What are your favorite games of all time?

I know I'm a contentious bastard for replying just to this tidbit, but:

I totally understand feeling burned by SotS2, but SotS was pretty crap at launch too. Worse? Probably not. It's fairly enjoyable now if I do say so myself, and I'll be sorely disappointed if it doesn't get at least one expansion due to the terrible reputation it's garnered. I do fear that it's just not going to happen at this point regardless of how the game has improved though...

Er, right. Let me justify this post then.
I have a hard time making a "top" list, so in no particular order:

Sins of a Solar Empire.
Gothic I&II, maybe even III in some strange fashion (don't judge me)
Darius Gaiden
Shin Megami Tensei II
Tetris Attack
Riven
Sword of the Stars: A Murder of Crows (didn't appeal to me much before AMOC and ANY)
Uru

 

Does this make me a contentious bastard squared then? Or simply an off-topic kinda guy?

It is of quite some importance for me though, so I'll risk it.

SotS is a GREAT game. LOVE it!
As such, I prepurchased SotS 2, along with (at the same time) HOMM 6.
Ouch.

Well that taught me, again.

I do feel SotS 2 has improved greatly though. I tried to play it when it came out, but stopped after 4 hours of ... yuck.
The incredibly regular and many patches since however have lifted my spirits, along with the reputation the studio has for fixing things, along with their candid (and Paradoxes too) behaviour and communicative devs and their apologies. So I decided not to take their offer for a refund and consider it an extra gift for the original SotS that I got incredibly cheap at a steam sale, including all expanions.
And I am still optimistic and very much planning to play it extensively in the now very near future. Maybe somewhere in may.

Long story short: cheer up, people may grow to love it yet, if it deserves such. I also hope an expansion will come, just so it can get new reviews for example. I hope I will enjoy it when I start it up in a few weeks (if I'm not too busy).

 

The comments section of GoG is bugged for me. I never get to any but the first page of comments.

I searched and found this:

Master of Orion 1 unofficial patch

Reading the changelog, it sounds great. No more bait-ships and cheese tactics for the game.

Just to throw it out there, even in the latest official patch, you can build a bunch of Missile bases and develop nice missiles to be launched from them, then put a single tiny weak ship in orbit and an enemy fleet simply cannot choose to not try to kill the bait ship. You can wipe out entire fleets with that lameness.

 

That sound like a browser issue or something, because I have no problems there.

 

If you haven't before, you really ought to try Sword of the Stars -- I think it's the best 4X space game there is. Among it's best features are (in the fully expanded game):
1. 6 distinct alien races, each with unique technologies, ship designs, and strengths and weaknesses Playing each race has a completely different feeling, mostly because of the distinct way that each travels from star to star. A few SEEM at first glance to be similar, until you actually start to play.
2. Interesting and surprising random events, and galactic menaces
3. Customizable maps, plus a large library of built-in maps that you can vary in size from just a few planets for short games, up to Ginormous universes for games that can last months.
4. Complex, Semi-randomized tech trees -- some technologies will always appear for a specific race, but some are random with a specific percent chance of appearing.
5. Combat can be tactically resolved in real-time, or you can use quick combat if you choose.

Here's the wiki (though I recommend that you stay away from the "unknown menace" section that talks about the random events and encounters): http://sots.rorschach.net/

Oh, and as a newbie player, I strongly recommend that you start as Tarkas or possibly Liir. Tarkas are the most intuitive to play, and Liir are similar enough (though they tend to have flimsier ships).

 

I actually gave up on it after spending a half-hour trying to figure out how to actually build a ship, how to send it to another planet, etc. The whole mission thing is very far from intuitive, and an entirely unnecessary piece of complexity. I like a little complexity if it actually adds to the game's depth, but this didn't feel like that. I didn't even get far enough to figure out if what I was experiencing was due to bugs, or simply a horrible GUI design. I just had to give up in frustration, and had no desire to continue. I really don't have the patience anymore to deal with those kinds of things. If I were 10 or 15 years younger, things might have been different.

That said, I promise to give it another shot. I absolutely love SotS 1. It was a game that had far too little publicity so I never heard about it until the first expansion or two came out. So I probably never saw a lot of the bugs that you mention.

 

Completely second that. SotS is amazing, and I think it has my favorite backstory of any 4X. Pick up Deacon's Tale some time if you're a fan, it's quite good!

Though I find Tarkas to be a bit tricky in the DN phase, those BRs are fiddly at times and I'm tired of losing them to friendly from the Dreadnaught that launched them. I'm a hivers player at heart. Their playstyle is awkward at first, but they're extremely versatile once you get the hang of them, especially once you have Farcasters. I've been playing them in a "one-planet challenge" lately, where I build no colonizers and abandon any acquired independent worlds/surrendered worlds, using my gates to quickly stripmine every planet I reach. The AI doesn't seem to differentiate between planets that are high-quality or not when colonizing.

NINJA EDIT:

It's a lot different than SotS 1, so if you end up not liking it even as a finished product, it's not a personal fault. I became accustomed to the mission system after awhile, and the best way to look at it is that your entire fleet is now a single ship for all intents and purposes (if you immediately thought "like MoO3?", stop that.) It's certainly not the high point of the game, though. I'd say the high point is the vastly, vastly improved ship combat.

 

Threads like this are the reason I have no free time, nor any money...

But I thank you nonetheless Haldurson. In fact I am considering it. I have an odd question that you may know the answer to, however.

What is the difference between SotS Complete Collection and SotS Ultimate Collection?

