What's the closest thing we have to Stars! these days?
Looking for a game that has:
>turn-based
>MP focused but also playable SP
>highly customizable factions
>auto-resolving battles
>support for asynchronous gameplay (i.e. PBEM)
>preferably space-themed but other themes welcome
>preferably with tools to mitigate micromanagement
Anything comes to mind?
Dominions.
The only autism space game of the modern age is Aurora 4x.
Aurora.
Except MP focus.
Stellaris
I have to disagree with this, stellaris is not turn-based or asynchronous, and to get the full experience you have to buy a lot of overpriced DLC.
Frick off paratroony
Tell me more about this
You have coverage of planet defenses?
Can you deplete resources of a planet?
Is there one planet per star like moo?
Yes to all your questions. You can't completely deplete the resources of your homeworld, but you'll mine very little per turn after a certain point. The other planets can be exhausted.
To this day Stars! does things that no other 4X game ever did. You have planetary mass drivers that shoot mineral packets to other planets. You can do it as a mineral transfer or as a doomsday weapon when you shoot a warp 16 packet towards an enemy planet (max ship speed is warp 10). There's also the whole mechanics with stealth, as it works on the strategic layer. One race specializes in it and their fleets are nigh undetectable on the galactic map - when they finally show up on the radar they're already too close to your planet.
Aurora 4x has mass drivers and mineral packets too, as well as detection/counter-detection. No MP though.
How's the AI opponents in Aurora? Can they actually play the game?
No idea, I never made it far enough to actually meet the aliens. The game is such a drag just expenading.
Yeah they're pretty good as far as I know. If you aren't ready for it you will get raped in half by the pirates.
I loved Stars! so much growing up. I was so hyped for Stars! Supernova Genesis. I always remain hopeful that a closed beta will leak one day.
Is there a way to get Stars! working on a modern PC?
Winevdm. Works flawlessly, no need for virtual machine or anything
Linux + wine works well
Space Empires 4 has everything you're asking for but nobody ever played it for some reason.
I love Space Empires IV. Downloaded custom races and shipsets online and everything. Never played multiplayer though. The gameplay and music always put me in a bizarre trance. It sucks autists in and doesn't let them go.
The graphics in 4 were such a turn off. But I played SE3 a long time ago. They should have just kept the stars!-like minimalist minesweepercore aesthetic.
Oh how I wish the AI was somewhat decent. It's a great game but SP feels more like a sandbox because the CPU is unable to fight back. Last time I played, by turn 100 I had 3x the tech levels of 2nd place and had already eliminated one player while everyone else was still on the exploration phase.
Game came out in 2000 and I don't believe it came to steam until 2012 or so. By that point, the people who played that sort of game on the regular were still using forums and whatnot to manage games. Anon hated steam until around that same time and those forums were and are still isolated from the internet at large. For reference, I was in high school in 2000 and we used IRC and somethingawful for all that.
Where can i get that game and how to run it?
http://starsfaq.com/download.htm
The serials listed won't work with the latest versions of the game. Grab the stars26i version, that one will accept them.
Stars! is a 16bit app so Windows 10 won't run it natively. Winevdm should work but never tried it myself. DOSBox also works but last time I tried game looked like crap.
Also I posted this starter list of tips back when I was playing on Windows XP.
https://old.reddit.com/r/4Xgaming/comments/4b1f2u/beginner_tips_to_stars/
What's the difference between Stars! and VGA Planets?
For starters that pic looks a real mess
Remnants of the precursor
No mp tho