Star Prospector has launched a week ago. Intrigued by this new sci-fi RTS I decided to take Star Prospector for a spin. Not to write a full-blown review yet but to get a taste of the game, and to let you guys know my first impressions playing it.

I played the first two missions (not the demo, the full game). But after finishing the second mission I realized “Hey, maybe I’ll just play one more!”. The article could almost end by now :) No, seriously, here are my first impressions of Star Prospector. Enjoy!

A smooth entry

First of all the intro is really nice. This is something you don’t see much these days and is surely a very important asset to set the right mood. I navigated very comfortably through all the menus. I choose my rig, its weapons and a first mission assignment, which was kind of a basic tutorial one.

With the help of the tutorial learning to play the game was very easy. The user interface is very accessible, which also helps a lot. Everything seems to be in the right place and feels right. There is enough information available (descriptions, damage inflicted by units, unit’s experience, power required for each building, etc).

There are several types of missions available to you, which I find particularly interesting. I could find already prospect, eliminate and archeologist missions. In the prospect missions you are assigned a task to assess if a particular planet is suitable for exploiting a particular resource. In the archaeologist missions you need to investigate some event or events, take necessary action and bring back a report. So, in a sense the archeologist and the prospect missions are kind of survey missions you undertake on the various systems and planets.

After every successful mission you’re rewarded with credits and experience. With those you can upgrade your rig with better weapons and defenses or decide to invest in unlocking new units or buildings (which is understood in the game as new “techs”). So, mission after mission you gradually upgrade your list of possibilities which is a nice thing that increases replayability and mitigates a bit mission repetitiveness. You know, build ore facility, build bot factory, build bot, extract ore, build fuel extractor, etc…. To mitigate this repetitive pattern I think some missions (some, not necessarily all) could start already a bit advanced (with the basic buildings and units) so that you don’t need to start every time everything from scratch.

One other very interesting aspect about Star Prospector is that every game you start is randomly generated. So, you will end up getting different missions every time you play a new game. This is a very important aspect because it increases game replayability. In my game session I completed 2 missions of a total of 101 for that game (2% accomplished in 1 hour or so of play). That’s a lot of play potential.

A pure RTS with a twist

Star Prospector is an RTS, a pure one in the sense that you need to use your workers (in this case bots) to collect resources nearby your base (which gladfully are finite). Then you need to bring that ore into an ore processing facility to be later used for constructing new buildings and new units. You have two types of resources available, ore and fuel. This is the game’s core mechanic, and there’s really nothing new here.

However, although Star Prospector is a pure RTS its pace may not satisfy all players at the start. The game has a kind of more calmer and leisure feel to it, certainly not the case of your typical RTS where everything happens instantly and you get to places very fast. Not in Star Prospector. Things don’t take that much time to build alright but units do take their time to move around, scout and reach a destination. Including your rig. So, don’t expect a full adrenaline rush coming out from this game but more of a casual and joyful experience, certainly a kind of a twist to traditional RTS games.

I have nothing against this calmer pace. Actually, for me the fast pace (sometimes even frenetic like in StarCraft) is something I don’t fancy that much. So, this game will be perfect for you guys that like RTS but like to take your time.

The music and sounds are very decent. I found the sounds particularly interesting by the way. The sounds of bot miners extracting ore or the sounds of lasers firing from laser bots and laser towers are particularly nice.

In terms of graphics Star Prospector doesn’t bring anything new really. There are no spectacular explosions (that I could experience in two games at least), no revolutionary camera moves or fully detailed models. But overall graphics are quite nice. Very clean and crisp. I have nothing to complain here.

Conclusion

Star Prospector seems like a very nice and decent sci-fi RTS game that every RTS gamer should have a look at. The experience evolves at a calm pace featuring a very interesting blend of RPG elements (progression, experience gain, level up, items purchase), strategy elements and action.

I found my first incursion into Star Prospector a very joyful and entertaining experience. The decision of including Star Prospector in the Space Sector’s sci-fi/space games list for 2012 was indeed a fortunate one. It was the first title of that list to come out, and it came out as a good surprise.

In case you missed it there’s a demo available. Try it for yourself and let me know your own impressions about the game.

Star Prospector is available on Impulse/GameStop for the Windows PC, for a price of $19.99 USD.

Sword of the Stars II: Lords of Winter was released in October, 28 2011. After the first few minutes playing the game players started reporting, incredulous with what they were experiencing (or not experiencing), that the game was very unstable and incomplete. The (un)official word by release day was that (by mistake) the game had been released in beta state. That “bogus version” would eventually be replaced by the final product. However that build wasn’t final either (very far from it actually).

Two weeks after release I wrote a (somewhat lengthy) SotS2′ first impressions. I saw no point in publishing a review at that time because it was more than clear to everybody by then that the game was released unfinished. In public announcements, both the publisher and the developer have apologized for the game’s state at release time and committed to complete it.

Three months after release (more than the producers had announced they needed to put the game in a playable state), I’m writing Sword of the Stars II’s review. I read all the game’s latest documentation available (manual and beginners’ guide) and I played 3 games, for around 250 turns total. One game I played with the Sol Force faction, another with the Morrigi Confederation and finally one with the Liir-Zuul Alliance (the one I liked playing the most, by the way).

Exploring the Sword of the Stars 2′s Universe

I admit that I was never a big fan of the original SotS’ star map and its 3D navigation. Although it looks nice on the surface I find it quite hard to find a view that I like, so, I’m re-adjusting it constantly. Anyway, eventually you will get used to the starmap’s navigation mechanics. You can zoom in and out and rotate in every direction, but I miss the ability to intuitively grasp distances between star systems. And the UI doesn’t help you with this either since it doesn’t give you quick distance information, like parsecs, turns, whatever unit really, so that you know how far a star actually is.

On the other hand, SotS2 offers a very interesting way to move your ships around the stars. To send your ships to other star systems you must first create a fleet. To do that you must pick an admiral from the admiral pool (each one with its positive and negative traits). Then you need to select one or more ships to include in your fleet. Your fleet must always include at least one command ship, a special type of ship that is required to coordinate the other ships. After that you can start conducting missions.

Actually, almost everything you do in SotS2 is achieved through the missions concept. You assign a mission, the designated fleet moves to some place, does what it needs to do and then returns to base. Take into account that the mission ETA (the time it takes for the fleet to do what you order it to do) includes the time for the fleet to arrive at its destination, perform the required mission (survey, colonization, construction, patrol, strike, invade, etc) and then head back to base.

To explore star systems you assign a survey mission. Any type of fleet, with any type of ship is allowed to do this type of mission. To build structures you assign a construction mission. In this case you need to have at least one constructor-type ship to be able to conduct such a mission. Then you can issue colonization orders. For that you need to have at least one colonization transport in your fleet. These missions (survey, construction, colonization) are your basic non-military type of missions but then you have a series of military-act missions you can do, which include patrolling, striking or invading star systems. You can also perform an interdiction mission which will not directly attack a system but will attack anyone coming in or out of it.

I love SotS2′s mission mechanic. I like it because in my opinion it removes the barren feeling normally associated with the traditional way to create and move ships around in other games of this type. Moreover, and since you can’t have hosts of fleets, your ships and your decisions really do matter, and that, in my opinion, is a big plus for SotS2.

Expanding your empire across the galaxy

Another Sword of the Stars 2′s great feature is the stations concept. Stations are modular structures that you can evolve over time by purchasing additional modules that increase their efficiency. Some modules will lift empire limits, others will unlock new possibilities. Stations evolve through four stages, with the culminating stage being a very special, expensive and unique structure for each type. There are four basic types of stations: Civilian, Diplomatic, Naval and Science stations. Besides these four basic types of stations there are two additional specific ones, one for the Hivers faction (the Gate stations) and another for the Suul’ka Horde (Tribute stations). Then there is a lesser station type (to some degree) used for mining purposes.

You can use stations to expand your empire’s military and research levels but also to boost trade and diplomatic relations with other empires. Although it’s fun to build and develop your stations there’s still also some mystery about them since you don’t know, exactly, how much of an impact a particular station is having on your research, for instance. Research modules should increase the research bonus ok, but then you can’t see an accumulated bonus modifier. There’s some polishing work to do here, as I found the stations concept, more the information about them, a bit obscure.

Developing your empire… but… with so many doubts?…

The economical part of the game is probably the most confusing one of all the game’s weakest elements. I mean, what exactly is a planet’s “Economical rating” anyway (moreover it’s always the same value for all colonies)?! And the manual doesn’t help you either. What about the biosphere concept? How exactly does it work (again the manual fails you and there are no tool tips available to guide you). This is the sort of thing that makes you frustrated and wanting to stop playing the game because if we have so many doubts about the game how are we supposed to understand the full scope of our decisions?

For example, in the empire manager screen (above), where you make all your economical strategic decisions, there’s a slider called “Stimulus”. No tool tips are provided on how it works and again the manual (and the in-game encyclopedia) fail to help you again. So, it was only after I consulted the game’s forums that I could understand what the intention behind the stimulus slider was (I went to the game forums constantly to try to understand stuff I could not find anywhere else btw).

So, it seems that there’s a private (or civil sector) of some sort in SotS2′s mechanics. The idea is that if you help, the best word is stimulate really (like government spending), areas like mining, colonization and trade then the civil sector will act autonomously from you and will create their own trade ships, trade routes and mining bases, and even help the empire on the colonization efforts free of charge (no maintenance costs associated) at the cost of lack of control over those enterprises that is.

This civil sector seems to be a great feature but as so little information about the stimulus slider is available on how (or when) this can be used to help your economy you can’t help not to feel quickly frustrated again. For instance, there are a series of techs that you need to discover first before the stimulus slider can actually work. But nothing is said anywhere about what needs to be done, and the sliders are just there open for you to play with them. However you don’t have a clue on what you’re doing (or obtaining). There’s no feedback from the game (no feedback at all) so you actually don’t know if your investment in stimulus is producing any effect. This is a very severe game shortcoming.

SotS2′ tech tree is probably one of its stronger points however. There are many tech trees (or branches) to invest in, with plenty of techs to research. In some cases, before researching a new tech you must first undertake a feasibility study. This tech pre-assessment will tell you how likely a tech is to breakthrough. This is very interesting because this uncertainty on how many turns a tech will actually take to research (if it will breakthrough at all) adds another layer of uncertainty on top of the random tech tree. In summary, there’s enough content and depth in the tech trees to keep you entertained by researching and experimenting new techs.

The worst, or better said, most incomplete aspect of SotS2 is the diplomacy system. And SotS2 would not be a 4X game without it would it? Well, in fact there’s barely any information on the manual or in-game about how diplomacy actually works, yet and in a way this is quite consistent with what the game currently offers in this respect (or at least is perceived to offer), which is, very little.

The diplomacy functional skeleton is already there, you can see what races you have already contact with. You can negotiate treaties and request things from them however there is so little feedback on your diplomatic actions, and the bugs are so many that it’s utmost evident that the diplomacy system still needs to be finished before we can even say anything further about it. In summary, the game’s diplomacy system is not yet finished and is barely functional at this stage.

Spaceship design and construction

And now we reach one of my favorite parts of the game (that actually feels very complete): the ship design and invoicing system. If you want to prototype your own cruiser, dreadnought or leviathan class ship (or any other ship for that matter) SotS2 offers you a straightforward and satisfying way to do that. Like in the original SotS, ships are modular. There are three modules that need to be customized separately. There is an engine section, a ship-type class section and another module for other vessel special characteristics.

At first not all that you’re required to do (or know) is evident, which is a SotS2 general problem. But after you experience around with the various options provided to you, you start to get the hang of it. There are many weapons, weapon types and mounts to choose from. You can even compare one weapon against another in a nice graph instead of having to memorize damage numbers, or having to cycle through the various weapon one by one. There are also extra modules, mostly that you unlock through research that you can include also. As already said ships are separated in three modules that increase the configurations variety, so, you can also play with that to further customize your ships. With respect to ship design SotS2 also includes a very nice ship testing feature. After choosing all your ships’ parameters you have the chance to see it in action before entering in real combat. The game puts you in a simulation controlled environment with some targets for you to test your armament.

The invoice system, i.e. the way you instruct your ships to be built, is also nicely done and gives you (in this case) all the information and features you need to build your ships. Before building ships of your newest designs you must invoice a single prototype. Only when your prototype gets built you can start producing that design in mass. The only negative aspect worth mentioning in the invoicing system is that I didn’t find a way to re-order invoices in the invoices queue after they are submitted. Although this may sound realistic I think the game should allow you to re-order your build queue anyway.

