Picked up this title during the STEAM Summer Sales and I'm so glad I did. This game is incredibly fun! I'm not a fan at all of RTS games but the pacing in StarDrive is slow enough not to become a clickfest. I also like the fact that you can pause the game and issue orders as well as increase or decrease the speed of the passage of time.
I'm amazed at how well, not perfect but pretty good mind you, the management screens are for your empire. It is not necessary to locate planets or ships on the main map in order to issue orders to them. There is more than one way to navigate around the game.
I think the tech research map is well laid out and fairly logical to follow. I'm still having trouble coming up with efficient ship designs but am having a lot of fun designing said inefficient ships. ;)
Exploring and colonizing is a fun aspect of the early game but I'm really starting to hate those Owl people and the Computer people. They wipe the decks of their ships with my backside very violently. I gotta figure out how to make them either fear or respect me enough in the early game as to not declare war on me.
And I was surprised that our fellow Grog Martok is in this game. He plays a pirate who tries to extort 250 credits out of you during one of the random events in-game.
It got a good review in PC Gamer mag.
Preaching to the choir here bud. I was on the forum several months ago advocating for this game. it's not the perfect 4x that's for sure, but it's pretty fun and seem to run pretty well and I have a good time with it. I really like the ship design feature and I like being able to choose which buildings i put on which individual planet based on the amount of resources The planet has.
Glad to hear you're enjoying it, W8aminute. I also picked it up during the Steam sale. I've fiddled with it a bit but haven't really taken the deep dive yet. I love the way the game looks -- it's gorgeous. And I can begin to understand the comparisons to it as a 'simplified' Distant Worlds.
Post more impressions -- you will inspire me to actually play this game I bought!
Re: Owl people etc. -- this is so a pet peeve of mine about 4x games -- the lack of imagination when it comes to dreaming up alien species. The "Take Earth Animal and Turn it into Alien Species" always bugs me as laziness on the game dev's part. The Insect Aliens. The Reptile Aliens. The Avian Aliens. It just bores me, although I can look beyond it to enjoy the game. To my mind, the worst example is the "T-Rex" aliens of Distant Worlds. How the hell do they build anything, much less starships, with those stubby arms??
(There are some imaginative exceptions, of course -- Endless Space has some interesting aliens, like the "Horatio" species, and the Loa in Sword of the Stars II seem refreshingly original.)
Quote from: mikeck on July 24, 2013, 11:11:34 AM
Preaching to the choir here bud. I was on the forum several months ago advocating for this game. it's not the perfect 4x that's for sure, but it's pretty fun and seem to run pretty well and I have a good time with it. I really like the ship design feature and I like being able to choose which buildings i put on which individual planet based on the amount of resources The planet has.
I saw that thread in which you praised the game. That was one of the reasons why I decided to take the plunge, based on a fellow Grogheads recommendation. I'm so glad I did.
Ship design is a lot of fun and I agree with you about placing buildings in precise locations on the planet ground grid.
Quote from: sandman2575 on July 24, 2013, 11:52:14 AM
Glad to hear you're enjoying it, W8aminute. I also picked it up during the Steam sale. I've fiddled with it a bit but haven't really taken the deep dive yet. I love the way the game looks -- it's gorgeous. And I can begin to understand the comparisons to it as a 'simplified' Distant Worlds.
Post more impressions -- you will inspire me to actually play this game I bought!
Re: Owl people etc. -- this is so a pet peeve of mine about 4x games -- the lack of imagination when it comes to dreaming up alien species. The "Take Earth Animal and Turn it into Alien Species" always bugs me as laziness on the game dev's part. The Insect Aliens. The Reptile Aliens. The Avian Aliens. It just bores me, although I can look beyond it to enjoy the game. To my mind, the worst example is the "T-Rex" aliens of Distant Worlds. How the hell do they build anything, much less starships, with those stubby arms??
(There are some imaginative exceptions, of course -- Endless Space has some interesting aliens, like the "Horatio" species, and the Loa in Sword of the Stars II seem refreshingly original.)
You've really got to dive right in sandman! Once you learn how easy it is to navigate around the galaxy and the various screens this game becomes a joy to play. It runs smooth and the action items that the player must process are captivating. I started this thread with the intent of posting some more feedback as well as some screenies from my second attempt at trying to stay alive in this game. The key to this game is to think on a high level and trust the fine details to your ship commanders. I have not used planetary governors yet primarily due to my small amount of colonies to manage. You can decide for yourself how much detail you want to fiddle with or how little. Starting out though I highly recommend playing the game from a 50000 ft high altitude and gradually work your way down to the lower level zoomed in view of empire management.
