Games don't get me excited these days like they used to. After the disappointment of games like Star Trek: Legacy (bad development) and Star Trek: Online (bad development *AND* DLC), and whatever came out after that (I didn't re-follow until recently), I have a very low hope for any modern Star Trek game. Not just because of bad development, but also the potential and highly likely scenario of including the Nu Trek garbage into any modern Star Trek games.
I dare modern Star Trek game developers to prove me wrong.
I think the best we could ever hope for is revitalization of old games like BotF and Bridge Commander, or something which is easily and fully moddable like Space Engine (modern) or Galactic Civilizations (classic). BotF still has my heart.
Here is one steam review.. alot of not recommended. Warning: Spoilers
► Show Spoiler
Posted: October 12
Product refunded
I want to address something: When people say 'Star Trek: Infinite is just a reskin of Stellaris', they're not just talking about it being somewhat similar to Stellaris because it runs on the same engine.
Star Trek: Infinite is, quite literally, a reskin of Stellaris in the fact that it retains a lot of the elements of Stellaris that simply don't make sense for Star Trek.
For instance: Stellaris has a specific design where all surveying of systems and investigation of anomalies is done by specially built science ships (that you plop a scientist into) and all building is done by special construction ships. All other ships you build are military vessels meant for combat. That's absolutely fine for Stellaris as a core mechanic of that game.
But Star Trek: Infinite copies that core mechanic exactly. Which might even make sense for the Klingon Empire or the Cardassian Union, but the Federation? The people whose ships are built primarily for exploration and diplomacy? Yeah no, their 'military' ships can't do the things they're canonically do either, because Stellaris says no. As the UFP, you will build Intrepid class ships (the class of ships Voyager belongs to), canonically meant to do long-range exploration and scientific analysis far beyond Federation borders i.e. exactly the thing the science vessel does in Stellaris, to bolster your military and even if you have a hundred of them, they cannot survey a system or analyze anomalies or move beyond the allowable support range of your territory (again: All things they're literally purpose designed to do).
That's what makes this a Stellaris reskin.
This a game could have let you play a United Federation of Planets that actually feels like the United Federation of Planets, sending ships out to explore, perform diplomatic missions etc.. and only occasionally having to pull them into war duty. We know this because Stellaris modders have managed to do this, so a professional studio working with the full support from the original designers of Stellaris certainly could have.
The same applies to the other Factions (the main reason why I focused most on the Federation here is that the Federation is the Faction that got the most focus from the designers. The events and mission thingies for the other Factions are relatively lacklustre). The only ones that feel fully themselves are the Cardassian, because they were never explored much beyond establishing that they were fascist slavers in Star Trek proper and shallow 'fascist slavers' is a supported option for how to play your empire in vanilla Stellaris.
) (and i have to start getting to know stellaris).
they could have done better
