Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander
Details: Video game
Developer: Walternate Realities
Publisher: Walternate Realities
Platform: Microsoft Windows
Genres: Indie game, Early Access, Simulation, Strategy
Description: The ultimate starship designer,powered by a deep game simulation...Cosmoteer is a starship design, simulation, and battle game. Design a fleet of ships by placing individual modules including weapons, shields, engines, and hallways. Battle A.I. starships to earn bounties or test your design skills against other players. A dynamic crew and combat simulation makes every design decision important and interesting.Best-In-Class Starship DesignerDesign the greatest starship ever made using an interface that is easy-to-learn yet incredibly flexible.Build your ship by placing individual modules onto a grid—weapons, shields, engines, reactors, crew's quarters, and more! Few restrictions and no pre-defined, creativity-limiting hull shapes mean you can create almost any ship you can imagine.Inspired by professional art programs, the Ship Designer has a variety of different brush sizes and shape tools, as well as full support for Undo & Redo, Copy & Paste, rotation, and mirroring, so you can quickly and easily design giant starships. It even has a "blueprint mode" which allows you to plan for the future and design before spending any money. The Ship Designer is directly integrated into the gameplay—no need to interrupt your flow to tweak your ship or experiment with a new design.Intelligent Crew SimulationEvery starship is operated by a crew numbering from half-a-dozen to hundreds—sometimes more than a thousand—of individually-simulated people.A ship's crew is its lifeblood. Crew not only operate its controls, but they also carry supplies such as ammunition and power batteries to weapons and systems. When a weapon wants to shoot, the crew go pick up ammo or batteries at an ammo factory or reactor and bring them to the weapon—all simulated in real-time.Crew are pretty smart and act mostly on their own, which is a good thing since there can be so many. Your crew are smart enough to figure out what controls need operating, what systems need ammo or power, and how best to get around your ship. They're even smart enough to avoid routes that are already jammed with other people.The crew simulation is what makes starship design so interesting, because how fast a cannon can shoot or how long a shield can stay charged depends directly on how quickly crew can deliver ammo or power to it. As a player, you'll have to think carefully about how you design your ship's layout so that it operates at peak efficiency without exposing its more vulnerable (and sometimes explosive!) modules.Physics That MatterEvery ship is part of a 2D physics simulation. Ships have weight and a center-of-mass depending on their size and shape. Small ships with lots of thrusters are realistically fast and nimble, while large ships with proportionally fewer thrusters are naturally slower and more difficult to maneuver.The position and orientation of your ship's thrusters affects its movement. Thrusters near its center-of-mass are great at pushing the ship forward, whereas off-center thrusters are effective at rotating the ship. Thrusters pointing forward are needed to decelerate, while thrusters pointing to the sides will let it move laterally.Ships can collide and block weapons fire. Weapons must be placed in locations that have good line-of-sight to the enemy, otherwise the ship will block its own shots.Emergent Combat ModelWeapons obey the laws of the physics simulation. Whether or not a cannon or laser hits an enemy depends not on a dice roll but upon the physics of the weapon and its target.Damage is tracked module-by-module, and each module can be individually targeted & destroyed.Some modules can explode, causing collateral damage to the surrounding modules. This means that you'll have to think carefully about where you place your reactors and munitions. Too close to the edge and they'll be exposed to enemy fire; too far and your weapons won't fire fast enough.Ships can break apart into multiple pieces when their connecting modules are destroyed. Usually this will be a crippling blow, but any piece that has a control room, power, and thrusters can continue to operate independently, potentially remaining a threat to the enemy.Epic Tactical StrategyClassic RTS-style controls make the game easy to learn. Simply right-click where you want your ship to fly, or right-click on an enemy to attack it, and the A.I. will fly your ship there. Advanced controls let you adjust the orientation, distance, and angle of attack.Target your weapons to focus their fire on the vulnerable parts of enemy ships. Do you take out the weapons first, go for the explosive power core, or eliminate the command-and-control center? Every ship is different, and the right strategy varies greatly.Command a fleet of ships, outmaneuvering and flanking the enemy to expose its weak side. Specialize your fleet's ships into roles however you see fit.Starship PainterThe surface of a ship is like an artist's canvas. The Ship Painter is even easier to use than the Ship