Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

www.matrixgames.com

EDIT
I edited the title as it was WAY to long. Please keep it short.

Atrocities

[ August 06, 2004, 10:00: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

This seems to be your only post here. Have you tried the game Space Empires IV from Shrapnel Games?
What did you think about it?

[ July 24, 2004, 22:55: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

Would be more appropriate in the SF forum anyway; Space Empires IV and Starshatter have very little in common. Only played the Starshatter demo, but:

SS is full 3d, SF is on a 2d plane. That means SS has more depth (heh) that way but is harder to control. Actually SF is much easier to control all around, and also easier to mod. You pay for that with less flexibility, though.

Starshatter doesn't have trading, but it -does- have dynamic campaigns; the best you can manage with SF is semi dynamic.

SS does have a air-to-ground component but frankly it looks like ***. In space I think the graphics are about even..not 100% sure. SS has a more realistic scale, it seems, especially as planet sizes go. SF doesn't have a fighter combat component, really.

IMHO the two games are in similar but not quite identical genera; you'd be better off comparing Starshatter to Freespace 2 (it fares poorly, but then again ANYTHING fares poorly when you set it against Freespace)

[ July 24, 2004, 23:44: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

A gamer on a budget point of view.

I like and enjoy the flexibility and depth in most - if not all the Shrapnel games.

= = =
No offense Iceboy: I was not that impressed with the depth in some of the Matrix Games and wish I never spent the money http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[ July 25, 2004, 00:00: Message edited by: JLS ]

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

I too have purchased a handful of Matrix games and liked them but never to the point of playing one for 4+ years.
Best money (time spent and value) I've spent was on every purchase of SEIV. Who needs another cheesy (sorry Narf) 3D sim in another overcrowded genre.

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

Yeah I ended up here because of Dominions (1 and 2) but thinking along the same lines. I was in a very regular 1-new-game-a-month cycle and was surprised to find a game that just would not die! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif It went from machine to machine as I upgraded.

Now I have SEIV which is obviously another game-of-the-undead. I enjoyed playing M.U.L.E. again in the Space HoRSE remake. And Im beginning to get good vibes about TWE. All from Shrapnel.

OK there are a few games I miss that I think should be everliving. And I see efforts going on for remakes of them. Im going to contact the developers and try to connect them up with Shrapnel. MUHAHAHahahahaa! more More MORE!

[ July 26, 2004, 15:35: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

I tried the Starshatter demo a few days ago and was actually quite impressed. I'll probably spend a couple more play sessions analyzing it before deciding whether to take the plunge, but that's mainly because I'm finicky and my spare time is limited. Basically I thought it looked extremely good, and did a lot of things much better (or perhaps, mainly much more to my personal tastes) than other games with similar elements.

It's certainly a completely different game from the Space Empires series, since it's a ship command simulation rather than a space conquest game.

It's also a much different (but closer than SE) genre to Star Fury, in that Star Fury more closely follows a free-agent roleplaying formula.

Anyway, the things I really liked about what I saw in the Starshatter demo included:

* Detailed ship damage model with fairly complex inter-system dependencies (though I will be analysing it a bit more, and seeing if repair times can be modded up and hull damage modded down, for more fun with derelicts).

* Newtonian ship movement that doesn't seem excessively acrobatic or dumbed down (though I will be analysing it a bit more, too).

Things I specifically thought Starshatter did well that really put me off Star Fury:

* Vastly more realistic scale - space is not cluttered, planets are way bigger than ships, ships and fighters seem to have more appropriate relative sizes, and the space and time for maneuver seem much more appropriate.

* Better distinctions between ship classes. They seem much more appropriate in scale and abilities and limitations based on size and role, as opposed to Star Fury where the different ship classes seem more like "power ups" or RPG "character classes" or "levels".

