While it means they haven’t been able to do as much with the rest of the game as a result, you can hardly argue they’ve put their eggs in the wrong basket. The graphical fidelity and mechanical design of these battles could rival anything you’d get from a ‘AAA’ studio you can read Marcello’s analysis of the systems here. If there’s one thing the Australian team knows how to do, it’s a space-based tactical combat engine. It’s a game that relies heavily on its combat engine to impress and provide as much enjoyment as possible, which we can confidently say it succeeds in doing.īlack Labs Games’ previous title, Star Hammer: The Vanguard Prophecy, was the precursor: a similar combat system with a more generic sci-fi IP, different fleet management minutia and epic, orchestral music. These ‘turns’ are played out in 15-second chunks of real-time space combat, with the action auto-pausing so that you can issue fresh orders and manoeuvres. Officially a turn-based strategy game, it offers a variant form of ‘WEGO’ mechanics where both opponents issues orders and resolve their turns at the same time (instead of the traditional IGO/UGO system of tactical turn-based titles). It can be said, then, that Deadlock is unique in its own offering. Apart from the Nexus mod, these are mainly 4X or real-time strategy games that involve base-building and empire management, as well as fleet battles. Most of the truly interesting stuff comes from the modding community: Search hard enough and you can unearth mods for Nexus, Homeworld 2, Sins of a Solar Empire, Star Wars: Empire at War & others that try to import the setting onto the base mechanics. There have been other past attempts, of course, but the history of official BSG games is one of a largely under-utilised IP Couple of gems, perhaps, but nothing in a while.

How great would it be, I always thought, to play a game that would encompass these titanic clashes of chrome and steel And then Battlestar Galactica Deadlock happened. Budget and the specifics of the plot meant that these could only go so far, but they were none-the-less pretty spectacular. While the re-imagined 2003/4 TV show of Battlestar Galactica was more grounded in intrigue, politics and (in later series) pseudo-religious concepts, it always had its fair share of space battles.

Homeworld 2 battlestar galactica mod