We built this fleet on rock & roll: See Sid Meier’s Starships in action

By Will Fulton February 10, 2015

built fleet rock roll see sid meiers starships action — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Firaxis Games shared a juicy half hour of gameplay from its recently announced sci-fi strategy title, Sid Meier’s Starships, with commentary from none other than PC gaming’s genial uncle, Mr. Meier himself, along with fellow Firaxis dev Pete Murray, both nerdily dressed in Captain Kirk-era Starfleet uniforms.

The footage focuses on the powerful customization options available for tweaking your fleet, then taking those customized ships into battle. Individual ships are upgraded through a points system. Resources can be spent to buff up systems such as shields, engines, stealth, and various types of weapons. The range of permutations possible within the system is extremely wide, allowing you to create specialized ships, such as a long-range carrier that hangs back to launch fighter squads and torpedoes while a front line brawler with heavy shields and cannons takes point. Ships can be modified between missions, allowing you to incrementally develop a fleet that suits your particular play style.

“The fun is in the battles,” Meier says when explaining why the fights cannot be automated. Turn-based, tactical battles are the heart of the Starships experience. Like Civilization, combat takes place on a hexagonal grid across a 2D plane, with each ship allowed to move and take one action per round. Like XCOM, facing, proximity, and environmental elements impact the chance of a shot’s success and how much damage it can do. The landscape is dynamic, with certain asteroid fields possibly shifting during the course of battle, opening and closing paths to alter the terrain and force admirals to adapt. The skill seems to lie in designing a fleet with complementary strengths, and then knowing how to properly utilize each ship in the course of battle.

Check out the footage below. Tune in later this week for a follow-up when Sid is joined by XCOM lead designer Jake Solomon to talk design. Sid Meier’s Starships is set to arrive in the first part of 2015 on iPad, Mac, and Windows PC.

Editors' Recommendations

Save $45 on Sid Meier’s Civilization VI for Nintendo Switch today

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…

Gaming

How to mine Silver in Hades 2

Art for Nemesis in hades 2.

Silver is one of the most important resources you can find in Hades 2. Unlike most others that drop after clearing a room, this precious metal must be mined from deposits around the map, leading to the question of how you can gather it. You may come across a glowing stone with the "Collect?" prompt, only to be told you cannot gather it without a special tool. That tool is none other than the Crescent Pick, but unlocking it is a bit obscure. It won't take you many runs to get what you need, so just follow our lead so you can start collecting Silver to make new weapons with.
How to mine Silver

Silver deposits will pop up around the environment as you navigate the randomly generated rooms, so you will need to keep an eye out for these glowing silver rocks. To gather that sweet material, you first need to unlock and acquire the Crescent Pick, which takes two steps.

Gaming

All Rockstar video games: full list of developed and published games

Michael from Grand Theft Auto V.

It might seem like a boastful name, but Rockstar Games really are rockstars in the gaming world. The developer is responsible for arguably the most important and lucrative gaming franchise of all time with the Grand Theft Auto series. While the open-world crime series is what the studio is best known for, it has dipped its toes into a wide range of genres and styles as a publisher since its first game in 1997. While the studio's output has certainly slowed, with an over eight-year gap between Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA 6, there's a backlog of over 40 games in its portfolio. That's a lot of history to digest, but it's important to understand the entire scope before we decide which games are the best.
All Rockstar games released

Originally called DMA Design, Rockstar has been developing and publishing games since 1997 and shows no sign of stopping any time soon. Not counting any remasters or rereleases, here is every game Rockstar has developed and published. We split this list based on whether a studio with Rockstar in the name developed or co-developed the game in question.
All Rockstar-developed games

Gaming

I want more approachable Soulslikes. These new games show that it’s possible

Stellar Blade STALKER fight.

One of my favorite copypastas on the internet comes from someone complaining about a player using mods to make a FromSoftware game easier. "You cheated not only the game, but yourself," it reads. "You didn't grow. You didn't improve. You took a shortcut and gained nothing. You experienced a hollow victory. Nothing was risked and nothing was gained. It's sad that you don't know the difference."

The infamous post was made in response to a PC Gamer article about mods that made Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice more approachable for the writer. It's funny to see someone get that angry over another's personal experience with a game they own, but it also addresses a question that's loomed over the gaming community ever since Dark Souls took the world by storm: Should FromSoftware's games and the Soulslikes inspired by them have options to make them more accessible?