Check it out, tell your friends, tell them to tell their friends, and even their enemies, and their enemies friends…
Bought it today! It’s just like the PC version. Very nice to have on the iPad. 
Are the add-on packs being released separately for the iPad version?
Fantastic to be able to play on iPad, though I was really hoping it would include the campaign mode.
One other thing to mention is that the game bugs out if you rotate your iPad screen, the graphics rotate as you would expect, but the touch settings are then all reversed, something that should really be sorted.
Great to see GSB on the ipad! (my desk top has been gathering dust since I bought mine last year).
What is not great are the bugs. After downloading the game I went and configured a small Federation fleet of 4 ship types leading to 4 crashes. I then went to the deployment screen, placed a couple of training vessels (it would not let me place those I had just configured) and is now stuck 
Is the game assuming I am going to go straight to the first mission with no personal ship configuration?
So first impressions are not good - the product feels like it has skipped proper QC. At £6.99 GSB ipad is a top price game for the platform and should be delivered as such (there are numerous free games / 69p with perfect stability for example).
Cliffski: GSB ipad needs proper end user QC and patching ASAP as the reliability looks embarassing next to much cheaper rivals at the moment. I say this as a fan of the PC version who has purchased all expansions so I don’t want this great game to get a bad rep.
I have been waiting for this game since last summer. I absolutely loved it on the Mac and bought all the expansions, however curling up in my recliner is a much more comfortable gaming experience for me than hunched over the desk.
CCTV
The amount this game crashes is unacceptable.
Are there any plans to fix this buggy thing, because i’d like to play it, and I can’t in the current state the game is in.
I absolutely love this game. If it will run on my Mac, I’ll buy that version too, but it’s so perfectly suited to iPad gaming. The initial release version is fairly buggy and has a lot of crashing issues, but once I got into the game, I fell in love, and I’m able to look past the problems for now since I know they’re being addressed. I really hope there’s a chance the campaign/multiplayer gets added as DLC in the future. I’m very happy to have found this forum and all the useful information it contains.
Red Marble (team doing the port I guess?) said in the GSB thread on toucharcade that an update was already submitted fixing the rotation issue and that they are committed to fixing any bugs. They also said the additional race expansions would be available for IAP soon. forums.toucharcade.com/showthrea … stcount=44
I highly recommend buying the MAC version from redmarble. There’s a bunch of converted PC mods for you mac GSB in the modding section too
Mac Mods!!! <-- Click!!
I posted this as a review on iTunes:
I love this game from the mac/pc version, ok its buggy as hell, but still wonderful. I like the kick back aspect of the action, do your set up then watch the fun. Ipad port is incredible visually, I trust this developer to update to fix what are admittedly some issues in this first release.
Now I’ll say–gotta to do some quick patch ups. The “orders” menu doesn’t happen at all, some other really obvious issues. That being said, I remain as convinced as ever that this is perfect for ipad.
I especially don’t think you should divert attention to GTB, which come on, turns out to be a tower defence game? zzzzzzzz!
Get this one fixed up, campaign mode the works…Oh, and I paid it because I’m into the game, but WAY to expensive for an app–don’t do your usually cheezey charge for every update please cliffy!!!
The lack of UI adaption and the bugs make this disappointing at the moment, but the biggest problem is the price. You have to look at the market, and $10 isn’t ‘really cheap’ on a mobile device the way it is on PC; it’s ‘top tier AAA full-3d movie licence from EA that is also overpriced’. Particularly since it doesn’t include all the content that already exists, you have to consider expectations, lack of a demo, and the negative reviews the game has recieved because of the QA problems.
Don’t do a King of Dragon Pass and price your amazing game so high literally nobody but existing fans will buy it. For me personally, I won’t buy a mobile game over $5 unless I am already totally convinced its good, and the mobile market is full of people who a) like spaceship pew pew action and b) have never played GSB and will be pretty wary about dropping premium money on something so poorly described. GSB is great stuff and I’m eagerly awaiting more spaceships after the mud simulator is done, but $10 for a buggy game that’s fiddly to play because the interface wasn’t tweaked very well is a real shame.
I was not an existing fan and I bought this for 10 bucks with no problem. The “ten bucks is a fortune for a mobile game” attitude is absolutely killing gaming on iPad/iOS. It’s the primary reason we don’t get many high quality games, and mostly cheap ports of old games or half assed mobile versions of real games. Without the bugs it currently contains, this game would easily be worth 10 bucks in the AppStore. Sure it’s a premium price on the platform, but it’s also a premium game. I agree about the UI needing some changing (primarily the unusable sliders and tiny arrows for scrolling the ships list), and it’s a shame about the release bugs and the even worse ones introduced in the update. In fact, it seems the game has been pulled from the AppStore for now. Hopefully it comes back bug free and with a bit more of a splash than the original stealthy release made. Anyway, when it comes back, I hope it remains at ten bucks and finds success. We need more games like this to find success at reasonable price points, so developers of good games will make the effort to bring them to iOS. If games like GSB can’t succeed, then the platform is doomed to a terrible freemium fate worse than death.
