The 2014 Space 4X Thread

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Fri Jan 24, 2014 10:11 pm

2014 is the year of Space 4X games. I will be sampling them all and bringing you my impressions here.

One of the first we'll be looking at is a game called HORIZON. Horizon brings a few interesting things to the table, as you can choose the regular sandbox mode, OR a more story-driven mode with "quests" and the various races starting from different points in their development based on the backstory. It is also interesting because it is the first one of these in a while that is definitely going to need a manual.

I've played the beta for a few hours, which consisted of a lot of clicking around and not totally understanding what I was doing. Your first planet screen comes up. There are buttons to upgrade factories! And upgrade farming! And upgrade trading! Sure, I clicked 'em all on the first turn! Why not? I have no idea. Each star has a "SCAN STR" and "INDUSTRY CAP" statistic around it. What does that mean? I bet the manual will tell us!

There will certainly be a manual, yes??

I enjoyed my time clicking around in Horizon so far, though. I like the research mechanic, in which everything is researched at the same time, but you can specialize as needed. I like the tactical combat. The galaxy map is functional but attractive, other than the horrible grating sound which it makes every time you zoom in or out.

The cut-scenes are laughably bad! But this is an indie venture, and I'd imagine we're all up for forgiving cut-scenes in a 4X game, which we all skip past immediately after the first time anyway.

Horizon! It's officially being released in February, I believe, on Steam, which will make it the first official space 4X release of 2014.

We're all very excited! Assuming that there is a manual! You can't just drop SCAN STR on us.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Thu Feb 06, 2014 2:42 pm

The year of the space 4X game has officially begun, with the release of Horizon! Which was released! Like two hours ago!

I will post impressions after this weekend when I will spend at least a half hour with it!

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 5:24 pm

Wow! So far people really hate Horizon! Now I'm afraid to click the icon!

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Tue Feb 11, 2014 7:04 am

The time is right to launch a website dedicated to 4x games!

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Wed Apr 09, 2014 1:33 pm

The GalCiv 3 Alpha was released a couple weeks ago. It is in a bare-bones, stripped-down, barely playable state with old GC2 assets and half the game missing, and it's already the best space 4x to come out in the last five years.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Sat Apr 26, 2014 3:59 pm

Okay this is now the 2014 4x Game thread, because that's all that's coming out, and that's all I really enjoy anymore.

RELEASED:

Warlock 2: The Exiled
First Impressions: BITCHIN'
# of completed games: 0

Horizon
First Impressions: SUCKS
# of completed games: 0

EARLY ACCESS:

GalCiv 3
First Impressions: Greatest game of all time
# of completed games: 0

Endless Legend
First Impressions: Game Of Thrones Opening Credits: The Game
Second Impression: ALSO AWESOME.
# of completed games: 0

LOOKING FORWARD TO:

Civilization: Beyond Earth
First Impressions: Greatest game of all time, along with GalCiv 3.
# of completed games (assumed): 0

Predestination
First Impressions: They're really not going to all have Irish accents, are they? I mean, it's cute when Tina Beans does it, but god.
# of completed games (assumed): 0

Yes, I am the 4x MASTER. Except for actually ever playing any of them.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Sat Apr 26, 2014 4:01 pm

Oh also:

Age of Wonders 3:
First Impressions: Not bought, because Finsternis likes it and we can never like the same thing at the same time.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Fri May 30, 2014 3:43 pm

Wow, I found someone even crazier than TDR!

[youtube][/youtube]

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Fri May 30, 2014 3:56 pm

Also, speaking of StarDrive 2, I thought I was done with 2-D space 4x games (other than GalCiv 3).

But holy fucking pootiesuckers, is this the most beautiful thing ever or what?

[youtube][/youtube]

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Fri May 30, 2014 4:09 pm

HAAa ha haha.

Oh man.

Stardrive is now my favorite 4x franchise. Search reddit or steam forums to watch a bunch of FUCKING WHINY NERDS who have never left their house and think they might be gay because no women will get near them go apeshit about Zero's (the developer) behavior.

Here is the short and sweet of it:

1. Kickstarter says "will eventually feature multiplayer!"
2. People backed the Kickstarter.
3. The game is released without multiplayer.
4. The game is put on Steam without the promise of multiplayer.
5. Zero moves on to start developing SD2, admitting multiplayer is out of the reasonable realm of scope for SD1.
6. OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SHIT NEEERDRAAAGE!!!!!
7. Thousands of threads/posts all around the internet calling Zero a LIAR and a THIEF and LITERALLY HITLER.
8. Zero and the SD team start banning/erasing these posts in forums they have control over.
9. THE RAGE MULTIPLIES!!!!!!!!!

