Man, Space Rangers 2. Didn’t that first come out back in the mid-aughts or something? I bought my boxed copy at Fry’s, and it had the dreaded Starforce DRM on it, but the buzz was so great I chanced it. It didn’t ruin my computer or anything then. Later I bought Reloaded Reboot and then A War Apart during various sales.
I never got terribly far in it because I couldn’t grok how to make enough money for repairs/upgrades etc, but I enjoyed what I played of it, and always have meant to go back to it.
End of last year I was in a Star Trek game mood and picked up Starcom Nexus. Loved it, really scratched the itch I had. When I found out another was coming out, I put it on my wishlist. Just waiting for them to finish and I’ll be picking it up.
If it doesn’t have to be a computer game, GMT Games is coming out with a new John Butterfield game called Away Team, which is based on an old spi game of his.
Space Rangers 2 is how I found this forum. Bill Harris of Dubious Quality had a series of posts about Space Rangers and Dwarf Fortress and linked to their respective threads on here and Octopus Overlords. That was back when you had to email Tom to register. Lucky for me he approves of my taste in games.
So Steam and GOG are finally getting the weakest of the Five-Star General series, but an interesting game in its own right – as it’s based of a series of novels called the Fleet series – Star General.
I of course will buy both versions because that’s how I am, but it’s an interesting piece of space gaming history that’s at least worth checking out.
A local indie dev just posted in the Colorado game dev Slack about this turn-based, tick-driven, multiplayer 4X space game:
It’s definitely still in development, but I thought some folks here might be intrigued enough to try it out.
I played a number of these games in the past: O-Game, UltraCorps… The thing to me was that they were always too mercilessly competitive. Any little screw-up and you were permanently crushed by the experienced players. Curious if this is any different.
I often tend to overlook this thread just because it seems (to me) to lean way over into 4X and flight sim sub-genres of space games, but I have to say this year is just an absolute wealth of space games that I’m enjoying and looking forward to. What with the Dead Space remake earlier in the year and Jedi Survivor in the last few weeks, and Planet of Lana and Star Trek: Resurgence arriving this week, plus Invincible and Starfield coming later in the year - not to mention another Mass Effect plus whatever Casey Hudson’s new company is working on further down the road? Just a great time for space games.
I played a few of these and my problem was that mistakes on the diplomacy side of the game would always trump anything you did on the gameplay side. No matter how efficient your empire you can’t beat the steamrolling alliance of two players next door.
