There is?  There's Pescado's impressions, but that doesn't seem like a general review thread to me.  I was looking for one earlier, too, because I trust the people here to be more sophisticated in their understanding of the game than anyplace else.  I eventually ended up buying it anyway, and I'm mostly enjoying it, despite the puddings.

 - Gus

When I saw the Create A Sim image of the orange skunk, my first thought was: Adam West.

 - Gus

You're talking about Spaceship items like weapons, right?

I'm of two minds about that.

First, I never paused to turn those on.  It never occurred to me, and I wouldn't bother now that I know you can do it.  Clicking on the weapon icons isn't a slow process.

Second, I think it's stupid they took that out.  Even though I don't use the feature, in general I approve of enabling orders while paused in most games.

 - Gus

Those look pretty decent.  If I were still playing, I'd definitely install them.

 - Gus

While it does say something about the game, that's not the same as "not worth $50."

Some games have considerably more replay value than others.  Spore is one that had a couple of hundred hours in it, but after that, it was pretty much done.  I don't see an expansion pack changing that, particularly given the history EAxis has with Sims expansion packs.

What Spore would need to inject new life into the game would be random situations that require serious decision making.  Spore has some randomness in it that forces decision making, like what parts are available in Creature and what planets are nearby in Space, but for the most part they're fairly easy decisions.  To make it interesting again would require the expansion make the game harder, and EAxis doesn't do that.

 - Gus

I guess you don't know me, because I thought it was worth the $50.  Sure, it has lots of flaws, and ultimately ends up getting repetitive, but I got several hundred hours out of it before I moved on.  That's well above what you get for $50 from most games these days.

Faizah, cell is one of your favorite stages?  I know this is tough to do, but could you share why?  It seems really, really limited to me.  And repetitive.  Every time I've played, I've ended up with pretty much the same creature pretty quickly, just for practical reasons.  Doesn't matter if it's a herbivore or carnivore, the weapons and positioning is pretty much the same.

Heck, Cell is really the stage that needs a Parts Pack.  Something to throw some variety into it.

Creature grew on me with time.  If you enjoy making stuff and fiddling with the creature editor in general, the limitations of having only those parts you've found, and the need to maximize stats adds something, pushing your creatures in directions you don't go if you have an unlimited budget and parts.  I still prefer Space, but it's probably 2nd for me.

I don't see myself buying expansion packs for it either.

 - Gus

Wait, wait, there's a way to rename star systems?

 - Gus

That's what the Stuff packages for The Sims 2 do.  They're purely decorative crap.

I'm feeling pretty much done with Splotch right now, I'm currently playing Colonization.  But when I was trying to re-create specific vehicles and creatures, I definitely noticed some limitations.

The most obvious one is asymmetry.  Since there's a mod out that does that, and people use glitches in the editor right now to get around it, I fully expect that they'll add that.

The game badly, badly needs better textures for spaceships.  There are some fairly good techy looking textures for buildings that they don't give you for spaceships, where they're really needed.  Instead we get crappy organic and rivet textures.

There are some basic shapes missing from the vehicle editor, like hemispheres and pyramids.  I'd be much happier if they'd give us a trapezoid with the width controls of the cylinder, so the top face can be smaller than the bottom face.  No arbitrary constraints on part size would be nice too - there are a bunch of interesting items in the building "details" section that can't be made large.

It's difficult to give creatures heads that aren't blobby, and insectile creatures in general.  I found it quite difficult to do a Preying Mantis or an Ur-quan.  Both have very triangular heads.

 - Gus

I assume that's how you get the Flight of the Bumblebee achievement, which I haven't done yet.

 - Gus

I suspect the Llamas were originally a reference to the opening credits of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  After the people who did the subtitles ("A Møøse once bit my sister") were sacked, and then the people who sacked them were sacked ("Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti..."), they were re-done at great expense.  The result involved a lot llamas.


