This or Space Haven?

[Toxicwire†]

And why?

[Brigand231]

At the risk of sounding cliche, both!

Both games have their pros and cons. Space Haven is definitely from a human perspective, giving you complete control of your organic crew with the ability to create robotic slaves. The game in general gives you almost complete control over everything you see. Space Haven allows you to control your crew size, control your own pacing and your destiny.

Stardeus requires a LOT more patience and offers a much more rewarding challenge. You can't control the biologicals on board and can be actually be overthrown by them if you're not careful. The way the game is structured, you're more or less required to become Unicron from the Transformers franchise, expanding to grow your power grid, CPU, RAM, and storage so you can eventually research the endgame techs while doing your best to mitigate the unavoidable mishaps that befall your ship. The title is appropriate, in my opinion, as you're forced to deal with an ever-expanding crew and ensure their survival, like a beneficent god dealing with wayward children who stumble around in the darkness. They would destroy themselves if not for your intervention, but you have other priorities to contend with.

Space Haven is much more casual and relaxed; you can savescum if you want. While you can force Stardeus to allow you to save and load in a limited fashion, it's intended as an ironman experience and you're constantly racing against several timers that can cost you the game. While totally no a fair comparison, you could say Stardeus is more like Rimworld with the "storyteller" throwing events at you to keep things moving and continuously challenge you.

[|Nick]

Wait, you can be overthrown? I only played the demo and proposed this as an idea to the devs in my survey sheet yesterday.
Tell me more about filthy flesh pods trying to overthrow proper intelligence!

[Brigand231]

Originally posted by |Nick:

Wait, you can be overthrown? I only played the demo and proposed this as an idea to the devs in my survey sheet yesterday.
Tell me more about filthy flesh pods trying to overthrow proper intelligence!

There is a "mutiny" random event. It's been tuned a bit in the last day or two, so now it only "recruits" people who are not happy and they must be present on the ship. Before the fix, it didn't matter how well you treat them, they'd just turn on you. Also before the fix, the selection was 100% random and could and would "recruit" mutineers from people on expeditions, which made the game very interesting when they returned. I hadn't realized it was possible, so when 3/4 of my expedition members returned, they murdered #4 and took off in my shuttle. That was amusing.

[|Nick]

Nice.

[jice]

Originally posted by Brigand231:

At the risk of sounding cliche, both!

Both games have their pros and cons. Space Haven is definitely from a human perspective, giving you complete control of your organic crew with the ability to create robotic slaves. The game in general gives you almost complete control over everything you see. Space Haven allows you to control your crew size, control your own pacing and your destiny.

Stardeus requires a LOT more patience and offers a much more rewarding challenge. You can't control the biologicals on board and can be actually be overthrown by them if you're not careful. The way the game is structured, you're more or less required to become Unicron from the Transformers franchise, expanding to grow your power grid, CPU, RAM, and storage so you can eventually research the endgame techs while doing your best to mitigate the unavoidable mishaps that befall your ship. The title is appropriate, in my opinion, as you're forced to deal with an ever-expanding crew and ensure their survival, like a beneficent god dealing with wayward children who stumble around in the darkness. They would destroy themselves if not for your intervention, but you have other priorities to contend with.

Space Haven is much more casual and relaxed; you can savescum if you want. While you can force Stardeus to allow you to save and load in a limited fashion, it's intended as an ironman experience and you're constantly racing against several timers that can cost you the game. While totally no a fair comparison, you could say Stardeus is more like Rimworld with the "storyteller" throwing events at you to keep things moving and continuously challenge you.

I know thos is a bit old but thank you for this. This helped a lot.

[Brigand231]

Anytime!

[Ghevd]

Don't get me wrong, I like Space Haven. In fact I was recently playing it when I found this game.

Space Haven is more of a grind imo, at least in the beginning. You never seem to have enough space to build in that game. Stardeus' spaceships are massive in comparison. I do like in Space Haven I can draft my workforce while in Stardeus the manual control of bots is a lot more barebones.

Space Haven has a different focus since your crew is comprised of meatbags.

I like in Stardeus that I don't have to have a fully pressurized ship. In fact, having areas in vacuum is necessary for heat producing machines.

