Recomend Daz a TB space-strategy...

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Daz
Stars is almost impossible to find...

I have a copy.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Originally posted by DrSpike


I have a copy.

I loaned him mine.

[Grumbold]

I just can't get into GalCiv. Something about the first scout ship pulling an USS Enterprise and becoming more powerful than a battleship from its explorations while your first planet struggles to produce basic early game items just kills it cold for me. I'd much rather play MoO3 where you have whole fleets of ships and feel like an emperor!

Unfortunately there aren't any other recent space TBS that I know of, so exploring whatever shareware / abandonware / 2nd hand games you can find out of the list vxma mentioned is about your only option. The Imperium Galactica games are worth a couple of plays if you can find them cheap, but they dont repeat well.

For a different kind of space strategy game I can't recommend Alien Legacy enough, but you will need a dos slowdown program to get it to run at the right pace on any modern machine.

[Daz]

Originally posted by Spaced Cowboy


I loaned him mine.

will uninstall it and give it back as soon as I'm finished with it

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Thrawn05
If you are willing to download a thirdparty editor, then SW: Rebellion. The default values generaly suck so you need RebEd to fix it. My homepage has recommended settings that I use for it.

Not to be an ass or anything, Rebellion was one of the worse games. I actually gave it away three times and all gave it back.

I finally tossed in the trash. Very few people cared for it as far as I can tell, don't see how anyone could recommended, sorry.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Daz


will uninstall it and give it back as soon as I'm finished with it

No need to uninstall it.

[Colonâ„¢]

What was bad about MOO3 again? I remember reading it was teh suckage, but I can't remember what the specific problems were (or if those problems eventually got fixed with patches).

[vmxa1]

It was bad when released, but I am not sure if some of the issues were fixed in the patch or not.

Spying was one I recall and I know some users addressed it.
I spent the first month playing, but in the end I just did not have any fun.

I have started it with the patch a few times and just could not get interested. I am a monster fan of Moo1 and Moo2, but just could not hang.

[Grumbold]

MoO3 had all the gameplay bases covered but it just lacked a bit of soul. The package was designed to allow you to control more than ever before. Your galaxy spanning empire would no longer be five developed planets, a few more inconsequential mudballs and one stack of a dozen super dreadnoughts.

In that respect it delivered. Wars would see multiple stacks of warships plying the space lanes and wars on multiple fronts, not just one battle stack. Personally I really liked that feeling after so many games where one fleet conquers all. Unfortunately many more felt it was like flying a thinly disguised spreadsheet. Where I agree with them is that parts of the game like spying and searching for the mysterious Antarran 'X's were never fully developed.

With the official patches and some fan tweaks applied I find it a satisfying space conquest experience that actually provides some challenge, which is sadly more than many otherwise fun space games managed to do.

[Bkeela]

Originally posted by Grumbold
I just can't get into GalCiv. Something about the first scout ship pulling an USS Enterprise and becoming more powerful than a battleship from its explorations while your first planet struggles to produce basic early game items just kills it cold for me. I'd much rather play MoO3 where you have whole fleets of ships and feel like an emperor!

Unfortunately there aren't any other recent space TBS that I know of, so exploring whatever shareware / abandonware / 2nd hand games you can find out of the list vxma mentioned is about your only option. The Imperium Galactica games are worth a couple of plays if you can find them cheap, but they dont repeat well.

For a different kind of space strategy game I can't recommend Alien Legacy enough, but you will need a dos slowdown program to get it to run at the right pace on any modern machine.

Agreed. I didn't get 10 turns into the demo before I was bored.

I'm hungry for a new space game. MoO2 expanded and made pretty to the extent that Civ IV is to Civ II would be really good.

[vmxa1]

BTW I bought the deluxe version of Stars! from Empire few years back and it came with two CD's, so you could play with a friend.

The only time I went to game convention in LA they had the demo for the version, but it never was released. This was the same year that MMVII was shown.

