StarS

Best game ever! You take over the universe, basically. Wait, isn't that how most games are?

Lacks cool graphics or sound, but makes it all up with good gameplay and good management tools. Infinitely better game than even MOO3. (Someone is probably going to shoot me for saying that. :p)

RyanRiegel had the mad idea of trying to modify it to take relativity into account. I think I successfully convinced him that, even if it perhaps wasn't a stupid idea, it at least would have been hell to implement. - ChainMaille

Stars! is a turn-based strategy game in the same vein as MasterOfOrion?. You can design various features for your own race, with a couple of different base races to start with. The base races each get certain special advantages that nobody else gets, and after that you can add various perks and flaws, adjust how much it costs you to mine stuff, etc. You can also design your own ships; you research various technological fields and can learn how to make new hull types, which can fit different amounts and types of components, which you also get via research.

Er, stuff. This review should probably not be written by someone who got bored because it was too complicated (i.e., SeleneTan), but then again, you may have seen her rant about simple games in the ConsoleRPG node.

JeremyLennert and KaiLiu are the biggest advocates of Stars. Jeremy does crazy things like look at a fleet's weight and figure out approximately what components (e.g. weapons) it probably has. Kai does not do crazy things like that, but he manages to min/max on the order that actions are resolved within a turn. O_O

If you see KaiLiu, bug him to put up a link to where you can get Stars! and a keygen for it. (Note that the Stars! keys use a hardware hash or something like that, so you can't use the same key on two different computers and submit turns to the same game using it.)

This publicity campaign brought to you by SeleneTan, on the behalf of KaiLiu

So are we going to get a game together again at some point? I thought the idea being floated for preset teams last year was promising.-- EliBogart

GET SOME SLEEP.--KLewis