VEGA Conflict

Online strategy games that force you to wait real time in order to build things were popular a few years ago, but they would only be playable in browsers. This way, they were more of an occasional distraction than a game, something to check up on every now and again. As it turns out, the genre grew a lot in the meantime, which means that more and more actual games use the same mechanics nowadays.

VEGA Conflict is a sci-fi strategy game that allows you to build a spaceship fleet and equip it with all sorts of weapons, although that takes a lot of resources and many hours. In order to get the resources for the fleet, a base is required, and it needs a variety of modules to function properly. Unlike in regular strategy games, on the other hand, building stuff takes actual time, and there’s not much you can do other than wait or pay.

Your base can be augmented with modules that facilitate defense, resource gathering or combat. Each module needs to be powered as well, so building placement is important too. Even if the action takes place in space, on the other hand, the view is fixed and you don’t have to worry about three-dimensional placement. Resources are everywhere as well, but it takes a long time to gather them.

There are new ships added on a regular basis, and they are pretty powerful. This makes the experience dynamic and engaging, but it also puts a lot of pressure on the players. Powerful ships take a really long time to build, sometimes even weeks. While this wouldn’t be so horrible under normal circumstances, the fact that other players can spend a lot of cash to bypass this waiting period makes the game very unbalanced and annoying.

It doesn’t help that most in-game events require powerful fleets for you to stand a chance in them, and it’s that much more frustrating when you realize that all your work can go to waste if you get destroyed. Thankfully, it is possible to repair ships, but it obviously takes a lot of time to do so. For an MMO that should theoretically keep players engaged over long periods of times, there is just too much waiting involved.

All things considered, VEGA Conflict is not a very bad game, but it’s mechanics have the power to push away almost any devoted fan. Since you either have to wait entire weeks for something to be built or spend a lot of cash on ships that become obsolete in a rush, most people would probably choose to do neither.