Startopia and Star Trek Voyager shooters

[Shrykull]

Has anyone ever tried Startopia? I saw it once on G4 (back when it was tech tv, before they screwed it up) I'm thinking of trying the elite force shooters, sometime after I get a new desktop with a PCI express card, currently I just have a laptop.

[Stark]

Startopia is like a slower scifi Dungeon Keeper 2. It's interesting, kinda flexible, but isn't very good multi.

The EF shooters are appalling hackneyed nonsense. The fist level of EF is cool for the 'lol borg don't care about phasers' part, but otherwise they're terrible shit.

[Shrykull]

Startopia is like a slower scifi Dungeon Keeper 2. It's interesting, kinda flexible, but isn't very good multi.

The EF shooters are appalling hackneyed nonsense. The fist level of EF is cool for the 'lol borg don't care about phasers' part, but otherwise they're terrible shit.

Is species 8472 in that game/games?

[Uraniun235]

Startopia is like a slower scifi Dungeon Keeper 2. It's interesting, kinda flexible, but isn't very good multi.

The EF shooters are appalling hackneyed nonsense. The fist level of EF is cool for the 'lol borg don't care about phasers' part, but otherwise they're terrible shit.

What really killed Elite Force 1 for me was the atrocious level design. Oh hey let's just have enemies spawn twenty feet away and charge at you for five minutes, this makes for thrilling combat! Ugh.

[Gandalf]

I don't think so.

As I recall, all of the enemies are basic humanoids.

[TC Pilot]

Yeah, Species 8472 makes a brief appearance in the Borg Cube level. They're slowing taking over the cube, and the Borg need the Federation team to kill them off. They have absolutely no weapons or armor and rely exclusively on melee attacks.

[Stark]

Dudes let's not talk about the shit games he mentioned.

Startopia is actually a pretty cool game; it has a ring-shaped station with three levels, divided into 15 'sectors'. You start with one, and need to make 'energy' (money) by encouraging people to enter your sector and use your facilities so you can use that energy to upgrade your facilities and open new sectors for use (I believe the story is that the station is derelict or broken or whatever - from outside, the non-used sectors appear open to space with hull breaches etc). The levels are bio (ecological simulation farming), a manufacturing/industrial level, and a hotel/brothel/shop/gambling level. You can focus on any sort of venture you like, and thre are a variety of ways to make money. When you open enough sectors to reach another players' area, you can force open their bulkhead with energy and send your armed laser skutters in to fuck up their shit.

It's cool because the game constantly generates random encountes in space that you may or may not profit from - ie, there could be a spaceship accident nearby, so if you have medical bays you'll get lots of wounded to care for. There may be an influx of criminals requiring detention, spies from a nearby war infiltrating and blowing your shit up, a need for certain products or whatever. It's quite slow (nothing like as action-packed as Dungeon Keeper) and it's not hugely polished, but it IS a good bit of fun.

[Ohma]

About the biggest problems with Startopia (from what I remember, I haven't played for a while) are those damn alien things that periodically infest your guests and eventually (you *can* cure people of them, but the infested dudes rarely stay near enough to sickbay to get there between when their AI switches into "oh I'm sick" and "RARG CHESTBURSTER") spawn crazy powerful bug dudes who will massively wreck your shit if there's more than one of them, and that the interface doesn't scale well to the demands of your station once you get beyond like, three or four sections.

[Stark]

I've never had the chestbursters actually. I imagine as in other similar games, the solution is to turn all over venues off to force the AI to go to medbay.

The UI certainly doesn't scale, however. It's not as 'hands off' and directive as Dungeon Keeper (there's a fair bit of tweaking each venue) and the overview windows for staff/visitors/whatever aren't very informative or well laid-out. That's largely why it doesn't work multi - it's hard to fight a war when it's so hard just stopping everything falling to bits.

[Ohma]

I've never had the chestbursters actually. I imagine as in other similar games, the solution is to turn all over venues off to force the AI to go to medbay.

Or build a couple turrets right outside sickbay and the brothel (which must be oh so comforting to the majority of the visitors ). The little cat facehugger dudes are also spawned more often when you've got a lot of trash laying around, so supposedly if you keep the station clean you're pretty well off (I was never very good about that, trashcans got in the way of all my fountains and sculptures :p ...and scutters get really easily distracted)

The UI certainly doesn't scale, however. It's not as 'hands off' and directive as Dungeon Keeper (there's a fair bit of tweaking each venue) and the overview windows for staff/visitors/whatever aren't very informative or well laid-out. That's largely why it doesn't work multi - it's hard to fight a war when it's so hard just stopping everything falling to bits.

Yeah, too bad there was never much of a modding community for the game, because a few simple interface tweaks would've done wonders for it.

