Stars in Shadow: Legacies DLC

I consider the base game as the best 4X currently out there, and if you own it, I recommend buying this The art alone is worth it, but the Tinker faction also feels unique in its play-style to warrant multiple playthroughs and will help populate large galaxies with even more races and funky ships

This is a good Master of Orion experience. If you didn't play MoO2 specifically, let me explain: MoO2 is an easy to understand 4X. Everything you do in this game has a nice and easy to grasp impact on your galactic empire. You don't need many ships, buildings, oversight over many different resources, and the UI is quite clear and informative. It is focussed and not too overwhelming in its mechanics. Stars in Shadows is a fantastic introduction to the genre, and through and through recommendable to new 4X-players, as well as experienced 4X-veterans who want a quick and easy nostalgia trip. Music is fine, performance could be better, and diplomacy needs a bit of reworking (I ended up in a total galaxy war because I didn't sever all contacts with everyone as demanded by everyone). Follow my curator at https://store.steampowered.com/curator/28337205-Fair-Minded-Witness/

DLC factions are usually OP. If I like the base game, I would say get the DLC. But the problem is that base game is buggy and unbalanced, so is the DLC. Plus the Tinker is OP. They don't need food, and their ships are very sturdy, heals itself and replenish ammos. The base game is unbalanced, now with DLC it gets worse.

Tinkers feels like playing the Borg from Star Trek. Being friends with Harpies and Arda Seed opens new possibilities. System infested with Harpy? Leave them alone and get better tech from friendlier Arda Seed. Return to system and take it without fighting after getting Harpy repellent tech. Looking forward to new content.

Honestly, it does not add a whole lot to the game, basically just a new race that are basically the borg from star trek. Still, it goes a bit towards felshing the game out by adding more variety to the races. It's still not a great game, but it went from above average to good.

Oof. I may be missing something, but while I enjoyed the base game, after messing with the DLC Tinker race for an afternoon I just can't get them to do much of anything. They're robots, but they can't colonize hostile worlds like you'd assume. Instead they have a pretty low population cap on most worlds that aren't deserts. Oh, and a low birthrate that's compensated by the ability to turn the planet's production over to more Tinkers, but by doing so you're not doing anything else useful with the planet. Perhaps the most frustrating part is the species that are typically the most annoying - the vermin, the viscids, the stupid plant centaurs on Gaia - the ones that you really *want* to give the Reaper treatment - can't be harmonized AT ALL, so not only do you have a slowly reproducing race with a ton of weaknesses, you can utterly get pushed around by an indigenous species with no recourse. The only nonplayable species I *did* manage to harmonize was the Yeti, and they somehow turned back from robots when I sent them to colonize a new planet. Was it because there was no machine temple? Was it a bug? No idea, and I'm not really interested in playing another round to try and figure it out. Got it on sale for $1.69 and it doesn't seem worth it, I'd have rather done something else with the afternoon. :P

Fan boys will tell you it is great but this is one of the rare cases where the dlc makes the base game worse. The game has some races that rely on carrier aircraft and some that rely on direct fire weapons, then without any play testing they nerf the direct fire weapons. That failded to totally ruin the game so they came up with new rules that have no tutorial and are totally different than before the dlc. Now you have a super pirate/monster race with end game weapons early in the game and no one declares war now they just surprise attack you. Outposts no longer repair your ship. It is about as much fun as trying to learn the basic rules of chess by trial and error. So not only do I not recommend this dlc it has caused me to reconsider my initial positive review of the base game.

Adds a new race, some small map changes and some encounters for 5 bucks. This is a DLC that adds a fair amount of content for less money then what you paid for that Starbucks coffee that you only half drank this morning. Currently its on sale for 1.69 which is the same as what I paid for a small cup of juice at McDonalds this morning.

This DLC is well worth the price. The new race adds another nice unique flavor, and the Arda seed expands the role of the star harpy beyond just some random monster guarding its territory. The herald tech purchasing really gives you a nice choice of tech for metal, which really helps with some of the random colony setups you can get (e.g you're swimming in minerals and can't find an artifact planet for your life) If you like SiS, get this DLC and support a quality indie.

