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[GirlscoutBob]

This is by far my favourite strategy space game since Masters of Orion, by far. By far.

Although my ship designing skills can do with some more creativity at the start of the game, since if I can't find any remnant tech to capture all I tend to build is small fighters with nothing but missiles and warp engines, small freighters with nothing but missiles and warp engines, frigates with nothing but missiles and warp engines...

Obviously my ships therefore tend to be a bit vulnerable without any shields, armour or maneuverability; So I add some more missile turrets for extra defence!

My wonderful missile-to-enemy ratio blots out the stars with devastating effect; Until the Opteris create a punitive fleet that perfectly counters my many missiles :O

PS: The dev stated that broadside-firing weapons are on his soon-to-do-list, happy days!

[Ygdrad]

I'm currently itching to buy this one. What's the verdict as of today?

[Sean Mirrsen]

The dev ran out of letters for the 1.06x test build versions, so the bugfixing orderly progressed into the 1.07 test version. In other words, there's a great need for a pest exterminator in this house, though the owner seems to have some good success cleaning the rooms by himself. The house, however, is a modern reimagining of a classic design with excellent structure and great capacity for expansion, and definitely worth staying at - as long as you don't mind the occasional nest of ants under your mattress.

In other words, the verdict is: Buggy in places, but constantly worked on (technically still in beta), and quite playable as it is, not to mention highly enjoyable.

[jocan2003]

The dev ran out of letters for the 1.06x test build versions, so the bugfixing orderly progressed into the 1.07 test version. In other words, there's a great need for a pest exterminator in this house, though the owner seems to have some good success cleaning the rooms by himself. The house, however, is a modern reimagining of a classic design with excellent structure and great capacity for expansion, and definitely worth staying at - as long as you don't mind the occasional nest of ants under your mattress.

In other words, the verdict is: Buggy in places, but constantly worked on (technically still in beta), and quite playable as it is, not to mention highly enjoyable.

That it really worth its price tag believe me, some bug are a pain yes, still need some optimisation here and there but overall, if you have a decent computer youll enjoy your game believe me.

[Ygdrad]

I'll be getting it. Sadly, hardware that should be decent or even really good has issues with games it shouldn't break a sweat running. Because of developpers' inability or unwillingness to code for multiple cores, an old 3.8ghz pentium from 2006 would probably run games better than my current quad 2.5ghz. Also, because the hardware wasn't overly great back then, games were just better optimized than they are now in a lot of cases. Looking through Stardrive's forums though I can see the dev is trying to improve performance. With some luck I'll be able to run it smoothly.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Stardrive actually supports multicores. Supporting them is actually the cause of a lot of the recent bugs. ^_^

[Shades]

I'm currently itching to buy this one. What's the verdict as of today?

Personally I was actually disappointed in this game, although that might have mostly been that my expectations where too high.
I did enjoy it for a while but quickly found it fairly generic, that said updates appear to happen fairly often so it may just be I need to wait and try again.

Edit:
That said don't take this as a recommendation not to get it, I spent many hours when I first got the beta and I'm sure I'll go back to it again eventually.

[Ygdrad]

How's the difficulty? Is it challenging? Most 4x games tend to see you snowball into an unstoppable victory as you amass a bigger unit blob than the enemy with little to no challenge past early game skirmishes.

[Shades]

How's the difficulty? Is it challenging? Most 4x games tend to see you snowball into an unstoppable victory as you amass a bigger unit blob than the enemy with little to no challenge past early game skirmishes.

Early on it can be tricky, although once you start steam rolling you get a similar classic snowball effect. However there is a nice speed mechanic meaning the defender is likely to be able to move ships around faster than your attack fleet can transition so you find them recapturing when you move away a lot more than other games.

Also if you attack with your whole fleet you'll suffer badly as it can take a very long time to get back to home when you notice your under-attack yourself so you can't just make bigger blobs all the time.

[Sean Mirrsen]

The key point - or one of the key points, but by all accounts the biggest one - in attaining victory is the design of your ships. You can spam cheap ugly fighters and throw them against the enemy, sure, but a well-designed cruiser can take on innumerable dozens of fighters without breaking a sweat. Winning on sheer technology alone is feasible, but properly utilizing it is still key. So when you win your first fights against the AI, you'll likely have a number of good ship designs built for the race you're playing as.

And then when you next play the game against that race, you get to see all of your ship designs used against you. The AIs will happily use the same designs that you created for yourself.

It's a bit like Spore in that regard. You can also look through the forums and download ships designed by other players, so that the AI can hammer you with them.

All in all, the AI is not without its faults, as in any game, but for the most part defeating a decently successful AI is a challenge, especially without resorting to, say, assault trooper spam or early planetary bombardment rushes. Not least because amassing a bigger unit blob is a challenge in and of itself - the AIs do a good job of managing their economy.

[Shades]

And then when you next play the game against that race, you get to see all of your ship designs used against you. The AIs will happily use the same designs that you created for yourself.

That I never noticed, either my designs are terrible (likely) or I need to go back and play it more...

[Girlinhat]

Playing with a random race every time gets challenging pretty quickly.  You find yourself trying to outdo yourself, as you face your own ship designs and have to design something new to beat them every time.

The AI can also wreck you if you're not smart.  They use the same economy model as the player, and in this game it actually means that you've got the same force.  In other games you see the AI floundering or using cheats to compete, but here you see some legitimate challenge, especially once you get multiple enemies at once.

[sebcool]

Yeah, the AI is really good at managing their economy and research. Even on Normal difficulty you will have a hard time getting ahead in research, let alone military. I'm spamming ships to the point of breaking my economy, and I'm still at the bottom rank. Not to mention how ruthless the AI can be against weak players.

Of course, the AI's standard ships are painfully unoptimized, and they don't seem to understand how I keep beating their asses with my 50% bonus from Pack Mentality. Pro tip: Always use Pack Mentality. It's ridiculously powerful if you play your cards right.

[Dwemeral]

Need your honest opinion. Is worth the buy or not because from I heard the game is good but some people claim the developer is doing to some shady things like silencing opinions that think negatively of the game. And I don't want to throw 26 bucks on what could be another Eador.

[forsaken1111]

I've played the game quite a bit and I enjoy it, but I also feel that its still lacking a lot of polish. There are events in the game that still don't even work correctly.