http://game.en.stne.net/main There's also German and Spanish servers, but I'm personally on EN1.
Also screenshots from me:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=119940.msg3851539#msg3851539Space Trek: The New Empire. Yes,
Space Trek. I blame part of this because it's originally German, but mostly it's blatant. Game's been around for years, at least longer than I've been a part of Bay12. I've recently returned to the game, with a new Dwarven mindset and a pocketful of chaos.
How it works in basics:
Time is split on 5 ticks per day. For Central US Timezone (GMT -6:00) these occur at 6am, 9am, 12 noon, 3pm, and 5:30pm. In Germany, these are at 12 noon, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm, and 11:30pm, set to happen around the time when most people would be able to conveniently play. In Germany. Slightly less convenient for the US, but at least it's not 3am I guess.
You can own planets and asteroids, a basic account gets 4 planets and 2 asteroids, but you can spend RL$ to get a higher colony limit. You start with one planet, an M Class, which has a smattering of different terrain types, and is unique in that it can build the Phaser Cannon, a massively overpowered planetary defense weapon which is basically there to make sure noobs don't get permafarmed. It also makes your M Class into a good vault. You may only own one M Class, and only one Phaser Cannon. There are other basic colony types, like the Moderate that's very similar to M and not good for much, Deserts have a lot of potential solar energy, but not much else, making them good for high-energy activities, like producing starship fuel or research labs. Lava planets are good for producing high-class ore used to produce starships, Rock planets produce low-class ore, and have a lot of radiation energy from their numerous craters, making them fair for most things. Small asteroids are good for producing the fuel source Dilithium (always in very high demand) while Large asteroids produce more energy but less Dili, for varied uses.
It's generally possible to set up planets/roids to be self-sufficient, or nearly so. Many will require something like 20 Deuterium (fuel type) per tick, while a single harvester ship may produce 800 daily, making their intake just about nothing. It's also entirely possible to make very high-intake, high-output colonies, that may consume hundreds of ore per tick, but also produce hundreds of building materials. Generally speaking, self-sufficient colonies produce less, but require less ship upkeep, while high-production colonies will need more ships to support them, with ore collectors, deuterium tankers, and transport ships.
A new player has 100 ship slots, but can expand this limit for RL$. A single tanker takes about 1.5 slots, and so do ore collectors. Light warships take 1 slot and heavier take 2 slots. There's no middle ground, but the next step up is Carriers that take 15 slots, and Flagships that take 25 slots. Stations can take anywhere from 1 slot to 25. "Credit Ships" can be bought for RL$ or on auction, and are generally better in some way. Most specifically, ore collectors and deuterium tankers consume the same slots but produce more materials, so you need less of them for a bigger economy.
Ships have a lot of stats on them. Some games have "Is it alive?" and others have "How much damage does it have?" but STNE takes it further. You've got shields, engines, energy banks, warp core charge, deflector charge (deflector is basically useless), along with things like crew levels and flight range and weapon power. For the most part, combat in STNE is the "slugfest" variety. The "standard warship" of most players is the Darinaya, which has 60 hull, 4 armor, 50 shields, and 1x22 Disruptor weaponry. This means that every "battle tick" it fires 22 points of damage, which might miss. Phasers are more accurate, but do less damage, disruptors are the only real good weapon. Damaged shields will leak damage through to the ship, so the ship may need to be taken down to 20 shields before it's destroyed, and with 4 armor the dizzy hits will do 18 damage to hull. It may take 5-7 hits for this ship to destroy itself, and the bigger ships only become more durable. This leads to fights where you can face an enemy and actually retreat if you start to falter.
The map is made into a grid. Most of it is blank space, with no special attributes. Planets may have an increased flight cost, for instance if a Darinaya takes .6 energy per tile, then passing over a tile with a 2x modifier would consume 1.2 energy. Not bad, but for some capital ships they already have 12 flight cost, making expensive terrain very expensive. Certain nebulae will have effects as well, like deactivating your weapons on entry, deactivating your sensors on entry (good place to hide), killing your crew instantly, or just being costly to travel through. Additionally, certain ships have solar panels or bussard collectors, with solars harvesting free energy from a planet they're over, and bussards harvesting deuterium from nebulae or certain planets. Then there's also ore asteroids, with the obvious benefit of harvesting ore off them. The overall result is that the strategic map does matter, and it can pay to set yourself in an awkward position or a particularly defensive position.
