# Starbase Orion — user reviews > 239 indexed App Store user reviews of Starbase Orion by Chimera Software, LLC, rated 4.70/5 from 329 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/starbase-orion/id438375580/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/starbase-orion/id438375580.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 279 · 4★ 21 · 3★ 16 · 2★ 4 · 1★ 9 ## What do users think of Starbase Orion? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 🚀 Excellent 4x strategy game - 👍 Faithful recreation of Master of Orion - 🚀 Continuously updated with new features - 👍 Vibrant player community - 🚀 Smooth gameplay and intuitive controls - 👍 Excellent value for money **Cons** - 🐛 Crashes and stability issues - 🔍 Limited diplomacy and foreign relations - 🔍 Automated combat lacks depth - 🔍 Repetitive late-game experience - 🔍 Outdated visuals **Commonly reported bugs** - Crashes and save file corruption - UI issues with overlapping text and unresponsive controls - Multiplayer matchmaking and connectivity problems **Most requested features** - More ship classes and customization options - Expanded tech tree and research system - Deeper diplomacy and espionage mechanics - Manual control of ship combat - Improved end-game content and victory conditions ## Newest reviews (18 of 239) ### 4/5 — Very Good Adaptation *2025-12-18, version 1.3.3* If you mistakenly build two planetary extensions for one planet slot. The game will glitch from that point onward. If you are enjoy that scenario then be careful of what you build because the game won’t catch it. ### 4/5 — Spectacular game but.. *2025-11-26* To start, I love this game. I’m a Stellaris player and this is game is a dream come true on my phone. Good level of depth of systems and it’s clear a lot of love went into this. I also can’t overstate how much I love the Star Trek inspiration for the human ship design. I have on concern and it’s the fact that my game will reliably crash if I watch a large battle between a large number of ships that fire a big salvo of proton torpedoes. It happens every time. Its a drag to build up my fleets, engage is a large scale battle only not to be able to watch it. I’d love to see a fix to effectively perfect that beautiful and fun masterpiece please. ### 3/5 — Interesting, It’s Less and More. *2025-11-15, version 1.3.2* While the game is almost as good as MOO2, it can be played on an Ipad or Iphone. Easy to understand by moo2ers and therefore easy to play. However, my favorite cheat is missing in that you can’t get every research item. Oh well. ### 5/5 — Years of entertainment *2024-07-21* I have been playing this game on and off for almost nine years. It is clean, robust and reliable. If is the 4x game you wanted. ### 2/5 — Love the Game but Constantly Crashes *2024-05-27, version 1.3.1* I love the game but it's very unstable. On my previous iPad it would crash maybe every ten minutes or so, which I could deal with. On my new M2 Air, once you get towards the end game, it crashes every other time I hit Next Turn. It becomes unplayable. I really hope that the developers do something to fix this problem. It's sad that I can't play a game that I love. ### 5/5 — The best strategy game on ipad *2024-05-04* Absolute masterpiece. ### 5/5 — Such a great game! *2024-03-06* Classic 4X galactic conquest game. The closest you can get to the old Master of Orion PC game on a mobile device. Best part of all: it isn’t some pay-to-play, micro transaction nightmare the way every other app out there is. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the developers. We need more games like this. ### 5/5 — Replayability at 1000% *2023-12-06* Somehow, this game is able to get you hooked on for a long time, even with mediocre graphs and horrible music/sounds. Not even a full port from the pc game, but still a must have gem. Very addictive ! ### 5/5 — Outstanding game that passes the test of time *2023-09-21, version 1.3.1* This game is awesome! Highly customizable, great soundtrack, and so much replay value . I love it and hope support for it doesn’t end. ### 5/5 — Awesome Game for IPhone! *2023-09-02* Nicely done and well balanced. What I would like to see in the next update would be the ability to change plant names and for the race creator to be expanded. For example being able to change the race image, name and ship templates. Other than that great job! ### 5/5 — 5* *2023-06-30* Great game, they just need to do an update and bring out new things ### 5/5 — Absolute Greatest Sim Game - NO ADS OR PURCHASES *2023-05-06* Pick a race. Build a colony. Fight your neighbors. What’s better? Best part is no marketing whatsoever! Love the game and have played it countless hours over the last few years. Still my favorite game on iPad. Only suggestion would be to allow more than 1 human player. Smooth, no glitches, and always challenging. ### 4/5 — Simple but fun *2022-10-20, version 1.3.1* Great tablet game that feels like Masters of Orion or Stellaris. Simple. Maybe too simple, but easily replayable many times ### 5/5 — STILL A CLASSIC (July 2022) *2022-07-30* BUY IT RIGHT NOW… LOOK at the ratings. This 4x classic is heavily inspired by a 90’s classic “Master of Orion” In my mind though, this is our Stellaris! A shame… no upcoming publishers or game investors have not looked at this game, and reached out to the developer (Rocco) He is amazing with his community, always engaging - would he had… had the backing, this would have been a large platform bringing profits, easily could had fit in an esports type setting as well, focusing on the battles and various tech setups for each players - play style. Excellent multiplayer (main feature) ### 4/5 — Spying currently broken *2022-07-08, version 1.3.1* Like the reviewer from February, the spying UI doesn’t work for me. Can’t move spies off an empire once placed there. iPad Air 2020 and iOS 15.5 ### 5/5 — meilleur jeu sur App Store *2022-05-11* Super jeu inspiré de MOO « master of Orion ». Peux modifier les équipements de vaisseaux. Peux spécifier stratégie de combat pour chaque vaisseau ou pour tous. Toutes les planètes peuvent être géré individuellement ou on peux utilisé des gestion automatique pré-conçus ou même modifier ces gestions automatiques. Beaucoup mais beaucoup de recherche a faire. Les galaxies peuvent être créé au goût. Oufff!!!! C’est vraiment complet comme jeux. Manque les Antarens (attaques extra-terrestre aléatoire qui augmente la difficulté) et une fin plus épique. ### 5/5 — Galaxy screen not sorting *2022-04-01, version 1.3.1* Returned to the game and discovered that the Galaxy screen is not working. It’s sorted Alphabetically by default and can’t be changed. Please fix. ### 5/5 — Fantastic *2022-02-20* Great port of a genre normally reserved for PC. Game runs well, AI is good, and the mobile simplifications don’t detract from the game. Also no microtransactioms offering you an in game boost! ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Dude, fit the screen size for iPhone 13 *2023-09-01* Or i will have to refund this. Please update… ### 1/5 — Don’t do it. *2022-04-02, version 1.3.1* This game spits on the memory of Master of Orion by claiming to be it. They’ve managed to make an uncanny valley recreation of MoO that comes close enough to remind you of the original while falling substantially short of it. The gameplay isn’t as good, the graphics aren’t as good, the AI is dumber in all respects (dumber than a game made in the mid-90’s mind you). Just go get the actual MoO II (or 1 if you prefer) on Steam. ### 1/5 — I love this game *2022-02-12, version 1.3.0* It has a glitch. You assign a planet to build ships. It is all misaligned. You can’t make changes. The game in not playable like this. ### 1/5 — All locked up *2022-01-05* Starbase Orion is a rewrite a reach for the stars I hope rewrite reach for the stars and to Pascal and Adelphi back in the 90s one of the assisting people on development with a friend of mine, vander, And all of that was fine I’m loaded the game on my phone I try to play it and every time I try to purchase a leader or I try I have any other interaction with in the game with diplomacy itlocked up I notified this as a problem with in the game got no response so I requested a refund and the game will not even give me a refund very poor ### 1/5 — The game was good but AI went bad :( *2021-02-19* It used to be a great game but the A.I. Is now mostly useless, as only 1 to 2 A.I. empires actually build fleets and expand beyond their home world per game. Maybe there’s a bug that they don’t build new scout ships when the first one is destroyed? Maybe they are just locked in internal spy battles with each other stifling growth? I tried re-installing the game but no change. It’s a shame as it used to be a good game. Now it’s just me expanding across the universe mostly unopposed. ### 1/5 — Where do the troop ships go? *2019-03-06, version 1.2.9* I love the game. Some time during the game the planets that manufacture troop ships change to scouts, so, you cannot win the game. This feature is a constant in the last year. ### 1/5 — Family Sharing? *2017-01-30, version 1.2.7* No family sharing support? How stingy. ### 1/5 — Was great but not anymore. Avoid. *2017-01-07, version 1.2.7* This game used to be great. Rocco, the author, was constantly making small changes to ensure the balance between factions was adequate. It had a vibrant enthusiastic community with active and helpful players. Unfortunately, Rocco let us down. No updates are made anymore, as it stands the game is not balanced, with spying being completely OP. As a consequence the player base is going down fast and it becomes hard to find games.Save your money and look for other 4x options. ### 1/5 — Crashes too much *2015-11-22, version 1.2.6* Usually when the game gets complicated and fun. Very frustrating. Great fun to play when it works. ### 1/5 — Does not work with ios9 *2015-09-20, version 1.2.6* Was very stable but now crashes repeatedly. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — The best 4x *2025-12-16, version 1.3.3* Awesome game that is still updated. Please support full screen for new devices. ### 5/5 — From DOS based Master of Orion to iPad Starbase of Orion *2025-11-05* Yeah, this is a very simple game. That is just so repeatedly enjoyable. I play it often and over and over again usually a game a day since it came out 10 years ago, I guess maybe more I don’t even know but I do enjoy this. I have a number of suggestions based on my gameplay that would make it so much better without what I think is a lot of work if you’d like to reach out to me, I would love to talk to you. ### 5/5 — Fun space 4x *2025-10-28, version 1.3.2* There is a learning curve involved as there is with most games of this type, but after you figure out what’s going on, it’s really a very nicely done and detailed 4x space game for the iPad tablet. In that regard I find it very enjoyable. ### 5/5 — Marvelous game *2025-09-19* My favorite game on iPad. Note that the 2025 late summer update has a few minor bugs with some UI sounds going muted off, and game crashes for me in combat replay when monster/ship is about to be destroyed (bad explosion sound ref issue maybe?), but it is still very playable, unless you want to see the combats unfold. Make sure to save on the beginning of a new turn before combat playback just in case. Hope this will get fixed quickly because this game and new players really deserve it. Many thanks to the creators of this game. ### 5/5 — One of my favorites *2025-09-05, version 1.3.2* Glad to see the update! FYI, viewing the battle reliably crashes the app. ### 5/5 — Fun *2025-05-10, version 1.3.1* A+ ### 5/5 — Excellent Game *2025-01-23* Always play the humans ### 5/5 — Best game ever! Our dad has played this every day for 12 years!! *2024-12-21* Good strategic game and challenging. Please make another level past ‘impossible’ as our dad has been playing that one for years! Addicting and interactive game. Isather is the best option to play as (per dad’s review) Unfortunately he cannot get the game centre to work so he often plays by himself :(. We tried to learn but can’t do impossible level!! ### 5/5 — Excellent *2024-10-03, version 1.3.1* I remember playing this game a long time ago, I’m very glad it still works! Classic scifi 4x on mobile, can’t beat that! ### 5/5 — Old school fun *2024-08-01, version 1.3.1* This really is a fun game if you are into old school, turn based, space simulation like Master of Orion. It has depth but is still accessible. Played for many hours. No adds. No upcharges. Good replay value. Well worth the game cost. --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-29.*