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Author Topic: Nebulous Starfleet Command  (Read 1452 times)

LoSboccacc

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Nebulous Starfleet Command
« on: August 25, 2022, 12:34:24 pm »

So I stumbed on this game, which seems interesting.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/887570/NEBULOUS_Fleet_Command/

it flew under my radar for a while because the store page is absolutely unattractive, but there's a wealth of things that does *really* well

the basic first tho: you get five hulls of varying size, on which you can put internal and external modules (radars, weapons, jammers, etc) - there's a tutorial, and no campaign to speak of, the game is for now various form of tactical battles with fixed fleet point either vs AI or vs players. you can download fleets off steam workshop, and you get a selection of few maps centered around asteroids, to b e played as capture, domination or annihilation.

among the most interesting things is the sensor play. jammer, comms, active and passive radars etc create a limited information battlefield where figuring out what's happening is a challenge in itself. missiles follow similar rules, with similar vulnerabilities to jamming and spoofing, and the option of missiles that will target radar or jammer signatures.

you get various amount of weaponry, with rails sitting at the absolute peak of armor piercing and cannons of various caliber going 450mm down to 20mm for point defence purposes, plus a couple energy based weapons.

weapons have in general more range than sensor, with ships targeting using each other target information - that is, unless their communication are jammed, but jammer (communication and radar) in general act on a small cone of space, so you need to know in which direction to jam to blind or silence the enemy scout.

weapons have specific firing arcs depending on where they're attached, so point defence placement and orientation in combat is paramount to survival. ships will howerver work in bringing attack weapons to bear automatically, so at least there's that.

I've run the tutorial so far and a skirmish, and the commands are quite straightforward, reminiscent of homeworld but there's some more detail that makes them more intuitive

here's some multiplayer gameplay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzr3TZYmYQQ
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se5a

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Re: Nebulous Starfleet Command
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2022, 04:57:51 pm »

Had this in my wishlist for months.
Unfortunately I've not had the time to get it and play.
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Salmeuk

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Re: Nebulous Starfleet Command
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2022, 06:07:56 pm »

thanks for the write up. looks like it would be great for some Legend of the Galactic Heroes roleplay scenarios
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LoSboccacc

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Re: Nebulous Starfleet Command
« Reply #3 on: September 03, 2022, 02:38:28 am »

having a blast in multiplayer



missiles hit super hard right now, and while defence is possible, many player overlook it for dps.

the ELINT layer makes matches super interesting,
because you have to constantly trade off while deciding the approach angle between being stealthy,
being off plane or being in cover of some asteroid.


some weapons hit from super afar,
so the player with better Intel coverage will have quite an advantage if the match drag after the initial engagement,
as they can bring fresh undamaged ship in mid game without having to sacrifice early game dps or alpha


repair parties are quite effective at keeping ships alive as well, so that if the enemy cannot finish off a ship
during the engagement the ship will be back up and dangerous in a short while,
and while armor depletes and will be vulnerable, firing from afar will still net you full dps.

last match an heavy cruiser completely disabled my ship close range and moved to finish a couple of light cruiser that were running away,
but I managed to repair in time and put 4 full 450mm salvoes trough his engines and straight into the reactor at super close range,
with so much internal damages that lifeboat ran out short after.


so far it has been super interesting and it does seem the developers have a clear grasp
of the multiplayer metagaming
« Last Edit: September 03, 2022, 12:15:27 pm by LoSboccacc »
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se5a

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Re: Nebulous Starfleet Command
« Reply #4 on: September 03, 2022, 06:14:59 am »

ok ok you've convinced me to get it.
downloading now.
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LoSboccacc

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Re: Nebulous Starfleet Command
« Reply #5 on: September 03, 2022, 12:36:59 pm »

cool, hit me up on steam, LoSboccacc, I've a couple fleet on the workshop, hammer is a good starter
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se5a

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Re: Nebulous Starfleet Command
« Reply #6 on: September 03, 2022, 05:58:58 pm »

still working my way through the tutorial.
I got past weapons and give skirmish a try, and got pasted. soon as I saw the enemy I got jammed and missile spammed.
I also need to figure an alternate key map for alt, since linux doesn't seem to like using alt. so at the moment I'm restricted to firing a single missile at a time.
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se5a

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Re: Nebulous Starfleet Command
« Reply #7 on: September 04, 2022, 01:59:18 am »

finding the movement controls really annoying tbh.
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Ranged66

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Re: Nebulous Starfleet Command
« Reply #8 on: September 04, 2022, 08:19:55 am »

They're heavily inspired by / the same as Homeworld's movement controls. There isn't much of a better way to make an intuitive 3D space RTS movement system.

Once you get used to it, it's really fluid. Tip: if you're changing elevation, there is a horizontal line along every asteroid to show the height of your next movement node.
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LoSboccacc

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Re: Nebulous Starfleet Command
« Reply #9 on: September 04, 2022, 10:21:08 am »

The red line is only in map mode (space bar key)
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se5a

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Re: Nebulous Starfleet Command
« Reply #10 on: September 04, 2022, 04:51:26 pm »

I'll have to give it another shot, and give it a deeper look at exactly where I was finding the friction. 

I did have another quick skirmish battle with I think the oak fleet, one of the ships started opening fire on the enemy after I'd set it as a target, but the other wouldn't. not sure what was going on there.

I think once they've got a campaign in it'll help a bit, sort of like how CoDE slowly ramped up the difficulty/complexity as you learned how to play.
atm it's just tutorials, which get a bit boring, and skirmish which is a little big of a jump, and then I expect multiplayer to be an even bigger jump.
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LoSboccacc

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Re: Nebulous Starfleet Command
« Reply #11 on: September 12, 2022, 06:41:36 am »

jd just made a movement tutorial could help smooth some initial weirdness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbVknT-1Ag0
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thepodger

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Re: Nebulous Starfleet Command
« Reply #12 on: September 15, 2022, 12:11:33 pm »

This game is absolutely fantastic.  If it had true newtonian physics it would be one of my grail games.

I reached out to Lob, but we're in different time zones.  Anyone want to get a B12 squad going?
I'm on EST.
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