Battle Pirates

[masteff 64]

Finally, a Facebook game that doesn't entail tons of silly repetitive tasks that result in nothing (how long did it take you to realize that FarmClone is nothing like farming?).

 

http://apps.facebook.com/battlepirates/

 

First off, these are modern day pirates, not Jack Sparrow.

 

I'll start w/ the disclaimer that at this moment certain features are still in development (namely the attacking of other players' bases). And this game is very much in beta so the changes made in updates can be pretty dramatic (last night's update cut the number of mines in half and downgraded most of them). So consider yourself forewarned.

 

So what's good about Battle Pirates? One of my dislikes about Ikariam was the lack of animation. Combat was simply a static display of results. Well, Battle Pirates changes that. It's programmed in Flash and both movement on the world map and actual combat (well, sea-based combat since we haven't seen how attacking of bases will work) is animated AND player controllable. Yes, you read that right... you control your fleet in real time and can maneuver your ships during battle for strategic effect.

 

You start w/ a small island and build various buildings (e.g., a wind station for energy, a shipyard for constructing ships, a weapons lab to research new and upgraded weapons, etc). You can get all the resources you need without leaving your island or you can hit the sea and try to gain them from mines, from fighting AI ships or from attacking other players (most typically while they're at a mine). They just added the ability to send mercenary fleets to your Facebook friends so I don't know how those work yet.

 

Another good thing is that you don't permanently lose ships in combat. They're out of commission after they lose all their armor points and must return to base for repair before they can fight again (but they still count towards your fleet's cargo capacity so you don't lose plunder). This is balanced by the fact that bigger ships require more resources to build, have significantly longer build times and take significantly longer to repair. But at least you're not constantly rebuilding that "perfect" fleet (repairs only cost time, new ships cost both resources and time).

 

Now, considering it has realtime movement, one serious feature is lacking... the ability to chase down an enemy. As long as an enemy is moving at the time your ship arrives at their location, no combat occurs. Of course this does allow lower strength players to evade yet another whooping from a bully neighbor.

 

I'll attach some screen shots and more commentary on game features later.

[masteff 64]

On the move on the world map

 

In combat against AI ships (better in full screen mode but couldn't quickly figure out how to grab the screen shot in full screen)

 

Victory (show how many resources I won)

[gogoblender 3,078]

Masteff, this review is awesome, I love the detail and the luxury of a great after work "snack" read^^

 

That's about as close as I'm going to get to any other game other than SacredWiki now though. Ogame just about burned me out and taught me much about how much I can get caught up so easily in to stuff I like too much.

 

Does this run with clans or teams though?

 

Just asking

 

 

gogo

[masteff 64]

Thanks Gogo! I remember how much fun a group of us from the DM forum had playing Ikariam for awhile so thought peeps here might find this one interesting if they do FB games at all.

Does this run with clans or teams though?

Yes, at least two have started up (but no functionality in-game yet to support them). Members of their forum can go under "Community" and see the "Groups" listing where groups can have an info page and members can have discussion threads. Might be a good place for DM to have a listing. http://forums.casualcollective.com/

[masteff 64]

A month and a half later, this game has yet to blossom. They've made some tweaks and additions. But they still haven't released base attacking. Ship battles against the computer have become boring because they lack any randomness; the AI fleets are the same ships w/ the same weapons and their strategy is attack the closest ship.

 

They recently adjusted construction times from beta levels to "live" levels. End game construction times are days to a week or more per upgrade/research.

 

My personal biggest disappointment with the developers is their failure to realize that cosmetic bugs, while not affecting gameplay, make their game look tacky and unprofessional. Just because something is low priority, if it only takes 5-10 minutes and makes the game look polished, then do it. For example, on the main screen it says "Netal" instead of "Metal". How hard is that to fix? If you can't fix sloppy things on the surface of the game, then how sloppy must the guts of your game be? Well, based on the bugs they're having, must be some sloppy coding in there.