RECOMMENDED AFTER MORE UPDATES
This is a fun colony game which has two unique parts to it. You build a base that looks like something from the Terran Republic in Planetside 2, and the Combat reminds me of Serious Sam/Unreal Tournament and borderlands.
Base Building
It's base building is cool, but at the moment limited.
- although I haven't experienced anything to defend your base/planet, I would like to see it in the future.
- It isn't open world, so the planet you land on isn't boundless, it has a boundary which is a shame but I can imagine unless you have a beefy PC, makes sense for optimization.
- You can upgrade your buildings based on resources you gathered, I do hope that they add a visual look to the buildings when it's upgraded. So far the only one that gets one is the prisons which increase horizontally with more prison cells.
-Prisons to me are the main way you convert enemy npcs into your soldiers. You torture with either indoctrination and electrocuting them. If you electrocute you can have a chance of killing them vs indoctrination.
-Your soldiers are also your labour, so they'll go around to work jobs that you tell them to do, gather, etc.
-The gathering needs more work, I noticed that soldiers don't grab everything and you'll have files of resources just floating. Not a big deal but needs work.
-Overall cool on the base building, you can get a tech where your character flies around the base and whenever you try to use the three construction options, your character goes up in the air anyway to get a better visual to build.
Combat
-Really fun, you grab your ship to go on expeditions, you go to different types of areas to grab specific resources that you'll need to complete your expedition to 100 per cent. As you travel in space, the enemy gradually increases in strength the longer you go.
-When you land on a planet that has enemies, you go to a specific arena type of map, that has powerups and NPCs. You kill the enemies look doom/serious sam/borderlands, and kill the boss. Some variety is there but this is the main type of mission. It's fun, the powerups keep going more powerful the more you complete objectives in the expeditions.
-This is also how you capture enemies, while fighting them, you can equip a capture round that I think you press F? and depending on the health, the type of resource round, and the type of soldier, you can capture them and they are teleported to your ship.
-Once you get to 100 per cent you have usually two options, you can either return to base and store your prisoners and goods. All you powerups get removed but are turned into a unique resource that you will need for your shipyard and I guess for more advanced buildings and tech, but I have yet to see that yet. OR you do a decisive battle. A decisive battle is a big map where your faction's army supports you and fights the enemy faction controlling the sector. Once you do these battles three times, you capture the sector to progress the story but the sector itself is the same, you can still do expeditions and capture resources, fight enemies etc. Nothing unique.
It's in early access but you can see it's got potential. The biggest issue I have is the work shift which others have complained. Your troops can be overworked and you can set a shift time for them. As a dictator, it feels a bit weird. I get the mechanic but I think they need to redesign it to match the theme of being an autocratic ruler. I guess maybe a propaganda system can help, just needs more authortarian mechanics to offput the morale/loyalty system of your workers.
The other issues are minor, mainly visual. For example, the elite enemies that you fight and capture, are just large giant versions of other NPCs. It would be cool if they were more unique looking, and looked different when joining your army. But again, minor issue.
I recommend this game in the future, it's fun but just needs more time to cook.
