A Fortnight in News
- First up, Astra Exodus Released on January 30th to Poor Reviews. We’re working on our review, which should be up this coming week, but needless to say, it’s not quite as good as a lot of us may have hoped. But the good news is that they’re already working hard on improving it: Astra Exodus Update and Future Plans.
- Warhammer 40K: Gladius v1.4.6 Update: Some quality of life updates and more polish come to “Gladius” and we’re itching to do a reeXamination here at eXplorminate. Anyone with time, experience, and the desire to write about its current state, please inquire within!
- Paradox has been answering questions related to its upcoming eXpansion, “Federations” and we got answers here: Stellaris Dev Diary #167: Galactic Community Q&A and here: Stellaris Dev Diary #168: Diplomacy Q&A.
- Steve Hawkins of Kathawk Games has been spilling the beans on the new Alliance of the Sacred Suns Project System Update and then went on to outline the new Alliance of the Sacred Suns Military System, which should be available to beta testers rather soon!
- Chris Park of Arcen games and his fantastic group of volunteers continue to make AI War 2 a better game with the AI War 2 v1.320 “Intelligence Intensifies” Release and just announced an AI War 2 Beta Branch and Update.
- Battlestar Galactica DLC: Beta Testers Wanted: Want to beta test the upcoming next “Season” of Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock content? Now’s your chance! Sign up now and help shape the future of this pretty great game!
- Humankind Developer’s Diary Video: One of the most anticipated games in any genre, Humankind is gearing up for its 2020 release with its newest video, the first in a new “Developer’s Diary” series.
- Stellar Monarch Update: Some significant changes to how autonomous fleets work are in store for Stellar Monarch players. We’re also looking for someone with some experience with Stellar Monarch to help us with the Age of Technology review. If you’re interested, email us at the address below!
- Pax Nova Patch: Admittedly a bit of a surprise to us, as we are expecting a new “roadmap” from Iceberg for Pax Nova, but Greywolf continues to flesh out and polish this very promising 4X game. Stay tuned for that aforementioned roadmap soon(?).
- Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars Beta Update: New maps, new lord skills, new lots of things are now available for this incredibly promising 4X/Total-War hybrid. It’s one of Rob’s favorite games right now and you can watch him play it here.
- And for those that don’t listen to our Weekly eXchange Podcast, here are two games we highlighted these past couple weeks: What is…Rising Lords? and What is…Corruption: 2029?, both of which would absolutely appeal to our audience.
We now go to our Interstellar Space: Genesis beat reporter, Chris:
Hey guys, Chris here!
Praxis Games, the indie studio behind Interstellar Space: Genesis, recently released patch 1.08. Considering the game was released just a few months ago, it’s safe to say that these guys aren’t fooling around.
So what does 1.08 bring to the table? What’s changed? Let’s take a look.
Well, the much anticipated and sorely needed, (free) graphics update is not here yet, sorry folks but we’re going to have to wait just a little longer for that. But while the graphics have stayed the same there has been a lot of activity that influences gameplay.
The Team at Praxis continued their meticulous bug hunting and even managed to isolate and eliminate some of the most obscure bugs that a player can encounter. The attention to detail and the support that these guys are providing is quite frankly excellent, and it is nice to pick up a title these days that is as stable as ISG.
We also received some UI/Graphics enhancements, mostly in more concise descriptions of certain aspects of the game that could cause confusion for the player. With a game as complex and intricate as ISG, it’s most welcome.
The main essence of the patch though is centered around balance changes and gameplay, here I saw wildly divergent results, some good and some bad. Space Monsters and found Starships have received some much-needed missile defenses, this was a no-brainer and a plus. The AI was also adjusted to focus more on PD weapons and missile defense such as the use of ECM. This, unfortunately, had negative consequences as the AI now overcompensates and sacrifices too much space to these systems, resulting in consistently underpowered AI ships (if the player includes a few ships with MIRV missiles in their fleet).
At the same time, PD defenses were enhanced and made easier to obtain while missile damage was reduced by 25%. The hypothetical reason behind this change made sense, but the practical consequences of this move have further tilted the balance of the game towards defense and away from offense. This change, along with the existing evasion of small ships allowed me to destroy a technologically superior Battlestation by attacking it with two Frigates only… should this ever happen?
The effect on the early game was also poor. At this stage, missiles were the only viable weapon to use if you wanted to inflict damage or have a chance of taking out a small ship with high evasion. (Beam weapons and kinetics are pretty useless until you research some targeting algorithms or have a leader assigned to your ship, preferably both, but this takes time). By both reducing missile damage output and increasing missile defense, early combat consists mostly of misses until one side or the other withdraws. This seems like overkill, and a compensatory move is needed.
Since the inception of AI cheats via production/research bonuses,(in a previous patch), we have also been given the opportunity to set these parameters for both the AIs and ourselves at the start. If a player wants a faster-paced high tech game, it’s available, if another wants a slower-paced low tech game, that option is there as well. But these choices are not balanced or equally viable, and some of the changes found in patch 1.08 only exacerbated that situation. Sometimes you need to make sacrifices, I understand that, but this wasn’t the case here, other options were available that could have offered much better balance and results. But as is often the case, when you are too close to a thing, it’s hard to see the whole picture, perhaps this was the case here.
For fans of TBS 4X games, ISG has tremendous potential, but it still has a ways to go. I for one am looking very forward to patch 1.09
Now back to you guys!