Posted by: Felan
« on: June 24, 2014, 12:34:47 PM »
I've played it a fair amount, though I've never actually won the game. A recent game I popped into a star with strong solar flares and a strong enemy. The enemy transported over a boarder to my engine room and it was stronger than my individual crew. A missile shot (or maybe it was a laser, the flare messed up my shields) from them wrecked my med-bay while the solar storm spawned a bunch of fires throughout my ship. I couldn't engage the boarder till my med-bay was back so I focused on staying out of his way as he wrecked my engines. My weapons fire was effective and punched through their shields and disabled their weapons and transporter (couldn't risk another boarder). The boarder went to my life support next, which isn't usually a big deal but with all the fires it's a problem (as the fire chewed up my oxygen supply). I got the med-bay back up and was suppressing the enemy ship by alternating around it's weapons, transporter, and shields. I healed up 2 crew and sent them in to challenge the boarder just as he was getting to my weapons section, even rotating crew between fighting the boarder and the med-bay I still lost a crew man, but managed to keep my weapons array up and suppressing the enemy. Finally I had done enough damage to destroy the ship but solar flares had spawned a bunch of fires and I sent crew to repair the life support as my oxygen was getting red everywhere, except the life support room was on fire, lost another crewman there. Got the fire contained and repaired the life support as another solar flare started more fires, including on the bridge. I ran everyone back to a few rooms around the life support room and vented the rest of the ship to space. With my remaining 3 crew I repaired my engines, sealed the ship, repaired the bridge and flew back to a world I had already been to lick my wounds. Even though I was able to repair my systems my hull was still badly damaged, short on money, the only repair base I knew of had been overrun, and worst of all I was down to 3 crew. I lasted another couple of battles before my ship was turned into space dust by missiles.
It's a fun game but very rogue-like in it's view of dying. Luck is a huge factor but skillful play is a must and winning a battle is meaningless, what is meaningful is how much did it cost you to win that battle. Because a disastrous battle will lose you game as will several costly battles. This mix of tactical (winning the immediate battle) and strategic (winning in a non-costly way) makes for a fun, engaging, frustrating, challenging game.