* Better feel in the destroyer squadron demo scenario of captaining a large ship and leading a squadron, while Star Fury seems more like piloting a suped up star fighter (or bumper car in space) and constantly having to do things like dodge obstacles.

* Seemingly appropriate roles, situations, and equipment for a military ship, as opposed to Star Fury's "you are an undercover ship captain who runs errands to earn credits to upgrade your equipment completely at will and do whatever you want". That's a question of genre, and I do like free agent games like Omnitrend's Universe or Elite, but in Starshatter it seems like the roles and ships and situations make sense (in the demo anyway) while in Star Fury I'm left incredulous about most of the content.

* The movement of the ships, especially the larger ones, seems much more correct in Starshatter.

PvK

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">yep ive got it and all the expansions. space empires IV is a great game!!!

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

Normally we like to keep post such as these to a minimum. I am sure you can understand. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

I bought starshatter.
It has abseloutely nothing in commun to SE4, think more of freespace. But good game, the dynamic campaigns are really a good move.

Graphics are ok, indeed air to ground are bad, but the rest is neat and clean, proportions are respected and the physic used is newtonian. It was a good buy.

As for Matrix games, it is for me a very respected publisher, its Steel Panters mega campaigns have been on my HD longer than SE4.

Only problem with Matrix was that their forum was a sad place, not very friendly, but I heard that they recently started to mass-clean it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

I'm still slowly transferring my Steel Panthers game I d/l to my work computer to my home computer. It came to over 250 files after I broke it down with WinRar that I have to put on 3.5" disks, and I'm about half-way through. One of these days I'll get them all on my pc so I can play this game. I haven't check the link yet to Starshatter, so I can't comment on that yet. But heck, I haven't played SF in months. I don't know if I'll have the time to play a similar game.

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif You should really think about purchasing removable USB flash card. This will make file transfers between computers a lot easier and faster.

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

Well, I played around with the demo for this a bit more, and it makes the cardninal sin of moddable games: you can't access the stock data files! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif Anything must be done from scratch or not at all.

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

I really like Posts like this. We are obvioulsy a group of people with similar interests, and are well suited to share information about those interests. Furthermore, Shrapnel staff has often advocated that the popularity of ANY wargame or niche product boosts the success of the entire industry.

That said, the reviews and featurelists from SS look cool, but not nearly as cool as X2 from www.egosoft.com - which i have long meant to pick up, but have still not gotten to it.

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif You should really think about purchasing removable USB flash card. This will make file transfers between computers a lot easier and faster. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Believe me, if I thought I wouldn't get in trouble over it, I might try something like that. But since it's a state computer, I'm not even going to try. They just fired a co-worker recently over excessive use of e-mail and the content of said e-mail. I can just imagine what they would do if I start attaching unauthorized hardware to the computer. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I just signed up for a 30 day free trial period for Verison DSL. Once that starts, I'll re-download that file to my home computer, as long as some of the larger SEIV files that I don't have on my pc either.

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">For X2, here is what David Braben had to say about it :

"I do find games like X Beyond the Frontier irritative and unimaginative - simply trying to cash in on the heritage of Elite without doing anything new."

As a matter of fact, I bought X2 and regret that decision. The CD is picking dust on my desk.

(any european takers welcome, PM me)

[ August 06, 2004, 09:58: Message edited by: Unknown_Enemy ]

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

You might also be interested in VegaStrike. It seems to share some similarities with these games. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

Looks interesting.

After editing The Wargamer's review of the first X title, I still have a residual aVersion, although I did buy a used disk of it, but never installed it. It sounded like some stuff was messed up, the combat and ship design and mechanics (my main interests) didn't sound so good, and then IIRC you were stuck with one ship with really obnoxious puns associated with it:

The Xperimental Shuttle http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

That name just makes me want to lock weapons and fire...

PvK

Re: Anyone here played Starshatter?
 

I was one of the beter testers.
its a good game, I havent managed to get a copy of the full Version yet though. must get a credit card sometime...