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Skybuck's Review of Sid Meier's Starships 3 out of 5

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Hello,

The last 2 days or so I played this game called:

Sid Meier's Starships.

My first impression was it was kinda nice but it had lots of weapons 
missing.
My second impression was it's a nice tactical/positioning strategy game.
My third impression is that it doesn't suit well for "spam/swarm" 
strategies, which is what I tried a few minutes ago.

I simply build a lot of ships, with 2 fighters on it... so I could spam like 
10 fighters at least... then game complains max starships reached.

But the biggest problem is... it takes waaaayyy too much time to command all 
these little fighters... cause it's turn based... ship by ship.. and that 
kinda sucks.

And that basically kills the game for me to be honest... cause if I can't 
implement a simple spam/swam strategy because of playtime restrictions that 
kinda sucks.

Also the game does not have mines...

Overall it's a nice game... but in the end... it's a weak strategy game... 
because of these kinds of limitations.

Though if you are willing to ignore this time problem... that it's kinda 
nice game... sort of a rock-sciccor-paper game in space... that uses astroid 
fields/planets to make a map/obstructions/defensive positions.

Rock/sciccor/paper in the sense that you will have to choose between max 8 
shields modules, 8 lasers, 8 plasmas, 8 engines, 8 fights, 8 stealth, 8 
sensors, 8 armor.

Something like that... so that maximum is 8,8,8,8,8,8,8 and so forth... but 
the more equipment you add to heavy the ship becomes so you ll have to 
either add more engine modules... or "invent/research" better engine... 
which will give all ships better/faster engines.

So in that sense it's kinda interesting between upgrading individual ships 
so they become big battleships.... or investing money into planets/buildings 
so that later research can be bought so that all ships can be upgrade... I 
may try the research approach later on... so far I played on easy, medium, 
hard and impossible AI levels... and it's all quite nice...

At the end... suddenly resources just kept coming which was kinda lame... 
don't know why it did that... I guess it had to do with the impossible 
difficulty level lol... if you dont kill a ship fast enough... new ones will 
spawn.

Anyway the game is kinda nice... not too much overhead with building 
stuff... just click some icons and everything is build... nothing to choose 
from... just invest in more "cities" which gives credits.... or more factors 
which can either give "metal" or "food".

There are 5 "currencies" : energy, metal, food, research, credits

This is kinda nice... because ship upgrading costs energy only... so you 
want face dilemma's...

You will face some dillema's how to spent metal on planets... do you want 
more energy production or more food production or more metal production and 
so forth....

So the "resource spending" dilemma is mostly based around the planet 
investments...

The ship investments is already dilemma enough... which modules to choose...

I did find a little "hack/short circuit/short cut/exploit?" so to speak... 
it's possible to sell all resources on the credit market and then buy 
energy... so ships can be upgraded more fast... which is kinda nice...

I wonder if the ai does that as well or not..

Ofcourse selling off like that might hurt planet build up... but not really 
because at the start you will need to conquer other planets... and you ll 
need to have strong ships for them... and repair then when they go 
broken/bad/zero.

Anyway it's a nice game... you can't really losing your ships... your 
configuration so to speak keeps saved... so you can just rebuy your ship in 
a way...

The cool thing about this game is if you concuer a home planet... you ll get 
all other planets tooo... so the home planet is like a king planet... one 
could also consider this lame but so be it...

The fighting/firing animations take a bit too long for my taste... this is a 
big waste of time... to bad really and kind of ironic compared to the rest 
of the game.

The movements take a bit long... could be sped up... and also explosion 
animations take long...

Also when ai travels across space on the planet map... concuering planets 
and such also takes a long time... I wish that could be disabled...

These issues is what I don't really like about this game and that makes it 
kinda weak.... especially the spam/swarm strategy issue is kind of shitty.

So basically this game has been dumb-ed down quite a lot...

Master of Orion was better, Conquest Frontier Wars was better, Starwars... 
can't remember its name was better overall...

But this game does have nice tactical battle in space... it does feel more 
like a strategy game...

Perhaps it should not be a turned based game or perhaps it should be 
possible to select multiple ships and give them orders all at the same time.

I think that last solution would make me more happy... civilization 3 
conquest had that too... possible to "stack units" and such...

As far as I know this game is missing that though I didn't really try it...

It's also possible to place ships at the same square... not sure what 
happens if they get attacked... do they share/distribute damage ? or are 
they all hit equal hard ? That's kinda weird...

Also at first I didn't get how the astroids work with obstruction fire.. I 
saw all kinds of weird red numbers on screen but then later I realized this 
is penalty.... and also it's kinda weird... sometimes IT CAN and sometimes 
IT CANNOT shoot through asteroids... so that somewhat weird and 
inconsistent...  which is kinda frustrating perhaps... it's just weird.

The jump gates is also very weird... but can lead to sometimes funny and 
unexpected situations.

I do like the concept of the game... and I do like the story... the graphics 
are smooth... but a bit snail-ish.... slow.... movement speed to slow... and 
so forth.

Overall not a too bad game, but not too great either it was interesting to 
play... but it has some obvious weaknesses which would need to be fixed to 
be more enjoyable/better.

In that sense this game is kinda weak... feels like a preview/demo of what 
to come... perhaps in future... perhaps a second version might be better.

For now I give this game a 3 out of 5... which would mean a 6 out of 10... 
which is kinda weak... but that's what you get...

I think there are better strategy games out there... but if you already own 
them... and are looking for a new one... this one is kinda fun to try out.

Also one last thing... it has wonders.... never really build one... cause I 
kinda find that weird/boring... but I did build the dual command wonder... 
then I could launch 2 fighters per turn per ship...

Ultimately enemy battleship was strong... and it took way too long to kill 
it with 10 or 20 fighters or whatever and new enemy battleships kept popping 
up in impossible... and it's late if I have to go sleep.. so I quited...

The ai diplomacy is also constantly nagging... saying hi and bs... 
fortunately one click can solve that...

Also diplomacy kinda weak...

So overall this a very weak game... it does play kinda nice/fast... it could 
even be much faster...

But for anybody serious about space games... I would advice you to wait for 
something better.. perhaps version 2 or so... or another space...

Though you could pirate this game... and then get a taste of it... it's 
quite tasty :)

Euhm I don't know what happens if other content is added.... probably not 
much I think (?) some other game can be plugged into it...

The graphics are nice, the voices are nice, the sound effects are nice... so 
this is kinda of a nice game... but none the less weak.

Real strategy players are probably better of playing company of heroes, or 
warcraft, or starcraft.

Though for a space game... this game has re-introduced "space" as a viable 
strategy game...

It's uses of astroids and planets is quite interesting and therefore a must 
play ! But don't expect greatness as of yet ! =|

So long space-suckers...

To boldly blast... where no-one has blasted before ! =D

TTTTututututututu sssshhhhhh

Oh one last thing... this game does not have multiplayer... I would have 
loved multiplayer though... except for the fighter spam thing that would 
take quite long... unless it can be grouped or stacked... kinda odd how sid 
meier's game usually don't have grouping... like all other strategy games do 
have :) maybe Sid against grouping lol :)

Bye,
  Sky-space-Buck ! ;) =D

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Skybuck's Review of Sid Meier's Starships 3 out of 5 "Skybuck Flying" <skybuck2000@hotmail.com> - 2015-03-17 00:24 +0100

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