I'm a fan of Positech (indies 4eva) and GSB is a pretty good game. Available on Steam; I bought it a few nights ago.

http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/



It's all my favorite parts of Masters of Orion and other space-empire games: Making fleets, customizing ships, sending them into battle. Without that headache of having to play for 4 hours just to get a decent fleet going.

Only played it for two days though then nuked it; the "upgrades" are hardly worth the investment and I foolishly never purchased another race and ran out of money. Now I can't play the other campaigns and I'm left with a bunch of useless toys. Still worth a playthrough though.

I think the game could really be improved if there was a larger variety of components. It really seemed that in any situation there was one particular ship that would win, and you have to build it.. or else.

My favorite layout is making 3 very-spread-out "carriers" (ships with no engines so they don't move, fighter repair bays, and lots of armor) with as many squadrons of fighters as I can fit. If I can get away with a few bombers too, all the merrier.

Wot do u think?

I bought the game and I find it pretty fun. The urge to make the PERFECT design on a hull is rather addictive. Also, looking around on the GSB forums, seems that a fairly healthy modding community has sprung up, and mods with the inclusion of bigger and more lasery hulls are on the way. My only real complaint with the game is the lack of kinetic weapons. I've also been a kinetic weapon type of guy and the lack of railguns and gauss cannons makes me sad

Outfit a dozen squadrons of fighters with:
1x best engine possible
2x best power generators
1x pulse LAZOR (the one where the description says "suicidal close up strafing runs")

the laser actually looks like a little pellet flying out of the ship, and it's a beautiful sight to see them all swarming on the same capital ship - pellets flying all over the friggin place, dozens of explosions per second on the ship... they chew up the best cap ships in under 10 seconds or so, as long as you arrange them to all attack the same one at the same time. (orders: Cooperative, Vulture - start them off tightly packed in the corner of the map)

oh: don't forget to tell them to be "cautious" so they return to your carrier for repairs after a while. Also make sure you zero out engagement range (I think it's "100" as a minimum) so they swarm INSIDE the cap ship shields instead of outside of them. absolutely devastating.

This. I'm assuming patches will deal with it but the "perfect combo" is a bit of a drain on creativity.

Looks pretty cool, let's make the piracy begin... Arrr!

I got tired of using puny lasers and rockets, etc, so I went into the data and made everything 1 honor to buy.

Oh? It's made by the guy who asked pirates why they stole his games. I feel inclined to buy his game just because of this, his small article (I think that's what it is but I am not sure) on the issue was really inspiring and made me feel sorry for the guy. Gratuitous Space Battles also looks like a really great game and actually looks like something I would play unlike his earlier games which I had no interest in

My favorite strategy involves as many as possible number of armed and armored to the teeth cruisers, and a squadren or two of Anti-Fighter Fighters, usually equipped with an Anti-Fighter Missile mod. Screw Frigates entirely.

EDIT: If your on the fence about buying it, I think the demo is out by now, so try that before anything else. Otherwise you suffer.

I never found demos to be quite fitting of a game unless it's the full game on a timer, or on a limited number of uses.

Ugh, those demos I hate the most. It puts a carrot in front of you, an hour of trying to get the carrot later, it takes it and eats it.

I think it's pretty boring, all you do is design ships really, thought the ship designing was a bit crap really... mostly because I like designing things like this perfectly symmetrical, and because of this it made it very hard to actually make a "good" ship according to the game as I kept testing my ships out and they kept being obliterated, except strangely when I just loaded them up with loads of the same weapon, because varied weapon sets are apparently worse. I don't know, I only really like games that you play an active role in the action parts.

I agree with robolee.

They need some balancing work. I can take out a massive fleet of cruisers with ~150 fighters, armed with nothing but little pulse lasers.

*cough* This looks quite familiar, it reminds me of a game that I found about the same time as cortex command, that was ultra-customizable. Might not have been the same scale but the 'design your own ships and have epic space battles with huge fleets of ships' most certainly applied. I mean it's not like it's still around anywhere or anything, I mean it was freeware after all.

That game needs far too much hardware for it to play any kind of well in a large battle. I enjoy the editors, but they need to optimize.

@Miles: They're really for two different audiences, especially how BSF has evolved. Practically no-one "plays" BSF anymore, they just design pretty and interesting ships, because there is no point or value limit on what you can bring in.
GSB looks like it will have a modder community and a player community, much like we do with some interaction between the two camps. The players debate the best strategies and loadouts, and the modders break the game's balance to make it funner or more interesting.