IXION - space station sim by Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus developer

[MadMaxHellfire]

i was really hoping for a city builder style.

 

[Oropay]

Ixion is an excellent game. Very intuitive, the right amount of complexity, and only moderate challenge. Good atmosphere and nice systems. I guess my main complaint would be crashing and general performance problems, like stuttering and 100% GPU usage at all times regardless of framerate. It's basically a power virus, as the wattage my GPU is using is the highest I've ever seen. I feel like Unity is probably mostly to blame here: I used Process Lasso to set Ixion's process to High priority and disabled SMT (using R5 5600X), and the game runs a lot better. Almost 2x perf improvement.

stockpiles

You can have multiple resources in a single stockpile; just change the resource type to whatever you want while there's another type already in the stockpile. The stockpile will be able to actively distribute or receive whatever the primary resource is, and other active stockpiles with the non-primary resource can still remove said non-primary resource if they're in the same sector. There are a lot of nuances to stockpiles (e.g., unpowered stockpiles can receive resources but can't distribute them).

make sense.

I can definitely understand that each person has different thresholds for faux realism / immersion, but I enjoy the gameyness of Ixion. To me, it's not supposed to be a sim.

 

[Axioms]

Ixion is an excellent game. Very intuitive, the right amount of complexity, and only moderate challenge. Good atmosphere and nice systems. I guess my main complaint would be crashing and general performance problems, like stuttering and 100% GPU usage at all times regardless of framerate. It's basically a power virus, as the wattage my GPU is using is the highest I've ever seen. I feel like Unity is probably mostly to blame here: I used Process Lasso to set Ixion's process to High priority and disabled SMT (using R5 5600X), and the game runs a lot better. Almost 2x perf improvement.

stockpiles

You can have multiple resources in a single stockpile; just change the resource type to whatever you want while there's another type already in the stockpile. The stockpile will be able to distribute or receive whatever the active resource is. There are a lot of nuances to stockpiles (e.g., unpowered stockpiles can receive resources but can't distribute them).

make sense.

I can definitely understand that each person has different thresholds for faux realism / immersion, but I enjoy the gameyness of Ixion. To me, it's not supposed to be a sim.

The issue is really that they don't market the game properly.

Like a Paradox game is real time strategy but if you marketed it under that specific genre designation people would be mad. Ixion is not a city builder. It is closer to FTL than to Banished.

 

[Oropay]

Ixion is not a city builder. It is closer to FTL than to Banished.

I understand where you're coming from (management aspect but on a much larger scale), but to me Ixion has very little in common with FTL. It took me several runs to beat FTL on the recommended difficulty, but I haven't even been close to disaster in Ixion (except for a trust scare in Chapter 3; currently playing Chapter 4). I haven't played Rimworld, but I'd guess it's similar to something like that (also reminds me somewhat of Surviving Mars and Frostpunk, although I didn't play far into the latter).

I think a lot of the difficulty comes from players (as you mention, maybe a player looking for a relaxed city builder) not playing the game as it's supposed to be played. Imagine trying to play DMC like a stealth game. You're not going to have a good time or be successful. Being "good" at a game often just means that the player wants to play the game in the way that it wants to be played. For me in Ixion I almost always use the normal speed [>] and pause often. I'm careful to keep my population happy (lower case, so high trust and optimal work conditions), and to strip systems of most resources. I also use almost all major mechanics the game presents, probably some that many players miss, like the fact that you can research sub-upgrades for buildings or the battery mechanic that someone in this thread missed at first. But all of that is just the way I naturally want to play the game, and it happens to work out well. I saw a player run Surviving Mars on Ultra speed [>>>] non-stop with almost no pauses, simply because that's the way he wanted to play the game. As you can imagine, his colony failed. Of course that didn't bother him, as that was, for him, an accepted risk, but I think a lot of people don't have the patience or the relative meticulousness to play games like this as they're meant to be played. Which is fine, as not everyone's playstyle will suit every game, but I don't think they should blame the game when things go wrong.

marketing strategy

Honestly I haven't paid attention to the marketing. I was aware of Ixion, and it looked like it ticked a lot of basic boxes for me; then right after it released, I realized it was by the W40K: Mechanicus devs (which is a game I loved), so I went in blind. Pretty sure there is or was a demo though (and of course it's not Denuvo protected either) so people shouldn't buy without a test drive. Having said that, to me, $35 is a very fair asking price considering the overall polish of the game.

