Vapourware Star Trek: Infinite - grand strategy published by Paradox

[Jarpie]

The goal of this reskin game was to provide a more "streamlined" and "story-focused" experience in the Star Trek universe (Paradox' own words).

It's not story-focused though. It's just Stellaris with a few ST events crammed in on certain years.

Is there even a Stellaris player who thinks "ayayay, I wish this game was less complexx"?

It's already too simplistic, yeah. And from what I've seen, this looks worse in that regard.

And, of course, simply by how this game looks and plays, the "reskin!" downvotes were all but guaranteed, even if it was better than the mod.

It's not about how it looks. It's about the lack of work to make it a better Trek game.

Using the same engine is fine. But keeping the same generic diplomacy system, when racial diplomacy is half of Star Trek?

Where are the new, more Star Trek-like game features? Shouldn't there be individual captains of "military" ships with career paths or something?

Nope. It really is just a reskin with dumbed down gameplay.

I don't get it. Why bother acquiring the license if all you're going to make is a mod?

Or maybe the license really is that cheap to get ahold of at this point.

Tactical/Engineer/Science specializations/career paths will be in the DLC, duh!

Given how barebones Imperator: Rome and Viccy 3 launched, it's clear that they've just done bare minimum on Star Trek Infinite as well... it's actually kinda fascinating how a lot of Star Trek games come off as lazy effort outside of a few exceptions like Interplay's two TOS games or Starfleet Command games.

 

[Axioms]

Yeah the lack of having a full suite of birdge officers is pretty anti-Trek. Can you even have multiple characters per ship?

 

[thesheeep]

Yeah the lack of having a full suite of birdge officers is pretty anti-Trek. Can you even have multiple characters per ship?

Well, you are not really playing a ship or a captain, you are the Federation (assuming you do play as the Federation).
It would be pretty counter to that objective if you had to have this kind of personal experience with every ship - remember, there are quite a lot of ships in the Federation.

This whole "focus on the bridge/a handful of characters" doesn't work well for that kind of gameplay.
It works somewhat for games like CK3 due to the nature of their hereditary systems and the much smaller scale, but even that has clear limits.

To be honest, I don't know how you could ever make a grand strategy experience very Star Trek series-like.
Something like King Of The Dragon Pass, possibly? Reducing the perspective.

But Stellaris? Nah.
Best you can do there is do the setting justice. Which is already done about 100 times better by New Horizons.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Given how barebones Imperator: Rome and Viccy 3 launched, it's clear that they've just done bare minimum on Star Trek Infinite as well... it's actually kinda fascinating how a lot of Star Trek games come off as lazy effort outside of a few exceptions like Interplay's two TOS games or Starfleet Command games.

And Voyager: Elite Force, which was very polished for the time, and even had multiple endings, depending on whether or not you saved your commander near the start of the game.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Yeah the lack of having a full suite of birdge officers is pretty anti-Trek. Can you even have multiple characters per ship?

Yeah, they should have had a flagship at least with a bridge crew, and that could have been like your main ship for quests and such.

This is why the negative reviews are justified imo. The lack of effort and creativity.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yeah the lack of having a full suite of birdge officers is pretty anti-Trek. Can you even have multiple characters per ship?

Yeah, they should have had a flagship at least with a bridge crew, and that could have been like your main ship for quests and such.

This is why the negative reviews are justified imo. The lack of effort and creativity.

4x games do not need shit like this.
4x ST just needs something like botf or better that works well on modern systems and where turns do not need forever in late game even on fast PCs.

 

[Axioms]

Well 4X ST is a stupid idea. You should make a game from first principles, perhaps inspired by existing games that vibes strongly with the Star Trek experience.

Might have been better to make a Space Ranger 2 or w/e it is called type situation or something mechanically Thea like rather than a Paradox 4X/GSG hybrid. Course you couldn't do minimal work to ship a full price game if you did that I guess.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

4x games do not need shit like this.

Better not play Stellaris or Crusader Kings then.

It's a Star Trek game. Not really compatible with the usual 4x tropes of spamming doomstacks of ships. Every Star Trek series has a ship and crew.

Stellaris missions are all exclusively for science vessels, but in Star Trek, every Federation vessel is a science vessel. Even the Defiant, a ship designed especially for combat, still conducted science missions occasionally.

