Starlight Tactics™

I had high hopes for this game. Its a nice concept but extremely poorly executed. I would have liked to do a "Pros & Cons" review, but im seriously struggling to find any pros beyond the reasonably nice ship models. So, in no particular order, heres a list of reasons why you should give this game a miss: 1) At the time of writing, Ive completed 20 out of the 50 missions that make up the campaign and have completed them on all 3 difficulty levels, however I have yet to be shot at by an enemy ship yet! Not one single enemy has ever fired a shot, launched a fighter or a missile! 2) The same scenario every time - Warp in with the enemy ships on your right. No objectives, no story line, nothing.... The only thing that changes is the composition of the enemy fleet. 3) No damage models - Every ship just seems to be a bag of hitpoints. You do seem to be able to knock the engine offline sometimes, but there are no subsystems to damage and weapons cannot be take off line. 4) Many of the game mechanics are terribly thought out, missiles and fighters being the worst of the design decisions. To attack with a fighter you launch it and it then autopilots at the target ship while you watch from the chase camera with a button that says fire, when the reticle is over the target, you press fire... Wow... just wow! 5) BUGS - Shots randomly go whistling straight through enemy ships sometimes, the mission "End" button often gets obscured by the move command of the next ship even though the game should be over, and if you complete a mission on admiral difficulty without first doing the easiest difficulty, the mission ends up as "unresolved". 6) No Context - There is an intro video that sets the scene, and every couple of missions you get a popup news article about fighting on earth, but there is no story behind your set route around the solar system, and no mission objectives - Its just a casual waltz around space erradicating the NAN forces. 7) Although the ships look quite nice, there are only about 5 models for each of the 2 factions. The same model is used for each of the upgrades and the cruiser model is even recycled for use as a heavy and light cruiser! This game should be avoided at all costs!

This is a bad game. The game concept is clearly not complete. The Devs clearly rushed this game out the door in order to make money. The concept of play is that you warp into a battle field and fight an enemy fleet. However, the starting points are always the same and the initial engagement is also almost always the same. You appear right beside the enemy fleet, so you have two options turn into the enemy fleet and fire or turn away. So, you almost always turn into the enemy fleet. Another major flaw in the game is that you are better off just having one big killer ship as opposed to a fleet. The turn order is dependent on your fleet. So if you show up with a fleet, each ship takes it's turn in a pre-determined order. If you show up with one capital ship, it takes up all the turns in that order (instead of just one turn like one would assume). So, your capital ship can then move and shoot many times in a turn. An interesting twist on this game is that you move and then shoot. The turrets are all linked and you have to target them all according to their arcs of fire. So ship positioning becomes important. If you can line up an enemy ship so that all your guns can hit it, that ship is doomed. The problem is that to do so, you always do the same moves for every battle. The game is also buggy, I've had ships just vector off in a random direction when it wasn't supposed to move. Pros: - Spaceships - Unique shooting concept. Cons: - Weak and incomplete game design - Repeatative battles - Weak plot - Buggy

Ok now i have had chance to play the game and big thanks to the dev for listening to the feedback on here. I like the Game so far got a few hours in today and i know im going to sink a few more hours into it so well worth the price. My initial problem i think stemed from the tutorial being a bit off (Spoke to the dev and he said he will look into it). The difficulty at the start is fairly easy but ramps up nicely. Graphics are pretty nice and ship designs too. Apart from a few other little bugs ive noticed so far which will hopefully be sorted out soon its a good little game. Also the intro sequence is good, one of the better ones i have seen for a while ----------Old review---------------------------------------- Ok this Just came out but a bit dissapointed so far. you need to buy a ship at the start and wait for delivery 3hrs (Real time). Not knowing this i bought a few ships and used all credits. Next after buying these the game said you can speed up delivery using credits but i have none so not a very helpfull tutorial. I have tried restarting the campaign and it does not seem to work as credits are still used up and ships still in shipyard. So do not buy too many ships at the start people or you will have to wait to actually do anything. Ill now have to wait another 2.5 hrs before i can play. I dont usually do reviews but this little point has annoyed me. My review may change when i can actually play.

