Played this one quite a bit. I really like the concept, but the execution is just slightly lacking. The ability to customize is fantastic, as is the ability to order around your fleets. The problems are:

1. Differentiation between races and outfits is too slight. Huge swings in stats/price could lead to things getting unbalanced (and the one race that's the most different is unbalanced), but the gear on offer is just too similar to other entries in its category (of which there aren't that many). If you get a shield that's advertised as 'fast-recharge', but has a recharge rate just a tiny bit higher than the standard one, it's kind of disappointing. Likewise if you switch to a new faction to discover that aside from ship classes and small passive ability, their only advantage is a single racial outfit that's (again) almost identical to the standard one.
   
2. A game that's essentially a management sim has to have decisions to make, tradeoffs between cost, power, weight, etc. This game has those in spades, except for the problem above. But, it also has to have careful balance, so no one linear strategy (always get the cheap/expensive stuff, just spam A, etc.) dominates. I would assert that the game fails this second test. Due to eccentricities in how damage is calculated, it's possible to build a 'tank' ship that's almost invulnerable to attack. Combine that with the prevalence of (arguably) the game's best weapon, a multi-warhead missile launcher with the best range and striking power available (and because of the multiple warheads, it handily defeats the point defense system options - and did I mention missiles have infinite ammo?), and you have a recipe for an intense stalemate. If you avoid such degenerate tactics, the game can be fun, but I would rather see exploitative things nerfed out of existence.
   
3. Playing the campaign mode is the most enjoyable for me, once everything's unlocked. But the mac version is buggy, and I've been unable to get it to work properly. It'll play the standard campaign fine, but won't load up either of the other 2 maps. The whole point of any TBS style 4X game (which this expansion turns it into) is the variety in the randomized map and different factions, etc., but this game comes with exactly one galaxy map to try and conquer (later patched to 3, but that's still too few, and as noted, they don't work right). There is a user-created program that will make randomized maps, but only for the win version apparently.
   
4. Oh, and lastly, combat is entirely non-interactive (you're basically watching a movie of how well your forces do), and it maxes out at 8x speed. Fine, except that your fleets start far enough apart and often move at such glacial speeds that it takes a minute or more of staring at wallpaper peeling until they make contact.

So, I wanted to like this more than I did. It's still good, but falls short of greatness.

Very enjoyable watching my fleet destroying the enemy fleet. It takes a while to figure out the best way to play, and once you figure it out, the fun starts. Starting from this game, Positech became one of my favourite indie game devs.

As a standalone game (without DLC), Gratuitous Space Battles is mostly just an excercise in optimization - it isn't especially difficult to beat most of the missions with a generic all-around fleet, but you are only really rewarded for doing it with the least amount of cash.

The issue is, the feedback on how well you are doing is... lacking. There isn't a sandbox mode to quickly test fleets against each other, the after-battle graphs are impenetrably thick and there's no explanation I found for what "most effective" means, especially considering different weapons will have different uses (e.g. anti-fighter versus anti-shield versus anti-hull).

It's frankly a bit more of a mess than it needs to be.

By far the worst thing about this game is the way the developer tried to nickel-and-dime (or five-dollar-bill) us to death with minor, overpriced expansion packs that you pretty much needed to get if you wanted to keep participating in all the community had to offer. Now you can get the "Complete Pack" which is not a bad deal for newcomers but you don't want THIS one, which is the basic game.

The concept was actually fun and I got some good enjoyment out of it but unless I hear he's dropped his stupid revenue model, I don't plan to buy Gratuitous Space Battles 2. I got a bad enough taste in my mouth with how he handled the first one (if you bought every pack you'd end up paying like $15 for the base game + $42 for the DLC, so basically $57 for a game that is worth maybe $20 all total, relative to other Steam offerings. Those expansions do not contain $6 worth of new content.)

Rating: 6.5

This game is about designing ships and upgrading them with new hulls, armors, weapons etc, using experience points gained on won battles throughout the campaign. Once your fleet is deployed you can only watch the fight in a non-interactive way, speed up execution and nothing else.

At the moment of this writing, price is a bit high: I would recommend waiting for a discount and then buy it if you like strategic games and if you are a patient person, because you'll end up planning and reading a lot.

If you love strategy and senseless violence, then you love this one.

Build spaceships and send them into unconnected battle scenarios. Win the battle and get some money to unlock factions, hulls and equipment. Since you just watch the battle unfold, The game is in the ship designing and pre-battle planning stage. Watching the battles can be fun, But lack of an overall campaign would help give more meaning to the scenarios.

I played thru 6 out 12 scenarios using the tutorial ships given to you at the beginning of the game. So, I never felt the need to design my own ships. I'll stop here, File it under Play Again? And look into the campaign game expansion. Or wait for Gratuitous Space Battles 2.

nice idea of game =)

A decent distraction but ultimately let down by shallow mechanics. Can't recommend, but it isn't exactly bad either.

Why didn't I like this game? It's all in the setup. This wasn't exactly a surprise -- it's an advertised feature. All the tactics and thought take place during setup, and the actual battle itself is the computer running the numbers to see who wins. My problem with this mechanic is that it hardly feels like a game. If something goes wrong, there's absolutely nothing you can do but watch your fleet get destroyed. I'd rather be able to manage things as they happen. The hands-off battle is kind of a neat concept, but it's not for me.

If you think you might be interested, absolutely try the demo first.

Full review here: http://postlaunch.blogspot.ca/2012/01/gratuitous-space-battles.html

Honestly, it's a well put together game. There isn't any bugs or issues that I was able to see, and doesn't require a bunch of amazing resources to run.

