Now I dislike RTS games due to the bore of having to gather resources, setting up your base and defenses, moving your marines to certain checkpoints.. until bad guys show up to ruin everything (aka, the Starcraft series).
Spacebase DF-9 is somewhat similar, but it’s also slower-paced than most RTS games I’ve seen. So what this game is (from a video from Dan aka NerdCubed), you pick a spot in this galaxy to set up shop for a permanent Space Station. It’s an Early Access, Paid Alpha on Steam. What I’ve seen, it’s like a mixture of Starcraft, Space Engineers, and Dungeon Keeper.
There’s several things you got to watch out for before you pick a spot, such as finding a good spot for resource gathering, but also if it’s a hot spot for hostile encounters.
You also have a percentage chance of having derelict ships showing up. Now I don’t know what these serve as and neither does Dan, but what I assume is either for resource collection, or maybe to control it to visit other areas, for another base.
So once you pick a spot, you have mere minutes as they’re running out of air to direct your three spacemen to build a station that they can live in. They build similar to what I’ve seen of Dungeon Keeper 2 (set up the room, and they’ll build). You also have to assign a room as the Decompression Chamber, so they can take off their suit and breath air. But in order to do that, you need Oxygen Scrubbers to turn the vacuum of Space into breathable O2.
You have to assign rooms. You’ll also have to assign your spacemen jobs to actually build. There’s several jobs, like Builder, Miner, Tech, and Guard).
You got to be careful when it comes to Airlocks, as you could accidentally suffocate to death one of your crewmembers in the vacuum of space.
So you got your station under construction. Occasionally, depending on what sector you picked for the station, these weird chicken-like people show up in a ship and either ask if they can live in the station, or invade it and attempt to kill everyone. This is why I don’t feel it’s not that much of Starcraft.
And when it comes to being invaded, depending what sector you chose once again, I think has to do with the number of invaders. They can destroy your station, so you have to be careful not to have your crew near hull breaches.
It’s quite interesting. I might get it next month. It won’t be my first RTS game (Dungeon Keeper 2 being that) but still, it’s… something. It’s worth a look.