Space combat

Since SotS was always much more about space combat than strategy, we now reach one of the game’s critical areas: space combat. First of all SotS2′s space combat is very demanding in terms of performance, but if you actually have a good, or very recent 3D accelerator video card, you should be fine. But I leave the warning for people with moderate-to-good video cards from 3 years ago: you may struggle a bit to get a decent and smooth space combat rolling, if you do manage to tweak your card well enough in the end I mean.

Unlike the rest of the game that plays in turns combat unfolds in real-time, in a limited time span between 5 to 12 minute sessions(this limit is set by you at game setup). Overall graphics are very good. The planet models for instance are probably the best looking I’ve seen to date. The space stations and all spaceships are also very nice looking (some of them absolutely gorgeous), so, the graphical aspect of space combat is overall very good.

Now, in terms of gameplay, I found combat to be quite straightforward. You point, click, order attack with the left mouse button, select several ships and order movement with your right mouse button. Point, click, shoot, move, shoot again or standoff and retreat, all the basic combat options that this sort of game usually offers. I quite enjoyed the combat overall. The voices are nice, a bit repetitive but actually quite good, especially the Liir ones. I had only a few annoyances to report, but those are not strictly related with the combat itself but more with the preceding and the succeeding UI panel, that I found to be a bit rough and even wrong, as it contained some mistakes. For instance the battle report screen (at the end of battle) shows you a wrong number of destroyed ships.

Some further scattered thoughts

The game offers multiplayer options (LAN and Internet) but during the time I played for this review I only saw one open game there, which was protected, so I can’t tell you anything further than this regarding multiplayer.

The ETA system for turns is still unfinished and frankly quite disappointing. Sometimes fleets take less time to arrive at their destination. Sometimes a fleet uses less time to build a station, for example. Other times these issues are far more evident. Sometimes you get negative ETAs (yes, “-2″ turns for example) or you get “5937593″ turns, or overlapped text. I found this ETA instability very disturbing.

Sometimes you can’t colonize a world and you don’t know why. Other times you can’t relocate a fleet somewhere and you also don’t have enough information either in-game or in the manual to understand why. Could it be that you can’t have many fleets stationed in one system? But we don’t actually know that there is a maximum number, so there’s that lack of information and feedback problem again.

Sounds are basic, and music is minimal (although there is one for each faction), but they are enough to set the tone well. Voices are ok in general, mediocre at places (with annoying accents or simply unremarkable) but excellent in others (like when playing with the Liir for example).

Game screen switching, i.e. entering and leaving screens can lag severely. In large maps you can get up to 8-10 seconds to return back to the starmap (from the research screen for example). In smaller maps this is largely mitigated, and you end up getting “only” 1-3 seconds lag.

The fleet manager is cool, you can assign formations to your fleets (even in different layers: up, middle, down) although I’m not sure if this is actually working in combat as it should since in my battles my ships were all set in a straight line.

You can actually see stations under construction.

I didn’t like the fact that you can’t play with less than 3 systems at game start (for any map size).

The colonization system is interesting. After you colonize a new world you may decide to keep giving support to that recently established colony, especially if it was built in a less favorable environment. When you’re giving support to those colonies you accelerate their development, the downside however is that your colonization fleet is unavailable to establish new colonies elsewhere.

Very interesting shield technologies. The are several types of shields offered for research (against beam or projectile weapons for example) and you actually need to mount them in ships using special modules in order to use them.

The different factions, lore and background information is very good.

Bottom line

It’s clear to me that the game’s problem is not one of design but one of implementation. Both the art and the overall game’s design looks, and feels great. But you can’t help not to end up feeling frustrated sooner or later because of all the lack of information, crashes (for some people), bugs, lack of feedback or just incomplete or missing features.

After playing the latest version of Sword of the Stars 2 (the version the game was at, at the time that this review got published) I have strengthen my believe that this game has really great potential, and I mean BIG. Many issues have been addressed since release and the most important one being stability. The game is actually very stable now. At least for me it is. At release, and a couple of weeks after, I couldn’t even play for more than 4 straight turns (actually trying to do something) without crashing the game, and now, 3 months after that, I didn’t have a single crash after playing for this review.

At the time I wrote my Sword of the Stars 2′ first impressions I don’t think the game was playable at all, judging from my experience “playing” and by what everyone else in the game forums was saying. Now, judging from the type of activity I witnessed in the game forums (a lot more: “What’s that?, “How do I do this?” and less “I get a CTD here.”) the game is finally quite playable now. It’s not yet finished and lacks a lot of polishing work though. There are still bugs also to iron out. Examples of these are: wrong or negative ETAs, overlapped text at places, sliders that should not be active at game start, extreme lack of information and unpolished and buggy UI.

Now, about the golden questions you may be asking at this time: “Is the game already playable?”, “Is it ready?”, “Do you recommend the game?”. I will reply with this.

For the ones of you with a tight budgets that need to select carefully where to spend your money to maximize your game experience I can’t recommend this game for you at this moment. It’s too incomplete to be satisfying enough for you, and to be able to offer a solid game experience. At least for the $40-$50 price.

For you 4X veterans out there, that are still undecided whether to jump into SotS2 or not, I would say it’s already worth it for you to go ahead and buy SotS2. I think you can squeeze as much of the current game’s state to be worth the $40 or $50 bucks it costs. However don’t come back to me saying you had an unsatisfying experience because that’s probably what you’ll get. There’s the risk of not getting more than what you get now, yes, but there’s also a good chance you will.

If you’re new to this genre (space strategy) I don’t think it’s a good idea to enter in the SotS2 universe just now. There are other titles available that are definitely far better products, that will be more worthy of your money, and that will give you a better impression about the genre than Sword of the Stars 2: Lords of Winter will.

Guess I’ll need to re-review this one in a 3 to 6 months period, which is becoming a strange need these days.

Sword of the Stars II: Lords of Winter Buy it at GamersGate. Also available on Steam and Impulse.	Space Sector score: 4.0 (about the score system)

(credits for these shots go to GameSpy)

Screenshots added on Dec 28, 2011

(thanks to sporemaster for bringing these up on the SoaSE forums!)

For more information check: Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion Announced

GameSpy has just published an interview with Stardock’s staff about Rebellion, the new, and highly anticipated Sins of a Solar Empire stand-alone expansion pack. I condensed in this post what were, in my opinion, the juicier parts of the interview. I also added a few personal notes and bits of further information. You can read the entire interview here.

In the interview Stardock clarified that Rebellion will include all the previous titles content, so, all the features included in the Diplomacy or Entrenchment expansions (or in the Trinity pack) will be in Rebellion.

Stardock also provided some details about the 3 new Rebellion (sub)factions. As we already knew each one of the three original races gets split into Loyalists and Rebels. “The TEC Loyalists are very defensive (…) the TEC Rebels are very aggressive”. Stardock also added that each faction gets its own Titan class ship and confirmed that “there are going to be six distinct Titans (…) each has its own abilities and stats”.

Stardock also clarified that regarding more ships offered (from the original Sins’ games) apart from the new 6 different types of Titan class ships there will also be new corvette and capital class ships.

Then GameSpy staff asked the gold question (always have been a Sins debate over this topic). “Are you planning to introduce any kind of single-player campaign?”. Stardock confirmed that “there won’t be a single-player campaign.” although “we are hoping to put some scenarios in, which would be not just stand-alone maps like we’ve had in the past, but a bit more detailed, with specific objectives to accomplish”. So, at least it seems that we are gonna get a few more mission depth with these new promised scenarios.

Now, about the tech trees, and any possible major revamping Stardock clarified that there will be changes that make Rebellion feel a bit more unique regarding research but “probably more of an addition to the existing”. Stardock explained further that the new Rebellion techs were integrated into the existing tech trees (military, civilian and diplomacy).

About the pirate system (a very cool Sins feature btw), GameSpy asked about changes on that. Stardock confirmed that they’ve done some additional tweaks to the pirate system this year. They also added that there will be key differences “the TEC Rebels (…) can actually ally with the Pirates, and use Pirate ships and not have to pay for them”. Now that’s a funny twist.

Stardock then announced that there will be a research victory now. “You have to have researched X number of technologies Then, once you do that (…) a special research condition is unlocked which is really expensive and takes quite a lot of time to research, but if you can do that ahead of anyone else you’ll win”.

About the looks and sounds Stardock said that the UI is not getting significant changes. The only one worth mentioning by Stardock was that each race will have its own UI now. Regarding overall graphical improvements Stardock promised many changes on that aspect. They also added more music and a new intro movie.

About possible AI improvements Stardock replied that “there’s a bunch” of AI areas that were worked on. They add that they have updated the pathfinding for ships so that they don’t try to go over or under one another” or ending up getting stucked. They also stated that they’ve updated the AI to be more effective against exploits like ” massed missile swarms or massed bomber attacks”.

Questioned by release date Stardock replied “As cliche as it sounds: when it’s done“. There was anticipation for a Rebellion release still in 2011, with all the pre-orders and beta announcements. But after a while no more news were heard about that. There are rumors (and only that) in the Sins’ forums that Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion will (probably) be released this spring 2012.

It’s worth mentioning that Ironclad  Games is helping Stardock on Rebellion’s development (or vice versa, can’t really tell). Thanks to Gamespy for putting up this nice interview. It really was informative and very well structured.

I’ve just received word from Cryptstone Games that Star Prospector was released today, and is now available for purchase on Impulse/GameStop. Star Prospector is part of the Space Sector’s sci-fi/space games to look for in 2012 list, and it is also the first of those to get released.

Star Prospector offers a gameplay mix of strategy (real-time) and RPG elements and I was intrigued not only by that but probably most of all due to its curious gameplay features. At first glance Star Prospector does not seem to be like your typical RTS game, and it seems to have something to offer for everyone. See this clip taken from the 2012′s sci-fi games list about Star Prospector, that I think describes well my thoughts on the game.

“Star Prospector features a mix between RPG and real-time strategy elements and your mission, in the role of a prospector, is to mine, salvage and build bases on remote planets in search for resources, technology and adventure. In the good tradition of RPG games you also get loot drops from your foes and skill points that will allow you to get access to new units, buildings and items. Although certainly not like StarCraft 2 in terms of graphics, Star Prospector seems to be a decent title, that intertwines some 4X elements and RPG elements. I’m curious to see what Cryptsone Games has assembled for us.” ~Adam Solo (Space Sector)

Star Prospector is available on Impulse/GameStop for the Windows PC starting today, for a launching price of $19.99 USD.

Gemini Wars official release date is set for Q1 2012, however the European version (to be released by Iceberg Interactive) is due for April, 20 2012, for a release price of 29.99€. Yesterday, and after a long (apparent) dormant period with no news, Camel 101 has released a new Gemini Wars gameplay video and announced that they are making the final touches on their game.

What’s left them to get the game out?

Balancing: we‘re still balancing the game; it’s quite big, that’s the reason it’s taking so long. Some polishing (textures and sounds) and testing; multiplayer testing is also underway. ~Camel 101

Here is the gameplay video that got released yesterday.

Two of Space Sector’s game’s choices to look for in 2012 are XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Xenonauts. They are both remakes, or re-imagined versions (the difference is only subtle really) of the original X-COM games from the 90′s where your job is to lead a squad of elite fighters against an alien incursion on our planet.

On one side there’s Xenonauts, produced by Goldhawk Interactive, a <24 manpower indie video game studio founded in 2009 based in London, that uses the alpha-funding model to fund their games. On the other side there’s the giant (at least size-wise it is) game publisher Take-Two interactive (that owns 2K Games). Take-Two has given the job to Firaxis Games (a respected game developer studio responsible for game titles like Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri and Sid Meier’s Civilization 3, 4 and 5), to build a new X-COM franchise sequel. Take-Two owns the original franchise trademark that belonged to Microprose by the way.

I can’t tell you well enough how excited I am, as surely thousands and thousands of other X-COM fans spread around the globe are, to hear that after a long wait (of more than a decade) this year we will finally be able to get the chance to play a new X-COM style strategy game, that is worthy of the original titles. I’m not referring to one of the games in particular although I have to confess, understandably I guess, that I am a bit more excited to hear that a new X-COM game was going to be produced (the Firaxis one) than when I learned about Xenonauts, a long time before. Firaxis and 2K only announced their game now but Goldhawk Interactive, also due to it’s alpha-funding scheme, have announced Xenonauts many months ago.

We can imagine the shock this new XCOM announcement has caused on Goldhawk Interactive, seeing a “AAA” XCOM announcement for the same year they are expecting to release Xenonauts. In fact Xenonauts people talk about on receiving this news (see Goldhawk Interactive’s recent post about their reaction to 2K/Firaxis’ announcement). See a clip below.