Oh man. Hey, maybe I'm wrong and I should be on the whine-fest side. But I enjoy this side much more.

(The guy in the video two up from here comments on his own video that what Zero did was "illegal", but he doesn't have the time or money to make suing him worth it. AHAHHAHAHahahah. "There was something on his Kickstarter page which he never implemented! ILLEGAL!!!!!")

Unbelievable.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Fri May 30, 2014 4:39 pm

The depressing part about all of this is that it just means adults are now allowed to act like children complaining they didn't get what they want for Christmas, and it's socially acceptable -- NAY, ENCOURAGED.

Thanks, Obama.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Sat May 31, 2014 11:03 am

Anyway, let's do a quick SPACE 4X ROUNDUP, featuring every theoretically upcoming SPACE 4X game, and my Twitter-length thoughts on them!

Galactic Civilizations 3 - The big daddy. They do weekly dev streams on Twitch which allow you to see how the game's progressing. Still looks like shit (old placeholder graphics) but I couldn't be more excited!

StarDrive 2 - Spoke of this one above, but very looking forward. He's saying "September" for release. We'll see.

Star Ruler 2 - The original Star Ruler was a bit of a magnificent mess. I could never quite figure out what was going on, and never finished a game of it. SR2 looks to be a much tighter experience. Let's see what happens!

M.O.R.E. - Almost two years after the successful Kickstarter, it appears to still be stuck in development hell. Will it ever come out? Will the devs ever even release any new screenshots? Hard to say. Getting a little worried about this one.

Predestination - At least on this one we have proof that progress is being made. Early backers have now had a peek at all three main "modules" of the game -- galaxy map, planetary management, and tactical combat. Each module separately looks pretty solid, but it remains to be seen if they can work seamlessly together. The UI at this point is quite rough around the edges, so hopefully that gets sorted out.

Lords of the Black Sun - Used to be called Star Lords. Then they got on Steam Early Access and changed the name to LotBS. Then... they completely disappeared. There hasn't been a post on the website or the forum for over a month. As the game stands now, it is unacceptably light in features and technological polish. Once at the top of my antipicated-list, it's now pretty much DFL.

StarLife - Another development hell game that the devs haven't provided an update for months. Is the project dead? Not officially, but it's hard to say.

Beyond Beyaan - This unabashed MOO1 clone continues to receive plentiful updates, and continues to look like it's being developed in MS Paint. Oh well, the price is right, and he seems like a nice guy, so let's hope for the best.

Galactic Inheritors - Just learned about this one. Looks like a pretty streamlined, basic space 4x. It's got stars, and ships, and tech, and lasers. There ya go.

Deep Space Settlement - This real-time 2.5D space 4x about deep space sett-- well, you know -- continues to look VERY cool, continues to be in active development, and continues to be developed by a GIRL. LOLOLlololol.

Star Czar - No updates from the dev in almost a year. I'm going to assume this is a dead project unless I hear otherwise. If I don't hear otherwise, this is the LAST I WILL SPEAK OF IT.

More updates as I figure out which ones I'm forgetting. Bottom line is, if you like space 4X, you're gonna be pretty busy over the next couple years.

Garth's Equipment Shop · Sun Jun 01, 2014 2:18 pm

Sweet, so basically these games are like the ultramodern 3d version of Tradewars. Cant wait to explore space! Oh hey, do any of them have a flight simulator mode? That would be cool as hell in space, especially if you can also land on planets and fly around on a planet you want to explore.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 4:06 pm

Garth's Equipment Shop wrote:Sweet, so basically these games are like the ultramodern 3d version of Tradewars. Cant wait to explore space! Oh hey, do any of them have a flight simulator mode? That would be cool as hell in space, especially if you can also land on planets and fly around on a planet you want to explore.

There are plenty of space flight simulators that let you do just that (check out http://www.starwraith.com/ for many good examples), but nobody's yet incorporated that into an honest-to-goodness 4x game. Good idea!