 

[Axioms]

Ixion is not a city builder. It is closer to FTL than to Banished.

I understand where you're coming from (management aspect but on a much larger scale), but to me Ixion has very little in common with FTL. It took me several runs to beat FTL on the recommended difficulty, but I haven't even been close to disaster in Ixion (except for a trust scare in Chapter 3; currently playing Chapter 4). I haven't played Rimworld, but I'd guess it's similar to something like that (also reminds me somewhat of Surviving Mars and Frostpunk, although I didn't play far into the latter).

I think a lot of the difficulty comes from players (as you mention, maybe a player looking for a relaxed city builder) not playing the game as it's supposed to be played. Imagine trying to play DMC like a stealth game. You're not going to have a good time or be successful. Being "good" at a game often just means that the player wants to play the game in the way that it wants to be played. For me in Ixion I almost always use the normal speed [>] and pause often. I'm careful to keep my population happy (lower case, so high trust and optimal work conditions), and to strip systems of most resources. I also use almost all major mechanics the game presents, probably some that many players miss, like the fact that you can research sub-upgrades for buildings or the battery mechanic that someone in this thread missed at first. But all of that is just the way I naturally want to play the game, and it happens to work out well. I saw a player run Surviving Mars on Ultra speed [>>>] non-stop with almost no pauses, simply because that's the way he wanted to play the game. As you can imagine, his colony failed. Of course that didn't bother him, as that was, for him, an accepted risk, but I think a lot of people don't have the patience or the relative meticulousness to play games like this as they're meant to be played. Which is fine, as not everyone's playstyle will suit every game, but I don't think they should blame the game when things go wrong.

marketing strategy

Honestly I haven't paid attention to the marketing. I was aware of Ixion, and it looked like it ticked a lot of basic boxes for me; then right after it released, I realized it was by the W40K: Mechanicus devs (which is a game I loved), so I went in blind. Pretty sure there is or was a demo though (and of course it's not Denuvo protected either) so people shouldn't buy without a test drive. Having said that, to me, $35 is a very fair asking price considering the overall polish of the game.

Marketing should be about expectations management but instead nearly every game, especially from larger studios or publishers is putting out checklists and showing pretty trailers instead of accurately conveying the experience of the game. Whether we are talking about this or the infamous "checklists" of mid 2000s MMOs where they list deep crafting but actually it is useless and simplistic crap and the same for character builds and such.

The reason they do this is to draw in the largest user base because it is all about money and not giving players an ideal experience. Of course the players could do deeper research into the game but that would actually be worse because better to get a sale and a mad buyer than not get a sale. Ixion had much higher sales than you'd expect if you understood the game. Which is because of the large marketing push which was not clear enough.

Companies can of course play the "people who bought our game are just retards, there is no problem with the design" or even the less controversial "well players should do more research before buying". And they'll probably get away with it. But the codex is supposed to be better than that, or at least more cynical.

I played the demo and chose not to buy it, for a variety of reasons. The unrelated reasons aside I *probably* wouldn't have bought it due to the actual genre of the game, but I can't know for sure.

Personally I think devs should consider giving refunds to players with under 10-20 hours in games that are designed for long play times, since you'd probably be able to avoid a lot og negative reviews that way. They won't of course.

 

[Malakal]

So this basically space Frostpunk?

 

[Norfleet]

Marketing should be about expectations management but instead nearly every game, especially from larger studios or publishers is putting out checklists and showing pretty trailers instead of accurately conveying the experience of the game. Whether we are talking about this or the infamous "checklists" of mid 2000s MMOs where they list deep crafting but actually it is useless and simplistic crap and the same for character builds and such.

