Sid Meier's Starships

Now seriously. And not to piss off Brian. But I’m rather enjoying the game. Sure it’s like a Civ 2D map of space, but the gameplay is rather well done. And hell, $3.74? Would I have been happy if I bought it at full price? Hell no. But less than four bucks? Hell yes.

Made a good first impression on me, too. It’s a boardgame! There’s four or so currencies, and four things to spend them on. The ship battles have been super easy so far, which I’m totally fine with. A slightly better tutorial would have eased the the entry, but I feel like I’ve figured out almost everything. Seems like I game I can vibe with!

I’m really enjoying this. The parameters that create the universe are decent. The game is fast. The ship building is pretty simple.

I just found out that putting extra fighters into all of your ships means that you wasted money. Because fighters count towards the total number of ships in the battle. The first time I got a ‘ship limit reached’ message I was pissed.

I keep losing to the AI on easy, but I don’t care. I play it like a roguelike. I recently actually read a guide and now I know what I’m doing wrong. I make a massive fleet full of weapons and armor and shields. And I lose. Because I was thinking wrong. I need to actually try for the stuff that wins. :) I’ll be playing this for a long time.

Link to that guide?

Avoid the comments as usual. :)

In my first play through on moderate difficulty as Purity and guy whose name starts with B with four opponents large galaxy, so take this for what it is worth. The game ended so quickly I don’t think knowing all the synergies with planets mattered. Once I had five planets my fleet was strong enough to crush the other AIs.

For some reason I thought you could only have four capital ships so I maxed them out.

I will try hard setting next and maybe knowing which planets to specialize will be necessary.

This is a fun game for what it is. A brief summer fling.

Playing this makes me want to try SM’s Ace Patrol.

I feel like Ace Patrol is similar: A bit wobbly, but a fun core dynamic at the center, a la Sid.

The first Air Patrol is really good. It’s similar, sort of, to Starships, but elevation and maneuvers add a lot to the game play. What held it back is the management side is really weak. It would have been nice to have a bit more depth there, but overall its worth the money. The second one is fun too, but just more of the same.

They were great iPad games, but of course were killed in the great 32-bit purge.

I love the SFC vibe and the away missions feel of the game. I’m still awaiting a game with a more robust adventure away missions generator with managing crew and ship, but this comes closest that I’ve played. My 2nd play through, and will play it again till something comes closer to scratching that itch.

I’m worried that Brian will have a seizure seeing this at the top of the recent topics though…

I’m pretty sure he’s muted it by now. For the sake of his blood pressure. :)

Suddenly I have this urge to play Privateer 2 again and talk to @BrianRubin about it!

I bought a lot of,good games when I was a teenager (I had good taste!) but then I bought Privateer 2 and Master of Orión 3 too.

Master of Orion 3? They never made a third game.

Wow, good for you! I wanted to forget that game existed for a long time, You’ve succeeded! The rest of us have to still live with the trauma

Hush, you!

I hear there are people that play it patched. You know you want to try it ;)

Some strategy spoilers, at least as I recall…

Once you’re familiar with the game’s tactical quirks, the easy way to win is to strike the enemy homeworlds as soon as possible. The AI seems not to like attacking your own 100% worlds, so you don’t really have to worry about your own capital. If you methodically mess with the independent worlds at high level the AI handicap will eventually build up to the point their fleet becomes enormous.

Lasers, engines, and stealth are IMO the most important techs, and you can totally live without missiles, the short range weapon, and fighters. The AI doesn’t path all that great either, and it totally doesn’t understand jump gates and those on-off asteroid doors. Maximizing long-range damage enables a couple of cruisers to methodically eliminate a huge swarm of enemies so long as they don’t get surrounded at close range.