Outscape

Outscape is the kind of game I always wanted to play but no one ever wanted to make. Until now that is. Most grand strategy, if not all grand strategy MMO's follow the same formula, be it browser or launcher based: You start with a city / base / planet and you built it up, you expand, you create alliances and conquer others (short version). Then if you pay hard cash you can do it faster. This is where Outscape differs from all the other grand strategy MMO's on the market. There is no cash shop. Everyone starts equally, everyone evolves and expands equally and your strategy makes the difference if you get better weapons earlier than your neighbour. I've played Outscape since Alpha, the developers interact with the community, they listen to us and implement things we need. During Alpha's there was no automation of any kind and after being highly requested they added research and building construction automation. Players asked for better starting planets and resources and the devs implemented, revamped flight times, more buildings, more research, you name it. [h1]How is the game right now in Early Access? [/h1] Its more stable than it was in Alpha that's for sure, there's more features and its easier to get into due to the tutorial they added. [h1]How is it different from other MMO's in the genre (apart from the no-p2w mechanics)? [/h1] Since everyone is on the same playing field the biggest advantage is that you cannot be eliminated overnight during the early stages of the game. Your capital planet has 1 late game planetary defense system and enough troops to keep you protected for quite a while. Even if you spawn in the game 1 month in the risk of being eliminated by an already advanced player is minimal because spawning starts from the center of the galaxy and keeps expanding outward the more players join the game. The top 20 players will be fighting in the center, days (if not weeks) of travel away from you. Of course, like all MMO's there is a risk of eventually being eliminated from the game, but that's after playing for a rather long time and by investing a lot into armies. Wars can last weeks if not months, the more planets you have, the more they are defended, the harder it is to be eliminated. The vast majority of the community is also great in Outscape. Older players help new players, people tend not to trespass in other player's territory (unless they plan to start a fight), they tend not to steal your resources if they see you're already present in a system and if they find new players that are getting ganked by more experienced players they tend to help out the new player by providing support with their armies. [h1]How does the game play? [/h1] After choosing the race you want to play as you start off in a system with a capital (colonized) planet and several uncolonized planets, a few scout ships and colonizers. You build up your planet's economy, research new technology, colonize planets in your system or send out colonizers to other systems to expand your empire. Each planet has its own population, sometimes a planet will have a native population that is beneficial to you and adds different boosts to your planet's economy or military capabilities. Everything in the game takes time. The first batch of research can be completed after a few minutes, from there it gets more expensive (time wise) but this can be lowered drastically by building more research facilities on your planets. The more you have the lower the research time. To fly from one system to another can take anywhere from a few minutes to several days (depending how far away you go). At the start of the game nearby systems are in general just 30 minutes to 2 hours distance. The travel time can be reduced with research and new engines you unlock. [h1]Is this game for you?[/h1] If you want a grand strategy MMO that has no P2W mechanics it is worth playing it. If you are scared that you'd be forced to invest a lot of time into it, do not be. The game can be played in short bursts of 30 minutes to an hour. Early game you have a lot of things you can do but once you reach a certain point in your development you don't need to be ever present. Its a more relaxed MMO than others. If you are scared that your empire will vanish overnight, do not be. Its not like other MMO's that require constant attention.