I agree with you too on that alien species issue. It is a cheap and cheesy way around alien race creation to borrow from life here on our planet and alien it up a bit to make a race. Endless Space has some great alien nations in it indeed! That game is starting to take my infinite spare time away from me as well.
Nooooooo! I was so close to picking this up yesterday (it's on sale at Gamersgate) but I went for Dark Souls instead. Now I'm all sad. :(
Don't fret Huw. Dark Souls is a great game. I know because I have it for XBOX and love it.
Put StarDrive on your wishlist though and wait for another sale. ;)
Quote from: W8taminute on July 24, 2013, 12:30:38 PM
The key to this game is to think on a high level and trust the fine details to your ship commanders. I have not used planetary governors yet primarily due to my small amount of colonies to manage. You can decide for yourself how much detail you want to fiddle with or how little. Starting out though I highly recommend playing the game from a 50000 ft high altitude and gradually work your way down to the lower level zoomed in view of empire management.
Sounds like good advice -- and music to my ears, since anything to avoid micromanaging is a plus in my book.
The race of Samurai Bear aliens makes me roll my eyes in exasperation every time I see them, but I can forgive such stuff provided the game is good, which it sounds like it is.
It's good if you accept it for what it is. A light Real time space 4x. By "light" I mean compared to Moo, space empires or DW. I think it's depth compares favorably to SoTS2 and Endless space. Others may disagree. I do hate the Aliens...space bears, owls and bugs. WTF?
Quote from: W8taminute on July 24, 2013, 12:42:32 PM
Don't fret Huw. Dark Souls is a great game. I know because I have it for XBOX and love it.
Put StarDrive on your wishlist though and wait for another sale. ;)
Good advice, thanks mate! Yeah I bought the sexybox version of Dark Souls too. I hope it arrives by the weekend! I've wanted it ever since it came out.
How is multiplayer on Stardrive?
I don't think there is a multiplayer.
Quote from: mikeck on July 24, 2013, 05:11:23 PM
I don't think there is a multiplayer.
Thanks. I just found a review that confirmed no multiplayer. I think that I will hold off purchasing at least for now.
The 'Samurai Bears' are pretty cheesy, but the other stuff doesn't bother me.
Seriously.. I've heard people complain about the alien races in pretty much every 4X game out there. Most of them aren't as bad as they're made to be. Except friggin' space samurai bears, of course.
I had to give it a plus in the alien race department for including a Cthulhu-esque race. So maybe the tradeoff was worth it. 8) It seems like most of them had some kind of inspiration, even if they were inspired by previous 4X games or old literature.
The biggest problem with StarDrive is it's no-frills UI in some places. I recall getting a bit frustrated with the way a couple screen transitions worked. There is also some times I'm trying to give some order and expect there to be a button for it on that screen.. and there isn't. Pretty sparse GUI in places. Endless Space it isn't, regarding UI. Still fun, though, and the ship customization is pretty cool.
Agreed on UI. Took me 4 games before I figured out that you can set fleet formations and behaviors for individual ships
Well, I bought it during the Steam sale, sounds like I need to fire it up!
To date, only Birth of the Federation has had good alien races.
Gah. I really do need to get back into this game. With all the various patches/updates that have been released so far, it looks like it's much improved over the release version (which, while not bad, it obviously needed more love).
Quote from: W8taminute on July 24, 2013, 10:17:46 AM
And I was surprised that our fellow Grog Martok is in this game. He plays a pirate who tries to extort 250 credits out of you during one of the random events in-game.
Wait, what??
Heh, haven't run into that one yet. :D
Quote from: bbmike on July 24, 2013, 06:55:26 PM
To date, only Birth of the Federation has had good alien races.
Wasn't there some freeware re-release of it? Or was that just a mod?
I tried playing that again, within the last few years, but the damnable memory leaks just buggged the piss out of me. I always got sick of having to restart all the time whenever the game started slowing down and responsive got sluggish. Didn't seem to take very long each time I started playing, either.. just a couple minutes. >:( Ragequit!
