Hi been coming to the forum for a while now, and have found you all to be very useful at answering questions.
Like many of you here i love sins and games like it, im also a big fan of MOO3 with the mods that is, turned from a sucky game to a great one.
Now im after another in the same style, the bigger the better, i like my games to be of an epic size, building from nothing to huge empires.
So what can you recommend i look at, newer the better.
Thanks in advance.
I agree, the pve aspect is really what i am personally in to. I was looking at the Infinity page listed above and it does indeed look very awesome, from the closeups of the stations down to the walkways which gives a perspective as if i were a normal sized person standing on the walkway, the scale is awesome!!
But it "is" mmo and currently it is listed as team based, when i really prefer the single-player aspect more, but then again, im only one player, there are probably tons of people that love the mmo team-based aspect more than i do.
Anyway, thank you for the interesting look at some interesting games, take care,
-Teal
Conquest Frontier Wars was the bomb.
Hmmm.... looks very interesting, and a browswer game as well, that makes it easier to play certainly, Thank you for suggesting this, i will give the demo a try and tell you what i think, but it looks interesting.
LineageII is a very odd recommendation. It's not even close to an RTS or anything like that. It's a Korean grind mill of the worst kind.
Tough? It isn't tough. It's just excruciatingly time consuming, which is why 99% of the players use bot programs or buy ingame items and money on Ebay.
I think there are games like that aleady: Eve Online and Vendetta Online.
Star Trek Online should launch this year and it sounds exactly like what you're wishing for.
On topic, I'd highly recommend King's Bounty: The Legend. The battles are the only tactical portion of the game, otherwise it's a pretty straightforward rpg, but MAN is it fun! It has a terribly interesting game world that could rival Mario's and the story is incredibly funny and interesting. Plus, the battles are always fun. Not exactly like your standard TBS game, but I think most anyone on these forums would be lulled by its charm.
i was in this problem just a little while a go and i ended up getting a game called sword of the stars. it is a tbs in empire mode and rts in combat. it has a really extensive research tree and the galaxy can have hundreds upon hundredsa of planets. i think this will satisfy your craving for epic empire play
Klacey, would you mind mentioning which mod or mods you are using on MOO3? I wouldn't mind seeing that game actually work. Still got my disks.
THIS! QFT! Ad Infenitum. Speaking as an EVE player the PvE side of things drives me insane. Especially as the same agent will repeatedly give you the same mission. Hopefully, one day, CCP might figure out how to do PvE... hopefully. Of course, if someone else were to develop a scifi MMO with both strong PvP and PvE stuff (along with the player market and everything else that makes EVE neat)... my CC will be burning through my purse.
But to answer the OP, If you've got GalCiv2 and it's addons along with Sins then that's pretty much it as far as I can think for spacey stuff. Of course you could look at some of the FOSS versions like FreeOrion (MOO clone) if you find MOO3 to not be to your tastes.
RTS
Conquest - very dated, but I still think it has a big edge on a lot of games since. If you've not played it you should. It was 2001? Remember all the RTS/4x games since and see where they went wrong by not doing stuff from it. It's a 2d RTS when every RTS was going 3d. Campagin has the funnest quotes in it. Characters were very good, a random unit response from an English character - Time for tea!
Haegamonia - legions of steel used simular concepts, but to be honest I don't think it really was any better - outside of graphics. Units were simplistic, not specialisation. Me bigger guns and hull me win! Multiplayer required an expansion, and it just didn't have polish. Some of the same team that made Imperium Galatica.
Nexus - was a ship to ship combat game that was made that I kinda rate as buggy as it was. You only have a couple of ships, but there was a feel to it like ships were slugging away at each other. I actually winced when getting shot at. Eve-online could learn from Nexus over 'feel'. If you want more 'epic' than SoaSE, this feels it, but it's a few ships - and online is pretty much dead now.
Homeworld - was utterly addicted to this game once. 2 to me, even though things changed - really it was a fancier interface imo. Just wish it had more. I actually feel the same way about Sins.
4x
Space Empires V is pretty epic, possibly too epic, I alway seem to restart rather than finish a game. Never got into it as much as Gal Civ. Definately one if you want to get lost in a game. Can get lost in the info overload and loose the game in your head.
Gal Civ I & II - what more can I say that hasn't been said - I rate it. Many a 4am finsih with that on 'skool' nights =/ For II get both expansions.
Imperium Galatica I & II, I like these, they have something about them. Sure they're real time, but there's a pause button, and that makes them have that turn based feel with statagy with them. Imp Gal II, I just love, there's something about it that I really really like. I've said it in jest before, but it's finding that odd girl who hides at the back of a room who isn't attractive absolutely georgous. It's the ground combat, it's the spying, it the dodgy fleet combat. I've modded that game a lot - and it's like an old friend. The first one is too scripted - but simular ideas.
MoO 1 and 2, Yeah, famous for being so good. If you haven't played them, you should do. Genre defining even now.
MoO 3, It isn't MoO, but patch it and spend a week or two learning it, and pretend it's not got MoO in the title, and there's some interesting ideas in there. Honest. You really do have to remember you're not playing MoO, your playing something completely different.
