Would You Buy a B5 game

[H]

redo Star Wars Supremacy (rebellion) as B5 with updated graphics etc. thats a cool game.

btw anyone still play this? i would love to get some 2 player going on it.

seriously, you liked this game. I bought it full of hope, and played it rather a lot, but I just never really liked it, I suspect I missed something in it to be honest, the battles were kinda fun, but the strategic side i always got a severe whooping at! so on that basis I may have to excuse myself from any MP games ;-)

Birth of the federation was cool, still play it every now and again, the borg could be turned off by going into the stbof.ini file, finding the borg, and It either said Borg=Y or Borg=1 (can't remember which) and you just changed it to N or 0. the game suffered from the ferengi 9 times out of ten, being stupidly hard, and outnumbering you 25-1

 

[katadder]

yeah i love it, still play it now and have owned it nearly 10 years. ok the graphics are crappy but you can easily tell the ships apart.

nothing beats turning up with 12 SSDs escorted by 20+ ISDs and a death star plus well over 4000 tie defenders

 

[Locutus9956]

Supremacy was an AMAZING game and I do still play it occasionally but it really really hates net play via routers in my experience so Ill have to pass there Im afraid.

Birth of the Federation again: Ah thats the one, will have to switch off borg next time I play as they just ruined the game (especially in multiplayer where if they hit one player it pretty much lost them the game outright and certain races (Romulans and Klingons had a MASSIVE advantage vs them if they built lots and lots of cloaked ships).

Then there was the problem with the Ferengi. That was I must admit a massive flaw. You can sort of counter it though if you start all sides off at level 2 or 3 advancement and start the ferengi at prewarp . If they'd only switched the Ferengi for the Dominion it would have been soooooo much better.

Sadly with the demis of Microprose its unlikely we'll ever see a BoTF2. Or an X-Com 4 for that matter.

 

[H]

yeah i love it, still play it now and have owned it nearly 10 years. ok the graphics are crappy but you can easily tell the ships apart.

nothing beats turning up with 12 SSDs escorted by 20+ ISDs and a death star plus well over 4000 tie defenders

I may give it another go, and Graphics are irrelevant if a game has great play

 

[Locutus9956]

I wold suggest one thing with supremacy: Read the manual. All of it. It may be daunting at first but there is so much depth to the game you will most likely miss if you dont

 

[H]

manual? whats one of them!

 

[Locutus9956]

yeah I know most people never read them (I myself am guilt there too) but supremacy has so many features you just wont find by randomly clicking stuff (or at least wont really understand) unless you read it

The diplomacy system for example and how the knock on effects shift other nearby systems and how planets can be held against their will etc etc. Or how you can run missions with characters and how you can run decoys for those, and how planety shields and defences work precicely. Supremacy looks fairly simple on the surface but is one of the most complex strategy games ever made but once you get to grips with it its truly fantastic

 

[katadder]

yep have to agree there, the characters can do a huge amount of things, one of my mates wondered why his planets kept going into uprisings then joining me until he read the manual.
the only problem i find is the AI never seems to build very big fleets. which is why when i used to have a home network it was always fun to carve up the galaxy, build your fleets then start the rampage

 

[H]

My Ai must have hated me then, when, after about 20 mins, a fleet 5 times bigger than I could have feasibly built descimated me! damnit, now I have to play this and teach the computer a lesson in humility!

 

[katadder]

it does like to hit and run you alot though which is annoying until you get interdictors

 

[locarno24]

some sort of Empire at War/Master of Orion/Birth of the Federation/etc

would be good; generally I can imagine people wanting fleet combat (but there needs to be a good fighter/carrier control mechanism; fighters are a big deal in B5), and the trade/politics/intrigue aspect. Ground combat can - by and large - be ignored (or modelled with much less detail); it was something never really done in B5, and if it makes you feel any better, lob mass driver rounds or virus bombs at them.

Multi-race campaigns are very good; being able to play the setpiece battles from both perspectives would be superb.

I never managed to get hold of a full version of bridge commander; although I thought it looked very good.

 

[Locutus9956]

A few tips for starting out in Supremacy:

1) Build up one planet with a bunch of construction yards in a sector. Use this planet to FILL another planet with shipyards. Basically build dedicated ship building worlds or ships, especially bigger ones take a billion years to finish Same applies to troops but they dont take as long so you dont need to go as over the top (I try to get a planet in each sector with at least 12-15 shipyards on it ), maybe two if I want a REALLY big fleet.

