StarDrive: Invasion of the Space Bears.

[Toranth]

Apparently it has been released now. Is it release quality or are there still some bugs to be ironed out?

Much improved in performance since the WTF review, but there are still plenty of balance issues to work out.  Right now, it's generally too easy (poor AI) and too focused on certain techs/strategies.  However, Zero says he intends to address those issues, so we'll see.

Certainly a better product at launch now than SotS II or Pegasus.

[Wingflier]

Still needs 6-months to a year of development imo, but it's playable if you REALLY like the space 4x genre. Everyone else should just give it some time I think.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I guess that's a better assessment than "its broken". Too many games have been released in a broken state recently, especially from the AAA publishers.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, for a game in this genre that's actually a pretty good release state.  I keep wondering why that kind of failure (more mild in the case of something like this or Endless Space) is so pervasive in this one thing.  Though maybe it's not just this one thing and it's just that I happen to actually pay attention to 4x-space releases.

[Echo35]

Yea, for a game in this genre that's actually a pretty good release state.  I keep wondering why that kind of failure (more mild in the case of something like this or Endless Space) is so pervasive in this one thing.  Though maybe it's not just this one thing and it's just that I happen to actually pay attention to 4x-space releases.

Probably because 4X games are massive, and the developer is probably taking a "I can release it in a 'good enough' state for sales, and continue working on it because it'll never be 'done' anyway" kind of approach.

[Mánagarmr]

Still needs 6-months to a year of development imo, but it's playable if you REALLY like the space 4x genre. Everyone else should just give it some time I think.

I would like some more backing up this statement. It's easy to just toss that out there, but why?

[Wingflier]

Still needs 6-months to a year of development imo, but it's playable if you REALLY like the space 4x genre. Everyone else should just give it some time I think.

I would like some more backing up this statement. It's easy to just toss that out there, but why?

From playing about a week ago (unless he fixed ALL these issues in 1 patch, which I highly doubt)

1. Game still not working on multicore machines. So horrible framerates into the lategame...in a 4X. Not acceptable.

2. No graphical options whatsoever. Not even anti-anialising or any kind of options for people with better cards.

3. Tutorial system extremely inept. A couple small videos and then a bunch of text explanations for what you're supposed to do.

4. Random events that can end the game instantly for you, based on when you hit them (and how lucky you are).

5. Ship building feature is nice, but lacks any kind of streamlined process, so you'll spend hours making even basic designs for most of your ships. Some people might like this, I certainly don't.

6. Bombardment/Colonization feature is very whacky, needs a lot of work. It's about a 7-8 step process than should probably happen in 2 steps.

7. Research System is very vague. Doesn't tell you what you unlock or how it helps you. Isn't helpful at all about what you should research or when.

8. Individual planet economies are handled pretty, but the "global economy" feature is non-existent. For example, if you're maxed out on a certain resource (like agriculture or production), the game won't actually tell you that. You may just keep researching better agriculture or production buildings, and you would never know your citizens are becoming fat Americans.

9. Diplomacy system needs some work. Specifically you can't buy or sell planets/technologies for money. Also the "statistics" for every empire are very vague. All it tells you is how they "rank" compared to other empires. There is no way to see what technologies they've unlocked, or what their army consists of, etc.

10. As has been said, the AI isn't particularly bright.

It does have some things going for it. The combat system is neat, and could be really cool if you made some awesome ship designs, and the AI made some awesome ship designs, and then you had an all-out war. Unfortunately it would probably take...10 hours or more to get familiar enough with the game to do something like this, and from my experience, there's no guarantee the AI can keep up with you.

Also, the game on the 1x speed setting is PAINFULLY slow. PAINFULLY. Like it makes AI War on epic mode look fast. I usually keep it at 4x speed as a default, which is kind of annoying when battles start happening because then I have to slow down to 1x again...I don't know the whole thing is kind of clunky to me.

