How does SEIII/IV compare to Stars!

[dmm]

Anybody played both? How are the games different, what are the pluses and minuses of each?

(Sorry, Shrapnel and MM, if this is a tacky question to ask on your BB!)

[Baron Munchausen]

I've played both. Stars! is very rigid in the ship design area. You are given a very small number of slots and clear limits to what you can put in them. Only so many shields or armor can be put in a particular class of ship, for example. Also, there is no "tactical" combat mode in Stars! -- only strategic and you get a replay after your turn is executed. The racial variations are very interesting, though, and lead to real differences in strategy to an extent that makes the game a lot of fun in other ways. Stars! is more of a multi-player game, with simpler options in ship design and control while SE is more of a single player (detail oriented) game. Both can do PBEM, though. The biggest 'strategic' flaw in Stars! is that there is no maintenance cost, so you can build up fleets to ridiculous levels. But, Stars! does have one area where it's very detailed. You have to manage your resources directly! Yep, transports have to move minerals around and planets have to have enough minerals on hand to build something. Now, Stars! Supernova promises to be much closer to SE if they can do all the stuff they are claiming.

[General Hawkwing]

I would say that Baron Munchausen's analyst is pretty much on the mark. Other points on resources:
A) planet mining decreases resources
B) planet output of resources is more directly tied to population

Research is more area than item oriented and could not be split among areas. This appears to be changing in the new release.

The AI in SE3 was (in my opinion) harder, but that is probably due to the fact that Stars! was designed for multiplayer from the starting gate.

[Richard]

Not a problem, we have nothing at all to hide and have no problem comparing our product to anyone else's .

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Sarge is coming...

Richard Arnesen
Director of Covert Ops
Shrapnel Games
http://www.shrapnelgames.com

[Master Belisarius]

I only can remember tree advantages of Stars! over Se3:
1) Better options into the Race design.
2) Simultaneous turns in multiplayer (much better to speed up a PBEM game).
3) The post-battle viewer for PBEM games (in SE3 you can not see how the battle was: only the result).

About the advantages of SE3 over Stars!, well, the people in the others Posts said most of them:
1) Better game setup.
2) Better ship design.
3) The combat simulator.
4) Less micromanagement: in Stars! is a nightmare keep your transport moving the resources.
5) Much better AI.
6) Tactical combat in solo game.
7) Although SE3 have not great Diplomatic/Espionage options (SE4 is much better), still is much better than Stars! (nothing!).
8) More cool components in SE3 (Star/Planet destroyers for example).
9) The way that SE3 managed the solar systems.
10) The Warp Points give a lot of strategic options in SE3.
11) The tech editor, and the capability to customize the picture of your ships.
12) Mining the planets decreases resources, and not exist a game option to change it.
13) Have a better game interfase (God, I love the SE3 right click menues!).

Overall: I only have played during some weeks Stars!, and in the other hand, still I'm playing SE3 after 2 years and 9 months!!!

[Baron Munchausen]

Well, others have remembered more details. It's been more than a year since I played Stars! Another interesting difference between it an SE is that Stars! uses the "open space" model where SE uses a bunch of closed systems. You can travel straight from anywhere to anywhere in the Stars! map if you have the fuel. But the systems are featureless. Like the original MOO, a planet and a star are one and the same. So, you can't have multiple planets in one system. You can build a starbase, and you can build planetary defenses, again much like MOO. There are no bases away from a star/planet, though. There's no system map with planetary features at all. So, Stars! is a totally strategic game. SE has a lot of tactical elements.

[Urendi Maleldil]

Compared to Stars!, SE4 just blows it away, but the upcoming Supernova Genesis looks like a worthy contender. The things I liked about Stars! were the open galaxy- things weren't confined by warp points and such, and it had some elements of real-world physics. One of the things I didn't like was the fact that there were no star systems- you either colonized an area w/ a star or you didn't. Planets didn't play a part. The biggest thing that kept me playing SE3 was the customizability of the ships and the tech editor. When I first played SE3 I was thrilled becouse it combined many of the elements of Stars! that I liked with the combat-orientation of SE2 which I liked very much. I've been playing SE4 non-stop so these things seem like dinosaurs, but look out for Stars: Supernova Genesis. It promises to be a terriffic game in its own right. I recommend getting both SE4 and Supernova. No 4X game is perfect, but these two will complement each other nicely.

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-Km :