2) Use the characters. ALOT. Send every character with any kind of half decent diplomacy rating off to convert worlds to your cause asap. Send the good combat characters off to sabotage stuff. Special notes: Never take Palapatine off coruscant, as long as hes there he grants a bonus to ALL imperial forces in the galaxy. Any charactere travelling as part of a group with Han Solo are travelling on the Millenium Falcon and travel twice as fast as normal. This can be invaluable for making quick recon runs or sabotage missions.

3) Colonise uninhabited systems. If you find a planet with no population (as with most of the rim sectors) if you land a single troop on them you gain that planet. As soon as youve build 1 building there then the planet gains a 100% loyal population (and you can remove the troop if you wish).

4) Sabotage expensive things early. At the start of the game the Imperial player will generally have at most 1 or 2 Imperial Star Destroyers (usually only 1 and some VCDs). At this stage it will take well over 100 'turns') to replace that ship (quite aside from the cost!). If you can get Han and Chewie on a sabotage run with maybe another character and a commando unit or two running a diversion you stand a good chance of blowing said ship up outright. I did this once (and thanks to hans special movement speed rule this was within the first 20 'turns' of the game) against a friend of mine over our network at uni and got a phonecall.

"Hello?"
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"
"yeah sorry about that "

:twisted:

 

[Locutus9956]

some sort of Empire at War/Master of Orion/Birth of the Federation/etc

would be good; generally I can imagine people wanting fleet combat (but there needs to be a good fighter/carrier control mechanism; fighters are a big deal in B5), and the trade/politics/intrigue aspect. Ground combat can - by and large - be ignored (or modelled with much less detail)

You've pretty much just described Star Wars Supremacy (Rebellion outside the UK) just in the B5 Universe

I never managed to get hold of a full version of bridge commander; although I thought it looked very good.

It was for about the first half of the game then it just seemed like they ran out of ideas for interesting missions and just dropped it straight into repetitive battles against Cardassian Galors

 

[Spike1382]

Rebellion (Supremacy) really did have a lot going for it. It could have been the best 4X game ever with a little more work IMHO, but as it stood it just couldn't hold up. Too many unbalanced situations and terrible space combat that took way too long to resolve after enemy ships were disabled. I had been holding my breath that Empire at War would keep the good and fix the bad giving us the game Rebellion should have been, but no such luck. Of course that doesn't prevent anyone from making a B5 game along similar lines.

 

[Drahazar]

We need a good B5 Strategy game like homeworld 2 or star wars empire at war it would be the heat.

 

[High Sierra]

B5 MMO would be amazing.

however its very difficult to get MMO's tied to existing sci-fi/fantasy worlds right.

you got too many people willing to argue the point about various bits.

 

[locarno24]

You've pretty much just described Star Wars Supremacy (Rebellion outside the UK) just in the B5 Universe

Never liked the 'real time' bit, though - prefer such things to be turn-based.
And the detail on the politics/trade is only so-so; I'm talking about trading tech, for example.

Diplomacy in supremacy was basically limited to 'are you on our side or theirs?' - an inevitable result of the good guys/bad guys SW universe. B5 is a lot more complex, and a lot more fun. Especially since as well as the major governments (EA/Narn/League/Centauri/Minbari) you can also ally yourself covertly with either the vorlons or the shadows....

(hmm...now there's a thought. Alternate history where the minbari allied with the shadows. Shadowtech Warcruiser, anyone?)

 

[Joe_Dracos]

I have a problem with MMO's...
As an amatuer 3d animater and a guy who has done some programing and a guy who took some computer classes I can tell you that if they are charging you 1 buck a month to play they are ripping you off. A free MMO though, thats a whole new can of worms. My wife-to-be would be the one with a problem with MMO's

 

[Target]

MOO3 with a mod could work. The problem with MOO3 was it took to the last patch to get right. It's now a decent game but it was to late as everyone had gone off it by then.

 

[Spike1382]

Has anyone else played Star Control 2? If not, I HIGHLY recommend it, as it has a bit of a Babylon 5 feel. It's my favorit game of all time and still has never been duplicated. You can get the full specal edition free online.