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[DeltaV_11.2]

Solar war is a 2D empire management game in which you play as the commander of Earth's fleet, tasked with removing the alien menace from the outer reaches of the Solar System.

The game is very obviously inspired in its theme by X-Com, having a time-based strategic element combined with a turn-based tactical system. The biggest difference is that in Solar War, the focus is much more on how you equip your force than how you lead it in combat. For example, here is the screen for outfitting a ship, before you add any components to it:



And here's the same screen afterwards:


Scrolled:


The basic concept is that your ship has three limits on what it can carry in terms of weapons and equipment: mass, power, and heat. Every component consumes some amount of this. Say you want to add another shield-piercing laser to your ship, but don't have enough power. You could either add additional powerplants to your ship, or you could modify the ship to use larger powerplants. Usually, either of these options will put you over heat, meaning you'll have to reduce structure(HP) to add venting, or over mass, which will mean that you have to make savings elsewhere. You can only go over on heat, but if you do your ship will overheat as long as enough components are active.

Once you've built your fleet, you have to fight the alien fleet. I haven't played the harder difficulties yet, so I don't quite know how hard the AI pushes you then, but from what I saw on the easy difficulty it maintains a pretty good tech lead on you, but it doesn't really defend its bases yet, though the designer did say that that will be fixed in the next update.

The Solar System:


Right now the game is in Alpha, and is available on Desura. There is a demo as well, which limits you to the level of Cruiser, the first ship fitted with a Warp Drive for insystem travel.

Link to Trailer:
http://youtu.be/edFmFDdb-Dc

Website:
http://solarwar.net

[jocan2003]

To me it look more like a lite version of Aurora than X-Com. Nonetheless im am getting that game as soon as humanly possible.

[FritzPL]

Also, PLEASE don't use imageshack, post images to imgur instead.

[Frumple]

Demo's pretty neat. Kinda' bare-bones and I feel like, zero feedback on what works in combat (due mostly to the starbase 1-shotting light cruisers... sometimes multiple per turn) and everything feels either flimsy or unkillable -- there generally doesn't seem to be a space between "somewhat damaged" and "dead". Something's either taking basically no damage or it's exploding. S'kinda' weird.

Demo's pretty boring once research is capped out, though. You can clean out and colonize and crap the initial four planets, but after that there's just not much you can do besides suicide cruisers at juptier for giggles. Eh.

Definitely won't be buying it, but I won't be filching it either Might be neat to check up on it again post-beta or somethin', though. Has potential, I'd say.

[Hanzoku]

I agree that it has potential, but that I'm holding off on throwing money at it straight away.

General gripes:
- Destroyer hull is basically unusable in the demo. The required power requirements tanks the heat exchange, and the technology in the demo means that you can't assign a meaningful combat loadout to the destroyer class. For some reason, I refuse to build ships that will bake their occupants within 3 combat rounds.
- Description of technology needs a bit more work - I'm not really sure why I would use a particle beam versus a fusion laser, for example.
- 'No, duh' tech increases should always be selected in a new design - best available armor, best available structure. If you want to step back to an older version, that's fine, but you shouldn't always have to select the most current options for these.
- Why can a ship not have both active and passive sensors? I'm guessing because it's a linear upgrade of passive -> active -> ?, but it could use more explanation.
- There needs to be a way to scrap unneeded ships. For example, all the useless fighters and corvettes once you're building frigates regularly.

It's a really good demo for the alpha, gripes aside, and I'll need to keep an eye on this when it's closer to release.

[Drakale]

I liked the demo quite a bit, lot of potential. I especially like the curved trajectories for inter-planet movement.

If I wanted to critique it I would say that the current gameplay in the first few year is too static. Without warp technology that is only unlocked after the cruiser you just sit at earth with nothing to do except research and the occasional fight.

I really wish it was possible to assemble ships in squadrons or subfleet that can be controlled as one unit in battle to cut on the micromanagement. Building orders need a Build x Ship option too, building a fighter every 4 days get old. At the moment I feel the only way to go is bigger ships, fleet of small ships are really too tedious to control. Controlling 50 fighters in one stack would be fun I think, and would give more incentive to massing some small weaponry in your fleet to protect against them.

Some ship building restrictions feel a bit artificial too. Why can't I build a fusion engine/reactors for my fighters, even with advanced tech? As it is the bigger ships are actually faster than the fighters due to that restriction. Radar come in one size per tech level too. In the end I  found there are not that many effective design you can build for each hulls, at least in the span of the demo.

[forsaken1111]

looks like it has promise. PTW

[Mephansteras]

looks like it has promise. PTW

Indeed. The world needs more games that mix the Strategic and Tactical levels like X-Com

[Tellemurius]

can i get bigger screens man, i can barely see those.

[Zangi]

Also, PLEASE don't use imageshack, post images to imgur instead.

can i get bigger screens man, i can barely see those.

^


Initial Thought: Aurora Light, but I havn't looked at the website... nor can I see those pictures.  Will check later. 
AKA: PTW

[USEC_OFFICER]

Initial Thought: Aurora Light, but I havn't looked at the website... nor can I see those pictures.  Will check later. 
AKA: PTW

It's pretty much Aurora Light with an X-COM like research tree welded on top. The pacing is completely off though. By the time that I was expanding off of Earth I had already researched all of the demo tech (or close enough, at least) and had an almost unbeatable fleet of starships. Also Starbases and Defence Batteries are completely overpowered. Once you have them over your colonies, they'll generally tear through enemy ships like there's no tomorrow, especially once you get the light/medium fusion upgrades for them. But once they fix the balance and pacing, this ought to be a fun game.

[BuriBuriZaemon]

Has HUGE potentials, please keep on working on this.

[Zangi]

So... is there going to be pilots/crew?  Or is it just all AI/Drones?

[Hanzoku]

It's all pilots and crews, in fact. Fighters and Corvettes use 1 to 3 officers, however frigates and upward have (at least) four officers and crews of 200+.

To assign officers and crew, click on the ship and click on the button 'Details'. You can manually assign people by clicking on a position, or have the system assign the highest-skilled person to the ship by clicking on the 'Auto assign' button.

[MrWiggles]

ptw