Designer, requiring no drawing ability to make your ship look great.Pick a color and texture to customize your ship's basic appearance. If you're not artistically inclined then no need to do more, but otherwise you can...Add decals to decorate your ship. Every ship has two independently-colored layers of decals. Decals are small shapes, icons, symbols, letters, and numbers that you can stamp on your ship to give it extra visual flourish.Painting your ship is free and has no effect on gameplay.Bounty HunterYou are a bounty hunter, traveling from sector to sector, hunting down renegade enemies and destroying them.Earn money for every enemy vanquished. Use your income to repair and upgrade your own fleet, growing bigger and more powerful with every victory.Explore a galaxy in search of bigger and more powerful enemies. The galaxy will crumble before your almighty armada!Creative ModePlay in a creative sandbox mode if being a bounty hunter isn't your cup of Earl Grey—the only limit is your imagination! (And the power of your computer.)Pit your designs against each other and import designs from other players. Ship designs are saved as PNG image files, making them easy to share with others.Or just turn on the A.I., sit back, and watch massive fleets annihilate each other!MultiplayerBattle your friends and enemies in real-time, pitting your designs against theirs. Compete to be the master "Starship Architect & Commander" against up to 7 other players in Team vs Team and Free For All battles.Configure a variety of game options by specifying number of ships, total funds, game speed, and other options. Play tiny skirmishes, massive fleet battles, or anywhere in between.Play online in public or private lobbies. Local Area Network and direct I.P. address connections are also supported.Important Note: Multiplayer is NOT SUPPORTED between 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems!And more!Everything you should expect from a great PC game, including customizable controls, windowed and borderless display modes, support for high-resolution displays, no mandatory locked framerates, and dozens of other options to tailor the game to your own preferences.Unobtrusive tutorials that don't interrupt gameplay and are easy to dismiss or turn off altogether. There's no special "tutorial level" you need to play through—the context-sensitive tips are built-in to the main Bounty Hunter mode.A powerful modding framework lets mods change almost any part of the game data, opening up a universe of possibilities beyond the base game. A mods manager makes it easy to install and uninstall mods created by the Cosmoteer community.
Developer: Walternate Realities
Publisher: Walternate Realities
Platform: Microsoft Windows
Genres: Indie game, Early Access, Simulation, Strategy
Description: The ultimate starship designer,powered by a deep game simulation...Cosmoteer is a starship design, simulation, and battle game. Design a fleet of ships by placing individual modules including weapons, shields, engines, and hallways. Battle A.I. starships to earn bounties or test your design skills against other players. A dynamic crew and combat simulation makes every design decision important and interesting.Best-In-Class Starship DesignerDesign the greatest starship ever made using an interface that is easy-to-learn yet incredibly flexible.Build your ship by placing individual modules onto a grid—weapons, shields, engines, reactors, crew's quarters, and more! Few restrictions and no pre-defined, creativity-limiting hull shapes mean you can create almost any ship you can imagine.Inspired by professional art programs, the Ship Designer has a variety of different brush sizes and shape tools, as well as full support for Undo & Redo, Copy & Paste, rotation, and mirroring, so you can quickly and easily design giant starships. It even has a "blueprint mode" which allows you to plan for the future and design before spending any money. The Ship Designer is directly integrated into the gameplay—no need to interrupt your flow to tweak your ship or experiment with a new design.Intelligent Crew SimulationEvery starship is operated by a crew numbering from half-a-dozen to hundreds—sometimes more than a thousand—of individually-simulated people.A ship's crew is its lifeblood. Crew not only operate its controls, but they also carry supplies such as ammunition and power batteries to weapons and systems. When a weapon wants to shoot, the crew go pick up ammo or batteries at an ammo factory or reactor and bring them to the weapon—all simulated in real-time.Crew are pretty smart and act mostly on their own, which is a good thing since there can be so many. Your crew are smart enough to figure out what controls need operating, what systems need ammo or power, and how best to get around your ship. They're even smart enough to avoid routes that are already jammed with other people.The crew simulation is what makes starship design so interesting, because how fast a cannon can shoot or how long a shield can stay charged depends directly on how quickly crew can deliver ammo or power to it. As a player, you'll have to think carefully about how you design your ship's layout so that it operates