Sid Meier's New Game Is About Starships

jones_supa writes: The next game from the mind of veteran strategy and simulation game designer Sid Meier has been revealed. 2K and Firaxis Games have announced Sid Meier's Starships, a turn-based interstellar strategy game scheduled to arrive in early 2015 for Windows, OS X, and iOS (iPad). In the game, you control a fleet of starships as you journey through the galaxy to complete missions, protect planets and their inhabitants, and build a planetary federation. As you trek through the stars, you will be challenged to expand your federation's influence and reach. You shall also amass futuristic technology and take part in combat using a deep roster of customizable ships. When designing Starships, Meier was intrigued by the idea of exploring the next chapter in the story of Civilization: Beyond Earth. "What happens after we colonize our new home and eventually build starships to take to the stars? What has become of our long-lost brothers and sisters from the planet Earth," Meier asks. "My goal was to create an experience that focuses on starship design and combat within a universe filled with interstellar adventure, diplomacy, and exploration."

Comments

A Boom in Civilization

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is war an assumed mandatory condition for space travelers? This is patently absurd (though perhaps fun in a game). Don't ya think we would have already located some extraterrestrials if there were wars going on in space? Or is this war thing predicated on humans being out there?

We are entrained to believe wars are inevitable, due to differences in opinion or scarcity of material. May I once again posit that war is not a natural result of being human, but rather one put upon mankind by strong, selfish, sociopaths that profit from it?

Re:A Boom in Civilization

[Jeremi]

Why is war an assumed mandatory condition for space travelers?

Nobody assumes it's mandatory for space travellers.

Lots of people assume it's mandatory if you want to make a profit selling your space-themed video game. And they're probably right about that.

Re:A Boom in Civilization

[barc0001]

> Don't ya think we would have already located some extraterrestrials if there were wars going on in space?

Why would you think that? Let's open with a quote from Douglas Adams:

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
  Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Our own galaxy is 200,000 LIGHT YEARS across. This means it takes light 200,000 years to cross from one side to the other. It's friggin' enormous. And what we can observe is only relatively large energy sources like stars. Let's presume for a minute that there are some ETs happily engaged in armed conflict with each other 500 light years from us, tossing around 20 megaton nukes all day long like they're NBA players at a strip club making it rain. Assume that they are using 10,000 of such warheads against each others ships every day engaged in action around a star system. That's a total energy output of 200 GT (Gigatons) per day. The STAR in that system if it's a star like Sol will be putting out 7890000000000 GT per day of energy. How are we even supposed to detect 200GT more on top of that load? That's like going into Giants stadium at night and staring at the light arrays from the pitchers mound and trying to pick out someone flicking a lighter for a half a second in the midst of one of the arrays.

Secondly, I mentioned the "space is big" thing, right? Suppose these races developed doomsday devices that could actually kill stars and are happily wiping out each others' systems with nova-bombs. But they're fighting 500 LY away from us and their war only got really going 200 years ago. It's still going to be 300 years before we start seeing evidence of their handiwork.

Re:A Boom in Civilization

[rossdee]

I thought our galaxy was only about 100,000 LY across
Wikipedia says 100,000 to 120,000

But maybe Samsung will come out with a bigger one

Linux support?

[Eythian]

No Linux support? What is this? 2014?

Re:anything has to be better than beyond earth

[mjwx]

I've been gypped with Beyond Earth.. It's definitely crap at this point. Sorry Sid, the magic is gone.

Its been bad since Civ V.

Civ IV: Beyond the Sword was the high point of the Civ series, it's now in decline thanks to Firaxis chasing the casual dollar. The fact this new game is coming out for Ipads is a clear warning it's going to be seriously gimped. I dont think Sid Maier has much, if any input on the current games that carry his name, a lot like Tom Clancy.

I took a pass on Beyond Earth because Civ V was so horrible. In fact I'm still playing Civ IV BTS over Civ V.

Spore

[Jarik C-Bol]

Sid Meier is just re-making spore as 3 games, and skipping the weird creature creation stage. Seriously, at this stage we have a 'conquer the world' game, a 'conquer nearby star system' game, and now we have a 'conquer you local galactic arm' game? sounds like spore, only without the insane promises.