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Best 4x Space Game?

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power_hour said:
StarDrive is on steam for pre-order and its the first I have heard of it. Ship design and combat engine seem to be its selling points. Anyone got the scoop on this one?
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Yea, I was wondering about that too. Just from reading, it seems to be a cross between 4x games and top down action space games (EV: Nova/SPAZ). I'm tempted to just preorder it straight up for the savings, but being a little cautious.
 
Why is it so difficult to get a modern game w/ turn based tactical combat? That's the only way you can truly experience the nuances of different ship designs.
 
GoodRevrnd said:
Why is it so difficult to get a modern game w/ turn based tactical combat? That's the only way you can truly experience the nuances of different ship designs.
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It's possible to have good real time battles. It just hasn't been done yet. That Stardrive game you control your ship a la SPAZ and can give fleet orders as well so it's not really turn base friendly.
 
power_hour said:
How's the combat? Are the ships upgradeable in the sense that they are not predictable. In Sins you have paper rock scissor combat that gets annoying sometimes. And would you recommend the DLC? I don't see the value in them based on the description so maybe you can help clarify that a bit. Thanks.
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Endless Space uses a rock-paper-scissors type of combat. You don't control anything other than selecting tactics "cards" before the battle. There are three phases and the ships attack each other based on the cards you selected. Ships are very customizable, you can add missiles, beams, and kinetics and defenses for each of those three. You can choose engines and other add-ons. It's not unlike Moo2 in that regard. The weapon selection is limited to various levels of those three things.

For example, you may have a ship with the following:

4x Missile (level 3)
3x Missile (level 1)
12x Kinetic (level 2)
1x Beam (level 4)
3x Flak Cannon (level 2)
Engine (level 2)

As far as DLC goes, are you talking about the soundtrack and stuff? You can skip all of that.

Here is a YouTube video of a battle.

Again, it's not Moo2, but it's enjoyable. If you're wanting a new 4x game, I think that the cost right now is a safe gamble. If you're not willing to shell out the money, maybe try FreeOrion. It's still at 0.4, but it's supposed to be playable at this point.
 
While StarDrive isn't bad, it definitely is missing a lot of polish. Making great strides though, if you compare the UI of the tutorial videos and the actual UI now.
Somewhat high price for a one man project (albeit with art outsourced to contractors).
With more content, less omniscient AI, UI improvements, MP it could become a nifty game.


power_hour said:
How's the combat? Are the ships upgradeable in the sense that they are not predictable. In Sins you have paper rock scissor combat that gets annoying sometimes. And would you recommend the DLC? I don't see the value in them based on the description so maybe you can help clarify that a bit. Thanks.
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I couldn't find a more fitting word for the combat in Endless Space than "annoying"; for Sins it would more be "boring".
As the only involvement you have in ES combat is choosing a card to play (based on what you expect the other side to use), so it becomes a pattern guessing affair.
The weaponry is a lot like in GalCiv 2 or any other game with three weapon types (RPS) and linear upgrades for those. For each weapon type there's a specific armor/counter to install on your ships.
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/_...images/2/21/Galactic_warfare_technologies.png
http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Combat

I still regret preordering ES.
 
Sword of the stars 2 is automatically disqualified for that travesty of a launch.

Distant Worlds is a bit harder to get the hang of but it is a solid game if you give it time.
 
Agent11 said:
Sword of the stars 2 is automatically disqualified for that travesty of a launch.
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They did at least make all DLC/expansion stuff free.
The UI still doesn't exactly work, but honestly there's a game behind it!
Some people say the AI is still pretty bad, I don't understand the game well enough yet to rate that.

Re DW, does the game also slow down to a crawl for you when there's a sizeable amount of ships in the galaxy? I hope the new expansion coming out soon will be nifty.
 
Luckz said:
I couldn't find a more fitting word for the combat in Endless Space than "annoying";
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Agreed. You enjoy the first few battles because of the graphics and the tension, but after that, the battles are very predictable (and usually going to go one way regardless of the "cards" you play). You'll quickly end up skipping the battles and just playing the cards, even though you lose the ability to adjust your cards based on how the battle is going because it just takes so darn long to play out a battle otherwise.

I've found the AI to be woefully lacking, it's very easy to counter the enemy ships and they don't adjust to your ship builds as fast as you can adjust to theirs.
 