But, it just isn't all that much _fun_. The premise is that you build and design your fleet and then have a go at another computer controlled fleet battle. While the idea sounds epic, the execution left a bit to be desired. Since the battle itself plays out by the computer, and not via any type of user control, all the thought has to be put into the design of the ship.

While that itself, seems reasonable, you quickly find out in the AI battles, that your AI of your ship is a brain-dead hacked ♥♥♥♥♥. It will incessantly pound with small fire on another ships shields, doing no damage, while taking out small ships with the big guns, resulting in your ship getting routed because the big-guns should have been used elsewhere. That and any idea of using tactics of any sort is thrown right out the window since you have zero control over the outcome other than via _design_.

So, while the game is expertly written, and is good for a few hours of laughs, there just isn't enough there to keep you interested very long.

Buy it on a Steam sale day for laughs, otherwise save your money for a real game.

I don't like games where you have to study hours and read pages and pages of text before playing. In this game, you have to study MORE, read MORE, before and during the game!
Also, the battles are pure strategy and very slow.
I just find it too complex to have fun.

But for fans of HARD space sci-fi, that like strategic wars, starships, details of equipments and technology, this is a full plate.

To start my account.
This is the best game ever.
10+e19-10eemasogoodomy2323/10

This game is literally God.

FUn game. Lots of variation for very gratuitous space battles.

The number of hours I've logged in this game should give you an idea of how replayable this is IF you like this kind of game, which I obviously do :3

How I would describe the game:

-a couple or handful of hours of campaign, which really equates to; getting you used to the game mechanics
-then you have custom campaigns, this is where all of my time has gone; the numerous combinations of ships to create your fleets are absolutely fantastic, there are tons of commands to program into the ships, tons of balancing to do while creating your ships, revisions, reasons for 'special mission' ships, and best of all you are going up against fleets created by other users

Quite obviously, I recommend this, but only for the people who love strategy (and the weapons/shields/ships have a very star trekky feel, which may influence some in one way or another.)

Wouldn't say it's worth full price of 15$, and it's disappointing that somehow the DLC isn't cross platform while the original game is.

In this game you can customize 3 classes of spaceships (fighters, frigates and cruisers) and change their weapons loadouts, armor thickness and shield strength (all about the tradeoffs). It comes with a few (10-ish) single player campaign missions and 3 races each with it's own set of ship hulls.

The learning curve is there but it's not steep, you can get away with skipping the tutorial. What you do in this game is you customize your ships, and on a budget with restricted amounts of pilots you deploy them into pre-determined battlezones, you customize the AI a little and then watch the battle ensue. You cannot manually control or micromanage ships while the battle is on-going, you must decide it all before the battle.

It's a unique but cool take on real time strategy. In space. You can expect to get anywhere between 3-10 hours from it depending on how fast you catch on to techniques for easy victories, and how much time you spend customizing your ships. For me, as soon as I'd unlocked all the modules and finished all the campaign missions, it was over. There wasn't even any lore to get into. I didn't have any interest in online play either.

Overall it was a decent and fun game, but I found it lacking in content (both mission quantity and amount of things to do for honor points. Once you've unlocked everything, there's no reward for winning battles any longer), not quite worth a 15$, but if you catch it on sale, it's worth at least one playthrough :)

These battles sure are gratuitous.

To much long-term planning for my tastes. The main game loop involves you designing ships, deciding which ones to deploy, then assigning orders. Then you just wait and see if it works. If it doesn't work, then you have to try to figure out what went wrong and how to win. I just find that loop to not be very engaging and be more mentally exhausting than stimulating. The amount of thinking about tradeoffs and all the decisions the game wants you to make are more stressful than fun - it's pretty much everything I don't want to do in my free time (it's the same sort of mental exhaustion I encounter at work).

This game does exactly what it says on the tin. It has lots of battles. And they're in space. And they're completely gratuitous. No plot or characterisation to get in the way. Just lots of lasers and explosions.

The ships are beautifully designed. The graphics and special effects are glorious. And while the sound effects are a bit quiet compared to the rest of the game, especially when zoomed out (which is also not that good - not possible get the entire map into view), they are still as epic as you'd expect building-sized missiles and highway-thick lasers to sound.

That said, this game is not without its flaws. The zoom function, I've already mentioned - sometimes, you want to get an entire battle into view, just to see the sheer scope of things. Not possible, however. Fighters have little love in this game, having the smallest amount of customisation options. It is also quite easy to unlock everything, myself having done so after the first eight or so battles.

I've read some of the other reviews. They complain that despite the vast amounts of customisation, the battles are not conducive to that, instead forcing players to stick to the same narrow tactics, strategies and loadouts, in order to win. This is not true. Admittedly, it is possible to win that way. However, the real difficulty in the game is abandoning your OP strategy, and trying to win with your favourites, rather than the "proper way". Is it difficult? Yes. Is it frustrating? Yes. But, that is half the fun of the game.

Other people are giving negative reviews, because they missed the point of the game entirely. They were expecting an RTS, and what they got was something completely different. You are not a fleet admiral. You are not on the battlefield, commanding your ships. (Well, unless you select the 'direct control' button). What you are, is the guy on the space station, outfitting your faction's ships before the battle, then giving orders to the captains of said ships. You are the guy whose job it is to make sure as many of your guys come back. And doing it within a budget.

As to the people who complain about the cost of the DLCs. So what? You don't have to buy them. And if you paid attention to the developer's website, you'd know that the price is due to the cost of getting the new ships designed - The developer does not create ships himself, instead hiring a 3d designer from out of house, and contracting it to him.

One nitpick I do have though, is that the 'Complete Pack' on Steam is anything but, since it does not include the Parasite or Outcast factions.

In conclusion, a beautiful game, with some flaws, but nothing that should put you off getting it. I've had hours of fun with this game, and it has infinite replayability.