[Stark]

Seriously, the UI for some buildings is utterly arcane and uneccesary, like the comm facility. It doesn't need to be that big, it could be a tiny window with the three buttons and the statline of the guy working there. Noooo, it needs to be a jumbo-huge window to make it harder to multitask! Trying to deal with staff can be a nightmare, and no matter how many skutters you have you always seem to need to pick rubbish up yourself.

The skutter management thigno (with the prioritising different roles) is really strange, and doesn't let you do things like 'set 5 skutters to 24/7 trash patrol'.

[weemadando]

Startopia is great. A very classy sci-fi management game. It's just plain enjoyable.

[loomer]

Startopia is still in my top ten list of games. Hell, it's still number three. It's quirky, it's full of sci-fi references, it's got a great theme and it actually plays well to top it all off.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Ill have to jump on the praise for startopia bandwagon too, its a fun little game, if slow paced.

[Zixinus]

Ill have to jump on the praise for startopia bandwagon too, its a fun little game, if slow paced.

Me too, me too.

I really loved Startopia. I took it out several times since I first played it several times since I first got it several years ago.

[Stargate Nerd]

The EF shooters are appalling hackneyed nonsense. The fist level of EF is cool for the 'lol borg don't care about phasers' part, but otherwise they're terrible shit.

Sacrilege. Raven doesn't make shit games.

[Bounty]

The EF shooters are appalling hackneyed nonsense. The fist level of EF is cool for the 'lol borg don't care about phasers' part, but otherwise they're terrible shit.

Sacrilege. Raven doesn't make shit games.

EF maybe wasn't shit, but it did come this close with its endless generic SF shooter levels. Done butchering the floaty blue aliens in the green level? Then move on to the floaty brown robots in the grey level! If that's not Star Trek I don't know what is.

Of course, EF1 did have the best Paris quote ever, even if it was probably stolen from a better piece of fiction:

"We've got no weapons and no engines. What do you suggest we do, drift over there and use harsh language?"

EFII was a bit better about the mindless killing, had it not been for the endless stream of critters trying to eat your shins. The levels where you were either doing something Trek-y (exploring the Dallas, tricordering) or fighting humanoids were fun, but it was still a Quake mod more than a Trek game.

[Stark]

Sacrilege. Raven doesn't make shit games.

In the eternal war between facts and blind brand loyalty, facts always win. EF was a hilarious disaster, the only saving grace is that back then, pretty much EVERY shooter that wasn't Half-life sucked donkey balls.

[Rye]

I feel I must derail the thread to some extent; is dungeon keeper abandonware (and XP compliant) or anything yet? I used to love that game and was gutted the third one never got made.

Also, I liked Startopia, but at the time it came out I had the least stable system I've owned so I never got into it.

EF was douchewater as others have said. Steer clear, play some half life or something instead.

[Stark]

Dude abandonware doesn't even exist; it's a nerdling coward-pirate feelgood story.

I actually find this thread a great example of how some people have opinions, and some people have football teams. Some people can discuss their attitudes; some just blindly state 'is good'.

[Stargate Nerd]

EF maybe wasn't shit, but it did come this close with its endless generic SF shooter levels. Done butchering the floaty blue aliens in the green level? Then move on to the floaty brown robots in the grey level! If that's not Star Trek I don't know what is.

Of course, EF1 did have the best Paris quote ever, even if it was probably stolen from a better piece of fiction:

"We've got no weapons and no engines. What do you suggest we do, drift over there and use harsh language?"

EFII was a bit better about the mindless killing, had it not been for the endless stream of critters trying to eat your shins. The levels where you were either doing something Trek-y (exploring the Dallas, tricordering) or fighting humanoids were fun, but it was still a Quake mod more than a Trek game.

Honestly I played Elite Force 7 or 8 years ago, depending on when it actually came out. I really don't remember much of the game anymore but I remember that the farthest I got was the blue floating aliens in some strange cave.

EF2 on the other hand I just started playing last year. It was nothing special but not shit either. I disliked the yellow critters very much though.

In the eternal war between facts and blind brand loyalty, facts always win. EF was a hilarious disaster, the only saving grace is that back then, pretty much EVERY shooter that wasn't Half-life sucked donkey balls.

Half-Life imo wasn't all that special. I know people make a big deal of it's "new" form of story telling and innovations in level design. But I found the 5 minute intro scene rather tiring and never really got into the Half-Life spirit. I much preferred the balls to the walls expansion pack Opposing Force or the mission based gameplay of the N64 shooter GoldenEye which was later picked up by the Medal of Honor series on PS1, culminating in the awesome Allied Assault for PC.

As for EF, as I already said, I don't even remember the game and have no intention whatsoever to go back. Jedi Knight 2 and Soldier of Fortune 2 are much better Raven games.

