Suggestions for a GOOD space strategy game?

[MrFun]

I am currently trying to decide buying either Sins of a Solar Empire and its expansions, or Master of Orion III. I came across a PC game that's still in development called Horizon.

Has anyone played the first two games mentioned? What are people's thoughts on either of them?

[MrFun]

Here's a link to Horizon's website.

[MrFun]

Endless Space looks mouth watering but still in development.

[Proteus_MST]

MoO III is said to have not a learning curve, but a learning cliff ...
I can say that it is true, but I think, most people here on Apolyton are intelligent to get into it
it initially had some problems, especially with regards to PD, but that was fixed (or rather workarounded):

In contrast to the other 2 parts of the series it simulates planetary development on a larger scale (with planets split up into several regions (with larger moons orbiting the planet being separate regions and/or underlying existing regions on the planet) which can be specialised (for example for agriculture or industry). Also starlanes (which already existed in the former parts) play a larger role now, as they are your almost exclusive means of transportation (all systems are connected by a network of them and travel outside of starlanes is so slow, that it becomes infeasible for most uses (might be used for circumventing blockaded systems, or for doing dirty tricks on the AI however [like sneak attacking an AI controlled backwater system]). The AI however exclusively uses starlanes as means of travel ... never had seen it travel outside of them.

Combat is simulated on a larger scale as well. You still design individual ship classes to be built, but these are put into (customisable) fleets, that consist of a core of mission ships, as well as a picket ship ring and a PD ship ring. orders you give and combat that takes place is between these fleets and not between individual ships.

SoaSE is rather lightweight compared to MoO III. It is RTS (in contrast to TBS like MoO III), faster paced and therefore also better for use in multiplayer against friends. It also misses the ability to customise your planets/starships (just generic starship classes that you can build (with each race having its own set of them and its own playstile as well) and isn´t as in depth as MoO III (but, as said, the game definitely can be fun as well, in Multiplayer at least) ... for single player I for my part would prefer MoO III over SotS however.

Another game that seems to be good (at least if you love in depth games that require some intelligence) seems to be Aurora, which can be found here:

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/board,10.0.html

It is for large parts even more in depth than MoO III (but also a little bit harder to get into) and allows you pathes of customization you won´t find elsewhere.
It also has some glitches however (being a VB6/Access - Project that is managed by a single person) and many of the error mesages aren´t very helpful (as he often didn´t implement his own error handling, but lets Access generate the error messages), and has almost no graphics (aside from the system map).
Some people call it the "Dwarf Fortress among X4 games" and they might be right

During installation you also should also ensure that you always keep the library files that are already on your computer, instead of allowing the installer to overwrite them (as your own files are usually newer than those the installer supplies and installing them might cause some problems).

But it definitely has a mouth watering depth and, has (IMHO) the most exciting first contact situations of all 4X games (especially, as, realistically, you initially don´t get to know more about alien ships, than their size on your thermal sensors ... further in depth knowledge has to gathered by using active sensors (which might be considered an agressive act, however) and by disassembling wrecks you might find of a certain alien ship type.


Another game that is developing into a good X4 game is Sword of the Stars 2. While it was widely (and correctly) criticized at release, that it was rather a beta version than a release version, the developers have worked hard after release and it now is almost totally feature complete and has most showstopper bugs fixed.
It needs, however, a good computer to run it, with a DX 11 graphics card and ideally with a good processor (like multicore with 3+ GHz/core) and enough RAM (ideally > 4 GB).
It rewards you with graphics in space battles, that are among the best you can find in this genre (well, if not even the best ). In terms of depth, SotS 2 is comparable to MoO II and MoO I.

[MrFun]

Wow, thank you Proteus!

[aadamjohnsons]

I have played Master of Orion III games and according to me it is better game than Sins of solar empire or any other Space strategy games. So I suggest you to purchase this games instead of Sins of solar empire.

[Timu_Matt]

I have played Master of Orion III games and according to me it is better game than Sins of solar empire or any other Space strategy games. So I suggest you to purchase this games instead of Sins of solar empire.

A good browser based game to check out is Starpires. It's a turn based, MMO, space strategy game which a lot of people who really enjoyed Master of Orion really like.

[vmxa1]

You may want to mention it is a facebook app. The site does not offer any sort of method to check it out. The tutorial I found was in 360, so I could not really even view it.

[Dinner]

Alpha Centauri

[vmxa1]

SMAC was a good game, but to me it is not a space game. It is civ in another world. Space games must have space ships.

[Docfeelgood]

Here's a link to Horizon's website.

Damn, almost a year later and still in production

[vmxa1]

The good news is they claim to have a publisher now. The bad news is I have not seen them show up on sites like Spacesector. So no idea what is going on. Looking via Google I see it was mentioned on Spacesector, BACK in 2010.

[conmcb25]

SWG JTL

[WhydmerG]

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to put my 2 cents in for Distant Worlds. It is a Real Time Pausible game from Matrix Games. Quite a good bit of strategy and variablity, with some decent modability. The main problem is that it is an expensive game to get into. Matrix is not big on offering sales. The base game is weak and so the first expansion game "Return of the Shakturi" is almost necessary to really get the flavor of the game. Combined they are $50. Each of the next 2 expansions are another $20 each if you get them on sale. But you now get to play as a space based pirate empire attempting to bring down traditional system based empires. There is also no multi-player.

[Spaced Cowboy]

too expensive for my blood...and test the forum.