Conquest: Frontier Wars

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Tue Dec 23, 2003 12:19 pm

I posted a few weeks ago about having picked this up as a freebie at the store. I'm nowhere close to finishing it, but I can tell you that I like it. It's a 2-d space-based RTS type game. Each system can have planets, which are the only places you can build bases, nebula of varying effects, asteroid fields which also slow you down, black holes, and wormholes to other systems. Certain items, like space station defences, you can build nearly anywhere. Nebula and asteroid fields can be mined for resources (ore and gas). They also provide hard or soft chokepoints, a "soft" chokepoint being one you can get around but it's slow/painful. In the single-player campaign you play only the humans. But you can play one of the other two races during multiplayer if desired. They are an insect-type race and an advanced "pure energy" type race. There is also actually a plot. Not quite Starcraft-level, but good. There is a research tree, which is not very complex but does make a difference. What really sets the game apart are supply lines. <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"> Very important. If you take a fleet of ships off to fight in an enemy system, you'd better take a supply ship or two with you. Your ships and your space stations can run out of ammo if they're not within range of a supply source. Also, you build jumpgates around wormholes, for two purposes: First to keep an enemy from using that wormhole (until the gate is destroyed), but the second is to connect the supplies from the first system to the second. I just finished a mission that took me 3.5 hours of playtime to finish. Not counting dying & reloading, of which I did a lot. It was a serious slugfest, especially trying to get a foothold in new systems. In this one mission, I had to clear the enemy out of six connected systems and build a headquarters in the last, and in one spot there was a branch so they could come around behind if you weren't careful. I ended up going around THEM and cutting off THEIR supplies, which is part of what the mission was trying to teach you. Some units are more useful than others, but there are missile ships, carriers, big-gun battleships, sneaky scouts, leaders, troop carriers that take over enemy ships, and the like. There's no uber-powerful ship; they've all got weak spots. Many have special abilities. In short, it's not a gotta-play blockbuster, but it is a relatively unknown, solid, strategically satisfying game that's worth taking a look at. Anyway, if you can find it it should be in the bargain bin. I got mine at CompUSA. Make sure you download the updated graphics patch for a much prettier game. (higher-res textures, etc) <img src="http://www.xmenclan.org/xmengambit.gif"/> XMEN member Card-carrying DTM OKL Fish-napper Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained.  The Tao of Programming