When I see something like “The Horticultural Syndrome” written above a planet, I want to know more.
Levels are randomised, usually containing several anomalies that cause ships to jump to another position on the map, plenty of asteroid fields to use as cover, and an objective to defend, escort or destroy.Īll of the missions have fancy names that sound like they could be the title of a piece of short fiction in Planet Stories, or the name of a forgotten Star Trek episode. The other level – and the heart of the game – is tactical ship-to-ship combat. You'll also build improvements, wonders and cities at the strategic level, as well as improving your fleet. The first is the strategic level, in which you send your fleet from planet to planet, performing tasks for the occupants in order to gain influence over them. It conducts its business quickly and cares little for the pleasantries. Starships is more like a firm handshake of a game. At first I thought the game was slight enough that a passing bumblebee might have distracted me but after a few restarts and a successful Epic size campaign, I'm securely within Starships' clutches. None of the embellishments distract from the tactical and strategic play though, which is a relief. Aesthetically, Starships is plain – the strategic map is caught part way between tidy abstraction and dramatic representation, and the repeated vocal acknowledgements had me reaching for Brian Eno's Apollo rather than enduring them for more than half an hour. There are only a few visual elements to understand and they're all distinct and legible. The graphics don't convey the wonder of space but they're functional and I use that word in a positive sense. It's a game that runs as well as it can on the weakest hardware its available on and unless you're reading RPS in 1982, that's not going to be your PC. Other than that, the game plays well on PC, despite from the lack of any customisable settings whatsoever. Doing so immediately moves the fleet instead of providing access to the other choices and there's no undo button to correct mistakes. Hovering the cursor over a location brings up a radial menu, with construction options popping out above the central icon, but even after playing for a few hours I still click that central button without meaning to from time to time. The UI does feel touch-friendly and I've occasionally sent my fleet to a planet by mistake when intending to construct a city there.
Sid meiers starships and beyond earth Pc#
The game is available on tablets but I've only played the PC version. It's simple to learn, best played in short sessions and based around a ruleset that feels suited almost as much to a tabletop as to a tablet. Rather than considering Starships in relation to Beyond Earth, it's far more sensible to think of it as an extension of some of the ideas in Ace Patrol. In the Firaxis stable, Starships' closest sibling is Ace Patrol, the excellent turn-based dogfighting game that seemed to appear in bright blue skies, fully-formed a couple of years ago. After playing for a couple of days, I find myself wishing that it did. Starships does not take place in that world. There's a world of wonder in that exclamation mark, a world in which an inept starship captain blunders from one planet to the next searching for pieces of a galactic treasure map, raids a space station and retires on a distant moon, married to the Lunar Governor's daughter, It's not part of the Pirates! family either, much to my disappointment. Starships shares a story and theme with Civilization: Beyond Earth but it's not part of the Civ family.
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