After playing this game for about 7 hours now I feel good about writing a review. First I'll answer some of the points from other reviews: 1. Have to wait hours for ships to be delivered. A. The devs removed this problem fairly quickly, and now the longest wait for a Carrier is about 12 minutes, while a destroyer is about 3 minutes. This adds a different dimension to the game than other similar ones, and makes you think strategy when requesting units and budgeting. Also, while you're waiting you can earn more command points (CP, game currency) playing skirmishes. The skirmishes are a lot of fun because you can set the ships/upgrades however you like. It's a lot of fun to take some revenge after your ships get destroyed in the campaign by setting your ships up with all upgrades, and the enemy up with none =). A major flaw that still is exists is the repair times for ships. Slight damage takes 10-20 minutes to repair, and you can earn some CP while you're waiting. My carrier just got into a firefight and it is going to take 7 hours to repair? [b]That's a bit much devs[/b]. BTW you can also spent CP points to repair your ships instantly, and deliver them instantly, but when you're trying to save CP's you don't want to spend them on rushing. 2. The game UI is difficult to aim properly. A. Yes at first, but as your get used to moving/aiming your ships you get a lot better at it. There's also skirmish mode like I mentioned earlier to hone your skills. Again, this is a different dimension to the game that makes it interesting. As far as blind spots being as big as cruisers, well like in real life, the closer you get the harder it is for all the turrets to aim together to one point. You have to take firing ranges into account in your manuevering. Larger ships have longer ranges. Let me tell you there is no greater feeling that the first time you line up all your turrets on the enemy ship and blow it away. 3. You can only use one ship at a time on both sides, no matter how outnumbered the enemy is. A. Yes, this one is a little annoying. You have 5-6 ships, your enemy has only one left, and while you get to use one ship, so does the enemy. So if you run 5 rounds letting all your ships have a turn, the enemy ship also gets 5 rounds. From a challenge point of view this is good, but from a realistic point of view this is way off. Especially when the enemy has a large ship left that can take some hits, and you lose a few destroyers trying to take it out. A good strategy to deal with this is remove the hardest hitting enemy ships first, but again it's not realisitic. 4. Game has no ship damage system. A. It kinda does. You can hit the enemy engines and damage them hard enough that the ship will start spinning. However there is no way to knock out enemy weapons or subsystems. 5. The story is lacking. A. No dispute there. There is just a quick paragraph of information before each engagement, and none of them have anything to do with the battles you are fighting. But it does give the feeling of being in a war, and the battles are all part of the larger conflict. Now questions answered this is a fun game. It's pretty well balanced, and takes a fresh approach to a space strategy sim. Physics are in play and asteroids/other ships react to fire. The graphics are fantastic, and run well with decent machines (I have a beast rig I built myself, and a 2012 Alienware laptop). I was able to run the highest graphics settings on either machine with no drop in framerate. Also, the game has not crashed/bugged once since I've been playing. That smoothness is appreciated. Ship designs are very familar to Starship Troopers/Babylon 5/Star Trek, and other well known scifi series. They look nice. Overall, it's well worth the $9-10 they are charging for it, and will give you your monies worth in enjoyment, if you have the discipline to learn the controls. UI 8/10 Graphics 10/10 Sound 8/10 Enjoyment 9/10 Story 4/10 Bugs 10/10

8/10 space combat turn based more fun than you may think step 1 set your move length-direction-angle step 2 try to point all weapons at target with hight-left-right then fine tune your shot....fire there are lots of ships-types and different factions all with there own ships that look different and work different there are things you can add to the ships that will make them better eg damage type armor missiles shields ect nots seen many different types of missions

Battles are very spectacular and the ship models are amazing! You can build ships, you can upgrade them. Make an own fleet. Of course the game isn't perfect. But if you like the turned-base Sci-fi games, then this game worth the 9 bucks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ4sQOW60LM

So far I have only tested this game for four hours (I am now in 18th of the 50 missions) and it seems that I have seen everything it has to offer... The game's premise seems interesting: fight a turn based fleet action in space. In reality this game is just a string of missions where the fleet of your choosing is pitted against enemy fleet. There have been number of games where this worked alright but they had something Starlight Tactic lacked - context (why are we here? Why is the enemy fleet consisting of two freighters and three frigates? You know...fluff..) and certain demand for player skill. When you buy game like Starlight Tactics, you expect that the game demands some sort of tactics on your part. In reallity 50 percent of the time the enemy ships spawn next to you, where the each side turns towards each other and start pounding away. The other 50% of time it spawns right in front of you, at most 300-500 meters, where you can dispense with turning part. Basically it all comes down to this - position your ships in such way that most of their weapons can hit the enemy (yep, that is all there is...) By this point I have covered everything this game has to offer in tactics department. Ship types and roles? Just buy the ship with most firepower (Then buy the AP round upgrade and you are set for next 18 missions....). Weapons? 5 cm is not as good as 12 cm. At this point, at this price range (10 USD) I cannot recommend this game (even for the most casual of gamers). At same price you can get Nexus: The Jupiter Incident from 2004 which has slightly worse graphics but is infinently better space fleet combat game (not for the casual gamer though).

Nice idea but has a few problems. The AI does shoot back at you, despite what people say, but it seems bugged. If you avoid shooting the lead ship, it will eventually start shooting. Thats nothing really compared to the fact that half the game that is completely missing. Thats right, check the achievements. There is absolutely no game where you can play the other side despite that being planned and the game being out for well over a year. There has not even been and update in over a year. If you like supporting games that devs dont, go ahaed and buy it. Otherwise there isnt much here to recomend.

I'm NOT a fan of this game. But, that doesn't mean I can't see it's joys for certain people. I love space combat, but like I love my other more visceral types of combat. I've never been a fan of turn-based rpg elements like this. If you really enjoy turn-based (think hexagon/grid squared based RPGS), then apply that thinking to outer space. Bingo, got this game. I'm guessing the name may be based off of Fallout Tactics? similar combat to that game. If you enjoy that, you'll like this. Just not my cup of tea.

this game is good fun and easy to get into. it can be played in skirmish mode which is fun all by itself and a great place to learn the gameplay. campaign offers a nice steady string of missions that can be played in 3 difficulty levels. the battles may become repetitive, however, lining up shots and blowing the other ships out of exsistence never gets old. its worth noting that the complaints that have come up have been fixed already so the game is running just fine so no worries there. i would not suggest this game to someone who is expecting micromanagement type of depth. that being said, i would highly recomend this game to everyone else, especially at the nice price for this title. what we have in this game is good gameplay, addictive progression of your fleet, easy to manage options, nice style and graphics in my opinion, and this is a great game for "jumping in for a quick battle" if you dont have much time. bottom line, go for it and have fun, may your capital ships endure and bring you glory!