Star Conflict: A Personal experience with A space shooting AMC Game [Gaming]

I don't play often, I am not a gamer even though I consider many games are built to train the brain for reflexes, improve decision-making skills, real-time strategies and improvised tactics. I do follow gaming and game-dev news all of the time, Steam has to be installed on my Linux and macOS machines just to follow up the titles, read reviews and comments as well as review the game presentation.

But from time to time I choose a title to play on my Windows machine which I dedicate for gaming only (Now, testing Windows software for reviews on Medevel.com), Gaming courses take few months before I quit the game: (Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare, StarCraft I/ II, WarCraft, Stronghold,  0.A.D and some other games)

However, I have been always a big fan of space, space games is no exception I  follow several AAA titles and play some like "Galaxy On Fire" which I played on my iPad and recently "Star Conflict" which is running amazingly on Solus Linux with Intel NUC (Thanks to Zeno Davtaz).

I do believe gaming is consuming time, but I also believe it's  the ultimate experience to train my mind and in term of development a good experience any developer can get, especially working in teams, and improving their development  and decision-making skills as well. However, gaming is still time-consuming and it can become addictive with the support of an amazing gamification model the game developer(s) provide.

Now about out title of the day "Star Conflict".

What's Star Conflict?

Star Conflict is a massive multiplayer online space simulation game. It's consisting of space shooting against the AI and with your team against other teams, asteroid mining, open-space exploration.

The player can choose his ship from  fighters, frigates,  interceptors, long-range and he can also build special types of ships or buy premium ships.

The game has a very stable well-calculated and amazingly engineered gamification system, which is very good but it's also one of the weakest points as the same time (I will clarify why at the end of this article).

Unlike many gaming communities, Star Conflict community is not toxic they are helpful and supportive. They are aggressive on the battle-field using missiles and blasters, which is not offensive.

While playing a skirmish expect to see your name pop up in the pilot message board or "chat": "Everyone Eyes on ......" which means team members should support you at this moment. Everyone has a role yet he can improvise.

As the game is a space shooter with space ships, it captures the same concept of sea ships and fighter jets there are interceptors, gun ships, tacklers,  long-range and engineering, guard and destroyers. Every ship has it's own custom features, guns, secondary weapons and modules that can be equipped with special modules or multi-purpose modules that increase the ship power or its durability.

This game like many other space shooting games provides great value for ACM "Air combat maneuvering" simulation or dogfight air combat where spaceships (fighters) purse, tail, hunt and maneuver hits aiming to destroy each other.

The game is cool in terms of simulation, graphics, ACM, variety of ships, and of course, the gamification system implemented, nonetheless  the supportive community which is "unique" among many toxic gaming aggressive communities.

It's fun, it's cool, there is not much to learn but there is many thing to explore, try and test. But that is coming to an end when everything becomes a routine: Gamification routine and competing for numbers, not scores.

More gamification and sophisticated  equations, less adventure = boring routine.

There is limited mission types that give rewards to the player, I have been playing and finishing them since I played the game, but they are repeating over and over again: destroy, collect, escort, and activate. They are limited by time which the player has to login to finish certain tasks to no waste the reward, in the end, it becomes a routine which is not fun.

There are also team missions, sector conquest and last man standing modes as well as portals which are also fun but unfortunately they become a routine by time.

Setting up goals

To improve your spaceship, you need modules, weapons, seed-chips that require game currency. You can get them easily by playing the game more and more. There Galactic Standard as well which is like a space currency. You can get them either by buying them or through playing games, missions,  selling precious materials or even create spare-parts in the workshop from materials and minerals collected from space.

Setting up goals is very good, but sometimes it's conflicting with the overall goal. As the player "has" to play to "get" to "improve" or "update" his ship. It's not just playing for fun anymore but playing for numbers. Soon as you finish a certain goal (number) you go for another one then another one and so on.

A Space for improvement

There is always a space for improvement in such a great game,  the game developers are always pushing new updates and improvements, bug fixes and adding new features. However, I wish to see new scenarios and fun missions with more adventure less gamification, even though I believe the gamification system is awesome.

I am looking forward to other games from the same developers, so I hope they provide better support for Linux for their other titles.