[Stark]

Listen to yourself. Everything you just said is subjective crap. Half-life had actual objective things going for it, like interesting level design (as much as I might hate the platform silliness), varied levels, better AI for the time, etc etc. I'm not a huge Valve fan and I don't give a shit what you think about anything, but it offends me that you think people care that you 'couldn't get into the Half-life spirit'. What the FUCK does that even MEAN? You're saying a game is bad because you weren't channeling Baron Samedi, but you say Elite Force was good EVEN THOUGH YOU CAN'T REMEMBER IT? Like I just said, your opinion is a simple baseless statement (since you can barely remember the game at all) but you'll 'defend' it without actually applying any reasoning at all. Even though I think Valve hasn't made a good game in ten years, that subjective attitude doesn't change the fact that Half-life was gaming milestone and Elite Force was a piece of crap generic shooter with a starfleet skin applied. I-mod, anyone? lol!

It's an amusing comeback to 'brand loyalty is stupid' to say 'well I don't even remember the game'. Next you'll doubtless get pissy for me not 'respecting' your 'opinion'. Statements you can't discuss or explain are utterly worthless.

[Coalition]

Startopia was fun. You could get the double-head guys to research stuff, then you would later produce it in your factory. You can then grab the stuff you just produced, and drop one of the items into the laboratory again, to reduce the cost. IIRC, each time you research something beyond the first results in a 5% cost reduction.

Pretty much, the only thing you cannot produce on the station is Mineral Ores. Keep those fully stocked, and you can set the food dispensers to automatic. Use the Cargo Hold (can only be placed against a wall) to store items, and as your Stores/Shops, Food Dispensers, and Medical Bay need items, they are automatically beamed to where they are needed. Traded items are automatically beamed out of Cargo holds, but loaded one at a time.

For Trade, get your own Spaceport and Commsensor (and three Grekka Targ to run it) ASAP. Otherwise you have to buy and sell everything to Arona Daal, and his prices are horrible. Unfortunately, he is the only option you have early in the game, so just buy what you need, and research/build the rest.

For dealing with trash, I would try to have the stores facing each other, but with a line of 6 trash cans between them. The food dispensers had 5 trash cans on each side, to make sure there was no litter. After that, lots of Scuzzers. Figure ~3 Scuzzers (preferably lvl 3) per section (so 9 to start), and 2 Fuzzers (the security bots) per section. The Fuzzers deal with criminals, disarm bombs, and help shoot critters.

Scuzzer control is easy, a drag and drop interface. You just right-click on a Scuzzer to bring up the menu, and drag the trash icon to the top. Presto, that Scuzzer will now consider trash its primary job.

To deal with attackers, I would park a turret right in front of the security control on my side. In order for them to capture the segment, they have to have a Fuzzer at those controls for several seconds. The turret kills them in time. Add more turrets for greater coverage, and a Security Center (darn thing is huge, make sure you have room) to increase the range of the turrets.

My main complaint was that when it was time to promote people, there was no general 'promote everyone needing promotion' button. Or just when you sort people by skill level, it would put everyone that could use promotion in that level is one section. At larger worker populations, I would wind up hiring someone, and bumping them up to max paycheck just so I never had to worry about them getting annoyed and leaving.

A couple nitpicks - I wish the Gem Slugs had better 'spending power'. These guys are supposed to be absolute royalty, but they only have the similar amount of money as everyone else. If you increased their spending power by an order of magnitude, but made them come on board less often, it would reflect better. Basically you treat them very well, and are willing to make several other aliens annoyed, because if they like it on your station they will spend for hours. Of course if they come across any trash, they get in a huff and leave.

Still a darn fun game though, plus the sound effects from the siren's business were nice. (Yes, I did fimish the game)

Oh hey, here's a set of pages all abot it: +http://rakrent.com/rtsc/rtsc_startopia.htm

[Stark]

Scuzzer control is easy, a drag and drop interface. You just right-click on a Scuzzer to bring up the menu, and drag the trash icon to the top. Presto, that Scuzzer will now consider trash its primary job.

So they SAY. It's pretty fuzzy on this stuff, and no matter now many skutters I jiggered about, they'd still break off if another, lower-priority job was closer. Particularly with the different levels of skutter, I would have preferred to be able to set certain groups to x levels, y jobs, z tasks if primary is complete - the crap ones are fine for repairs, since it's not time-critical, but obviously the fast ones should be focused on other tasks. I am grouchy about the UI, but back in the day all UI's were like that.

[MKSheppard]

Listen to yourself. Everything you just said is subjective crap. Half-life had actual objective things going for it, like interesting level design

Yeah, the level design is so great I can't even remember anything about Halflife beyond the opening test chamber.

On the other hand, I can remember E1M1 of both Doom 1 and 2....