Spacebase Startopia is a bad game

[Rambles]

I really, really wanted this to be better than it was but so many outstanding and fundamental issues remain that I struggle to see how they'll fix it in time. It's currently badly balanced, missing features, buggy and not worth any money.

1. Combat is terrible

Your employees don't fight. Never can, never will. Nor can you build defensive towers. So the only way you can stop pirates or rivals from killing you is by a) developing your tech tree to about 75% of maximum, b) researching security stations and then c) wait for them to generate four crappy police bots. These will die at the slightest challenge. So that leaves d) using your security stations to build giant, enormous robots.

Unfortunately these robots are a) massive b) slow and c) potentially hard to source resources to build. So once you've done all of that work, harvested about 10-15 plants on the biodeck, turned them into the right materials in a factory and used those materials to build a robot, you better make sure you have LOTS of wide, useless avenues between all your rooms just to act as pathways for the robots.

But you also need a "mech transporter" just to get those robots to other floors. So when you get attacked you better hope that all of your levels have wide avenues and space for mech transporters because if not, you're dead and defenseless if the enemy attacks you on level 2 or 3. That means your entire playing area looks like ugly swiss cheese just so that robots can move around on the rare occasion you get attacked.

Finally the massive robots are incredibly slow. So given every map is a circle, you need to defend against enemies at both ends - plus at any random point because pirates can hit you throughout your map. It can take several long minutes for your robots to cross from one side to another. And the animation for moving between floors also takes far too long.

So the only way to survive against serious enemies is to plant numerous security stations throughout your station, which has ugly wide avenues to allow robots that will barely be used. And if you don't, your forces can quickly be overwhelmed by enemies without warning when the enemy does attack.

2. Workers require super micro-management. In a bad way.

There are many bad examples but here is one. You will need your third level - the biodeck - to thrive and produce trees full of resources if you want to survive. Only one species is capable of getting this done. But at the slightest sign of a single piece of garbage, they'll become furious. And if you actually get the trees to produce the resources in front of them manually, they will become furious. Once they're angry, they quit.

Garbage is impossible to erase entirely. Unless you have dozens of top tier droids dedicated to clearing garbage and a bin at every corner (which is hard because of combat/space problem listed above). Your resource-producing aliens will get angry and quit.

To replace them, you click the alien tab, click the right alien type, sort by skill/work ethic or price and then either click "hire" or click their bio and click "hire". Except a very, very high proportion will be criminals, so you'll want to read their bio before hiring them. Once you hit their bio, you have to start the whole process AGAIN. Click the alien tab, click the right alien type, sort by skill/work ethic or price and then either click "hire" or click their bio and click "hire".

Multiply this across multiple alien types for multiple reasons and you have a crazy slow system that will take up hours of mind-numbing, uninteresting and repetitive time. It's stupid and you'll hate it.

3. Producing good droids is too expensive and annoying.

You have three types of droids. The first walks slowly around on two legs. The second has rollerblades and the third flies. It's fun!

But as you grow, the first type quickly becomes useless because they're too slow. They also use the same lifts for moving between levels as your aliens, so they immediately cause traffic jams no matter how many lifts you install.

And because there are no robot rechargers on any other level except level 1, much of their time will be spent moving to or from the rechargers on level 1. Charge, walk walk walk, queue for the lift, walk walk walk, perform task, low battery, walk walk walk, queue for lift, walk walk walk, recharge.

This means you will need a massive amount of droids, preferably level 3. But to build a level three, you need to take a fully completed level 2 droid and add some resources. And to get that level 2 droid, you'll need a fully completed level 1 droid and some resources. That's right - you can't build a level 3 droid even though you paid for and researched it.

Droids will be fun when you're small and a s**tshow as soon as you get anywhere - think: about 30-40 minutes into playing.

4. The narrator is a lie. The interface sucks.

The voice in the original game? That's not there despite COUNTLESS fans wanting it. The voice in the promo videos? That's not in the beta and I somehow doubt it'll be fully voiced in the final. Instead, you have a voice so artificial and awful it sounds like Google Translate from 2015 before they improved the system.

