Polaris Sector - another new space 4x

[mikeck]

 It is my favorite as well not even close. I made the mistake of bringing a carrier a long armed only with fighters that were armed with torpedoes.  They were identified by the enemy fighters which were armed with... Something other than torpedoes. Long story short was that about 100 torpedo bombers were torn apart by the enemy fighters. My  frigates and point  defense  made pretty short work of the enemy fighters because they had to get so close to hit my ships, but that's a lot of bombers to lose and that's a lot of production time and resource to replace those.

I find the tactical combat to be not so much a "rock – paper – scissors" contest as it is a combined arms contest. It's not that fighters beat anything in particular, it's that if the enemy has fighters with long enough range weaponry, those fighters can stay out of range of your weaponry and maneuver.  Another example is when I brought for new frigates into battle by themselves. They were armed exclusively with plasma missiles and they hold lot of them. Unfortunately the enemy ships had a lot of short range quick firing lasers which are perfect for point defense. The enemy ships chewed up my missiles as soon as I threw them out. Meanwhile they closed with me and started ripping me apart with lasers. I lost two ships before I could retreat. You cannot put all of your eggs in one basket which I think is the sign of a good tactical battle system.

@jarhead. +1 for Moo3. The ability to name units and organize battalions and divisions was one of the things I like most

[solops]

Try not to build factories and orbital factories on earth-like planets...unavoidable at times. Use laser type energy weapons to kill fighters. Missiles might need buffing. While they are devastating, missile carriers have a hard time living long enough to reach firing range against late game weapons.    I usually have three variations of each hull type: carrier, beam/energy and missile.

[mikeck]

 New review of Polaris up at space sector.

http://www.spacesector.com/blog/2016/04/polaris-sector-review/

I will say that I disagree with the author about exploration. For the same reasons he does not like exploration I do like it. I don't want to find space monsters and mysterious people that have somehow managed to make it into space before I did. I don't want cheesy sci-fi things like  ancient alien ruin s on every single planet that give me some kind of new technology. I like exploring the vastness of space and uncovering empty  worlds that may or may not have anything of value. He calls it boring I call it realistic.

Overall he did not like it very much. Seems everything came back to the lack of space monsters and exploration and trouble with the user interface. A lot of complaining about a frustrating experience because he can't figure out how to do things. I can't say I've had the same problem but to each their own. After reading it I think it comes down to the game is to "realistic" and does not have enough "pew pew", space monsters and quests.

For example: in his "the bad "section he writes "not enough meaningful decisions quote. I disagree. The placement of buildings as in what planet you want to build what on our extremely important choices and will leave you short of resources minerals proper research or factories. You will find yourself unable to build ships or lacking food.  Nothing different than other 4x's but meaningful nonetheless. Also your ship design is an important decision because you're stuck with those ships for a long time. I'm sorry there are no quests or decisions you have to make like whether to execute your fleet captain or some crap

He had a few valid points and to each their own

[Freyland]

Can you guys speak to his comments about the enemy spamming corvettes and fighters, or the lack of utility of missiles as long-range weapons?  I have the game, and was getting pumped to play after reading the last several pages of this thread, but that review is bursting my bubble a bit.

[ghostryder]

Ghostryder...the problem isn't your opinion, I think it's your attitude. We're happy to have you here, but please be respectful and polite. Nobody has called you a liar. Some have disagreed with you, but there is nothing wrong with that.

Please control your temper. Thanks.

I'm not angry-how can anyone derive that idea from my posts? If i was angry I'd be attacking--the last post directed towards me had a "shut up" in it--now that shouldn't angry but hard to tell with the anoynomity of a forum.

As for evidence? I've been out of town and just got back---but i will note in the screenshots since there's none of the opening screen, nor any races shown---which could quite easily be done by selecting a planet---those screenshots my be of 5 different races for all I know--which of course would start in 5 different positions. I'll try it with just one race as i have been on different maps and see what happens. 

But me angry? lol I'm the most non angry guy you'd ever meet  :P

[mikeck]

Freyland: Both true. The AI loves corvettes and fighters. You can't really "spam" anything as the economy won't allow it. I think that view is skewed though. Tech takes a long time and frigate/destroyer/cruiser hulls are pretty far down. I just think at this point in my game, they haven't researched it. But yes, so far it's just corvettes, fighters and bombers (and heavily armed space stations). I do believe i have seen a few frigates but I just can't say 100%

Missiles? Yeah, single warhead missiles are pretty useless when the other ship has laser point defense...as it should be. In space, you wouldn't have a hard time burning a hole through a missile based on distances and such. This game doesn't artificlly "balance" combat for the sake of balance. Some weapons don't work well. That said, I just discovered MIRV tech and THAT WORKS. Some missiles are alive long enough to break up and dispatch their multiple warheads. Overwhelms defense.

I'm a little put off when people complain that a certain does not work well i'm a little put off when people complain that a certain does not work well but they don't explain why.  Missiles early on it don't work long range because point defense.  Want to use missiles? Put them on fighters and wants them from your carrier. Fighters get really close and they swam around which means they hit it from all angles.maybe the author should have tried that before complaining that a weapon doesn't work

Man, I have to stop posting on this thread...I'm becoming ridiculous LOL

[Jarhead0331]

Ghostryder...the problem isn't your opinion, I think it's your attitude. We're happy to have you here, but please be respectful and polite. Nobody has called you a liar. Some have disagreed with you, but there is nothing wrong with that.

