Post by Koalabear on Jul 15, 2019 7:38:33 GMT -5
I started playing this game this weekend and it had such a huge impact on my War Robots playing that I'm cautiously optimistic that I will play more Star Forces and less War Robots as time goes on.
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.azurinteractive.StarForces&hl=en_GB
This game is by the same people who does Robot Warfare and Planet Commander/Space Armada. In fact, it's a direct spin off from Space Armada: same ships, same maps, but completely different game play. When I first played Space Armada, I liked it. It was a great tactical space battleship game, something that had been lacking in the world of games for a very long time. But, when they started ripping off iconic star ships and making them P2W - one Star Destroyer rip off could take on an entire enemy squad single handedly and win against 4:1 odds - I lost interest and left.
This game, still has P2W elements, but at least it's all up front - no boosters or modules - and if you employ good tactics, you can overcome the P2W. All weekend long, I was killing the premium ships with my cheapo gold ships quite easily. The mechanics of the game is super simple, maybe even too simple, but I'll get into that later. Instead of setting a course and then using target zoom to target ships and hit them, you fly the ships very much like a star fighter. At first its cool, cause the starting ship you get looks like a star fighter. But, it gets a little weird when you start seeing the battleships and dreadnoughts from Space Armada flying around like star fighters. All the ships have similar stats when it comes to movement, so I won't go too much more into it. Basically, you have the joystick that allows you to move in all directions, and a speed button that either shuts down the engines or goes full speed.
Weapons
There are two types of weapons. Gun turrets and missile turrets. In Space Armada, before the big update, the missiles dominated the game. They had more range and more DPS. You could literally build a missile destroyer with good mobility and simply keep the range at maximum, out of gun range, and pummel your target. After the update, missiles became next to useless. I'm finding that to be the case in Space Force. I haven't tried many of the missile turrets yet, but the two that I've tried were basically single shot homing missiles with a reload cycle. Sure, the missile did fair damage and was guaranteed to hit, but even the most basic gun turret had higher DPM and didn't miss as far as I could see. So, due to that, I've outfitted all my ships with guns only. The weapons have 5 tiers, called Marks. Each tier up does much more damage than the previous. For example, a Mk2 level 1 gun does about the same damage as a Mk1 level 4 or 5 gun. The guns come in 3 flavours: 6km range, 4km range and 2km range. I don't remember all the names yet, so bear with me. The 6km range guns do the least damage, but they can start hitting your target sooner. However, I've noticed that this range advantage is pretty useless considering most engagement happen around 3km or less, and when two ships are charging each other, that extra range advantage goes out the window real fast. I've outfitted all my ships with either the 4km or the 2km guns (or both). Ships have 2 - 6 hardpoints for either guns or missiles.
Abilities
The ships all have one ability. They range from the basic boost to things like teleport and stealth and shield and repair. The free ships only get one ability, while some of the premium ships have two. I don't have any premium ships and haven't spent any money on this game yet, so I can't comment on how it feels to have 2 abilities. The boost ability is pretty useless, the repair ability can fully repair your ship and can even function as a damage resistance if you time the repair while being hit. But, so far, my favourite abilities are stealth and teleport. The stealth means you can't be seen (not just targeted), and you can't fire your weapons while in stealth. But, it's a great tool for escaping damage and getting onto someone's tail where you can blast them as soon as you come out of stealth. The teleport is cool. It lets you jump to instant brawling range of your target (from about 4km away). This means, you escape the damage you would have taken had you closed traditionally, and you can instantly bring all 4 (or more) of the high DPS 2km range guns to bear on your target. Even the expensive premium ships melt under this sort of fire.
Ships
Many of the ships are rip offs off pop culture, like the Star Destroyer, Millennium Falcon and Serenity, but some are original (as far as I can tell), and they look very cool. Too bad they never did factions with them.
Gameplay
The graphics are outstanding. If for nothing else, try this game for the graphics. The sounds are crisp, and the pounding of my cannons as I rip through another targets is glorious. There seems to be 3 types of currency, keys, crystals and gold. Gold is easy to get, and I've bought all the gold ships and they're all pretty lethal and fun to use. Crystals is like gold in War Robots, and you get it by completing daily missions, leveling up and watching ads. I don't know what the keys are for yet. I get them for free when I do something, but I can't figure out what to buy with them yet. There are ads galore, but they play by choice and they all do something. For example, you can increase your winnings with an ad, get extra 15 crystals, speed up upgrades, and open a free chest every 15min. Open enough chests and you get the super chest, which is a guaranteed ship apparently. Some ships can only be acquired by opening the chests. Don't worry, I took a quick look at the ships, and they're similar to the premium ships, but not that much more powerful than the free ships. The premium ships are also technically free cause you buy them with crystals...but they cost A LOT of crystals! I think there's also a tier of ships that cost real money. I haven't been tempted to buy them yet.
Final thoughts
The game is far from perfect but it's fun. It feels good to be excited about a game again. For future improvements, I'd like to see them revamp the missiles so that they're useful, add a throttle control instead of the on/off button, and maybe a lock target function so that I don't random hit the closest ship to me. The guns are auto fire while missiles are manual fire. I'd like to see the guns switching to manual fire too if possible. I'd also like them to revamp the ship stats so that you have ships that behave the way they look. For example, big ships should be slower and less maneuverable, but have higher HP and more guns to compensate. Smaller lighter ships should have the ability to outrun the bigger ships and get out of range of the big guns and use their speed and agility to support from 6km away. Oh, and I'd like the ability for evasive maneuvers too. Right now, if you get someone on your tail, premium ship or not, you are toast. Ditto if you're the one doing the hunting!