[Colonâ„¢]

Originally posted by Grumbold
MoO3 had all the gameplay bases covered but it just lacked a bit of soul. The package was designed to allow you to control more than ever before. Your galaxy spanning empire would no longer be five developed planets, a few more inconsequential mudballs and one stack of a dozen super dreadnoughts.

In that respect it delivered. Wars would see multiple stacks of warships plying the space lanes and wars on multiple fronts, not just one battle stack. Personally I really liked that feeling after so many games where one fleet conquers all.

That feeling is something I'm also sorely missing in many space-strategy games. MOO2 would be the ultimate game ever for me, if only you wouldn't constantly have to fiddle with colony improvements and if the game wouldn't actively try to restricy the amount of ships with that command-points system it has. Too bad MOO3 couldn't live up to its potential.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Sort of real time, but Star Ships Unlimited is worth a peek.

Just tried this, not seeing it.

[vmxa1]

Well it is a few years old now, but it has many of the features most like. Ships can be upgraded as you get tech. Better and biggers ships come with later techs.

The resources gathering is automatic. You have some diplomacy, including alliances where you actually merge as one.

Artifacts canbe gathered, special items to aid in combat. Attacking planets and annexing them. Pirates and such.

Not great, but I enjoyed a few games here and there. No where as good as Stars and Moo.

[Whoha]

me *****ing about games that I find reasonably fun

Originally posted by Colonâ„¢
What was bad about MOO3 again? I remember reading it was teh suckage, but I can't remember what the specific problems were (or if those problems eventually got fixed with patches).

Moo3 came out with a lot of problems. eventually workarounds were found to mitigate some issues, and the patches did also resolve some issues. there is also Bhruic's work, he has done a lot of 3rd party patches, and they are really great.

spying isnt as much of a problem anymore because it can be removed, and the ai doesnt prioritize spying on the human player anymore. I play dictatorship and set the oppresso meter all the way up, works for me.

visibility is still messed up, I'd like a patch that just made everything visible to everything else. being the attacker gives a pretty insurmountable advantage, because you can fire and the other player, sitting around defending his planet can not.

point defense is definately just wrong. I flat out cheated and gave an armada something like 10K(THOUSAND) light autofire hardbeams per ship(200 THOUSAND total), and missiles/fighters managed to get through all that. because all of a taskforces weapons only fire on one target(cluster of missiles or cluster of fighters) at a time.

migration was ill thought out for a variety of reasons: first off, it generates a large scale complex math problem that takes up a good bit of cpu time to resolve, and is responsible for the slowdowns that I've seen. if you encourage migration to a planet, every planet 40 jumps from it will calculate to see if it can migrate to that planet. also multi-species planets have severe terraforming problems. bottom line, disabling migration speeds up the turn processing and helps the ai a lot.

the planetary budget,empire budget,etc will all overflow and go massively negative if you aren't careful later on in the game, and there is a limit to how much industry and research you can get out of a planet so the vast majority of the money you spend will be burnt off on nothing.

Further still there are a bunch of buildings that won't be built by the game normally, you'd either have to tweak a dev plan, or if you are like me and don't want to do that, tweak the spreadsheet that contains the rules. for example there are buildings like reinforced construction, and structural shielding, whos only purpose is to sit there and be a very large collateral damage target. but according to the default game rules, having something be a collateral damage target makes it unattractive to the viceroy,and an extremely large target is similarly extremely undesirable.

stellar converters are a big let down graphicly, even though they are functionally the same as in Moo2(well lack of planet construction hurts of course).

Originally posted by vmxa1


Not to be an ass or anything, Rebellion was one of the worse games. I actually gave it away three times and all gave it back.

I finally tossed in the trash. Very few people cared for it as far as I can tell, don't see how anyone could recommended, sorry.

I have to second this, rebellion suffers from many flaws, only a few of which are addressable. however it does have the death star, but in the rebellion universe every 100 turns a planet gets effectively plastered as it stands(natural disasters ), so I don't see what the big deal with the death star is