Picked this up on its out-of-early-access sale today. $11 and change.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/278910/?snr=1_7_15__13
Build up your base; shoot at the bases of other players; while those bases are orbiting around a common star.
Because here "base" == planet.
So it's a lot like the
Take Command / Scourge of War AAR I'm working up, except where it's different. :)
Looks pretty interesting...have you tried it yet?
Yes, but my impressions are muffled slightly by trying it on a touchpad first.
My impressions so far in a rough topical order.
0.) Don't play this on a touchpad. Or if you do, use a mouse.
1.) This game would be highly amusing in a Grognard multiplayer match. It's a turn-based game, which can fit up to eight players. (Possibly more?)
2.) The darkness of space around the planets can get a bit problematic. Most so when trying to plot where to place facilities on the dark side of a planet -- it isn't impossible, the game will subtly cue whether the facility is on usable terrain or not, but they should add a local glow to the building ghost so as to show terrain, really.
3.) The basic concept is simple: plot ballistic shots at your enemies until you destroy them sufficiently enough to win. Just like any artillery duel game. It's the details that make this epic. But not so epic as to be unmanageable. There are clear steps to take each turn, and many subtle hidden details which can be easily missed (but the game will remind you about the most important ones, so missing them is a real oversight), which give the game some flexibility.
More impressions to come soon as I write them up.
All right, more specific impressions. Not in a numerical rough order.
Each player (human and/or AI, up to eight if not more) is given a planet with a variable land/sea mass, all orbiting the same star. Planets, per optional setup, can orbit concurrently or retrograde; and can be different sizes and terrain compositions. A smaller planet is a harder target to hit (especially early in the game), but also doesn't offer as much room to space out one's sites for protection against an area attack, and may tend to be bare rocks so offering fewer construction options.
Planets orbit faster in proportionate proximity to the star, so even if orbits are concurrent eventually planets will pass each other -- there are pros and cons either way there, obviously. The star need not be yellow like ours (in my test game the star was blue). The game will fill out the solar system with other uninhabited planets. All solar system objects (except for a few small exotic weapons) can intercept shot weapons by accident (or on purpose) and will affect trajectories by gravity, some objects moreso than others depending on size and constituency. Once all players have plotted their moves for the turn, the moves are resolved simultaneously, with any shots being immediately fired for that turn -- but the orbits continue during the turn phase!
The planets are rotating, too, in a day-night cycle as they orbit, and so your weapons might easily be pointing out of the solar system or otherwise away from your intended target any turn. That doesn't mean you can't still shoot, you just have to get creative about it. ;)
The game will show you an expected trace for your shot when you drag the mouse around the map after selecting a weapon; but this naturally assumes all objects remain stationary which (aside from the star) they won't. I was very amused to find myself trying to plot intricate loops for my mass driver's shot, while also trying to anticipate where the enemy planet would be, and ALSO how various other planets in the way would affect the outcome AS THEY TRAVELED.
This is where a lot of the multiplayer glee comes, I expect, from unintended consequences of carefully planned shots in a game where alliances are tenuous at best. :D
Each turn there are four basic actions to take.
1.) Get an overview of where all the planets currently are; click on any enemy planet to visually check damage or for newly revealed information. This is the best view for watching shots between turns (though zooming on a planet is best for seeing impacts as they happen). However at the moment it is impossible to switch views as turns are being processed, so I have to remind myself to go back to this view before ending my turn. Also the UI can be a bit fiddly here, and in the shot-targeting view (or not fiddly enough there, or too differently fiddly). This is my main complaint about the game so far. That and the sound design is surprisingly pauce for a game about nuking the hell out of planetary enemies with superweapons.
2.) Build facilities. Like the Total Annihilation games (including Planetary Annihilation which probably inspired this game a little), there are two main resources (plus population which mainly serves as a tech resource but sometimes in subtle ways.) Those are energy and material. Energy and material are generated different (mostly obvious) ways, by facilities and by facility improvements. The main difference, aside from different actions costing different proportions of energy and material according to their character, is that you cannot stockpile energy from one turn to the next, whereas you can stockpile material if you want.