Complete is more than twice the price excluding shipping that is about the same. Yet in all my digging I cannot find any actual difference that an end user who bothers to download a patch could notice. They each have the three expansions. CC may have additional stuff like maps and a printed manual, whereas UC may have digital versions of those. That is my guess at least. I cannot fathom why they are priced so different unless something like that is the case.

I read through enough of the Wiki to see that it may well be a great game. I typically avoid strategy games entirely, and may have missed out on this one because of my prejudice towards the genre.

I also read some reviews and they are exclusively glowing reviews. People literally say this is something to consider as a remade MoO without the Microprose logo, and with much better graphics and stability.

On a purely off topic note, I may be a bit am crazy. I buy games that I know I will never play but that I know are good. I do this because I want to be prepared for an apocalyptic life where games are no longer made and what you have is all there will be for decades to come. Politics is a sore subject, and I do not watch news broadcasts at all, purely because I know it will piss me off.

I am adding SotS to my list of games to buy for a potential apocalypse. Hopefully one in my family will inherit the never used bulk of my games collection when I die.

UC looks like the one to go with unless you know something I could not find about the two versions. After shipping it should be ~15$. Not bad at all for a game and three expansion packs with as much depth and detail as it seems they put into it. I could read for several days and never finish reading the material on the Wiki.

Again thank you for the suggestion, and thank you in advance for any help in picking the right choice between the two versions.

*Edit* Two more posts while I typed this one up... Sigh.

I found the answers. See my post below this once I finish writing it.

 

I agree (and I also love the Hivers), but I'm just saying that because when I first started to play, I started as a human player and was completely and utterly clueless. Then I tried Zuul, and it was even worse lol. Tarkas are an easy race to learn the game with.

Gotta go, I'll talk later.

 

As I edited above, I found the answers. Amazon is worthless for details. These links explain in full detail what is different about the two bundles.

Sword of the Stars Complete Collection is just that. It has THREE expansions.

Sword of the Stars Ultimate Collection is not what the name suggests. It has TWO expansions.

While the price may slightly compensate for the trouble of installing the third expansion separately, with shipping costs it would be cheaper to use CC than UC.

So it is basically ~25$ in the door. Not bad. I will live on Raman Noodles for a month and have it.

 

Gaslamp Games, if you are reading this I am glad to have your eyes for a moment. I will make a thread in a few days if I hear nothing.

I would like to know if you have considered GoG (Good Old Games) as a distribution method?

Despite the name, games need not be old to be featured there. The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition is there right now.

They have a massive following and would likely be much easier to work with than Desura, and would offer the benefits of that distributor as well. (They have a zero DRM policy for all their games. I read that the Master of Orion 1 version they have has been modified to still do the copy protection picture quiz it did back in the day, but to accept any answer and thus negate the DRM.)

Thank you in advance for any replies.

 

Actually, I've asked Nicholas about this a few weeks earlier. His reply was: "we're looking into it".

 

Ah. Thanks. Then forget I asked.

 

Great idea. Speaking as an old-time gamer, DoD definitely appeals to my demographic (as does GoG).

Now I'm going to have to start playing SotS again lol, I have a confession that although I absolutely love the game, I'm actually not at all that good at it. So I generally play on huge maps with lots of room for expansion so that I don't get pummeled into submission too early. I guess it's the rogue-like lover/masochist in me lol.

 

My first time in any game is on easy mode with all the help I can get. After that I will either play a more normal mode or move on to the next game. I plainly suck at any RTS though, but 4x is not exactly RTS, and usually has options for turn based, or other ways of doing things to compensate for the fact that there is too much to control at once. I hate simplifications, but love being able to set things up for partial automation.

I would buy yet another copy of DoD + RotDG if it were on GoG.

And yes, the browser is likely the issue for me on GoG. I use an older version of Firefox and a bunch of extensions like Noscript, Adblock, and RequestPolicy that get in the way of most sites layout and totally prevent any Java from working until I add an exception or ten. But I have done all that and GoG still fails to work right. I could start a new session and disable all those and it may work, but then it may just be that my copy of Firefox is too old for it. I am not worried. I know I could get it working if I tried. I could even use a standalone Portable Firefox 11 without the aforementioned extensions. That would certainly work right.

 

if you guys enjoy space games, and ive seen some talk of sword of the stars then I implore of you to look at star ruler. I love it, and it is purely amazing. One of the better space sim/4x type games out there. And it has great multilayer-in fact...

If anyone is interested in trying out the multilayer with me I'd love to have a go at it some-time. although I would recommend at least 4-8 players minimum. I forget if there is a maximum(I dont think so) but the more people you play with the more interesting things would become.

Mind you, it has a semi steep learning curve. It is easy to play, but hard to master haha.

Edit: and there is a lot of mod support

 

I have Star Ruler but wasn't entirely impressed with it. It has some serious optimization issues, just about melted my gaming PC last time I tried to host a game. I might give it another try though.

 

Was Star Ruler based on an old PBM game? Because it does sound familiar, and I did dabble briefly with PBM games way back when.

/edit I'm fairly sure there was a PBM game going by that name years ago, but it may not have any relationship to this game -- looks to me like this is a fairly new game (happens a lot that game titles get recycled).

BTW, Steam has a free demo of the game. I'm going to give it a try.

 

Ack, after booting up the demo, I now remember this game. I don't generally play real time strategy games. I remember seeing the game when it came out and being disappointed that it was a real-time game.

In the amount of time it took me to read and absorb about 4 pages of the tutorial, my civilization was already at war lol. This DEFINITELY is not for me. But it does look interesting.