I'm a sucker for these games, but this one looks like it might be a little too scripted and linear for me. Also looks a lot like Stars in Shadow, which never really griped me...the space battles look pretty cool with good pacing for RTS, and the modding could be interesting too if there is a strong and talented community contributing to it.
http://www.slitherine.com/news/2880/Conquer.the.galaxy!.Astra.Exodus.has.been.announced! (http://www.slitherine.com/news/2880/Conquer.the.galaxy!.Astra.Exodus.has.been.announced!)
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Astra Exodus is the new space grand strategy game with all elements you eXpect from a serious 4X. Explore the galaxy, found new colonies and try to forge strong alliances with alien races. Fight off pirates and slavers and fight real-time battles to repel invaders and conquer new worlds when all your diplomatic skills have failed.
The single-player narrative Campaign will send you up and down the four corners of the galaxy following the mysterious Legacy of the Exodus, with a series of linked missions. You can also choose the free sandbox mode and go full-alien, taking the lead of one of the other seven factions, from the winged Okli to red skinned reptiles of the Veloran Horde, each with unique traits and abilities, for endless 4x action.
A game developed from the ground up to modded. Players will be able to add or modify any faction, starship, troop, technology and everything else and boldly go where no one has been before.
Announce Distant Worlds 2 you cowards!
Astra Exodus looks pretty good. I'll keep my eye out for this. Need to know more about the game before making the 'must buy on day one' statement.
Are the real-time battle elements pause-able? If not, I'll pass.
https://www.matrixgames.com/news/astra-exodus-to-be-released-on-january-23
Video was painful to watch. He didn't seem to know how to play everything. Lots of inane comments. 2 hours! From my 10 minute skip thru it looks like it's just MOO2 with real time battles. No feedback on combat screen. There should at least be a health bar somewhere.
Stars in Shadow, anyone?
Stars in Shadow is a game I return to often.
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on December 24, 2019, 05:18:45 PM
Stars in Shadow, anyone?
Another underrated gem (one I admittedly don't play often enough).
Stars in the Shadow or Genesis ? Say there is only cash for one.
Quote from: Yskonyn on December 25, 2019, 01:24:57 PM
Stars in the Shadow or Genesis ? Say there is only cash for one.
IMHO, and I have played both (still playing Genesis), I'd go with Genesis. I didn't like Stars in Shadows nearly as much as Genesis.
Quote from: Yskonyn on December 25, 2019, 01:24:57 PM
Stars in the Shadow or Genesis ? Say there is only cash for one.
If you're looking for a quicker, "lighter" 4x game, go with SiS.
If you want a fuller, more in-depth space 4x experience, you want ISG.
This ticks two big boxes for me:
1. Turn-based space 4X
2. Released by Matrix/Slitherine
I'm sure I'll pick it up as soon as it releases, even if it ends up not being great.
I have Interstellar Space: Genesis but haven't gotten around to trying it out yet. Maybe I should pick up SiS before the sale ends.
I have press code for this and there is no embargo on videos or reviews, so here are my immediate initial impressions. You asked for it in the Friday thread.
Importantly, I have not yet tinkered with diplomacy, ship design, space combat or ground combat. I've only played a few hundred turns involving the strategic layer. This is not a full a blown review, just very early impressions.
First, I have two rigs that I could not get it to run properly on. The screen was blurred and the text on the UI was mostly illegible. I tried everything and just couldn't get either system to run this correctly. Eventually, I relented and installed it on my main simming rig, which for some reason was able to run it properly. Hard to believe this game requires a 2080ti. LoL
In any event, I do not care for the look of the game, but I knew that going into it. The bright colors, the cartoon graphics, not my thing at all. It looks so much like stars in shadow. Hard to believe the developers are not the same or related. I turned the other cheek though since this is space 4x, after all.
Exploration, colony management, research, economic management. Really nothing new jumps out at me yet. Very basic. Very simple. Very familiar. We've seen these 4x tropes over and over and over again. These concepts have all been done before, and been done better. There is really nothing notable for me to comment on yet on these aspects of the game.
I'm running the human campaign that begins with a tutorial. The first mission is to expand and destroy a pirate base. They don't tell you where the pirates are and they seem to be inhabiting two systems very close to your homeworld. So far, I've lost two invaluable colonizers by unexpectedly running into them. Not a fun way to start a tutorial.
