What is this game?

[Cade]

So I'm looking at the description and reviews and am considering buying for me and my best friend for a game night, but after playing tons of starfield lately and previously no mans sky, I'm curious what is the gameplay loop like? Is it just you and your group repairing a ship and operating it? Is there out of ship combat or traversal? Progression other than cosmetics and toys?

[Shelf]

Teams are made of 1-4 players. You can drop in and out mid-mission.
The loop starts in a hub where you pick your your ship as well the mission you want to go on. Missions consist of 1-5 sectors with varying difficulties and modifiers.

Each sector has a main objective (kill a target, protect a target, loot a base, find an item, etc) and potentially side-objectives that give loot and resources. Once you complete one sector, you can warp to the next. Once all sectors are complete, the final warp brings you to a victory screen where you get experience used for to unlock new ship parts and cosmetics.

The ship has a limited amount of power, so you'll need to turn certain systems off in order to have other ones on. Damage and malfunctions also need to be repaired wherever they occur, so you'll need to run around to find and repair hull-damage and fixing things up. Many objectives also have requirements that need to be done on foot, so you need to split the crew so some can go into space and do the mission while others defend the ship.

You can pick 1 of 2 ship hulls, and then pick from a bunch of different options of what tools and weapons they have. You can find and craft new weapons and tools mid-match, but those only last for the duration of that mission. You want to do optional objectives to make your ship stronger, but you don't want to waste too much time and resources doing so.


There is no large-scale exploration, and there is no non-ship combat.

[Dionis]

It is very similar to Guns of Icarus: Alliance if you have played it before...
Really fun and tense.
I recommend joining official discord and use lobbies there instead of in-game chat (it's buggy atm, unfortunately)

[The Prophet]

Get it.

[Disodium]

Originally posted by Cade:

...I'm curious what is the gameplay loop like?

Is it just you and your group repairing a ship and operating it?

Is there out of ship combat or traversal?

Progression other than cosmetics and toys?

Game loops is:
Select mission(s)
Ship and starting loadout
Jump to first mission
Scavenge for loot to upgrade and or supply your ship
Complete objectives
Set next jump point and jump
Repeat until all missions done
Gain rewards at end of run

You and your must manage and maintain, and operate your ship
Things break, stuff needs shooting, munitions need loading, and someone needs to pilot

No out of ship direct combat
You can EVA to repair external damage and go to objectives
There is also weapons systems that can be used on some outposts

Progress outside cosmetics is class perks/buffs
Unlock these to get stuff like better piloting buffs to make flying ship easier, or better gun operations for more dmg or range

There are no toys so to speak but you do unlock recipes for construction and ship loadouts as you rank up

[>< V ><]

I would say, wait.

The game engine or some timing is locked to 30 fps when in first person mode, no matter what your frames say.

The energy economy is fundamentally broken as you can over power without limit and just flip a breaker now and then as the "penalty." In other words, there is no point in generating power, just flip breakers once in awhile.

I really enjoyed this game initially with the coop play, managing a ship, crew and resources, but the power management broke me. If that doesn't bother you, then I do think this game has a lot of potential, but as of now, that is still just potential and not reality yet.

[SushiJaguar]

The power management thing is nowhere near as much of an issue as this guy above says. What he's complaining about is how you can overload your power supply to power more ship modules than you should be able to. When you do, you begin stressing your ship and eventually cause circuit breakers to flip, hard capping your power and shutting down systems. These systems can include your piloting system, your shields, your O2 supply, your guns.

On Normal difficulty, this isn't a huge penalty as most combat situations feature fighter wings and maybe one freeze-ray ship, sniper, or bomber. Newer players and crews will struggle, however, because they simply don't have access to sufficiently powerful modules to tank the repercussions and keep on trucking. Or the resources to make hull repairs.

On higher difficulties, the circuit breakers are extremely punishing because every bit of hull integrity is essential for making it through these marathon races of up to 5 core objectives. Losing your piloting system to a circuit break right as three sniper ships line up shots on you is a major, major issue. Overloading your power supply to fire three guns at the same time? Well, now your fuses tripped and your point-defense gun is down. Enjoy eating multiple volleys of space torpedoes.

[>< V ><]

Originally posted by SushiJaguar:

The power management thing is nowhere near as much of an issue as this guy above says. What he's complaining about is how you can overload your power supply to power more ship modules than you should be able to. When you do, you begin stressing your ship and eventually cause circuit breakers to flip, hard capping your power and shutting down systems. These systems can include your piloting system, your shields, your O2 supply, your guns.

On Normal difficulty, this isn't a huge penalty as most combat situations feature fighter wings and maybe one freeze-ray ship, sniper, or bomber. Newer players and crews will struggle, however, because they simply don't have access to sufficiently powerful modules to tank the repercussions and keep on trucking. Or the resources to make hull repairs.

On higher difficulties, the circuit breakers are extremely punishing because every bit of hull integrity is essential for making it through these marathon races of up to 5 core objectives. Losing your piloting system to a circuit break right as three sniper ships line up shots on you is a major, major issue. Overloading your power supply to fire three guns at the same time? Well, now your fuses tripped and your point-defense gun is down. Enjoy eating multiple volleys of space torpedoes.

Have you played Veteran, friend?

This game effectively has, infinite energy. All ships have infinite energy easily obtained by flipping breakers within about a 4 minute time span on ships that take about 5 - 10 seconds to get to the breakers from anywhere on the ship.

There are 3 breakers on the small ship and 4 breakers on the large. When the first breaker flips, nothing happens. When the second breaker flips, nothing happens. When the third breaker flips, nothing happens. And when the final break flips, nothing happens.

You still have about a minute before power actually shuts down.

If people want this in an easy setting, fine. But this should not be part of normal game play and certainly not on the hardest difficulty.