Pretty cool game for those who like relatively free-form building, designing units to deal damage and mitigate it for themselves. Especially if you're into diesel- and/or steampunk.
The things you have to account for and balance out in a unit's design are quite numerous and varied; Everything costs something and everything weighs something. A ship's maximum altitude - which is very important -is determined by its weight vs. lift, for example. This is probably the strongest part of the game.

So in combat, you'll be witnessing how those designs fare against the NPC (or enemy player) units; Did you actually give your ship enough coal to stay aloft through the average battle? Oh, it turns out this one has a massive structural weakness and will be cut in half by one or two rockets. Great job!
Each unit has a variety of commands, which is on a cool-down. You can pause at will (at least in SP) to think about your next moves as long as you need.
You have to manage the effective ranges of your units' weapons against those of the enemy, the disposition of your fleet to mitigate catastrophe, account for firing arcs to maximise firepower, keep track of their ammo, coal, water and repair stores.


The campaign ties this all into a metagame, in which you have to balance the costs of researching more technology to incorporate into your units; building, maintaining, repairing and refitting them, with taking territory, holding it against rival factions, and clearing out abominations in your territory that hurt your bottom line.

Unfortunately no part of the game is without idiosyncrasies. The UI is universally "functional, but crude" and the same could be said of every element to some degree.
The campaign for example lacks some relatively simple stuff, like showing how many ships are in each of your fleets without the player having to click on it, or being able to assign units into their own separate fleets instead of merging into one because they're in the same sector. A "repair all" button is absent for when it makes sense (edit: repair all button has been added).

Campaign AI is kinda bad; They usually stick to one or two ship designs, and either spam them because they have the income, or don't because they can't, so it's often a game of who's got the bigger and better deathstack.

Combat AI is hit-or-miss - Single ships will often stay put in the face of said deathstack's 1000 cannons. Meanwhile in small-scale engagements of fairly equal strength, they can be quite conniving, constantly trying to stay out your fields of fire.


Combat's biggest flaw is the apparent supremacy of explosive weapons and planes, which are pretty damn difficult to do anything about en-masse unless you've designed your ships to withstand them specifically; Missiles especially can practically saturate your entire fleet regardless of the ranges involved, and vice-versa.

The battlespace is quite restrictive and the only limit to ships you(or AI) can deploy in a battle is how many you brought, and how many of them fit in the deploy zone. In your average campaign battles get pretty crowded pretty fast, making battles fairly static.

But ultimately, it's still pretty addicting, and it's backed up by pretty damn good presentation. The soundtrack is quality. Gunfire, explosions, impacts and collisions all sound as they should. The visuals are nice, for the resolution of the sprites they're really quite detailed; fire, smoke and explosions are pretty, ship components disintegrate as they take damage.

And finally the game's still receiving updates a couple years post-release, with a fairly major feature on the way as of now.
For the price, it's more than worth it if this is your thing.

Pretty cool game for those who like relatively free-form building, designing units to deal damage and mitigate it for themselves. Especially if you're into diesel- and/or steampunk. The things you have to account for and balance out in a unit's design are quite numerous and varied; Everything costs something and everything weighs something. A ship's maximum altitude - which is very important -is determined by its weight vs. lift, for example. This is probably the strongest part of the game. So in combat, you'll be witnessing how those designs fare against the NPC (or enemy player) units; Did you actually give your ship enough coal to stay aloft through the average battle? Oh, it turns out this one has a massive structural weakness and will be cut in half by one or two rockets. Great job! Each unit has a variety of commands, which is on a cool-down. You can pause at will (at least in SP) to think about your next moves as long as you need. You have to manage the effective ranges of your units' weapons against those of the enemy, the disposition of your fleet to mitigate catastrophe, account for firing arcs to maximise firepower, keep track of their ammo, coal, water and repair stores. The campaign ties this all into a metagame, in which you have to balance the costs of researching more technology to incorporate into your units; building, maintaining, repairing and refitting them, with taking territory, holding it against rival factions, and clearing out abominations in your territory that hurt your bottom line. Unfortunately no part of the game is without idiosyncrasies. The UI is universally "functional, but crude" and the same could be said of every element to some degree. The campaign for example lacks some relatively simple stuff, like showing how many ships are in each of your fleets without the player having to click on it, or being able to assign units into their own separate fleets instead of merging into one because they're in the same sector. A "repair all" button is absent for when it makes sense (edit: repair all button has been added). Campaign AI is kinda bad; They usually stick to one or two ship designs, and either spam them because they have the income, or don't because they can't, so it's often a game of who's got the bigger and better deathstack. Combat AI is hit-or-miss - Single ships will often stay put in the face of said deathstack's 1000 cannons. Meanwhile in small-scale engagements of fairly equal strength, they can be quite conniving, constantly trying to stay out your fields of fire. Combat's biggest flaw is the apparent supremacy of explosive weapons and planes, which are pretty damn difficult to do anything about en-masse unless you've designed your ships to withstand them specifically; Missiles especially can practically saturate your entire fleet regardless of the ranges involved, and vice-versa. The battlespace is quite restrictive and the only limit to ships you(or AI) can deploy in a battle is how many you brought, and how many of them fit in the deploy zone. In your average campaign battles get pretty crowded pretty fast, making battles fairly static. But ultimately, it's still pretty addicting, and it's backed up by pretty damn good presentation. The soundtrack is quality. Gunfire, explosions, impacts and collisions all sound as they should. The visuals are nice, for the resolution of the sprites they're really quite detailed; fire, smoke and explosions are pretty, ship components disintegrate as they take damage. And finally the game's still receiving updates a couple years post-release, with a fairly major feature on the way as of now. For the price, it's more than worth it if this is your thing.