http://www.swordofthestars.com/

Played the first one and liked it. A by-the-book 4X style game, and for nostalgia fans not that dissimilar to old classics like Masters of Orion and the like.

It comes out on the 28th Oct and Steam and the usual suspects have it on pre-order with the (now typical) bonus DLC.

Anyone here a 'explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate' (4X) style game fan?

Edit: Eye candy

I've been watching and waiting on this. Never got the original though...but I do have Sins of the Solar Empire. I also like to play Galactic Civilizations II.

Star Ruler has made all other space 4x games obsolete.

... although I still love a game of GalCiv2 from time to time

Star Ruler...never heard of it. I just found the website...looks interesting. I'm going to have to check out some youtube videos of gameplay...might have to get this.

The feedback on this seems to be that it's one of the most buggy releases this decade...

I've taken a look at many youtube videos on it. To be honest...it looks to me to be an almost exact copy of Sins of the Solar Empire. The interface looks so similar.

Are you talking about Star Ruler or SOTS2?

Star Ruler is to Sins what Arma is to Call of Duty. SR is a totally open sandbox type game. It's the first game I've seen where clever ship design has a profoundly game-changing effect on the match. There is no limit to the size of ships, they are all "scaled" from .001 to infinity. No prefab "hulls" like destroyers, carriers, battleships, etc... everything is custom. You can build colossal ships that can one-shot a planet into rubble. Conversely you can build ships that are tiny gnats that dock into carriers which deploy automatically when a threat is present, and, given enough supplies, can build replacements right on board. Tractor beams, ship capture, jump drives, mining, salvaging, reactor explosions, branching research, orbital manufacturing, the list goes on. I hate to sound like a fanboy but it's really a unique game.

On the downside, it is a bit rough around the edges but has never crashed in 100+ hours of gameplay even with literally thousands of spacecraft and satellites flying around. It's also got a bit of a learning curve to it. The best way to figure it out is to just play and lose a few games. There's also a built-in IRC type chat thing so you can ask other players questions even if you are playing a single player game.

Hhmm...I'll have to read up more on this one then. Keep an eye on it. I've been watching more videos of it. Seems like you can pause the game and then give orders, set priorities etc. I seem to remember you couldn't do that in Sins of a Solar Empire and it drove me nuts because real time just took the fun out of it for me.

i believe the website has a playable demo on there but i haven't tried it.

I picked up Sword of the Stars II as my curiosity got the better of me. I'll post some screens and first impressions hopefully tonight.