Greetings! I'm Archduke Astro and I'm glad to be here.
I've been swimming in the deep end of the space-themed 4X gaming pool ever since the 1980s. I began this journey by way of overcaffeinated, day-long solo playthroughs of
"Reach for the Stars", by SSG. Probably almost none of the age-40-and-younger forum members have ever heard of it, but RFTS is strongly reputed to be
the very first computer-based 4X game, going public an entire decade before MOO.
I still shudder at the memories of how
incredibly devious & challenging the enemy AI was; it was delightful as well as torturous. Reach For the Stars' massive replayability easily hooked me. Regardless of genre, many far more "slick," visually polished, modern computer games provide less than one-fifth of the replay value of this one long-forgotten progenitor of all later 4X computer games.
From RFTS, it was a smooth progression for me to MOO 1 and 2, Space Empires, GalCiv 1 & 2 (but
not 3), SOTS (but
not SOTS
2) and most recently Endless Space. Among them all, MOO2 is my all-time favorite, with the original SOTS as a close second-place winner.
I'm relieved that the 4X gaming sub-genre survived the Kerberos/Paradox hara-kiri otherwise known as SOTS 2. We can't afford to have any more 4X developers and publishers STUPIDLY squander the goodwill of their customers. I'm fully aware that I'm taking a risk by pre-ordering SiS.
But ---
before doing so, I had just read all 109 (as of today) pages of Arioch's
excellent Outsider series. Great stuff!!!
The fact that the Loroi are in part a tribute to the Gamilons of
"Star Blazers" (aka
"Space Battleship Yamato") [ * my forum Avatar (lol!) comes from there * ] really piqued my interest further. I then found my way around Arioch's website to the Gallery, where numerous examples of SiS visual design elements were to be found.
After that, I simply HAD TO learn more about the game, and I took care to do it thoroughly. The more I read about it on the SiS website, the more I was
impressed as well as interested. Sven's design imperatives truly sang out to me; he really intends to make SiS into what sounds like my own personal "dream game" in the 4X genre.
2016's going to be a very interesting year! I look forward to trying my luck with the beta build.