I would be all over I:B if it had a Mac client.
Hello my amazing friends, and welcome to another busy week of space gaming! This week, we only have one game of the week. What would you get if you mixed FTL with Gratuitous Space Battles? You’d get Corpoct, a sector-jumping roguelike in which you have no direct control over your fleet, but use cards to place items or effects on the battlefield. It’s a neat twist on the formula! I might get more videos in as I have time during the week as well. At least I do hope so. ;)
Moving on from pre-recorded content, here’s this week’s streaming schedule (please remember all times are Pacific):
- Monday - 8:00 AM-???, Freespace 2 20th anniversary stream. I’m gonna try to do the whole campaign in one day!
- Tuesday - 8:00 AM-12:00 PM, EF2000 stream. 5:00 PM - Looking back at the best and worst of the last decade for the podcast!
- Wednesday - 8:00 AM-12:00 PM, Notia stream.
- Thursday - 8:00 AM-12:00 PM, Far Cry 5 stream. 5:00 PM, Din’s Legacy LAN Party broadcast.
- Friday - 8:00 AM-12:00 PM, 3030 Deathwar Redux stream.
You can see all of our planned upcoming streams and events on our calendar, as always!
You can watch any of these streams on Twitch, YouTube, Mixer and Steam.
Finally, I’ve been trying to do more weekly written content on the website itself. Sunday I’ll be doing discussion topics such as wondering if Rebel Galaxy Outlaw will bring about a new era in cockpit space combat games. Mondays will be a gaming check-in where we talk about what we’ve been playing and what we hope to play, and Wednesdays will be our weekly news digests telling you about all the latest space game news, from patches to developer diaries to new releases. I do hope you’ll check it out. :)
That should do it for this coming week my wonderful friends. Thanks so much, and I hope to see y’all in a stream, chat room or forum thread! Have a great week
I am rooting for Adam and the team behind Interstellar Space: Genesis. Fans of space games that made a space game that @BrianRubin and DasTactic both recommend. Who cares if it’s another ‘inspired by MOO2’ game, MOO2 was amazing, so more amazingness to come.
Some on Steam and elsewhere gripe about the graphics. And I get it, unappealing graphics can reduce immersion. Good news, an update is on its way with a “significant overhaul of the game’s graphics.”
Agreed. Wishlisted.
It deserves more love, that’s for sure.
Where are my “inspired by Ascendancy, but with an AI that can actually play it” games, dammit.
Sadly I dunno how well Ascendancy did, sales-wise. It’s a shame, there really is nothing else like it.
Looks really good indeed. Thanks!
Yup, in a world with too many MoO clones what we really need are more wild deviations from the formula like Ascendancy.
Let’s be clear now. There are too many MoO2 clones and not nearly enough MoO clones. ;)
On this we can surely all agree.
Confused. Space Game Junkie says MoO2 is the one that is classic.
MoO2 is a classic. C’mon now, don’t be daft.
It’s just that MoO is better.
Why would you say it’s better? Less micro?
I feel like it is a more streamlined, fun design.
Less micro is one thing, and something I have noticed with older, more abstract games is that I tend to infuse the computer players with personalities that may or may not be there. In the first Civ like in the first Moo, this gives me the sentiment of a much more vibrant and lively world.
I think the first game aged much better than the second one, but as I hinted above, I also think the first Civ game is better than its sequels, so I cannot be trusted!
When I was in grad school studying international security affairs I had to take a class about the history of war. I actually used MOO 2 as a tool to illustrate how balance of power worked in an anarchic state system (still taking into account the whole Galactic Council formation mechanic). I wish I still had the paper Those Darloks were jerks and man a Gaia planet was really a rare treasure.
There definitely seems to be an advantage to keeping an idea pure and simple. The first Civ game not only had charming - and sometimes beautiful graphics - it also presented a very specific, brilliant idea and its implementation. The second game started to expand on that idea, but the problem is that when you expand on ideas, you’re never really quite done. There’s always more expansion to do, and you end up creating an imbalance in the mechanics, much like expansion packs tend to do. At some point you might also just be expanding for the sake of expansion, just because a new iteration must be shown to do enough new things.
I can’t speak for the MoO series though – I was never able to get into it, though I’ve started countless MoO games.
I liked how MoO treated a planet as a planet, and not a city.
You could also set defense to max, and forget that you did and then, when the AI surprised you with a sneak attack, instead of being screwed, you just see that the AI gets destroyed by hundreds of missiles.
Who didn’t love the research breakthrough music of MoO 1?
And I think MoO 1 was the first to have space elves?