Though I’d like to add that a sale at some point (maybe 5 dollers or so) could really boost chart position and possibly help get the game the visibility it needs to build sustainable momentum. However, it might be best if it wasn’t too soon. People who paid full price for the buggy initial release would likely get all up in arms about failure to respect early adopters, etc. The AppStore is so complicated, I’m glad I don’t have to deal with this stuff…
Okay, after a week of frustration with GSB ipad here is my advice and assessement of the game as it stands in the original release version:
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DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. Significant parts of this game are at pre-beta levels of stability, get ready to spend plenty of time repeating and reloading (see below for details) if you try to play
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If, like me, you bought this game and feel ripped off ask for a refund through the App Store. HOWEVER do not state that there are issues with app stability as Apple will not provide a refund and just simply fob you off to Red Marble to take it up with them. Instead report it as an app downloaded in error.
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It turns out that Apple posted the game for purchase very quickly after Red Marble submitted it for release surprising even them. If we set aside the fact that Red Marble took the Michael with sending an unstable product for customers to buy App Store don’t seem to have bothered with any QC at all.
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A patch was submitted to App Store by Red Marble on 14th April so lets hope that for us unlucky souls who have paid that it gets released soon. I don’t know what this patch is supposed to fix however.
If after reading the above and other posts of a similar nature in this thread you want to give GSB ipad a go PLEASE bear in mind the following stability issues you will encounter that are likely to erode your sanity:
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The ship design screen will crash randomly when you: swap modules, remove modules, add modules, save designs and load designs. That’s right, just about every function is unstable.
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The delete design button in the load design menu does not work at all and will automatically crash the app if used.
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The fleet deployment screen Change Race button does not work and will automatically crash the app if used.
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The Fleet Deployment screen will randomly crash when you: save deployments, load deployments, add ships to your fleet and remove ships from your fleet.
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The Post Battle statistics screen will sometimes crash when you exit.
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Although not a stability issue the in game music audio sampling is poor with a background static hiss being clearly audible at medium to higher volumes. This is just really shoddy!
This is not exhaustive but gets the main problems that ruin the gameplay experience. Given that a significant portion of GSB is to do with fleet design and deployment you can see why the above are significant.
In the interests of balance the actual battle sections run fine and performance is very good - I have an ipad 2 and guess that ipad 3 owners would have an even better experience of battles given their faster processor (well, except for the hissy music that is…)
Hope Cliffski is reading these as I would be fuming if someone damaged the value of my IP with a shoddy 3rd party port to a new platform.
A few comments on the above post. If you read the thread on TA, you’ll see people’s experiences vary. For example, I never see crashes unless I do one of the following: Try to change race from the deployment screen, change a module directly after saving a ship design, try to delete a ship design. Literally nothing else causes me crashes any more. I had more crashes at first (post battle stats, etc) but realized it was a memory issue and now keep things clear for GSB and can play for hours without any crashing by avoiding the three actions I mentioned above. I can do all the other things that you say cause crashes without a crash. The update already went through and it apparently fixed the screen rotation issue (controls wouldn’t rotate with screen) and the design delete crash. However, the update introduced new bugs making issuing orders impossible. I didn’t download because I heard about the new problems first. Shortly after the update was approved and released, the app was pulled from the AppStore is is not currently available for purchase or download/update. Honestly, the version I have (release version) is admittedly buggy but moderately stable IMO. Obviously different people are having very different experiences, which is particularly strange on iOS where that is not usually the case. I also have an iPad 2 (64G Verizon3G) for what it’s worth.
Interesting to hear about the thread on Touch Arcade which I’ve had a look at. A quick tally of the posts shows over half the people who voiced an opinion on the game were strongly negative about the ipad version based on the stability problems. Not really very scientific given a sample size of a dozen but the fact that the App Store have pulled GSB from sales is the true indicator of where the game is at presently.
forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=130191
I’ll give the suggestions on reducing crashes a go though!
Yeah, the game is ‘worth’ ten bucks, but you need to consider the market. The game was very badly tagged (and had low visibility on searches for scifi or spaceship words, indeed didn’t appear as a result for ‘space battle’), the blurb was not very informative, unlike other platforms there’s no demo to hook people, and th game was actually broken and very difficult to play. That doesnt add up to making a lot of sales, and as an existing user the lack of the other races is pretty sad.
By contrast I bought an $8 game the other day and was pleasantly surprised with the quality, multiplayer, and features. High priced games can certainly sell, but I think this initial release was a bit of a turnip. Normal people (ie not forum going fans) are just going to tell everyone it sucked and delete it, which is a real shame. If it worked and had a decent UI (and even the PC version struggled with the clunky tiered windows) it’d be a must have.
For some reason I can’t seem to pull it up on the store either on the iPad, or in iTunes. When I click the link, it takes me to the store, but then just tells me “Your request could not be completed.”. iTunes cannot find the software. Has it been pulled? Is it just not available in The States?
Nuke…
The update broke the game by making issuing orders impossible, so they pulled it to get it fixed.
Pfft… Issuing orders is for sucks. Pick your ships and let em run amuck! That’s TRUE leadership! =p (I kid! I kid!)
Thanks for the info. I’ll keep an eye out for the resub.
Nuke…
Back in the AppStore! And all the reproducible bugs I was aware of are gone except one crash on editing a just saved ship design.