Ok - ive a bit more time on my hands and owe it to Brant and Boggit to see how we get on with Polaris Sector. No stories, just playthrough with mistakes and warts and all
First off, the compulsory galaxy choice - im leaving everything on default, so we have an eliptical galaxy
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Second - race choice - its not so much the typical spiders, lizards, birds, bear, cats choices that make me have a sad face its just that the stories and choices seem so uninspired - theres nothing here that makes me think, 'oh man, they look awesome'. In the end we go for the cats, or the Sharatar - mainly because cats are awesome and their skill set has the least amount of negatives so should be fairly balanced. That, and they remind of Mirth - a bisexual, upright walking mammal
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This then is the galaxy screen, home is in the red box, im going to assume thats some kind of 'culture' border round the planet. This shot is after maybe 30 mins play brought to you by a series of mistakes. To the south is kappa Virgo - the weird purple box is some kind of anomoly i cant investigate without a cargo carrying facility on the ship. Oddly the 'scout' im using says it has 400 cargo capacity but awestruck with my ship designing skills i go back home and build a new cargo ship - the 'Stobart'. It has 200 cargo capacity. 'shrug', but it definitely has the required cargo carrying capsule, and while the first ship carrys on scouting we build the Stobart. When the ship is ready we set off with glee - except i didnt put enough fuel cells on board and we cant actually leave orbit from the home planet! Back to the drawing board to quadruple the range, the Stobart 2 is in the workshop and thats when i saved............... more later
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:o :o
:2funny: :2funny: :2funny: :2funny:
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I have no opinion about the game at all; it's just that, the race artist must have read the flavor text and then thought really loud, "TO THE HELL WITH CATS!" And then that thought flew forth as art.
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That's clearly Grumpy Cat, only so, so much worse.
Cats are, admittedly, awesome. Sometimes. Depending on the cat, even all the time.
But someone worked hard to anti-awesome that cat.
After maybe another hour weve managed to investigate most of what you see here on the screenshot. Found two more 'earth like planets' - 'the jewels of the universe' for colonisation. To the south east is the Vindemiatrix system and east is the Ankaa system. Yes i changed the homeplanet to Cat-ooine, but the game changed the planet in Vindemiatrix to Purrim.
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And then way out east I find the first NPC
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Its these guys (chortle) - I try a number of diplomatic options and finally come out with open borders for non combat ships, and a research bonus for the pair of us. I was sorely tempted to head back home and build a mighty fleet but i want to keep someone as a friend. Although the UI suggests earth like planets are awesome for farming and industrialisation ive gone with a 'balanced' auto-builder to get a decent grasp of all things until i know how to specialise - future plans then are to get 3 or 4 more earth like planets and maybe find an NPC to stomp
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Ok, i have a select band of games on my HDD that take up most of my gaming time but ive found today ive spent a lot of time thinking about strategies, builds and next steps in this game
Junior goes to bed at 2030 and its all ive played for the last 2 nights - and its getting deeper - a really, really enjoyable game, as someone said somewhere the closest thing to Imperium Galactica II ive played and i loved that.
So........... after probably 6 more hours we're here. I have colonised 5 Earth like planets, the others are oceanic and desert planets that have been colonised to allow freer movement of the fleets and to be border planets to provide fuel for the scouts as they expand outwards. Every yellow pyramid is the extent of my exploration - i cant get further than this without colonising some more 'outposts'. Ive got a decent handle on the Earth like planet buildings and theyre maxed out - each one has an orbital space station so we can construct 5 ships at a time. We had a bit of a hiccup for 25 years when a pirate fleet parked on a space lane blocking my 5 seperate ships from forming a fleet big enough to take them on - he moved - we merged - he got zapped. This shot is taken just after the destruction of another pirate fleet that cost me 4 corvettes that fell to 40 fighters, once the fighters were killed the fleet fell easy. I only had one carrier with 6 interceptors, and whilst they were vastly superior to the pirate fighters they were easily overwhelmed. Also, the jokers next door declared war, killed a scout and crossed the border where we meet. They then went back so weve got carte blanche to go stomp them to bits.
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I have to be honest and say i think the games great - nothing stunning, nothing amazing, its just doing its job perfectly. Every enhancement is met with 'OMG OMG mega lazers!! im going to lay waste to the....... crap, i need bigger pylons, where do i research bigger pylons, ahhhh.......'
Its a huge learning experience, not hard, just a lot to learn, im sure when we attack the idiots ill get planetary attacks wrong, and then well go home and get it right
Any thoughts on whether the PvE component (i.e., pirates) is much of a challenge, or are they just a nuisance factor? I really enjoy 4x games like Distant Worlds or that crazy Civ 4 dark fantasy mod (whose name I forget) where you spend the first quarter of the game just trying to survive "non-player" enemies...
I find that the AI just usually isn't smart enough to make PvP battles against AI interesting more than a time or two. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on AI behavior. So far, it seems like the Urgans were kinda dumb in declaring war and then not doing much.
Whether by design or conicidence what the pirates have done so far is very clever - sat on space lanes preventing me from colonising or scouting any further unless i come in force. What they have destroyed you could consider nuisance attacks but its also in keeping with what i would have done - theyve picked off unescorted ships and destroyed unprotected oribital sub systems, a major pain in the arse, whether one sees that as uncoordinated random attacks or clever is in the eye of the beholder - i find it frikking annoying but in a 'bravo AI, bravo' kind of way
The Urgans kind of did the same thing - a long time ago they came to me for 10% of my mineral deposits and this was clearly some kind of algorithm - Urgen Fleet => Player fleet then demand minerals and i caved as i didnt have any offensive capabilities - i see it that he saw the opportunity to kill a scout and took it - what 4x AI knows what the player will do, personally ill wipe them off the map given time
Urgans look like... sex organs.
Interesting stuff, thanks for the answer!
ok, turn wont load on PC for some reason - just hangs the game - starting again ::)
Did you upgrade to the beta patch? Maybe it's not backward compatible.....?