So without a good narrator to flag when things have happened, you end up having to look yourself. Traders have come? I hope you clicked on the small box on the right that soundlessly came and left to accept or reject them. Production at the factory is ready? Sorry, noone told you so you wasted time and effort. Oh, and apart from traders, there's also research and a random non-trader trading auction that rotates every 1-2 minutes.

But you wouldn't know going by the voice. So you stare at the prestige bar, the research options and a tiny dot blinking on the auction to tell if a new rotation has started.

You won't enjoy the playing experience because you'll spend most of your time micro-managing various parts of the poorly designed user interface.

5. It's glitchy

This is the least worst part, but annoying nonetheless. You will often be stuck wondering whether the station is falling apart because of you, or because of the numerous bugs. Aliens and bots will often get stuck on an invisible point - endlessly walking without moving an inch. They in turn will lose battery if they're a bot or patience if they're an alien - in some cases getting sicker and sicker if they're in need of medical attention. If this is your employee, then they won't fulfill their task - causing a chain reaction of unhappy aliens and problems.

You might need to reload an earlier save - except on three occasions I've been stuck unable to save/reload. Alternatively you can demolish the entire structure and hope that they become unstuck.

Please let that sink in - sometimes you have to shut down or demolish ENTIRE STRUCTURES just so that the aliens can move. Of course, there's no alert for this. So across the many, many spans of your station you might not see the tiny bots or aliens who are unable to move. You'll just see a slowly-rising tide of anger that seems impossible to solve.

This is the least worst part because I think it's a genuine bug that will eventually be fixed. The other points are apparently seen as positive gameplay.

This game is a 5/10. It's worth $15 when the bugs are fixed and even then will be poorly-polished and not that fun. The graphics are alright but the bad gameplay make them moot. It's not ready, ill-designed and doesn't deserve your money. Spacebase Startopia is a bad game.

[⎛⎝Tiùwilo⎠⎞]

Sounds like standard Kalypso MO, honestly. I was looking forward to this a bunch, but at such a steep price it'd have to 1up OG Startopia in more ways than one to be worth it.

[Eddy63]

I kinda expected something sloppy like this. Judging from the amateurish, tryhard "wanting-to-be-funny-but-just-managed-cringe" trailer and some of the screenshots, that there will be a generall lack of quality.

[Rubyeyed]

Thanks for taking the time to share. Very informative.

[Martin]

I'm convinced, pass for me.

[Kunovega]

I'm still getting it, but I'm going to wait for a sale event.

Of course, part of that was buying into Evil Genius 2 and I rarely buy games at full price, so buying that will put me off buying many others at full price for a few months

[rinaldop]

Why did you wait until 2 days before launch to post this when the game has been in EA for months?

[Man of Stone]

Was looking at it, but asked on this I will be waiting for a steep sale. 10% not enough

[Adders]

I Agree mostly with rambles, been waiting a while to see if some of the annoyances were cleared up before launch, the AI voice is bloody horrible, thank the light you can turn that off. it don't help that they put various different tones into it, its still horrible.

The bugs and glitches are just that, am sure they will be solved eventually.

The thing with the "not scuzzers" needing a previous one to upgrade is pretty annoying, but it is not too bad, you just save up a ton of them boxed and then upgrade them in batches.

I have to strongly agree with the bad combat mechanics, BUT, combat happens pretty rarely as far as i have played with the occasional pirate raid, and i am well aware of how the original treated PVX but as far as i have tried (though it hasn't been for a little while) there was no way to take over someone else's sector in this version, i haven't tried playing through a player vs AI game since before Christmas so this may have changed.

the thing i have to say i hate most about spacebase is the top deck. the different biomes and completely confusing harvesting mechanics the 2 dryads to a pod situation i don't like none of it. would have been so much more intuitive to just keep the original system and add a autoharvest.

All of the oddities though can be solved with patches and i think a 5/10 is pretty harsh, the VFX are pretty good the game is on balance fairly polished i have played a lot bigger turds than this (DF9 i'm looking at you buddy) i personally would give it a 6.5 as it stands and it is worth a shot, just don't come with the expectations of it being at all like Startopia and let it be its own game? cause Startopia is a Godly game and has some pretty massive shoes to fill. maybe they should have called it something else. if they had they wouldn't be in for all this criticism imo....