“Mid-January is upon us and the festive season has been left well and truly behind. It’s time for another update on what’s been happening on Xenonauts, plus a few words on a game being made by a little-known studio called Firaxis. I’ll start with the elephant in the room, the Firaxis X-Com remake. I’ll admit that their announcement was not the ideal way to usher in the New Year, but the more information that is revealed about the game the less I worry for Xenonauts. I have a lot of respect for Firaxis and I imagine that their remake will at worst be a good game, but there are a lot of differences between what we are aiming to do and what they are. I therefore don’t think they’ll erode our target audience a great deal. In fact, they may even increase it.” ~Goldhawk Interactive

We have only to gain with this because now there’s a little competition going on between these two to see who pulls it off better, so, we have everything to win with this little dispute :)

Does Xenonauts has everything to lose?

I’m a huge X-COM fan, and I’m sincere, right now my preference, in terms of expectation level is for Firaxis’ “XCOM”. It doesn’t have anything to do with what they promise to offer really, since we barely know anything about the two games at this point. It is just natural to assume that an official sequel product is likely to be a better one, at least more true to the original. But this preliminary preference works both ways really. Although it may seem that Xenonauts starts way behind, they actually have one (well, I’m sure they may have more), one big thing in their favor: people don’t have so much expectations for their game as for Firaxis’ one.

Another Xenonauts advantages is that being a smaller studio in size they may benefit from all the hype behind the new XCOM franchise remake and take the opportunity to cash-in through that hype. Moreover it’s understandable to think that many XCOM fans will also want to try Xenonauts, if not for the sake of pure interest in the game, at least from a pure curiosity point of view, as much as prices will allow of course.

What made the X-COM series fantastic in the first place?

It’s a fair observation to make that there would not be a Xenonauts game if it wasn’t for the original X-COM titles (such as UFO Defense, Terror from the Deep and Apocalypse). But it isn’t less unfair to note that there wouldn’t be an XCOM: Enemy Unknown made by Firaxis either. The true credit must be given first to the original X-COM series, the one that made all this host of remakes, clones and re-imagining “XCOM” games possible.

So, but what made the franchise a huge success in the first place? – you may be questioning now. “What is all this great XCOM thing about? This seems to be one of the most loved sci-fi strategy games ever. But why?”

The answer is: many things. Many observable (the gameplay, the visuals, the music) and probably such as many not so observable (the people and the companies behind the projects). But with respect to the game itself the great characteristics, for me at least, are: the setting, the game’s atmosphere and of course the elegant turn-based and real-time mechanics gameplay mix.

I could be here all morning saying good things about the original games but if I had to choose the best aspects I would definitely say the setting, the game’s atmosphere. It’s that killing suspense, the horror, the surprise factor that so many people neglect how important it is to capture a player’s attention and provide a fun experience that made X-COM great. Examples of these surprise horror moments are “WTF will I see behind this door?”, “What horrors, what alien or number of aliens will be there?”, “WHERE ARE THEY??”, “My GOD, not one of THESE!! I’m F*****!! (Castle Wolfenstein any one?). It’s that tension, the grim and compelling atmosphere that builds and builds the mood higher and higher that glues the player to the screen. Ultimately you could almost feel you’re being part of what’s going on, what we can define as game immersion.

But there are lots of other details worth noting. The music was also special, it had momentum and also helped build tension. Then there’s the tanks and hovercrafts. You could actually move inside tanks and use them to blow up houses, and the poor aliens. Another interesting aspect of the game is that although the game was not linear, in a sense that it didn’t start and ended following a linear sequence of events, it had a story, and a storyline that you would need to follow more or less closely to allow you to finish the game, but you could always make some choices along the way that could accelerate or not the end-game progression.

Another key aspect in the original X-COMs is that you really cared about your squad of men and women. And you had good motives for such because as your men gained experience that would make them experts and very critical assets to have. The loss of one squad member could mean sayonara to the entire game. You really had to look out for your men and protect them from danger at all costs. This tension, this life-or-death confrontation is slowly disappearing in today’s games, where dying doesn’t mean anything anymore and if you’re in bad shape you just need to look around and find some health flask, wait for mana recharge or simply don’t care at all, die and happilly start over. What’s the fun with that? In the original XCOMs you could always save your game yes but if you made some bad moves that could cost you the entire battle or the even the entire game (NOOOOO!!! I killed the lobsterman navigator!! I needed that bastard alive for questioning, I’m F*****!!). Damn, those were good times.

Screenshots Mano a Mano

Now it’s time for some quick comparison show-down between the two titles. In the end it all comes to “what have you brought?  ~Indy 3″.

Remember that these are all “under-development” screenshots, both games only get released by the end of the year (Q3 2012 to be more exact).

Terrain

Terrain look & feel is a very important aspect of these games because thats where most of the gameplay mechanics unfold (there are usually several terrain settings involved in XCOM games, from deserts, jungles, ships and cities). In the next three shots you can see the original game’s terrain look & feel, followed by Xenonauts proposal and then the one by Firaxis.

XCOM: UFO Defense Terrain (1993). shot from electrondance.com

Xenonauts Terrain Screenshot

XCOM: Enemy Unknown Terrain

Xenonauts went on a more “clean and crisp” approach that somehow makes me remember the original games more. XCOM: Enemy Unknown has much more graphical effects, which is nice but ultimately not that critical for me.

Planet Monitoring

The Planet Monitoring screen (aka Geoscape) is where you manage your base and can see the world view. It’s in the Geoscape where you fight the strategic war with the aliens, where the “Battlescape” is where you fight the tactical battles. More info on this in the UFOpaedia.

XCOM: UFO Defense Geoscape

Xenonauts Planet Monitoring Screenshot

XCOM: Enemy Unknown Planet Monitoring Screenshot

It’s really hard to tell anything from the screenshots alone besides the fact that both visions look good. Xenonauts in flat 2D world view, XCOM followed the “3D” (original) formula.

See more XCOM: Enemy Unknown screenshots here. More Xenonauts shots here.

Gameplay features close look

Both games are still in production and are due for release only by the end of the year so it’s not possible at this time to be very exhaustive in features, simply because they are not known yet (firmly at least), and I don’t have access to neither game’s builds at this point :)

In a general sense gameplay will be pretty much the same in both games, as expected if you’ve read this far. The real-time element of both games is set on a global view (the “Geoscape”), where the player tracks UFOs, and alien incursions happening on the entire world. You should also be allowed to conduct research and develop your XCOM / Xenonauts bases at any time (although I couldn’t confirm this yet). This is the games’ real-time strategy part.

Combat is all fought in turns, in a normal turn-based fashion. Both teams have a series of “movement points”. Each unit spends its points and when those are exhausted you pass to the next unit in the team till all are left without enough movement points to conduct any action or till you’re content with your movement. You hit end-turn and now it’s the Aliens time to play.

And while gameplay is basically the same in both games it’s possible already to enumerate a series of details from what I could manage to dig up. As I don’t have first hand information I decided to use some quotes along the way to summarize the features.

Re-imagining vs Remake?

What they say.

“The game [Xenonauts] is heavily inspired by the classic X-Com / UFO: Enemy Unknown, released in the mid-90s by the now-defunct Mythos / Microprose. It is not a straight remake; though the core mechanics remain similar much has changed or been updated – so much so, in fact, that we prefer the term ‘reimagining’ to remake’. ~Goldhawk Interactive

“Re-imagining is probably a better term. Firaxis’ XCOM: Enemy Unknown doesn’t directly copy the underlying game systems – for instance, soldiers have different stats than they did in the 1994 original – but the concepts are still here. Players still have to manage multiple resources and threats on a global scale in a seemingly hopeless war against extraterrestrial forces with far better technology and capabilities.” ~GameInformer (Game Informer has an exclusive coverage deal with 2K/Firaxis for XCOM: Enemy Unknown)

Squares vs Hexes

The original series featured squares as spatial movement unit. Xenonauts seems to have kept the formula. XCOM: Enemy Unknown apparently innovates this aspect and now uses hexes as spatial movement system instead.

Base Building

In the original series you could see and manage your base from above. Xenonauts keeps the traditional base view, XCOM: Enemy Unknown innovates a little and offers vertical base building.

From left to right: X-COM: Terror from the Deep, Xenonauts, XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

Other differences

In 2K forums there’s talk that XCOM: Enemy Unknown may feature some original gameplay streamlining. Elements like ammo now being unlimited or we now having one main base only to manage (where before you could build sister bases all around the globe). Fog-of-war now prevents seeing an alien from too much distance and something about squads having a cap of 4 soldiers max. Frankly from what I could tell these are all speculations still.

Conclusion

It’s definitely too soon to take any definite conclusions on who will stick closer to the original X-COM formula and conquer more X-COM fans (if sticking to the original formula is the best strategy at all). It all comes down to who will provide the best gameplay experience, and that’s much more complex than knowing only who will offer the best graphics or if one of the games offers some detail exactly equal or not as in the original series. For me the winner, from a nostalgic point of view, will be the one that is able to recreate those classic moments of tension, suspense and that overall horror setting as it was provided by the original X-COMs. All that with believable gameplay and lots of surprises sprinkled throughout the experience should be the winner’s ticket.

We are still 9 months apart from both games release date, since Goldhawk Interactive has announced a couple of days ago that they’re planning to release Xenonauts about the same time as XCOM: Enemy Unknown, (i.e. this autumn 2012). And as if all this would not be enough there’s also Chaos Concepts’ UFO2: Extraterrestrials coming in 2012 :)

Guess this will be the X-COM remakes year. And… I couldn’t be happier.

I hope you had as much fun reading this article as I had writing it :)

No, it’s not a post from 19 years ago :), XCOM: Enemy Unknown (yes, a new true X-COM installment with the same name as the original title) was announced today by Firaxis and 2K Games.

So, Firaxis Games and 2K revealed that our dear sci-fi strategy series is back. That’s right, this fall (hopefully) we’ll have a new good old X-COM game to dive-in and lose ourselves doing your best to stop another alien invasion. Will lobster navigators return? Perhaps the flying flowers-of-doom are back? Or the tiny insectoid-like creatures hidden in someone’s backyard doing gods-know what kind of experiences on we poor humans.

Now, this was the sort of news that I was needing to lighten up my day. Boy, I’m so excited about this. The X-COM games are among my favorite games of all time! And it couldn’t get better, I guess. A new (true) sequel to X-COM that is currently being developed by Firaxis Games, which is undoubtably one of the best strategy producers out there, and we don’t need to wait years for having it! It’s ironic that this gets announced now when XCOM, a tactical shooter (not to be confused with the real-time and turn-based strategy title we are talking about here), is coming out this spring, curiously brought also by the same publisher (2K).

Steve Martin, Firaxis Games president, said “It’s been a dream of ours to recreate X-COM with our unique creative vision. We’re huge fans of the original game and it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to re-envision a game that is as beloved as X-COM,”. Steve added “We were careful to keep XCOM: Enemy Unknown true to the elements that made X-COM such a revered game while delivering an entirely new story and gameplay experience for both die-hard X-COM fans and newcomers to the franchise.”

From left to right: X-COM: UFO Defense (aka UFO: Enemy Unknown) from 1993 , X-COM: Terror From the Deep (1995), X-COM: Apocalypse (1997). Credits for the images for Gamespot.com.

The original X-COM series offers a mix between a real-time strategic view where events unfold (new UFOs sighted, intercepted and crashed) and turn-based combat, where all the alien hunt fun began. Let’s hope both views are kept from the original installments, now (hopefully) with better graphics, improved gameplay and more surprises.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown will come out for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this fall. Keep tuned-in for more information on this as it comes out. Thanks, Game Informer.

Cryptstone Games, a computer game development company located in Vancouver Canada, is developing Star Prospector, a single-player real-time strategy game set in a future science fiction universe.

Star Prospector’s devs have released a trailer of their game a couple of days ago. By watching you can see that they mixed elements of RPG and real-time strategy. In Star Prospector the player takes the role of a prospector, and in each mission you take you will mine, salvage and build a base on remote planets across the galaxy in search for resources, technology and adventure. That’s the strategy part. The RPG part is where you end up getting loot drops and skill points that at each level of experience increase will allow you to access new units, buildings and items.

Features

• 100 randomly generated missions (including story centric missions) within a galaxy that is unique for every player.
• Earn experience, skill points, and credits from missions to purchase units, upgrades, and weapons.
• Battle against brutal Scavenger forces as well as a myriad of hostile creatures.
• Scan and mine ore, build wells to collect fuel, defend your base with turrets.
• Units gain combat experience and level-up within each mission and can be upgraded with shields, armor, damage, and other attributes.
• Collect loot from enemies. Use your rig to salvage wreckage for unique items.
• Outfit your Rig with weapons and modules to boost your stats.

