Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Feb 15, 2023

  Came expecting The Expanse, got The Hunt for Red October in Space instead. This is NOT a complaint.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 7, 2022

  This game has a high learning curve, but if you play through the tutorial, you'll have enough knowledge to start taking on the AI. Here's what your first skirmish is going to be like: You'll turn your radar off to reduce your signature, but you'll leave it on your little corvette scout ship. It will ping the enemy corvette. You'll then proceed to button bash and launch 30 missiles at that corvette. You'll bounce up and down with joy as it briefly turns into a star. Then once your corvette's sensors have recovered from the solar event. You'll notice several cruise missiles inbound to every ship that took part in your little missile orgy. Everyone on the flight deck will look to you for orders, and beads of sweat will begin to form on your upper lip. The room you are playing in will go dark red. A klaxon will sound off (bloody neighbour with his strange house alarm). "Your orders, sir" - Your 3 year old son. You look at him, wide eyed. sweat sheeting off your forehead like a water park. "Abandon ship" - You whisper at first. But your second doesnt hear you. "Sir?" - Your son says. "I SAID ABANDON SHIP GOD DAMMIT". You reach down and shake him into seeing sense. A dog barks (Who brings a dog on a damn warship?) You run out the door screaming as your fleet is reduced to slag. A great gaming experience. I recommend
• gamedeal user

  Jan 31, 2023

  Yeah, so recently bought this game, because the video on the steam page reminded me to space combat in The Expanse, and I thought I would give it a go. I'm not at all disappointed, and this game is basically just a tutorial, single player skirmish, and multiplayer skirmish, still the most original space combat concept I ever experienced. It's a great game well worth the price and here are the reasons why: - It's not just you can customise your ships' colour, or the ships. You can customise the missiles. The f...ng missiles. - No shields, just ships trying to bust through each other's armour with standard artillery, rail guns, missiles, or melt through them with lasers. High stakes on a new level, holy crap when the damage icons start racking up!!! Damage crews can repair and restore partially, but can't work miracles. - The first time you see a reactor explode. - Creative missile battle, different active defence systems, anti-missile turrets/flak cannons/lasers (worthless against ships) jamming, - There's value and purpose for different radar systems. Yes, radar systems. Detecting the enemy's positions and trying to jam their sensors while the enemy is trying the same is literally part of the the battle. - Epic and majestic battles. Ships look super cool. - Mods. Yes, above all, mods. - And yes, space combat is kinda like in The Expanse.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 15, 2022

  This "game" is a task force level space based naval simulation written by an actual Naval officer. Any person who has ever used actual military tech interfaces will see that immediately. realistic Newtonian physics, weapons loadouts and electronic warfare, plus, individual unit modular damage and damage control (!). No health bars here, and no guaranteed hits just because you clicked. It brings to mind the "Ansible" from Ender's Game, a gods eye view of an average of 5 ships against a similar sized opposing force. You have a points budget and an EXTREMELY capable fleet editor so you can design the task force of your dreams. Ship and formation navigation is quick-ish to learn, you need to grasp "plane then surface of sphere" to place your point. This has the best electronic warfare (EWAR) implementation I have ever seen. Jammer cones, separate fire control and sensor RADAR, Battle short ( As a Navy vet this really pleased me, all real military tech will let you run it until it burns up for emergency battle needs) and more. Plus, your EWAR emitters and controls can be hit and your unit is then reduced to visual targeting only. FAR from useless. Is your thing running silent and springing the trap? yep, you can do it. Hoards of missiles? yep. FIrin' yer LASER? that too. Like seeing tracer streams from point defense cannon? Perforate them with rail guns? it's in there. it's ALL THERE. Weapons act like they should. There is no magic tech here except for the ship drives and therin lies the magic. Ranges mean a lot and missiles have fuel limits. The damage control (DC) Teams aboard each ship are good at their jobs, but they are not magicians and systems degrade with damage. You can change their priorities if it gets desperate. NEBULOUS: Fleet Command is deep. supa-deep. It has great music, voice over, polished UI, and best of all it is still Early Access so it willl only get BETTER. This will train the newest fan of space combat as well as test the most experienced space sim grognard. You know that show that has the most realistic space combat yet seen? well this is the closest game you will get to that and probably always will be. A steal at $100 much less the measly $20 being asked. If this is even a little bit your thing GET IT NOW!
• gamedeal user