Outscape is one heck of a beast. First of all, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT, if slow methodical gameplay (Think a epic campaign of DND or an extremely long game of Civ) doesn't turn you off. It is very difficult to describe this game without showing the game. I'll let others try that, I have failed every time I've attempted. The best I can do is explain some experiences: It's MMORTS and it's done fantastically well. NEVER Pay to Win. LONG, real-time strategy that will span MONTHS, not a Click Per Second machine. I was invited into the private alpha late into the Alpha 2 server. Got spawned inside of a minefield, trapped in my spawn system and had to wait for the big mean guy to come take my stuff so I could restart. GG Fast forward 2.5 years and here we are, finally on Steam. I had over 1200 hours on the Alpha, and I played most of today, as you can see above. I played extensively in Alpha 2, was part of the war that caused the Great Lag Week of 2018, and played the first half of the Alpha 3 server where I got insanely unlucky and wound up in the absolute worst area of space. Awful experience overall but I learned SO MUCH about how your spawn area, your own personal and unique situation will shape and guide EVERYTHING you do for MONTHS in this game. In Alpha 2 after the instant invasion thing, I spawned in a relatively quiet pocket of space, had one guy nearby, he was friendly, decided to be non-aggressive, and we moved out with our lives. I built up a modest empire of ~54 planets over a couple months (this was before the limitations) when I got sucked into a massive war involving about 15 people that wound up lagging the server for over a week with constant crashes because there were thousands and thousands and thousands of ships moving simultaneously. It was epic, and it was chaos. Best moment of Alpha 2, for sure, and it really showcases the kind of combat this game has in its future. You can spawn in, build up some fleets, and spread out and attack your neighbors if you want, but doing so will give you a reputation for being hyper-aggressive and you're far more likely to get attacked yourself, on sight, by groups of players if you act this way, but if that's how you like to play, then more power to you! You can make friends with your neighbors, join or form alliances with friends and neighbors, join in wars that can alter the course of an entire sector of space spanning several hundred lightyears... well, maybe not yet. But eventually! Buying this game at this time will help the devs out tremendously, by affording them the opportunity to hire more devs to get work done faster. It's an investment. The devs listen to us, ESPECIALLY on the Forums. For example, there was a patch pushed out earlier this week that addressed some significant early-game issues. We start with 25k credits and guaranteed 2 decently sized planets in our home system, instead of 5k credits and just a Homeworld of ANY size. It's absolutely worth it for the stories, the heartbreak when you lose your combat fleets and the elation when your allies swoop in at the last second to save your empire from total extinction. It's massive scale is unbelievable unless you play it yourself. If this is the type of game you can enjoy, then you WILL get hundreds of hours out of it, guaranteed, you just gotta stick with it. The start can be a bit frustrating, but as you figure things out, they become much more apparent and you will learn from your mistakes. Asking questions in chat is almost always beneficial as well. The start will feel like it's overwhelming, and then you will eventually hit a wall. Credits, Resources, or Population. One of these things will stop you from continuing at the breakneck pace. Then you'll get on every couple hours, set orders, queue one or two things to build, and go do something else. This "maintenance time" as i call it, grows as your empire grows, and eventually when you're got 30-40 planets and 40 fleets you're moving around freighting resources, or patrolling your territory to kill pirates, or scouting enemies, you will find that you have the option to play all day again, so it comes full circle. Don't get discouraged!

Such potential to fill a gap in 4x games, just not there though sadly. Pretty much everything it claims is slightly misleading... Explore and colonize: exploring takes forever and there is no automation so you must micromanage ships on trajectories that can take months of travel in real time. With latest server update the planets you have to choose from range from bad to worse, to dead...making it hard to build even a modest set up. Mine planets for resources: sure, most with decent allocations of resources now are worthless tiny planets you wouldn't ever plan a colony on since the game relies heavily on planet size for pop growth yet they have nerf'd the planets to the extreme in the new update. Even planets with secondary populations are now mostly pointless to colonize as they take way too much building to make viable yet the planet size makes doing so impossible or at least unlikely to be of any real benefit long term no matter the benefit the 2nd race gives you. Develop your colonies: sure take 50+ hours or more to build up a colony that will run out of population before ever being able to be viable due to the planet it is on being tiny or devoid of resources. Gone are the viable multi planet systems with large planets and decent resources...game moved too fast with them? Are you kidding me? Game is a slow slog thru misery in its current form and I personally love the slow grind style 4x games, this one just takes that to the insane extreme. Imagine if Eve and Stellaris are combined into 1 game and then have a stroke...you are getting close. Research tree is not that big, only way it is made to feel large it the time it takes to do the research...weeks plus for higher techs which you won't get to for months and with the newest server you may never get there as building tech research buildings is one of the highest population required buildings and tiny planets will allow you to build 1 maybe 2 or 3 if you are lucky oh and did i mention there is a cap on how many total planet you can support at all? Not much of a grand empire with a max of number of planets...tiny no resource planets to boot. Design and build fleets: Sure predetermined shells you can change weapons on but considering the weapons are not that diverse there is no real choice...bullet or beam...choice made, customization done. Max of 18 ships in the largest fleet possible...not huge. Arrange ships in tactical fleets, not really...larger ships have very little choices in their arrangement as the space a given flag ship offers for the entire fleet is so small you end up smashing ships into a ball. Trading? oh you mean dropping a pod of supplies anyone can take from but there is no real trading going on, not sure where this comes in...i guess if your friend makes you some ships and gifts them to you or drops a pod of resources for you sure...maybe you could call that trading. Also the economy is all based off your pop and how many of the upgraded expensive buildings you can cram on your tiny useless planets over the course of months of daily game play...hope you don't have anything else to do but stare at your screen while snails inch across it for hours at a pop. might get to make 1 or 2 actual decisions or moves in a whole day of play...super fun. Ok, just 1 last point. The new server dumps you right on top of each other so huge galaxy with 1% full and you have 20 neighbors fighting you for the same crud planets within minutes of spawning into game...this as i see it is the biggest flaw so far, everything else could maybe be worked around in game but since you need so many tiny crummy planets to get going players should be hundreds of light years from each other yet there will always be at least 4 within 50-100LY everywhere you spawn yet the galaxy is 1% or less full? only thing that makes sense on start would be making a colony ship and sending it off into the void for say 2 months or more of real time travel time without fuel and then coming back in said 2 months to hopefully have survived the trip and get luckily to find a decent planet away from everyone else so you can actually start exploring, of course this means you will not have a home world really as they have a resource bonus that your out of the way colony won't get...makes even this solution pointless. Might check back in at some point. As it stands now sadly probably not...had such high hopes and gave it a real go, the new servers killed it for me, they offered 1 small improvement and like 10 large game breakers as I see it...not a good start.

