been seeing this game in a lot of FLGS as i roam around the country on clearence with both the game and expansion for 25 dollars together. Just wondering if this is stores trying to get rid of it or signs they are rereleasing the game or something.
I think they plan to do more with it but I think other projects have taken priority.
25 dollars? Ouch…
i regret not buying it for that honestly
Search online and you can find it for that price or less pretty easily.
As sad as I am to hear that...the game desperately needs a second edition. There are a few errors that really mess with the gameplay, such as certain cards having the wrong flipside. There are a few other things I personally find frustrating, but nothing that is technically gamebreaking.
I keep hoping to see some errata cards for those with the wrong flip side. Once I have that I'll introduce the game to my group.
Same here. I've been waiting for the errata to play those decks.
Hopefully they can focus on reworking GSF, or at least creating something new in the setting, once SotM wraps up.
I think one of the biggest issues was that there was very little tension once you realized that generally you could hole up in one side of the table and build up your power till you were basically unstoppable. There needed to be some kind of mechanic that forced you to move into enemy sectors more often.
In addition to that, the characters were a lot harder to get attached to than in SotM. And as far as story went, there was no real indication of what you were fighting for in the art. The only real depictions of any characters in the game were of you, and the enemy ships. In SotM you had cities getting devastated, civilians being held hostage, villains pulling the moon into the planet! All of these motivations for the character you're playing were there in the flavor text, in the card art, and even in the game mechanics themselves.
In GSF, the sectors pale in comparison to the uniqueness of SotM's environments from both a thematic standpoint as well as in regards to game mechanics. The sectors didn't really feel like they added the same kind of game-changing "oomph" that SotM's environments did. I know they're not necessarily supposed to be an exact analog to SotM's Environments, but they do fulfill similar roles in the game. Environments just filled that role better. Maybe if each sector had a set of cards that get played in certain phases, and those cards being thematically tied to that sector... instead of (or in addition to?) the generic "every ship in this sector takes 2 energy damage in the Travel phase" type of effects) Wouldn't even need a whole 'deck' of cards...
Or maybe each sector has its own unique station cards that get shuffled into the station deck for that sector!
The GSF starter decks have a small portion of the amount of "character" and uniqueness that SotM's hero decks do. They are still unique and thematic throughout any given game. (so long as you don't bloat your deck up by buying too many things...) But the player ships/characters felt significantly less thematic when compared to SotM's playable characters. Probably due to how few unique cards each character gets. I don't think it helped that the ship abilities were tied to your character's race instead of to the character themselves, which just made you feel even less unique if you played with 2 Neo-Elves in the game, for example. I think it would have been better if each ship had a specific ship bonus on their panel that wasn't simply tied to their race.
The enemy forces, with their unique ships and mission cards are great, but they don't change the way the game is played to the same extent that villain decks did in SotM. Even so, I think this portion of the game design was definitely on the right track.
All that being said, I wouldn't mind an entirely new game set in the GSF setting. As long as it's co-operative, and I can get my co-op gaming fix, I'm fine! My one fear is after SotM is over if >G starts making primarily competitive games. That would be the worst! (for me) I originally got into SotM because I wanted a good co-op game. Now that it's ending, my only prospect for a continually evolving/expanding co-op game series is Marvel: Legendary (funny that it's a superhero game too...) This is the reason I jumped on board with GSF when it was announced. We knew at that point that SotM had a distinct end date. So I was hoping GSF would get picked up as the next big >G co-op game series. If the majority of >G's releases from now on are competitive, like tactics, then I feel like the world of boardgaming would be a lot less amazing, since you guys do co-operative REALLY well.
I can't speak to a lot of specifics, but I can certainly answer the last thing you said.
Cooperative games are my favorite games. They're my favorite games to play. They're my favorite games to design.
A future in which Greater Than Games is not making cooperative games is one that I cannot envision.
So GSF has some mechamical problems, yes, but I think the biggest problem - and kind of an inevitable one, really - is that it was the first game that >G made that wasn't Sentinels of the Multiverse, and so people expected Sentinels In Space. That's what Derp's whole post reads like, save the first two paragraphs: the things I loved about Sentinels are absent or lessened in this game. It also didn't help that it had analogues for the villain, heroes and environments to make such comparisons easier.
It ould be interesting to see what would have happened if GSF had been released this year, when >G have Tactics and the RPG and Spirit Island and the whole Dice Hate Me line. Would it still inspire the same reaction?
GSF, like Flame of Freedom suffered from not being explored enough. On release problems were found that hadn't been caught in playtesting.
SotM had the benefit of going big with the Enhanced edition that fixed a ton of issues. If they released first edition Sentinels right now it would get a poor reaction.
I'm sorry. I tried my best 
You just can't replicate 500 players playing the game 5 times each in playtesting.
Heck look at the Flame of Freedom Scenarios, I played everyone of the Dawn ones and had no problem with them, then after release we find out that it 2 of them don't work at all with lower numbers of players.
It is one thing I hope we can do right this time is get enough playtesting of each scenario that they aren't flawed.