Gratuitous Space Battles

Just got this off of the App Store and oh man is it fun. It's the kind of game I've been waiting to drop on the Mac. Complex but straightforward, and a lot of variety available.

Anyone else play it? Any ships you're particularly proud of?

I've got a couple that I really liked:

• Quick Taggers (Leopard Class Fighter): Basically Interceptors. My second creation, and I think I struck gold early. Packed with nothing but a pair of engines, a power cell, and a pulse blaster, they're short range and generally ineffective against shields, but faster than lasers and enemy fighters and tear pretty much everything apart in minutes once those shields are down. Love 'em.
• Bombardiers: Frigates (can't remember which type) stocked with a pair each of missiles and plasma launchers. Ineffective against fighters, devastating against anything else. Later versions trade off engine strength for shields to generally increased effectiveness.

edited 11th Jan '11 6:58:30 PM by KnownUnknown

I think we've had this thread. I made it. It might have gotten wiped though.

Also, I think we've got a Gratuitous Space Battles page.

I played the demo for it on Steam. Quite fun, but I haven't managed to buy it yet... perhaps if it goes on sale.

Going to grab the demo again, actually. As soon as Steam starts working... which is right after I hit "send" apparently. >_>

EDIT: All missiles, all the time makes for a very colorful Macross Missile Massacre.

edited 11th Jan '11 9:49:06 PM by TheInferno

I have bought the game and I really enjoy it. I also Downloaded a Star Wars mod that lets you build various ships from the series; it is really fun to build Imperial Star Destroyers and sic em on your enemies....

Dug this one out again. There's indeed no massacre like the Macross Missile Massacre. My two most successful designs are Whirlwind frigate and Javelin cruiser, both sporting craploads of long-range missiles and a target painter for a good measure. Then, there's the Axe cruiser armed with Megaton Missiles and Hammer cruiser with four or six (not sure how many exactly, I think I left a Quantum blaster and a PDS just in cause) heavy plasma launchers. The only problem I ran into were Tribe Ships with their autocannons - those things eat shields like one, two, three.

edited 31st Jul '11 6:10:56 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

After playing this game for so long, I'd have to say the only thing missing is local multiplayer - the ability for multiple people to pit battles against each other by choosing ships from the same set, on the same computer, or at the very least a mode where one can test their own ships against others of their own ships.

It's not like it'd be a difficult thing to do, after all, and it's the kind of game where two people playing on one computer is actually kind of optimal. In fact, I was downright surprised to find that there wasn't any such mode, because it seems so intuitive.

Apparently there's online multiplayer, but it's in a challenges menu that's on a stage-by-stage basis and is always grayed out and unclickable. Hrm... maybe it's not available on OS X.