Crapting systems are ALWAYS like that. Every crapting system boasts how many different craptables there are. The problem is that pretty much all of it is crap. Like you can have a crapting system that offers you 200 different swords, but there's a problem: A man can only wield one sword. That means approximately 199 of them are worthless trash. Unless every single one of your items is unique and carries a specific, unique purpose, you're going to have classes of item, and of them, only one, if any, can be best-in-slot. The rest? Worthless trash, because this is an MMO. If it's not BIS, it's garbage. That means a whole bunch of dev time just went down the drain filling the system with a bunch of pointless trash. Particularly if NONE of it is any good, meaning the entire crapting system is itself pointless crap.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Marketing should be about expectations management but instead nearly every game, especially from larger studios or publishers is putting out checklists and showing pretty trailers instead of accurately conveying the experience of the game. Whether we are talking about this or the infamous "checklists" of mid 2000s MMOs where they list deep crafting but actually it is useless and simplistic crap and the same for character builds and such.

Crapting systems are ALWAYS like that. Every crapting system boasts how many different craptables there are. The problem is that pretty much all of it is crap. Like you can have a crapting system that offers you 200 different swords, but there's a problem: A man can only wield one sword. That means approximately 199 of them are worthless trash. Unless every single one of your items is unique and carries a specific, unique purpose, you're going to have classes of item, and of them, only one, if any, can be best-in-slot. The rest? Worthless trash, because this is an MMO. If it's not BIS, it's garbage. That means a whole bunch of dev time just went down the drain filling the system with a bunch of pointless trash. Particularly if NONE of it is any good, meaning the entire crapting system is itself pointless crap.

I hate crafting, except the type that exists in some of the Infinity engine games, where it is some rare thing, like in BG2, or Icewind Dale with the Yeti Skins...but collecting endless bits of yarn and dried out flower petals and the droppings of a diseased barn owl is tedious and when I see it is in a game I pretty much don't want to play. I guess I suppose for some genre of games it is more forgivable and maybe even necessary, like a game about surviving a zombie apocolypse, but I don't know..

 

[Axioms]

Marketing should be about expectations management but instead nearly every game, especially from larger studios or publishers is putting out checklists and showing pretty trailers instead of accurately conveying the experience of the game. Whether we are talking about this or the infamous "checklists" of mid 2000s MMOs where they list deep crafting but actually it is useless and simplistic crap and the same for character builds and such.

Crapting systems are ALWAYS like that. Every crapting system boasts how many different craptables there are. The problem is that pretty much all of it is crap. Like you can have a crapting system that offers you 200 different swords, but there's a problem: A man can only wield one sword. That means approximately 199 of them are worthless trash. Unless every single one of your items is unique and carries a specific, unique purpose, you're going to have classes of item, and of them, only one, if any, can be best-in-slot. The rest? Worthless trash, because this is an MMO. If it's not BIS, it's garbage. That means a whole bunch of dev time just went down the drain filling the system with a bunch of pointless trash. Particularly if NONE of it is any good, meaning the entire crapting system is itself pointless crap.

I hate crafting, except the type that exists in some of the Infinity engine games, where it is some rare thing, like in BG2, or Icewind Dale with the Yeti Skins...but collecting endless bits of yarn and dried out flower petals and the droppings of a diseased barn owl is tedious and when I see it is in a game I pretty much don't want to play.

That's what I'm saying though. So many games shove in useless derivative crafting to fill a check box for marketing, then lie and claim it isn't the same grindy bullshit from WoW or w/e. Then shocked pikachu when people give a thumbs down on steam when the hype was not supported by the mechanics or content.

 

[Hellraiser]

I finished it today and I have to say it was better than expected and in a lot of cases better than Frostpunk, although that could be because unlike with Frostpunk I knew what to expect gameplay wise. Also it is a lot longer than Frostpunk.