Perhaps my favorite feature of STNE though, is that things are expensive. Unlike the majority of RTS games were you can spam out some tanks without noticing and not even follow them when they die, STNE has expensive units. On my casual development, I can produce a Darinaya in about 2 days, but I don't have all the resources needed, and alliance members have been kind enough to donate the high-end resources to me. I've scraped together enough for about 7 of these little ships, which is not much. Most players have a real battle fleet that may be 50 strong. Each of these requires fuel and crew, and optionally torpedoes, with torps being rather costly but with higher attack values. This ultimately means that constructing and maintaining a fleet requires a significant amount of infrastructure, for building materials, fuel, cargo ships to carry more fuel, and torpedoes for blowing stuff up. (For that matter, Disruptors cannot attack planet structures, only phasers and torpedoes, so bringing torps for planet bombardment is basically required.) This ultimately results in a lot of cautious combat, with the ability to have weeks worth of construction tossed into debris in just minutes, the majority of players are far more cautious and alliance-wide warfare is a very special thing, which really gives a sense of scale.
There's also a unique feature. NPCs are not NPCs. The game has shamelessly named NPCs as Cardassians, Federation, Ferengi, etc. All the Star Trek people. But the majority of them have a human controller who abides by NPC rules. Roleplaying is a big deal, and if you send a well-worded message to an NPC you can garner more favor than a fleet of warships. It's all within reason, of course, for instance my alliance did a short RP claiming to fight someone, and contact one NPC who was an enemy of them, so the NPC slid us resources 'under the table' to fight a mutual enemy. It wasn't much, but it was more than we had before, and it adds spice to the gameplay. Many other NPC will set up server-wide events. Like currently, the Suliban have begun an incursion and have several bases and fleets around, which players/alliances can make strikes on, for fun and for very special item drops. This all leads to a very active and living game world. The devs didn't just drop players down and turn their backs. There's plenty of NPC/admin intervention to keep things interesting.
Now for a bit of the bad. It is a "free to play" game which means the credit card holds power. Players can but ships directly, albeit at somewhat extreme costs, and can buy resources indirectly. "Credits" are the premium cash, and you can spend them to buy ships or premium time (more features for convenience), or you can offer them on the global trade exchange for game resource. This makes it perfectly possible for a rich douchebag to buy a few hundred credits, trade them for materials, and build a fleet quickly. This also makes it possible for me to sell my materials, get credits from a rich douchebag, and increase my colony limit without ever spending my own money to do so. It's perfectly possible to get all the upgrades, eventually, without spending money for it. To that end though, the game has a Ferengi Trade Exchange, where you can drop resources into a "bank account" (and lose some to taxes) and trade with anyone else on the server, and a Talaxian Ship Auction (getting Dune names now, I know right?) where NPC generated ships will go on sale for Dilithium. Always Dilithium, except Christmas season when it gets more random. Credit ships and special NPC ships will go on auction, so it's possible to horde enough resources to buy a premium ship when it goes on auction, or to sell Dilithium for great profit when people need Dilithium for their own auctions. Dilithium is also a fuel source, making it one of the most highly-valued items available. It's not the most expensive item, but it's always in demand and anyone producing Dilithium will always have customers.
TL;DR - it's a browser game, but it's a gem. It's a bit more brutal and a lot more complicated than your average browser game, and lends itself to some nice gameplay. Plus you can change your name after you make your account! Alliance tags and colors for everyone!
Girlinhat is in game, currently alliance Black Sun Empire, [BSC] - a villainous hive of raiders and trolls who respect no other authority than their own and aren't afraid to lose ships. After all, we didn't pay for our warships, we raided the construction materials to begin with! A pirate has nothing to lose that wasn't stolen in the first place!
EDIT! When you start the game, it puts you in a tutorial area, aka 'Noob Zone' where you cannot be attacked, or attack anyone. When you finish most of the tutorial, it lets you join the 'real' galaxy. It gives you a choice of where to spawn, or to spawn randomly. Please PM Myself or Another Player to get a spawn location nearby. Handing out coordinates openly will invite you to be raided, so it won't be posted on thread.
Keep in mind though, noob accounts get two extra ticks, per tick, so they can gather a lot of resources more quickly, and a sufficiently smart player can stockpile building materials and then construct a lot of new buildings on their new area.
