Starbase Orion
4x Strategy gaming in your pocket
So I mentioned this on a thread somewhere and it seems very few people have heard of this brilliant title. It is basically a MoO2 with better multiplayer. In the game, you build up your forces from spaceship parts that you research, using credits, time and population as resources. You will have to find a perfect balance between food, industry and research as you expand your empire. Others will be out to stop you dead in your tracks. Here are some features:
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Randomly generated universe: Play on a small, medium or large universe which is randomly generated every time for more !!FUN!! and variety.
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Fantastic AI: A rarity in 4x games, the AI in this game supposedly got recognition in a worldwide AI competition, and has a host of different difficulty levels, and you can play with up to 3 of these at once. Easy was a challenge for my first game, and people are reporting that the hardest difficulty (Impossible) requires a lot of skill and knowledge of the game to beat
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Variety of races: Choose from 5 races, or create your own. Similar to MoO, you can create your own race with good things and bad things about it. Bad things give you more points to spend, and you start with 10 to allocate. The other 5 races are varied and interesting
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Tech tree: Choose from certain technology to research in the game to aid in your conquest. Certain technologies will have to be picked over others (picking red techs in the tree will make other techs disappear) meaning you will have to pick what you need in any given situation.
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Ship designer: Choose from a variety of hulls and weapons, each with different ranges, damages and costs. You can build a quick scout ship with basic weapons, or a warship with a large variety of nuclear missiles. What you build will impact your strategies in battle
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Somewhat tactical battles: Works a bit different to other 4x games. In an attempt to bring this game to game center multiplayer, some things had to be sacrificed. What actually came out is a clever combat system that allows you to set up your fleet to counter the other fleet. You can set orders to what range you want your ships to try and fight at, you can set them to hold position, evade and you can set what ships you want to fight: weak ships, strong ships, closest ships etc. Choosing the right options will mean the difference between a defeat on turn 1 or a victory.
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MULTIPLAYER: This is what the developers wanted to have in the game, and almost all their decisions were focused around this. Basically, players are pitted against each other in certain setups, and are tasked with destroying the opponent. You take a turn whenever you want, and when someone else takes a turn in the same setup, you are matched up with said person. A recent update also allowed players to take a turn, which ended the turn, and then take their next turn as well, rather than having to wait for the next player. This effectively doubled the speed at which turns are played out. Of course, you can play against your player in a few sittings, or over the course of a few days or weeks, possible even months. A huge amount of work went into the multiplayer, and when you get a good worthy opponent, it shows.
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Auto management building system: Tedious empire management is solved with an empire screen that is efficient and fast at allowing you to pick what you want to build and where you want your population working. Some fantastic automation features have been added as well, allowing the AI to build things for you depending on what you want, and they tend to build what is best. It works, and you can still manually do everything if you so desire. With a new update, you can now tweak you build orders and make your own custom automated system that suits your playstyle, race and needs.
The good:*Streamlined a little bit from MoO2, but done in a manner that makes sense for an iOS device.
*Constantly being updated with player requested features about once a week
*Game is fairly balanced towards multiplayer
*AI are a challenge
*Combat is different, but makes sense and works well for the iOS devices
*Very diverse choices in play options when it comes to strategies, and race selection and creation
The bad:*No diplomacy - This doesn't bother me at all, but I can see why people want this option in. When you meet another race at the moment, they speak to you and talk about how much better things would be if they controlled your colonies. Developers are considering adding this, as it has been asked for a lot. The only form of diplomacy at this time is spying, which allows you to steal techs from other races. Useful, but not a huge thing.
*Small balance issues - They aren't very big or bad, but the options in the race design giving you bonus food are a tad too powerful. Also a racial disadvantage, repulsive, weakens spy operations, but they were not an important mechanic to begin with, and people often take it for free points to place elsewhere. Yet again, developers are looking into solutions
*A small little niggle that people don't seem to like is a scout discovering a hostile planet, usually means that scout will die because it can't retreat. It doesn't bother me, but it does bother others. As of update 1.1, scouts and other ships can retreat from battle as long as they have a certain amount of health remaining.
*Ground invasions - something that the developers would like to work on, there is a simple system surrounding ground invasion. In short, marines are the invaders, and whoever has more wins. It is very simple, and something that people have wanted to be more complex.
*Small tech trees - Like all the bad things in this list, the developers have acknowledged that the tech tree is quite small and doesn't take much to research as much as you can. Some techs are unique and useful, but it leaves a fair bit to be desired, but the developers do want to add more.
*Pricing - Finally, this issue is small. The price is 8USD, but many do not know whether this is what they are looking for or not, with no demo to speak of. It is 100 percent worth it, but I am almost guaranteeing it will put some off and stop some from purchasing what is otherwise a fantastic title
Definitely get this. It stays faithful to its big brother, MoO2, but does enough to not consider it a straight up port or clone, and is built with iOS devices in mind. It has a good multiplayer, strong AI, and good combat system all mixed in with that 4x goodness that people like.
NOTE: To play multiplayer, you need gamecenter plus iOS 5 or higher. The same for iCloud as well I think, which allows you to transfer saves from one device to anotherHome page for Starbase Orion
http://www.chimerasw.com/starbaseorion/Read this to get a vision of the game and what the devs want to do with the game
http://www.chimerasw.com/starbaseorion/?page_id=2Here is the game on the appstore
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/starbase-orion/id438375580?mt=8