That's when I got bored and decided to go play Mechwarrior. I'll give it another shot and see if my impressions change, but right now, I have very little motivation to play this, other than I do want to see space battles. They look kind of cool in real time. Ground combat looks an absolute bore though. Again, simple in the extreme. Very small maps. Uh, oh well...
Thanks JH....pretty much what i was afraid of. Going to wait for a while to see if it's getting better. We've got plenty of good 4x to play with already.
I will most likely pick this up on release, sink ~5-10 hours into it, and never touch it again. That tends to be what I do with any new space 4x.
I'm afraid I largely concur with Jarhead's early impressions of the game. I was excited by Astra Exodus at first, but less so the more that I read about it, and (especially) once I got into the beta; I just had a very difficult seeing what made this stand out from other space-strategy titles. The only notable feature is the turn-based campaign combined with real-time combat, but I'm not sure that's enough make it worthwhile to dive into.
I feel bad saying that, as the developer obviously has a genuine love for 4x games. In all honesty, though, I found playing the beta to be both frustrating and boring: frustrating because of some of the controls and lack of useful tooltips/hints, and boring because I haven't seen anything in in AE so far that other 4x titles haven't done better. I'm sure things have changed somewhat in the game's release version, but not the fundamental design (which I think is the main problem).
If you're looking for a classic/"old-school" space 4x game done right, then I recommend you go play Interstellar Space: Genesis. I'm pretty sure Astra Exodus just ain't gonna cut it.
Thanks for the impressions guys, what you say is kinda like it appears. I wish the Developers luck. It's a little strange, Polaris Sector was received pretty well initially and seems to have died on the vine, must not have sold enough to throw some weight behind it.
I decided several years ago that unless a new space 4X game was unusually interesting in some way, shape or form, that I will never buy one again. I'm tired of playing what ultimately are all the exact same games against the exact same races (usually one dinosaur/reptile, one avian, an insectoid, a 'mineral', a bull/bear race, and several similar to humans but empathic/evil twins/space elves) with the exact same starting conditions with copy-paste research trees. Games that for some reason spend a lot of time and energy on tactical space battles that ultimately just become skippable mini-movies (and then get the physics all wrong). Also, you always start these games with FTL, one or two scouts and a colony ship. Like magic.
I got into Stellaris for a time, based purely on Paradox's reputation. It was okay, but ultimately it was just a Paradox-quality 4X without much interesting meat on the bones. Distant Worlds I actually enjoyed, if only because it was the first (?) game to 'privatize' resource extraction. I really enjoyed that game, and am looking forward to a sequel.
What I'd really love to see from a 4X game is it beginning Humans and with the nations we are intimately familiar with. I've given this some serious thought over the years because I've played so many bad or uninteresting, formulaic space 4Xs. So, to put the proverbial money where my mouth is, and even though nobody asked, here's my rough outline for my ideal Space 4X:
Phase One: Reaching (2020 to ~2100)
In this phase, the player is the director of space policy for a current Earth faction - the USA, Russia, China, France/EU, India, Japan, etc. Basically any nation with a space program today. The playable map is Earth orbit, Luna and Mars.
I imagine it playing our kind of like Rule The Waves, where events happen and tensions rise and you have a limited, unreliable budget to do things with. The goal is survival and/or prestige (which provides additional resources). Do you budget for hunter-killer ASATs to destroy Chinese spy satellites or a probe to Venus? A lunar colony or a space station to support your early warning/first strike network? How much privatisation do you allow, knowing that in greatly improves your technology but you have little control and it may divert resources and prestige away from you? What about asteroid mining or rogue asteroid defense? You're balancing all of this while the computer/other players are doing the same with their countries.
The phase ends when either your country is destroyed or there are at least three permanent colonies on the Moon or Mars. Countries with the most prestige advance to the next phase with additional resources.
Phase Two: Exodus (~2100-~2300)
The game moves onto this phase. Now you're concerned with the entire solar system. Earth's factions begin to consolidate - factions might now the the EU or the Chinese East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere or the North American Union. You play one of these factions - not just their director of space policy, but the entire state, and you determine government types, diplomacy, military policy, lead the wars, etc. like a regular 4X. You'll also start having to take into consideration things like government types (theocracies might offer excellent control, but are fragile - and what happens if you discover aliens while democracies might offer less control, but are sometimes more resilient and adaptable to change, etc.) and education and maybe things like ethnicity or changing popular opinions.
