Gratuitous Space Battles - no really, that's the name of the game.

[SunnyD]

Think Sins of a Solar empire, without worrying about the RTS part.

GSB is the new game from UK developer 'Positech Games'. It's a strategy / management / simulation game that does away with all the base building and delays and gets straight to the meat and potatoes of science-fiction games : The big space battles fought by huge spaceships with tons of laser beams and things going 'zap!', 'ka-boom!' and 'ka-pow!'. In GSB you put your ships together from modular components, arrange them into fleets, give your ships orders of engagement and then hope they emerge victorious from battle (or at least blow to bits in aesthetically pleasing ways).

Indie developer, one lone guy made this. A demo is available.

 

[Elcs]

£16'ish... I think I'll wait until a couple of people here put down a few good words about it.

looks promising but not really want I am looking for right now I guess.

 

[Pepsei]

hmmm, is it like star control?

 

[WildW]

I preordered this and got to play the beta. It was rather unfinished feeling at the time, haven't actually downloaded the proper version yet (wasn't quite out the last time I looked.) . . . it's okay. . . basically one for the micromanagement freaks (which I have counted myself among at times).

You set up your fleet and then sit back and watch. There's multiplayer by virtue of the fact that you can save a fleet setup and exchange them with other folks, hence you can both set up a fleet and then let them fight.

If you're the sort of person who plays collectable card games like Magic The Gathering, and get the most enjoyment out of the deck building as opposed to the game itself, this is one for you.

 

[Raduque]

Downloading the demo now.

 

[rivan]

Looks pretty great. I'll DL the demo tonight

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Is the AI in the demo the same as the AI in the full game?

It's interesting, but the AI options are lacking some fundamentals. Things like "Protect target against specific classes of ships" - while I want may want my interceptors to protect my frigates against enemy fighters, I sure as hell don't want them trying to protect it from enemy cruisers.


I'm assuming all unlocks are completely disabled in the demo, and not that I'm missing something about how they work.

 

[TheVrolok]

I'm in for the demo.. How could I resist gratuitous space battles?

 

[TheVrolok]

Played around with the demo, definitely a fun little time waster. 23 bucks? I dunno if I have the cash around for that.. but maybe at 10-15 I would.

 

[minmaster]

no way is this worth more than 5 bucks, lol.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

It sounds like the "Make Your Own Space Battle Movie" game.

 

[Raduque]

Played around with the demo, definitely a fun little time waster. 23 bucks? I dunno if I have the cash around for that.. but maybe at 10-15 I would.

Yea exactly. It's fun, but not $23usd worth of fun... I can get all I need out of the demo before I go back to Eve.

 

[Skott]

'GSB is the new game from UK developer 'Positech Games'. It's a strategy / management / simulation game that does away with all the base building and delays and gets straight to the meat and potatoes of science-fiction games : The big space battles fought by huge spaceships with tons of laser beams and things going 'zap!', 'ka-boom!' and 'ka-pow!'. In GSB you put your ships together from modular components, arrange them into fleets, give your ships orders of engagement and then hope they emerge victorious from battle (or at least blow to bits in aesthetically pleasing ways).'


I can't remember the last time a game developer used words like 'Zap!' 'Ka-boom!' or 'Ka-pow!' in a description. LOL
I applaud and support the indie developers though and I hope it works out well for GSB.

 

[FreedomGUNDAM]

downloading the demo as I type. Will give it a try this evening

 

[Zenoth]

I tried the demo and I was very pleased, it's loads of fun, it has a simple friendly interface (contrarily to the labyrinth of complex choices and countless small icons and sub-categories of A.I War: Fleet Command, which by the way I still like, but it really isn't for everyone) yet it posses a depth that really involves strategy, if you screw up your armada build down to bad choices for individual components of individual ships it's a guaranteed defeat.

I for one will buy it, it comes out on November 16th on Steam.

 

[JTsyo]

I would pay about $5 for it. I played the demo and in the first battle I had no idea what the enemy fleet was or what weapons they were firing. WOnder if there is some kind of intel module.

 

[Zenoth]

It came out today on Steam for a reduced price, $20.69 instead of the usual $22.99. I bought it, and the current version is 1.23, but from what I've read on the official forums the game's developer (I think it's just one guy working on the whole thing, amazing if true) is sending patch 1.24 via e-mails for testing purposes, I'm not sure if the Steam version is compatible with that, I would doubt it.

But anyway, I played some, and it's already much better than the demo, so many options, when you register the game (there's a game code) you get access to user-made challenges and fleets which you can try to beat, there's also a history for those fleets, how many times users attempted to beat it, how many were victorious, with a stars-rating system for user-made challenges difficulties, etc.

I'm very pleased so far, well worth its price in my opinion. I bet this game will surely grow up in features over time.

EDIT: Apparently the Steam version is currently outdated, being version 1.23, while the current non-Steam version is 1.24 (and I believe the demo as well was 1.24). Additionally, after I launched the game a second time (after Steam was closed and re-started) the game tried to update itself via the "normal" way with a patch installer from the Desktop, which all Steam games aren't compatible with from what I've often read. I for one canceled that patch from the Desktop.

I don't think it would work if I tried to point the installer to the Steam folder where it's currently installed, I believe that Valve needs to check out about that themselves for a proper Steam-compatible patch. So if you do buy the Steam version like I did be aware that the game will try to patch itself, I recommend not to try it until official words are out about its compatibility, unless of course you want to try it anyway, the game isn't big so if you screw up the whole thing it would take about five minutes to download again (it's about 300MB).

 

[shortylickens]

THIS GAME IS TITS!!!

I love blasting away at massive capital ships. Its almost as good as the fleet battles in Moo2, but its lacking a comprehensive ship builder. Fun times though, will buy soon.

In the demo the game seems to hiccup whenever I go past 1.0 speed. Is that an issue in the full game as well? I have a fast quad-core system with gobs of RAM, it should not be a hardware limitation.

 

[Zenoth]

Alright, I've tried to install the 1.24 patch from the installer to the Steam's installation folder of the game (within the common folder like all the non-Valve games), and it seems to be working. I launched the game after I updated it and it shows version 1.24 properly in the main menu. So, for now anyway it seems to work just fine. I'll test and see if the changes from the patch's changelog were indeed applied properly to make sure it's 100% working.

EDIT: Additionally, if anyone is curious about the changes to the game since it received its very first update months ago there's a nice thread at the official game's forums with each patch's respective changelogs: http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2506

 

[Zenoth]

I just received a newsletter from the developer (anyone who subscribed to it will receive the same message as well) about a new "Data Pack" for the game. I for one just call it a DLC, it's called The Tribe and it costs $5.99. It adds a new race (The Tribe is that race's name, in fact), new Tribe-specific modules, new weapons (kinetic weapons, which is new to the game), and two new missions.

http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/tribe.html

I'll get it. I play GSB at least once per day ever since I bought it.