Well. After reading this thread and info on other sites i decided to give it a try.



Started with the tutorial. It is quite simple and easy to read, but its not interactive at all. Just a couple of screen shots with explanations. So there is little 'hard' learning from it (i like being forced to rotate camera, click on multiple buttons and give manual orders in tutorials).



The first screen after you hit 'new game' displays a set of races (man, developer has a very good sense of humour and definitely is a fan of MOO and Lovecraft). In this screen you can customise your race abilities (you are given 10 points that are already spend for each race. Each time you select something - a generic text appears in race description box. A funny feature, but completely useless and somewhat too generic). I like race customisation a lot, so i spent a lot of time reading through all the race abilities and playing with various race setups.



Races are traditional, but with a unique representation. For example - a bear-like samurai race that can never dishonour themselves by doing espionage missions. Or a race of wolves with a very cool art. Or owlfolk being subjugated by some boimorphic thingy thinking that its being the cutest in the whole universe. Oh and Ryeleh (may misspell it) with its absolute Lovecraftish looks made me laugh a lot.



The first 10 games forced me to quit as i was either being stomped into dust by overwhelming forces or getting drown in maintenance payment or simply spending time on useless techs.



After i actually got some experience - i managed to win one game by conquest. That was very easy to achieve actually - i just concentrated all my colonies on research and once i hit large ships - i immediately switched colonies to production. Had to be very friendly with all races and accept their demands though just to ensure that i`ll survive long enough to get my fleets.



I loved how ship design is done in this game. Reminds me of old Space Empires Fury game and Remember Tomorrow. The modules are placed on internal, external, hybrid (internal/external) and engine slots. Some pieces of equipment take 1 slot, some 2x2, 3x3. Some take even more space and have different shapes. I like the idea of turrets and hardpoints. The first are usually larger, but can fire in 90 degree arc and you can specify their facing. The second is usually more powerful, but takes less space (exceptions are heavy mounts of various weapons which take more space than turreted versions). Power generation and redistribution is a cool idea. You have to take into account where to put you powerplant (that can instakill every other module around it when it gets destroyed). You can connect different parts of the ship to a powerplant via power cables.



Ship to ship combat reminds a lot of Distant Worlds. But you have specified fire arks here and damage is assigned to the first modules that are placed on that particular side (so putting lots of armour around your powerplant is a good idea). I managed to create a powerful frigate with repulsor beams and basic cannons - this combo allowed me to stomp anything that my ship was facing while repulsors, that i turned to face rear and sides, ensured that no one would get close to ships drives.



Techtree is huge. It contains several technology types, but i actually was unable to get deeper into it. So can`t say much here.



Colonies are made like in Armada (forgot its following number, something 20xx). You have a slot where you can put a building. But buildings are made like they were in MOO2 - so just one type per colony (not like 20+ laboratories per colony or such). Colonies have population, can produce food, industry, research and always generate money by taxation. You have three sliders for food, industry and science that control how many population of the planet are assigned to producing those things. My only grip here is that i can`t see what what is included in calculation of each of these values.



Exploration is a bit complicated. If set to manual control - you`ll have to visit each star and planet like in Distant Worlds. So i always forced AI auto exploration. Same with colonisation, but like in MOO2 you have a list of available colonies where you can assign a colony ship to any planet.



Some planets can contain ruins. These can contain a momentarily bonus or a powerful artefact. Most of them are guarded. To claim the ruins you have to manually land a trooper there or colonise it. This manual 'expeditions' are fun - i once managed to steal an artefact from Mercury and Humans didn`t even notice that.



Overall the game is nice, but there is a lot of things to improve. Design screen needs 'clear all' button and easier ways to delete old designs. Research screen needs to contain module sizes and type requirements (i was so frustrated after i got my assault shuttles only to learn that i need some really huge ship to house a single AS hangar module!). Interface needs some more attention as its a bit difficult to command ships and issue construction orders from main screen.



