Star Command looks like a real winner, so we’ve been following it like the hawks that we are since its initial unveil. The especially cool part about this approach is that we’re watching it grow month-by-month, and our users, who are understandably excited, are a something of a cog in its development now. Case in point: the Star Command dudes are asking for feedback on the ship-versus-ship battle system to decide if it should be real time like the rest of the game’s action or turn based as initially planned. Talk about big decisions, eh?
Here’s the scenario being laid out:
You receive a transmission from the Evil Cortexians. You start a fight with them; your weapons begin to charge and you fire using a brief 10 second mini-game to target them. You then take a few critical hits and your shields drop; now, you have a fire from the last shot occurring on you’re bridge so you move some guys from engineering to go fight the fire. Meanwhile, engineering gets hit by an even bigger blast and you have to split this repair crew… and …
… then two different follow-up scenarios are introduced, both of which are fairly wide-reaching and strategically harrowing. The problem that the developers are running into is that they’re afraid to ditch the methodical X-Com-ish strategy in favor of a more seamless, action-focused kind of approach. Your thoughts matter here, however it does seem like turn-based is currently out of favor.
Check out the thread to dive in, see everyone’s thoughts, and add your own to the delicious pile. And speaking of thoughts, it looks like free-to-play might be thing in Star Command. Check out this post:
…the game will be fully playable, beatable and fun but with the monetization along the lines of unique characters, or something along those lines.
This way the game isn’t forced to go slow or be painful just to entice to raise revenue. Instead, we will have random drops of non-important game items — and if you want that specific one — you will have to pay for it or just keep trying to grab it.
At SOME point we need revenue, and freemium might perhaps be the least painful way of doing it. Perhaps not, but it is also (as we are all mature) a good way of raising more revenue which leads to more Star Command.
If that seems up in the air, it’s probably because it still is. The larger takeaway from these kinds of community outreach pitches is this: Star Command probably isn’t anywhere near finished. You don’t ask about stuff like “Hey, how should we do our combat" unless a product is still a ways off. Kind of a bummer, actually, now that we think about it… but, hey, at least you can have a voice in this stuff.
