New Admiral-in-training...

Hi!

I’m obliviondoll. I found out about GSB a long time ago, but I’ve been mostly a console gamer for the past few years, and at the time, my computer was barely competent running DOSBox for my retro gaming (Frontier: Elite II and One Must Fall: 2097 mostly). I heard “space battles” and my interest spiked, but then I looked at the “no PS3 version” and saw the system requirements and promptly moved on to something I already had the hardware to play.

For my birthday, my parents very generously gave me their old (but still newer than what I was using) laptop. It’s been a few months, but I was looking for an old-ish space game and accidentally rediscovered GSB. I promptly downloaded the demo and realised it was even more awesome than I’d hoped when I first heard about it. So a few days later, I bought the game (the Collector’s Edition with the first 3 DLC races included).

In spite of my rather low-spec laptop, I’ve managed to get the game to run smoothly without having to drop the resolution (although extended play sometimes locks the machine up). I’m still slowly grinding my way through the missions included in the game (I’ve got 3 or 4 left, I think, then onto the DLC missions), mixing up my fleets and playstyles to try new things.

I’ve basically taken each spatial anomaly so far as a cue to create a new race. No shields? Switch to the Rebels, and build an armour-heavy fleet. No repair modules? Switch to Swarm, and build a fleet of fast, cheap ships.

I haven’t yet looked at challenges, so I have no idea how my “awesome” skills will hold up when I’m trying to compete with real people. Probably pretty badly, at least to start with. I’m looking forward to what I’ve been describing as “kinda-sorta-multiplayer-but-not-really” though.

Anyway, not sure there’s a whole lot of point to this thread beyond greetings and hoping to see some of you on the battlefield in the not-too-distant future. Wish me luck? Or a quick death? That’s up to you.

Welcome aboard, obliviondoll. :slight_smile:

Given that GSB is far from new, traffic on the forum is very light these days. The most hardcore among our veteran members still check in from time to time, but don’t expect a rapid exchange of info. :stuck_out_tongue: However, lurkers still use the in-game challenge system, so new missions are still occasionally being sent back and forth across the player community. It’s possible to get gameplay questions answered here on the forum, albeit at a slow pace.

Since you’re new, I suggest you also explore the older threads on the forum; they’re a treasure of information. Here is one that I recommend for you; it describes in detail one possible (albeit quirky) way to equip & deploy your fleets for battle, and what the results of that design & deployment philosophy were.

Once you progress through all of the core game’s DLC expansion races, you’ll likely be wanting something new to sharpen your skills with. I recommend that you check out the Gratuitous Modding area. That’s where most of the remaining forum activity is centered. Since Cliff Harris is now done developing this game, that’s where all of the new content has been coming from in-between official DLC releases. There’s a large number of mods, which cover a wide range of genre sci-fi inspiration and new gameplay items to choose from.

Enjoy your stay with us!

In the meantime, if you can’t find any ‘lurkers’ with challenges, try sorting existing challenges by date, difficulty, number of attempts etc. Some of the old challenges are pretty tough, and they will revolutionize the way you build your fleet. I do have a couple of challenges online as well.

you will notice a boom in changes upload on a date like a month or so ago, when steam (or cliffski(aka Cliff Harris)) gave out a free weekend and i might try posting challenge thats vanilla so you can play it

Thanks for the responses, guys (and girls? I don’t know anyone yet…)

Nice to see a friendly welcome, and I very much appreciate the advice/links. I’ll definitely be spending a while with the base game (and DLC) before I throw mods into the mix, and I think I’ll be looking at challenges before then too. Nice to know where to look for that though. And don’t worry about the low activity, I knew about that coming in :slight_smile:

Just a slight warning about the DLC scenarios: at least in my opinion, out of all the standard scenarios in the game, the two Outcast scenarios are by far the most difficult.

Regardless of what scenarios you’re playing with, though, don’t be afraid to brute force your way through the scenario (by spending most or all of the available budget) and then refine your fleet and tactics later, if you need additional honor points or want to improve your high scores. Generally speaking, you can beat any scenario with most fleets which cost more than 95% of the fleet budget, and even if it doesn’t work, it at least gives you a pretty space battle to look at for a while and will probably help give you an idea of what you should try next time.

Good luck, and have fun watching your fleets and those of your enemies blow each other to space dust.

Oh, and the campaign mode, if you have it, is a decent way to get a random sampling of player-created challenges, if you don’t really want to dig through the Challenges list. Just be advised that the campaign mode can be very frustrating and difficult even on the easiest difficulty.

its not hard enough with some of these (ahem arbalyst cannons and destroyers, Praetors) mods.

lol, stop using that hull configuration, you dishonourable player!

With PI Mod v1.2b update and Yoma Mod v1.0 (wich i didnt even started yet… aradia, if you are reading this, dont kill me) i dont have time to deal with those abominations you have created xD
I dont even have time to mod anything! D:

Damned free-time-killer university… -.-‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’’

Damned free-time-killer internship, in my case.

To echo Archduke Astro, welcome aboard.

While I’m honoured that my thread is used as possible examples, I also feel that while copying anyone else’s designs (be they mine, or 123stw’s from his guide thread, or anyone else’s) can only get you so far and no farther. You’ll gain far more enjoyment from trying out combinations of kit and hulls yourself. Also, I do feel my own fleets would not do too well in the white hot heat of ‘competitive’ play.

Well, so far, I’ve found that I’m running through the main campaign pretty slowly. Almost finished it now, though.

I’m not using any mods - at all - until I’ve completed the provided missions without them. It’s just how I like to play (unless mods are required to make the game stable or fix bugs the devs never got around to, which doesn’t seem to be the case here.

My approach so far has been a pretty brute-force one. I like building HUGELY EXPENSIVE ships (except my Swarm fleet) and going for quality over quantity. Most fleets have been heavily defense-oriented, and I’ve typically built them Cruiser-heavy (again with the Swarm being an exception), and relied mainly on a solid Cruiser line backed by specialist Frigates to fill in the gaps the Cruisers leave behind.

Whenever I’ve come across a new spatial anomaly, or a mission with tight supply restrictions, I’m switching to a new race, so as not to compromise the designs I already created. My Swarm fleet was actually created for a particular spatial anomaly where auto-repair systems were inoperable, so I decided to focus on both speed and quantity. All of my Swarm ships are rated for 0.35 speed or greater, and while not practical for many situations, I’ve found them highly effective against certain enemy fleets. They’re also the fleet for which I typically have the largest Fighter presence.

I haven’t yet unlocked the Empire race, and I haven’t created an Order fleet even though I have them in my game, but I’ve used - to varying degrees - every other fleet I have access to.

I’m not overly proud of my Federation fleet’s current state, and I plan to redesign them in future. They served me well enough through the first few missions, but I haven’t returned to them since, even though I quite like the aesthetics behind many of their ships. My Tribe fleet are also yet to find a proper niche for themselves, although I have an idea where I want to take them.

you haven’t used the tribe!! dude that like… easy mode

[size=50](or thats what everyone else says)[/size]

I hate the tribe. Both playing as them and playing against them. The reason simply is that they’re kinda easy mode. Seriously. They have very good hulls, and the double hull health at the expense of armor and shields means that it’s harder, but not impossible, to get them fighter-resistent. But because the 1/2 shield and armor reduction isn’t equal to a 1/2 reduction in survivability for any other race, doubling the hp more then makes up for any shortcoming.