I also like the general space theme of the game and saw some interesting thematic parallels to homeworld, I mean in both cases you have a mothership with a fleet you manage, travelling into the unknown and dealing with it, looting space crap along the way. Plus the ambient music enhances the experience.

Story, lore bits in events and setting aren't as interesting as in Frostpunk, I have to give them that. Also the game sometimes just sounds/reads like someone really wanted to make use of all the philosophy and ancient culture classes they took while at university. Although naming the ersatz Elon Musk of the game as Vanir Dolos is quite witty I have to say.

So this basically space Frostpunk?

Frostpunk where hard timelimits and the game throwing unavoidable scripted events at you according to a timeline was replaced with soft timers in all but one case at the very endgame. Anyway it isn't an exercise in memorizing which choice reducing which bar to pick and avoiding scripted gotcha moments Frostpunk's original campaign was infamous for, which made Frostpunk feel like a CYOA with a city builder front-end. IXION seems more of a strategy-puzzle game hybrid. It also does have more resource management since it has more resources period, but the logistical management is pretty primitive (I mean even a fairly simple supply chain game like the Settlers 2 has deeper logistics, since proximity and bottlenecks are factors).

You can just avoid continuing events or postpone jumping to the next system as long as you don't run out of a resource triggering a death spiral, there's usually no rush except maybe in the very beginning. Likewise you can postpone picking up (usually frozen) colonists until the right time. When I failed it was always a death spiral of my own doing to be honest, with again one exception in the endgame where you really need to know what is coming in advance and prepare before the jump to the final system.

People had some complaints about the permanent negative modifiers to stability, but honestly it's not that hard to stay at neutral at least in the early game and later tech allows you to boost it with almost 0 effort. It's more of a trigger to redesign sectors and build stability buildings somewhere. The only policy I ever used was maximum propaganda, and still had stuff like bigger rations or reduced working hours I could use if I needed to raise it higher (I was at +3 stability in every sector by the final chapter I think). Only real problem is storing too many frozen colonists, but you can keep 499 on ice at just -1 stability which is as much of a hit as enabling waste recycling in a sector is (which you want since it makes the resource side easy and boosts efficiency by removing waste purging pauses). You can also not take the pods unless they are part of an objective, although I think this is a gotcha that might make the game unwinnable in the very end. The same goes for losing too many colonists in accidents.

It took me until the end of chapter 4 before I got to the stage where I wasn't constantly rebuilding and redesigning the sectors. Tech advancements and the sector opening penalties made me do it constantly.

Speaking of rebuilding I didn't bother with the specializations bonuses much, I finished the game with only 3 sectors specialized, out of which one or two sectors had only level 1 specialization. Now that I checked online what other bonuses there are, I realize I could have went for the waste recycling specialization, although even without it waste recycling is ridiculously good.

 

[Oropay]

saw some interesting thematic parallels to homeworld

Same. Really nice atmosphere.

bottlenecks

I didn't find many but at one point for whatever reason my food sector couldn't export fast enough even with 3x large stockpiles. Needed to add 2x drone hangers eventually to keep all resource distribution flowing smoothly.

negative modifiers to stability

At one point I had 1000+ cryopods (-4) and the -1 corpse modifier and morale was still neutral. Very easy to handle morale if you're paying attention to the sub-research for buildings like the brutalist legislative center.

specializations bonuses

Same, didn't really bother with specializations although you can't help but get Rank 1 in a lot of your sectors. Honestly this is proof of how easy the game is: it could be considered much more difficult if attaining perks like Rank 2 was NECESSARY as the game advanced. Same with the sector layout optimization requirements. Lenient. I had a lot of unused space at the end of the game. Each solar system also has way more resources than you actually need.

Major late game event

I went in blind and the only time I ever lost is because I didn't realize I had to build the anti-missile missile in the actual probe bay, and this is my own dumb fault for not reading the research tech blurb properly or noticing the option above probe in the solar system view. Having said that the construction to disable Edden and the research for landing on Romulus were also hard to find, so maybe there could have been more obvious pointers. But then again I would prefer too little hand holding to too much.

