Great game, well executed concept, really underrated combination of elements that you don't see too often as a slow-burn MMORTS. My retro gaming heart is truly full of glee.
>> PROS:
- THE LAW SYSTEM: It's a really well thought-out set of rules that effectively discourages randomly attacking your neighbor. In summary, you have 6 statuses that apply to all players that change depending on their actions. If there is no Governor, all players start as Settlers. The first person to achieve 14,400 influence becomes Governor. Once a Governor appears, everyone else becomes a Refugee. Refugees have 5 days before they become Illegal. Refugees may prolong their status by donating units to the Governor’s monastery if they have built one. Each Illegal player on a planet reduces mining productivity by 10%. The Governor can legally declare war on and attack an Illegal player. If anyone attacks anyone else for any other reason, they become an Invader. Each invader on a planet reduces the overall mining productivity on that planet by 5% and thus becomes a target for everyone else. If the governor attacks someone illegally, they become a Tyrant. Tyrants gain 20% mining productivity, but also decrease mining productivity by 15% for the entire planet. This also makes the Tyrant a target. There is also a status called the Marauder who is an attacker that has no influence on the planet they're attacking. The number of Marauders does not impact mining efficiency or any other mechanic.
There are some other points, but this is the gist of the Law System in the game. This system highly discourages random attacks on other players by imposing negatives on players' mining productivity and painting a big red target on the hostile's back. However, it doesn’t make attacking completely useless, but it's more of a tool to use when politics is no longer an option.
>> CONS:
- GAME CRASH: The only time the game crashes that I've encountered is when just opening the game. I'll see my base for a few seconds, then the game crashes out. After a few tries, it stops happening.
- REGENERATING FOG OF WAR: After a unit has walked through an area, a view of that area lingers afterwards. Slowly, the area becomes black once again and can no longer be seen. I don't think the fog of war should regenerate. We should be able to continue seeing what we last saw after passing through an area, but only immovable objects like trees, resource nodes, and buildings, but not moving entities. This game is very slow in a good way, so coming back after sending your scout to look around after giving it a predetermined path only to find that the fog of war has covered its tracks once again is disheartening for someone who is maybe doing chores while playing this game or just decided to look away at a video for a bit.
- UNIT PATHING: It’s kinda bad. Sometimes your units will have to walk through chokepoints. If a chokepoint is full of other units already walking through it, they try to find another way around an obstacle. Sometimes, that detour takes units face to face against hostile entities, which isn’t fun to micromanage. A few times, I’ve seen units run off at a completely random direction and keep running in a straight line until they encounter something that kills them.
- LACK OF COOP: All players begin on a random planet. There's no way for you to play cooperatively or even competitively with your friends. You could eventually leave your planet and go to where a friend might be, but it takes a few days of playing to really gear your base up to be able to conduct space travel.
>> CONCERNS OF OTHER PLAYERS THAT I'D LIKE TO ADDRESS:
- NO NEW PLAYER PROTECTION: Yes, there is a learning curve. Your first game probably won't be a successful game, but you will learn from it. Yes, you are going to encounter players that are way stronger than you, but the game has mechanics to keep you an undesirable target as explained in my "PROS - THE LAW SYSTEM" section and in the game’s manual. The game’s rule system is a really integral part of the game, so it’s important to read it. They also provide a button for you to start over if you don't like your odds of surviving on a planet. You can view how many players there are on your planet, what their names are, and what their influence rating is. If they're way above you and you don't have a chance of becoming governor, then just abandon that colony and start over on another planet.. (Or go out guns blazing ;D)
>> QOL:
It could use some quality of life updates. Just things that are normal for RTS games, but this game doesn't seem to have. For example...
- Double clicking one unit in other RTSs would normally select all similar units visible on the screen. It would be useful in this game too.
- Units are too small and need to be highlighted. Getting tired of spamming my selection window to find scattered units.
- An option for WASD movement to scroll around instead of using the arrow keys would be great.
- Adjustable scroll speed for WASD, arrow keys, and mouse edge scrolling.
- Refugee status timers on players visible to the governor. (Debatable, but I'm not mad at the way it is currently)
- Private messaging between players.
>> OTHER NOTES:
- There are some quirky mechanics that are funny when you think about them, but serve as a way to balance the game. For example, attacking a stone gate sends back 80% damage to the attacker. So if you send a group of tanks to break down a gate or fence, you will probably come back to find them dead. But if you think about it, it makes walls really serve a purpose instead of just slowing down the opposition. Walls aren't impenetrable, but I don't want to spoil anything.
- Tigers shouldn't be able to kill tanks. If they were space tigers, sure. But they look like regular tigers. C'mon, Aleksandr, give us space tigers!
