Astra Exodus - Another Space 4x by Matrix/Slitherine...

Started by Jarhead0331, July 02, 2019, 12:02:26 PM

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Anguille

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.

al_infierno

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.
A War of a Madman's Making - a text-based war planning and political survival RPG

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Martok

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. 

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-budd-

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.
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hellfish6

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:



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? 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:


Jarhead0331

Grogheads Uber Alles
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hellfish6

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.

Jarhead0331

Grogheads Uber Alles
Semper Grog
"No beast is more alpha than JH." Gusington, 10/23/18


Yskonyn

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.
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W8taminute

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. 
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Pete Dero

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

solops

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.
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