[LintMan]

I've been playing StarDrive for the last week, and it is indeed in rough shape.  Pretty much all of Wingflier's issues remain as of the latest released patch, but I have a whole host of different issues that I find a real drag.  Such as:

- Wonky diplomacy, and limited diplomatic options.  The AI will threaten you if you go to colonize systems it is interested in (even if it has no presence there), but you have no way of doing the same to the AI.  The AI will colonize a planet in your homeworld system and then complain about your presence there.  Also, making a basic trade offer it doesn't like can switch a race from a high trust relationship to an angry one, and there's no way to tell pre-offer if the AI will like it or not.
- The UI is EXTREMELY rough.  This game is going to burn out my mouse scroll wheel: to zoom out from system view to max galaxy view , you have to roll, roll, roll that wheel.  On the ship list, there is little filtering options, and the scrollbar is basically busted if you have too many ships.  So again, you're rollin' that wheel to find the ship you are looking for.  And since you can't issue ship orders from the ship list, you have to double click on the ship to go to it, then select it there, give the order, and then go back to the list to find the next ship.
- And then, since the ship and planet lists automatically reset all your filtering and sorting choices EVERY time you enter those screens, you need to re-filter and re-sort, and then scroll-scroll-scroll to find the next item you're looking for.
- Unit selection is kinda wonky.  It has an interesting fleet-manager system that can automatically replenish your designed fleet from reserves or new construction, but it is rather terrible at just the basic group management where you just want to select a certain bunch of units, group them up and go.   You have to select a unit to identify it - mouse hovering doesn't work.
- The planetary ship construction list has no design filtering, so it always shows every ship type you can build - all the myriad pre-designed ones, plus all your own designs old and new.   There is no way to make it hide old obsolete designs.  Also, while you can upgrade older ships to a new design, there is no way to automatically upgrade your fleet designs to use the new upgraded ship, so you have to go back and manually edit every fleet removing all the old ships and adding new ones.
- The auto-queuing of constructor ships when you want to build platforms is a neat idea, but it often queues them up on obscure planets with barely any production capacity, so they take forever to get built.

To be fair, once you get past the steep learning curve, the game is pretty fun.  It's just that all the myriad rough spots are so wearing.  It's a one programmer studio, and he seems responsive to player requests and complaints, but he doesn't seem to have the update frequency the guys at Arcen do when they're actively working on AI War.  I have hopes he will fix the game up nice, but it really does seem 6-12 months out for that to happen.

[zespri]

It's a one programmer studio, and he seems responsive to player requests and complaints, but he doesn't seem to have the update frequency the guys at Arcen do when they're actively working on AI War. 

Pretty much nobody but Arcen does this. That's why Arcen is so unique and incredible =)

[LintMan]

Pretty much nobody but Arcen does this. That's why Arcen is so unique and incredible =)

That's why I mentioned it.  It's easy to get spoiled by Arcen and have unrealistic expectations.

And as for StarDrive, I've just officially given up on my current game.  I had seen a few complaints about game performance getting bad on larger maps, after around date 1300 or so, but performance had been good for me (on smaller maps), and I have a fairly beastly PC so I thought I'd be OK.  But I just hit a wall late in my current game that made the game unplayable: it alternates locking up for ~8 seconds, then running for less than a second before locking up again.  Looking at the in-game date?  1315.

It took me 5 minutes of attempts before I could get the save menu to open so I could save out and quit.  Even in the largest most epic AI War games I've played, with 8K-10K ships performed much better than that, and never froze up the GUI.  I'm going to stay away from the game now until it gets some hefty patching done.

[Mánagarmr]

It's on 50% right now on Steam, but I'm honestly still hesitant. The comments in this thread really doesn't paint a pretty picture.

[keith.lamothe]

It's on 50% right now on Steam, but I'm honestly still hesitant. The comments in this thread really doesn't paint a pretty picture.

Yea, that's pretty much what I thought when I saw the deal a little bit ago.  That and that 50% is still $15 for me, and I tend to not go that high unless it's something I'm pretty confident I'll really enjoy.

[zespri]

It's on 50% right now on Steam, but I'm honestly still hesitant. The comments in this thread really doesn't paint a pretty picture.

Skip it. The game is quite mediocre. It may be has a couple of original elements, but the rest of it done worse than say in Galactic Civilization series.

[Shrugging Khan]

I tried it out after someone recommended it as the greatest space 4X ever, but oh deary me.

'tis a shame.

[Toranth]

It's on 50% right now on Steam, but I'm honestly still hesitant. The comments in this thread really doesn't paint a pretty picture.

Skip it. The game is quite mediocre. It may be has a couple of original elements, but the rest of it done worse than say in Galactic Civilization series.

I had high hopes, even after the mediocre launch release, because of all the things the dev talked about adding/fixing/improving after launch.  He even hired more people to help, but somehow nothing has come of it.

I may try again in a year, if there've been changes.  After a year, Endless Space is releasing the first paid-expansion, which looks to fix a whole bunch of complaints.  We'll see how that goes, and how StarDrive tries to follow up.