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[mosshadow]

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Recently I found a pretty interesting 4X game MMORTS called Cosmic Supremacy. You play as the leader of an empire and you expand your control by sending out colony ships to other planets. The game play is complex with planets having populations divided into agriculture, industry and research each of which require upkeep and produce different items. Unlike games such as Astro Empires ship building is free form, each hull available is filled with parts by the player instead of premade classes. In addition instead of working in real time each Room (called a galaxy) runs on ticks which can run from 10 minutes on a practice Galaxy to 12hrs for a slow game. Unlike other space mmo games the client also renders the galaxy in 3D with procedurally generated planets and stars.



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More details can be found in this Q and A provided by one of the forum/server mods

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1agVcTpK2Rfnwz03F7Ia5n6dGgmpOf7VjkhPBxjFfdZI/edit


While the learning curve is steep in some areas, the game can be understood pretty quickly if you have had experience with Orion or FreeOrion or Sins of a Solar Empire. It is no where near as hard Aurora4X or Dwarf Fortress. As a indie game there are also some features you won't see in other games such as a rudimentary logic system that allows you to create "Governors" and "admirals" for your planets and fleets, these will accept a list of commands that works as a basic system of automation for more experienced players.


To join the game please use this link to their website : http://cosmicsupremacy.com/game_news.php

The downloads links are on that page along with installation and tutorial instructions

[mosshadow]

Lets Play Cosmic Supremacy
Galaxy 290

So right now I am starting my first round of an actual game instead of the practice and tutorial rooms. The client is activated by downloading a GalaxyPass which you take each time you enter a room. The first game I joined is simply called Galaxy 290, it starts on friday so right now the turn timer is not moving.





The game starts in 18hrs to allow players to join the room, sorta like a FPS team room. The timer is at the bottom along with my name, the turn number , ship count, money count and planet count. The middle box is a simplified view of my home planet. The first two columns are self evident, the third is population which is 7 out of 30 spots available. After that is ships again and Food production with the green part indicating surplus food. Next is production and research and which we will get to later. Then there is  0 where it says resource which is because my planet lacks miners. Next is citizens, soldiers and then what I am currently producing which is a farm.

Above that is the tabs which let me move between other  screens.

On a second screen which appears at the same time(not a tab) there is a 3D view of my system





Its not exactly sins of a solar empire but it does the job. My homeworld is the only one labeled and it also has my insignia which is just a picture I drew and had lying around my desktop. The 7 is simply the population and it says what is currently being built which once again is a farm I selected. The two blue triangles represent the colony ships I start out with, each of them can plop a couple of farmers down on a planet.

At the bottom are some options for marking my territory and measuring the distance between worlds. Cosmic Supremacy does not have any FTL drives at this stage of the game so your ships will manually drive across space to reach the next system.

Luckily space in CS is quite compressed


Anyway It would be a good idea to change the planet name first for some flavor







Tis a start.





Anyway while the ships aren't going to be moving for some hours I can set their actions right now



I'm going to tell both colony ships to colonize the other two  planets in this system so I can jack up my population and start building more ships or possibly using some of those to research more weapons. I don't think I even have mass drivers available so it would be pretty useful.





The two planets in the system look pretty similar one is slightly better at increasing population and research faster while the other is better at production which means its going to build its buildings and ships faster but only slightly.

There no reason to wait with these colony ships so I am going to send one to each planet now .




Too be continued

[mosshadow]

Right now thats all I can do ship wise, back on the other screen I flipped to the the planet view tab for Sufficient Velocity Prime.




Most of this is self explanatory, ships on the left buildings on the right. The middle is resources along with food and how fast my farm is going to be built at the bottom is my empty military so I probably should try to get more. Military comes from having enough food to funnel to the military food storage box in the middle, its controlled by a slider. When either bar fills up I get one more soldier or one more civilian. At the top of the screen it shows my civilians and I can change their occupations with a right click, for now Ill leave them as they are.

Moving on and skipping over several tabs which will only be used later there is the research tab.



Most of the technologies here are military based with only a few population improvement items. I am going to select Quantum Fields, the game will actually begin researching the two prerequisite technologies first but its good to plan ahead in case I miss a day or two.





And thats pretty much it for what I can do right now so lastly I'll check the overview panel which just shows me my troops and resources




Thats it for now.

[bulborbish]

Hey Moss, you may want to move this into the play with your buddies board, this is a discussion board only.

[ductape]

a bunch of us were playing this a ways back: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=62490.msg1432859#msg1432859

[Farce]

I have been waiting for an Aurora Lite forever.  PTW.

[mosshadow]

Hey Moss, you may want to move this into the play with your buddies board, this is a discussion board only.

Oh right, thanks.

[mosshadow]

Open Sesame Galaxy

Meanwhile as I wait for Galaxy 290 to finish its countdown lets talk about team galaxies. Galaxy 290 is just the standard easy level galaxy for all ranked players. Ranking is a system that just divides newer players from older players based on how they perform and how many times they have played. Galaxy 290 is open to new players and rank 1 players while Team galaxies and a few other galaxies require being rank 1 or above or submitting your name on a forum post to be give the special access code. I was able to talk to a game manager to get into Sesame.

