Smugglers 5 Secession
| title: | Smugglers 5 Secession |
| url: | link |
| download page: | link |
| license: | shareware |
| genre: | Strategy Games |
| developer: | Nielsbauer games |
| platform: | Windows |
| release: | October 2012 |
| features: | text, sound, visuals |
| last edit by: | Dark |
Description
Smugglers 5 Secession is the latest game in the Smugglers series, a set of rpg/stratogy games from developer Niels bauer, games which have quite deservedly achieved a high reputation as some of the most addictive, complex, and atmospheric accessible games available. It is the 24th century. humanity has spread out from earth under the banner of the united federation, colonizing many worlds in a number of star systems. These new colonies however, living hundreds of lightyears from earth no longer believe in the sovereignty of the federation, and demand their own individual rights, forming a faction now known as the outer rim alliance. As war brewed between the Federation and outer rim, Others saw this as a chance to prophit, the ruthless syndicate, a number of colony worlds linked by their tendency towards piracy, and the peaceful coalition, a union of worlds wishing only to expand their commercial interest and stay apart from the war, though forced into conflict when the other three factions attacked. Smugglers 5 sees you commanding a starship for one of these four factions, trying to make a name for yourself in this warring galaxy in one of a number of professions. You might be a combat pilot, hunting down space pirates for prophit and eventually hoping to head into battle as commander of your own fleet. Or perhaps become a pirate yourself, dodging the law as you plunder merchant vessels, persuading local government to your side and perhaps becoming ruler of your own personal space empire. You might choose the path of a trader, keeping close watch on the markits as you transport goods from system to system , working up to owning factories and eventually even financing your faction to win the war.
In addition to picking a profession, you can also now pick a background story if you wish, which adds extra missions and challenges to your career as a space captain. Try to join the illusive smugglers guild, recover the lost treasure of the famous pirate solomon, or seak revenge on a pirate captain who once destroyed your home and kidnapped your sister.
As with the previous games in the series, gameplay is turn based, and involves flying from planet to planet, fighting, trading and exploring the unknown.
Smugglers 5 however is probably even more of a major leap forward in gameplay than the jump from Smugglers 3 to Smugglers 4 was, sinse even though the interface and several gameplay elements are the same as the previous installment, innumerable aspects of the game have been vastly tweaked and improved.
The first and most noticeable improvement, is a huge number of special events and mini adventures. Everytime you land on a planet, it can be explored, an exploration which leads to a gamebook style encounter with various choices that could be bennificial or detrimental to your progress. These might be as simple as going to a museum or indulging your curiosity about a given planet's natural environment, or large and intricate missions to attempt. with several stories per planet, not to mention the special encounters for your background story (over eighty thousand words of story text were written for the game), you can be certain that there is plenty of teretory to explore.
The turn based combat system of the game has recieved vast updates sinse Smugglers 4. Your pilot's skills, from the antagonizing taunt to the destructive focus beam are now no longer static,each turn several are pulled from a deck of skills for you to choose between. As you have a limited number of action points each turn, this makes combat a major leap forward in stratogy and far less just a matter of repeating the same sequence of techniques over and over again, particularly sinse now, each of the six professions in the game comes with their own unique skill tree with abilities to choose from, thus making combat as a bounty hunter very different to fighting as a trader. In addition, there are special events that occur during combat occasionally to shake things up, You could find yourself dodging asteroids, stunned by a computer virus, fighting an enemy at long range or even getting lucky with one of your ship's missiles.
Another major change to the game are the different endings. Now, as noted above pirates can control their own space empire, bribing governers to defect from their original faction. Such an empire must of course be kept safe, sinse the other four factions won't want a rival, which means being carefull to keep your systems defenses up and your minians supplied with weaponry to maintain your ongoing war. You must also manage your taxes and resources and keep your populous happy, sinse the last thing you want is your people deciding your not much good as an emperor after all. .
Traders can still win the war by buying war bonds to finance their faction, but now there are far more ways of making money than just trading. Setup asteroid bases to store your goods to sell at a more prophitable time, or buy and manage factories, running them either automatically or more prophitably by manual updates, and thus form your own commercial network across space.
Combat pilots can still capture a battleship and engage in fleet battles, but even here more options are available sinse fleets might contain devastating missiles or destructive orbital turrets as well as enemy ships or entire squadrens. Bounty hunters can attack pirate outposts, or destroy smaller bases in besieged systems to up your own side's chances of winning the war.
With six main professions, all with their own skill trees and different playing styles as well as three possible background stories and four different factions to choose between, Smugglers 5 is now more open ended than ever, and that's even before considdering the many new planetary exploration adventures or random events.
In terms of it's interface, Smugglers 5 uses the same "blind compatibility mode" as Smugglers 4 did, meaning that all in game images are labeled but you'll need to use a virtual curser to click on in game text to fly to different locations or activate combat abilities. Though the mode and interface are the same as in the previous title, in smugglers 5 there have been some accessibility changes too, noteably to the skills screen to make playing with a screen reader easier. Supernova, window eyes and Nvda all have workable virtual cursers that can be used effectively to navigate the game, ---- Jaws is possible, but takes a little more effort. Just remember to click on "game settings" each time you start the game, and then click on "blind compatability mode" to turn it on, otherwise many in game images will not be labeled in text.
As with Smugglers 3 and 4, a demo version of the game can be downloaded at the above link, which will let you play the first 300 turns, though you won't be able to leave the starting system. For the same reason, some of the professions that start with ships already equipped with jump engines such as Fleet trader and Pirate aren't available in the demo. The game costs 25 usd, and with the high level of replay value and open ended gameplay this is more than worth it. Additionally, for an extra 4 usd,you can buy the smugglers bundle, containing all four previous games, particularly Smugglers 4 and Smugglers 3 with all addons and expantions. Even considdering that due to some unlabeled images smugglers 2 isn't accessible, this is still a fantastic deal, (particularly sinse the original smugglers 1 seems quite playable too). Whether you buy the Smugglers bundle or not however, smugglers 5 is an incredibly fantastic game and well worth playing.
additional Resources.
For a preview of the game, take a listen to This trailer of the game from youtube Which explains in audio several of the games' new aspects.
A more in depth audio introduction has been recorded by a strange fellow calling himself Dark you can Download that here
For more information about how Smugglers 5 plays with NVda, see This guide by Stuee
And if you find yourself getting lost among the 25 star systems, see This textual explanation
currently, Smugglers 5 Secession, though released and highly playable is still being updated This means some extra tweaks, bug fixes and expantions in content are being added. So, to make certain you have the latest version, check your version number in the credits option of the main menu, and go to The smugglers 5 updates page found here to get the most current version of the game.
Further resources (such as a complete game guide), are going to be available in the future, plus, with the game continuing to be expanded through patches and updates, goodness knows what will be added next! If you loved Smugglers 3 and 4, or if your just interested in the most complex and replayable space rpg game you'll find, you'll absolutely want to try Smugglers 5.
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Updates: entry 2 Feb 22 and description 2 Feb 22