It's online, so war focused players call the builders farmville players, and the builders call the war focused players ganking a$$holes. You know the drill. Other than that, it's a make-you-own-fun game. There is a practical limit of 40 - 50 planets per player, and once you've reached that and developed the economy, there's no real reason to do anything, so you set your own goals. I think that's where the "emergent" bit is supposed to kick in, but I'm not seeing much of it. I'm bored of the game, but it was fun to learn. note: Ignore the hours played. Things happen slowly. If you walk away from the game for 6 hours, nothing much will have happened. In my case, divide by 10 for about 40 hours of mild entertainment. Not bad.

Abandoned. Waste of money

As many have stated i really wanted to like this game and on the surface it is an enjoyable game. Once you get past the shiny veneer however it just has to many issues currently to recommend for purchase. If you want to support the genre then this is not a bad title though. If you are looking for a game that has flaws.... lots of flaws and some very game breaking, then this is the title for you. Most of my grips focus around just how easy it is for a player to attack you while you sleep i.e. under 8 hours and with most radar until way later you wont notice. Also if you strike back hard and a war ensues even if you are on the winning side they will just drop out of the game instantly deleting all the spoils of war you would have gained and basically due to fuel and such most likely strand your attacking force on a now empty world/system. Add in players currently exploiting friend codes to spawn starter planets in their home system then gifting them to the main account along with the starting fleets/colony ships and you get a real imbalance quick. It turns into who does not cheat/exploit mechanics loses. I have seen entire systems filled with starter planets which gives huge wind falls of free population/resources/ships/and changes the old dust ball world into a extremely desireable world. I do like what the game is trying to be, i just do not care for the state it is currently in at this time. I hope to revisit this game and review in the future and be able to change this to a recommend.

This is the only game review I have posted (at least that I can remember). That's because this is the game I have waited for. Like Eve Online meets Stellaris. I can't get enough. There are ways to be somewhat hands off, but you can also micromanage, tinker and optimize about as much as you can keep your eyes open. It's pre-beta so it has its rough edges and certain mechanics are still being worked out, but it has a dedicated and responsive dev team and a growing and seemingly lively player community. A thorough read of the already well-developed Wiki is a must for getting bearings, but the learning curve is not excessively steep. It's already a lot of fun, and I can't wait to see how it develops further. I would purchase and donate copies of this game to help support its development. That's how strongly I feel about it.

Devs abandoned game and killed all servers. Game has no playability now what so ever. Everyone who bought it, got screwed.

I gather this game has been abandoned due to Dev mismanagement.