  Jun 8, 2022

  I don’t know where to begin. Although I’ve wanted to write a review for some time, I decided to wait until I had at least 100 hours on the game before reviewing it, to be sure that my review was as accurate as possible. I’ve now passed 100 hours, so, here it is: Within 24 hours of learning of NEBULOUS: Fleet Command’s existence, I had the game installed and was playing it. Within 7 days of purchase, the game had surpassed Space Engineers as my favourite game. For reference, I have almost 4000 hours on Space Engineers, and I’ve been dedicated to it as my favourite game by a longshot since I got it around 3 years ago (until I played Nebulous). If, like me, you’ve played games like Homeworld and wished that there was a space game with more realism and tactics. If you played Children of a Dead Earth and wanted to pit your mind against another in multiplayer. If you’ve watched The Expanse and wished there was an Expanse game… this is the game for you. The tactics in Nebulous are unlike any game I’ve played before. The sheer number of equally plausible, and customizable tactical opportunities that you are presented with in the game is simply fantastic. Want to sit in the back and guide swarms of missiles around asteroids in a surprise attack to your enemy, while having a couple ships up front jamming their sensors? Want to get in close with cannons and torpedoes? Want to sneak around the map with stealthy particle beam destroyers and rip their battleships to molten slag at close-range? Want to have a laser anti-missile fortress with long-range railguns? Any of these options and far more are equally plausible in Nebulous and are established in a very intelligent way making all of these gameplay styles extremely fun, for both you and your enemies. And the best part is that in-between matches you can customize your fleets (and save them) however you want and come with a different fleet every match if you wish, due to the game’s fantastic ship and fleet editor. While games like Homeworld have to rely on fast-paced explosions, graphics and massive fleets to keep you engaged, Nebulous does it with the tenseness of trying to get information on the enemy, in maneuvering your fleet into position and out-maneuvering the enemy fleet, and then in sudden and intense combat with beautiful visuals, effects, and a very high roof ceiling on skill. In other words, it has both incredibly engaging and fun gameplay, and awesome visuals and space battles. In terms of bugs, for an early access game, it has a staggeringly low amount. The only seriously problematic bug I’ve really experienced is that, although quite rarely, sometimes a few of my missiles fly into my own ships. But considering this is basically the only notable bug in an early access game that came into public hands only like 3 months ago… it seems like nothing. Nebulous is quite a complicated game, which is why it is so incredibly fun to play, although it is understandable to be concerned about the learning curve. Luckily, the developer spent a lot of time and effort on the tutorial. It includes voice acting, is interactive, and made learning the game’s mechanics quite easy. Of course, many of the details of the mechanics you learn better as you go, but… it’s really not a very bad learning curve compared to what you’d expect. This brings me to talk about the developers. Really… I’ve never had more faith in a developer team. They seem extremely responsible, intelligent, and skilled, more so than I’ve ever seen in such a small team (4 people). They really seem to value the player’s opinion and spend a lot of time figuring out how the game is played to figure out the best way to improve it, for new and existing players alike. Before I conclude, I do want to mention that this game is not AS realistic as I thought it was upon buying the game. Ships do have speed limits, and quite low at that. Space drag, (I know it sounds terrible), is still a thing in this game. However, the game’s mechanics, at least for me, completely make up for it for me. This coming from someone who is the biggest realism enthusiast I've ever met. Also, it is still significantly more realistic than Homeworld or any other of its multiplayer competitors, as there, actually, is no universal up-direction in the game. The spaceships fly like spaceships, using thrusters in all directions to change their velocity as needed, even flying backwards while shooting at the enemy if you want them to. I mean, the beginning of every match literally looks like a clip from The Expanse, with your fleet flying in backwards, main engines decelerating the ship to arrive at a stop at the edge of the battlespace. It’s not by any means perfect in realism, but in realism terms it's still far better than anything else I’ve seen (save for maybe Children of a Dead Earth, but that’s singleplayer). So, to sum up, NEBULOUS: Fleet Command is the most mentally engaging, cool, fun, and realistic multiplayer space strategy game I’ve ever played. I give it a resounding, 100% recommended to any hard sci-fi or military tactics/strategy fan. I can’t say enough of how awesome it is. Before writing this, I just came out of a truly epic match against some AI (which, admittedly aren’t the best, but they work well enough and have some seriously awesome improvements planned). To add to it, this is only in the game’s current state! With a grand-strategy game-mode, carriers, ship boarding, a single player campaign, and much more planned, along with the incredible mods I am even now seeing sprout from the great modding support of the game… I’m just telling you… you need to buy this game. It is unbelievably under-priced for the incredible gem that is NEBULOUS: Fleet Command.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 15, 2022