Point is: I never had a problem with anything other than one gotcha event; resources or morale or other game mechanics were all very easy to manage. People thinking this game is hard are either of lower intelligence or simply don't want to play the game like it needs to be played ("my workers SHOULD be fine while being overworked! space demands sacrifices, damnit! you'll be overworked and like it!")

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Looks and sounds like Frostpunk in SPACE!!!

Frostpunk was fine for a single playthrough on a free weekend, so maybe if this game ends up doing a free weekend i'll play it once too.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Monocause]

Ixion is a very good game with some problems. First and obvious one is the lack of replayability. The second major flaw is how the game's design struggles against itself - it's like on one hand the game wants you to progress and jump from disaster to disaster and go on an adventure where you're always on the brink of death, and at the same time penalises you for playing the game exactly like this.

What it rewards is overstaying your welcome at sectors, mining a lot, doing good sim city and most glaringly really heavily rewards metaknowledge. There's a fair few events in the game for which there's no real way for you to figure out the optimal choice. The player who savescums or checks the wiki gets rewarded.

Another major problem is that the last two chapters feel undercooked. But can't go into too much details without spoiling the story a lot.

All this aside though - there's a lot to the game that's brilliant. The builder aspect is very satisfying and well thought out. The music is excellent. Art direction's great. Writing's solid. The game grabbed me and kept me in clutches for more than my money's worth. Fully recommended.

 

[Demo.Graph]

I've tried it and so far caved in the first chapter (a return to Sol).

I can support the comparison to Frostpunk. Ixion is also marketed as a grimdark roguelike management sim. It also isn't a roguelike since it has no challenge and not a management sim, since external pressure isn't present, so you don't have to manage anything.

Unlike Startopia, the game has no meeples (population is represented by sliders), no trading, no missions and no charm.

Mechanically, the progress is gated by population slider. Devs feed you pop points from goody huts predeterminedly placed on the map with text-based events on top. You can't see the outcome of different options in those events, so aren't able to make a meaningful choice without savescumming.

The real problem is a complete lack of builds. You're forced to spend some pop points on life support (food producing buildings, mothership repair resource sinks, etc.). You also lose some predefined proportion of pops as unemployed for some religious reason. When you mentally remove those popsinks from calculation, almost nothing remains. So far there're 3 factories that convert 3 types of raw materials to 3 types of intermediate goods, a dock to send 2.5 units to the map to farm more resources... and that's it. Again, without external pressure there's nothing to optimise against.

My best guess on the genre is - a farming game. You place a building, then you wait, then you place another one, etc. I'd say that if you really want a farm, you should rather go pirate Cloud Meadow. You'll at least have an option of masturbating on some quality pixels.

I also find completely revolting the idea that postapoc survivors ON A GODDAMN COLONY SHIP had completely lost their ability to breed. Yes, it's a new age game about multiculti eurocrats in space, but... But I've recalled granny Von der Leyen and her mustache and nevermind, they can go extinct all they want.

 

[Hellraiser]

You can't see the outcome of different options in those events, so aren't able to make a meaningful choice without savescumming.

...

I also find completely revolting the idea that postapoc survivors ON A GODDAMN COLONY SHIP had completely lost their ability to breed. Yes, it's a new age game about multiculti eurocrats in space, but... But I've recalled granny Von der Leyen and her mustache and nevermind, they can go extinct all they want.

For the first one I'll just say I disagree because there is an alternative to save scumming... google an event guide.



Which is what I did for the last 2 or 3 chapters since there's too fucking many events with too many steps which fucks up the pacing. Frostpunk had way less event choice clicking.

As for the breeding part, I always assumed the timescale is too short for kids to grow up and become useful. It would work better if it was implied the journey takes decades.

 

[Monocause]

I've tried it and so far caved in the first chapter (a return to Sol).

