New game, currently in 'pre-order beta'. You pre-order the game, you get to play the beta while he works on the game. Sounds a bit silly, but it works. Game is better than many finished games I've played, and by the sounds he's planning to call it 'released' soon

What is it? Exactly what it sounds like. "Gratuitous Space Battles"

You design your ships, deploy them, issue them generic orders... Then enter the battle and watch it play out. You have *no control whatsoever* during the battle itself, it's entirely down to the designs and orders you issued in the deployment screen.

As PBEM players, I'm sure you all realise the implication of that You can design fleets, post up challenges (either public ones anyone can try, or to specific players) and other people can try them out. "Massively Single Player"

Game is very pretty. Still has some rough edges, and some of the orders/AI needs a bit of an overhaul, but it works. There's plenty of depth. And more to the point... It's epically good fun.

Balance is quite good already, and being worked on. My initial successes were with fleets heavily specialised. With more play, I've I can chew up those strong fleets of my own, with combined arms fleets, so it's got more depth than Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Oh, and it's only 20 bucks. That might go up when he ends the beta, people in his forum are telling him he's undercharging. I think 25 would be fair. Much more would be a stretch for a battlesim game that isn't actually attached to a campaign system.

I want this attached to Stars!

Link to developer's website, with gameplay video, and the best place to buy the game.
http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/


EDIT: oh... bit higher spec than stars though. I'm running it on a old 2.13ghz Core 2 Duo, only 2gb ram and a 8800 GT. It mostly runs fine for me, but occasionally hiccups when there's a lot of fighters on screen. I'm running on a high resolution, with all effects enabled except motion blur when moving the camera (

[Updated on: Thu, 15 October 2009 04:04]

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[Updated on: Wed, 04 November 2009 19:52]

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"AutoHost" has been trying my challenges

I thought 'I wonder if that's Ron'. Turns out it was

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Dogthinkers wrote on Tue, 22 December 2009 12:27

"AutoHost" has been trying my challenges I thought 'I wonder if that's Ron'. Turns out it was

Yes, it's a fun game, and I still don't see how you can call that challenge 'easy'! That combination of missile ships and fighters armed with target painters is nasty!

I can wipe out over half the fighters, but still get creamed.

[Updated on: Tue, 22 December 2009 23:50]

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Ron wrote on Wed, 23 December 2009 15:50

Dogthinkers wrote on Tue, 22 December 2009 12:27 "AutoHost" has been trying my challenges I thought 'I wonder if that's Ron'. Turns out it was Yes, it's a fun game, and I still don't see how you can call that challenge 'easy'! That combination of missile ships and fighters armed with target painters is nasty! I can wipe out over half the fighters, but still get creamed.

It's easy, because it's set up to take on short to mid range fleets, and frigate swarms. A MIRV-Only fleet should be able to take it down handily, since only about 2/3 of this fleets weapons reach out to max range.

Also, like any missile-only deployment, it's extremely vulnerable to a trivial counter - if you mount two or three Guidance Scrambler Beams on each ship, you'll have no problem taking it down. Of course, you'd also have a fleet that was useless for taking down anything else.

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