[dorianmode]

I broadly agree with this assessment, but some specifics in this breakdown seem to me either overblown or misunderstand what is going on - for example:

Originally posted by Rambles:

But at the slightest sign of a single piece of garbage, they'll become furious. And if you actually get the trees to produce the resources in front of them manually, they will become furious.

They don't become furious - they get one negative thought and might give your station a bad rating.

Originally posted by Rambles:

Once they're angry, they quit.

Anger is a separate system to negative ratings - although they have some similar mechanisms. One bad rating from some garbage or a manually harvested plant will not cause a Dryad to get angry enough to quit, unless their other needs are not being met.

Originally posted by Rambles:

Garbage is impossible to erase entirely. Unless you have dozens of top tier droids dedicated to clearing garbage and a bin at every corner (which is hard because of combat/space problem listed above). Your resource-producing aliens will get angry and quit.

Most of your Dryads' needs can be met by the Bio Stations on the Bio Deck, and aliens won't (or will only very rarely) drop garbage on the Bio Deck. Again - it shouldn't take much management to avoid them getting angry enough to quit. If they are quitting, then I suspect there's something else going on with the management of the station - this is certainly not a given of how the mechanics are designed.

Originally posted by Rambles:

a very, very high proportion will be criminals, so you'll want to read their bio before hiring them. Once you hit their bio, you have to start the whole process AGAIN. Click the alien tab, click the right alien type, sort by skill/work ethic or price and then either click "hire" or click their bio and click "hire".

This process is unnecessary - your Security Stations will produce drones that will scan for criminals and rehabilitate the aliens in the Brig. You can micromanage hiring criminals if you like, but like you said it's tedious - also unnecessary.

Originally posted by Rambles:

Multiply this across multiple alien types for multiple reasons and you have a crazy slow system that will take up hours of mind-numbing, uninteresting and repetitive time. It's stupid and you'll hate it.

Some of this appears to be entirely normal human impulse to optimise the fun out of something - more could have been done to design around this - but I don't it is the death sentence it's being painted as here.

That said: the writing and combat have the potential to irk me greatly. Remains to be seen how the balance falls.

[⎛⎝Tiùwilo⎠⎞]

Are there any plans for the combat to change after release?

[iFred]

The absence of any pre-release reviews in the media shows me that it´s better to wait

[dorianmode]

Originally posted by ⎛⎝Aarki⎠⎞:

Are there any plans for the combat to change after release?

Your guess is as good as anyone else's. The combat AI got improved quite markedly in a recent beta update, and anything's possible - I guess it depends on money, time, and severity. The combat-focused campaign missions haven't been released in beta yet, so maybe we're getting a skewed picture of how it's supposed to work.

Originally posted by iFred:

The absence of any pre-release reviews in the media shows me that it´s better to wait

Caveat emptor. Even if there were pre-release reviews you might want to wait for player feedback. Your mileage will always vary.

[flinker]

No buy for me. Thanks.

[Stone]

I heard the rip-off Portal AI voice in the trailer and thought...NOPE! Good call!

[Mansen]

Here's my super short take (review coming)

It's basically an HD remake of Startopia - And yet not. All of the species have been renamed, things have been made slightly more cartoony and whimsical. Combat is definitely worse, managing staff is a pain.

A few things things I really don't like about it is how the Hitchhiker's Guide style narration by VAL is completely gone - And the replacement is nowhere as funny, as frequent or as interesting to listen to.

The missions in the campaign are also more or less direct copies from Startopia but shorter and less involved - I mean the first three? missions have two achievements that specifically expect you to finish the map in 15 and 25? minutes respectively.

Then there's combat - Oh god the combat. You're only given four mostly useless droids per Security station (they are rather massive) and one mech - And the mechs move very slowly and need wide avenues you would normally use for construction to move around, which takes a lot of planning or leads to quick losses. Which wouldn't be as bad if the game didn't make everything take up more space than Startopia.

It's not a bad game - But honestly? If you don't mind the dated graphics, you might as well just buy/keep playing the original because it's infinitely better. I haven't really seen any aspect of Starbase that improves on the original in 14 hours of gameplay.