Food in Space Haven, or the lack their of, is usually what ends my runs. It is easy to go into a death spiral because you run out of particular resource without noticing in time. Nothing like your crew slowly dying of starvation because you didn't research the chemical refinery and have run out of fertilizer.

I disagree Space Haven is more casual. I always felt rushed to get the next milestone to keep my crew alive.

I do enjoy both games and wholeheartedly agree that you should get both.

[corestandeven]

Apologies for reusing an old thread, but given two years has passed I was wondering what people's opinions are of both games? I bought Spacehaven in December, following it since it was announced, and I must admit I was very disappointed. It got samey way too quickly, and was limited compared to say Rimworld and ONI, which I love and still keep coming back to.

Discovered Spacedues yesterday by chance, and even more pleased to see it has a demo. Hats off to the devs for doing that. My first impression is it seems more complex than Spacehaven, and that it has more mechanics and things to do. Not sure what I feel about not being able to control the crew. Only 30 mins in so far.

So are things pretty much as they were in 2022. or has either game significantly changed or improved since then? Do people tend to prefer this over Spacehaven, both, or neither?

[Brigand231]

I'm taking a break from the game for the moment to play other stuff, so I can't really say much. The dev, Spajus, is still working on the game tweaking and improving things. He's still actively streaming development sessions too and is very approachable if players feel like reaching out.

[FDru]

They're both good BUT Stardeus needs 1 good update (particularly addressing the AI of robots/humans cause they're really dumb and difficult to work with) and it'd be a strong recommend. It has a lot of good things about it but I really can't be bothered to play at all til they fix some things. On the other hand, Space Haven is a fairly cohesive experience.

[sir Evans]

Originally posted by corestandeven:

Apologies for reusing an old thread, but given two years has passed I was wondering what people's opinions are of both games? I bought Spacehaven in December, following it since it was announced, and I must admit I was very disappointed. It got samey way too quickly, and was limited compared to say Rimworld and ONI, which I love and still keep coming back to.

Discovered Spacedues yesterday by chance, and even more pleased to see it has a demo. Hats off to the devs for doing that. My first impression is it seems more complex than Spacehaven, and that it has more mechanics and things to do. Not sure what I feel about not being able to control the crew. Only 30 mins in so far.

So are things pretty much as they were in 2022. or has either game significantly changed or improved since then? Do people tend to prefer this over Spacehaven, both, or neither?

Space Haven takes years to update, and every major update they have to change icons for some reason. And add extra hard cap to what you can build or where you can build it.

StarDeus is early Beta right now. I would say - buy it, because it has a dev who actually communicates with people here on Steam and seems to deliver regular, albeit small updates - deserves support.

But there isn't much of a game here, yet. Some solid foundations, you will enjoy it for a week or two. Afterwards, no replayability at the moment.

[ImpairedImperator]

I would say Space Haven, TBH.

Just finished Stardeus for the first time this weekend, even though I've had the game since day1. I have yet to beat Space Haven, though I've had that game longer than this one.

The gameplay in Space Haven is much more...balanced. Stardeus, starting out is a race against time (made worse by the somewhat clunky controls and somewhat unintuitive game design), followed by a consistent yet not very complex gameplay loop of research and searching for resources/waiting for traders, followed by sitting AFK for four hours over the terraform world I spotted while the game played itself in a stable state. And then...nothing. Like, you can keep flying the ship, but I closed the game about five minutes later because it felt like there was no point.

Now, again, I haven't beaten Space Haven, maybe it is similarly unsatisfying, but over the last however long both have been in my library, I usually pick Space Haven. You're more consistently in a situation where thinking/decision making is required in Space Haven, whereas here it's like climbing a sheer cliff to find a staircase to a mediocre view. So many things in this game feel like you made the right/wrong decision in the first hour and now you get to deal with the resulting boredom/death.

Next, half the research tree is useless. You can comfortably beat the game by rushing terraforming and doing nothing else.And the thing is, there isn't really much to do. Sure, I can unlock 2,000 robots, but I have no idea how to even use them. A dozen robots will not only keep my ship running, but also do everything I could possibly do. I'll spend actual days/weeks designing megabases in Factorio, but there isn't anything similar in Stardeus.

