Starion Tactics Reviews

This game is one huge, unfinished bug. - at certain zooms levels left-clicks don't work, keep zooming in and out until they do - sometimes left-clicking move confirmation deselects unit - sometimes left-click does random things - as if you clicked somewhere else - I am getting achievements for things I haven't done - my ally AI uses negative cards against me - no tutorial, manual doesn't explain anything beyond what you can figure out from the interface - enemy AI (on novice level) gets the artifact card every 1-2 turns, I never got even one - battles are completely unclear, dice are thrown with symbols of unknown meaning, sometimes ships shoot sometimes not, their shields/hull sometimes decreases sometimes not, one ship at some point explodes - if ally has ships at your planet, you cannot move your ships from there... seems the AI cannot move their ships either...

Exceedingly plain and banal game. The trailer is misleading, there is no storyline and the featured visuals have no connection to gameplay, they are just menu animations. The strategy consists of an even grid of planets and you are essentially pushing pieces around playing space-checkers or space-go, but with the addition of some tedious board game rules.

Don't buy this game. It's filled with bugs. I just had a multiplayer game where the first time the AI attacked, it ended the game stating that the AI had won, when it attacked one planet out of my ...30. They only just added a singleplayer save function, it's incomplete and full of bugs and has been sold as a complete game. It's not even worth $5.00 in its current state. Buyers beware :(

I found this game to be completely underwhelming. The store page could not possibly be more misleading about what you are getting in this game. This is not a 4x game in the very least. It is space themed checkers. The only win condition in the game is to control a majority number of the planets on the board. The default settings in game are that when you move to an unoccipied planet, you capture it. Generally I will have won the game long before any combat has happened between myself and an enemy faction. I feel completely ripped off by this game. It promised so much and delivered on almost nothing it says in the store page. Please save your money for something worth it, like a lottery ticket.

First impression: casual unpolished wargame I am calling Starion a turn-based wargame because the emphasis is on conquering the game board by strategic production and expansion. In normal gameplay, there are 7 different unit types (6 do combat, 1 upgrades a planet's production), but there's only 1 resource type (aka money, though it's not called that) and only 1 planet type (with production values of 0-2 per turn) that can produce any kind of ship. There are no tech trees and no research, there are no specialized production facilities, there are no terrain types, and battles play out by the strength of your units and the roll of the dice (the battle system is never fully explained). The rules provide for simple tactics: Do I produce weaker ships fast or strong ships more slowly (and can I defend the planet while it is producing)? Can I anticipate and counter enemy actions successfully? The game provides for deathmatch and team modes, both in singleplayer (with AI) and multiplayer. The rules would make this a decent game, but there are various minor bugs, the UI feels unresponsive and cumbersome at times (5 clicks to produce a ship, ship and planet lists not suitable for large numbers), and the manual is incomplete: some features of the game and most notably the battle system remain undocumented. I have played some standard 1-on-1 games against the AI. I always get the same, unbalanced map (layout and assigned production values). The AI always produces ships on undefended frontline planets, and I can mop it up easily with a simple rush. This happens on all levels of AI. It also failed to take two of the good cities next to its base, giving away its production advantage. I expected more of Starion. If you are looking for this type of game done right, [i]Mayhem Intergalactic[/i] is slightly more tactical and delivers a better experience.

I got this on sale for under $5.00 thinking it looked cool even though the reviews are mostly negative. I was wrong. If a game has mostly negative reviews, guess what, it isn't a good game. I tried 3 games: Game one, team play. I lost track since another player and my units were the same color and it just turned into a muddled mess. Hello, shouldn't the colors be the players rather than the factions? And my teammates ships as well as my own would both be around some plantets, and I could not tell them apart. Sometimes it seemed as if my ships were brighter, sometimes my enemies. Game two, 1-1 with different factions. I made the mistake of leaving artifacts on in the vicotry conditions. I won the game after finding 3 artifacts before even having a combat. Not fun. Game three, 1-1 different factions, artifacts off. The AI proves it'self brain dead. I took all the plantes. During the game, I built 53 ships. The AI? 4. yes 4. I lost (automated combat) 15 ships to take out his 4. Either he only built tough ships, which is silly in a game where it is all about expanding fast, or he just did nothing. Either way, too easy and not fun at all. Game four - easy - Uninstall. This game has potential. I really do think that a major overhaul could save the game. As it is, pretty much everything about this game, from the way it scrolls to the Custom game setup, which really isn't custom (can't even pick the number of planets, it's dependent on which game you choose) is irritating. Some things that would help custom: Color choice, planet number choice, difficulty choice. Fix the AI. Fix the colors. Fix the winning conditions. Fix the irritating scroll. Fix just about everything.