Much of what happens in this phase is a natural extension of the first phase - you start colonizing the outer reaches of our solar system. Learn how to produce antimatter on an industrial scale, colonize, explore and develop. What is your colonial policy? How much do you militarize space? Should you prepare for aliens? What happens if an asteroid hits Earth - how does it change things if you did or did not build an asteroid defense? Do you build shuttles or railguns to transport resources to Earth? What and where do you prioritize orbital factories? How do you deal with the Martians who are demanding independence? Do you send a ship to find a lost independent religious colony on Titan, and what do you discover there? Build the first space warships that might look something like this, rather than Star Trek:
(https://i.imgur.com/uDbtFmc.png)
The phase has an end game of discovering a way out of FTL. Ideally, there could be several ways, such as you find the remnants of an ancient alien civilization on Mars or Europa (and dealing with the consequences of this would be interesting - keep it secret from everyone, share it with other countries, what happens when your citizens and religious groups find out - will the knowledge of aliens destroy the fabric of your country or have you prepared them sufficiently for the possibility?) or you find anomalies somewhere that lead you to the knowledge of how to create wormholes or fold space, or your scientists just finally create a working Alcubierre FTL Drive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive)? Any one of these (or multiple versions?) might be valid.
The next phase is reached when the first ship departs for another solar system. Or the Vulcans arrive and introduce you to the rest of the galaxy.
Phase Three: The Universe (~2300-?)
This is the open-ended phase. You have the entire universe. Your playable factions continue to be Earth nation-state-federations, but soon independent human planets join you (or you can jump and take over your rebellious colony and start anew). Mars might compete with the African Union along one space route, or the Evangelical American Mandate's three worlds might fight a crusade against the apostate world of Einstein. Do you allow the UN to colonize worlds? Do you have a voluntary, commercial or forced migration policy? Do you allow corporations to become sovereign? Do you fight over a garden world?
Technology continues to develop so new options become available. Maybe you can transport a billion embryos to a planet with everything they need to know embedded in a tiny chip in their brain instead of slow trickles of living colonists with their own experiences and biases.
Also, maybe now you finally encounter aliens. Or what if you don't? What happens if their technology is so far beyond you - do you hope they don't notice you, or do you try to make contact and hope you benefit? All kinds of interesting concepts to explore here. Your propulsion technologies might determine how you explore and expand too - what if you can only fold space 20 light years at a time at your current level of tech development?
Also, your ships can start looking like this:
(https://i.imgur.com/KkAPSiC.png)
You haven't played, Aurora, have you?
I have, actually, but I was never able to get very far because the game would fall apart/crash/etc. I had one game where every system I visited was another solar system, with Earth, Mars, Jupiter, etc. I never knew if that was a bug or not.
I liked the detail a lot, and I understand there's a new version in the works.
^Yes, C#...should be out by March.
Or, we could start a Grogheads StarFire forum game.
The discussion about the ideal game keeps coming up. StarFire is the game Aurora was based on and as a pen and paper game would fit forum play quite well.
In theory it ticks all the marks we've discussed we'd want in a game.
Now live : https://www.twitch.tv/slitherinegroup
Previous streams : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQrYLOdjwRhQiLZM3j4mqm4zpvwE0wVxc
Quote from: -budd- on January 26, 2020, 05:42:54 AM
Thanks for the impressions guys, what you say is kinda like it appears. I wish the Developers luck. It's a little strange, Polaris Sector was received pretty well initially and seems to have died on the vine, must not have sold enough to throw some weight behind it.
Echoing -budd- here on the thank you for sharing your thoughts on the game with us.
Polaris Sector is a great game and it is a shame it died on the vine. As for Astra Exodus I still intend to keep my eyes on this but I don't feel so giddy anymore about it. That could change if I see some more compelling gameplay vids than what I've seen so far.
https://www.matrixgames.com/game/astra-exodus
https://www.matrixgames.com/news/Astra%20Exodus%20-%20v1.01.07%20Update%20-%20New%20playable%20factions
Update 1.01.07 releases today, and with it five new playable factions have been added to Skirmish mode.
This latest update is the culmination of Atomic Kaiser's relentless work on expanding and improving Astra Exodus. You can find the full changelog below.
On sale : 50% off for 7 days
Polaris Sector was and still is one of the best space empire games out there. It really begs for further development. I'll watch this one.