 - Gus

The early snatch is definitely worthwhile.  I typically go for 40% health / 40% attack / 20% speed for my post-grab units.  Having some speed is of value because you may want to add reinforcements to an ongoing assault.

For Econ vehicles, the post-snatch vehicle's value is a product of its strength x speed.  So you really want something more like 20% / 40% / 40%.  Or even more extreme for boats or planes, which don't need to worry about getting snagged by wildlife.

If you can, you want to go all-naval.  Naval units are stronger and have longer range than either air or land, and you get the same number of unit slots regardless of type.

The relationship between stats and percentages is not linear.  Compare these two military land vehicles:
Name         HP%  ATK% Speed%   HP  ATK Speed   HP/%  ATK/%  Speed/%
Spy Hunter   15%    5%   80%   240  12  37      16      2.4   0.46
Pkzw V       53%   29%   18%   467  21  12      8.8     0.7   0.67
At some point I may try reverse-engineering the equations converting percentages to real values, but I suspect that there's a lot of slop in them, because Maxis had to know there would be a lot of people playing vehicles more for looks than stats.

 - Gus

I am simply not that awesome.  However, I've found that I generally don't need to invade (unless playing by Ur-quan rules) until I've got a few upgrades.

I have noticed that 1. damage seems to depend on distance to target, and 2. there's a dead spot where the turrets won't fire on you if you're in the center and very low.  Sometimes you'll run into a planet with very tall city hall / building models, and you can't get into that dead zone because it's blocked.

I started to say that they should have made G-class stars have more life but tend toward red spice, and put the less common spice on harder to terraform worlds at the ends of the spectrum.  But then I remembered that M stars are about 75% of the stars out there.  So if you're going to have a correlation, crappy spice should be around class M's.

I don't think I've ever seen a Wild planet with anything better than Green.  Pink and Purple always seem to be on blue or red orbit planets.

 - Gus

Allied ships don't suck as much balls as you might think.  Since J.M. pointed out that they vary in strength depening on empire size, I've found allies from large empires to be handy.  Not great, and you have to repair them periodically, but handy.

I've not had any problems with Spodists once I mastered Space.  I've found it relatively easy to get them sweet on you early, which means they don't demand money and you don't have to kiss boots.  Warrior and Zealot races give you +10 relationship right off the bat if you threaten them in your initial contact instead of being mealy-mouthed.  Run one mission for them, sell them a few Spice / buy a few items, and pretty soon you're +50 and they're friendly.  Start a trade route and they're Green pretty quickly.

Once past the mid-game, you can use the Medium or Super Happy rays and get +50 relationship for the cost of some energy.

Going the other way, taking planets is fairly easy once you realize it's about nuking cities, not destroying ships or turrets.  Zoom along at maximum alititude for speed, and them zoom down to absolute minimum for the maximum damage and to avoid turret fire, let off a couple of bombs, and you're done.  T0's are always doable once you have the minimum bomb, T1's and T2's aren't that hard if you don't stick around for enemy retaliation, and homeworlds aren't hard once you have the shield.

Finding a claiming a couple of good-color Spice planets early is the key to prosperity, though you may want to stick to Wild planets initially if you're playing without the Terraforming Tutorial exploit.  It's also helpful to concentrate on getting 2-3 good colonies before contacting any aliens.  As J.M. pointed out, they don't start their own rapid expansion until you talk to at least one.

 - Gus

I made a Blue / Blue / Red / Red race just for variety, and the Speed Demon attribute was really noticable after playing all those Prime Specimens.  +50% HP is still more valuable, but the FTL speed looks to be about double.  Which is more useful in the late game when you're likely to be doing 3-4 jumps in sequence without pausing.

 - Gus

I've seen it a couple of times now, but only because it was a weak empire being mashed by a bigger one, and I was pretty powerful.  Despite the tendency to sneer at your tag-alongs, if you've got 3-4 really strong ones they do add a lot of firepower.  The enemy typically comes in groups very like yours: one central strong ship armed with missiles and bombs, and 4 small escorts armed with beams.  When I'm by myself, I have to do some kiting to deal with the escorts one at a time.  If I've got a strong escort of my own, the enemy escorts are generally dead before I have a chance to target more than one. 

