Stars! comparison

[Renegade 13]

I think aquiring the rights and work already done would be prohibitively expensive for a company of Shrapnel's size to consider.

[Rasorow]

I have played Stars! and Space Empires IV for what seems like since the dawn of time... to me Stars! is a game of logistics... making sure you have the right materials in the right place. Transportation of Minerals plays a much larger role as they have to be at the right planet at the right time. Combat... is much simpler to me in Stars! then Space Empires IV. There is less of a need for speciality ships and less variation in design and action.

Space Empires IV assumes that all planets will automatically have all the resources they need if the Empire has the quanity of resource available. It is much more sophisticated in combat. Even requiring in some situations specialty ships to make up for the lack of general ships in certain areas (point defense comes to mind - but there are others....).

Additionally as mentioned the orders are much more sophisticated and introduces diplomacy and Intel to control combat. (at least thats my use of it)

Rasorow