Starsector - It's Worth the Wait

[aReclusiveMind]

I consider Starsector to be either the best indie space game people don't know about or the best indie space game people here aren't talking about. Since there's no thread about it, and since the next release (0.9a) is poised to add more 4X-like elements to the game, it seemed like a great time to bring people up to speed.

Summary:

- "Open-world single-player space-combat, roleplaying, exploration, and economic game"
- Has 4X elements (which continue to grow), but is more of a 4X-like / RPG hybrid
- Excellent 2D real-time tactical combat that does not require competitive RTS or arcade game skillsets
- Balanced deployment system and combat mechanics requires tactical use of various ship sizes and styles rather than just using the heaviest battleships available to you
- Modding community is robust and dedicated - entire new ship sets and even additional 4X conquest features have already been included in mods
- In development since at least 2010
- Updates occur infrequently (6 months - 2 years) and are large and feature packed
- (Currently) Only available direct from the publisher


What is the basic premise?
The official line is: "You take the role of a space captain seeking fortune and glory however you choose."
You always control and move a fleet of ships (Mount & Blade style) on the starmap. Soon, you will also be able to manage a faction and colonies.


What types of things can you currently do in the game (as of 0.8a)?

- Strike out on your own or fulfill commissions proposed by other factions
- Build up an impressive fleet from a wide variety of ships each with their own unique special ability and attributes
- Hire, level up, and assign skills to officers and then put them to work flying alongside you
- Survey distance worlds, investigate distress beacons, salvage derelicts, hunt down pirates and other criminals, uncover mysterious <redacted>, and engage in the trade of legal and illegal goods


What things are coming in the not too distant future?

- Establish colonies and setup your own faction. Manage the industries/structures, hire administrators, set up colony defense forces, install hull and weapon blueprints for manufacturing, and use AI cores to boost your colony
- Manipulate supply/demand and the overall market availability of commodities. Make your faction the primary supplier for other factions by establishing waystations or engaging in piracy
- Thematically appropriate factions with better fleet compositions and with officer qualities, behavior, and aggression appropriate for the faction.


Why is this ship combat system better than anything available in the space strategy genre?

- There are many ship hulls in the game and each one has its own unique attributes, weapon hard points, and special systems. There are also variants of these hulls that swap hard points around or swap out the special systems.
- Small ships never become unusable. They can outmaneouver bigger ships and cause significant damage. They also cost less money and command points to deploy.
- Flux is generated when firing weapons and by absorbing weapon fire with your shields. When you over-flux, your ship temporarily shuts down and becomes a sitting duck. You must manage shield and weapon usage and know when to back off and when to go for the throat.
- Ship effectiveness degrades over time during combat. Combat readiness decreases per ship the longer a battle lasts, and this can cause issues like random engine shutdowns and weapon failures. This helps balance ships out as certain higher tech ships are deadly but degrade quickly in prolonged engagements compared to more mid and low tech ships.
- Ship combat AI is ruthless and will eliminate a straggler, including you. On that same note, your friendly ships will help cover you if ordered and can allow you a timely retreat to recoup and vent your flux.
- Officer AI determines how effectively they will pilot certain ships. Don't put an aggressive officer in your lightly armored support ship.


I'll update this when 0.9a is available. Right now you can follow along with the in-dev patch notes: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=13445.0
Also check out the blogs: http://fractalsoftworks.com/blog/
Mods here: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?board=8.0

[Terminus]

That's great. Thank you for the detailed comparison. I thought I heard the Starsector economy was also closed and supply and demand is based on events?

[athelasloraiel]

wow. that was really rich. u should write reviews.

[Gregorovitch]

Terminus eredeti hozzászólása:

I thought I heard the Starsector economy was also closed and supply and demand is based on events?

I'm no expert 'cos I just got then game but my impression is that the price of most stuff that matters, like supplies fuel weapons and ships, is fixed and consistent across the universe. I have heard I think that certain event chains do affect supply/price of certain things in certain circumstances but I don't know any details about that.

