Recently announced during the Summer Gamefest, now with a Steam page. It's basically an official Star Trek 4X, built from Stellaris (cue internet rage that they're selling a dumbed-down Stellaris mod as a full-priced game). It currently has no release date.
Star Trek: Infinite is built upon the core systems of Stellaris, leveraging the deep and complex system and making them its own. Aspects of these systems have been streamlined and simplified to better resonate with the Star Trek franchise.
Space 4x games left me behind when they got so big and complex. My limit was hit after MOO 2. It was my favorite type of game when I started PC gaming in 94. Moo 1 still stands tied as my favorite game ever. But Ive not been able to get far in most any one since including Stellaris. Games I should love and want to love but overwhelm me with too much busy work and info.
I did love the Star Trek Armada games though.
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I am Dyslexic of Borg, prepare to have your ass laminated.
I guess Ray Butts has ate his last pancake. http://steamcommunity.com/id/daehawk
"Has high IQ. Refuses to apply it"
While there is obviously speculation that the mod might get foxed now that Star Trek: Infinite is going to be a thing, the mod author author seems to have reason to believe otherwise. I'm sure that will do nothing to quell the related internet outrage, though...
"What? What?What?" -- The 14th Doctor
It's not enough to be a good player... you also have to play well. -- Siegbert Tarrasch
Apparently there are multiple Star Trek total conversions for Stellaris. While it looks like Star Trek: New Civilizations is somewhat in the loop wrt Infinite, another more popular one, Star Trek: New Horizons is reportedly not. Internet drama intensifies...
"What? What?What?" -- The 14th Doctor
It's not enough to be a good player... you also have to play well. -- Siegbert Tarrasch
The last Star Trek 4x I recall is Star Trek Birth of the Federation. I only enjoyed it online though. And it was very buggy where getting a game finished was a miracle. It was neat as it allowed people to drop out due to conenction and an AI take over until another player joined. If they happened to pick the dropped player faction then they started where the other left off plus AI work done.
Last edited by Daehawk on Sat Jun 17, 2023 2:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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I am Dyslexic of Borg, prepare to have your ass laminated.
I guess Ray Butts has ate his last pancake. http://steamcommunity.com/id/daehawk
"Has high IQ. Refuses to apply it"
hepcat wrote: ↑Sun Jun 18, 2023 6:39 pm
Apparently it's coming this fall. They must have been working on it for a while before releasing info on it.
I'm definitely in for this! Looking forward to the DLC that allows me to finally play Balok!
Of the First Federation? You just want to stockpile Tranya
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I am Dyslexic of Borg, prepare to have your ass laminated.
I guess Ray Butts has ate his last pancake. http://steamcommunity.com/id/daehawk
"Has high IQ. Refuses to apply it"
Max Peck wrote: ↑Sat Jun 17, 2023 1:23 pm
I really liked Birth of the Federation. It did have a lot of technical issues, but I enjoyed it a lot.
I randomly found my CD and Manual the other day of BotF. I really like it, despite all the bugs. My main complaint, however, was the 3D combat, which was terrible.
Wasn't any gameplay in that gameplay trailer. Thats standard practice now days though.
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I am Dyslexic of Borg, prepare to have your ass laminated.
I guess Ray Butts has ate his last pancake. http://steamcommunity.com/id/daehawk
"Has high IQ. Refuses to apply it"
I've wishlisted it on Steam, just so I don't forget it exists, but my gaming time is already heavily loaded with Starfield at the moment, Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty at the end of the month, and Jagged Alliance 3 and Baldur's Gate 3 currently on the back burner. I will undoubtedly pick it up at some point.
Multiplayer mode? If we can’t play Ascendancy, I am demanding we play this.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein "I don't stand by anything." - Trump “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867 “It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
So this released today and I have been playing it. The price is low - priced I suppose to reflect what it is - basically a high quality mod for Stellaris. Here are some of my early, tutorial game, thoughts after about an 1.5 hours.
This is Stellaris. The technologies are mostly the same, a lot of the UI is the same, some things have slightly different names but are basically the same thing (phasers vs. lasers). There are places where the Star Trek veneer is super thin (but still adds flavor). If you know how to play Stellaris and love it, then you will likely be ready to jump right in.
They did away with lanes and the map is totally open - I am too early (no wars) to tell what that is going to mean. But you can't create chokepoints and put all of your fleets in them. This is sort of interesting, because (outside of certain techs) the intricate web of lanes in Stellaris was a giant limiting factor to movement and growth. Having no lanes also means that you can do interesting things. Rather than have a Spy system where you assign spies on a screen, spies are now ships-based. So you send spies specifically to planets (they can cross borders) and have them undertake missions. The same is true of governors - they are on ships and you can send them to planets you want to boost. This is interesting, but I can also see this as having some micromanagement. So far, it is easy and limited by resources (late game could get worse).[/list]
The Star Trek elements are really cool. The races are there, the HUD is Star Trek, the ships are nicely modeled. You get Star Trek missions and Star Trek anomalies (which have a bigger and less text dense screen). You still spend Unity on different focus areas, and they are more Star Trek flavored (although the bonuses are similar to Stellaris). Each of the four major civs - Romulan, Cardassian, Klingon, and Federation - have their own slight differences and their own unique tree. There are a LOT fewer choices than in Stellaris with all the expansions - think closer to stock Stellaris.
Which sort of leads me to my next point - if you found Stellaris too dense with too many options and you love Star Trek, then this might be for you. They took out a lot of Stellaris stuff, some of which was annoying, some really cool, and focused on the key components that most fit the property - diplomacy, exploration, civilization building, spying. But if you came straight from Stellaris it might feel a little sparse.They did add an interesting thing from HoI 4/EU4 - the Mission Tree. It works here to unlock and trigger certain major events (like the construction of the Enterprise) and that adds some story to the whole thing. You also get to see familiar faces pop up here and there in notifications when they get recruited. Not sure the long term effects of that yet. It also seems like some thing - such as fleet capacity - have been rolled into other stuff like administrative power and your fleets are more limited by resources and officers (a new resource) than an arbitrary cap you constantly have to try and increase.
If civ creation was your major draw to Stellaris, then you will be disappointed. You get the four civs and you can't customize them (as far as I can see). I do wonder if future content might unlock extra places/civs or stuff like the mirror universe.
If this was $40-60 and you already owned Stellaris I would say "no way." But at $30 it feels like a fun jaunt in the Star Trek universe. One interesting thing that I haven't seen the full impact of is that all four main civs start in the Alpha quadrant and have a giant space to explore around them (fitting the property). So you will be vying over minor civs pretty heavily as foils against your rivals. That feels on brand.
Last edited by baelthazar on Thu Oct 12, 2023 5:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Star Trek Ascendancy, although I did like that PC game back in the day.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein "I don't stand by anything." - Trump “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867 “It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
Sheesh, there's been like 3 small patches since it released earlier today. Primarily to deal with their launcher erroneously reporting you didn't have the deluxe version if you bought it...which, of course, I did. But the stuff still showed up in the game, so it was just the launcher causing the issue.
Yeah, I've installed the game but haven't tried playing it yet. The fact that they seem to have needed to release a hotfix to the fix the hotfix for the launcher makes me think that maybe they need to tighten up their QA process (assuming it exists, of course).
"What? What?What?" -- The 14th Doctor
It's not enough to be a good player... you also have to play well. -- Siegbert Tarrasch
