Slitherine

Polaris Sector is an upcoming 4X strategy game with vast game worlds and huge fleet battles.



Features

• * An epic and dangerous playground: randomly generate a galaxy able to host up to 900 stars.
  * Full customization: external threats, pirates, number of races… you can set up the world that fits your own tastes!
  * Full control over ship design: want to make a corvette into a drone carrier? Go ahead. Want to make a freighter into a scout? No problem. Your creativity is the only limit!
  * Explore: send scout vessels to find new mines to exploit, new planets to colonize, and to establish contact with other empires.
  * Innovative research system: technologies and equipment will get unlocked depending on your investments in fundamental and applied research.
  * Diplomacy: Dialogue with other factions to gain their favor, trade goods, and make military agreements to fight common enemies.
  * Command your troops: when a battle starts you can join the battlefield and maneuver your ships in a tactical mode. Alternatively use the auto-resolve mode when you have more urgent tasks to attend to in your empire.
  * Unique espionage system: seed false intelligence to enemy spies and lure them into a trap!

Setting
The ancients who named this sector ‘Polaris’ sure had a unique sense of humor. Polaris - the bright star, the star of hope and faith. Well the Polaris sector has precious little of either; just a wilderness of gas, stars, and supernovas soaked in treachery, oppression, and the lust for power.

Can anyone build an empire in a place like this? Other factions are naturally suspicious of newcomers and may wage war at the first sign of unidentified craft. Here, a natural death is an uncommon luxury. You look weak? Pirates and scavengers will plunder your planets. You show military strength to discourage potential enemies? Your rivals will combine their forces to eliminate the threat.



Total domination requires many diverse stratagems. Shaking the hand of a powerful emperor, designing new warships in secret, investing everything in fundamental sciences to gain technology before your competitors - all may be the road to success. But will you have the time to implement your strategy? Will you be visionary enough to build weapons and technologies that will make the difference in battles fought decades from now? Find the right balance between fundamental and applied sciences to stay ahead of the opposition. Find the right balance between classic designs and crazy prototypes and your ships will be feared across the galaxy. Your engineers and scientists provide you a high level of flexibility, but it’s your decisions that will shape the empire’s fate.



Many a mercenary or adventurer has come here seeking wealth and power, and all their stories are now just whispers in the void. Polaris is a black hole for living species, and empires rise and fall in the blink of an eye. Maybe the leader that will bring stability to this zone hasn’t been born yet, if they will ever exist…

And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
- Shelley

Is this turn based?

TheGrayMouser wrote:Is this turn based?

It's a mix.

Tactical combat is pauseable RT, strategical part is "event-based auto-pause" with concurrent movements - it is not a classical TB, but feels very like TB - you always have control over the game flow and nothing is dependent on your reaction and mouse-clicking speed.

So, while all parties move in the same time, in Polaris there is an “auto-pause”, that can be triggered by more than 50 different events. If you allow all these triggers, the game will be basically turn-based, but with “non-uniform turns”.
In a classical TB game, simplifying, every turn you first check your planets, give new orders if necessary, then check fleets, give new orders if necessary, then press “End Turn” button to proceed.

In Polaris you check you planets, give new orders if necessary, check fleets, give new orders, then press “Play” button to proceed.

But while in TB right after the turn is calculated, the game processing stops waiting for the new “End Turn” button click, in Polaris the game processing stops when something happens (construction finished, fleet reached it’s destination, new technology invented, enemy fleet approaching, unrest started on some planet, etc).
And then you react on this event and press “Play” button to continue.

So, in TB the process looks like this: orders -> End Turn Button -> orders if needed -> End Turn Button -> orders if needed -> End Turn Button

in Polaris: orders -> Play Button -> Event! -> orders -> Play Button -> Event! -> orders -> Play Button

It looks great. I like specially the design from the galaxy because it remembers me to the old Imperium Galactica where you can see all the galaxy at one screen.

Is there a ground combat component with planetary invasions or is it all space based ship combat?

Most space 4x games I've seen seem to skip the ground component completely but I really think it's something that can add a whole new dimension of game-play to set a game apart from the same old space 4x that we see in the dozens.

GrumpyMel wrote:Is there a ground combat component with planetary invasions or is it all space based ship combat?

Hi! It was described here:

http://slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 39#p577630

All the 4X turn based games of late have been bobbins, so here's hoping this real time game is outstanding and starts a trend!

Reminds me of distant worlds - really looking forward to it !

March 22 release date woot !

pguyton wrote:March 22 release date woot !

+1