Not quite ready. I've noticed a few things with this game off the bat. Every turn it gives you a summary of the action in the last turn and the statistics were not telling me about the ships I lost. Combat is simplified kind of like the Civilization games, this combat is a little confusing; much of the time it will show my ship destroy the other one and find out it had destroyed my ship as well. I do like the game and with a little work these things will probably get smoothed out in a few patches until them I can't recommend this to anyone. Lastly this is not a 4x game, there is no research and there is no diplomacy I could find.

From the outset, I like this game. It does what it sets out to do very well. That said, I won't be playing it because it's not my style of game. It's not a space 4x game but a casual simplistic strategy came set in a space theme. What the game appears to be from the advertising is a simplified, casual, 4x turn-based space strategy game. It isn't. I could really enjoy a game like and keep playing it for a lengthy period of time. It needs to have just a few more mechanics and a few more complexities to be a 4x. For example, there is no eXplore in this 3x game. That goes along with no research, no empire management, no ship customization, no planetary development. Well, heck, it's not a 4x game at all! That's my one warning, you will be very upset if you buy this expecting that (yes, I know it says it on the store page advert, honestly I don't know why they would advertise it as such). Let me explain what it actually is. It's a space themed table top strategy game. It's Risk with space ships on a check board. No more complex than that. It's not a 4x, not Endless Space, nor MOO, nor SOTS, nor Stardrive, etc. It's a bad decision to advertise it as this genre. You have a checker grid of planets with each having a set number of Resource points. Capturing the planet means you gain those resource points each turn. Each planet can construct ships and the cost is subtracted from your resource bank. You have cards with some strategic value, i.e. your ship will suicide next battle and kill itself and all enemy ships, which can also be traded for resources. There are essentially two races, the Empire and, essentially, rebels/Pirates. They have different play styles whereas the Empire has stronger ships, combat strength and health, they take longer to build and more resources. The Pirates have weaker ships and take less turns to build. So the pirate early game is sprawl as fast as you can before the Empire starts coming. The ships are each different resource costs, turns to build and stats. The battles are simply graphical representations of the stat calculation. It's like Civilization 5 where you have one unit attacking another, animations ensue, and the victor remains. That's the game. That's all there is. It's a deeper checkers in Space. Perhaps that's unfair. It's a very complicated Checkers game in space. Think of the genre as on a range of complexity from a tabletop stragegy game to your traditional, archetypal, 4x PC game like MOO. Within the table tops you can go from as simple as checkers to as complicated as Risk. Your 4x games, I would say Endless Space would be the simplistic title, MOO/Sword of the Stars in the middle and the spreadsheet game of MOO3 as the most complex. This game falls squarely in the complex table top game category and doesn't even touch the simplistic 4x scale. That's what you're buying. Don't expect a simpler Endless Space or even a casual 4x title because you'll be disappointed. What it does though, it does right. The UI is crisp and looks good, the ships look good as does the space background. Next to no game breaking bugs so far after 2 hours of gameplay and multiple play throughs. Your games will last from about 10 minutes - 45 minutes. It's very much a pick up and go strategy title. For me though, it's still space checkers -- where you can own tiles you were on and build more checkers on them and each time you jump another player there's a battle based on numbers. I'd recommend this for casual players and table top players, not necessarily 4x players. There is a little polish lacking, it's day one after all, with some stuttering in the panning and some funky zoom decisions (click on planets to move around map, forget panning or zooming). Also, damage on ships is hard to see or even even keep track of since it's not represented graphically or shown on the galaxy screen nor battle screen. The other reviews criticised the game for having a scout take out a cruiser, fair enough, they can when your cruiser has 1 shield point left but you'd never know it during the battle. That sort of detail isn't quite polished in yet. I think $15 is a fair price point, $20 is pushing it in its current state, but maybe when it gets more polished and maybe with a little more content.

I only played single player, There is no story line to discover, Though it gives you the option of team play, there is only one winner at the end (and having the computer win when you helped it sucks). There is no tutorial, This feels more like a phone app than a computer game. For $20 I expect playability from simple games that is at least comparable to a popcap game. Maybe it was meant to be played multi-player, but I was very disappointed.

The demanding price for this game is unreasonable by the extreme end of the sprectrum. Those with even the slightest interest, feel free to disregard as this game really brings nothing new to the genre. If this game is much better suited as a flash game on Armor Games / Newgrounds. The RNG in this game is shoddy and no customization. "..deeply tactical and highly visual experience.." This description cannot be any further from the truth.