The Story

It is the year 2158, and after a hundred years of space exploration humanity has still only visited a small fraction of our galaxy. Corporations routinely send out one-man prospectors, via warp gates, to locate energy-dense resource locations on remote planets and asteroids. Based on the prospector’s findings, and if they manage to survive, the corporations launch large factory-builders to start full-scale mining operations.

The Prospector Guild is an organization established to train, regulate, and provide jobs for the prospectors. Prospectors have become more than just mere miners. They are explorers, mercenaries, archaeologists, and entrepreneurs. The Scavengers were once human exiles of Earth. Now they are cyborgs, spread in sparse groups across the unexplored worlds.

Star Prospector looks and feels pretty much like your typical Command & Conquer or Warcraft 3 RTS game set in space. Much like StarCraft. Star Prospector seems to incorporate a few nice touches of exploration with randomly generated missions per galaxy, but the core seems to focus around base building and real-time battles in alien worlds.

For more information please head on to Cryptstone’s website. In there you will find more screenshots and a few very interesting gameplay trailers too.

Star Prospector was recently in beta stage so it’s expected to release soon, and exclusively, for the PC. So, stay tuned!

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat - Sun Tzu ^[1]

The Tactics and Strategy concepts are largely described in the literature explained by who knows best. Their difference is also described in great length over the Internet. One of the emblematic references for these concepts is Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”, a book that explains you the basics (and the not so basics) of warfare, leadership, tactics and strategy.

This is one of my Sun Tzu’s favorite quotes by the way:

Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory. - Sun Tzu

Which basically tells that the best strategists (the best leaders, rulers) only fight when they’re absolutely sure they’ll win (when they have won before the battle has even began). This seems obvious, the devil is in the details however. It takes a great deal of intelligence, experience and intuition to be a great leader, because you’ll need to possess all of these traits (among others) in order to know when it is and it is not the best time to fight.

So, why am I bringing this up? What do I have to add to this subject?

Not much really.

The objective of this post is not to teach you the difference between Strategy and Tactics, since I would not be the best teacher available, as I have my share of doubts too. This article aims on helping us know more about these concepts and understand their differences a little bit better, since after all they are at the heart of this blog’s theme. Moreover these concepts are not only important in the gaming domain but also very useful to apply in other areas of our lives as well.

You have some references at the bottom of this article in case you want to learn more about this subject.

What is Tactics?

One must change one’s tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority. - Napoleon Bonaparte

In this article I’ll focus on military tactics, which is how the tactics concept is usually presented in games.

Military tactics is the science and art of organizing a military force ^[3], prepare it, equip it and lead it with the aim of defeating an enemy in battle.

Factors that the tactician should take into account when deciding how to fight are usually: the terrain and the location where the battle is to be fought; possible obstacles found there; the weather conditions; the numbers involved (men, weapons and machines). All this information is extremely important to have in order to determine the best formation to use and to consider if the use of ambushing, flanking or reconnaissance are necessary. But probably the best weapon that the tactician wants to have in its possession is information about the enemy. The more of it he has the better the outcome ought to be.

The Generals, Commanders and Admirals are usually the tacticians, of an army, navy or fleet.

What is Strategy?

All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved. - Sun Tzu

Strategy is the art of “careful, skillful thinking and planning in order to achieve victory” ^[4]. I would replace “victory” by “a goal” to make it more broad and general without loss of meaning.

In military terms strategy is distinct from tactics where tactics is concerned with the actual engagement and events of a battle while strategy is concerned with how different engagements (battles) are linked and how that affects the global picture of a campaign or any other endeavor’s progress towards achieving a high-level goal.

How a battle is fought is a matter of tactics. Whether it should be fought at all is a matter of strategy - Wikipedia

If the Admirals, Captains and Generals are the tacticians then the Governors, Rulers and Emperors, are the strategists with the role of managing a city, a nation or a spacefaring civilization.

Strategy Video Games

Now, with respect to strategy games, the subject of this article in particular, things are a little bit different. That’s here where things normally start to get fuzzier (at least to me it had that effect).

In strategy games all strategy elements apply (naturally), however strategy games normally comprise other kinds of disciplines as well, that are not strictly related with strategy. For example strategy games normally present other challenges to the player other than the strategical, like tactical, logistical and economical challenges. That’s why usually (and I tend to agree with this classification ^[2]) strategy games come in different flavors and include tactical games as sub-genres. There are other types of strategy games but I’ll keep the list to what I consider to be the main five for the sake of simplification.

Strategy games’ main sub-genres:

• 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate)
• Real-time strategy (RTS)
• Real-time tactics (RTT)
• Turn-based strategy (TBS)
• Turn-based tactics (TBT)

The description of each of these sub-genres is out of the scope of this essay, but if you’re interested to know a bit more on 4X games for example I invite you to read What are 4X Games: a Definition and links to Games.

Examples of 4X games are the Civilization series, Master of Orion series and the Galactic Civilizations series among many other titles. Examples of RTS games are the Homeworld series, Command & Conquer series or the StarCraft series. Examples of RTT games are Star Hammer Tactics, World in Conflict and Warhammer: Dark Omen. Finally, examples of TBT games are the X-COM series or Jagged Alliance series.

Conclusion

Tactics and Strategy are different concepts and imply different things. While the former deals with the details of engagement such as the best way to undertake a battle (or another type of task at hand) the latter deals with longer-term and higher-level objectives that require a great deal of thinking and planning in order to achieve a goal. In games usually that means achieving victory.

It’s not only a question of scale but also a question of actions involved. While the strategist deals more with thinking ahead, planning and scheming the tactician deals with situation analyses and execution with what is provided to him. Both include decision as a central aspect however. With a bad decision the tactician may lose a battle, with a bad decision the strategist may lose the entire war.

In gaming, strategy video games normally comprise more than strategy elements only. Tactical games are a sub-genre of strategy games. It is natural to be so in my opinion because in many strategy games the intention is not only to allow the player to plan the road to victory but also to allow him to experience the action and the execution of the events that are part of that plan. In war games this is particularly true. The player is invited to not only think which is the best way to achieve victory in the long run but also to experience the hack-and-slash of war.

So, when we are talking about strategy games we are talking about both strategic and tactical games. And in many cases strategy games contain aspects of both concepts in their gameplay.

References

[1]: The Art of War, Sun Tzu, Shambahla Publications, 1988

[2]: Video Games Genres – Wikipedia

[3]: Military Tactics – Wikipedia

[4]: Strategy – Wikipedia

Legends is Distant Worlds’ second expansion pack, after Return of the Shakturi, released 11 months before and Distant Worlds original 9 months before that. Distant Worlds is a single-player 4X real-time space strategy game for the PC.

Both the devs and the community have been very active lately and a couple of days ago Matrix Games and CodeForce released Legends’ first official patch (v1.7.0.6). After trying that and after playing quite extensively for the past 2 weeks I’m now finally ready to properly review Legends. So, here we go.

What’s new in Legends?

The major additions and changes that were promised (at least that I could take note before release) were:

- Leaders / new character system
- Influence spheres
- New ships models (around 600!) with better graphics
- Ability to track where your ships are headed (ship vectors overlay)
- Potential colonies, scenic and research locations shown on main map (more overlays)
- Expanded technology tree (e.g. carriers, new planetary facilities, wonders)
- Race-specific events and victory conditions
- Improved fleet management and automation, including fleet postures
- Improved modding support, including full race and character modding
- Improved refueling system (more intelligent fuel management)
- Improved diplomacy system with refueling and mining rights and immigration policies
- Improved performance and sharper graphics

I can confirm that’s all in Legends plus these other interesting new additions:

- Research events (setbacks, research crash breakthroughs)
- Declarations of war now shown on main screen as galactic news
- Elegant new race-specific victory conditions system
- Resources events with new resources found on planets
- Catastrophe events and more menacing space creatures (the dreaded Silvermist)
- Races now have key resources that provide specific bonuses
- We can now see where ships are headed (with a vector, not just coordinates as before)
- Custom ship designs are now signaled with a different color
- You can set the game’s difficulty level

Characters

The character system is Distant Worlds Legends major improvement. Characters are special people who specialize in different aspects of your empire like economical, social, intelligence or military aspects. You have Embassadors, Colony Governors, Special Scientists, Intelligence Agents, Troop Leaders and Fleet Leaders. These characters are varied in nature and you can tell that your play style does influence their appearance and progression. For example if you negotiate often in the diplomacy screen you get diplomacy skill increase on your existing Embassadors and new Embassador characters also tend to emerge more. At least I experienced that.

Characters have positive and negative traits which makes them feel realistic and fun to play. You have a leader, only one; that’s you. If you don’t like yourself much, or other characters, you can dismiss them and new ones will eventually be generated. Some character traits are unknown at start so you have to put your character to the test before discovering their abilities. This is a very interesting and fun detail, since it involves a surprise factor.

Your characters level up with time, according to their past events (which are logged by the game for you to consult at any time). It’s really very cool to see your agents for example get specialized in sabotage or espionage due to the fact that you keep sending them to those kinds of missions. If they keep succeeding in their missions they will continue to level up those skills which makes the intelligence system much more fun and immersive to play now. Moreover you can’t recruit as many agents as you want as before. Agents now emerge so you have to take care of them much more carefully than before. I particularly prefer how the intelligence system works now.

In summary the Legend’s Character system is what I was expecting it to be and more. It is really a new experience to play Legends over Return of the Shakturi just because of that believe me. Characters provide extra strategic choices, gameplay depth, personality and immersion. And the expansion would probably be already worthwhile just because of that.

But there’s plenty more

Your colonies now project influence spheres. At first I didn’t quite understand what those were really about, but after playing Legends for a while, and after going through the galactopedia and the manual (both very good by the way), I finally got what they’re real aim is. By the way, in-game documentation is very good with links to the galactopedia spread all over the different screens to assist you in case you have doubts. I guarantee that you’ll have doubts many times :)

Planets project these influence spheres based on their strategic value (population and development level). The more of it they have the bigger the spheres will be. Inside your sphere of influence is all the territory that the other races see as under your control so they will avoid building mining stations and colonies inside your space. Due to this new feature you can now grant mining rights to the races you want, another cool new feature that deepens diplomacy options even more.

In addition to mining rights you can also decide to offer refueling rights to your neighbors, for the ones you’re not in a mutual defense pack already that is. Another nice one.

Another interesting new diplomacy feature is the ability to set immigration policies on your colonies. Distant Worlds allows several races to peacefully (or not so peacefully) co-exist in the same planets, which is a good feature in my opinion. In Legends you can now set policies to influence the way immigration works. For instance if you don’t want a particular race to be present in your colony you can set it up for relocation and slowly your private sector passenger ships will transport those races elsewhere (you can set immigration policies empire-wide if you need). If you want to enslave a particular race for economic bonuses on a colony you can also set that up, among other options like don’t accept a particular race completely at a colony (or colonies) or decide to slowly exterminate a particular race. Enslavement and extermination have a strong negative impact in your reputation (the way other races see you).

An old negative aspect of Distant Worlds has finally (and thankfully) been addressed in Legends, which is the way ships looked. This was a big complaint of mine in Distant Worlds since the beginning, as you can judge by my Distant Worlds original review. Ships looks were really very poor and unappealing. That is no more! With the help of a mod fan (nicknamed WoodMan in the Distant Worlds forum) the devs have injected 600 (yes, 600!) new ship models. Ships are now sharper and much more interesting, however there’s an option that allows you to use the old models if you prefer.

Research and the tech tree also had some improvements. There are now new weapons (rail guns that partly bypass shields); carriers (a special type of ship hull class that is suited to hold fighters); new planetary buildings (like the terraforming facility that is used to increase the colony development after a major catastrophe). There are also wonders now, Sid Meier’s Civ style. Below you can see 3 of them. From left to right you have the Gizurean Universal Hive, the Rusan Technology Installation and the Shandar Lava Palace Resort.

Wonders are special structures that provide significant bonuses to the race that finishes them first and are unlocked by researching required techs. There are 15, which vary in development, research, ships speed, defense, among other bonuses.

There are also two new nice twists to research that made it even more interesting. Now there are research crash breakthroughs and research setbacks events. The former causes a tech to breakthrough much faster, the latter causes an entire research on a particular field to be lost. Scientist characters also play a role here. If you happen to find one with the Creative trait your chances to breakthrough techs increase. Here is another example of good association between characters and gameplay.

Refueling, another headache from the past has now been further improved. In order to solve past annoyances which required too much fuel micromanagement we can now set a % that determines how many (a % of) ships in a fleet need to be out of fuel before they ‘assemble’, meaning they will get more gas before attacking (\Edit this only works when your fleets are automated). This is a VERY important implementation. In DW previous installments it was very annoying to witness that sometimes your fleets were crawling because of a single frigate having no gas. Now if you set a low % of refuel order before attacking, that fleet will refuel at the nearest refuelling point before embarking on its attacking plan. This is another big plus.

