I'm so glad someone else posted this! I mean, if it doesn't hit kickstarter, really really hope it finds something via Fig or Early Access on Steam.
It looks like a dream mashup. I can understand people's caution after The Mandate and a few other ambitious but flawed projects. But this takes the Strategy / planning layer and meshes it with something beyond just XCO Ms TB combat.
Plus it looks like the Geoscape is the ACTUAL planet, so you see the impact of failure on the ever present background. I have paypal issues, but going to see if I can contribute to fund it somehow.
To update - it reached its funding goal and there's a demo on steam!
Had a play of it - got shooter, got that BS: Galactica muffled-in-space feel. The demo is just waves of asteroids and aliens but shows how you have to be careful - destroying certain asteroids reveals certain monsters. And if you're SUPER unlucky you get a full fledged silicoid worm that DOES wreck the fleets you have.
No research, funding or hangar elements in there - you just get fleets every few waves to help you manage. I'm impressed - absolutely NO loading beyond starting the game up. Just a huge sky box. Here's hoping the strategic gameplay and campaign add some variety as well.
Solar Warden: A Six-Degrees-of-Freedom Space Shooter / RTS hybrid with a full Co-Op Campaign, made by the creators of Mechwarrior: Living Legends
FYI, the name has more relation to the plot and setting than you'd think. I tried looking up a Youtube video link for this game, and guess what popped up? A ton of conspiracy videos related to a certain project during the Reagan administration named "Solar Warden." The majority of them involve the governments of the world achieving effective space travel and having a far greater presence in the solar system than let on by the media/NASA/etc, ranging from the typical benign first alien contact giving us advanced starship tech, to more malignant theories of technology suppression, Illuminati=aliens, or whatever have you.
In this game's case, it mixed things up: the governments of the world indeed achieved space travel much earlier than publicly acknowledged, but the nature of the space fleet is indeed for combat. Whether it was initially to counter the Soviets' attempts at space expansion, or humanity knowingly preparing for the possibility of hostile E.T.s is unknown though. The result is the same as X-Com, in the end: you are tasked with preventing the aliens from destroying humanity by preventing their asteroids from reaching the surface or destroying their nano-silicate-based ships, while at the same time keeping key member states of the space race satisfied by continuing to cover up the existence of your own space fleet, helping to protect their space-based assets, etc.
The combat scenarios take some inspiration from the Homeworld games. Most missions give you several ships to engage the alien threat approaching Earth and take place on a true XYZ axis, meaning you'll need to account for the angling of you craft when aiming weaponry, too. One example of a mission would be to destroy the asteroids flung at earth by the aliens, while also engaging their escort ships and preventing them from destroying your bigger warships, whose heavy weaponry will be crucial to effectively destroy those asteroids before they breach the atmosphere. The House of the Dying Sun comparison becomes apparent once you realize that despite the game having strong RTT elements, you can assume direct control of any ship in your fleet during battle, including the bigger ships.
Unfortunately the game's on it's final Kickstarter week and has only obtained half of the necessary funding needed to continue development. Fingers crossed that it gets a much-needed last minute injection of funds, I rather like the concept.