I think it was more pronounced with newer hardware and OSes than the older stuff, too. It worked better on Win98 long ago in the far far away. If some mod or rebuilt version of BotF has pretty much eliminated this issue, then it's on!
I actually had a couple little 4-player LAN games of BotF back in '99. They were a lot of fun. The long string of nasty obscenities one of my buddies flung at me, after I annihilated his whole Ferengi war fleet, still makes me smile. ;D One of those LAN games froze up near the end, however. The game was notoriously buggy in multiplayer, IIRC. I really want to play this again if it works better than last time I tried.
I know its a cliche question, but hows the AI? As Distant Worlds has shown you really need a robust AI to make these massive 4x game enjoyable when playing SP.
Quote from: sandman2575 on July 24, 2013, 11:52:14 AM
Re: Owl people etc. -- this is so a pet peeve of mine about 4x games -- the lack of imagination when it comes to dreaming up alien species. The "Take Earth Animal and Turn it into Alien Species" always bugs me as laziness on the game dev's part. The Insect Aliens. The Reptile Aliens. The Avian Aliens. It just bores me, although I can look beyond it to enjoy the game. To my mind, the worst example is the "T-Rex" aliens of Distant Worlds. How the hell do they build anything, much less starships, with those stubby arms??
Have you tried the Distant Worlds Extended Mod? Along with adding 38 more races it also redoes all of the vanilla race images and does away with most of the "insert earth animal here" race images. Some of them are still in the same vein as the vanilla images but the T-Rex's in space are gone, along with most of the other serious offenders.
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3141149 (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3141149)
The new Birth of the Federation.. is this the place you get it? >
http://www.armadafleetcommand.com/botf/
Sorry for going off-topic there. Back to your normally scheduled program. ;)
Quote from: Kushan on July 24, 2013, 11:17:08 PM
I know its a cliche question, but hows the AI? As Distant Worlds has shown you really need a robust AI to make these massive 4x game enjoyable when playing SP.
Quote from: sandman2575 on July 24, 2013, 11:52:14 AM
Re: Owl people etc. -- this is so a pet peeve of mine about 4x games -- the lack of imagination when it comes to dreaming up alien species. The "Take Earth Animal and Turn it into Alien Species" always bugs me as laziness on the game dev's part. The Insect Aliens. The Reptile Aliens. The Avian Aliens. It just bores me, although I can look beyond it to enjoy the game. To my mind, the worst example is the "T-Rex" aliens of Distant Worlds. How the hell do they build anything, much less starships, with those stubby arms??
Have you tried the Distant Worlds Extended Mod? Along with adding 38 more races it also redoes all of the vanilla race images and does away with most of the "insert earth animal here" race images. Some of them are still in the same vein as the vanilla images but the T-Rex's in space are gone, along with most of the other serious offenders.
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3141149 (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3141149)
That looks pretty cool. Extra races are always welcome, especially when the artwork is done so well.
Does this mod come with custom ship graphics? I recall someone was redo'ing whole sets of them for each race, a few years ago (WoodMan maybe?). He wasn't touching them up but making brand new ones that looked great, so it made me wonder if this mod already came with some new ship graphics too.
Quote from: Nefaro on July 24, 2013, 11:24:42 PM
That looks pretty cool. Extra races are always welcome, especially when the artwork is done so well.
Does this mod come with custom ship graphics? I recall someone was redo'ing whole sets of them for each race, a few years ago (WoodMan maybe?). He wasn't touching them up but making brand new ones that looked great, so it made me wonder if this mod already came with some new ship graphics too.
Ywa, it does come with new ship artwork.
I believe Woodmans work was incorporated into either DW ROTS or Legends. I don't recall what one specifically.
Quote from: W8taminute on July 24, 2013, 10:17:46 AM
And I was surprised that our fellow Grog Martok is in this game. He plays a pirate who tries to extort 250 credits out of you during one of the random events in-game.
There's a Martok in this game? I must have
him it now! :D
Gentlemen: For further discussion of
Birth of the Federation, may I suggest we reconvene here (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=6832.msg166103#msg166103)? (If we're going to derail the current thread, it should at least be in the direction of food, beer, and/or womenz.) 8)
Quote from: bbmike on July 24, 2013, 06:55:26 PM
To date, only Birth of the Federation has had good alien races.