If you keep your fleet repaired, it's not hard to defeat an invading fleet without much assistance from the natives.  AoE repairs are very cheap.  The main thing is having escorts that are strong enough to survive 1-2 encounters before you need to repair them.

 - Gus

That's my experience as well.  My real problem is that the game crashes in the Space stage, apparently at random.  Frequently.

The 1.1.0.358 version didn't crash anywhere near as often, except that it locked up in two crucial areas - black hole transits and starting a new Cell stage.

 - Gus

That's true, the AI is remarkably stupid about empire building.  It appears to just mark something as "colonized" without terraforming it in any way.  So they end up with loads of red / blue orbit planets that are T0's and produce nothing.

Sometimes they don't even colonize the best planet in a system.

 - Gus

Maybe I'm thread-crapping here, but looking over that link, there wasn't a single mod I wanted to install, ever.  The problem is that every single one of them makes the game easier.  I don't need easier at this point.  I want mods that make the game harder, rather like Pescado's No $20K Handout mod.

For example, it'd be nice if terraforming the hot / cold planets was tougher.  As it stands, I only really care about spice color.  Who cares if the Purple planet is a hellhole with a surface temperature that would melt lead?  I'll dump an ice storm on it, maybe two at most, and then it's just like every T1 in a Green orbit.  $240K in income a minute, here I come!

Of course, a real fix for that would involve a re-design.  Like, put limits on what the terraforming tools can do, and unlock more advanced tools with higher badges.  So instead of the redundant diagonal tools, say that Ice Storms can only cool down planets one level, and you need an advanced tools to cool down 2 or 3 levels.

I'd probably dump the "free" tools that only cost energy entirely.

 - Gus

I haven't had any lag issues, but my computer has beefy arms.

 - Gus

I've seen a couple for asymmetric parts, but they're flakey.  Even when you manage it, it's very difficult to manipulate the parts, because if you select the part it reverts to normal.  Since I almost always have to tweak a part after I place it, I don't find it very useful.

 - Gus

I like those too, though my first thought was the Tripods series by John Christopher (The White Mountains / The City of Gold and Lead / The Pool of Fire).

Vehicles should be doable.  There are leg pieces.

 - Gus

Crap.  Now I'm gonig to have to try this again, just to see how that works.  I thought I'd be screwing myself if I took out those obnoxious neighbors through religion.

 - Gus

The implication seems to be that you should take at least 3 cities on your home continent with religion before starting the econ push.  One of which is the econ city, of course.

Isn't taking 3 cities enough to prevent you from getting a Blue win?

 - Gus

Third time was the charm.  But I really didn't do much differently, it was largely a matter of luck.

The main problem is that the maximum bonus for bribes is +120, and it's not difficult for other players to dislike you enough that this won't be enough.  For whatever reason, I managed to get a trade route with one of the other cities on my continent.  Meanwhile I continue to bribe everyone, which was enough to keep them from declaring war, but not much more.

I certainly could have beaten the lot of them if I'd gone for an all-out religious offensive, but you just can't offend anyone if you're going for an economic victory.

So now I can say I've done Red / Red / Green / Blue on Hard, but I'm not going to bother again.  From now on, my last two colors will always be the same, it's less painful.

 - Gus

I just tried it again, and found it impossible.

Sure, it wasn't difficult to capture the only economic city.  As you say, 4 religious land vehicles make short work of this.

But that's as far as it gets, because by the time I'm in any position to gift anyone, they're all attacking me and they all hate me.  -90 or so relationship because I'm "too big" and "a threat."  There are no "low neutral" cities to bribe into accepting a trade route.

Since I'm trying Red / Red / Green up until this point, "Diplo Dervish" isn't available.

Maybe you're playing on Normal...?

 - Gus