Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander

[Robert Maxwell]

I picked up this little gem a few days ago as it left Early Access.

Some have compared it to FTL, but apart from pixel art and being set in space and having space ships, they are really nothing alike. The gameplay is totally different.

So, what's a better comparison? It's like XCOM meets Star Trek. You have a base which is expanded in a very XCOM-like fashion. You have crew officers who belong to one of three divisions: tactical, engineering, or science. Each has different strengths and abilities which lend a rock-paper-scissors flavor to combat.

The premise is that the Terran Federation has been all but annihilated by a Chruul invasion. A small band of survivors crews Halcyon 6, an ancient starbase discovered not long before the genocide. Armed with its resources and your own determination, you set about scouring the galaxy for survivors (who provide you with needed resources), protecting them, and building up your fleet capabilities to take the fight to the Chruul in the hopes of beating them back to wherever they came from.

Alongside this you have pirates and a number of alien races, each of which may assist or hurt you depending on their disposition and how you deal with them.

Getting down to nuts and bolts, the basic game activities are:

1. Explore rooms in your base, fight the leecher infestations in many of those rooms, and then build useful modules in said rooms. Each room expands your resources or other capabilities in some way.
2. Research technology. This part is pretty thin. You gain technology simply by spending the resources to unlock it. New options in the tech tree are unlocked by making progress through the game. New technologies give you access to new/better rooms and ship types.
3. Build ships, crew them with officers, then send them out on missions. These consist of fighting Chruul infestations, shutting down their portals, defending remaining Federation outposts from attacks, doing favors for aliens/pirates, and gathering resources from outposts (this last one is the most tedious part of the game, honestly).
4. Combat. Both on your base and in space, combat is up to 3-on-3. Each crewman/ship has a set of abilities which deal damage or repair it, and some of these inflict or exploit status effects. So combat strategy consists of figuring out which statuses to inflict in order to exploit them (deal more damage) and achieve victory faster. Using these effects wisely is often the difference between a win and a loss. Unlike XCOM, there's no grid to move your ships around. The ships are essentially arranged on a skirmishing line and any ship can attack any other. (Ground combat works much the same.)
5. Crew management. Crew are resources like any other, while officers are rare. But officers are able to level up, which lets you unlock new abilities on their skill tree. They also acquire traits through their actions in the game, and these could make them better or worse at their jobs. (The last part is very much like VIP traits in Stellaris.) You need officers not just to command your ships, but to explore parts of the base and carry out activities in base rooms. You will usually never have enough officers for everything you want to do, so building up your crew supply in order to gain more officers is always a priority.

Combat and base management are really the big points of the game. It's not grand strategy like Stellaris or other 4X games. The approach is more close-up and tactical, like XCOM, and resource management requires you to pay attention to what you have and what you need. The main resources are fuel (for moving ships around), dark matter (repairing ships, doing various activities on your base), crew (for running your ships and creating officers), and materials (for virtually all building activities).

I haven't finished the game yet, although I've gotten pretty far. I have tier-2 ships and have unlocked Chruul technology. Looks like a new chain of story events is opening up as a result. I may post more thoughts if they occur to me.

The game is $16.99 on Steam until the 15th, so if you're interested, go grab it! I'd say it's well worth that price given the entertainment value I've had so far. There are a few minor bugs (mostly things like events not expiring when they should) but nothing game-breaking or frustrating, just minor annoyances. The UI could also use a bit more polish. I'd say these are very minor niggles given what is overall a very fun experience.

 

[SPCTRE]

You had me at XCOM!

This sounds actually pretty neat.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

So, right at the point where I felt like the game was becoming a bit too easy, a new Chruul event began and it's got me on the ropes. I may have to sacrifice some survivor outposts. While I'm a little miffed by that, I appreciate that the story progresses in phases and that the midgame is bringing a new challenge to test me.

I definitely don't have enough ships, though! That's my own mistake. I didn't focus enough on generating crew members early on because I didn't realize their importance and how slowly they generate. If I find myself in a no-win situation I may just start over and try to do better with what I know now.

I'm loving how each officer is distinctive and has their own types of abilities. I have one guy who is kind of crazy--all his abilities are practically suicidal, like ramming ships and raining fire on them from close up.

 

[Whizzer]

It's a very good game, but it has some harsh spikes in difficulty.
I went from: "Easy fight, easy fight, ..." to "OMG my 3 level 9 officers just got murdered in a single ground combat"

 

[Whizzer]

Just finished my first play through after 21 hours of playtime.
The game is very much worth the money and time, but for me just a few things need some tweaking.

1) Space combat can be pretty repetitive, and there is a lot of that.
2) Ground combat is pretty much based on you having some luck when your officers ground combat skills are generated in character creation. Either you get some great combos, or you will notice how bad your team is when your first Spire combat comes around.
3) Quest tracking - Had some rather annoying bugs with quests never leaving the to do list, even though they are done or no longer achievable