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.azurinteractive.StarForces&hl=en_GB
This game is by the same people who does Robot Warfare and Planet Commander/Space Armada. In fact, it's a direct spin off from Space Armada: same ships, same maps, but completely different game play. When I first played Space Armada, I liked it. It was a great tactical space battleship game, something that had been lacking in the world of games for a very long time. But, when they started ripping off iconic star ships and making them P2W - one Star Destroyer rip off could take on an entire enemy squad single handedly and win against 4:1 odds - I lost interest and left.
This game, still has P2W elements, but at least it's all up front - no boosters or modules - and if you employ good tactics, you can overcome the P2W. All weekend long, I was killing the premium ships with my cheapo gold ships quite easily. The mechanics of the game is super simple, maybe even too simple, but I'll get into that later. Instead of setting a course and then using target zoom to target ships and hit them, you fly the ships very much like a star fighter. At first its cool, cause the starting ship you get looks like a star fighter. But, it gets a little weird when you start seeing the battleships and dreadnoughts from Space Armada flying around like star fighters. All the ships have similar stats when it comes to movement, so I won't go too much more into it. Basically, you have the joystick that allows you to move in all directions, and a speed button that either shuts down the engines or goes full speed.
Weapons
There are two types of weapons. Gun turrets and missile turrets. In Space Armada, before the big update, the missiles dominated the game. They had more range and more DPS. You could literally build a missile destroyer with good mobility and simply keep the range at maximum, out of gun range, and pummel your target. After the update, missiles became next to useless. I'm finding that to be the case in Space Force. I haven't tried many of the missile turrets yet, but the two that I've tried were basically single shot homing missiles with a reload cycle. Sure, the missile did fair damage and was guaranteed to hit, but even the most basic gun turret had higher DPM and didn't miss as far as I could see. So, due to that, I've outfitted all my ships with guns only. The weapons have 5 tiers, called Marks. Each tier up does much more damage than the previous. For example, a Mk2 level 1 gun does about the same damage as a Mk1 level 4 or 5 gun. The guns come in 3 flavours: 6km range, 4km range and 2km range. I don't remember all the names yet, so bear with me. The 6km range guns do the least damage, but they can start hitting your target sooner. However, I've noticed that this range advantage is pretty useless considering most engagement happen around 3km or less, and when two ships are charging each other, that extra range advantage goes out the window real fast. I've outfitted all my ships with either the 4km or the 2km guns (or both). Ships have 2 - 6 hardpoints for either guns or missiles.
Abilities
The ships all have one ability. They range from the basic boost to things like teleport and stealth and shield and repair. The free ships only get one ability, while some of the premium ships have two. I don't have any premium ships and haven't spent any money on this game yet, so I can't comment on how it feels to have 2 abilities. The boost ability is pretty useless, the repair ability can fully repair your ship and can even function as a damage resistance if you time the repair while being hit. But, so far, my favourite abilities are stealth and teleport. The stealth means you can't be seen (not just targeted), and you can't fire your weapons while in stealth. But, it's a great tool for escaping damage and getting onto someone's tail where you can blast them as soon as you come out of stealth. The teleport is cool. It lets you jump to instant brawling range of your target (from about 4km away). This means, you escape the damage you would have taken had you closed traditionally, and you can instantly bring all 4 (or more) of the high DPS 2km range guns to bear on your target. Even the expensive premium ships melt under this sort of fire.
Ships
Many of the ships are rip offs off pop culture, like the Star Destroyer, Millennium Falcon and Serenity, but some are original (as far as I can tell), and they look very cool. Too bad they never did factions with them.
Gameplay
The graphics are outstanding. If for nothing else, try this game for the graphics. The sounds are crisp, and the pounding of my cannons as I rip through another targets is glorious. There seems to be 3 types of currency, keys, crystals and gold. Gold is easy to get, and I've bought all the gold ships and they're all pretty lethal and fun to use. Crystals is like gold in War Robots, and you get it by completing daily missions, leveling up and watching ads. I don't know what the keys are for yet. I get them for free when I do something, but I can't figure out what to buy with them yet. There are ads galore, but they play by choice and they all do something. For example, you can increase your winnings with an ad, get extra 15 crystals, speed up upgrades, and open a free chest every 15min. Open enough chests and you get the super chest, which is a guaranteed ship apparently. Some ships can only be acquired by opening the chests. Don't worry, I took a quick look at the ships, and they're similar to the premium ships, but not that much more powerful than the free ships. The premium ships are also technically free cause you buy them with crystals...but they cost A LOT of crystals! I think there's also a tier of ships that cost real money. I haven't been tempted to buy them yet.
Final thoughts
The game is far from perfect but it's fun. It feels good to be excited about a game again. For future improvements, I'd like to see them revamp the missiles so that they're useful, add a throttle control instead of the on/off button, and maybe a lock target function so that I don't random hit the closest ship to me. The guns are auto fire while missiles are manual fire. I'd like to see the guns switching to manual fire too if possible. I'd also like them to revamp the ship stats so that you have ships that behave the way they look. For example, big ships should be slower and less maneuverable, but have higher HP and more guns to compensate. Smaller lighter ships should have the ability to outrun the bigger ships and get out of range of the big guns and use their speed and agility to support from 6km away. Oh, and I'd like the ability for evasive maneuvers too. Right now, if you get someone on your tail, premium ship or not, you are toast. Ditto if you're the one doing the hunting!
