Earlier this year I assembled a crew to play the game Artemis. (You can read about that original experience here.) We found the experience suitably fun that we re-convened for another session after the game had undergone some updates.

The Artemis and the Intrepid

Let me jump right in with the best experience of the day, when six of us tried to crew two different ships…

DS1 is in trouble. A fleet of enemies approaches from the west. Worse, two powerful ships flank from the north and south.

This is a mission requiring more than just one ship. The crew of the Artemis agree to split up — half board her sister-ship the Intrepid. This could be a problem — the six officers fully crewed the Artemis but will be doubling up on some roles now that they are spread across two ships.

I volunteer to be the Weapons officer on the Artemis. Knowing that my fellow Helm and Engineering officers will need total concentration on their roles, I take on the jobs of Science Officer and Communications Officer as well. This will keep me busy…

The Intrepid is first into the fray, and skirmishes with the massive ship from the south. With powerful beam weapons and strong shields it more than outmatches either of our ships. Worse, the Intrepid soon discovers that this one can teleport…

The Artemis joins the fight. We fire torpedoes at the enemy, but moments before impact it teleports away. Knowing there is little else to do, we close to trade beam weapon fire, certain that the Intrepid will help.

Our plan is working at wearing down the foe when suddenly a new contact appears on-screen right behind us. The ship from the north — just as powerful as its sister from the south — is able to cloak and has snuck right up on us!

We manage to warp away, but take damage. Worse, our energy reserves are dwindling and our plan to take a moment out of the battle to dock with DS1 seems less likely all the time.

The southern ship approaches for another pass at us. Our energy reserves too low to flee, we put what we can into our fore shields and face the enemy. The Intrepid, faring better than us, zips behind the approaching ship. Our combined beam fire spooks the foe and it teleports away.

Our attention turns toward the other ship, rapidly making up the distance gained by our emergency warp. Our energy levels are zero now. Shutting down off all that he can, our engineer manages to generate a small amount of power. Lowering the shields to assist with power savings, I request power to impulse and torpedo tubes. I ask the helmsman to turn his back to the approaching foe as I click to load mines into our tubes.

Our turning speed is agonisingly slow. We manage to unload our stockpile of mines just in time, and begin inching away to get some distance. The enemy is upon us. He hits the first mine, the second — his shields are down! — and the third… He’s gone. Cloaked? Teleported? No… the science console’s sensors show he’s gone for real. We’ve destroyed him!

The engineer isn’t looking too happy though. With limping engines and disabled shields, we weren’t far enough away from that final mine. Status is shown on-screen. The rear three-quarters of the ship is shown in red.

Even the crew of the Intrepid pause to remark at the sight of that status screen.

Damage control crews have suffered terrible losses, some totally obliterated, yet they valiantly work to repair the systems. If only I had raised the shields before that mine went off… even with our near-zero power… it may have saved those men.

Noticing that the teleporting enemy is returning, we ask, what still works? Warp? No. Impulse? No. Maneuvering jets? Just barely. Beams? Yes. Shields? Yes.

Turn to face the enemy! Full power to fore shields and beams! Nothing to do but sit and wait.

It comes into range. We exchange fire, all eyes on the readout on each ships’ fore shields. We’re losing.

A fast-moving blip streaks across the flickering tactical display. It’s the Intrepid! Boasting non-zero energy reserves and a mostly-operational ship it adds its beam power to ours. The enemy shields collapse, its hull is consumed by orange fire. It is destroyed!

Both crews break into a brief moment of celebration. Our engineer powers down all systems and directs the surviving repair crews through the damaged decks of the Artemis.

The moment is short lived. More ships are appearing at the edge of our tactical view. It appears the western fleet has broken through the minefield…

What’s New in 1.51?

Missions:

• These are scripted scenarios that feature character dialog and scripted events.
• Story. Even a simple mission, where you are tasked to investigate anomalous nebulae (which turn out to interfere with ship systems), lends an element of story to what would otherwise be a duller kill-em-all affair.
• Different Game Mechanics. Good missions can really change the nature of the game. One mission involved a profiteering commander who sold our torpedoes and nuclear warheads to an arms dealer in exchange for a ramscoop that meant we could harvest energy from gas clouds (and hence be less likely to require precious energy from his station). The lack of heavy warheads, and the addition of this energy-harvesting mechanic, really changed the tactics we used.
• Variable Quality. We only played missions that came with 1.51. Even so, some were interesting, some were simple combat scenarios.
• Difficult to Choose Difficulty. It’s very hard to know what difficulty level to choose when doing a mission if the author doesn’t explicitly mention it. A difficulty level of 5 is impossible on some missions and trivial on others.

Engineering:

• Power distribution. Minor improvements here.
• Overheating. You can “overclock” a component to get more power, but it will overheat if you don’t also allocate coolant. There’s a limited flow of coolant so you need to be careful.
• DamCom Teams. Totally new, and quite nifty, is the damage repair team system. The engineer moves teams about on a three-dimensional representation of the ship. The teams slowly repair whatever sector they visit and they can only travel through repaired seconds. There were times we couldn’t repair, say, something at the front of the ship because these crews were surrounded by damaged sections in the ship’s aft. Oh… did I mention they can also die?