  TLDR version - I have good feeling about this. [h2]Longer review:[/h2] Ever since release of “Nexus - The Jupiter Incident” in 2004, which itself was born out of a failed RTS game project (Imperium Galactica 3), there have been few developers (and none backed by established publishers!) trying their hand at a game which have at front and center, fleet action in a semi-hard science fiction setting. Those that tried failed either due to lack of funding or due to lack of skill. So why do I think this attempt would be any better? Read on! So what is this game about? If you are veteran of the PC gaming who have played and liked “Nexus – The Jupiter Incident” and/or “Starshatter – The Gathering Storm” you are in for a treat. Also due to esthetics and focus on the fleet combat, many players that liked Homeworld series of games are reminded of that game. If you are a youngling who thinks that Snapchat or Facebook is something grandma used to seduce grandpa, you may like the strong “Expanse” vibe this game has. [h3] Game Mechanics [/h3] The core concept of this game is, as already mentioned, semi-realistic fleet combat in space – devs background from navy shines through with concepts like electronic warfare, outfitting of your assets, difference of sensor types and importance of positioning of your assets on the battlefield, which are typically glossed over in other games, are given proper/realistic importance in this game. GUI has also vibe from military designs from 70s or 80. Fair warning - if you are totally unfamiliar with concepts above, you may find the GUI strange. Also movement and targeting solutions will for some players be hard to get used too. There are no shields or cloaking devices in this game – if you want to reduce your sensor output, turn off you radar and communication devices. And reduce your radar cross section by orienting your craft. Or just turn on your jammer – just be aware that an anti-radiation missile may be coming your way… The ships in the game have no health bar – the damage is compartmentalized, meaning that components (placement determined by player during the design of the ship) take damage. Taking damage, depending on the component type, may result in damaged component (reducing its efficiency), killing of the crew or even a fire that damages the component over time. Catastrophic failure that disables the ship outright can also happen. Regardless, take enough damage and your ship is destroyed. All in all this is most complex and most “proper” fleet space action game currently in the market, only beaten in realism by “Children of the Dead Earth” (which you should not attempt to play if you don’t understand at least basics of orbital mechanics). What it has not, is a realistic movement of objects in space. At beast, it has semi-Newtonian representation of such movement which I think is good for this type of game. This means that ships have a max speed and no concerns regarding dV spent. [h3]Early Access stuff[/h3] Obligatory warning! Is Early Access these days often misused concept just to peddle half-finished products to naive customers? Yes, more often than not! But sometimes good indie games would never see light of the day without financing received from EA. That being said, buying EA games is not the smart thing to do from the perspective of a gamer. Currently, couple of days since release, the game has tutorial, skirmish vs AI and multiplayer option. You also can modify your fleets (by designing ships that fleet consists of) and there is decent number of components already present in the game. What is not in the game, but has been promised: a story campaign, carrier ships and carrier combat, boarding and number of QOL features (rebinding keys is not in-game yet). Roadmap can be found here: https://trello.com/b/ZNxJIGSQ/nebulous-public-roadmap The dev is listening to the players and has already released couple of patches with bugfixes or implementing changes based on the feedback from the players. At same time, the game has pretty clear goals that are not overly ambitious. In ten hours playing I have not encountered single bug. Discord channel is very active with dev presence. All in all, I see many signs of successful project being present and no red flags typical of steam EA games that never reach their end-goal. The value for the money is excellent if your are into multiplayer and just right if your are like me and prefer singleplayer.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 11, 2022