The DLC description oversells this content or describes it incorrectly altogether. It feels like I may have missed a chunk of content because some event didn't trigger (i.e. a bug). I really enjoy this game, but I can recommend neither it nor the expansion. I would like to invite the developer into clarifiying what I am misunderstanding when I say the content is not as promised. If I am wrong, I am happy to change the review. This is what you really get: ---------- As promised, a new, unique playable race This is a fun addition. The Tinkers do not use food, which is a big advantage. A key feature is a planet cannot starve by blockade. This is counterbalanced by their slow growth rate, where you have to literally build Tinker popoulation to grow quickly, This uses (1) a planet's production slot and (2) minerals. Early game, minerals can be quite difficult to obtain from 3-4 star systems, depencding on chance. So this "advantage" could make you better or worse off. I.e. if you start in a mineral poor location, you're a little screwed. (See also technology boosts by trading metal). Slow growth rate is deadly. Not only is it harder to colonize, but your productivity depends on population, especially when you try to put one single production type on a planet. I found the tinker ability to colonize... wanting. They can settle on a garden world with a max pop of 9. You can bring in other races to raise it, but this seems ridiculous. One also wonders why cyborgs cannot gleefully colonize an airless planet. (They are no better than yoral). The ONLY new technology is cybernetics (free for and exclusive to) the tinkers, which allows you to turn any of the main playable races into cyborgs. This has the effects: (1) making populations of that species in your empire angry (2) happiness for cyborg pop is zero (or suffers no penalties? not sure) (3) the population unit's reproduction rate decreases. However, populations do retain their habitt preferences. I never found cybernetics to be helpful long term. To counteract tinker slow pop growth, I supplemented with other races; neutering their reproduction would defeat the purpose. You also cannot harmonize (make cyborgs) from non-playable races. When you need harmonize the most is when you settle the first occupied planet... so... the harmonize ability again seems weak. An Asteroid base is (TINKER ONLY) shipyard with more armor. This seems like something leftover from development and has no real gameplay value. AFAIK you only get this at your home planet. Plus, mobile stations are so much better. While these aspects give the tinkers flavor, I do not see a distinct advantage from these. The good news is that this flavoring is balanced. Mobile Stations (tinker only) are shipyards that can fly around between planets. So you can take a mobile shipyard with you to invade, deploy to the planet you took, and start pumping out refits, ships, etc. The outposts do this, too. This makes for an early game blitzkrieg like no other. If you take this approach, you can harmonize conquered planets. But rebel forces won't convert until they are converted from rebels, once again defeating the purpose of harmonizing. You can take two outposts and cross the galaxy (playing leapfrog) if you are so inclined. You probably won't get far due to the dangers, but dare to dream little buddy! The tinkers have a built-in regen of 10% for hull and 10% missile stock. This is huge; tinker ships need no repairs after battle and can play missile volleyball all day. ----------------- The Minor Faction Arda Seed: the Arda Seed is almost a complete race, with its own unique ships and ship equipment. This makes it an odd expansion... one asks "couldn't this be a new faction?" For story reasons, no. But its a shame to see all the art and new ship components go to waste. That's right, we were told we got new technologies and ship components, but they are almost completely for the unplayable race. WTH? The (Arda Seed) Herald comes around selling technologies for metal every 100 turns or so. This can allow you to get a technology early, for which you don't have any prerequisites. This is cool. It also means stockpiling minerals has a purpose other than saving up to build dread stars. As a late game bonus, you can declare war on the arda seed. All arda seed ships have no missile defense and no crew (just like star harpy arda seed ships), so missiles/fighters wreck them. The galazy has 6 hyperspace holes containing Arda Seed fleets you can destroy. Other than my own personal satisfaction, I never saw any new events, technologies, components, encounters, or researchable relics come out of there. The whole thing seemed pointless. Regrettably, there is also no real late game to Stars in Shadows; you win long before you reach this stage anyway. Other than the technology buy, this content adds nothing other than a world as toy option. And more star harpy spawns, of course. ------- Other promised goodies: Researchable Artifacts -- played through twice, never saw these. New technologies, components and encounters -- (1) for the new race, you get one new technology and one component (2) 2 encounters: the herald selling things and the space anomaly