Artemis Bridge Simulator and true Space nerdery

I got in on a LAN over the weekend with THIS going on.  It was a ton of fun, and quite challenging.  We had just the right number of people for the roles: captain, engineering, helm, weapons with science and communications combined and the ideal set up: a main screen plus each of the station screens.  We each got better at our individual roles, but most important, we got better as a team.  I dug the engineering the most as you are constantly shifting power around the ship for a myriad of reasons and you’re never sitting around waiting as you can always make some tweaks or prep for upcoming power needs if you are idle. Weapons is my second favorite. While firing the weapons themselves is sort of boring, you have a ton of information on screen you are trying to relay to the team.  You also control the main screen view for the captain.

I really dug the fact that this is a LAN game– at this point it cannot be played over the interweb tubes at all, but I assume that will happen eventually if there is $ in it for the developers.  In the time of extreme anti-LAN (even fake LAN’s over hamachi) from the major publishers, this is really refreshing to see.