Heyyyyy guys! Me again (who else would it be, really?)! Been a CRAZY week, which is why I’m just getting to the news just now, and holy crap there’s a ton of it. I actually had to take a break in the middle of writing this just to eat a little something, because it was THAT INTENSE you guys! ;) Enjoy!
- Drox Operative – The expansion has finall been named! It’s titled Invasion of the Ancients and it has a ton of stuff, like ancient race invasions, space stations, a new race and more! YAY!
- AI War – The next expansion, Vengeance of the Machine, will be available for pre-order soon! Yay! I keep saying this, but I need to dive into this game. There’s also a new patch entitled “Activating Vengeful Sanding Machine” which adds a boatload of stuff to the game.
- Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion – While not a whole expansion, the first DLC pack for the game, Forbidden Worlds, is now available for $4.99, and adds new planets, new research and more!
- Starlight Inception – The official trailer has finally be released, and it looks great! Check it out from the link or embedded below.
- Limit Theory – The latest video dev entry has been released, and it’s well worth a watch.
- Distant Worlds: Shadows – Matrix Games’ Erik Rutins put together an intro guide to playing a new game in the Age of Shadows for new players. There are also new videos by Das24680 showing explored locations, creating a destroyer fleet, destroyers vs. a cap ship and…loros fruit?
- Void Destroyer – The Kickstarter campaign is in full swing, and Paul has put out no-less than fifteen updates since it launched. Rather than list ’em all individually, I’ll just link to the updates page if y’all don’t mind. ;)
- EVE Online – A lot of news here, the biggest being the release of Odyssey, their 19th (!) expansion pack. Keep chuggin’, CCP. There are also dev blogs talking about EVE VR and new audio transition sounds, as well as announcements on Caldari ships and military career arcs being reset. Over on The Mittani, they have so much EVE news I don’t even have time to list it all, but go check it out please. ;) Finally, Massively reports that 96% of EVE’s players are male, something CCP is juuuust fine with.
- 90Edges Universe – We now have the first pic from inside a space station. Nifty!
- GoD Factory: Wingmen – There’s a new video showing off some gameplay with the Oculus Rift.
- Beyond Beyaan – Apparently Brent has reverted to a pre-SVN version of the game, whatever that means. ;)
- Star Citizen – There’s a new “Observist Guide” to New York, a galactic guide to Earth, a new video containing an interview with 3D artist Jeff Cavitt (embedded below as well) and part nine of the writer’s guide.
- Star Conflict – There’s a new version of the game that adds metals and other stuff.
- StarMade – There’s a new dev build with a major focus on gravity. There’s also a new video explaining how beam weapons work (in Russian, FYI), as well as better AI, new textures and better admin tools.
- Infinite Pixels – The pre-alpha version is out for anyone who backed their IndieGoGo campaign. There’s also a new trailer for the alpha (embedded below).
- Void of Darkness -There’s a new teaser video of the game over on their IndieDB page (and embedded below).
- Eterium – Thanks to everyone who sent me info about this game. It looks very Wing Commanderesque, and the demo is a good time, so check it out.
- Kerbal Space Program – There’s a new minor update out (0.21) that adds crew management, overhauled space center scenery and more!
- Strike Suit Zero – Hey, they have a blog now, and their first post is about the game using the Oculus Rift! Yay!
- Predestination – Their May dev update is out, focusing on UI design and galaxy map features.
- Dominium – Sadly their Kickstarter failed, but they’ve still put out many updates on where the game is going.
- Freespace Open – The latest edition of the HLP Newsletter is out. This talks about the latest news in campaigns, coding and more.
- Vendetta Online – There’s a new version with lots of little bug fixes.
- Rubicon – This game has now gone open source. Check it out!
- Retrobooster – There’s a new video of the game from VG24/7 which I’ll embed below.
- StarDrive – There’s a new review on GameGrin.
- Aegis Division – I found this new game over on Kickstarter, so go check it out
We’re not done yet folks. Ooooooohh no. We have deals! First off, Amazon has launched a new indie game storefront (yay for them!), and to celebrate, they have a TON of deals going on, way too many for me to mention here, but thanks to the good folks on Reddit, you can see a list of the individual games and bundles that are currently on sale, which include a good deal of spaciness. Finally, you can get Dawnstar over on IndieGameStand for as low as $1, but more if you want extras.
Finally, in related news, the latest Science Behind the SciFi newsletter has been released.
That’s it! Whew! I gotta get back to doing this daily. Thanks for your patience folks, and have a lovely day!
https://youtu.be/suxHijWDP_I
https://youtu.be/6tSuprHIfEg
https://youtu.be/GjkI25wZr48
https://youtu.be/KAhHAOizWzs
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https://youtu.be/MFtQNtGlNy4
https://youtu.be/fCKlfjMzFb0
I feel like there’s always so much effort on games that have the player in the cockpit of a starfighter. Now, I like a space flight sim well enough… but I often wish for games where I’d control a big, ponderous starship and was responsible to manage its vast array of resources and capabilities. I don’t want to be Starbuck, I want to be Adama! Games along these lines that I’ve enjoyed have been Bridge Commander and Nexus (somewhat). The Battlecruiser games wanted to be like this, and I wanted them to be so much better.
I’ve probably played them all… but just in case: does anyone have thoughts about games like that which I may have missed?