As a team we have a small forum to our selves where we were given jobs, for example as a new player I am playing as the banker. That means I am supporting the team by focusing on turning my farmers into bankers, the banker population type just gives money instead of food, production or mining material. Money is used in upkeep, trading and speed boosting construction. My teammates have roles such as Vanguard which is basically a frontline fighter who I assume will be at the edge of our claimed systems. Other support roles that are working will be mining and scouting along with fleet which I suppose is our main offensive push unit.

When I open up the client this time I get a 3rd screen which gives me the option to customize the starting stats of my beginning planet.




Based on suggestions from other players I am going to min max so that I have more food and less research. As a banker I probably do not need to be researching weapons and ships.








After that I also have the option to change the traits of my Civ  such as food usage, income and fire power.



I am going take a few positives and no negative options.


So alot more food and money and a little bit of research and planetary defense. I could try Minmaxing all the ship offensive power and such but that sounds like a way into trouble.



Finally there is Civ name and Coat of Arms. I'm skipping this for now but you can see my default is familiar to some of you.






Looking through the research It seems that I should head this way to grab the banking center which gives me 40% more money for all my guys.



In addition it seems that in this advanced game there are more options unlocked in the research tab....




Well crap I did not expect an entire separate branch of stuff to get. Anyway I am going to head for reproduction, trade and then finance because that means even more money!








Anyway lets look at the 3D map.





So this time I start off with a bit more stuff, those 4 triangles are colony ships and I have 4 planets in this system so I'm probably going to send them all right now because it will be good to get the populations growing sooner rather than later. I could send them out into another system but that seems like a waste of time, plus I could run into an enemy player who rushed straight to lasers and my allies will be out of place to send help.




(the Big Picture above)

Checking the stats of each planet in the system I also find that they all have 30/30/30 stats for balance it seems.

There isn't much left to do now since the game hasn't started but finally I check the Home planet screen and activate the build farm option.



For now that's all I can do. Once the game starts I plan to head straight for a bit more population growth by keeping a bunch of farmers around, then Ill turn them into bankers for the shinnies while researching the banking options. Assuming nothing crazy happens in game that involves my teammates being wrecked by a fleet of dreadnaughts I plan to go on to planetary defense and a small combat fleet.

Too be continued saturday.

[mosshadow]

Galaxy 290
3/6/2015

For the Sesame Galaxy my teammates have told me that I should refrain from posting any pictures of the maps in the event that an opposing player reads on this forum so I am going to stick to Galaxy 290 and summarize the events of the team galaxy later. After I posted the previous images the map was reshuffled so those pictures are no longer relevant.


Anyway back in Galaxy 290 the game has finally started.







These images show the game 3 turns in. By now both colony ships have dropped off 2 settlers in each planet and they are now set to build farms. Population is pretty important because they determine how much research and production your planets create. The farm on my Home planet has also been finished and its now producing 25% more food that before. I am going to make another farm on the home planet so that I can get more food. At this stage of the game there isn't much in terms of buildings or ships to build because you need to research them so while the research is going I am going to build up the farms.

[mosshadow]

Galaxy 290
3/7/2015

Now the game is 21 turns in, each turn has been about an hour.




My population has grown pretty quickly, those two colony planets only had 2 farmers when I last checked.


Research wise



..... A bit slow, with only one scientist. I want those mass drivers please.




Unnamed planet no1 seems to have slightly more base research power than my home planet so I am going to rename it Alexandria (because Sci Fi means classical names) and assign it some scientists. Its also building a shipyard though I am not sure its needed.





And now the science power has tripled. It will only be 7 turns before the research is done rather than 21.
I also put in one miner to dig out the crystals it has because later on those are needed for ship parts.

[mosshadow]

Now then I also want to get a scout ship to look for more planets. So first I need to design my own.



Thats the ship design screen and its quite empty.
So with a right click I call up the ship design window



Right now I have nothing researched so the only thing I can place are some crap nuclear drives.


5 of them to be exact.
I then click ok on this design and I return to the planet view to add it to the production menu




At last I return to unnamed planet no2 and increase the amount of factory workers so that it can complete a new shipyard.



End of turn 21

[mosshadow]

Galaxy 290
3/8

Right now Its been about 43 turns so far.

One thing of note, is that the scout ship has been completed and sent on its journey to the nearest solar system back on turn 18





And shortly after it seems that we have first contact!





Unfortunately they do not seem to respond to our hails. It seems the alien mind may be incomprehensible. Or their leader is away from his keyboard. Either way the alien ship leaves soon after.



And a different one comes in! This one sticks around orbiting the sun. Hopefully it will answer our radio messages.





In addition my colony ships are completed so I filled them with two soldiers each( I have created about 7 so far)  The scout ship that was sent last night has found a new solar system and I am going to dispatch one colony ship to the planets with high research and high production. The last planet is a sort of a meh in terms of usability.





Meanwhile my researchers have finished their work on fusion tech so now I have mass drivers and fusion engines available. In addition they also got basic energy shields completed.
Thus I have designed my first combatship and started production, just for the sake of home defense until I can research planetary defense.



The firepower comes in two sections the light blue part is the damage done to small ships and the dark blue is the damage done to large ships, lastly is the damage done in bombardment against planets. Ship size depends on the hull used. The shields I believe do not stop all damage like Star trek, so they are not just Extra HP, they block a portion of damage but I am not sure how that is calculated since its possible to set the shield value over 100%. It would make your ship move VERY slowly though.






The last thing I do is set the research to planetary defense, at this stage its unlikely that other players have weapons but its a good idea to start early.