Pixel Starships

[Samwise]

I'm surprised I haven't posted about this earlier.  It's pretty fun!  Sort of a cross between FTL and Clash of Clans.  There's probably a better comparison than Clash of Clans out there but I haven't played it -- key element is that it's asynchronous 1v1 PvP where you steal from someone else to upgrade your own stuff.

The most fun/unique aspect of it IMO is that as your ship gets big enough to be unwieldy to control manually, you can write little automation scripts for all the various parts of it (via a point and click interface where you set a prioritized series of conditional actions).  This is obviously beneficial when you're "defending" offline since it lets your dudes react somewhat intelligently and put up a better fight against a live opponent, but even when you're the attacker and have the option of manual control, once you have 12 crew members and 6 weapon systems it's easier to script their behavior than to try to get them all to react to things in real time.

For example, I have a set of crew members whose loop is "go to a medbay if your health falls below 50%, otherwise repair any power reactor that's damaged, otherwise go to a medbay if your health is below 100%, otherwise wait in a reactor room for something to happen", so whenever I'm in a fight and the opponent targets my reactors, that group bustles around alternating between patching the reactors up and keeping themselves alive.  Another group is in charge of manning weapons; my missile systems are programmed to knock out the shields ASAP so my lasers can be more effective, and once the enemy's shields are destroyed my missile systems power down (to free up power for my hangar bay), and my gunners all move from the missiles to the lasers, which start by targeting the enemy's anti-aircraft guns so that my fighters can tear everything else up.  If shit goes sideways (i.e. my ship's hull drops below 50%), most of my crew members have a set of emergency orders that kicks in and has them start patching up systems outside their normal area, so my gunners don't sit on their hands if an enemy has succeeded in killing all my reactor techs.

It's a little more punishing than Clash of Clans in terms of how much you lose from being attacked and how much you're out of the game while waiting for an upgrade.  The AI system is really fuckin' cool though so I'm putting up with that.  I recommend giving it a look if you liked FTL.

[Draegan]

iOS only. Meh.

[grebo]

Agree on the fun involved in punching holes in noob spaceships.  Progress is pretty quick so far.

[Samwise]

Apparently the recent update added new AI options but I think I need a bigger ship to be able to use them.  Looking forward to checking it out since I've found a bunch of cases where I'd like more sophisticated triggering conditions.

[grebo]

Seems likely I'll keep playing this.  What's your team Sam, when I get there in a day or 2.

[Samwise]

I'm still ronin.     You have to have an alliance room on your ship to be in an alliance and I haven't seen that there are any benefits an alliance offers me vs having the space for more weaponry.  I might re-evaluate at some point.

[grebo]

Fair enough.  I, too, pack on every possible gun, since punching spaceships is by far the most lucrative thing.  The fact that nobody seems to use the AI room makes beating them into paste somewhat rudimentary.

[Samwise]

Fair enough.  I, too, pack on every possible gun, since punching spaceships is by far the most lucrative thing.  The fact that nobody seems to use the AI room makes beating them into paste somewhat rudimentary.

That'll change as you go up the ranks, but yes, even the best outfitted ship is basically a pinata if it doesn't have AI.

Protip; you can remove the AI room after setting up your AI and your scripts will still work (you just can't edit them).  I didn't learn this until very recently.  More gun!   

[grebo]

Why do small crates easily sell in the market for 100k minerals?  Do the high level players just have nothing to do with their stuff?  A lot easier for me than fighting through 30 pvp fights to get the mats for upgrades tho.

Also I haven't built the gym yet, should I not bother with it until my guys are much higher level?  I did repeatedly fire the garbage recruits into space until I got a crew of 3* guys.

Still liking this, despite the fact that I'm getting into the territory of having nothing productive to do for days while waiting for upgrades.

[Samwise]

I think crates are worth more than their face value because they can't be looted and because it gets really hard to save up for big upgrades, so stockpiling loot in crate form makes it easier to amass.

I'm not completely sure yet how exactly gyms work, but I have one and I keep my guys training in there constantly.  I think there might be some kind of diminishing returns effect where you want to wait to actually use the gym until it's max level, at least that's what I've seen on forums, but there's no actual documentation to back that up so it could be superstition.