I think this may be a deliberate design decision. Unlike X3/4 where you don't pay ongoing for fuel/suppliers/maintenance/staff, in Starsector you pay through the nose for it and running out of anything can have catastrophic consequences. Consequently you need to know exactly how much stuff costs pretty much to plan what you can and cannot do and you have to budget with extreme care. Also shopping around for best price for things like fuel and supplies for example would not make sense since you consume even more of them in the process.

[aReclusiveMind]

Glad a few of you picked this one up and have been enjoying it. I haven't had the opportunity to play in a bit, but it is one I certainly will be coming back to. It is the best real-time combat system in my opinion, for reasons Gregorovitch explained. It does not require arcade-like skills, although it can if you want to fly a speedy high tech ship capable of taking down some of the larger ones. I believe one of the standalone combat scenarios focuses on just such a situation.

Alex's blog entries explain a lot about the decisions made in the game. They go back for years if you want to do some reading. The economic/trade system went through many iterations. I believe this is his most recent entry on the economy specifically. If not, it at least explains some of the considerations and links to some prior articles.

https://fractalsoftworks.com/2018/01/03/revisiting-the-economy/#more-3861

[GDUBMX]

Do you think SS will eventually end up here on Steam?

[AK_icebear]

My understanding is it will come to Steam at 1.0, which could be quite a while.

[Kursah]

Right now the game client out of Steam works great, integrates with GOG Galaxy 2.0 quite smoothly as well. I'll probably pick up a Steam copy when that comes out and gift this copy to my son.

Been having some fun in this and debating how far down the rabbit hole I'll go. Been bouncing between Void Destroyer 2 and this lately, both are greet games in what they do. I'm just a bigger fan of 3D space combat, but the detail of ships and detail in what happens during combat is just so damn good in SS. VD2 is more arcade with some newtonian-ish physics and a few extra abilities, but is an epic blast of a 3D space sim with some empire building. It is kinda funny how similar yet dissimilar both games are.

That's what makes it worth owning both IMHO. Easily two of the best Early Access games available in the past few years, again IMHO.

[Bou]

This is one of those non-4X games I would like to see getting covered at Explorminate.

[Gregorovitch]

Bou eredeti hozzászólása:

This is one of those non-4X games I would like to see getting covered at Explorminate.

Especially since it's very like a 4X in many ways. You got factions, you got colonies, you got fleets etc. You fight, you trade, you colonise, you negotiate. The galaxy and system maps are actually very reminiscent of Distant Worlds.

[Bou]

aReclusivemind should write something for Explorminate about this game.

[Kursah]

Bou eredeti hozzászólása:

aReclusivemind should write something for Explorminate about this game.

Agreed! I'd love to see more coverage for this game and feel it would fit within eXplorminate's list of monitored games. Or its fringe enough it can be justified.

[Gregorovitch]

Started my second game of this after realising I'd made some elementary mistakes in the first one. I think I mentioned above that I noticed an issue with what Ii termed "the survey grind" that I'd noticed watching a couple of streamers play. I can add to that a directly related concern over a certain one-dimensionality in the gameplay that seems to arise from the way colonising has been implemented, this being a recent addition as I understand it.

To get your new faction off the ground you need planets that provide abundant food, metal, rare metal and volatiles. You also need ruins (remnants of the of Earth empire before the fall 200 years ago etc) which provide the tech for your toys, something only a few planets have. You also need a variety of industries but each planet can only support a maximum of four, and that only when they have grown pretty big.

That means you need more than one planet.

What this boils down to is you need to colonise at least one and preferably two terrestrial type planets (for your farming and main population/production base), at least one mining colony (often volcanic or barren hell holes) for your materials and a gas giant for your volatiles. So in practice you're going to need four planets, maybe three if you're lucky.

There is a problem with this due to the pirate mechanics. As soon as you start a colony the local pirates are going come straight for you. You only have one fleet in this game, you can't be in two places at once. Colonies however can build automated ground, orbital and system wide patrol defence facilities. This is where the rub is:

* If you have say three planets in the same system, all of which have defence facilities built, then these facilities will help each other against attacks thereby tripling the strength of the system's automated defence.