Might have been better to make a Space Ranger 2 or w/e it is called type situation or something mechanically Thea like rather than a Paradox 4X/GSG hybrid. Course you couldn't do minimal work to ship a full price game if you did that I guess.

Eh. It could work. But in order for it to be Star Trek, you do need some story and galactic politics going on. It's not as simple as, say, Star Wars, where the setting is constantly mired in a galactic war of one sort or another. Star Trek had one big war in 5 separate TV series. And if you want another one, fine. But why ignore the space and exploration stuff when Stellaris already has those mechanics built in? Just extend them to at least one combat vessel and make them more than science missions.

That said, a game Space Rangers 2 where a single ship explores the depths of space and gets into all sorts of adventures would be cool.

 

[Axioms]

4x games do not need shit like this.

Better not play Stellaris or Crusader Kings then.

It's a Star Trek game. Not really compatible with the usual 4x tropes of spamming doomstacks of ships. Every Star Trek series has a ship and crew.

Stellaris missions are all exclusively for science vessels, but in Star Trek, every Federation vessel is a science vessel. Even the Defiant, a ship designed especially for combat, still conducted science missions occasionally.

Might have been better to make a Space Ranger 2 or w/e it is called type situation or something mechanically Thea like rather than a Paradox 4X/GSG hybrid. Course you couldn't do minimal work to ship a full price game if you did that I guess.

Eh. It could work. But in order for it to be Star Trek, you do need some story and galactic politics going on. It's not as simple as, say, Star Wars, where the setting is constantly mired in a galactic war of one sort or another. Star Trek had one big war in 5 separate TV series. And if you want another one, fine. But why ignore the space and exploration stuff when Stellaris already has those mechanics built in? Just extend them to at least one combat vessel and make them more than science missions.

That said, a game Space Rangers 2 where a single ship explores the depths of space and gets into all sorts of adventures would be cool.

Star Sector has better exploration than Stellaris IMO. All the Stellaris shit is random meaningless timers with RNG events.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Star Sector has better exploration than Stellaris IMO. All the Stellaris shit is random meaningless timers with RNG events.

In terms of gameplay, sure. But in terms of story, SS isn't really heavy on it.

But you need story in a ST game, otherwise it's just a generic space clone in a ST wrapper. Which seems to be what ST:I is.

Wait a minute... STI?! First STD and now this??

 

[Talby]

It was a mistake to use the same time scale as Stellaris (1 tick = 1 day) because you burn through the entire TNG era in a couple of hours and everyone dies of old age before much even really happens. They should have compressed it more so getting as far as 2400 would be the extreme endgame, the equivalent of getting to the year 2500 or so in Stellaris.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

The best scenario you can hope for is that modders will fix everything wrong with the game.

At the very least, having Star Trek races and artwork already in the game should make modding a lot easier.

 

[ArchAngel]

4x games do not need shit like this.

Better not play Stellaris or Crusader Kings then.

It's a Star Trek game. Not really compatible with the usual 4x tropes of spamming doomstacks of ships. Every Star Trek series has a ship and crew.

Stellaris missions are all exclusively for science vessels, but in Star Trek, every Federation vessel is a science vessel. Even the Defiant, a ship designed especially for combat, still conducted science missions occasionally.

I do not plan to play either game.
Star Trek 4x is not just about Federation. Just like how BotF worked. Federation was the most boring faction in that game and I quit playing them as soon as I learned how to play the game.

 

[ArchAngel]

Well 4X ST is a stupid idea. You should make a game from first principles, perhaps inspired by existing games that vibes strongly with the Star Trek experience.

Might have been better to make a Space Ranger 2 or w/e it is called type situation or something mechanically Thea like rather than a Paradox 4X/GSG hybrid. Course you couldn't do minimal work to ship a full price game if you did that I guess.

You can have both. Just like how there are FPS ST games and adventure ST games and so on. There is even RTS ST game or two. You can even be Borg in that one.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

I do not plan to play either game.

Then why be in a thread about what's essentially a paid Stellaris mod?

This is Stellaris, from the UI to the in-game sidequests.

Star Trek 4x is not just about Federation.

Meaningless. Most ships in Star Trek were on their own and not engaged in massive fleet operations until DS9. Whether it was a Klingon Bird of Prey, or a Romulan Warbird.