There’s plenty more meaningful events added in Legends. There are now the new race-specific events. For example a race enters in a biological cycle where it will behave differently, more aggressively or friendlier. There’s the new catastrophe events. For example I had a major earthquake in one of my major colonies that decreased the planet’s quality significantly and I also lost a good amount of population. There are resource events now. I was surprised and very pleased to see this new feature. Now your colonies may occasionally discover a new source of a particular resource not found before. This seems to be a particularly rare event (it only happened to me once) but it is a nice new touch. And there are also the new research events (crash breakthroughs and setbacks) that I already mentioned above.

A word on the new victory conditions system

Till now Distant Worlds provided only the traditional dominance, conquest, time types of victory conditions. You reach a certain percentage of population, or number of colonies and you win. Although not a complete innovation in these types of games Legends introduces a new and more elegant victory conditions concept: races have their own victory conditions. These are specific goals that each race has to obtain to achieve victory. If you play with the humans you must achieve more mutual defense pacts, earn more income from tourism and trade than other races, for example. If you’re an Ackdarian you must possess the biggest capital ship of the galaxy and possess at least 50% of all ocean planets (Ackdarians are amphibians). And so on. Then there are many other interesting goals like the need to destroy most enemy troops (of the Boskara), enslave 25% of other races present in your colonies (of the Dahyut), build the Universal Hive Wonder (of the Gizurean) or start the fewest wars in the galaxy (of the peacekeeping Ketarov).

There’s really plenty of different flavors and variety on these goals, and that’s why I thought this new victory conditions system would deserve a section of its own in this review. The way victory progress is calculated and measured it’s also very interesting as you can see below.

Depending on your victory conditions setup at game start you will see victory progress which includes both the traditional and the race specific victory conditions. In red you can see the percentage of victory progression with respect to the Humans specific victory conditions. In blue it’s the economies’ %, in green the population and in yellow the territory %. This is all merged into a global victory progress bar which makes it very easy to grasp who’s in the lead. The first race to achieve the red line boundary on the right wins. You can set the weight of the victory conditions boundary now also. Default is 80% but you can be stricter or looser on your approach to victory. You can disable race victory conditions if you want and go only with the traditional population, territory, time or economy goals.

User Interface improvements

The User Interface has always been Distant World’s Achilles heel, its major weakness. The original game’s UI was inappropriate to play a game of this magnitude. The game’s potential was there already but without a good UI, sadly, we couldn’t experience enough pleasure playing the title. And unfortunately players can’t play potential alone yet. Return of the Shakturi solved most of the UI problems by introducing quick action buttons and the empire navigation tool which were surely most welcome.

Legends improves the UI even further, to the point where finally I have no major complaints about it anymore. For instance, now you’re (finally!) able to track where your ships are going by clicking on them or by turning on the ship vectors overlay, which will show you where all your civilian private ships or your state controlled ships are headed. Previously you could only guess where most ships were headed (particularly civilian ships). You would need to check the ships coordinates to know the ships’ direction. Clearly this was insufficient to say the least. This is now fixed and the ship overlays and vectors shown when you click ships are extremely useful features to have and another big plus for Legends.

Another interesting new UI feature is the ability to track colonies, scenic locations and research locations directly on the main map through overlays highlighting. Previously you could already see those special locations if you accessed the Empire Navigation Tool (a menu in the left side of the screen) but now you can switch on/off map overlays that show you where those places are with a circle around them all together. This is a very interesting and damn important feature to have during expansion planning since we can now zoom-out the map and look into the exploration’s big picture. Instead of going one by one we can now see everything glowing in the map which eases exploration and expansion by a significant order of magnitude.

Another simple, but very, very important new feature is the ability to track who declared war to whom in the main screen without having to go check that in the diplomacy screen every 5 turns or so. The devs were listening, as always. Simple thing to do, big plus.

The first Legends’ patch solved many fixes and improved the game’s balancing, judging from the patch notes, but it also added a very nice little tweak to the design screen interface. It’s now possible to easily distinguish your custom designs from the default and AI made ones. A simple new addition, but all helps.

Last but not the least fleet management is also significantly improved. There are now fleet postures. These are orders you can give to your fleets for them to act autonomously. You can order your fleets to attack or defend and you can set the range to which they will defend your territory independently from your actions (system, nearby systems or a whole sector away from the home base you set). This is also a VERY important new feature, specially against pirate raids or space monsters that appear out of nowhere (or other alien races as well). Many times you would have a fleet stationed in a planet and a marauding pirate would assault your mining stations nearby and the fleet would just seat there. Now you can set these fleet postures and not worry about minor skirmishes. Another big plus!

AI and automation

I don’t know if the AI is competent enough, I probably would need to play Distant Worlds Legends in full automation for a month straight to know that for sure but what I can tell you is that after dozens of hours of play (through DW original, RotS and now Legends) the AI feels competent. Diplomacy interactions are a good example of this. Negotiations feel appropriate, there are no WTF moments whatsoever. Overall diplomacy feels “authentic” and appropriate.

An important aspect about Distant Worlds automation is that if you like to play a higher-level strategy game style you can! Just turn many of the game’s aspects automated (for example ship design, colonization, diplomacy or espionage) and concentrate on other areas you enjoy more. The beauty of Distant Worlds is that it allows you to play in many different ways so you end up with many kinds of experiences and play styles.

The game is immensely complex so for many of you folks just starting now it is recommended that you leave automation on for some aspects of the game while you concentrate on others. I suggest you do this at least at the beginning, then you can slowly start switching off automation options one by one and start getting your hands dirty. I play fully manual now with some occasional suggestions left on and I can guarantee you that it is more than possible to control everything and have lots of fun with that at the same time. Even for an RTS. You just need to pause a lot to review your planning carefully from time to time and you’ll be fine.

Migration is 100% controlled by the AI and it works great. You can see your private sector moving people from planet to planet (from less desirable to higher desirable places) and also from other race’s planets to your own and vice versa. This feels realistic and it is at least fun to watch (since you can’t control anything that’s part of the private sector).

Your freighters are also 100% controlled by the AI. Freighters are the economic backbone of the game. They move all kinds of resources, luxuries to where they’re needed for construction, planet development or trade. There were some issues with freighters running out of fuel constantly in the past, going to the other side of the galaxy or moving around pointlessly in the game, but now, after the first Legends patch, that sort of things seems to have been finally resolved.

The bad, the not so good, and some suggestions

Let’s start with the worse thing about Legends, and Distant Worlds in general. Font sizes, blurriness and color contrast are a serious issue. It’s not just me, many people are complaining that some text in the game is very small and blurry/unfocused to read in places (tech tree and diplomacy screen in particular). Sometimes we can’t even distinguish a ‘+’ from a ‘-’. This is somewhat serious. Click on the image below to see an example of this (tech tree description text is very small and blurry).

This font size issue is not really game breaking or anything like that, but unlucky folks running this game on higher resolutions displays than the standard resolutions can get in trouble. Sometimes I have to lean on and put my glasses on in order to read stuff. Many people are complaining (myself included), others seem to be fine with it. I don’t know what’s causing this or how it can be fixed, so consider yourself warned. This is a serious minus.

Also, something that is really still a bit of a downer is that, although there are plenty of game setup customizations for you to choose from and many races to pick from you can’t yet customize your own race from scratch in Legends. This is surely one of the things that the devs should focus on providing next since it should not be too difficult to implement from what they have already. This is a slight minus.

When we give mining rights to a race the AI should acknowledge that. Currently they don’t say anything like “thank you” etc like with other gifts or treaties. It’s a small thing however. And we can’t request mining or refueling rights either, races are only allowed to offer them. In my opinion this is a slight minus also. The refueling and mining rights concept seems to be a bit rough on the edges still.

Another important thing to point out is that a couple more portraits for the characters of each race would surely be a nice thing to have. At least to have a small degree of variety. This is really not a serious issue but more character portraits would help with immersion.

Now some suggestions

When designing a ship it should be possible to increase or decrease the number of modules (or scrap them completely) in a faster way. Right now you have to click constantly to increase or decrease the number of components added/removed. It should be possible to edit the number of components directly if required.

Ships and facilities (the little icons on space ports and planets) could show build progress (as with a fill color that gets filled up as ships get built). This would be a very nice feature to have for colony ships and space ports construction in particular since they take A LOT of time to build. Instead of going through screens and menus we could just check build progress in real-time. That would be a great new feature since I lose a lot of time with building progress checking.

Another suggestion would be to show how many resources we have of a particular resource when we click on one in a planet. This would enhance exploration smoothness. That way we could know the number of resources we have in a nutshell without the need to go to the expansion planner. This would avoid breaking the flow of thinking also when we are carefully reviewing which systems and planets to colonize next.

You could have a way to store map snapshots. There are many levels of zooming and sometimes I find the need to capture a map (zoom and position) to restore later by pressing some hot key. I keep centering my maps on particular places all the time after being “distracted” by some event. This feature would surely be nice to have.

Further scattered thoughts

Another very interesting aspect about Legends is that you can actually, and surely be able to, win games peacefully if you want. This is not so common in 4X games but Distant Worlds manages to accomplish that for you if you want.

There’s a couple of new great music soundtracks (to add to the existing ones which were already very good).

You can now set the game’s difficulty from very easy to very hard. This will affect the amount of income generated by your colonies. Play very easy and you’ll earn more income than the other races, play very hard and it’ll be the other way around.

There is no multiplayer in Legends. Distant Worlds’ games are currently single-player only.

To play Legends you will need to own both the original Distant Worlds game and the Return of the Shakturi expansion. So, the all set, for the ones that don’t own the previous installments, will cost you around $63 (if you exclude VAT or other taxes required in some countries). It may seem a bit pricy but when comparing with some of the so called AAA games (that are “supposed” to be very good) that cost you from $50 to $70 for a single installment it doesn’t seem so much. Legends is to 4X space strategy fans as Skyrim is to RPG lovers, so the price doesn’t really shocks me.

Why wouldn’t Distant Worlds Legends be worth that much? Some will argue that Distant Worlds is a niche players-only game and that the price doesn’t really matter. I disagree. Legends is good enough to be appreciated by many more people other than the genre fans and, in my opinion, is totally worth the price.

Bottom Line

A very long review for an expansion pack wouldn’t you say? Yes, Distant Worlds Legends has it all. Powerful enough automation options for people who don’t like to micromanage and plenty of detail and depth for the micromanagers to be entertained for many months. What you can’t say is that there’s nothing to do in Legends. Boredom is to be found elsewhere.

The new character RPG system re-emerged Master of Orion 2′ leaders concept. DW Legends devs were wise to take the best of it and perfected it. Really, Distant Worlds Legends is what Master of Orion 3 should have been.

For people who never played these kind of games, that is to say: 4X, grand-scale, highly complex, space empire building games then Distant Worlds Legends is the perfect game for you to make your entrance. Don’t be afraid if at first you feel overwhelmed, I’m sure many of you will. Just go through the tutorials, the manual, start automated and then progressively turn-off automation and slowly you’ll get the taste of what it is to be in control of a space faring civilization. The Distant Worlds forum community is also a very helpful one so they will help you move around if you have doubts or need advice, for sure.

For the hardcore 4X space fans (that didn’t know much about Legends yet and didn’t play it yet) I don’t have much to say to them really. Buy it NOW! Most of you have it already anyway.

In my Distant Worlds Legends preview I stated the following: “In my opinion Distant Worlds Legends shows enough potential to be running for the best 4X space strategy game ever made (Space Sector: Adam Solo)“. I’m not disappointed. After playing Legends for a while now it really is what I thought it would be and much more.

I consider myself fairly unbiased about the game. Yes, I’m a fan of these types of games but the ones who know me know that I value honesty and sincerity. Take into account that I gave a 5.0 score out of 10 to the original Distant Worlds when it first came out. Also, if you need further proof of sincerity just check my Sword of the Stars 2 first impressions article. So, take that into account when you make your judgement.

I finish with this. If Master of Orion 2 was the 4X space strategy gaming reference of the nineties, then Distant Worlds Legends is the 4X space strategy gaming reference of the early XXI century. What are you waiting for? Buy it now!

Distant Worlds: Legends Buy it at the Matrix Games Store.	Space Sector score: 9.4 (about the score system)

After years of lurking in game-specific sites and forums finding this site has been a huge call-to-arms for me. Here, instead of criticize other works, it is possible to dream, discuss and sometimes even plan the future of 4X Space Strategy Games, a much more positive approach that has moved me, finally, from lurking to posting.

While a sometimes avid 4X gamer my roots are more in SciFi literature and pen and paper role-playing games that I am collecting for a number of years bigger than I care to share. Project management, software and data analysis knowledge come from my more obscure side: my daily job as a Database Administrator.