I can support the comparison to Frostpunk. Ixion is also marketed as a grimdark roguelike management sim. It also isn't a roguelike since it has no challenge and not a management sim, since external pressure isn't present, so you don't have to manage anything.

Unlike Startopia, the game has no meeples (population is represented by sliders), no trading, no missions and no charm.

Mechanically, the progress is gated by population slider. Devs feed you pop points from goody huts predeterminedly placed on the map with text-based events on top. You can't see the outcome of different options in those events, so aren't able to make a meaningful choice without savescumming.

The real problem is a complete lack of builds. You're forced to spend some pop points on life support (food producing buildings, mothership repair resource sinks, etc.). You also lose some predefined proportion of pops as unemployed for some religious reason. When you mentally remove those popsinks from calculation, almost nothing remains. So far there're 3 factories that convert 3 types of raw materials to 3 types of intermediate goods, a dock to send 2.5 units to the map to farm more resources... and that's it. Again, without external pressure there's nothing to optimise against.

My best guess on the genre is - a farming game. You place a building, then you wait, then you place another one, etc. I'd say that if you really want a farm, you should rather go pirate Cloud Meadow. You'll at least have an option of masturbating on some quality pixels.

I also find completely revolting the idea that postapoc survivors ON A GODDAMN COLONY SHIP had completely lost their ability to breed. Yes, it's a new age game about multiculti eurocrats in space, but... But I've recalled granny Von der Leyen and her mustache and nevermind, they can go extinct all they want.

You're missing the point of the game I think (which is quite possibly not your fault but a problem with the game's pacing). Play a bit more and go on to chapter 2 and certain mechanics should start to be more apparent, as well as what works as the external pressure point. Chapter 1 is sort of an extended tutorial in terms of how it functions.

This kind of ties into what I wrote about the game rewarding you for overstaying your welcome on levels. The -1 stability hit for not jumping takes way too long to kick in and is really not enough and I think the game should prompt you to do VOHLE jumps much more aggressively than that.


Hellraiser re: the human breeding - the game doesn't explain it but I thought so too. The way I see it - everyone's on a big chunk of metal floating in the space. Multiple dangers abound, stuff can explode and collapse. Every able-bodied person needs to be able to quickly move, work or evacuate. It would make complete sense for procreation to be completely forbidden in a scenario like that and contraceptive use enforced. Women in late-stage pregnancy and then infants are clearly a liability when you know you're on an oversized fake space ship that's increasingly unstable.

Would be a cool story event: administrator receives a report that one of the women got pregnant which is not allowed, and has to make a decision on how to deal with it. Drop the ban on procreation which leads to potential consequences? Force an abortion? Get the lady and her dude hidden away somewhere and pretend it didn't happen? It's a great idea that would flesh out the setting and realism more.

 

[Demo.Graph]

As for the breeding part, I always assumed the timescale is too short for kids to grow up and become useful.

Enough time passes for:
- hull to rot.
- your ships to crawl through the star system on ion or hydrogen engines (you never supply them with chemfuel or prop, so they should run on some kind of high dv / low thrust nuke powered engines with universally available propellant) and then scan shit and then mine shit and then send it back. Several times.
- (and then later for you to move to other star systems. It's implied that even the journey to something Centauri (Proxima?) in prologue took many years).
Those things imply timescale in decades.

Also, I've dropped the game early, but I think that nothing should prevent interstellar-era humanity from breeding all over the asteroid belt and gas giant moons. There're practically unlimited resources out there to be fruitful and multiply.
Cowboy Bebop humanity does exactly this and gets a nice soundtrack on top.

But, eh. I think that the game's technobabble is all kinds retarded, so better not to focus on it.

You're missing the point of the game I think

I've skimmed through youtube walkthroughs and don't miss the game at all.

 

[Monocause]

Enough time passes for:
- hull to rot.
- your ships to crawl through the star system on ion or hydrogen engines (you never supply them with chemfuel or prop, so they should run on some kind of high dv / low thrust nuke powered engines with universally available propellant) and then scan shit and then mine shit and then send it back. Several times.
- (and then later for you to move to other star systems. It's implied that even the journey to something Centauri (Proxima?) in prologue took many years).
Those things imply timescale in decades.