Honestly, the game feels a bit lacking. It is still early access, so this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Feels a lot like Rimworld did in version 12. And there isn't really an endgame, or much of a midgame. In retrospect, the game felt over once I got my ship stabilized and capable of supporting life early on. I was hoping to, at the very least, be able to do something after terraforming, but there is nothing left. Maybe like a system where I could collect colonists from other places and make more colonies, or having to support your colony growth (which could literally just be a second ship with a different background graphic which can't go mining on a different planet), or even just a trade interaction screen where instead of using money, you use colony growth points and have to balance your need for resources versus that of your colony.

Edit: I actually removed the heat sinks around my ship computer because using defrag as a fast forward was helpful. This is not a good sign.

Edit2: I also wish there was more interaction between the colonists and the ship computer, and maybe a bit more intelligent colonists. Like, I'd see a dude sitting at negative mood, and when I check them, they have all their needs near the top, except -100/100 for sleep, and they're just...hanging out, next to the row of free beds, with "no job" as their status. I really like the idea, conceptually, of having both robots and colonists. It's a very cool idea, compared to the omnipotent and ethereal deity that you are in rimworld/space haven...It just needs to be fleshed out more. Like, have colonists bring complaints/requests to the ship computer or something. At the very least, have some colonist-only jobs. I think there are a few recipes that are only made at the crafting bench, but I'm not sure if they're colonist-only. Maybe they are, and I just didn't notice.

Heck, having colonist-only jobs would make an evil AI playthrough extremely fun, because you still have to keep them alive to do the necessary work.

[Halcyforn]

first game can be named more alpha, its not bad i like this style but it lacks is many things, we have only more like demo. i think first we need more levels and skills for our robots and colonists, combat mele and range. we need option to send basic commands to colonists robots in fight, like try flank try go and atack from back etc, the fight with pirate ships. more controls for ship we have this manuver engines this should be new ui to move ship. game is not bad interesting but its more like alpha still. and space heaven have this aspect thats why can entertain for longer time.

[Zaffus]

Originally posted by corestandeven:

Apologies for reusing an old thread, but given two years has passed I was wondering what people's opinions are of both games? I bought Spacehaven in December, following it since it was announced, and I must admit I was very disappointed. It got samey way too quickly, and was limited compared to say Rimworld and ONI, which I love and still keep coming back to.

Discovered Spacedues yesterday by chance, and even more pleased to see it has a demo. Hats off to the devs for doing that. My first impression is it seems more complex than Spacehaven, and that it has more mechanics and things to do. Not sure what I feel about not being able to control the crew. Only 30 mins in so far.

So are things pretty much as they were in 2022. or has either game significantly changed or improved since then? Do people tend to prefer this over Spacehaven, both, or neither?

Stardeus is more complex and better designed from a technical standpoint, seems to be easier to mod (though I haven't dug into that myself) but has generally less content/more placeholder mechanics. Normally it has a very fast update cycle, but the recent Being overhaul seems to be turning into a total system rebuild, so we've been waiting on an update for a while.

Space Haven's closer to a finished product, though I feel it still lacks a true endgame and meaningful content beyond midgame. As said above, updates are few and far between. I've never really cracked the code to enjoying Space Haven as a gaming experience, it struggles to strike a balance between interesting threats, thought-heavy ship planning, and the laid back building experience you often see in the genre.

Stardeus is the better game, in my opinion, but it's unfinished. Unless you really want to be part of the active dev cycle with all the joys of early access, or just really enjoy the genre, it's one of those things I'd recommend a friend buy early for the pricetag then wait for a year or two for the updates to come in.

[Big Dog]

Originally posted by corestandeven:

Apologies for reusing an old thread, but given two years has passed I was wondering what people's opinions are of both games? I bought Spacehaven in December, following it since it was announced, and I must admit I was very disappointed. It got samey way too quickly, and was limited compared to say Rimworld and ONI, which I love and still keep coming back to.

Discovered Spacedues yesterday by chance, and even more pleased to see it has a demo. Hats off to the devs for doing that. My first impression is it seems more complex than Spacehaven, and that it has more mechanics and things to do. Not sure what I feel about not being able to control the crew. Only 30 mins in so far.

So are things pretty much as they were in 2022. or has either game significantly changed or improved since then? Do people tend to prefer this over Spacehaven, both, or neither?

I have both games, I think this game has a brighter future, and have enjoyed playing it more than Space Haven. Both need more work into them before we can definitely decide, but I think Stardeus will end up being better.