An interesting take on galactic conquest
December 5, 2008 2:53 AM   Subscribe

An interesting take on galactic conquest for a Flash game, at least.
posted by XMLicious (25 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
It reminds me of what was described in the book Ender's Game.
posted by XMLicious at 2:54 AM on December 5, 2008


I like it, I like it a lot.
posted by patricio at 4:35 AM on December 5, 2008


Oh god it's fast...
posted by From Bklyn at 4:38 AM on December 5, 2008


The interface is very frustrating. It should deselect your stars after giving an order. The fact that it doesn't often makes me do the wrong thing, and then spend more time undoing whatever I did wrong, and by then I'm dead -- it's a very fast-paced game.

It's a good idea, but the poor interface ruins it. If you want a high-speed strategy game, fine, but that means you have to REALLY tweak the UI to support that speed.
posted by Malor at 4:46 AM on December 5, 2008


Space Risk.
posted by clearly at 4:49 AM on December 5, 2008


This game is really good, although I agree about the deselection problem. Also, it needs a better pause (clicking the menu works, but meh). I was wishing I had a way to set up "trade caravans" from my naval bases, but actually you CAN do that. So...yeah, pretty awesome.
posted by DU at 4:58 AM on December 5, 2008


It get's a bit repetitive. I got into an endless loop constantly taking and then surrendering the same star over and over and over and over...
posted by PenDevil at 5:19 AM on December 5, 2008


When there's a bunch of stars close together with overlapping fields of influence from rocket planets, I don't get how you can break through.
posted by DU at 5:20 AM on December 5, 2008


Ahh looks like vga planets had a child.
posted by sandking at 5:30 AM on December 5, 2008


Ooooh, naval planets can set their waypoints to enemy planets. This changes everything!
posted by DU at 5:33 AM on December 5, 2008


I was going to say that it's too easy because defensive planets are so strong, but then came the rocket base...
posted by patricio at 5:34 AM on December 5, 2008


I'm making zero headway. Even wave after wave of my own men are doing nothing.
posted by DU at 5:41 AM on December 5, 2008


Surround and conquer - that's the ticket. After that, easy street. Easier street.
posted by From Bklyn at 5:57 AM on December 5, 2008


And don't attack the defense planets. Attack the other ones first to surround the defense.
posted by DU at 6:22 AM on December 5, 2008


"Safari could not open the page “http://www.alienprocess.com/StarBaron_Development/StarBaron.php” because the server is not responding."

I am sad.
posted by schwa at 6:31 AM on December 5, 2008


If you search the title of the game you'll find other hosts.

On linux it's a totally different game.

Some tips:
The AI will send wave after wave into minefields.
Fighters surrounded by anything are hard, because you take the outposts only to have the fighters retaliate. I went with a) nuking surrounding planets into depopulation b) setting up a naval base to go after one planet in a constant stream, distracting the fighters from defending the others. Where you have un-surroundable strong defense, you have to do something similar.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 7:39 AM on December 5, 2008


The opening music, unless Ambrosia used it from somewhere else, is from this lovely gem of shareware.
posted by ZaneJ. at 11:06 AM on December 5, 2008


I still play EVNova sometimes when I feel the need to kill some Feds. Great game XMLicious, thank you!
posted by Faux Real at 11:18 AM on December 5, 2008


The opening music, unless Ambrosia used it from somewhere else, is from this lovely gem of shareware.

I believe the opening music is from Holst's, The Planets. Mars, The Bringer of War. Highly recommended.
posted by quadog at 12:23 PM on December 5, 2008


Great game in theory, unplayable in practice. (And I say this having spent a few eager yet frustrated hours with it.) I hope the developer - who obviously poured a lot of time and talent into this - works out the kinks in the interface to make it responsive. If those little rockets had done all the things I told them to do, I'd never have put this down.
posted by bicyclefish at 4:52 PM on December 5, 2008


Did anyone else hit a stalemate at some point in the game?
posted by quadog at 6:22 PM on December 5, 2008


Yeah, the interface can be annoying. But it seems to me like it gets worse, at least more unresponsive, as the game slows down due to having to track an increased number of individual ships. So I wonder if the solution is to rewrite everything with more multithreading and better display throttling. Onslaught 2, for example, seems to maintain a more responsive interface even when everything goes apeshit.

I must say that overall I enjoy this "computational brute force" approach to entertainment.
posted by XMLicious at 6:28 PM on December 5, 2008


quadog: that evidently is due to a bug he's aware of where some of the enemy ships drift off the screen during play, so once you conquer all of the planets the game just keeps going because it thinks the enemy has ships left. The only solution I've found is to start that level over again and make sure none of the ships get away.
posted by XMLicious at 6:41 PM on December 5, 2008


So the way to get around the stalemate/infinite level thing around level 5 in the campaign is to let the yellow ships take over a star at the top, then they won't fly off screen.

Great game. I hope the author comes out with an update.
posted by wastelands at 3:45 PM on December 9, 2008


I'm on the last level of the campaign. Trying to finish off the red enemy. I have 170 ships at my disposable and massive graphics lag. Firefox is using 300 MB of RAM.
posted by wastelands at 6:03 PM on December 9, 2008


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