Why? Because it was a show about naval exploration and colonization. A captain had his ship. You don't get that kind of independence when every ship is grouped in a doomstack. They weren't making Battlestar Galactica.

Take TNG's "Contagion". It was the Enterprise vs a Romulan Warbird. Two captains racing to discover an alien technology. It didn't matter that one of them wasn't from the Federation. They were both explorers and both on their own.

Even the Klingons had ships go on solo missions. Star Trek 3 was all about one.

Just like how BotF worked. Federation was the most boring faction in that game and I quit playing them as soon as I learned how to play the game.

Good for you? Doesn't mean others won't want to play them.

Speak of BotF:

Having battles be a giant cluster of ships is precisely what the devs should have avoided with STI if they wanted a game that felt like TNG-era Trek. And if they couldn't, they could at least give us one ship with a proper crew that can do classic Star Trek stuff rather than the Star Wars pewpew BS.

Reading up on it, apparently, you can build a flagship and do some sorts of events with it (?), so at least the functionality is there for modders to build on, but you can't build it right away. Which apparently leads to some weird inconsistencies in the quests:

https://www.eurogamer.net/star-trek-infinite-review

As President T'Pragh of the United Federation of Planets, it's routine for me to hear from the USS Enterprise, the pride and joy of our fleet. It's another for the message sender to be tiresome prodigy Wesley Crusher, historical bearer of unwanted news. This time, Wesley isn't the problem. The problem is that the Federation doesn't even have the Enterprise yet - building the flagship is a milestone mission in the game, and at this current point in time, there is no possible Enterprise from which Ensign Crusher could be hailing me from. On an episode of The Next Generation, this could easily be a setup for a fun pocket dimension-themed episode or a time loop narrative, but it's not. This is the erratic world of Star Trek: Infinite, a grand strategy reskin of Stellaris that boldly goes to places that don't always make sense.

 

[ArchAngel]

I do not plan to play either game.

Then why be in a thread about what's essentially a paid Stellaris mod?

This is Stellaris, from the UI to the in-game sidequests.

Star Trek 4x is not just about Federation.

Meaningless. Most ships in Star Trek were on their own and not engaged in massive fleet operations until DS9. Whether it was a Klingon Bird of Prey, or a Romulan Warbird.

Why? Because it was a show about naval exploration and colonization. A captain had his ship. You don't get that kind of independence when every ship is grouped in a doomstack. They weren't making Battlestar Galactica.

Take TNG's "Contagion". It was the Enterprise vs a Romulan Warbird. Two captains racing to discover an alien technology. It didn't matter that one of them wasn't from the Federation. They were both explorers and both on their own.

Even the Klingons had ships go on solo missions. Star Trek 3 was all about one.

Just like how BotF worked. Federation was the most boring faction in that game and I quit playing them as soon as I learned how to play the game.

Good for you? Doesn't mean others won't want to play them.

Speak of BotF:

Having battles be a giant cluster of ships is precisely what the devs should have avoided with STI if they wanted a game that felt like TNG-era Trek. And if they couldn't, they could at least give us one ship with a proper crew that can do classic Star Trek stuff rather than the Star Wars pewpew BS.

Reading up on it, apparently, you can build a flagship and do some sorts of events with it (?), so at least the functionality is there for modders to build on, but you can't build it right away. Which apparently leads to some weird inconsistencies in the quests:

https://www.eurogamer.net/star-trek-infinite-review

As President T'Pragh of the United Federation of Planets, it's routine for me to hear from the USS Enterprise, the pride and joy of our fleet. It's another for the message sender to be tiresome prodigy Wesley Crusher, historical bearer of unwanted news. This time, Wesley isn't the problem. The problem is that the Federation doesn't even have the Enterprise yet - building the flagship is a milestone mission in the game, and at this current point in time, there is no possible Enterprise from which Ensign Crusher could be hailing me from. On an episode of The Next Generation, this could easily be a setup for a fun pocket dimension-themed episode or a time loop narrative, but it's not. This is the erratic world of Star Trek: Infinite, a grand strategy reskin of Stellaris that boldly goes to places that don't always make sense.

Completely disagree. ST is not just TNG era which also had mass battle vs Borg.

