Yay! I’m so glad you guys are digging ISG. The guy who made it used to run another space game blog until he decided to do this instead. Great guy.
If you get a ship leader with a trait related to exploration put them on the survey ship, it will help increase the odds of finding ruins and IIRC will increase the odds of finding something valuable in the ruins. I tend to leave ruins alone until I get a survey ship with an appropriate leader at the helm, unless the AI is close enough to be a threat in pillaging the site.
Remote exploration might identify a ruin, but if not send the survey ship to sectors where remote exploration did not yield a ruin. You also learn more about the planets in a system with a survey ship.
You also want to have a combat ship with the survey ship as it helps the survey ship escape encounters with space monsters.
Missiles are your friend.
My first game took a surprising turn at the end. 2 empires had been fighting off and on all game, and were 1 and 3 respectively. I was middle of the pack, and not a threat to win. Suddenly 1 surrendered to 3, became #2, and then a galactic council vote came up between the new #1 and #3. 3’s game long rival #2 along with everyone else except #1 voted for #3 giving them the votes for a victory. I need to make better use of outposts next game, and also remember multiple planets in a system can be colonized.
One thing i couldn’t figure out, is there a way to refit ships to new designs, or do you just have to scrap them?
Off to actually read the guide, and then another game begins.
Found the answer. If there is an orbital station at a colony, there will be a refit button on the colony screen.
Sounds like you had an exciting game. I’m really enjoying it myself. I like that it frequently makes us choose between mutually exclusive options. You can’t take every civic – you have to turn down half of them. When choosing which techs to learn to exploit a strategic resource, you forever exclude learning the alternative techs. The events are more standard in games like this, but even so, the choices are meaningful.
And yeah, exploration is really clever. The map is bigger than it seems at first.
You mentioned a guide. Where is that to be found? Some of the descriptions of techs and buildings could use further explanation.
The manual link on the Steam store page. It isn’t very in depth, mostly giving the basics about the game.
2nd game is going better. Currently in first and just coming up about 40 votes short in the galactic council’s first 2 elections. I completely misunderstood the ship support point display, and for a long time though the +# was how many points I was using instead of how many were free. Finally noticed it in the tooltip.
ISG sounds like it would be a good baby’s first 4X because I’m not adept and experienced at these things though I have dabbled in the genre. When I played the original Civilization on my Amiga so many years ago it was a rude awakening to realize my enemies in all directions didn’t just politely turtle themselves and wait for me to come a’conquerin’; that they actually came a’conquerin’ me, with mucho “game over, man!” success.
Yep, I think ISG would be a good intro to the genre. It starts out very simply and gradually introduces complexity. It can really get addictive. My only complaint is that some UI text is tiny and hard to read.
@vyshka, I’m now in the lead, and I won a majority of votes in the last council, but not enough to win. I’m around turn 175. I’m amazed at how fast you played your first game!
Tiny UI fonts with lots of important info screens is usually a deal killer with me unless I can drop my display’s native resolution of 1080p (if the game supports that) to 720p or lower to make it more readable for my old eyes. There was a trick you could do with Stellaris at 1080p (which I considered playing) making just the UI fonts large while keeping that HD sweetness by just changing your desktop’s custom scale resolution. I play from a couch in my living room on an old Vizio 43" TV so I don’t have the luxury of getting my face right up close to a monitor. My next big hardware upgrade will hopefully be an LG C1 65" gaming TV so maybe that will help a little in these games with tiny UIs.
@Spock it probably went by so quickly because there was a lot of me hitting next turn towards the end. I agree it would be a decent intro to the genre. While the outliner is okay, I wish there was something closer to an expansion planner screen that some other games have. It would also be nice if you select an outpost ship or colony ship and select the target instead of moving it to the system and then having to build outpost, or colonize (maybe I’m just an idiot and missed that you can do this?). Or give me a a reminder when they arrive, otherwise it can be easy to forget them when there is a lot going on later in the game. So some annoying things, but overall I had about 12 hours of fun with it today. Just picked up an alliance victory in my second game. I don’t know if I accidentally clicked something, but an early ally colonized a planet and killed off a minor civ which appeared to result in us going to war. So I was labelled a backstabber by some other races. Of course after this started, the former ally could never let it go, and would keep starting wars with me until I finally put them out of their misery. A second empire decided to try and take advantage while these fights were going on, so they were removed from the galaxy as well. They also made the mistake of the other empire of not letting it go after getting a good beatdown the first time they started a war. Most of the other empires didn’t give us any trouble besides sniping some planets right before we would get to them, or beating us to some good outpost spots.
I had a strange thing where some planets decided to be 100% devoted to production, the center button was greyed out, and colony automation was disabled. Not sure what was going on there. My goal next game is to get a better grip on the workings of that and the ecology/terraforming parts.
You guys broke me. I folded and bought the dlc as well.
@Rez I’m playing in 1280 x 800 resolution, and the game apparently does support it, but even so some fonts are small – even with the UI set to 125% and fonts set to large. Now, my eyes are a good 5 feet from my 30-inch screen, because my setup is a little peculiar. If I sat closer, I’d see better. Also, I have a cataract, which obviously doesn’t help. I’d suggest trying the game on Steam and refunding it within 2 hours if the UI is unacceptable to you. For me, it’s workable, just a little annoying.
@vyshka Grats on your win! As for colonies/outposts, I tend to use the quick link that shows up on the bottom right of the screen once a colony/outpost can be established. I click on it and it takes me right to the system in question. Have you tried that?
Also, I’ve enabled the filter that shows me where colonizable planets are. I’m not sure there’s such a filter for outposts, though. Actually, I’m not quite sure where outposts can go.
And yes, the eco UI is a bit mysterious to me. I’m not sure what the default eco setting does, and whether I should be putting any resources into eco if I’m not actively working on an eco project with a turn counter.
All that said, we often have the same taste in games, and I share your generally positive reaction to this one. I also spent hours and hours yesterday!
I started a 3rd game last night and actually noticed the notification icon this time for a colony ship arriving at a system. I’ll have to look again and see if I can find something that will show asteroid belts on the map like it does strategic resources.
Edit: I’m a moron. I finally noticed that the grey dot under a star system means an asteroid belt.
I think I understand what was going on now. Once you max out ecology and/or infrastructure it no longer needs to devote resources to them. So
- If ecology is maxed, the ball will shift to the edge between infrastructure and production
- If infrastructure is maxed, the ball will shift to the edge between ecology and production
- If both are maxed, the ball will shift to the production corner.
It doesn’t, it makes it worse given typical TV viewing distances - unless you plan to sit right up in front of the TV, rather than on a couch!
Warning: Starpoint has the wurst voice acting
For another freebie, don’t forget about Remnants of the Precursors
Star Wolves enters the chat
I’m just starting this. I just got a support ship from an event. It is parked in my home system and is supposed to be giving 50 flat production + 2 per infrastructure level. But when I mouse over the panels on my colony screen I cant find where it is being added in. Where are these types of bonuses reported?
