Gratuitous Space Battle: Possible competition to BSF?

D00D! · Post by **D00D!** » Sat Oct 03, 2009 12:40 pm

Found out about this while browsing facepunch here: http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=814288

Anyway, I recently heard about a new game in development that is remarkably similar to BSF-style game play.

Here's the description from the website:

Code: Select all

GSB is the next game from UK developer 'Positech Games'. It's a strategy / management / simulation game that does away with all the base building and delays and gets straight to the meat and potatoes of science-fiction games : The big space battles fought by huge spaceships with tons of laser beams and things going 'zap!', 'ka-boom!' and 'ka-pow!'. In GSB you put your ships together from modular components, arrange them into fleets, give your ships orders of engagement and then hope they emerge victorious from battle (or at least blow to bits in aesthetically pleasing ways).

Gratuitous Space Battles aims to bring the over-the-top explodiness back into space games. The game is for everyone who has watched big space armadas battle it out on TV and thought to themselves 'I could have done a much better job as admiral'. This is not a game of real-time arcade twitch reflexes. GSB is about what ships you design, and what you tell them to do. Your individual ship commanders have total autonomy during the chaotic battle that unfolds. This is not a tactical game, it is a strategic one. These gratuitous space battles are not won by plucky heroes with perfect teeth, but by the geeky starship builders who know exactly what ratio of plasma-cannons to engines each ship in the fleet will need.

And some screenshots & demo videos

they even got pulse cannons as short-range weapons

Video link:
http://lb.redirectingat.com/?id=629X119 ... 1QYMFGEv5M

Essentially Gratuitous Space Battles is BSF IN 3D! With less STRATEGY! & slightly more limited CUSTOMIZATION! BUT with a GRATUITOUS amount of SPACE BATTLES

It hasn't been released yet but a demo is avaliable for those who pre-order from the website here:
http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspa ... index.html

So what do you think?
Personally, I think it may count as an early glimpse into BSF in the future but the lack of strategy may be the deciding factor between these two games.

Sponge · Post by **Sponge** » Sat Oct 03, 2009 1:08 pm

Here's a link to an existing thread on the first page of Etcetera.

It's still 2D. The ships are static renders of 3D models. You could do that with BSF if you wanted to. It's also got quite a bit more strategy, seeing as how the entire game is based around designing ships (weapons/modules only; hulls can't be modified), arranging them, and giving them orders pre-battle in effort to destroy an enemy fleet packing punches you don't know about. Once the battle starts, you have no control. How you could say that a game with no gameplay element that isn't 100% strategic suffers from a lack of strategy is beyond me. It's a totally different game than BSF. It's therefore not a glimpse into BSF's future. It's also not competition.

D00D! · Post by **D00D!** » Sat Oct 03, 2009 1:43 pm

Well,l I think I have used the wrong words but what I meant was that there isn't as much emphasis on tactics such as maneuvering or flanking as compared to BSF.

Also, while the game does demand a great deal of planning & design of ships to win, the same can also be said for BSF. In fact, since there is a greater amount of customizing in BSF, you could say there is a greater emphasis on correct module/weapon placement rather than simply number crunching.

That aside, I do see your point. There is significant differences to both game and while the customizing & designing aspects are similar, the way the ships are fight are vastly different. So, perhaps it is only 40%~ that is similar to BSF?

Sponge · Post by **Sponge** » Sat Oct 03, 2009 2:03 pm

It's only similar to BSF in that they both have space ships and some degree of customization. They're both 2D, but to call that a similarity in a gameplay sense is reaching, as I could call Oblivion similar to CoD similar on the same grounds. The core gameplay element in GSB is designing ships on a budget to fight a given enemy. The core gameplay element of BSF is hard to put a finger on, because most people spend more time with SM than anything else. If you look at SM as being the bulk of the game, then the core gameplay element is building 100% customizable ships that look pretty. If you look at the game as being the bulk of the game, it's a simple RTS with an emphasis on effective microing. I don't want to say there isn't any strategy involved, because it's far from mindless clicking, but planning really sort of gets thrown out the window once you realize things seldom go according to plan. GSB is about planning, planning, planning. That's actually the entire game. You plan, see where your plan fails, and then revise it.

So I hold to my previous comment. GSB is not competition because the games are in totally different gameplay genres. It's also sort of hard to compete with a game that's free.