While I really love 4X games I always felt that something was missing in the experience and here on Space Sector I’m actively searching what was that.

In this first article I will put under the lens the starships combat system, I hope you will enjoy the view.

About starships, combat and conundrums

In 4X turn-based or real-time grand strategy space games conflicts resolution can be done in various systems ranging from the economical to the diplomatic but, more often than not, it will be decided in the cold space with starships that will use every technological advantages they have in store to erase the competition from the skies.

While this can be a quite gloomy view of our future it is also exciting and very appropriate for a game genre that proposes eXtermination as one of his four salient points.

How much importance and depth this system should have in relation to the rest of the game? Well the rule of the thumb says that as eXtermination is just one on four goals of a 4X game and there are other way to accomplish that like the even more bloodier planetary invasion (or bombardment) system or the more civil economic buyout system linked to the diplomatic one then it should not take more than one eight of the time.

Well, that happens rarely. It seems that our players really like the sound of the exploding ships in the void (pun intended) or, at the least, the game designers think so.

It is the very same game designers that, when they will work on space combat, will be confronted with some difficult choices:

The 2D vs. 3D conundrum

The problem here lies in the sad fact that a two dimensional map is barely sufficient for the simulation of nautical engagement and space battle are a completely different beasts. Even most SciFi movies who tried to visualize a modern 3D combat had to revert to something at the most similar to in-atmosphere dogfights than what can really happen in space. At the core of the problem is that nobody really know what can really happen in space because for now we managed to keep this kind of activity here at home.

So let’s let fall any realism problem and let’s define the main characteristics that a space combat should have.

While not realistic it should feel credible: the player is staking the future of his civilization on it and a too cartoonish resolution will not cut it.

It should be comprehensible: even accepting a learning curve the player should not need to have a couple of degrees and a jet fighter patent to understand it.

It should be elastic enough to let strategies and technology developments play a visible part in the outcome.

If it is possible to cram all of this in a 2D environment probably this will be the best choice and has been in most of the previous designs. If it is possible to do that in a 3D one that will be a serious breakthrough in the 4X game scene.

The 1,255 Km/h vs 1,080,000,000 Km/h conundrum

This is also known as the 760 mph vs. 671,000,000 mph conundrum. This is an exaggeration: no combat will ever take place at the full speed of light but even 0.5 c is an enormous and more possible speed, especially for an incoming fleet from the deep space.

The problem here lies with the fact that for our day to day experience the Mach speed is already enormous and, unless you are one of the few people who lose time on 4X games and that at the same time had the luck to flight on the Concorde, practically impossible to really experiment.

Even jet fighter pilots are nowadays depending a lot on their computers. That kind of speed is really over the human reactions capability.

In space speeds are much higher, very much higher.

From Wikipedia: time (1.255 sec.) for a light signal to go from Earth to the Moon showed in correct proportion.

This can be safely ignored when you move, let’s say, from one planet to another in a planetary system: extremely high speed is tempered by enormous distances and well defined game time.

It can be much more a chore in space combat: at that kind of speed the fleets of the opposite factions will have fractions of second when they can exchange punishment one to the other.

As you can see I’m carefully avoiding the pesky problem of the relativistic effects that kicks in at a certain speed point. I’m sure that it would be considered overkill for a game.

It is difficult to extract the needed drama from battles that are resolved in fractions of a second.

What we are usually seeing are sluggish battles between practically immobile behemoths with a spat of, relatively, snoringly slow fighters or other light shipping that zips around them.

At this we have to add weapons who, to simulate the much bigger targeting difficulty of a 3D environment, have an atrocious low hit rate.

What all of this means is that the combat system is at best a metaphor of a real space combat and as any metaphor all that it say or in this case display, should have a meaning over the directly visual one.

Will it be possible move all this in a more sensible and speed appropriate direction? Possibly but in any case all the choices made to simplify and made it more playable should have solid explainable foundations and reasons.

The Videogame vs. Newton conundrum

We have already told that Einstein relativity is possibly overkill (at the least for the moment) for a starships combat system so what about poor old Newton?

The guy had spent a good portion of his life to fight against differential calculus to the point that we are all using Leibniz notation even if Newton invented it first. The result of that David vs. Goliath struggle is that all the gravitation and movement equations are simple and clear.

And then we have 4X space combat systems who completely ignore it. No gravity, no inertia, no giant planet slingshots, no catastrophic failure to move from harm way. Somehow I think that taking away Newton from space combat is a little like taking away Shakespeare from the theatre story: a lot of the drama is gone.

The usual question is: why? Mind well: a good answer with its roots in playability, storyline and advanced speculative technology is fine but at the same time an answer like “because that is what my development environment let me to do” it is just not cutting it.

The TBS vs. RTS conundrum

The starship combat phase can have a completely different system than the one of the game: turn based games often revert to real time for the tactical military systems. So, what will be the right way to do it?

RTS, and I have to stress that the R for real is quite the misnomer here, have on its side the immediateness feeling, the sport watcher feeling: the stakes are made more real and close. I object the R for real just because it is rarely one to one with real time. I would have called it CTS: continuous time system.

TBS is more for the chess players, the strategy perfectionists. Adrenaline is substitute by dopamine and the pleasure here is to devise and execute the perfect plan. In reality there is always a lot of time to devise a plan, unfortunately the poor baby almost never survive the encounter with the enemy and then there no more time to spare.

Against intuition probably TBS system are in this case more realistic than RTS ones. In space the combat will be a series of manoeuvres to get the best possible passage in the combat envelope with long wait interval between each other and a final, violent and flashing quick moment of real combat.

As usual the choice will fall more on what system is conveying more the point that the designer want to make than realism. Sometimes (let’s say often) spectacularity is more important, its results are more poignant and that is all that count.

The ZFSM vs. DWCM conundrum

OK, I just created a couple of acronym on the flight, so sue me. ZFSM stand for ‘Zoomable From the Star Map’ and DWCM stand for ‘Dedicated Window Combat Map’. Both systems have been used in 4X space games with more or less success.

One of the most visible problems of the ZFSM system is the starships to astronomical objects proportion. Even a tiny planet like Earth is massively bigger than any starship will be put in operation during the game.

The reverse problem is the empty space feeling: in a DWCM often the starship are alone in a depressing dark environment with maybe a planet and a couple of satellite.

The consequence is that ZFSM can be more cartoonish, a little like the giant archer that is defending the Civilization city from a giant war chariot. After a while the metaphor become clear but it will always be worth a joke.

The consequence of a DWCM system is that combat seems to happen in a different place, a parallel universe dedicated to kill and destroy (now that I think about it quite a sad place) and a limited, claustrophobic one to boot.

How to compromise between the two? Is it just a problem to be able to invest a lot of time and money to become able to render an enormous space and number of planetary systems needed in a Grand Strategy game at such zoom level that ships become in scale? Or better and simpler answers are out there?

The ship to ship vs. fleet to fleet conundrum

Can the same system bring justice to engagement of such different order of magnitude? If the system is designed to bring justice to the details of single ship to ship engagements that will be prevalent at the start of the game will it scale correctly to the end-game fleets to fleets levels?

I have serious doubts about that.

What will be the choice the designer will make?

A usual one will see something that will sadly solve the one to one in a non-satisfactory way, will shine in the group vs. group to one big fleet vs. one big fleet and will fall again trying to manage more, possibly putting hard-coded limit to escape crashes.

Another solution can be to have more than one system but the development costs will become probably prohibitive.

Moving the not well managed type to engagements to the automatic resolution (see immediately later for more on this) can also be an expedient but…

When the player fleet is composed by just one colony ship armed with just a multifunction laser communicator and on the other side there is a pirate patchwork courier it is quite a pity to leave the quite important resolution (a new colony established or not?) to a couple of flashes and a result message.

When the player Joint Fleets Task Force will finally arrive in the Bad Guys planetary system for the Final Confrontation will he want to follow the momentous struggle in all his nuances?

The automatic resolution conundrum

While the resolution of the first engagements will be probably something that a player want to see and influence closely after a while it will become boring and time consuming. When the player is at the head of a sprawling interstellar empire it is doubtful that he will have the patience to follow and direct every little engagements that are going on. More probably he will follow the bigger and/or more strategic ones and leave the rest to automatic resolution.

Here comes the real problem: will the presence of the driving hand of the player change the outcome radically?

If the answer is yes then the automation system will be seen as broken and ineffectual, the player will try to follow as many combat as he can and a huge amount of time will be dedicated to this activity.

If the answer is no the interaction capability will be seen as weak and pointless. The space combat system will become just a button to press.

There are already experimented middle of the road choices like to strongly link the combat with the character system. The player will not manage directly the fleets but he will manage the admirals who will command them, their inherent bonuses and their combat philosophy.

Fleet postures are another way to let the player pre-interact with the engagements and also the starship design system can be a way to externally influence the final outcome of a battle.

One problem I did not see solved in any of the 4X games that I know is what happens when an automatic resolved engagement has a much unexpected result. Be it good or bad the player will need to know why and in the real world that, except extreme cases, should not be a problem.

Conclusions

I have introduced here a lot of non-answered questions.

I think that every game will have its solutions but my point was that all these questions are on the table when their designer will start his work and I am positive that a personal, being it original or not, answer is needed for each of them.

My personal preference is always toward realism but at a certain point, perhaps ironically, reality strikes and simplifications are needed to have a playable game that can be developed in this decade.

The race is open to find the most evocative, original ‘simplifications’ and to be part of the evolution of the 4X space gaming field.

bertipa is a frequent poster in the Game Design forum here on Space Sector. This is his first foray in real article writing but he is already looking ahead for a Nobel Prize in literature in few years. He is a voracious reader of Science Fiction and has a vast collection of pen and paper role playing games. Being allergic to ever finish any serious work not linked to databases he is now considering a carrier as biographic blurbs writer. Come to read and comment his posts here.

Anno 2070 takes place in a near-future where the sea’s rising level has destroyed the coastal cities. The player will need to gather resources, engage in diplomacy and trade with competitors in order to build a new society.

Launch Trailer

Here is a list of retailers where you can buy the game:

Digital Download

• GamersGate (SpaceSector’s affiliate partner) –  Normal | Deluxe Edition
• Amazon.com (SpaceSector’s affiliate partner) -  Normal | Deluxe Edition
• Gamestop/Impulse (SpaceSector’s affiliate partner) -  Normal | Deluxe Edition
• Ubisoft Shop
• Direct2Drive
• Steam

Physical

• Zavvi.com (Free UK delivery - International shipping available)
• Play.com (Free Europe delivery)
• Softunity (DE)

Or you can grab the demo first to get a taste of the game. You’ll be able to play the first two missions of the campaign mode.

For key features and screenshots I invite you to read SpaceSector’s Anno 2070 Preview.

I’ve witnessed some bad releases in my time. This one has been no doubt one of the most disappointing. It’s sad how this is becoming a pattern these days and how the players are being turned into beta testers more and more. Add on top of that the fact that people had extremely high expectations for SotS2 (since the original SotS is a game loved by so many) and you get one of the most dramatic releases of the last years.

It’s fairly known by now that Paradox Interactive and Kerberos Productions have announced that there were (major) problems with the game’s release, so, I am sure many of you are not being caught by surprise. On the release’s very next day the publisher’s CEO Fredrik Wester made a statement on Paradox’s forum apologizing for the current state of the game. One day after that, it was Martin Cirulis time to apologize on the developers forum. In that post Kerberos’ CEO asked for patience and promised that things will be fixed as soon as possible.

Having heard so many horrible things about the release I decided to get my hands into SotS2 as fast as I could. So, in the meantime of my work on the review here are my first impressions.

So, how bad is it?

It’s bad, really bad. Consider that I based these impressions on the latest available patch at the time of this writing (which would be the one from last Friday’s 11th November patch (several patches have already been issued since release day).

3D Map is a bit cumbersome to navigate

Let me start by saying that the worst part of this all is stability. It’s really hard to play the current release because it’s almost impossible to play 20 or more straight turns (actually trying to do something) without getting into a random crash to desktop (sometimes on the fleet manager, others on the “diplomacy” menu and on other places). Other times the game will just freeze, when you try to access the game menu for example. I know this is not happening just here because I’ve been checking forums where people are discussing the game, and they are saying the same there too.

But it’s not just stability. The game feels incomplete, it’s unpolished in many aspects and you can tell that there are features that are dummy or still work in progress. I think a couple of pictures will show you better what I mean.

