Sid Meier's Starships 12+

The key to enjoying a game that you but is buying the right game for you. There’s a lot of negativity from people seeing the name Sid Meier and expecting something with the richness and complexity of Civilisation. This is not that. It’s a simpler, smaller game that is more quickly resolved. If you were to play Civilisation as a physical boardgame it would take over your living-room and just updating the board each turn would take a long time and a keen attention to detail. Starships, on the other hand, is small enough that it could be played on a dining-room table with two boards (one for the map, one for combat). In short, and in resonse to those that say this is a dumbed down game of Civilisation, my answer is ‘yes’, but also, ‘what’s wrong with that.’ Sometimes I need something a little simpler.
The game is simpler by pooling all your resources between planets and having effectively one unit: your fleet. You therefore have only one unit to move around the board until you enter combat, at which point you treat ships individually. This simple game mechanic makes Starships into something that you can play though start to finish at one sitting. It’s also light enough on resources that you can play it on a fairly low-spec machine. I’m playing it on a 2012 MacBook Pro and it’s smooth as silk.
There are some flaws, though. The different characters you can play don’t seem different enough. I’ve only been played a few games, but haven’t felt the gameplay change significantly for each character. Also there are some things that don’t sit well with a laptop user. Moving ships in the combat map involes clicking the trackpad with two fingers; this feels unnatural. Scrolling through a list longer than a screen requires me to use the scroll-bar; a two-finger drag did nothing. And lastly, when I was in combat with a large fleet, the game wouldn’t let me lanch fighters at one point because I had too many ships in the playing area; restricting the game with an arbitrary rule that isn’t part of the game’s story feels cheap. The resolution of these things and seeing how replayable this is over a long time will decide if this becomes a four star game in my eyes. It’s teetering on the edge.

This game is a great idea, However it needs balanced and the pace has to be slowed down. Scentific upgrades and planterey advancements are made reudundant by the fact that the game pace is so quick, dipolmacy is non existant, your ether at war or you are not. while this helps secure your boarders (you cant pass through allied teratory to get to your enemy) it could be expanded to included so much more such as trade. The name Sid meiers in the title fools you into thinking this is the next Civilization and its not, but with a bit of time and some upgrades it could be !

Great game (potentially) but it needs to be bigger, especially for the price.
I was expecting something more like Masters of Orion III, Sins of the solar empire, or even star wars empire at war.

As this is a Sid Meiser game I was at least expecting:
More trade options
More diplomacy options
Being able to create more than 1 fleet
I want to be able to see my planet side cities and wonders in greater detail
Mix of space and land battles would be a nice feature, landing parties.
I would like to have more ship classes from scout up to titan/death star
I would like an option to build space stations and weapon platforms…
.. I could, I hope some of these will be available in updates or game add ons

For a quick turn-based start game, this is great, if you are a hard core Sid Mesier gamer, or a space fleet/empire builder gamer you will probably be disappointed

Lack of graphics settings is a bit weird!!