Sorry for this wall of text. I wanted to make it a short review

If you are a fun of MOO and like games like Distant Worlds and old Pax Imperial - this game may be interesting for you. And its cheap (at least here in RF).



Oh, just wanted to say that i like diplomacy in this game. You can ask other about their species and some funny staff on the screen. Animated 2d stuff looks awesome and each race has its unique 'sense of presence' and atmosphere.

Any updates from the people playing this game about the state of the game?

acare84 wrote:
Reviews for this game is not good and I am waiting for a big discount to purchase.

I agree this is the best approach, I'm also waiting.

Reviews for this game is not good and I am waiting for a big discount to purchase.

Igncom1 wrote:
Overall? Worth more then the cider I buy, so it is a good purchase.

Still worth more then a nights worth of cider!

I have stardrive and I played with it for a bit - But I've stoppped by now and went on to Distant Worlds. It is much more complex and shares a lot of the same interface and combat options.

I`ve played StarDrive quite a lot since i wrote that review. And i must say that i enjoy this game.



Yes, it has some really big problems with interface and controls, but once you`ve mastered them - everything becomes a bit easier to control.



I managed to survive two games on large maps with 7 races. In one game i`ve consume half of the galaxy and united the other - in the other i`ve played repulsive (totally bad at diplomacy) and had to fight each and every race. Won by going into massive colonisation early on, so by the time AI got his third colony i`ve already controlled 10th. That`s more money and resources to spend on ships, more research to use.



I usually go all the way up to the cruisers with getting weapons in between. This way i can out gun any AI fleet just by having larger ships in the fleet.



The one thing that i`ve learnt is that subspace projectors (road equivalents in this game) can be ignored completely by creating fast FTL ships with decent power generation (these 'roads' prevent ships travelling via them to completely ignore energy consumption). This saves you a lot of money that can be used to maintain larger fleets.

I feel vindicated in waiting.

I have the game too and I kinda share the general opinion of Pietrak.



Some aspects are really nice. Like space-combat where you actually are in charge of things.



But the whole management-part plays really strange. Build-times for stuff are so increadibly short, that it would be a total-micromanagement-hell to do it manually. So you are kinda forced to let the AI do it.

But if you do so it feels like the game mostly plays itself and then the few exceptions that you can't delegate to the AI feel even worse.

That's building and managing ground troops. Why can't I build and distribute them with the same ease as space-ships?



Also balance-wise. At least in the early game there's no way to actually force the enemy to fight. So why bother making huge fleets? In this game it is much better to have tons of Bombers and Ground-Troops that you send to harass or capture enemy planets in their hinterlands and then simply avoid fighting actual space-combat. Something like the Shield-button in Endless-Space that prevents opponent ships from leaving a system would be helpful.



And the controls. You are forced to zoom in and out all the time, much more so than in ES. Centering the map requires clicking the middle mouse-button. I really liked it Civ3-Style where the view-distance was static but simply perfect to play with.



I will probably play a little more of it but I'll put it this way:



You want an RTS? => Play StarCraft

You want a 4X-Space-game? => Play Endless-Space

A non-Space-4x-Alternative? => Fallen Enchantress

Just tried Stardrive - and currently I advise against buying it. The game has some very nice features, some of it's ideas are better than Endless Space, but it is so much unpolished...

Perhaps after a few patches it will get better. But, to be a little more specific:



+ building of custom ships much better than ES

+ better colonization/star system idea, each planet has to be colonized and conquered separately, multiple factions can share one star system

+ better planet classification (IMO), with planted type (terran, arctic, desert...) impacting initial max population. Every planet has a fertility/resource abundance indicator that is independent from the planet type

+ ability to freight food/industry between planets adds a nice layer of complexity

+ no travel nodes

+ possibility of automating certain tasks (i.e the AI automatically builds and assigns enough freighters to satisfy the demand for moving resources around)