* if you have three planets on three separate systems the pirates will treat each one as a separate target thereby tripling the number pirate attacks you'll suffer.

It is easily seen that if you colonise three planets in three separate systems each planet will be exactly 3 x 3 = 9 times more vulnerable than if you settled three planets in one system. That's a whopping order of magnitude more vulnerable.

So settling in one system that has all the planets you need complete with the aforementioned prerequisites is a no-brainer. But each prerequisite comes in a variety of grades. There is a big difference between "scarce" and "abundant" where farming and mining are concerned, as there is between "sparse" and "vast" ruins.

So you are looking for one system that has three or four planets, two pleasantly habitable, at least one with abundant food, one with extensive or preferably vast ruins, one with abundant ore and rare minerals and a good gas giant.

Terrestrial worlds are rare. Finding two in one system is even rarer.

As if that wasn't enough, this system must also be in the "inner ring" around the core worlds in the centre of the map because to bootstrap your colonies before they start producing anything of value and are able to defend themselves you must perforce commute back and forth to the core regularly for supplies, and earn a crust to keep the whole shebang on the road, and be on hand to repel the pirate scum at the drop of a hat.

This is looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack if it exists anywhere at all on your map (everything outside the core worlds is RNG'd). In practice in almost all games you have to compromise over something I believe, but hitting the jackpot over these criteria is so overwhelmingly beneficial to your fortunes that you have go to the ultimate lengths to satisfy yourself that your choice is without question the least worst compromise on offer for that particular map.

You have to fully survey every single planet in every single system across the map before you decide where to settle. This is a hell of a slog. It also means that you need to design a fleet specifically for this task to do it efficiently as well as take the relevant skills that support it in early character development.

Which makes things seem a bit one-dimensional. At least for ordinary mortal players who can't take down a fleet of battleships and carriers solo in a frigate.

[aReclusiveMind]

Kursah eredeti hozzászólása:

Bou eredeti hozzászólása:

aReclusivemind should write something for Explorminate about this game.

Agreed! I'd love to see more coverage for this game and feel it would fit within eXplorminate's list of monitored games. Or its fringe enough it can be justified.

It has been a while since I've written a review... :-)

I do appreciate the request, but truth be told my free time is a bit taken up with design work on another space game at the moment. Unfortunately, I don't have the time I'd like to play Starsector, let alone properly review it at the moment. Also, it could be seen as a conflict of interest even though the game isn't really a direct competitor.

All that aside, I do think Starsector is a game people should check out. As Gregorovitch mentioned, the colonization aspects and empire building mechanics are relatively new in the grand scheme of things. The good news is the developer, Alex, is constantly evolving and expanding the game, so I am sure any issues present now will be worked out in due time.

The other good news is there are a variety of excellent mods available to help expand the game and shore up the issues while he does his work. The modding forum on the Starsector site is the best place to find them. The community there is VERY active.

Nexerelin is a good overhaul mod which has been adding and expanding on 4X features in the game since long before the base game featured them. Likely a good choice for those of you looking to make the 4X experience more involved.

Scy, Outer Rim, Diable Avionics, Dassault-Mikoyan Engineering, Interstellar Imperium, and many other unique fleets have been around and updated for ages. They have also been balanced, more or less, across numerous tournaments. They can generally all be added alongside Nexerelin as well.

There are also mods that add more personality and traits to crew, leaders, etc. Mods are a bit of a way of life with Starsector. You play the base game when a new version releases and enjoy it. Then while waiting for the next update, which can take quite a while, you enjoy all the mod content. Then you rinse and repeat.

[Gregorovitch]

BTW my little rant about the survey grind thing was not intended as a warning over trying this game. I'm sure the issue will get worked out in time and for now you are looking at 100+ hours of stellar gameplay at least for a measly $15 before this issue might curb your enthusiasm for the game.

[Bou]

I've bought the game last year but haven't tinkered with it much (~5 hours) because I was waiting for v1.0.