Firaxis announces "Sid Meier's Starships"

[Acken]

eh obviously they'll advertise their games before release. And then ignore all the feedback from viewers warning about trade routes shenanigans so that it then took 2months to get it patched... badly.

The fact that they don't speak about it because it's not ready is actually what I'm talking about: slow patching. They actually communicated quite quickly for the first patch fixes... but since...

 

[Kutuzov]

Well, Firaxis are famously slow patchers. Why? I have no idea and of course, I'd be happier if they patched faster too.

We all want to know more about their plans for a patch. But it's a complete waste of time posting about it in this thread. So I've created a thread all of its own to ask them. I would have preferred it if someone with more forum cred than I had done it but there you go. It'll likely slip off the first page long before a Dev reads it but at least I tried.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

You're stretching to provide supporting evidence for a conclusion you've already made. You might even be right, or you might not. However, you really should consider that this will not include the folks who are happy with their purchase, like myself, who don't bother reporting that they like it. I have never put in a plus vote on Steam or Metacritic, or anywhere and I'm not going to either. Maybe I'm the only one, right?

The reason I haven't reviewed it is because the thumbs up or down is asking if I recommend it. If you're really thinking about the question then you could, and I often do, have very different answers to "do you like it", "is it good", or "do you recommended it".

 

[Minor Annoyance]

whats trade routes have to do with starships ?

Every discussion relating to CivBE ends up being a bot trade routes.

 

[Hail]

of course there is a strong self-selection bias in steam reviews. folks are more likely to voice their complaints than their satisfaction with/about a game.

but that cannot dimish the fact that the most useful civ:be's review are all negative. keep in mind that by default steam sorts reviews by usefulness. civ:be flopped.
why there was a civ:be free weekend? no thoughts?

it seems that Firaxis switched focus to Starships. smart move on their part. however, if I was them, I would keep DLC for civ5 rolling. civ5 is still going strong.

as for Starships: I have two concerns. one about replayability and second about tactical fights. they can become tedious and monotonous pretty quick.

 

[wayneb64]

I wonder about replay-ability as well. It just doesn't seem as interesting to accumulate ships as it does to build an empire. Battle tactics are only a part of the game of Civ, but this whole game seems to be about ship battles and it seems like that would get old pretty fast.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I wonder about replay-ability as well. It just doesn't seem as interesting to accumulate ships as it does to build an empire. Battle tactics are only a part of the game of Civ, but this whole game seems to be about ship battles and it seems like that would get old pretty fast.

That is a concern of mine as well. We know the game will try to add some replay-ability through the different maps to make each battle play differently. For example, we saw that one map had the unique condition that asteroids blocked all damage from lasers and cannons. By giving us random maps with different battle conditions each time, the goal is to give the player a different battle experience. If the battles give the player enough interesting problems to consider each time, I think the game will have lots of replay-ability.

My fear is that later in the game, when the player is producing a lot of energy, all the ships will start to look the same with a lot of every module. This will make late game battles less interesting if every ship is almost identical.

 

[wayneb64]

It looked like you could sell/buy all your parts with no overhead cost, essentially rebuilding all your ships specifically for every battle. That makes the game just one battle after another. That doesn't sound interesting to me. With Civ your units acquire special skills after leveling up, which they removed from BE. Free unit upgrades in BE is also rather OP. I almost always but lots of a given type of unit just before I get the tech to upgrade them.

Sounds like once you have played enough games to understand all the rules it would only take a few games of never ending battles to bore me.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

It looked like you could sell/buy all your parts with no overhead cost, essentially rebuilding all your ships specifically for every battle.

Actually, I don't think it works that way. If you look closely, you will see that the cost to sell a module is less than the cost to buy the same module. So you will lose energy if you buy and sell the same module. Also, the cost of buying modules increases with each module. So the cost to buy your 4th laser is more than the cost to buy your first. So you can sell your 4th laser and use the energy to buy your first shield for example. But you can't just sell your 4th laser and buy your 4th cannon. So you can't just rebuild ships for every battle with the same amount of energy. You need to make more energy from your cities and from mission rewards to grow your ships.

 

[Kutuzov]

of course there is a strong self-selection bias in steam reviews. folks are more likely to voice their complaints than their satisfaction with/about a game.
but that cannot dimish the fact that the most useful civ:be's review are all negative. keep in mind that by default steam sorts reviews by usefulness. civ:be flopped.
why there was a civ:be free weekend? no thoughts?

it seems that Firaxis switched focus to Starships. smart move on their part. however, if I was them, I would keep DLC for civ5 rolling. civ5 is still going strong.

as for Starships: I have two concerns. one about replayability and second about tactical fights. they can become tedious and monotonous pretty quick.

I would argue that the same self-selection bias diminishes that 'fact' as well. If people are angry, they are far more likely to post negative reviews, they are also likely to spend their time 'liking' negative reviews as well.

People who are angry are more motivated to use the tools available to them to make their protest louder whereas people who like the game will more likely be spending that time actually playing the game. One poster here has proudly stated that he has written eight reviews on different boards. How can people who like the game and are playing it possibly match that level of commitment?