+ real time strategy

+ fleet management



The list of pro's for this game looks good, but the con's outweigh them in my opinion:



- horrible implementation of planetary invasions

- bad UI behavior (example: I designed two corvette class ships for separate purposes, but when I double click one - with the intention of selecting only corvette design A - it selects all the corvettes visible, all designs)

- very bad auto-management of planets. A real time strategy would benefit of a very good auto-management system

- non-modifiable hotkeys

- lack of an interactive tutorial makes the game really hard to enjoy

- real time strategy (it's a pro and a con at the same time)

- generally unpolished gameplay



In general, despite a few very good ideas, the game is hardly pleasant to play for me.

Very interesting review, Okim... thank you for that!

Okim wrote:
Just a small advice: i would recommend waiting for some time as the game has some bugs and hopefully will be improved later. You know - just not to spoil your first impression.



On the other hand - supporting an indie is always a good thing, so its all up to you.

Thanks for the review!

Just a small advice: i would recommend waiting for some time as the game has some bugs and hopefully will be improved later. You know - just not to spoil your first impression.



On the other hand - supporting an indie is always a good thing, so its all up to you.

Anyone know anything about it?



Is it any good?



Is it worth buying?

The_Quasar wrote:
This is always concerning... there are some very good beta testers out there (I've done it myself in the past, a few times) and they take things seriously, why can't the devs take them seriously? It's my experience that when they do (take the testers seriously), they end up with a much better product. However, I do recognise that sometimes there is just too much to do, and sometimes what has come out in testing only gets there in later updates/expansions.

Tunnel vision. It happens all the time. The devs need to step away from their "baby" and look at the feedback from their beta testers. That's why I do not beta test, or play games in beta. When I spend my money, I want a finished product. But a paying customer shouldn't be a beta tester without his/her consent.

stasik28 wrote:
Well the DEV is taking everything into consideration, I saw some of the threads when it was in beta and he was responding in most of them. The problem is that he was trying to release it on a schedule and he's doing all the coding and such on his own. Making games is incredible difficult with a company, and it's even harder when you're by yourself. Expect the major bug fixes to come soon since he doesn't have anymore schedules to follow

Indeed, which is why I'm in a holding pattern. SotS 2 burned me. I held back a little with Legends of Pegasus, and I do not regret it at all. I waited to play ES until this year because of that too.

Well the DEV is taking everything into consideration, I saw some of the threads when it was in beta and he was responding in most of them. The problem is that he was trying to release it on a schedule and he's doing all the coding and such on his own. Making games is incredible difficult with a company, and it's even harder when you're by yourself. Expect the major bug fixes to come soon since he doesn't have anymore schedules to follow

Nasarog wrote:
The beta testers give good feedback, which is then ignored and an unfinished/polished game comes out with major game breaking bugs.

This is always concerning... there are some very good beta testers out there (I've done it myself in the past, a few times) and they take things seriously, why can't the devs take them seriously? It's my experience that when they do (take the testers seriously), they end up with a much better product. However, I do recognise that sometimes there is just too much to do, and sometimes what has come out in testing only gets there in later updates/expansions.

I thought combat was more akin to star control without the actual control. Moo2 was a tbs.



I've read some comments os space sector, and the game isn't getting too much love. It's almost like a repeat of stardock's releases of late. The beta testers give good feedback, which is then ignored and an unfinished/polished game comes out with major game breaking bugs.

The_Quasar wrote:
This thread is about the released game, not the beta, which the other thread is about.

Entirely irrelevant - We've tried very hard so far to keep only thread per game in the off-topic forums. The fact that the game goes from beta to release shouldn't constitute a new thread.



But I digress - viva le fragmentation /rant

Mansen wrote:
Duplicate thread - merge and delete.



/#/games2gether/forum/1-off-topic/thread/245-stardrive-pre-order-beta-access

This thread is about the released game, not the beta, which the other thread is about.



Thanks for the info Igncom1, I may just have a go!