StarDrive

[Anktark]

Anyone else been incapacitated with it? I spent a lot of time in ship design, probably more than in other parts of the game. Great 4X piece of art and very similar to what I would consider a near-perfect 4X game.

 

[Thurlor]

After a recent desire to get back into some good old space based 4X games I found StarDrive but quickly found it to be shallow in all but ship design. Then I discovered Distant Worlds (with expansions) and I couldn't believe I had never heard of it before. It has now become my favoured time-sink.

I must admit that I quite liked the species selection in StarDrive. My particular favourite were the Kulrathi.

 

[Anktark]

After a recent desire to get back into some good old space based 4X games I found StarDrive but quickly found it to be shallow in all but ship design. Then I discovered Distant Worlds (with expansions) and I couldn't believe I had never heard of it before. It has now become my favoured time-sink.

I must admit that I quite liked the species selection in StarDrive. My particular favourite were the Kulrathi.

I like Kulrathi the best too! Honourable hi-tech armored samurai bears from space? How can you not like them?

Looked into Distant worlds a little and from what I gathered, it has good AI managment witch is quite useless in StarDrive. Is there anything specifically great about DS (unique)?

StarDrive was mostly made by one person (INT for sure) and has a good idea about what it was meant to be. Then again, it does need finishing and polish. Ability to design my own ships is what sold me.

 

[Thurlor]

If you want complexity in ship design then I can't really recommend DW as it's ship design is limited to adding components with weight and energy requirements to certain hull classes (escort, frigate, etc).

However, in most aspects it is the best 4X game I've played. The civilian trade network and vast potential scale sell it for me. The game doesn't really have any unique features (in regards to gameplay and mechanics). What it does have is basically all the various 4X mechanics combined in a single real-time 4X game.

I will however warn you that most people seem to regard DW's learning curve as quite steep. I never found it so, but I enjoy learning the way a game plays and am willing to restart many times in the early days. I also went to uncommon route and switched off all automation from the get go (another cool feature - the whole game can be automated and you can sit back and watch how the AI deals with your empire).

My biggest complaints would be;
- The lack of graphs.
- The lack of decent fleet management.
- The inability to customise species.
- The lack of differing types of ftl.


Looking back at how much I've typed I come to the conclusion I must really like DW.

 

[Anktark]

Alrighty then, I shall give DW a try. Learning curve is one of the better parts of the game, IMO. It's why I obsessed over EVE so much and then quit- the whole system is mighty complex, but separate details- not so much. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to solo it