Starships has been released for PC and Mac, and also for iPad. Less a criticism, necessarily, and more about managing expectations. The diplomacy aspects are basically “we’re at war” or “we’re at peace”, and there isn’t an overarching story to uncover as you go along: this is a conquer-the-board game rather than a sci-fi space epic. That’s exactly the same kind of replayability spark that Civilization had all those years ago. ![]() It’s a game you can complete, and when you do, you’ll want to start playing again immediately, perhaps bumping up the difficulty level or increasing the map size. ![]() Sid Meier’s Starships is accessible and it’s comprehensible even if your strategy gaming muscles are rusty – you can get your head around what you need to do and how to do it. The main point, though, is that you will get to grips with the gameplay. There’s great satisfaction to be had scooting through warp gates and jumping out from behind asteroids (or whatever the spaceship equivalent of jumping out is) as you get to grips with the gameplay. Goals vary from destroying pirates and securing facilities to escorting transport ships and simply surviving for a certain number of turns.īeating the missions requires careful fleet management as you spend your acquired energy on upgrades for your ships – engines, shields and armour through to torpedoes and stealth cloaking – and build new ones.Īs you get to know the different missions, you’ll experiment with building different kinds of starships that best suit them, as well as your own tactics. The turn-based missions are the core of the game: they take place on hex-based maps incorporating planets, asteroids, warp gates – which zip you to different parts of the map instantly – and enemy starships. The resources include energy, metals, science and food, and balancing them is the key to healthily growing your space empire, while ensuring you don’t leave any weak spots for enemies to attack. Once in, you can build improvements to strengthen their defences and yield more resources for your cause. You’ll start with a homeworld and two ships, from which you can travel to nearby planets and complete missions to build influence with their populations, and ultimately to welcome them into your galactic gang. The galactic map can be small through to epic. And most importantly, the blend of upgrades, combat and exploration is restricted enough not to feel intimidating, but not so shallow that you get bored. Games can be done and dusted in a few hours if you choose the small map, or much longer with the “epic” one. It doesn’t look like Civilization, but the comparison is all about the rhythm of the game as you explore, fight battles and build cities, research scientific advancements and improve the planets that join your federation. Starships is all about, yes, starships: your fleet of starships which you build and upgrade, while exploring the galaxy and either conquering other factions or keeping the peace with them. The setting may be deep space rather than land and sea, but this game’s genetic link to the original Civ is undeniable – and that’s a great thing. There is a reason and it makes sense enough to me.Or, indeed, see Starships: a new game from veteran designer Sid Meier that you’ll love if you grew up with his Civilization, but feel a bit lost amid the sheer scale of its modern sequels. You can still wipe them, but it gives the other players/AI a chance to recover between turns and to try mounting a defense. This game is meant for 1-3 hour matches pending map size and difficulty, so the fatigue system means if you get lucky and get a major advantage and start rolling with it you can't just call game over in a single turn and wipe the entire galaxy at once. In other 4x games you would have so many fleets that you could eventually just stomp each race one at a time as you meet them in MOO and the like because you can have a fleet for each enemy planet and just stomp them all at once. Even if you have the most powerful fleet you can't just waltz over 10 enemy planets in a single turn while playing Ride of the Valkyries in the background. Why this fatigue system on one fleet? It makes sure there is only so much each team can do each turn, a sort of balance. There is a limit, but some wonders (Naval Tradition or something like that) reduce how much you get, and if you build a warp nexus thing (equivalent of roads in this game) you can travel between planets you influence or control without increasing fatigue by one. More fatigue means slightly lower performance in fleet actions. Each time you take an action you increase crew fatigue. ![]() Originally posted by Shahadem:Only one fleet? So it's the last stage of Spore all over again? Sort of.
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