Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate

So I’ve been binging 4X space games lately. I’ve had a couple of games of Stellaris going upstairs and downstairs, but I was doing some research on others in the genre to see what I had been missing. Then I stumbled across this trailer or Master of Orion and was like hell yeah.

The game is actually more polished and simplified that I expected. It seems like it’s targeting a less sophisticated gameplay loop than Stellaris or Endless Space. Seems like it plays faster as well. I thought I’d be able to rush through one last night and wound up staying up past my bedtime as a result.

These games all seem to have various components that are the same between the two: galaxy map exploration, solar system management, and planetary production. In MOO, the battles spawn these arena instances where it takes on an RTS feel. The rest of the game is turn based. Stellaris is real-time through and through, although you can pause it in the single player version.

It’ll be interesting to see which ways we go with Star Atlas. I’m not actually on any of the gameplay projects right now, and haven’t been following what’s been going on with the crafting and ship mission work. Today is the last day of the sprint though, so we’ll be getting updates on the various projects later today.

The dao is making progress. We’re digging into the architecture for the rewarder system, but it’s all mostly planning and figuring out what our parameters are going to be.