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 4:07 pm

pinback wrote:
Garth's Equipment Shop wrote:Sweet, so basically these games are like the ultramodern 3d version of Tradewars. Cant wait to explore space! Oh hey, do any of them have a flight simulator mode? That would be cool as hell in space, especially if you can also land on planets and fly around on a planet you want to explore.
There are plenty of space flight simulators that let you do just that (check out http://www.starwraith.com/ for many good examples), but nobody's yet incorporated that into an honest-to-goodness 4x game. Good idea!

EDIT: I guess some would say the X series attempted to do something like that, but they were all such colossal failures that it's not even worth editing a post to bring up, which I just did.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 4:08 pm

And I replied instead of editing, so that's a multi-dimensional failure.

Garth's Equipment Shop · Mon Jun 02, 2014 10:58 am

Hmm. Just realized that the wikipedia definition of 4x doesn't encompass most of the RTS games I've played like Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, Starcraft or my all time favorite Krush Kill Destroy 2 (KKND2). Oh and a more obscure title that never caught on that I loved was Desert Law. I'm a sucker for a good post apocalyptic setting.

I played the first couple Civilizations but found them a bit tedious for my tastes. I found myself missing the simpler days of good old god games like Populous or a good RTS like those already mentioned for their minimalistic resource management (relative to Civ) and more localized focus overall.

That being said, this thread is my first introduction to the latest 3d 4x games and those taking place in space in particular. A combination of factors which present themselves as an entirely new and fascinating world to me.

(snipped unrelated content. will add it at bottom...)

This thread is actually the first time I've even thought of Flight Simulator in decades! I can't wait to try out some of the latest 3d flight sims. Especially that space one you mentioned Pinback.

The prospect of adding to that a full fledged game involving galactic empires and all the things I loved about RTSs is exciting stuff. I read Asimov's entire series of Foundation & Empire (and Robot) related books and always thought what a great game setting it would make. These vast 3d 4x space games seem like they would really fill that void.

What exactly made those attempts at flight simulation in certain 4x space games a failure? Perhaps I wouldn't be so judgmental of them as the last flight sim I played was from way before 3d, when it was all 2d lines and flood-filled trapeziums. I'd imagine anything would impress this deprived and sheltered throwback. :D

(snipped part)
I was a huge fan of the first flight simulator back when you had to swap a gazillion floppies to play it but for some reason after computers started coming equipped with hard drives my interest turned to other types of games. Until HDs began being measured in Gigabytes instead of Megabytes it was a constant struggle to find room for games and things I wanted to keep. When CD burning came out I ended up with crates full of cd backups of everything which would remain in the box of backup CDs forever after never to be used again.

But one thing I remember thinking back then when I played the first Flight Simulator was 'this is just the beginning, this is only going to get better and better.' I could see that with Flight Simulator much more than I could with any other type of game back then. I didn't know to call it 3d back then but that is basically what I imagined flight simulator being once it fully matured. I remember seeing a few glimpses here and there of the advances made in the simulator genre years later and thinking I should check them out sometime but I never did.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 8:28 pm

I decided to play some of these space 4x games I have lying around the hard drive, just for kicks. I decided to set them to "easy" so I'd get the idea, but at least I wouldn't play it for 15 hours an then LOSE.

First up: Endless Space.

I just fucking LOST. After fifteen hours. On easy.

Fuck this. Fuck 4x, fuck space. Fuck everything.

Fuck.

Garth's Equipment Shop · Fri Jun 06, 2014 11:18 pm

pinback wrote:Fuck this. Fuck 4x, fuck space. Fuck everything. Fuck.

New best quote of 2014

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Fri Aug 29, 2014 2:48 pm

Holy crap!

I will just copy/paste the post I just wrote on Caltrops, about this:

purple hell wrote: What in the all-Christing ass-douche is THIS??!

I know there's a glut of space 4x coming our way, but nooooobody had heard of this until a reddit post a couple days ago saying "um, anyone wanna playtest my game"? And the shit is already more polished than pretty much every single other one of the 2492 "upcoming space 4x games" we've been hearing about for the last two years. Except for maybe [Star Ruler 2]. But maybe not!?!

At first glance it seems pretty "standard 4x"-y, with pausable-real-time, a unique research system and a focus on tactical fleet/carrier combat. But I mean. At least it EXISTS and you can actually PLAY it and it's not completely BROKEN or starting a SECOND Kickstarter because even though they tripled their original goal, it still wasn't enough.

The guy is not a native English speaker, so some of the in-game text is iffy at this point, but surprisingly not very much (except for the tutorial popups).