The hull doesn't rot, it's a huge ship that's contantly being peppered with all sorts of small debris and other space hazards, also strains under a lot of self-generated pressure (after all there's hundreds or thousands of people living there). And then there's the magic factor of the VOHLE jumps

Even the ISS which is a much much smaller object compared to a massive chunk of metal capable of housing 10000s of people routinely needs repairs.

Re: intersystem travel - the game waves it away by saying it's a non-existent "EKP engine" technology. Looking at how much time it takes to fly around the solar system and comparing it to how much time a lot of other in-game events take you can safely bet that the propulsion used in Ixion for intersystem travel is much, MUCH faster than any technology that's currently available like nuke engines.

The journey to other systems is using a different kind of technology principles of which are never fully explained but is clearly based around some form of time and space compression. Hence you can't really use VOHLE/IXION jumps to figure out the game's timescale as the time of these jumps is basically "whatever the writer needs it to be"

 

[Demo.Graph]

The hull doesn't rot, it's a huge ship that's contantly being peppered with all sorts of small debris and other space hazards

I haven't realised that humies are so heavy, they begin attracting new micrometeorites when player opens new sectors.

after all there's hundreds or thousands of people living there

5-6k

Looking at how much time it takes to fly around the solar system and comparing it to how much time a lot of other in-game events take you can safely bet that the propulsion used in Ixion for intersystem travel is much, MUCH faster than any technology that's currently available like nuke engines.

Yeah-yeah, and they power it by photovoltaics even on Jupiter orbit. I get it "it's magic, I'm not gonna explain shit".

 

[thesecret1]

Tried it, dropped it halfway. The setting is neat, but the gameplay mechanics are simplistic (you basically cannot lose if you plan ahead even a little bit, even on the new hard difficulty) and it's a bit of a waiting game. All in all, too boring for my taste.

Those things imply timescale in decades.

One cycle equals one day (you know this because every 365 cycles, the PA wishes you a happy new year), meaning the entire game takes place across only a handful of years at most.

 

[Demo.Graph]

Those things imply timescale in decades.

One cycle equals one day (you know this because every 365 cycles, the PA wishes you a happy new year), meaning the entire game takes place across only a handful of years at most.

IIRC, there's ~3 cycle flight for your units or mothership between Earth-Mars ingame. Suppose, that it's actually three days.
Again, IIRC, ingame Earth-Mars are almost on the opposite points of orbits, so the distance between them should be about 300-350 mkm.
Suppose that half the time (1.5 days) your ship accelerates on route to Mars, then decelerates. It would require 2g constant acceleration to reach Mars in 3 days.
Since both the ships and mothership aren't chemical rockets... I'm too lazy to calc it, but they would probably need GW-grade power plants to fly the smaller ships and TW-grade for mothership.

 

[thesecret1]

IIRC, there's ~3 cycle flight for your units or mothership between Earth-Mars ingame. Suppose, that it's actually three days.
Again, IIRC, ingame Earth-Mars are almost on the opposite points of orbits, so the distance between them should be about 300-350 mkm.
Suppose that half the time (1.5 days) your ship accelerates on route to Mars, then decelerates. It would require 2g constant acceleration to reach Mars in 3 days.
Since both the ships and mothership aren't chemical rockets... I'm too lazy to calc it, but they would probably need GW-grade power plants to fly the smaller ships and TW-grade for mothership.

The technicalities of this are easily and readily answered by space magic.

 

[Raghar]

Yeah-yeah, and they power it by photovoltaics even on Jupiter orbit. I get it "it's magic, I'm not gonna explain shit".

Well, it's easier than power German economy without Nuclear power plants.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I started playing this one and loving it. It is a bit shallow on sim part but space aesthetics and atmosphere really won me over.
Also it always have "nice" turn of events. Kinda liked the dready mood.