Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[miauw62]

Looks interesting, but I am worried it lost some of the sense of scale the original SPAZ had. The top-down view and lack of manoeuvrability of the bigger ships really gave me this gigantic space opera feel. Don't really see it as much here. Still very very curious. Loved the first game!

SPAZ never really had a sense of scale. Even in the lore it was explicitly stated that every system was basically completely isolated, and it damn sure felt that way. It also bugged me how insignificant Rez was in SPAZ. Late-game, if you lost a battle you were out of Rez and had to go do an hour long grind that you cant even alt-tab out of, to the point where I just ended up cheating in Rez in the end.

The game was pretty cool, but I always felt like it lacked a lot of depth. In the end I just resorted to mods and cheating to play through the game with a fleet of cloaked bombers.

[Gabeux]

Checked out SPAZ 2. No bugs and crashes found in 2-3 hours of play. Pretty fun, but I can see it getting grindy/repetitive.
Game has some features of different complexities that reminds me of games like Space Rangers (lots of independent pilots flying around doing stuff, that may or may not join factions), TerraTech (assembling your mothership using tractor beams to put or remove parts) and even Majesty (put bounties on things you want done / want to bring trouble to).

I guess the first chunk of the game is Combat, which is pretty straightforward. Some info:
- You get Energy / Ballistic / Kinetic weapons which are useful against Shields / Hull (health) / Armor respectively. Like TerraTech, individual parts (noses, wings and engines) of a ship can drop out of it if destroy its armor, and dealing actual Hull (health) damage requires you to hit Core/Sub-Core parts.
- You can boost your shields, taking half damage when boosting, but it consumes more power. Firing and Boosting Shields takes power from your capactior, which must be 'reloaded' once depleted - it's a vulnerable state in which you can't fire or boost/recharge shields - think Flux from Starsector.
- You can engage afterburners, which uses its own energy pool.
- You can take some "Strike Ships" to combat, which seem to be the ships from SPAZ 1.
- Weapons are attached on their parts. So Left-Wing-X has a Laser and Left-Wing-Y has a Cannon. Not sure if you can change weapons from a part.
- Some weapons have interesting properties. Like an Ion Missile that seriously eats shields and some sort of acid missile that drops a cloud which eats armor away, disassembling whole ships.
- If you want to have some interesting battles, each station offers an Arena mode which allows you to do an 1v1 fight and win resources (there are 5 difficulty levels and the rewards are one-time only)
- You can use your tractor beam to pull objects like debris and asteroids (of varying sizes), explosive barrels and the like, and throw it on your enemies..which is both amuzing and confusing. The enemy doesn't use his tractor beam, so it feels like a significant advantage at times.

I almost got to the part where you build your first Starbase, which I think is the second chunk of the game, so all I know is it uses transport ships to automatically gather the resources of your starbase's province.
You can also join an NPC faction and help them expand and upgrade. You can raid/plunder other faction provinces' resource generators, and much like Space Rangers you can get a pilot list (from factions, or not) if you want to systematically hunt them down or befriend.
Trading involves Ship Parts (Noses, Cores, Wings, Engines, Strike Ships) and resources (Rez, Scrap, Goons), Scrap being the currency.
Data is still your exp, and there's Lore lying around.


Well.. for an EA release version, I think it gives out a good clue to where the game's headed, and it felt polished.
I doubt it will be everyone's cup of tea, as it feels very arcadey (never thought I'd see spaceships with waving flags on top of them..), and I don't feel it excels in superficial-fun-stuff™ or deep-stuff™ at the moment. I'm not sure if everyone who enjoyed SPAZ 1 will enjoy it, either..you CAN fly the Strike Ships and change your camera to Top-Down, I guess.

I'm probably missing things, but if anyone is interested in it, make sure you watch some videos first.

[Anvilfolk]

SPAZ never really had a sense of scale.

I should've clarified. I meant the difference between the starting ships and the later big ships. They were incredibly slow, very well armed, and that made tactics really important. Decisions like, which side do I turn to now would have an impact 30s from now, as you'd only be able to turn around or use weapons efficiently if you'd planned ahead. I did two and a half playthroughs of it, I think, and I never ran into the problem other folks did, with having to grind. I mostly just attacked systems that were one or two levels above me, which were the right amount of challenge and always gave me a ton of experience/materials. I think that allowed me to avoid most of the grind.

Speaking of grind, they really revamped the system so there's much less boring grinding/sitting next to a mining station.

Not super sure whether this version of the game will allow us to build ships with the sense of scale the bigger ships in SPAZ1 gave me... I'd love to fly a huge, big, lumbering piece of DAKKA. I am curious to see how many cores you can get.


I'm also enjoying the open world so far. Yeah, it's not super complex. I'd say it's easily on par with M&B but more dynamic and more easily changed. I really like truly open worlds though, where you can legitimately make a difference or carve out a piece for yourself. I also really like the idea of 200 captains just moving around, and having distinct relationships between each other. I wonder how deeply you can delve into and leverage that.


I could really do with an easier ship-builder though. Having to disconnect however many parts just to get another core piece in there... ugh.

[Gabeux]

Try the arena modes to get a feel for the different designs. I played one that felt more like a carrier, one that was more 'technical' with shield leech and other stuffs, one that was a flanker/dakka-focused ship, and probably one or two more..so I think there's a ton of flexibility. It just really needs a better shipbuilder and ways to sort/find desired equipment (think the Information and Search system of Space Rangers).

I also felt some resemblances to M&B, so the game seems like a good mix of things I loved in sandbox, open world and/or open ended games.

[Mattk50]

the ship design system is pretty garbage, especially the limitation by cores. If your not doing an L-shape your gimping yourself to a huge degree.

also i beat the story/campaign extremely quickly, i dont get it, is this just a sample for EA or something?

[Gabeux]

No idea either. Somehow it makes it seem like it's the finished game, that may or may not receive additions and changes..but yeah, the story is really short and shallow - there's like 2 times you have to grind in order to gear up and beat the next story event (which is easier now as some stuff got balanced), which is what takes the longest time to complete.
They'd be crazy to call this the whole thing.

Oh, and the idea of having a faction and building up/hiring people is nice. By the end I was just putting a ton of bounties all around and people would just clear the space for me to build..felt like Majesty, except the tasks people accomplished independently were much more useful.
But I really wish they went for a Space Rangers 2 + Mount'n'Blade thing. Even though I had fun, I wish it had more depth/complexity.

[Mattk50]

bounties are pretty silly, you can spend tons of fuel getting allover the place manually conquering everything or just bounty at minimum and the enemy empire will evaporate. Also noticing lots of my stations just kinda delete themselves after some time without being attacked, im not sure if its some hidden upkeep cost or what but its making it hard to take the whole map.

anyways, one day with this game and i think i'm done.

[Gabeux]

Yep, that needs to be balanced. A loooot of things on this game feels like they need to be balanced, actually.
I've played 2-3 days, I think (~12 hours?), so it really is a hard sale. Then again, it's a 10USD game, I suppose?
This never seems much like an excuse to me, since one of my favorite games of all time is FTL and I think that cost me 5$ back then.

I don't know about stations disappearing. As long as you assign them to faction members, it should be okay. The more stations you own, the higher their upkeep, starting at 50% on your second station. No upkeep for member-assigned stations (since the upkeep is theirs to keep).