Aside from the fact they're pretty much all the humanoid/hominid type ("rubber forehead" aliens), I concur. It obviously doesn't hurt that the game got to draw upon the majority of Trek lore.
Quote from: Kushan on July 24, 2013, 11:17:08 PM
I know its a cliche question, but hows the AI? As Distant Worlds has shown you really need a robust AI to make these massive 4x game enjoyable when playing SP.
How good the AI in StarDrive is seems to depend on who you ask, and/or which aspect of AI behavior you're referring to.
My own impression -- which is based both on my own (still very limited) experience, combined with the aggregate opinion of the StarDrive forum community -- is that it's actually pretty decent overall, but with a major caveat: While the AI is fairly "smart", it doesn't behave very "human-like".
What I mean by that, is that the AI seems to almost "game the game", where it gleefully exploits loopholes and obscure rules/rule-sets in the game system that the human player is (generally) unaware of, as opposed to behaving how we'd expect a rational human player to behave. The results are computer opponents who appear to have a somewhat "cutthroat" mentality, particularly among the more aggressive and military-minded races. They actually remind me of "munchkins", those
Dungeons & Dragons players who play, not to enjoy the shared social experience of engaging in a role-playing game, but to *win*.
I'm not sure how to better explain that so it makes more sense. (It would probably help if I went and got some sleep; I think I'm coming up on 30 hours straight here... ::) )
Quote from: Huw the Poo on July 25, 2013, 12:47:04 AM
Quote from: W8taminute on July 24, 2013, 10:17:46 AM
And I was surprised that our fellow Grog Martok is in this game. He plays a pirate who tries to extort 250 credits out of you during one of the random events in-game.
There's a Martok in this game? I must have him it now! :D
;D
Quote from: Martok(If we're going to derail the current thread, it should at least be in the direction of food, beer, and/or womenz.)
Heh heh. Any thread at Grogheads can and will be derailed. Par for the course. Take this sexy lady for example:
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fventurebeat.files.wordpress.com%2F2013%2F04%2Fstardrive_c.jpg%3Fw%3D558&hash=1ef78a8091655d76cca00f2bfdd5e7f50948b833)
Wrt the AI. I'm only on my second game. My first game saw me get trounced by the Owls who had bigger and better ships than me. Now that I understand the tech tree and the need for a strong fleet early game I'm doing better. Haven't got involved in a war yet so I'll comment on how the AI fights at a later time but overall I am happy at how the game plays out. The official forums claim that the AI will use saved ship designs created by the player. If you create an efficient ship design with heavy weapons and fast drive speed the next time you play a game the AI will use your design. For example, say you improve on the colony ships speed and armor protection as the humans. If you play another game as anyone other than the humans the AI human player will use your design.
The official forums also has some good mods posted in it. Take this one for example:
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg4.hostingpics.net%2Fpics%2F464279AllianceDiplo.png&hash=7446b369ce20e0c1b25834b85099033f5dcd5d20)
AI is good enough to allow you to play the game if that makes sense. It will build stuff, attack you, make deals, etc. it won't beat you once you learn the mechanics. I give it a C. Where it does well is in ship design since it uses yours. I played all of the races and designed good ships. Now when those races are Ai controlled, they use my designs
With all this yakking about Stardrive and my interest back in Beta time before buying DW. I broke down and grabbed it at GamersGate for 50% off.. Now to figure it out! :o
Quote from: Kushan on July 24, 2013, 11:17:08 PM
Have you tried the Distant Worlds Extended Mod? Along with adding 38 more races it also redoes all of the vanilla race images and does away with most of the "insert earth animal here" race images. Some of them are still in the same vein as the vanilla images but the T-Rex's in space are gone, along with most of the other serious offenders.
Thanks for the heads-up. I will have to check this out. Although imma leave DW on the backburner for now while I figure out the apparently less demanding world of StarDrive
Quote from: mikeck on July 25, 2013, 08:26:08 AM
AI is good enough to allow you to play the game if that makes sense. It will build stuff, attack you, make deals, etc. it won't beat you once you learn the mechanics. I give it a C. Where it does well is in ship design since it uses yours. I played all of the races and designed good ships. Now when those races are Ai controlled, they use my designs
Thanks, think I'm going to pass for now. But I'll keep watching it. Very few game AI's will beat a player after they learn the mechanics IMO. What I look for in a 4x is an AI that at least reacts "rationally". Does the AI design any of its own ships if you did a bad design or as a counter to a design you have? Not a good sign IMO when an AI can't design its own ships in a game.