But it’s not only the incompleteness. Some things are just plain missing. Trade for example is not yet functional from what I could tell. You adjust your sliders to divert production to trade but nothing happens, you don’t get more income as you’re supposed to. (Edit 16/11: So it seems that trade should be already functional by now – from what I could learn in the Kerberos’ forum – however apparently the player is required to build the right kind of station, research the right tech, build freighters, and then trade routes will eventually be established, but I can’t confirm this yet. And surely this is not documented anywhere, and nothing in the game leads you to think you need all this) Another example is diplomacy. At first I could not see any diplomacy options, that’s ok, I had not encountered any opponent yet. Eventually I found an opponent and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Most Diplomacy options are just a placeholder, a dummy version barely 20% functional perhaps. See below.

Diplomacy options are currently a placeholder

It looks better than it actually is. The buttons “System Data”, “Slaves”, “World”, etc, are all placeholders, when you click nothing happens. At first you think you’re doing something wrong but after a while it becomes evident that you’re not. This is what you get if you request or demand something (I don’t know what the difference between the two options is since both lead to the same screen above). If you click treaty you can’t do anything (maybe you can’t yet? At this point you can’t help to start thinking otherwise).

Then there’s the random crashing and freezing (that I already talked about) and the annoying lag-time between menus that can go from a normal 1 to 2 sec time to more than 5, 10 or more seconds in some cases (again I know that this is not happening just here).

Then there’s more unpolished stuff and more annoyances proper of an Alpha/Beta release. Things like:

• No in-game tutorial.
• Options and cinematic in the game menu greyed out (unavailable).
• Not being able to select multiple fleets to strike a system (having to go and assign one by one).
• Not being able to distinguish explored from unexplored systems in a user-friendly way.
• Finding a gaseous planet (and a barren planet) with an Earth-type model rendering when you zoom-in.
• Many Terran planets have Very similar models (if not the same).
• Having to switch continuously between tech trees to pick the one I want (very tedious process).
• Info panel states 6 turns for a fleet to reach a destination but actually it takes 3 or less (at least with the Morrigi engines - the ones I played more). This is a very serious problem.
• There is “salvage research” and “special project” sliders on the empire manager screen that I don’t have a clue what they are for (even after reading both the manual and the beginner’s guide entirely – the Manual is very nice BTW). And what about the locked “Immigration Rate” slider? More tool-tips would help.
• There’s not an empire wide fleet overview screen, so we lose track of fleets very easily.
• Sotspedia (or Encycolopedia – not a typo, it’s how it’s written in the game) doesn’t help much and it’s incomplete.
• Station build order costs can’t be seen upfront, and while you can cancel the order after seeing how much it costs to upgrade the station it’s clear that that’s not the way it should be implemented.
• We don’t get a sense of distance between stars in the 3D map. To know that you need to simulate sending a fleet there… (couldn’t find another way)
• UI rendering is very poor in places (some ugliness when over-zooming). Clearly something that’s probably easy to fine-tune with proper testing.
• Overall UI clunkiness (from not very responsive to some serious lag at times)
• Can only rename planets right after colonization but can’t rename them ever since and systems can’t be renamed either (if they can please let me know)
• No random galaxy generation. Currently only a collection of fixed sand-box maps are available (scenarios are greyed out at game setup). The Manual states that systems details, stars and planets change from game to game but systems disposition (galaxy appearance) is fixed. This must be changed.

There’s more but I’ll save that for the review.

Anything good?

Plenty of it, great stuff, but unfortunately you can’t experience it for long because of all the bad stuff already mentioned, especially the stability issues.

There’s the beautiful ship models (some are just ok but others are gorgeous). The color palette may not be the best in places but the ships detail is generally awesome. You can even see inside the bridge/cockpit of some starships, I’m not talking about a painted model feel I mean you can actually feel you’re peaking inside the ship’s bridge. Awesome stuff (see below).

Want to peak inside a Morrigi cruiser?

There’s plenty of depth on the new stations concept. You can build many kinds of stations and you can upgrade them with new modules. This needs to be done carefully since they are very expensive yet very powerful. I really like this new stations feature. There’s Naval, Civilian, Diplomatic, Science, Gate and Tribute stations. Each of them level up several times till they become Science Centers, Star Cities, Star Bases, among other important base establishments that seem to have a strong impact in the game.

Gorgeously detailed stations

The lore is very interesting. The races background-story is detailed, rich and immersive. The races description is probably the best part of the manual by the way, and surely one of the best parts of the game also.

Other good and great aspects:

• Overall graphical rendering detail is very beautiful (planets, ships, stations).
• The missions concept is refreshing (survey missions, colonization missions, strike, invade, etc).
• Leaders: I could only see Admirals for now. For every fleet you need one of those. Each leader provides its own set of positive and less positive traits. Good one.
• Research randomization is kept from the original SotS and now there is the “Feasibility Study”, required before researching techs. Good addition in my opinion.
• There are small nice touches here and there. The tech icon rotates faster with more research spending and when there are ships under construction the build icon flashes to indicate you’re building something.
• Combat is overall nice although I experienced some clunkiness here and there. At some point I lost sight of my ships and it was hard to find them back … then the battle ended. Nevertheless space combat does feel epic, perhaps one of the best to date in 4X space games. We’ll see.
• There are independent races in the game that will not expand as much as the other major races. Finding them is supposed to be rare and you need to survey systems intensely in order to spot them (at least it’s what the manual states). Sounds good.
• There’s also a province concept where you can combine systems into provinces for economical bonuses and possibly other benefits I couldn’t grasp yet. Sounds great.
• The Survey missions, although a bit rough on the edges still, deserves an applause. eXploration has always been a weak link in 4X games, SotS2 does a great step in the right direction.
• Empire manager screen is rich in options and allows a good level of detail and control over the economical part of the game.

There’s more but that will also be in the review.

Bottom Line

In summary there’s plenty of good and even great stuff on SotS2 but there’s also plenty of horrible stuff as well. Some of the issues can (and will mostly probably) be resolved with patches to come (which the devs stated they are strongly committed on undertaking). When the stability issues are resolved, the trade made functional (Edit 16/11: or better explained) and the diplomacy complete I think the game will be fairly playable and probably already very enjoyable. At this moment however I think it’s not possible to enjoy playing, at least in my neck of the woods.

The release has been a disaster, that’s a fact, however both the devs and the publisher have made a sufficiently in-time mea-culpa, apologized and committed right away to support the game evolution through the coming months.  Moreover in order to help mitigate all this Paradox and Kerberos have offered a copy of the original Sword of the Stars Complete Collection to all the people who have bought SotS2 (or just the ones that have pre-ordered it, I’m not sure on this one).

For the ones thinking about buying the game at present state consider yourselves warned. For the brave and generous souls that are going to buy the game at this moment I think you have a good chance of not having your money badly spent since you’ll be supporting the devs through the patching process, now that all has been said. For the ones of you that have pre-ordered the game I guess there’s no big drama here either since you can choose to keep your faith in the game and on the devs or just decide to ask for a refund. I can’t see what’s the big fuss about this, at the very most people had their money tied-up alright but not lost.

All things considered I think SotS2 has all the ingredients to become a great game, perhaps even one of the best 4X space games of all time, but at the moment it needs many hours of polishing, tweaking and improvement still in order to aspire to reach that far.

I think I carried myself a bit with this first impressions article, it came out quite longer than I first anticipated, for an article of this nature, but I think it can be helpful for people to have an in-depth overview of the game’s current state. Thanks for reading and good luck to the devs on the major task ahead!

Anno 2070 is the new game of the Anno series that takes place in an Earth’s near-future where the sea’s rising level has destroyed the coastal cities. The player will need to gather resources, engage in diplomacy and trade with competitors in order to build a new society.

The player is offered the choice between two factions, that represent the two extreme ideals that we now face in our present time. The player may choose to play with the efficient and proven technology moguls called Tycoons and the eco-friendly sustainability seeking members called The Ecos.

You can grab the recently available demo to get a taste of the game. You’ll be able to play the first two missions of the campaign mode.

Key Features

• Build massive cities
• Choose between two factions: the industrious Tycoons or the environmentally-friendly Ecos
• Evolving and dynamic world. You decisions directly affect how the game looks over time
• Sea depths exploration. (e.g. algae farms, tidal turbines and oil exploration)
• Multiple game modes. Story-driven single player campaign, sand-box mode and multiplayer and online features
• Forge alliances with your opponents
• Smuggle goods between cities

Trailer

Screenshots

Star Supremacy is currently in closed-beta (till 7th November). It should then open to the public officially (go open beta) 15th November 2011.

Trailer

Screenshots

Matrix Games and Code Force announced Legends last September 2011. The list of additions to Return of the Shakturi (DW’s first expansion) is very promising so I decided to write this Legends’ preview to try and condensate these changes and present them in a nice wrapper for you guys, so that you know a bit more about what to expect in November 2011, current Legends’ release date target.

So, what’ll be new in Legends?

The major additions and changes to Return of the Shakturi, that I could take note of, are:

- Leaders / characters
- Influence spheres
- New ships models (around 600!) with better graphics
- Ability to track where your ships are heading (ship vectors overlay)
- Potential colonies, scenic and research locations shown on main map (more overlays)
- Expanded technology tree (e.g. cutting lasers, new planetary facilities, wonders)
- Race-specific events and victory conditions
- Improved fleet management and automation, including fleet postures
- Improved modding support, including full race and character modding
- Improved refueling system (more intelligent fuel management)
- Improved diplomacy system with refueling and mining rights and immigration policies
- Improved performance, memory usage decrease and sharper graphics

Wow! Where to begin.

The major new addition of Legends is no doubt the new character system. Legends brings Leaders, Admirals, Generals, Ambassadors, Governors, Agents and Scientists to scene. All of them with their own skills and traits with the opportunity to advance and improve them along the way. The character you start with, in the beginning of your games is your leader. Leaders have effects that are empire-wide, that is, they influence your entire empire, every planet, base, etc. Some factions are more likely to get certain types of characters than others. Characters can be lost along the way though due to violent events, accidents or retirement.

Each character has some skills. Next to each of these skills there’s a progress bar (0% in the example below), that measures progress towards the next level in that skill. You can increase skills (or acquire new ones) through experience in areas related to those skills. Characters also have traits. Your characters may start with one or more traits and may acquire more based on their experiences. You may start with additional characters. For example Randul Shokia (seen below) is a special scientist character.

Randul provides bonus to research, in the research base you decide to put him in. In the example above he adds bonuses to all types of research fields. If you assign Randul to a particular Energy Research station with a +15% bonus to Energy Research, his +34% would add on top of that to give you a combined +49% bonus to Energy Research at that location. Besides skills Randul also has a special trait. Randul is methodical which means that your empire is less likely to suffer critical research failures (critical research is a new feature in Legends, which can give you a spontaneous crash program or a boost in a research area). He gives more reliability to your research in that sense.

One feature I found particularly interesting in the character’s system is that some characters remain mysterious until you actually use them and find out about their abilities. In the example below Kweeki Woppit has known traits but unknown skills. This is an interesting touch in my opinion since it adds an element of surprise and gets the player a little curious (two essentials elements in 4X strategy games) of what to expect from their characters.

Kweeki is a Colony Governor. You can assign Colony Governors to a particular colony and their bonuses apply only to that colony. Similarly, Fleet Admirals are assigned to a particular Fleet or Base, Troop Generals to a particular Fleet or Colony, and so on.

You can assign more than one character to a particular location and bonus from them will add up, though they may not be purely additive. In Erik Rutins’ own words (one of DW’s main developers) «(…) if for example you have a Fleet Admiral who is great at combat and another Fleet Admiral who excels at Fighter Operations, assigning both to a fleet that has Capital Ships as well as Carriers can lead to better results than just having one or the other. However, since you generally will have fewer exceptional Fleet Admirals than fleets, you have to weigh the benefits of having one exceptional fleet against the flexibility of having two fleets that are each pretty good».

Another important aspect in Legends is that the devs state they’ve implemented a better memory management method. This should allow for better performance and memory usage decrease. They also state that this has allowed them to remove the compression mechanism they were using previously, on many of the ship and planet graphics. The result is that Legends should look better, or at least sharper from what I was lead to believe (less blurriness that you could spot in RotS here and there).

In addition to sharper graphics Legends shall also feature 22 new high resolution ship sets (added to the existing ones from Distant Worlds and Distant Worlds: Return of the Shakturi), all obtained from one of Distant Worlds’ players and modders, artist Martin Wood. Here’s an example of some of the new Teekan ships.

That’s approximately 600 new ship/base images right there in Legends! (if you didn’t use Martin Wood’s mod before that is). This was one of the weakest points in Return of the Shakturi in my opinion, and now that seems to have been properly addressed. Big plus! Don’t know if planets and ruins have also been worked at or not though. We’ll have to see.

