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[forsaken1111]

I love Startopia, and replay it at least once every 6 months or so. It is a very good blend of action, management, and simulation. I enjoy the management aspect of running a space station with limited resources, relying on external trade and relations to survive and make a profit.

Is there any other game like this? I have been looking for a long time for a modern game with Startopia's charm and fun.

[Pathos]

It's sad that Startopia got a bit of editting done to it. =( You were going to be able to have those giant gorilla things wandering your environment deck (which was a lot larger originally) as well as more alien species, including non-sentient ones.

What're the mods for it like?

[forsaken1111]

I don't know, I haven't used any mods. I love the game as-is. I usually do a hard game with 3 AI players and the economy set to difficult, research to slowest. Its a lot of fun, and a real challenge.

[Sowelu]

Space Colony is halfway between Startopia and The Sims.  It takes place on a planet surface, but really, the whole core is there.

Okay, maybe 3/5 of the way towards The Sims.  If you hate Sims games, you won't like it much, but if you're neutral, give it a shot.  The economy will be simpler than what you're hoping for, but maybe you'll like the time management aspects.

I found it when I was looking specifically for Startopia-like space station sims, myself...


...If you're willing to look a little farther out of the genre, Outpost 2 is a planet-side game that is halfway between Startopia and (your favorite RTS here).  I recommend it a lot, if you like Space Colony, though it's a little dated now and will run a little funny.  A typical day in Outpost 2 is sending a bulldozer out to the distant plateau where your surveyor found high mineral concentrations, so that it can pre-pave your building sites so you can get set up faster; your vehicle factory is churning out an extra construction vehicles so you can load up a nursery in addition to the vital command center, structure factory, vehicle factory, and smelter when you set up your new base, while you're frantically loading the structure kits onto your existing ConVecs and managing your ore hauling trucks to do a couple runs to your backup mine before the FREAKING VOLCANIC ERUPTION pours lava onto your primary base.  Meanwhile you've just researched better seismology so you have advance warning of earthquakes, and you've just re-tasked your labs onto faster scientist training time.  Then you find out that, while all this is going down, Plymouth colony has sent a couple combat vehicles over to say hello under cover of darkness...Outpost 2 has a pseudo-fog-of-war, you have satellites so you can always see everywhere, BUT there's also a day/night system and you can turn off your vehicles' headlights to keep them from being highlighted on the map at the cost of halving their speed (naturally, nice, cheap light towers at distant choke points are a good defense against someone sneaking up on you that way).

Yeah, Outpost 2 is a hectic management game in campaign mode, and a blast in multiplayer.  Plus it came with an in-game novella that advanced at about a chapter per campaign mission.  Pity it's about ten years old now.

[Bluerobin]

Wow... that sounds pretty awesome. I'll have to check that out.

[forsaken1111]

I have played both Outpost 2 and Space Colony. They are good games I agree, but neither really has the same feel as Startopia.

[Bluerobin]

Oh holy crap... I HAVE Outpost 2. Somewhere. I was looking at screenshots and realized that it looked a lot like a game I've been wanting to play again recently. Thanks for bringing it up!

Edit: and yeah, Startopia is a pretty unique game. I don't really know of many other games like it... kind of a theme park tycoon + RTS almost. I've discovered it's really hard to describe to people that haven't played it.

[fenrif]

Startopia always reminded me of Dungeon Keeper. If you've not played it it's definatly worth a download.

It's not set on a space station, but it has the same style of gameplay I think.

[forsaken1111]

The only space station management games I find are some relating to the real-life ISS and a few meh looking shareware indie games. I wonder why this genre is so neglected.

I have played Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2, Evil Genius, Overlord, etc. More looking for a sci-fi game with the management/trading vibe.

[Sowelu]

While I'm at it, I want to disrecommend "Moonbase", from the era of the original SimCity and visually looking very similar.

It's a pretty awesome idea.  But there is a very loose correlation between "what's fun" and "what's necessary", large events happen arbitrarily, and the game balance is TOTALLY WRECKED.

If you play Moonbase for half an hour, you get the impression that it's a really cool game that should have started a genre.  If you play it for even a full hour, you discover that it's a badly-executed game that nearly killed off the genre before it could get started.

[forsaken1111]

Well that sounds 'fun'...

Shit maybe I should just learn programming and make my own game.

[PTTG??]

I was just about to start a Startopia thread when this caught my eye.
 
If I can set up a VPN (or someone can convince me to use gamespy, if it even exists anymore), is anyone interested in a game?
 
I was thinking it would be interesting if it was divided into quadrants where one player has to have a Hot biodeck, the one on the opposite side has to have a Cold one, and the other two sides need to be Dry and Wet. I guess you could do that in single-player...
 
That's always been the main draw for me, messing with the BioDeck.
 
If I was going to re-make it, I would mainly make it larger and with a better management system- it's easier to order 25 or even 60 crates to be made in DF than it is in Startopia, with those tiny 9-step queues.
 
Heh, startopia mod for DF.

[forsaken1111]

It would be nice to even have a repeat order for the factory. I get around the 9 crate limit though as I usually had 2 sections devoted to just factories and the 30 or so salt hogs who worked them.

[PTTG??]

Ok, ok, you convinced me. I set it up on my spam machine with gamespy and if necessary I can put it on the DMZ or whatever. I do have a weird connection, though, so if someone has a fixed IP, we would be a better place.

The THREAD

[forsaken1111]

I should mention that I've never gotten a multiplayer game to work over modern VPN systems.