To add, Armada 2526 is sorta decent. I've played about 2 hours (yeah, not really long enough) but I won it off that GalaGiveaways.com site, played it on Desura and it seems to be quite decent.
 
Re DW, does the game also slow down to a crawl for you when there's a sizeable amount of ships in the galaxy? I hope the new expansion coming out soon will be nifty.
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Try setting the number of stars to 400 empires to 4

That's usually the size I use, never slows down or crashes. Keep in mind that independent colonies will turn into empires if they have time to.
 
I just started playing Endless Space. It took me a couple of games to understand how to play (even after reading the tutorials) but once you do get the hang of it, it's really fun.
Combat is, as stated before, really "Meh". You chose 3 actions and hope for the best.
other than that, it's a fun game. lots of things going on each turn.
 
I have a lot of nostalgia for Moo2 but ultimately I think GC2 is almost the better game. The economic/production model in GC2 is severely flawed but that's about the only big issue with the game. I wish Stardock would stop screwing around with weak MOM clones and make a GC3.

I like endless space. It's not quite up there with GC2 and MOO2 but it's worth checking out as something a bit different and very enjoyable. I really like how they do the resources, economy, and building in the game. Someone said they didn't like the tech tree but I don't get that - it's pretty much the same as tech trees in any other similar game, it's just represented differently visually (flat diagram and pretty slick UI for it with zoom, clear gains per tech, ability to queue up techs) vs linearly. Overall ES has a pretty good UI and overall presentation.

Sadly TBS is horribly under represented. RTS bore me - too much twitch and not enough thinking involved.
 
Voqar said:
I have a lot of nostalgia for Moo2 but ultimately I think GC2 is almost the better game. The economic/production model in GC2 is severely flawed but that's about the only big issue with the game. I wish Stardock would stop screwing around with weak MOM clones and make a GC3.

I like endless space. It's not quite up there with GC2 and MOO2 but it's worth checking out as something a bit different and very enjoyable. I really like how they do the resources, economy, and building in the game. Someone said they didn't like the tech tree but I don't get that - it's pretty much the same as tech trees in any other similar game, it's just represented differently visually (flat diagram and pretty slick UI for it with zoom, clear gains per tech, ability to queue up techs) vs linearly. Overall ES has a pretty good UI and overall presentation.

Sadly TBS is horribly under represented. RTS bore me - too much twitch and not enough thinking involved.
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welcome to the forums! are you my lost twin brother??
 
Elcs said:
To add, Armada 2526 is sorta decent. I've played about 2 hours (yeah, not really long enough) but I won it off that GalaGiveaways.com site, played it on Desura and it seems to be quite decent.
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saw that on /r/gaming today. Looks interesting, turn based empire building and real time space combat.
 
JTsyo said:
Is Sins worth it if you only play vs AI? Or is the sell of the game the multiplayer?
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I've only played it against AI and I think it's fine. Although only a few hours here and there though, but for what it's worth I had no problem with it.

I've never played it online since I can't commit to a 3-4 hours continuous session.. That, and I suck at it.
 
Voqar said:
I have a lot of nostalgia for Moo2 but ultimately I think GC2 is almost the better game. The economic/production model in GC2 is severely flawed but that's about the only big issue with the game. I wish Stardock would stop screwing around with weak MOM clones and make a GC3.

I like endless space. It's not quite up there with GC2 and MOO2 but it's worth checking out as something a bit different and very enjoyable. I really like how they do the resources, economy, and building in the game. Someone said they didn't like the tech tree but I don't get that - it's pretty much the same as tech trees in any other similar game, it's just represented differently visually (flat diagram and pretty slick UI for it with zoom, clear gains per tech, ability to queue up techs) vs linearly. Overall ES has a pretty good UI and overall presentation.

Sadly TBS is horribly under represented. RTS bore me - too much twitch and not enough thinking involved.
Click to expand...
The funny thing is that other than diplomacy, the economic and production models of GalCiv 2 are my favorite parts of the game. I wish more 4X games allowed you to truly build specialized planets/cities like GalCiv 2 does. I think it is truly awesome.
 
Martimus said:
The funny thing is that other than diplomacy, the economic and production models of GalCiv 2 are my favorite parts of the game. I wish more 4X games allowed you to truly build specialized planets/cities like GalCiv 2 does. I think it is truly awesome.
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That part is good, but I always found the strategic layer to be a bore and too much like a board game.
 
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