Legends also brings spheres of influence, or borders. The actual use for them is still a bit unclear to me. My best guess is that they tell how likely foreign colonies are to flip (turn to other empires) if they are inside an empire’s influence sphere. In that regard I think they serve as cultural/influence borders but I’m not sure of their full scope. In Erik’s own words «Spheres of influence are not quite the same as the way we think of borders here on our planet. They project from your colonies and define the space that you could control. Systems within your sphere of influence that you have at least explored are considered under your control. Borders in space are enforced within each controlled system but not in the deep space between systems. Also, building a mining station (for example) outside of your sphere of influence does not give you control over that system (though colonizing it does)». 

An interesting feature would be for these influence spheres to represent a race’s space territorial dominance. Aggressive races would tend to get annoyed if their space was trespassed or if other race’s colonies or mining stations are built inside their influence zones, but I’m just speculating here. It would be cool to have that kind of territoriality though, although I now that theme is a bit controversial and would not be appreciated by some.

In addition to all this Legends will feature new faction-specific victory conditions that can completely change how a faction plays, to faction-specific special events and resource bonuses. In the example below the Ugnari have 4 particular victory conditions: two of them (as examples) are to get 25% most trade and 25% most mining stations.

Another aspect where Legends devs invested a bit was on a new UI system that provides overlay information directly on the main map. At the choice of the player it shall now be possible to switch on/off layers for ship vectors, i.e. see where ships are going, potential colonies, scenic and research locations all in the main map with no need for more actions and clicks through secondary screens. This is a brilliant new addition that could be exploited for even more overlays that may be considered useful in the future.

Potential colonies shown directly in the main map are a particularly interesting feature to have in my opinion since they’ll surely help late game expansion, where there are simply too many planets to look in the expansion planner and what you simply need is a quick way to see where are the potential worlds for suitable colonies in favorable strategic locations. I was very happy to see these new overlays. The UI accessibility was already very good in RotS, now it will be brought to the next level.

Besides all that has been described already there are more things new in Legends. Examples are the expanded technology tree, the improved fleet management and automation (including fleet postures), the improved modding support (including full race and character modding), the improved refueling system (more intelligent fuel management is also a big plus) and the improved diplomacy system with refueling and mining rights and immigration policies (which should provide even richer diplomatic experiences).

Bottom Line

This preview is by no means thorough. Believe it or not, it is more a sneak peak on major changes. Legends adds much more stuff (judging from what I could understand in the game forums, from what I didn’t have access to and others I couldn’t find in detail in my digging). The preview was based on information provided by the devs and the DW’s community on matrix games’ distant world forums. If you want to get more information on Legends, or Distant Worlds in general, that’s the place I suggest you have a look at. I’m sure I missed a lot of things but judging from the changes featured in this preview alone it’s amazing the amount of new things this new expansion will bring, on top of so much RotS already offered.

I am really looking forward for Legends. And if you’re a 4X space strategy game lover, as I am, I think you cannot afford to miss this one either. I think they’re making history here. In my opinion Distant Worlds Legends shows enough potential to be running for the best 4X space strategy game ever made. That’s a very controversial and bold statement to throw I know, but I’m totally convinced that Legends may be that good.

\Edit (23/11/2011): Legends is out! Get it here.

About Heart of the Swarm

Heart of the Swarm is the first expansion pack to Blizzard’s sci-fi real time strategy game, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. Heart of the Swarm continues Wings of Liberty’s story with 20 new missions now focusing on the Zerg race and the female hero character Kerrigan. New multiplayer content is also expected to be included in the expansion, as well as new features and upgrades to the Battle.net online platform.

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is being developed for Mac and Windows. There are no current plans for any console platform. Current release date is still TBA.

GTB is expected to be released sometime in Q1 2012 for both PC and Mac.

Trailer

Distant Worlds Return of the Shakturi is Distant World’s first expansion pack. Distant Worlds is a 4X real-time space strategy game developed by Code Force and published by Matrix Games.

When DW first came out it had many problems, many of those related to its weak user interface. The game was practically unplayable by then, and that ruined the entire gameplay experience. RotS solved many of those issues. Here’s how.

From the Potential to the Actual thing

Many things changed in DW since the original release. But the thing that changed the most, the one that unlocked the game’s true potential and turned it into an actual playable and enjoyable game were the changes made to the user interface. But before getting to that let’s first see what’s new in RotS.

The research system was completely revamped. RotS offers many tech options now. You can queue projects and decide to buy/crash research to substantially accelerate it. Tech trees are well organized and provide sufficient information to the player. The only two less positive remarks I make to the tech trees is that sometimes it’s really hard to read stuff (font sizes are incredibly tiny in places) and the scroll bar does not provide a good color contrast, which makes it a bit difficult to navigate up and down in the tech trees sometimes. But these are pretty minor issues. RotS research has good depth, it is meaningful and is ultimately fun to handle.

There are fighters and bombers now. One major addition to the weapons research tree are star fighters. You have now many kinds of bombers and interceptors to choose from. To deal with enemy fighters you can use point defense weapons. I’ve used fighters in a couple of battles. They were fun to watch and can be a pain for enemies that don’t have point defense weapons. You can replenish your fighters and decide to launch them for battle at any time.

Another interesting new aspect in RotS is that you can build planetary facilities now, although there are only a bunch of them available to build and many of those are related to troop training. In addition to troop facilities you can also decide to build a Giant Ion Cannon to disable invading ships or a Planetary Shield to defend your colonies against enemy bombardment. Yea, very SW Empire Strikes Back, but that’s ok, I’d say that if you’re going to get inspiration at least you should take it from the best :)

RotS comes with a new backstory featuring two new alien races (the Shakturi are one of them). You can decide to take action and follow the story line or just play normally, as you prefer. There are plenty of victory condition possibilities to choose from. You can set population, territory, economic or time goals. You can set one of these, all of them or none at all and just decide to play a completely open sand-box game.

But I saved the best for last. RotS provides major user interface improvements to Distant Worlds. The UI was the worst aspect of DW vanilla. You could sense that the game’s potential was there, the huge amount of depth waiting to be unleashed, but the UI failed terribly and didn’t allowed the player to use that potential, and the gem remained unpolished.

I use the following aspects as a basis to analyze how good a UI is, taken from experience and literature (doesn’t matter if a game is complex and deep or not, or how many windows and amount of information it provides). And to simplify things let’s take out the presentation aspect from this list. That’s nice to have but not that ultimately important.

1. Do players feel in control of things? (The MOST important of all aspects)
2. Does the interface let the players do what they want?
3. Is the UI intuitive and easy to master?
4. Do players feel like they’re having a strong influence over the outcome of the game? Do they feel powerful?

I’m afraid DW vanilla UI failed terribly in all of these major aspects, especially in point 1. That was one of the major reasons why I gave DW original such a low-score (checkout my Distant Worlds vanilla review for details). Let me already advance that Code Force managed to solve most (if not all) of the UI known deficiencies.

First of all, it’s now possible to perform common tasks, like colonizing planets, build mining stations, construct new bases and so forth just by clicking on one-click action buttons from the main screen. For example if you want to create a mining base at a gas giant planet, an option is shown below the selection panel that allows you to easily instruct a construction ship to queue an order to build a base there. The same for building ships, colonize worlds, etc. These quick-action buttons solved the annoyances of having to find a suitable constructor, turn back to find the target to build the base (if you still remember the name or location). This UI new feature made the player’s life much easier, and removed a good deal of frustration from the player for not being able to properly manage his empire.

In addition to the quick-action buttons, RotS offers now an Empire Navigation Tool. This was it. This UI addition made all the difference. This navigation tool offers a set of scrollable lists that provide a quick glance and access to almost everything that is happening throughout your empire. You can navigate, access and interact easily with your colonies, construction ships, space ports, exploration ships, fleets, individual military ships, potential colonies, potential mining stations, potential research locations, potential resort locations, enemy targets and special locations. Wow! Someone was listening. This was exactly what the original DW game lacked. Due to this new UI feature it is now finally possible to play and feel in control of things. Thank you Code Force for this, great job!

A word on Immersion

Immersion is probably one of the best factors to define how good a game really is, because in the end playing a game is all about getting experiences, and feeling you’re being part of the game’s world is one of the best experiences you can get. In space games, especially in 4X games, the idea is to provide the player a feeling of being in control of a space faring civilization. In my opinion, RotS succeeds in providing a good deal of immersion to the player. Now that the UI is fixed the player is finally able to handle his huge empire and deal with everything DW has to offer more easily. The experience is not perfect because graphics are not very good. Ship models are not very detailed, are a bit blurry and not very pretty.

But if you can surpass that graphics issue (which is not that hard) you should have a great ride since music is wonderful, the galaxy feels alive and diplomacy options are very rich (you really can feel you’re out there negotiating with alien races). To add to all that, time flies (another way you can tell you’re immersed in the game). However not all is good about time passing so quickly since by late games you get the feeling you’re not progressing that much due to so many things happening at the same time. If you’re a control freak you may get the feeling of being overwhelmed sometimes, but that’s the price you pay for playing a hugely complex game as DW. You can always play a smaller galaxy with less habitable planets, no pirates and no space creatures for a simpler and more manageable experience. The game is rich in customization options so it should be just a matter of customization to get the right complexity for your taste.

Not all is perfect yet …

DW RotS is immensely better than DW vanilla, however there’s plenty of room for improvement still.

For example, DW RotS features a lot of resources, some are strategic, others are luxuries that increase your planetary development level and your people’s overall contentment. Although there are many types of resources, from commonly found to extremely rare, I didn’t feel the lack of them. Ok I felt Caslon scarcity once (gas used in engine fuel) in one of my games but that was it. Some spaceship components require special resources; it would be nice to take advantage of that and force the player to plan a more careful expansion and possibly spice it up a bit by forcing the player to get into conflict with other races for special resources competition. This would also enhance the exploration phase of the game. This resource conflict of interests is at the essence of strategic warfare, and should be looked at more carefully by DW devs. At the very least I think an option should be provided in-game setup time to allow the player to choose the resource availability level. Resources could be evenly spread or not, and could be made rarer or more abundant as the player requires.

Another less positive aspect is that even after the UI overhaul the UI has some oddities still. For example, you can retrofit space ports to later designs only if you click on the space port itself. If you double-click on the space port icon and choose the retrofit function the latest designs do not show up.

You can colonize continental worlds as Humans, since they are your prime environment worlds, however you are allowed to research the “continental colonization” tech…with no additional benefit I could grasp.

When you instruct your ships to refuel, they will head up to a nearby star port or gas mining base even when they have a deployed re-supply ship on their very own fleet. And sometimes ships don’t refuel on re-supply ships even when instructed to. They do refuel sometimes, other times they do not. So unfun.

Fuel is still a pain in the neck to manage in DW. I mean, I understand it is a hard concept to implement well and it’s equally hard to please everybody but Code Force is almost there. Much of the game is very intertwined with fuel decisions and although I really do like that extra layer of strategy it provides I think some things should be done to remove so much dependence on fuel. One possible idea would be to have the option to tell ships in manually controlled fleets to leave the fleet automatically when they reach, let’s say 20% of fuel, and then get back into formation. This percentage could be customizable. The game could also just provide a fuel consumption rate option. Casual players could be free from the refueling burden while hardcore gamers could still be allowed to micromanage their fuel decisions.

It would be interesting to have colony ship and re-supply ship listed in the empire navigation tool. I really missed that in my games.

Bottom Line

Distant Worlds has come a long way. RotS good performance is no doubt the result of its persistent, game-loving developers that did well on listening to the community and provide what they needed. That and their hard work have made RotS into one of the best 4X game experiences available to date.

If you enjoy the RTS mechanic, you love to construct your own spaceships, you like a great deal of strategic depth and you’re fond of a rich diplomacy experience than DW RotS is the perfect game for you.

It may take TBS lovers a bit of time to get used to RotS RTS mechanics, but you’ll get there. Since you’re allowed to pause the game at any time you can take all the time you need to carefully think your strategy (I think my games were paused most of the times). Late games in huge or large galaxies can be a pain at times, things can start to feel a bit sluggish and you will feel overwhelmed at times for sure. But with the new user interface quick-action buttons, the navigation tool and the right level of game customization you should be able to manage. If you still feel overwhelmed you can always switch off unnecessary warnings or turn some things that you like less automated, like espionage or troop recruitment for example, and you will do fine.

DW RotS made me feel in control of the lives and hopes of my civilization, I cared for them and could feel immersed in a huge galaxy interacting with other alien races. And that in my opinion is what 4X games are all about. That was one of the reasons I took so much time to review RotS, I was really enjoying playing :) And I will continue playing no doubt about that.

Distant Worlds Return of the Shakturi (Buy Return of the Shakturi at Matrix Games)	Space Sector score: 8.7(about the score system)See Distant Worlds: Legends review

Screenshots