Gratuitous Space Battles.

[MinisterofDOOM]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1QYMFGEv5M

Yes. It lives up to it's name.

It's an interesting approach to space combat strategy. You design your ships, customizing their weapons, shields, armor, and a lot more, then you assemble your fleets for battle using a deep order-creation system. But then, when you click "start battle" it's hands-off. Your ships fight on their own, according to their outfitting and orders, while you watch and enjoy. You can zoom way out and observe the grand scale of battle, or you can zoom in and enjoy the carnage on a more personal level.

There are 3 categories of ships: battleships, frigates, and fighters. Fighters come in squads. You can assign engagement rules (even individual engagement conditions vs different ship classes and even on a per-weapon basis), make formations, assign ships to protect each other (a massive capital battleship with squads of fighters swarming protectively around it is a hell of an awesome sight!)...

There's a lot of depth to just about every aspect of the game, which makes for a wonderful degree of balance.

One of the best parts of the game, though, is the fact that you're not burdened with participating in the battles. Instead, you're allowed to sit back and enjoy the space carnage, which is indeed gratuitous. You can vary the speed of battle progress so there's no threat of things ever getting boring. But they don't, anyway.

It's the kind of game you can jump into for one match or sit and play for hours and hours...immensely playable and easy to just jump right into, but (I can only assume, as I haven't had it for long) difficult to master.

The game uses a masterful mix of detailed pre-rendered ship designs and beautiful effects to build some spectacular visuals while still being pretty lightweight as far as system requirements.

[positron1]

Looks pretty awesome and a great concept, I love space battles, bought a copy of Star Trek Legacy but I hear that it don't deliver.

[MinisterofDOOM]

Legacy's biggest problem is that it puts you in command of a small fleet (up to 4 ships) rather than just giving you one ship and letting you enjoy yourself. Being real-time, you end up jumping from ship to ship (they'll go AI control when you're not controlling them) to keep things from falling apart. Sucks a lot of the fun out of it.

[Warped161]

game looks cool, how far are they from an actual release?

[BusyBadger]

Looks pretty awesome and a great concept, I love space battles, bought a copy of Star Trek Legacy but I hear that it don't deliver.

If you're looking for a Star Trek ship combat game the only game that really does a decent job is Star Fleet Command. SFC II: Empires at War and the Orion Pirates expansion is the best offering.

The first one is too limited in ship offerings & missions available and the third one is "Next Gen" based and dumbs everything down too much where its not much of a challenge.

Bonus for you: its an older game, so its CHEAP.

[MinisterofDOOM]

game looks cool, how far are they from an actual release?

Actually, I'm not ENTIRELY sure if it's out now or not. You can pay now and download the beta right away. But the website claims it released on the 16th. So maybe it's out. I dunno. Either way, you get the beta insta-download and then you get a boxed game in the mail later.

[S133P3R]

is this for PC only? looks kinda fun.

[MinisterofDOOM]

Yeah, PC-only. Shouldn't need too much of a rig to run it, though. While there aren't any solid system specs yet, I imagine anything made in the last 3 or 4 years with a DX9 video card should be just fine.

[S133P3R]

sorry no pcs in my house.maybe ill get it for work tho...