Polaris Sector - Gold Edition

Automation suffers from two issues: You cannot turn it completely off and if turned on it's not working as you want it to: - Early in the game I want to plan colonization ahead, just for myself. But the game keeps queueing colonizers which block my ressources (even when suspended). Unassigning the role in the ship design doesn't help either, cause it automatically reassignes the role to a design with a colonization module. Too much handholding for my taste. At least you can rename the system as a note ... - If you set up e.g. a new mining colony with automation, the governor issues an immediate stop on population growth and you have to fly in more population by yourself or turn off automation in order to turn off the population limit. Although it has a lot of options there's none to stop the automatic population growth halt. It's better to queue a lot of mines and be done with it than to use automation. Then there's the thing with domes/platforms: If you hit the population limit or want to land these 10k settlers, just queue some domes at the end. You can spare the time and don't need to exactly build them to make room. No need to plan ahead, a bit too simplistic. What I like in Polaris sector: - Combat has enough tactical depth to be interesting with firing arcs and distance, different roles and the possibility to win against a superior opponent using player skill. - Research is refreshingly new and works quite well. Maybe you don't want to look at another tech tree after playing Polaris sector. - the interface is nice and lean (maybe a bit too lean: upgrading ships is hidden in the context menu of planets with a spaceport). I would recommend it as a good start into the 4X genre. It's not overly complex and therefore doesn't keep hardcore fans busy for long enough.

I solely started writing this review because of the, maybe mislead, author of the first review my eye was placed upon. I'm sure there are more valid reasons for starting a review but hey.. guess what... so in a quicky... The first reviewer probably missed the option of building farms on aquatic worlds and later on the option of being able to build farms on toxic/ non atmosphere worlds. Is this important.. Yes it is because this is a 4x that stays true to its roots. Expect to juggle with resources, science, food and population while being harassed by pirates and maybe an empire or 2. Make friends, fall in love, design the whole night through and never forget too... you know... just don't forget a thing. Space combat is really something you need to adjust too, this being a slitherine production and all. I haven't played enough to see if the a.i. acts basic on the tactical level or the strategic level but there being difficulty settings and all so that should say enough. I do can tell that its not simple to win a fight! If your bored with Paradox standards or Galciv's hatefull a.i. setup look no further and buy this game today! ( p.s. i did look if i could text the first reviewer but alas.. his privacy settings are set on high! )

A good game from SoftWarWare/Slitherine. It has a easy to use strategy map & UI, not over-complicated and cluttered. The tactical battles graphically functional and somewhat fun, I deducted a 1/2 star here because although there is adequate room for strategies to be devised and deployed, I think they missed a chance to make the AI a little smarter, most often employing a straight charge. It is very nice how there are many options to automate the micromanagement of the empire without overlooking it, saying that however another 1/2 star has gone here for the seemless process of building ships and then the less attentive upgrade process, it is not complicate but a one-lick solution would've been ideal, perhaps predesignating an upgrade path and predesignated planet (which is already present for other functions) Graphics do not fail expectation so no stars lost here but if Slitherine ever get the chance to expand there art department it would be more than welcome here, altogether it would be the market leader I would conjecture..

This game is an interesting take on the 4X genre, most notably in the research department, where all research is researched at once, with the possibility to focus on specific topics to make them go faster. Planets are different in the sense that they have a certain amount of building points, and a certain amount of max building type. Planets can be micromanaged, but has about 8 different kind of ambassador settings. Ships are modular and can be configured in a lot of ways. And it is the ships that has my biggest gripe, modular ships are fine, but the game wants you to edit a new ship instead of editing existing ships, the editor is not the greatest, categories are to few, ehre the "big" ones are: reactor, engine, shield, armor, weapon and miscellaneous. The last category could easily be divided into more categories, like the all important fuel tank. Ships require fuel, but there is no tanker ship blueprint as default, making one is not difficult but would be nice to have at the start, tanker ships require a special module to refuel ships in their group, but building several tanker ships will not share fuel amongst them self, leading you to have empty tankers unable to move and fuelled battle ships being able to move on sector. Ship battles are RTS style, and if you do not have fighters in your group, you will be destroyed. 2 pirate corvettes with 10 groups of fighters (standard pirate group) will take out a group of 10 corvettes without putting them selves in danger.