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I used a volley of torpedoes to funnel him toward my fast-attack ships, trapped him in an asteroid field and gunned him down. In another mission, I had to stop a single thief from leaving the system with secret documents. With only two capital ships, it was a cat-and-mouse game, with me chasing nimble fighters and heavily armed frigates from point to point. Once, my task was to secure three orbital sentry stations from marauder attack. It looks every bit like an expensive, collectible miniatures game, but plays out much faster.Įven in this small demo, the variety of missions was exciting to see.
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Being able to adjust my ship's capabilities before every battle meant that I always had options for how to deal with a given situation, so long as I had enough resources.Ĭombat takes place with three-dimensional craft moving over a two-dimensional hex grid. Alternately, I built a few fast-moving aircraft carriers capable of darting behind the enemy and launching deadly fighter attacks on their rear. I was able to create slow, hulking frigates capable of slamming headlong into the enemy and doing massive damage at close range. Torpedoes travel for several turns, and must be detonated manually when near their target.īy tweaking these systems, players can build many different classes of starship. Fighter bays allow you to launch wings of fragile, yet deadly attack craft. There are also sensors for detecting the enemy, and stealth modules to hide your own ships. Lasers provide long-range offensive capabilities, while cannons do damage up close.
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Players must upgrade engines, shields and armor to find the right balance between speed and strength. There is an impressive amount of customization available. There is an impressive amount of customization You'll also be given the opportunity to upgrade your fleet just before you enter battle, giving you a chance to adapt your forces on the fly. Here you can see in detail what you'll be up against, with individual crew members relaying information about the enemy forces arrayed against you. The game then shifts from the strategic map to an image of your flagship's bridge, with your officers standing at the ready to provide you with information. The inhabitants of the planet have trouble on their hands, be it a wayward artificial intelligence wreaking havoc or a group of raiding marauders. When your fleet arrives in orbit around a new system, a mission card is displayed. The game proper begins when players are given control of a single fleet of starships, which they'll use to investigate neighboring planets. Additionally, one of eight leaders gives your people additional bonuses like improved combat abilities or enhanced resource production.

Players of Beyond Earth will already be familiar with them, but in short, affinities give your civilization an ideology, whether peaceful, warlike or somewhere in between. Players first choose an affinity: Supremacy, Harmony or Purity.

Your astronomers have recently found evidence of other, human-like civilizations among the stars and your society has rallied around a project to build starships in order to visit them. In the fiction of the game's universe, more than a thousand years have passed since your people reached an age of peace and prosperity. Starships shares the same universe as Civilization: Beyond Earthīased in the same universe as Civilization: Beyond Earth, it also seems to share that game's ability to draw players in for "just one more turn."
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Headed to Windows PC, Mac and iOS devices this spring for $14.99, the small slice of Starships shared with the press last week wasn't very long - just a handful of turns - but the game appears to be loaded with subtlety and action. This early version feels like an elaborate and satisfying tactical miniatures game, one that builds on the vocabulary of themes and mechanics already well known to players of past Civilization games. Sid Meier's Starships seems heavily influenced by this kind of tabletop play.

During its development, designer Jake Solomon and Sid Meier himself hammered out the details of the underlying engine with little more than a handful of cards and some colorful cardboard chits. Some take shape digitally and use placeholder art, but the team at Firaxis Games has been known to do testing with physical board games in the past. Nearly every game begins life with a rough mockup called a prototype. Oddly enough, it plays very much like a lavish tabletop wargame. This spring, one of the greatest computer game designers of all time will launch a spiritual successor to Civilization: Beyond Earth.
