>>5746645>>5740183>>5740208hehe nowadays I no longer play new games. As part of my imagining of the ultimate SPACE OPERA setting, I realised I actually have never played any spaceship 4x games (Age Of Wonders Planetfall doesn't count, as that game has no spaceships it is just planet colonisation). So I have gone back to 1995 on my dosbox emulator and I am playing ASCENDANCY
This game is insanely addictive I am locked in a life and death two front galactic battle over 2193 turns now lol also pic related I messed up my mega planet it has too much population not enough manufacturing lol still learning the game mechanics as I go along.
The game has a FULLY 3D rotatable star map, planets systems star lanes and colonisation. I went on a lightning assault capturing systems, I have tech supremacy with my xeno species hehe. Only to see in ONE TURN the ai somehow stealth infiltrated with ONE SHIP ran the gauntlet of my orbital defence lol and recaptured an entire system loop of stars and planet argh argh. In this game you are restricted to one ship per system owned, so if you lose a system your fleet capacity is eroded (ships scrapped last in first out!)
Some strategic reflections about this game:
-it takes so long travelling through star lanes (25-28 turns) and building from agriculture to industry, you have to think ahead so much in this game
-there are interesting strategies with the tech, eg one tech expedites the star lane travel. You can create a dedicated mobile gateship, that moves from system to system, speeding travel through various star nodes. The ships have slots you can put anything in them.
-the orbital weapons are devastating, but they deplete. Also (as the AI demonstrated) you can do things like lurk inside a planet, or lurk within the orbital defence
-given the insanely long build and travel times, an intriguing dimension of logistics arose (I wonder if this is similar to real life, what the aerospace and defence companies call sustainment hehe) If starships survive a lot of battles, because it takes so long to refit / construct shipyards etc you end up with a massive fleet of old and outdated tech starships crammed with legacy weaponry. As you push deeper into hostile systems, your massive fleet faces newly constructed higher tech generation nimbler vessels (even if you numerically outnumber them) You have to somehow locate, invade and capture a good forward node of manufacturing resupply clustered planet systems, this takes a lot of planning
-the devastating reversals occur when the enemy captures and invades your highly developed planets and turns the fortress orbital systems you built against you argh argh
-one drawback of this game is you cannot move or shuttle resources. Everything is locked to the planet system. Tech research is universally shared, through diplomacy, some xenospecies can copy it using special abilities