  Nebulous is a game for a very specific type of person. You might be that kind of person if you obsessively read Ender's Game, believe The Expanse has the best space battles put to film, and relax by reading about Soviet anti-ship missiles on Wikipedia. In Neb, you build and command small fleets of ships, choosing everything from weapons to modules to the exact specifications of your missile load out. You fly them against other people, weaving through asteroid fields in a deadly game where the right ship heading is the difference between victory and a sudden defeat, trying to suss out the enemy in a wilderness of electronic ghosts and guided missiles. This game is crunchy as all hell. Ships are not exactly fast, so when you make a move you have to commit, but contact can be an APM-clickfest where moments matter. Nebulous is not for everyone. But it's like someone reached into my dreams and made the perfect game. It's still in EA, so right now there's just multiplayer and a simple AI skirmish mode, but the first major update (missiles) was incredible, and the roadmap is ambitious. Skill curve is very high, so best start climbing the ladder now.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 4, 2022

  the venn diagram of nebulous players and expanse viewers is basically a circle
• gamedeal user

  Aug 20, 2022

  I am a little mixed on whether or not to recommend this game but the sheet depth and ambition the developer has for it is unmatched in anything I have ever played before and am excited to see where they take it. That being said I do not think most casual gamers will enjoy the level of complexity the game has so it is definitely not for everyone. Pros: -The amount of customization is mind blowing. Check out this trailer (https://youtu.be/U4UHQ7qa3fM?t=48) for the missile customization they are adding and imagine the hundreds of ways you can customize even them, never mind the ships that carry them. -Despite being complex the tutorial does a good job introducing you to all the systems in the game. Although mastering each system and strategy in general will take a LOT of practice. Cons -The complexity is absolutely a double edged sword. Sometimes playing feels more like work than enjoyable. For example, ship turrets have limited traversal angles (like they should) but movement and the weapons are completely independent so if you give a fire order on a ship that cant be hit given the ships current angle the ship won't automatically turn to bring the guns to bear for you, you have to manually pilot each ship to ensure they can actually shoot (in 3D, while the other ship is on the move). Even telling your ships to literally orbit the enemy ship isn't enough to guarantee they will keep LoS because you can't force ships to keep a certain orientation while orbiting something meaning constantly rolling the ship as they orbit. -There is a pause feature during battles which makes it much easier to control everything but there is no "speed up" function so the down time during a fight can take FOREVER -Jamming seems way too OP at the moment, the AI can keep you blinded until they are at arms length and it seems impossible to counter (nothing care fire without a target lock). One match I unloaded about 20 anti-radar missiles followed by about 40 semi-active missiles at single battleship ~4000m away with 3 ships locked on and painting the target and the missiles made it about 500 meters before they still successfully jammed me sending half my missile load careening uselessly through space. -As of now there is no campaign, only skirmishes. Which means there is no "long game" with spending resources and research, etc. It makes it hard to feel justified spending hours on a single battle when the results don't have a long term impact anyway. If you like "hard" games then this is absolutely for you. But it is a significant time/effort investment to play so be prepared.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 23, 2022

  1. Set up Abyss map with 10 ship fleets and max CPU players. 2. Put on Dvorak's New World Symphony 4th Movement. 3. Watch the pretty lights and drunkenly muse about history and philosophy. 4. Become Yang Wenli and profit.