Still, I found myself craving something grander-at least chronologically. StarDrive is coming together to be a more than competent RTS/4X with lots of depth, breadth, and customization. I did play on x4 speed quite a bit when nothing was happening, but that's pretty standard in this sort of game. If I had to name one criticism so far, it's that the pace is a little bit more on the RTS side-not unlike Sins of a Solar Empire-than what you would typically dub "Grand Strategy." Being able to seamlessly zoom from galaxy view down to a battle taking place between two opposing fighter squadrons in real time is pretty awesome, but even on the largest map size, I didn't get the sense that this is the kind of game where one campaign could last for dozens of hours. Experiments to see how many guns I could fit onto an assault frigate at the expense of everything else resulted in ponderous, frail, and ineffective wastes of metal. Despite a lower capacity for goods, they zipped between star systems with such speed and agility that my mercantile Space Vikings had the most efficient trade network in the galaxy. My most successful design was the Longship: a stock trade trade freighter with some of its internal storage removed to make way for more power generation and warp engines. Each hull type (unlocked with research, and ranging from small fighters all the way up to massive capital ships) has a grid overlay on which you can place weaponry, internal storage, power generation, armor, and many other module types. StarDrive also features an in-depth ship customization system. The former is the fairly straightforward: "Blow up anything that looks funny." The latter tasks you with uniting all remaining races (meaning, minus the ones that have to be destroyed due to non-cooperation) into a single federation using a Civilization-like diplomacy system. As you make your way from star to star, colonizing new planets, researching new technologies, and building trade and military fleets, you will be working toward either a military or political victory. Each is home to a handful of planets-some habitable, some not-that can be exploited for varying amounts of the main resources: production, science, and food. Even on the smaller maps, there are dozens of star systems to explore. Your ultimate goal is to go from a single planet in a single solar system to a vast, galactic empire. A lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff, like economy and construction, takes place on 10-second ticks. It's a term that makes my ears perk up, and a subgenre mostly dominated by the likes of Civilization, and Paradox Development Studio's various historical titles (Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, et al.) Like a Paradox grand strategy game, it uses pausable real-time, with ships moving around the galatic map as smoothly and seamlessly as in an RTS. This game is fun, complex and only going to get better – but the odd mishmash of polish and crudeness mean GalCiv II is still captain of the fleet.DiCiccio didn't hesitate to use the term "grand strategy" in describing StarDrive.
Yet the point about being an impartial reviewer is that you don't take into consideration the heart- string tugs of human interest, but look at the end product. Similarly, towards the endgame StarDrive suffers from excessive slowdown, especially in large galaxies. Many players, especially those on more obscure hardware setups, have had problems playing the game at all or suffer regular crashes. And although the developers are working madly hard to bug-fix, there were still some outstanding problems at the time of writing. I found myself using the standardised ships because they just worked.īeyond that, the diplomacy, combat and research are all solid if unexciting. Again, the lack of any tutorial means many of your ships are likely to be abortive sports, like the spare Ripleys in Alien 4 that are missing vital components. Unlike GalCiv II's modular structure, each ship here is like a miniature SimCity – you have to ensure each component has enough power routed to it, guns have enough ammo, armour is covering everything and that warp drives aren't missing moody Scottish engineers. Like GalCiv II, new research advances unlock new components.
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