And BotF is not just a good 4x ST game, it is a good 4x game. This is only 4x that I know off where you can basically win just by focusing into Intel. Sabotage is super powerful with Romulans and Cardassians in combination with certain minor races.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Completely disagree. ST is not just TNG era which also had mass battle vs Borg.

A mass battle. And it wasn't even on-screen.

How many ships in the Federation fleet in Voyager? Oh, that's right: one. Enterprise? One. TOS? One.

There were battles in every series that had multiple Federation ships, but they were very few and far from the norm in any series but DS9.

And BotF is not just a good 4x ST game, it is a good 4x game.

That's nice and all, but if you take off the rose-tinted glasses and really ask yourself if it looks like an episode of Star Trek when a dozen Ferengi ships are zooming around firing muh space lasers everywhere, you'll have to admit it doesn't.

Is it cool? Sure. But it's not really very Star Trek. That sort of thing is closer to JJ Abrams Trek than Star Trek.

 

[ArchAngel]

Completely disagree. ST is not just TNG era which also had mass battle vs Borg.

A mass battle. And it wasn't even on-screen.

How many ships in the Federation fleet in Voyager? Oh, that's right: one. Enterprise? One. TOS? One.

There were battles in every series that had multiple Federation ships, but they were very few and far from the norm in any series but DS9.

I do not know what you are talking about. There were wars in that world and some of them were even shown on screen. Your personal feelings about it are irrelevant.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

There were wars in that world and some of them were even shown on screen.

This is some quality copium right here.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

In the Age of Sail, ships used to go on detached missions of exploration. Bartholemew Dias rounding Africa. Vasco de Gama's voyages to India. Columbus discovery of America. Magellan's circumnavigation. Francis Drake's circumnavigation. James Cook's exploration of the Pacific. Darwin's expedition to Galapagos. Roald Amundsen and Scott's attempts on Antarctica. Ships also used to get together for things like the Battle of Trafalgar. Stacks do exist in Star Trek - there were 312 ships in the Second Battle of Chintoka - in one solar system.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Ships also used to get together for things like the Battle of Trafalgar. Stacks do exist in Star Trek - there were 312 ships in the Second Battle of Chintoka - in one solar system.

Again, apart from DS9, this wasn't the norm.

Again, I said larger battles existed in every series. They weren't the norm.

Star Trek was not a show about big space battles until the later seasons of DS9, and especially Nu Trek. And even in DS9, there weren't big space battles in every episode.

My point is that it's not what Star Trek was about. You can cope all day long about how Voyager had Year of Hell or TOS had The Ultimate Computer or an unseen fleet battle in Errand of Mercy. It's still not what Star Trek was about 99% of the time.

But it is the norm in this game. This is a Stellaris reskin with doomstacks being the bulk of combat. That's not Star Trek. That's Stellaris.

 

[ArchAngel]

Ships also used to get together for things like the Battle of Trafalgar. Stacks do exist in Star Trek - there were 312 ships in the Second Battle of Chintoka - in one solar system.

Again, apart from DS9, this wasn't the norm.

Again, I said larger battles existed in every series. They weren't the norm.

Star Trek was not a show about big space battles until the later seasons of DS9, and especially Nu Trek. And even in DS9, there weren't big space battles in every episode.

My point is that it's not what Star Trek was about. You can cope all day long about how Voyager had Year of Hell or TOS had The Ultimate Computer or an unseen fleet battle in Errand of Mercy. It's still not what Star Trek was about 99% of the time.

But it is the norm in this game. This is a Stellaris reskin with doomstacks being the bulk of combat. That's not Star Trek. That's Stellaris.

Now you are really treading into retarded territory.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Now you are really threading into retarded territory.

*Treading.

And I think the real intelligent thing would be not fighting over a Star Trek cashgrab on an RPG forum, but here we are.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

And Voyager: Elite Force, which was very polished for the time, and even had multiple endings, depending on whether or not you saved your commander near the start of the game.

isn't this from the sequel? i don't remember choices in the first one which was just a well done quake reskin. i can't be 100% sure, i couldn't finish either.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

isn't this from the sequel? i don't remember choices in the first one which was just a well done quake reskin. i can't be 100% sure, i couldn't finish either.

The choice isn't explained to the player. It comes off as a forced failure, but you can in fact save Foster. He won't be in the game until the end though.