Battlestar Galactica Deadlock

It's released and looks pretty good.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/54…tica_Deadlock/

Worthabuy seems to like it, and he's a miserable bugger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VswCaJ7RvUk

Experience Battlestar multiplayer like never before! Outwit your opponent in fierce 1-v-1 fleet battles.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/544610…95965289803087

Slitherine_Iain [developer] 11 minutes ago
The game is very much about the battles. The campaign layer keeps it varied an interesting but its aim is to create interesting battles rather than be a completely playable game on its own. If the battles don't interest you i don't think you'll like this game.

Not worth a single dime to me.

Is it strictly a strategy game or can you control a ship and engage in dogfights too?

Originally Posted by joxer
Not worth a single dime to me.

And you just had to let us know that huh?

It's been on my wishlist, so eager to hear impressions if anyone is playing it.

Originally Posted by JDR13
And you just had to let us know that huh?

Wouldn't be fair to share only exictment about games. Unless we all agree not to write anything at all when a title brings disappointment with it.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Is it strictly a strategy game or can you control a ship and engage in dogfights too?

I'm pretty sure it's strictly strategy.

BTW, I think you might have misunderstood what they meant, Joxer. It has a campaign section, and then the actual battles, a bit like the total war games. I think what he's saying is that the game is focussed on the battles, and the campaign section on its own, if you let all the battles auto resolve, wouldn't be very satisfying. I don't think he's suggesting that it's all about multiplayer.

Well okay then. When they strip singleplayer campaign and sell it as a standalone product, I'll buy. I'm not paying for stuff I won't use.

Well, fair enough, Joxer, and I've no reason to defend this game in particular. But, I would say that some games, by their nature, lend themselves to adding a multiplayer element to the single player gameplay. I see those quite differently to multiplayer games that have a crappy single player campaign tacked on to a fundamentally multiplayer game, and it just seems like a reasonable addition.

Originally Posted by Ripper
I'm pretty sure it's strictly strategy.

Tactics, actually. The strategic campaign is not that deep, apparently.

10-15 years ago I would have been really excited about this game. Now, my backlog of RPGs is simply too large, and I already own Nexus: TJI, Homeworld, and other similar titles. (Though they're not identical.)

It makes me feel bad.

Originally Posted by wiretripped
It's been on my wishlist, so eager to hear impressions if anyone is playing it.

The product was streamed by enthusiasts. Shortly. Which never tells positively of the quality of a product.
Content to be browsed through, streamers reported a lack of challenge, with victory kind of automatic. Battles are similar.

Battlestar Galactica would be a setting I'd like to see as an RPG. If Mass Effect is possible, then why not this, too ?

I only watched the movies, and only very, very, very few of the TV series.

Originally Posted by posfan12
Tactics, actually. The strategic campaign is not that deep, apparently.
(

I disagree with the distinction. I think that a battlefield game can legitimately be described as a strategy game. I don't think the formal distinction that some people make between tactics and strategy is actually very well supported.

I think I've played long enough for some first impressions…

At the top level of this game you've got a strategy map showing all the planets around four stars. You start off in control of one fleet and a giant ship building facility that can jump around with the fleet. The planets still loyal to the Colonies feed you tylium which you can use to build more ships. And you'll need more ships - lots more ships. The Cylons have quite a few fleets that will be jumping in and attacking planets. You can jump every turn but, if you jump in less than 3 turns, it costs you tylium.

When you encounter a Cylon fleet, you go into the tactical battle. That's where you'll be spending the bulk of your time. You'll set up where your fleet will jump in and decide what sort of munitions (missiles/mines) and fighters you'll bring. Then the battle starts. The battles themselves are played in 15 (?) second phases. You'll plot out where all your ships/fighters should go over the next 15 seconds, hit 'end turn' and off they go.

Ships are fairly complex with turning rates and firing arcs for different types of weapons. The battles are ALMOST fully 3D. Your ships can move up and down as well as turning right and left but they will always remain level - you won't end up with some ships pointed up and some down. Fighters can attack enemy ships/fighters or defend ships from missile attacks. Raptors have much less ability to fight but they do have several special options like boarding enemy ships - though so far I've liked the Vipers better.

The game has a nifty little feature that will let you stitch all the turns together after the battle and move the camera around 'Battlestar Galactica style' to watch it all play out. It's a lot more fun that I expected! Here's a sample:

There's also a little research portion to the game where you earn research points to buy new ship blueprints. Those same points get used to buy officers to manage your fleets so there's some deciding to do on that front - just don't expect big, detailed research trees.

The reinforcement pack DLC adds more ships to the game. The Broken Alliance pack adds a few more ships and more special story missions. Unfortunately, that means you'll need to decide if you want them not too long after buying the game, assuming you'll just play the campaign once. From what I've seen so far, the DLC is well worth the price even when not on sale. (I got the bundle on sale.)

P.S. The game starts up very quickly! It seems especially so having just played a lot of BattleTech.

So, after some more hours, I'll stick pretty much with what I said before. It does seem that the non-story missions start to get "samey" in the latter half of the game but the story missions set up interesting scenarios to deal with.

There's interesting differences compared to other games I've played. First of all, everything you build shows up at your mobile construction station. Second, jumping every turn is really expensive. If you've got your station in one corner, it can be 3 jumps to the opposite corner. If you try to send a couple of new ships alone off to the other side of the map, it's very likely the Cylons will pop in and destroy them! No more easy flights from a not-to-distant planet to the front lines - you'll need a fleet for escort duty. (Or you'll need to have your station keep travelling around.)

I am running into a few small issues with the game. It's been crashing at times. You can counter that by saving every two or three turns but, if you have to re-load, the stitched-together replay will start where the game was loaded. There's some GUI features missing that just seem odd, too.