Spacey Game News and Dealsies 6/1-6/13: The Lawdy-Lawd-I’m-Tired Edition

It's the News!
Bringin’ It Newsy Style.

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!

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!

Author: Brian Rubin

17 thoughts on “Spacey Game News and Dealsies 6/1-6/13: The Lawdy-Lawd-I’m-Tired Edition

  1. 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?

    1. Have you played Independence War, Klingon Academy, Starshatter or Rules of Engagement?

      1. 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.

        1. 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.

        2. 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 ;).

          1. 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.

            1. 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…

                1. 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? ;)

                    1. Hah, I played that game only to get to that part. I so wanted a full game made of it.

          2. 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?

            1. 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.

  2. 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 :)

    1. Ohhhh, okay, that makes sense. And those games do exist, they’re just few and far between, sadly.

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