Artemis Cosmos

so first of all I should mention that cosmos is not a single player game - it needs to be played as part of an online group of players (4+ players recommended) or in a LAN setting. Each Player takes up the role of one or more officers on the bridge of a starship. Its a game of comunication and team work. there are options for Game Mastered scenarios where a GM can run out a story in real time or P V E scenarios, a very expansive scripting system allows new missions to be made but that does require some knowledge of python. an easier to use but more limited system is in development. Whilst 1.0 is still somewhat rough around the edges and lacks some tutorials on how to play the community is starting to work on these.

We're a group of people that love to play Artemis SBS (Ben playing it on and off for the last 10 years at least) and we gave a change to this new title. Here's a couple things I have to say as of today: Bad: - No captains map. The classic Artemis had this "station/console" and I loved being able to go around checking units from my tablet on the map without stealing the focus from the science console. - Proper Linux support would be very cool for Steam Deck user and such. Neutral: - No 32 bits OS support; Can't run the game from my old Atom based Windows tablet with Windows 10 32 bits (stuck on a IA32 bootloader... can't boot a Windows 10 x64 on it :( ). However this one is on me since I tend to try to use my hardware to the maximum of its extend (was playing the classic Artemis on old off Lease Pentium 4 back in 2015 XD). Good: - Fighter management is greatly overhauled. Love that you can now accomplish some objective as a standalone fighter pilot. - Net code seems to be more stable than the old classic but we tend to run our SBS games on very different network/hardware every time we play so this may not be an accurate statement. I must add that I did not play all the console/stations as of today so take this review a more of a quick overview after playing a couple games with my friends. In the end, I suppose we can wait and see how everything's going to be in the future. Still recommend the game since we had plenty of fun that last couple games we had.

After a bit of work with port forwarding, online worked like a dream. I played the older version over a decade ago and wanted to give this another try

Although this is a multiplayer game and cannot be played solo, this is one of the most fun and entertaining cooperative team games I've ever played. The experience of being a bridge crew in charge of running a starship is an experience that is unlike any other. It's like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica come to life. While it can be hard to set up sessions with your crew, Find yourself a like minded group of friends, and sign on as the crew of the TSN Artemis.

the online doesnt work :(

Overall, this is not an upgrade from Artemis version 2.8. For most people, I recommend buying Artemis 2 instead. There are a lot of frustrating issues, especially with the user interface, that are not problems in Artemis 2. For example, the game window can only be maximized or its default 1024x800 (nowhere in between, there's no other resizing options), the mouse helm controls are really finnicky and it's easy to make impactful misclicks, the game is generally slow to sync the information displayed on the screen with what's currently happening in the simulation, the science details UI has obvious overlapping text that obscures important information, there's a bug where comms messages get sent to a different ship instead of the one you have selected, clicking text boxes causes keypresses prior to that click to be typed in, all scrollbars move in a weird way that makes fine control difficult, the zoom controls are unintuitive, multiple people are allowed to have the same console at the same time (e.g. two pilots fighting over which way the ship turns), you always have to re-configure the simulation/mission when you start a new game, the surrendering system is unintuitive and very punishing... etc. There are also a handful of missing features that are in Artemis 2. For example, pirates, biomechs, space monsters and beacons, side quests with friendly vessels, the captain's map and "data" consoles, single-seat bombers, etc. One strength of Cosmos that I can see might make someone prefer it over Artemis 2 is its higher flexibility in writing scripts for special missions or creating mods. You can do this using python or a simplified version of python meant to be more friendly to non-programmers. For example, I've been able to make the core pirate features (looting, variable docking privileges, overheating at high energy, etc.) work in Cosmos just by using this scripting system. However, the aforementioned user interface issues (most of which can't be fixed by changes in these scripts) cause frustration and make the game less fun regardless of whether you're playing a vanilla or a custom mission. So Cosmos's current state is more akin to what I'd expect in an early access game. To their credit, since I've started paying close attention to Cosmos about 6 months ago, the development team has been making noteable progress on adding features and fixing bugs. But at the current rate that issues are being fixed, I don't expect Cosmos's quality to surpass Artemis 2 for at least another year or two. When/if I think that has happened, then I'll flip this review to positive. [Edit May 18: 6 months later, I still don't think Artemis Cosmos is better than Artemis version 2.8. In Cosmos version 1.3.0, some bugs have been fixed, including the overlapping science text, but a handful of new bugs were introduced, and all the bugs and missing features I described above still stand as-written.] Finally, FYI, I noticed a handful of other reviews here are from people who I know play a highly customized version of Cosmos (the "TSN"). Their experience would have been vastly different from what you get in the shipped release you'd buy here on Steam. So I recommend taking reviews that mention the TSN--or custom scripting in general--with a big grain of salt.

"THERE IS AN ENEMY SHIP BELOW US! I'M LOADING FOUR NUKES!" - my Cousin