One thing I think is overrated in a lot of games is the ability to design your own ships. I would rather have pre-deisgned ships. Mainly because I think its hard for the developer to get the AI to do it correctly and after awhile all it becomes for the player is to simply hit upgrade all once you find a weapons mix you like.
"One thing I think is overrated in a lot of games is the ability to design your own ships. I would rather have pre-deisgned ships. Mainly because I think its hard for the developer to get the AI to do it correctly and after awhile all it becomes for the player is to simply hit upgrade all once you find a weapons mix you like."
Yep, this is why having the AI use your own designs is so great
How do you use subspace projectors properly? At first I thought you just had to have one in each system, but apparently you have to build a whole lane of them. OK, so I've done that...but it doesn't seem to have done anything for my fleets at all.
Hey Huw have you made sure that you've built the projectors on a straight line between systems? The projectors radii must overlap with each other slightly. Then when your ai controlled ships travel between those two systems they should get there faster. I haven't played in a while but I seem to remember that they do make a difference vs. travelling in empty black space.
Thanks W8. Yep, I've done precisely that. I ran an interesting experiment actually. I had a scout fly to a system that was on a line perpendicular to my space lane. The scout automatically plotted a route halfway down the lane before making a 90 degree turn to head to the destination. This meant I was able to easily observe its speed both in and out of the lane.
It didn't seem to make a difference. As the scout emerged from the lane its speed seemed to stay constant. Either it just isn't working, or the speed boost is very small.
^Interesting. I'll have to conduct my own experiments as well then. What a waste of resources and time if what you're saying is true. The thing that gets me though is I see the Ai players build these lanes all the time. Sometimes even with a pretty decent network. Maybe they cheat and we don't get to use this feature?
It may well be a bug introduced with a recent patch, so you've seen it work before but it doesn't now. Maybe it's something unique to my game for whatever reason. I'll double-check and take screenshots so we can compare notes.
Quote from: Huw the Poo on September 15, 2013, 05:52:47 PM
It may well be a bug introduced with a recent patch, so you've seen it work before but it doesn't now.
I'm wondering if this isn't the case. I've not played StarDrive in a while now (it's on my "to do" list, I've just had too many other games to play!), but I do know the projectors allowed your ships to travel faster...or at least they used to.
Hmmm. I tried the experiment a few more times this evening, and I did notice a very small speed increase. Very small though; so difficult to detect that I may as well not have bothered. The fact that I had to look so hard says it all.
That's interesting indeed Huw. I conducted my own experiment this evening as well. I pick a fleet of ships that consisted of 2 fighters and 4 frigates. First I started them well inside the projector 'blue zone' and sent them off a fixed distance down the space lane. I timed the flight using the fighter craft, since they were the fastest ships in that fleet. It took them about 11 seconds to reach the destination.
Then I moved this fleet out to the black area of space well away from my projector network. Sent the fleet moving the same fixed distance and timed the flight. This time it took the fighters 23 seconds to reach the destination.
I do think that the space lanes generated by those projector networks do make a difference however small it may seem.
Interesting! What on Earth is up with my game then? Perhaps it's ship type - I've only been using scouts. This evening I'll try with other ships. Thanks for checking it out, W8.
How are you all finding the game to be? Is it fun? Is it up there with the better 4x games? Will you play this for a long time to come?
any interest in MP? Spill the beans, please! :)
Ysk I'll post impressions soon. In a nutshell it's worth buying, but not for the usual asking price of £25 in my opinion. It's fun but it needs more work (which is ongoing).
No MP I'm afraid.
Thank you, Huw. I am looking forward to reading your impressions.
I've already bought it in a sale for a few bucks. But with all the other great games out there at this time, I was merely trying to gauge if its ready to deserve my time.
I have an ongoing 4x itch, which is still pretty much taken care of by DW, but I think StarDrive might be a stellar (pun!) game if it can live up to its full potential.
I guess I'll wait a bit longer still.
To be honest Ysk, if you're enjoying DW and already own StarDrive, I'd wait. Some stuff is missing, and the developer is currently porting the game to a new engine before continuing development.
It's a good game and I'll have as much positive as negative to say about it later, but if you can wait, you should wait. That's my advice anyway.