Hailing Frequencies Open – 5/8/17 – So Tired, So Worth It…

Hey folks, happy Monday, and welcome to another week! I am so, so, sooohoooo tired today because we went to a late (for us) showing of Guardians of The Galaxy Volume 2. It was a lot of fun, but not as amazing as the first, which is to be expected really. That wrapped up what was ultimately a pretty good weekend, less so for gaming though. The game I spent the most time with was this week’s game of the week, Starfighter Origins. As you might recall from my preview a while back, I wasn’t super enamored with the game after spending some time with it, and…the release version isn’t much different. Usually I try to do five videos for each weekday, but I could only get through three here. Later in the week I’ll make up for it though.

Oh, and I never posted on Friday, so you never got the last Between the Ashes video! I was just so drained from taking a CSS certification test I had no mental energy, but yes, Between the Ashes, so awesome. This last entry had me use a cheat code to do two missions, which were AMAZING. The first had me remotely piloting an enemy’s fighter to smear their “good” name, while the second mission actually involved tower defense elements. It just shows you the amazing power of both the FRED editor and the Freespace Open project. It’s also an amazing contrast to Starfighter Origins.

Since I had some extra time from skipping some Starfighter Origins, I made a video of Starsector, which is REALLY coming along nicely. I seemed to have a sound issue while recording though, which I’m not happy about, but I was too far into the video by the time I noticed it to stop recording. :/ I then spent time diving into the game we’re talking about on our podcast this week, Empyrean Frontier. It’s a Homeworld-esque RTS with FTL-style sector jumping, and so far I’ve done all the tutorials and some of the intro campaign, all of which I’ve really, really enjoyed. The RTS portion seems really well designed, with a great interface and solid AI. The missions in the campaign, so far, have been pretty fun, including killing a Death Star-like planet killing, wherein the minimap looked like the map graphics from the original Star Wars film as the Death Star approached Yavin IV. Great stuff.

I then spent some of my gaming time trying to get my recently-acquired copy of 1999’s Malkari to work. It installed perfectly, no errors or anything. However, while I was able to run the tutorial, any time I try to start a game proper, it errors out with some really weird “AutoConnectoMe” error, and I cannot for the life of me find what that is. It’s super frustrating, because I feel like I’m just a step or two away from getting it to run. After reading the manual, I really am keen to try it, as it looks pretty unique amongst the 4X space. I rounded out my gaming with some more LOGistICAL (that is harder than it looks to type correctly), which is just both super fun and relaxing. Overall it was a great weekend, gaming and otherwise!

Today is laundry day, so I doubt I’ll have much time for gaming once I get home. If I do it’ll most likely be more LOGistICAL or Empyrean Frontier to prep for the podcast tomorrow. What did you guys play this weekend?

Now, onto news, and since I missed Friday, there’s quite a bit!

• Remnants of the Precursors has a new preview vid they linked to, as well as an update on their next alpha.
• EVE Online’s upcoming structure update might be pretty extensive, according to the Imperium.
• Lightspeed Frontier got a massive new update which includes much-requested lock-on functionality, among many other things.
• Endless Space 2 has a new exploration trailer you can watch.
• Master of Orion got a teensy weensy little patch that fixes teensy stuff.
• Void Destroyer 2 has a new dev video that showcases things like field ownership and more.
• Wayward Terran Frontier: Zero Falls got a massive patch with notes that are so long I can’t even figure out what the major point is, but there’s a lot there.
• Stellar Monarch got “a small and boring technical update” which fixes a few little things.
• Galactineers got a big editor update with all sorts of new toys.
• Dimension Drive has an update showcasing new power orbs and such.
• Starpoint Gemini Warlords has a pretty hefty patch out fixing conquests, planet landings and more!
• Galaxy in Turmoil are looking for some voice actors.
• Heathen Engineering’s Terran has a big new patch that focuses on planets.
• Star Explorers has come out of nowhere to launch on Steam. I hope to check it out soon.
• Astrobase Command has a new post about race generation.
• Limit Theory has a massive new forum post with pretty new pictures talking about the game’s progress.
• Avorion has a massive dev blog update about out of space errors and more.

WHEW! That’s a lot, right? But wait, we’re not done! Because it’s Monday, there are weeklong sales!

• Duskers (not fully a space game, but awesome and close enough) ;)
• TOXIKK (not a space game at ALL, but worth it, and we play it together every so often)
• Close Order
• Armada 2526 Gold Edition

Next up, GamersGate has the non-Steam version of the Amazing Drox Operative and its DLC on sale. Finally, GOG is having a massive EA weekly sale which includes all the Wing Commanders and other awesomeness.

That should be it for today y’all. Thanks for reading!