SotS - never got into it. Something has always pulled me away. I can't get my head tactically around the different racial interstellar moves. I'd like to say it's fate, but something there for me ain't right. Civ/TW:series/GalCiv I can't stop pressing that turn button. Just one more turn.... SotS I can. That's kinda a bad review in my mind - but it could be me.
SMAC - Alpha Centari - It's ground based and old but it's till fun, but I'll be recommending Civ before you know it, so I'll leave that there. I'd actually like to see the city populations more in Gal Civ.
Lost Empire: Immortals - never played it - but it's a year old and supposed to be the "biggest" out there. It's on my to do list. It has the label "souless", which worries me. When a game turns into a spreadsheet... euk. Talking of space game spreadsheets:
MMOG
Eve, Love it or hate it, right now it's the only really viable spaceship MMOG out there today. Yes, PvE sucks, it's PvP centric - even trade is PvP. It has an obscene death penalty, and it's very travel based. Takes an hour to fly from one side of the Galaxy in a fast ship - but 75% of that travel time you are a big red flashing target with the chance to die in sub 5 seconds. Get into a good corp/guild in 0.0, it can be the best game in the world. Sit in empire mining/mission running - it sucks long term. I personally find it far too much of a time sink. Need a new ship fast, and haven't prepared for it? Plan on spending an hour putting that together - and that can be in the middle of a fight. That's what kills it for me. I want to fly round in a spaceship and shoot stuff. I don't want to plan the logistics of having replacements at stategically important locations. My 36 million sp character is sat in 0.0, with 3 battleships in another region - I really just can't be bothered to fly over the 15 minutes there and then the 20 minutes back. Without the income that can generate, I can't afford to PvP with the guys, so meh, I ain't playing it.
Wasn't there some news about a Conquest FW sequel at some point? What happened to that?
Space Empires 5... Unfortunately, it was a disappointment. I still play SE4 occasionally, with some of the various mods, and was hoping for another classic in the series, but got served a spreadsheet full of bugs instead, like with MOO3. Hopefully, A sequel will bring back the series' lost glory.
I had enjoyed Imperium Galactica II as well, BTW. What I liked the most wasnot the research or combat system (both very simplistic, biggest ship with biggest guns won), but the way they had implemented a 'freestyle' campaign for each race: Expanding and strategic options were entirely open-ended, and you could play however you liked, but you always got special 'quests' along the way that helped in advancing the story as well as giving you a chance to prepare better for the ultimate showdown. And each race had a particular ending, that you would get not just by winning (then you'd get the standard victory scene), but by completing specific quests and making specific decisions.
That would be a very interesting concept for a SoaSE campaign to implement, I think.
Aye Sotris,
I think that's what I really like - that background story interwoven with the sandbox.
MoO3, I patched and used a lot of community mods - but was over a year ago - and I actually enjoyed it then. Can't remember what it was, but actually saw some gems hidden in between the dross.
Never played SE4 beyond a demo - got SE5, but as I say, I get lost in the mechanics rather than the game, end up getting bored and starting again.
Well, Moo3 can be made to work with much fewer bugs. Just the tiny bit I know about it, caveat emptor!
First you really need Moo3 retail box disks. The forums say the downloadable version will not accept mods. I don't know this for a fact, but it is what the forums say.
1. Then add the official patch moo3_version125.exe. You get this from the official site. This was the last patch from the developers.
Then run Moo3 Install Check. I don't know why, but you do.
Then, mods. I would recommend starting with Strawberry, which is mostly getting the game to run like it was intended to. Other mods such as Tropical and Chocolate change its nature somewhat and are probably not best to start with. Strawberry seems the most debugged mod. Works for me anyway.
2. Unzip the Strawberry v1.21 mod to your Moo3 directory. Instructions are inside the zip files.
3. Next add the Aruspex_v2.08 mod to your Moo3 directory. This will give you 1024x768 resolution. This mod is optimized for Strawberry and perhaps for the latest Tropical.
4. Now add Encyclomod_5.0 so the encyclopaedia is fully up to date and actually useful.
You can find most of these mods at www.moo3.at by looking for the mod packages section, except perhaps for Aruspex_v2.08. Think I found it at a link by the author down towards the end of the tropical or strawberry mod thread, don't remember which. Happy hunting.
There! Wasn't that easy?
5. Start the game! Should work, and it is the game as it should have been at release instead of the horrible rolling train wreck that it was.
In the very unlikely event that you have problems (ha ha, ho ho, hee hee), go whine on the official site's modding forum. Very friendly crowd.
heheh, unfortunately so many people encountered the wreak that was released instead. They'd never even consider retrying it, that's if they didn't throw the disks out of the window in frustration. What annoys me with it, is how it's hurt developers trying to get financing to make these sort of games. As you can probably guess I'm a fan =P
It's amazing what was underneath all garbage in MoO3 when you do patch it up. I was honestly pleasantly suprised.
Now you got me thinking about giving MOO3 another try... I wonder where the disks are stashed.
Does anyone recomend Lost Empire: Immortals? I discovered It half a year ago and I've been considering getting it, especially for the epic scale part.
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