What we're seeing here is that folks are becoming more aware of how some of the tools the Internet provides empower them to bring more attention to their displeasure. Using these tools takes time, time which 'happier' folks don't have.

 

[Acken]

Well, Firaxis are famously slow patchers. Why? I have no idea and of course, I'd be happier if they patched faster too.

We all want to know more about their plans for a patch. But it's a complete waste of time posting about it in this thread. So I've created a thread all of its own to ask them. I would have preferred it if someone with more forum cred than I had done it but there you go. It'll likely slip off the first page long before a Dev reads it but at least I tried.

Hey you can bump it if you want Wouldn't like your trust in them to go to waste Anyway with the low activity on this forum it will take a fair amount of time to go into page 2

Moderator Action: Please can we not get personal in this thread. This thread topic is Starships, not CivBE. Let us stick to the topic of the thread.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Hail]

Actually, I don't think it works that way. If you look closely, you will see that the cost to sell a module is less than the cost to buy the same module. So you will lose energy if you buy and sell the same module.

If you look closely, you will see that the cost to sell a module is equal to the cost to buy the same module.

Spoiler :

Link to video.
7:17 - 7:18 where Sid sells lvl1 cannon off SS Odysseus. he sold the cannon for 75 energy. the same 75 energy it costs to buy it back.

I can only pray that one cannot unlearn a tech and get his beakers back

 

[SupremacyKing2]

If you look closely, you will see that the cost to sell a module is equal to the cost to buy the same module.

I stand corrected. I was looking at the price and sell next to the module description. The buy and sell is the same for the same component. I think that's fair. It is basically an undo button. The price does change for different components, like going from cannons to lasers. The price to sell the first cannon was 75 but the price to buy the first laser was 100. So, he would lose 25 by switching from one cannon to one laser. Also, adding an extra component increases the price. For example, adding a second cannon would cost 200. So you lose energy if you try to sell the first of something in order to buy a second or third of something else. Which is also fair. So, you can buy and sell the same component free but you can't buy and sell different components for free. How many components you already have affects future cost.

 

[wayneb64]

Having a 'reset' button while your building your ship is great, but I would think if you install new lasers and go out and have a battle or three with them, that when you go to sell them back later you should get a fraction of the cost to sell used equipment.

Now if you wanted to transfer those lasers to another of your own ships then you might just have to pay for the labor and not the parts.

 

[s0nny80y]

Timing the detonation of the torpedo for the desired effect seems to be a mini game in it of itself, a refreshing reminder of the game's departure from the Civ series.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

In today's live stream, Sid revealed that his first prototype of Starships used real-time combat in 3D space but he felt that the 3D space was more work than fun and switched to turn based because he felt that it gave the player more time to really plan tactics and strategy.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Sid basically lost the combat in this live stream's battle. No one shot kills this time.

We did learn a few things:
- a player's ship is never completely destroyed in combat. When it loses all its hit points, it is only disabled and must be repaired at full cost after the battle. Sid felt that losing ships completely would cause players to rage quit which he wanted to avoided.
- Ships gets powerful promotions when they disable an enemy ship.
- Some missions will require only one ship (like in Ace Patrol where you have to pick only one pilot to fly a mission)
- There is a wonder that gives you strong shields all the way around your ship (read of ship is no longer weak spot)
- Only one fleet in a game. Sid felt that multiple fleets would cause clutter (AI would have multiple fleets too). Plus if a player lost a fleet, they would just switch to another fleet so there would less emotional investment in each fleet.
- cross-connectivity with BE is a secret that Firaxis does not want to spoil. Players will have to buy Starships to find out what it is.
- No MP at all!

 

[Gort]

No MP at all!

Oh well. Never mind then.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Oh well. Never mind then.

I am greatly disappointed by no MP even though I am not a big MP player. I get that implementing the full game (strategy layer and individual tactical battles) might be tricky to implement for a MP game since players would have to wait around doing nothing while other players resolve their tactical battles. That would be bad. But, as I mentioned before, a tactical combat only MP mode would have been perfect and would have added a lot of value to the game. Then, it would not matter if the AI was simple or if the missions were repetitive because, you could at least have fun fighting tactical combat against your friends with your custom ships. SP only really kills the replay-ability of the game IMO.

 

[Gort]

I am greatly disappointed by no MP even though I am not a big MP player. I get that implementing the full game (strategy layer and individual tactical battles) might be tricky to implement for a MP game since players would have to wait around doing nothing while other players resolve their tactical battles. That would be bad. But, as I mentioned before, a tactical combat only MP mode would have been perfect and would have added a lot of value to the game. Then, it would not matter if the AI was simple or if the missions were repetitive because, you could at least have fun fighting tactical combat against your friends with your custom ships. SP only really kills the replay-ability of the game IMO.

I agree - it's a shame.

That said, I'll always take a developer saying, "We can't do this feature" over one saying they'll put the feature in and then the feature being broken in some fashion.