So, this seems as good a thread as any to ask this… I want to play a game that has really epic space battles. Something like Sins or Gratuitous Space Battles. It really needs to have graphics at least on that level or my itch won’t get scratched. I don’t care if I have to build a galactic empire to do it or not, either way is fine with me. I’ve played both of them (and modded the hell out of Sins, shamelessly stealing many models, particle effects and explosions to have it be significantly better looking) to death.
I really wish Distant Worlds had graphics that weren’t made out of garbage, because otherwise that might do it for me. Sadly, it does have graphics made out of garbage. Distant Worlds is still fun and all, but at the moment I am particularly looking for beautiful, large scale devastation in space, or at least uppermost orbit. Any thoughts or am I SoL?
Well Homeworld 2 still looks good, maybe Nexus The Jupiter Incident too?
I’m on my phone, but look for Shallow Space.
Grifman
1625
Yeah, I was going to recommend that also.
Thanks for the replies guys. Homeworld 2 is probably somewhere in my garage, and I have no desire to go digging for it and don’t really want to pirate it. If I remember correctly it isn’t super easy to get running on modern machines, in any case. All I remember about The Jupiter Incident was not making it past like… the third or fourth mission because I was so bored, but really wanting to like it because the graphics were unbelievably great for the time. I don’t know that I want to spend 10 bucks to relive that experience, but it’s possible.
Shallow Space looks very cool! Too bad it’s still in Alpha, so unless there is a playable build somewhere I didn’t notice immediately, probably isn’t going to help much.
And lastly… SotS 1 is exactly what I picked up last night after posting. Man, this game had some really great stuff in it (the colony buildup, economic/research abstraction, randomized tech trees with racial weighting, fun but not overly complex ship design), but some really old, dated stuff as well (babysitting fleets with tanker ships rather than just abstracting range in a more useful way, no auto-explore for scouts, bizarre and unintuitive morale rules). Overall, still great fun.
I also looked at some of the info on Stardrive 2, the combat in that looks pretty fantastic as well. But the first game was very so-so, so I’m hesitant to get excited about the sequel.
I just grabbed the 2 haegemonia games from the Meridian 4 sale on Steam ($2.24 total!). Has anyone played the standalone expansion pack? (cough Brian?)
kedaha
1629
The Solon Heritage is just a rebalance with a skirmish mode and new maps. No new campaign. I still quite like the original
I can’t even figure out how to fire the starting missiles in the game, or to board a ship. I can see 8 missiles in my ship but no buttons seem to fire them. I can grapple a ship but I can’t seem to send over any marines.
Either I am getting old and getting to the stage where I can’t figure out the “VCR”, or the tutorials/controls really suck.
X fires heavy weapons. It’s in the options. Also make sure to slave a key to the tactical overlay. That thing is massively helpful.
And not everything is implemented or even explained yet. If you continue to feel frustrated, I’d wait for the final version.
Thanks! I had great fun toying with it a bit. I did manage to hot key the tactical overlay so maybe I can salvage some pride - that said, I’m surprised they didn’t just set a default key for it.
I’m not looking for a complicated space sim so this scratches that itch - it’s just on the cusp of being something really great, or falling into the abyss of a “could have been”, although it looks more like the former.
I will wait patiently for it to finish up (like a bunch of my other Early Access games, like Stonehearth). Thanks for the heads up on this!
Paging Brian Rubin: its Space Weekend at the Humble Store, which is having a sale on space games that are set in Outer Space.
robc04
1635
I was wondering if any of these are really good.
SINS is fantastic if you like space 4x RTS games.
robc04
1637
I guess I should have mentioned I have Sins, Endless Space, and GalCiv :-)
I think I remember a podcast where Tom interviewed the guy (one of the guys?) behind SPAZ. Tom really liked it. SPAZ mostly bounced off of me, but I think it was mostly because I wasn’t any good at it. Couldn’t hurt to try it out for two and a half bucks.
Sins and Starpoint Gemini 2 are the best deals there.
Whoa that is a nice deal on Starpoint Gemini 2. I was planning to wait until the story campaign was done, but…
Spaz was great if you like games like escape velocity. There are some points where it can be grindy though. The biggest thing i can say about it is that i plan to give them my money for the second one when they open their hand (allow preorders).