Have you played Independence War, Klingon Academy, Starshatter or Rules of Engagement?
I played Starfleet Academy, but I actually never touched KA — I assumed it was similar. SFA was a spiritual predecessor to Bridge Commander in many ways, and was decent fun.
I played Starshatter quite a bit. It was decent… but was ultimately very limiting in what it let you actually do.
I played Independence War 2, which played much like a space-flight-sim… not sure I played the first one.
What I really, really want: control of big ship with lots of abilities, sandbox gameplay, procedurally-generated universe. The Galaxy Maps mods for Bridge Commander kindof get close to this… but the instability of Bridge Commander when so heavily modded really gets in the way. I’m hoping ST:Excalibur fills this niche.
Oh man, Klingon Academy is a BILLION times better than Starfleet Academy. It’s, I feel, the best capital space ship sim next to Rules of Engagement (which is still best in class, I think). You should also play the first I-War when you can, awesome stuff. As for the rest, you might wanna keep an eye out on Enemy Starfighter, which might let you do most of what you’re looking for. I hope.
How is your tolerance for 2D space? Because three best “capship” games would, in my opinion, be:
– Starfleet Command 2 (either Empires At War, or Orion Pirates)
– Rules of Engagement 2
– Starsector
Now, Starsector is still in paid alfa, and the whole trade/build gameplay is absent, but it has really interesting and deep combat system.
You might also check Gemini Sector, but… I played the demo but it really didn’t click with me. Seemed a lot like Starfleet Command, but not as good.
I agree with Brian that Klingon Academy was much, much better than Academy (and actually has a ship damage model that’s better than the Bridger Commander one). However, it just doesn’t want to play nice with 64bit Win7.
End while Enemy Starfighter is shaping up to be great, it is about “classing starfighter combat”. So I don’t think taht capships will be controlable. Void Destroyer, on the other hand, does have controllable caphips, and Gods Of Space Games demand your prompt backing ;).
I can’t fully disagree with your list, but I can’t agree with it fully either. ;) Starsector feels like a capship sim like Star Control feels like a cap ship sim, to me at least.
Well, it’s a biit more complicated than SC’s super melee ;).
There’s the whole interplay between different weapon types and shield/armour, different shield types, special systems etc.. Plus, latest updates go deeply into fleet logistics. So maybe not exactly space captain sim, but definitely space quartermaster sim. Now, Captain Rubin, if you want your replacement Atropos torpedoes, you must bring me BLUE form FM37-J in triplicate ;).
And since all this got me into a serious space nostalgia, I found this in my old programs folder:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-E8QpfgcU6kTE1MVnkwM0FsNGs/edit?usp=sharing
Now if only 2004 me believed in commenting “obvious” bits of code…
Whoa, wha the heck is that?!
Artifact from my Java days ;)
Started as adaptation of Star Cruiser ruleset, but turned into something else along the way. Basically, a turn based game where:
– each turn is 15 minutes
– ship acceleration is no greater than few gees
– “direct fire” engagement range is up to 30000km
– in addition to direct fire weapons (lasers, submunitions) ships can carry missiles and parasites (attack drones).
I had some MAJOR problems with 3d map, and absolutely detested native java 3d libraries (whatever of them was available in 2004). Then I decided to play with C++ and OpenGL, and then, as it always is, job happened. It’s all JS, JQuery and HTML5 these days (although I’ve been itching to do something like that in HTML5. Might be a good way to refersh programming skills).
I’ve found a compiled version, an put it here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-E8QpfgcU6kaHpjYUNZa2d3TDQ/edit?usp=sharing
So if you do want to check an old unfinished spacey project, be my guest ;) There are 4 batch files, each fires up a different scenario.
A bit of space game trivia. In a first scenario (r-convoyA), one of the ships you command is Lexington, a Bunker Hill class drone carrier, carrying nine Basilisk battledrones. What game have I been playing at the time? ;)
IIRC, the only good part of Mission Critical?
Yeah, exactly :)
Hah, I played that game only to get to that part. I so wanted a full game made of it.
I just learned about Void Destroyer with this news post and threw as much money as I could at it! Looks fantastic!
I do like Starfleet Command 2 a LOT. It had a good sandbox, too. I may have to get that game out again.
I’ve never played the Rules of Engagement games. They seem *really* dated… but maybe they are worth a shot. Is RoE just tactical combat with pre-defined missions, or is it more open-ended?
The RoE games are tactical starship combat games with pre-defined missions and campaigns (though you can make more with the included editors). They’re pretty dated and damned detailed. If you’ve not, check out my let’s play of the 2nd game.
Oh, I’m drooling over Predestination, I’m definitely getting it!
As for Beyond Beyaan reverting to pre-SVN version, if you read my previous post, I decided to rip out modding to speed up development. So I found one of the backups of my source code before I decided to go open source and committing on SVN, aka “pre-SVN”. It’s mostly hard-coded stuff, so I can use that as a base to start matching Master of Orion 1’s gameplay.
Josh, yeah, I’d love to be able to command a huge starship (Star Destroyer? Or even Death Star?) instead of being a lowly starfighter :)
Ohhhh, okay, that makes sense. And those games do exist, they’re just few and far between, sadly.
Hi Brian, thanks for the mention of Aegis Division it is much appreciated!