at peak efficiency without exposing its more vulnerable (and sometimes explosive!) modules.Physics That MatterEvery ship is part of a 2D physics simulation. Ships have weight and a center-of-mass depending on their size and shape. Small ships with lots of thrusters are realistically fast and nimble, while large ships with proportionally fewer thrusters are naturally slower and more difficult to maneuver.The position and orientation of your ship's thrusters affects its movement. Thrusters near its center-of-mass are great at pushing the ship forward, whereas off-center thrusters are effective at rotating the ship. Thrusters pointing forward are needed to decelerate, while thrusters pointing to the sides will let it move laterally.Ships can collide and block weapons fire. Weapons must be placed in locations that have good line-of-sight to the enemy, otherwise the ship will block its own shots.Emergent Combat ModelWeapons obey the laws of the physics simulation. Whether or not a cannon or laser hits an enemy depends not on a dice roll but upon the physics of the weapon and its target.Damage is tracked module-by-module, and each module can be individually targeted & destroyed.Some modules can explode, causing collateral damage to the surrounding modules. This means that you'll have to think carefully about where you place your reactors and munitions. Too close to the edge and they'll be exposed to enemy fire; too far and your weapons won't fire fast enough.Ships can break apart into multiple pieces when their connecting modules are destroyed. Usually this will be a crippling blow, but any piece that has a control room, power, and thrusters can continue to operate independently, potentially remaining a threat to the enemy.Epic Tactical StrategyClassic RTS-style controls make the game easy to learn. Simply right-click where you want your ship to fly, or right-click on an enemy to attack it, and the A.I. will fly your ship there. Advanced controls let you adjust the orientation, distance, and angle of attack.Target your weapons to focus their fire on the vulnerable parts of enemy ships. Do you take out the weapons first, go for the explosive power core, or eliminate the command-and-control center? Every ship is different, and the right strategy varies greatly.Command a fleet of ships, outmaneuvering and flanking the enemy to expose its weak side. Specialize your fleet's ships into roles however you see fit.Starship PainterThe surface of a ship is like an artist's canvas. The Ship Painter is even easier to use than the Ship Designer, requiring no drawing ability to make your ship look great.Pick a color and texture to customize your ship's basic appearance. If you're not artistically inclined then no need to do more, but otherwise you can...Add decals to decorate your ship. Every ship has two independently-colored layers of decals. Decals are small shapes, icons, symbols, letters, and numbers that you can stamp on your ship to give it extra visual flourish.Painting your ship is free and has no effect on gameplay.Bounty HunterYou are a bounty hunter, traveling from sector to sector, hunting down renegade enemies and destroying them.Earn money for every enemy vanquished. Use your income to repair and upgrade your own fleet, growing bigger and more powerful with every victory.Explore a galaxy in search of bigger and more powerful enemies. The galaxy will crumble before your almighty armada!Creative ModePlay in a creative sandbox mode if being a bounty hunter isn't your cup of Earl Grey—the only limit is your imagination! (And the power of your computer.)Pit your designs against each other and import designs from other players. Ship designs are saved as PNG image files, making them easy to share with others.Or just turn on the A.I., sit back, and watch massive fleets annihilate each other!MultiplayerBattle your friends and enemies in real-time, pitting your designs against theirs. Compete to be the master "Starship Architect & Commander" against up to 7 other players in Team vs Team and Free For All battles.Configure a variety of game options by specifying number of ships, total funds, game speed, and other options. Play tiny skirmishes, massive fleet battles, or anywhere in between.Play online in public or private lobbies. Local Area Network and direct I.P. address connections are also supported.Important Note: Multiplayer is NOT SUPPORTED between 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems!And more!Everything you should expect from a great PC game, including customizable controls, windowed and borderless display modes, support for high-resolution displays, no mandatory locked framerates, and dozens of other options to tailor the game to your own preferences.Unobtrusive tutorials that don't interrupt gameplay and are easy to dismiss or turn off altogether. There's no special "tutorial level" you need to play through—the context-sensitive tips are built-in to the main Bounty Hunter mode.A powerful modding framework lets mods change almost any part of the game data, opening up a universe of possibilities beyond the base game. A mods manager makes it easy to install and uninstall mods created by the Cosmoteer community.