Please control your temper. Thanks.

I'm not angry-how can anyone derive that idea from my posts? If i was angry I'd be attacking--the last post directed towards me had a "shut up" in it--now that shouldn't angry but hard to tell with the anoynomity of a forum.

As for evidence? I've been out of town and just got back---but i will note in the screenshots since there's none of the opening screen, nor any races shown---which could quite easily be done by selecting a planet---those screenshots my be of 5 different races for all I know--which of course would start in 5 different positions. I'll try it with just one race as i have been on different maps and see what happens. 

But me angry? lol I'm the most non angry guy you'd ever meet  :P

Well good to hear it. However, please take it to heart that from the perspective of an objective outside observer, that is not how your posts were coming across.

[Jarhead0331]

I'm having trouble figuring out the balance between food consumption, population, mineral extraction and building construction. For instance, on an inhospitable world, how many domes should I build? How many farms should I build for food consumption, etc. Is population transfer from planet to planet automatic in any respect?

[mikeck]

I'm having trouble figuring out the balance between food consumption, population, mineral extraction and building construction. For instance, on an inhospitable world, how many domes should I build? How many farms should I build for food consumption, etc. Is population transfer from planet to planet automatic in any respect?

To transport population from one planet to another you need to build a transport freighter with the transport modules. You take it to one planet load up calling us and then fly to the other planets and drop them off.

Balance is hard. Keep in mind that the platforms on water planets and tones on other planets so only exist to increase your population. Think of them as housing. I would make sure and build mines on every planet so you can get the resources...but Balance is hard. Keep in mind that the platforms on water planets and domes  on other planets only exist to increase your population. Think of them as housing.

I think the best thing to do is to build nothing but research and farms on ocean planets,   and build nothing but factories and orbital platforms and installations on the volcanic frozen and hot worlds that you colonize for minerals.  I think the best bet is to leave the terrestrial planets as balanced so that they can produce a few things but mainly do research and farming.

It is difficult to "balance quote because building a few big ships sucks up so much resources that it's hard to plan for things. I do find that trade contract with other races help alleviate that. By the way about halfway through the game I switched up and made my ocean planets solely research and my terrestrial planets almost solely farms (with 2-3 mines of course)That is worked out fairly well but not sure which is better.

The most important thing to remember though is that you don't get the resources and minerals that a planet has simply by colonizing it like you do with a lot of space 4x games. You have to build the appropriate mine it only requires one to do it so it's worth doing it on every planet I think

[ghostryder]

When you discover a planet the graphs shown pretty much tell what type is best--well they aren't graphs--just filled lines---but you cannot build the max ammount at colonization anyhow---you must have "people" ---- so your either building a couple domes or a couple platforms(Ocean planet) before you can build any research, farms or industry---and at that stag it tells you how many of each you can build.

Per planet percentages really isn't that important--it's the Empire amounts---as everything is shared anyway--and I use the overall storage/consuption lists on the main galaxy screen--as long as those numbers are going up you should be good-

[ghostryder]

Okay did some quick game starts. First galaxy type Elipperal----that's the one that shows () in the upper left on setup. Always human, 9 races---I start in the same upper left---HOWEVER if I adjust star amounts from default value of number of players I start in a different area. Set with 4 players puts me in the middle, 6 lower right etc---I imagine then the map is set up much like a Booleen graph--your moved over to the next slot if it's free---either by adding slots(Stars) or freeing slots by lowering races-

What i would like to be able to adjust is my starting distance from other races/pirates and the percentage of valuable planets.

[mikeck]

 You are correct that everything is shared. However, certain planets allow for more of a particular thing. For example you can't build farms on Rocky volcanic or any other planet besides ocean or Terran. Ocean and Taryn allow for a lot more research locks then other worlds. Ocean allows for more research than any of them. So the planet kind of dictates what type of thing you would put on it.  you might be able to build 4 mines on a specific planet but that might prevent you from building the original 50 research buildings that you could have built without them. Mines might not make so much sense then if there are only a few resources and they're not that plentiful . Also certain buildings exclude other buildings. Build too many factories and you can't build any farms or research. So we really do have to specialized. I don't think building a little bit  of everything on each planet is effective.

[mikeck]

Okay did some quick game starts. First galaxy type Elipperal----that's the one that shows () in the upper left on setup. Always human, 9 races---I start in the same upper left---HOWEVER if I adjust star amounts from default value of number of players I start in a different area. Set with 4 players puts me in the middle, 6 lower right etc---I imagine then the map is set up much like a Booleen graph--your moved over to the next slot if it's free---either by adding slots(Stars) or freeing slots by lowering races-

What i would like to be able to adjust is my starting distance from other races/pirates and the percentage of valuable planets.

Why are you spending so much time trying to disprove what somebody else posted about a game that you don't like.  Do you think they really spent the time to falsify screenshots just to prove its random?  I don't  understand why you are expending so much effort to find reasons not to like a game and to show others why they shouldn't like it either

[Freyland]

Last word syndrome makes it all worth it to some people.

[WYBaugh]

Ghostryder, can you post a  screenshot of your game setup...the screen before the initial positioning?

I started two separate games, took the defaults, started as human and it placed me in two different locations.