(Early in the game each player will in effect have 'more' energy than material on a regular basis, but this is a bit of a conceptual illusion.)
Facilities are usually built on the surface of one's own planet, though some can be (only) built in orbit. (And a few are built offplanet but without effective physical presence in-game.) This isn't a game about colonizing, though: it's only about expanding on one's own planet while nuking the hell out of everyone else until they die or surrender. Exploration is limited to figuring out what's on the other players' planets, and where.
Almost every facility has a physical location in the game, and can be shot by enemies -- on purpose or otherwise! So that adds another wrinkle to aiming one's shots: the planets aren't only orbiting relative to one another, the surfaces are rotating by some degree each turn.
I haven't figured out how to build cities, or even if it's possible, but they're the 'kings' of this chess match: lose your last city (with the number per planet pre-set as options before game start) and you're out of the game. Cities, like (almost?) any other facility, can be upgraded, and moreso with more population -- other facilities can only be upgraded with two options. They also (if chosen as an option pregame) can generate power like a power plant.
Every facility eats a certain amount of power each turn in order to operate; without that power, they don't operate that turn. (Some may also require materials per turn.) So it's important to create and place more power facilities, which can be upgraded with various techs. Facilities (other than power stations themselves, though they will usually have terrain restrictions) can only be placed within a certain radius of a power facility. That includes mineral producing facilities, and on-planet weapons. There are also intelligence facilities and self-defense facilities of various sorts.
No facility (apparently?) takes more than one turn to build, which is nice. :)
Facilities, including cities, can be assigned their own subactions each turn, which cost money and/or power, and which may take multiple turns to complete (and perhaps to recharge). Depending on the action, completion may produce a permanent result; if so I think this always means a consequential loss of the facility to take more actions with that particular 'slot' (the action is always being taken afterward).
If facilities survive a hit, they can be repaired.
There's a lot to building. :)
3.) Assign any weapons to shoot this turn and plot their shots. The three basic weapons are mass drivers (which are kinetic weapons); missiles (which are guided weapons); and lasers (which are line of sight instant weapons).
Other things being equal, missiles and lasers do a bit more damage than kinetics, and are more accurate, but their area of effect is more narrow. Mass drivers (which despite their name only require energy to shoot, by the way, not material) are far more inaccurate, and do a bit less damage, but spread that damage out a lot farther. Mass drivers are available on turn one, but still have to be built. So far as I know, ammunition does not have to be specially built for any weapon. You can build as many weapons as you can afford to build; and shoot as many weapons per turn as you can afford to shoot per turn (including in power maintenance costs). Weapons like other facilities can be upgraded (twice per weapon) or perhaps perform other actions than shooting.
I think defensive weapons will shoot automatically when their protocols are triggered. (There are also passive defenses like targeting jammers, and shelters for civilians.)
4.) Research tech. Each city provides so many people per turn to research tech, which increases with the population each turn. (There are techs to increase population faster of course.) Techs are rated in the amount of population needed to complete them, so if you only had 100 population you could start a 1000 population tech and it would take ten turns; or only one turn if you had 1000 population (not doing anything else of course).
There are only a few dozen techs, reachable by tech trees, and I think everyone has the same tech options, but this is meant to be a fairly short game. Anyway, (almost?) every tech grants two benefits, not only one, which might be a new facility type to be built, or a general buff of some kind, or an action a facility type could take (whether repeatable or as a permanent upgrade).
Then the turn ends and the planets orbit and revolve, and any assigned weapons instantly shoot, and any ballistic or missile shots trace around the solar system as the planet movement continues for the turn; and then impact (or successful defense) results are reckoned up and the game stops for the next turn.
So even if players start with many cities on their planets, it doesn't take long to process a turn; though as noted above, it can be easy to forget there are optional actions facilities can take each turn. Also, it's VERY easy to quickly accrue more potential actions than you have resources for acting on each turn, which can lead to wonderfully hard choices.