Other changes:

• “Boss” ships. At least, that’s what we called them. With powers like teleportation and cloaking you’ll be challenged by more than just sheer numbers.
• Nukes are rarer. They seem to take a lot longer to manufacture at star bases. This may seem trivial, but in version 1.30 of Artemis nukes felt overpowered because it was easy to use them repeatedly. They feel more like a special, rare-use weapon now… which makes sense to me.
• Multiple ships. I don’t remember if this was in 1.30 or not, but it’s a great way to play. It opens up those harder difficulties and demands another layer of teamwork. We tried it with six humans spread between two ships, but ideally you’d want at least four people per ship. I can only imagine the awesomeness of using the full eight (?) ships on offer.
• Music and Graphics. The music is a nice touch, even if it wears thin after some hours. The graphics have improved — especially the skybox.

This is actually the older version. Version 1.51 has a much prettier skybox.

What Still Needs to be Improved:

• Slightly Raw Interface. Sure, I know Artemis purposely makes tasks manual rather than automatic to aid the co-op aspect. But a few more hot-keys would be nice. Also, there are a few (and I do mean few) screens which don’t look so good on laptop-type resolutions (some of the Engineering elements were overlapping on my Eee PC’s 1024x600, for example).
• Minor Bugs. Crashes to desktop, error messages on Alt+Tabbing. These are actually quite rare. And since you can join a game in progress very easily, thse bugs are almost forgivable.
• Science is Still Dull. Even with the new missions passing a few messages to the science officer only, it’s still a trivially easy job.
• Comms is Still Dull. Now that friendly AI-controlled ships exist, I can see Comms being really important. Sadly…
• Friendly AI Commanding Broken. Friendly AI ships exist, but they’re rare. Worse, they’re broken — I could only order the Warsaw to drive in certain directions. It ignored orders to attack enemies, and there were no smart options like “follow me” or “attack my target”. Even something obvious like “stop” was not an option (annoying, because once I stopped babysitting it and turning it around it drove off the map).
• Enemy AI is Stupid. You can lure them into mines, you can even (sometimes) taunt them via Comms to make them follow you. They seem oblivious to their own shields. They chase you as a mindless pack and never try any kind of advanced flanking maneuvers. I fancy I once saw a weak-shielded foe circle about to get behind his allies but based on all else I saw I would guess that was a fluke.
• Enemy AI Is Underpowered. (This is not true of the “boss” craft.) The regular craft are slow, have no warp, and only have beam weapons. It seems that they travel in packs of six or so to compensate. It’s deadly to get close while there are six, so you pick some off with torpedoes or nukes, then move in for the kill when there are only a few left. It’s boring that a lack of torpedoes or nukes dictates your ability to fight more than anything else.

My Suggestions

I do not mean to imply that Artemis is not being updated, or that it is being updated poorly. Given the improvements from 1.30 to 1.51 I am confident the game is going in the right direction and at a decent speed.

Probably the actual updates being worked on are better than what I’m about to suggest below.

I’m just sayin’, if I were making Artemis, here’s what I’d do…

• Smarter AI. It’s a 2D plane devoid of obstacles… it should be fairly easy to smarten up the AI. Just basic things: like scattering if a nuke is inbound or avoiding battle with low shields. Advanced squad tactics could come later.
• More Powerful AI. The “boss” ships are real step in the right direction. I would like to see the regular ships be reduced in number and instead take some lessons from the boss ships in terms of variety. Fast ships, tough ships, maneuverable ships, little swarming ships, ships that can warp in-battle… ships with torpedoes or even nukes! This could give Science something to do — “Captain, that ship has a warp drive and that ship has a nuke onboard! Watch out!” It would also really spice up battles which otherwise have become almost formulaic.
• Nerf Warp. Clock this up to personal taste, but it sorf-of annoys me how you can in-and-out of warp so easily. I don’t want warping to involve some painful “charging up” affair, but I do think it’s a bit strange that you can turn while warping, and that you can feather the warp drive for considerable advantages in battle. I don’t remember Picard ever saying “Engage! Stop! Engage! Stop! Engage! Stop!” I reckon: no turning in warp and either a cool-down that limits frequent warping or an energy cost on entering warp to make it less attractive.
• Boarding Parties. This is quite a specific idea, but I would be surprised if it wasn’t already on the plate… The Engineering station’s ability to direct DamCom teams seems perfect as an interface to direct Security teams to fight off enemy boarders. Whether Engineering does it along with the DamCom teams, or whether the interface is duplicated for another role (Weapons? Comms? A new Security role?) I don’t know.

Still Worth Playing?

If you’ve not played Artemis before, then now there’s even more reason for you to get your buddies and plan a game right now. Even if I am super pessimistic and estimate you’d get only 2 hours’ entertainment, at only about $10 (it’s a $40 game, but you can split the price) it’s cheaper than a movie. Far more memorable too. The only caveat? I would suggest minimum four people — four people can comfortably pilot a ship where three start to struggle.

What about if you’ve played an older version? Well, the updates are free, so there’s no monetary disincentive. Is it worth the time and effort? I’d say yes… the new missions structure and “boss” ships add enough to the game to warrant another play. Furthermore, if you can get enough people, having two or more ships is a real blast.