A Few official reviews for Starshatter

[Master]

If you take off sound and graphics the playability of the game gets a 7.

What really hurt is that 4 in sound... But alot of people are not going to catch that slight detail. They are going to see the overall score and think its referencing gameplay.

[Deathifier]

The combat is one of the more interesting parts of the game IMO.
In a fighter you become all too aware that taking damage is not a good idea, and this is how it should be - fighters are not built to be all-purpose battlewagons!

In other space sims one lowly fighter can blow up entire battlecruisers, disregarding the fact that the fighters weapons are probably 100% ineffective vs. their armour.

With starshatter it makes you value your wingmen and the rest of your fleet - you aren't out there alone to take on the world, you're there as part of a fleet.
Unfortunately the lack of much AI activity or general background chatter (until you get into missions where lots of ships appear in the same space region) doesn't convey the fleet feeling well enough

IMO it should have scored a 7.5 easily.
Yes the graphics are a bit bland however the sound is reasonable, the music is nice (though a couple more tracks would help), the gameplay is good, the replayability is great and the modability is fantastic.

It also took me more than a couple of days to finish at full speed, so it gets bonus points for entertainment value

- Deathifier

[Burzmali]

I'll have to note, Deathifier, that as it stands, with a bit of skill, a fighter can easily wipe out anything from a DESRON, to a carrier group single handedly if the player is willing to use gamey tactics.

[Deathifier]

Hmm whenever I try the end result is one dead fighter

From what I gather the key weakness that allows smaller ships to defeat larger ones is hitting exposed reactors and such, which I think is a little silly :/

However at least here you have to know the weak spots or you spend absolutely forever scratching paint.

- Deathifier

[Burzmali]

You don't even have to find a weak spot, just a point where the carrier's PDB can't reach you and you can reach any launching figthers. The best spot is inside the carriers launch bay, but as I said, such a tactic is taking advantage of the AI so you reap what you sow, I guess...

[Phoenix-D]

ORIGINAL: John DiCamillo

Hi Phoenix-D,

I'm curious what games you are using that are significantly easier to mod than Starshatter. What's an example of extra complexity that you feel was not justified by the game design?

Thanks,

Bit of a belated response, but Space Empires IV and Starfury are much simpler..or perhaps more intuitive. To be fair Starfury is 2d so you don't have that complication. The most blatent example is Starfury's target types are a comma-seperated list. Starhatter uses a hex system for the same function. I'm sure SS can do the same things, but it is a lot harder to read that entry.

As far as the complication- SF has most of the options sitting there in front of you. Starshatter, even with the mod SDK, doesn't. I shouldn't have to go to user sites to find parameters I could use for my mod (not talking even detailed description here. There is -no- mention of flak in the official SDK, yet I go to a user site and there it is). Back to the target type again- the SDK mentions how it works, but just barely.

I think some of this stems from not having to include every parameter. In and of itself that's fine, but it means the example files provided don't included all the possible parameters.

Another example- you have this wonderful shield system- the idea with letting the user set the shield shape via the .mag file is brilliant. Except you can't add more than one shield system, so much of the usefulness (for me) is wasted. I haven't found any method of adding armor (protection for subsystems, will good, isn't what I'm looking for). Subsystem hit points appears fixed. Way too many of the possible subsystems say "XXX only!" In short pretty much everything I wanted to mod was actually fixed in some way.

Even when it wasn't, I can't access the stock data files, so I have all these possibilties..and no way to know what a sane range is. I have to re-make a weapon from scratch every time, etc. Again using SF as an example- I can look and instantly compare the turning rates of my new ships to the stock ships, and adjust accordingly if I need to.

[DamoclesX]

build an excel document

I have one nearing 500k that has all the ships, weapons, settings, ever last detail for all the ships / weapons / systems/ galaxys/ sounds/ missions/ everything

that way when I add ships I just add them to the root page.. next to the ship its better/worst then, and allows me to balance the ship, and its weapons in seconds

[DamoclesX]

as for turrent arcs.... system hitpoints, power, ect

I started on a vb.net system that would make it basically 3d allowing you to see the ship/turrnt positions powerload and so one.. but there is a LOT of info I need to dig out of the dat once milo opens it up before its worth even showing

[Pheonix Starflare]

Damo, a tool like that would be amazing! I think it would open SS modding up to a lot of people who would stare at a .def file and not know what to do (me in most cases). THis could also make checking firing arcs much easer as well as things like launch/landing paths for fighters.

[Pheagey]

ORIGINAL: DamoclesX

as for turrent arcs.... system hitpoints, power, ect

I started on a vb.net system that would make it basically 3d allowing you to see the ship/turrnt positions powerload and so one.. but there is a LOT of info I need to dig out of the dat once milo opens it up before its worth even showing

to bad I cann't program.. But what Phenoix Starfrlare said. That would help def writing alot. Noit like veteran modders like yourse4lf have problems deoing it but new comers do.
Anyways, throw that at me sometime and lemme have a look.

[Master]

here is another review... if you can call it that

http://www.simhq.com/_air2/air_106a.html

[Heartland]

A-ha, there is an actual review, but AFTER the after-action report.

"...do yourself a favor and buy this one. It’s forty bucks through Matrix Games, and ten additional dollars if you have Digital River send you the backup CD. It’s the most fun fifty bucks I’ve spent since Total Air War came out in 1998."

[Phoenix-D]

ORIGINAL: DamoclesX

build an excel document
[snip]

That works..if you're doing a TC. If you want to use the original ships it still doesn't help because you don't have that set of data.

I do have to add if I was going strictly from a player's standpoint I would have given SS more like an 80% (based on the demo). It just had the bad luck of hitting almost every one of my pet peeves..