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

[Gregorovitch]

Nasarog eredeti hozzászólása:

Yup, reads a lot like Battle Brothers. I'm still watching that let's play and some of the things he's said, I've said too in Battle Brothers when shit hits the wall and my company is standing right in front of it.

round about ep. 20-ish he slips up, get's jumped and totally owned. Has to pick himself up from scratch. I got to say he handled it pretty well overall. Props to the dude. And props to the game too for making it possible. Not sure if you can actually get back on you feet again in BB after something like that.

[Nasarog]

Gregorovitch eredeti hozzászólása:

Nasarog eredeti hozzászólása:

Yup, reads a lot like Battle Brothers. I'm still watching that let's play and some of the things he's said, I've said too in Battle Brothers when shit hits the wall and my company is standing right in front of it.

round about ep. 20-ish he slips up, get's jumped and totally owned. Has to pick himself up from scratch. I got to say he handled it pretty well overall. Props to the dude. And props to the game too for making it possible. Not sure if you can actually get back on you feet again in BB after something like that. [/quote]

You can. It has happened to me on more than one occasion. Also, he keeps making some really dumb mistakes.

[echo2361]

I really want to like this game. So much so that I bought it twice. I just can't get into the combat. I really like the setting, the factions, the exploration, and pretty much everything about the strategic side of game play. But when I get into combat it just devolves into a reflex-based fast shooter to me and that's not my style for combat. I know there is a lot of finesse to be had with managing shields/flux and other things, but things just move too fast for me and the control scheme leaves me confused. I'll keep trying though.

[Bou]

@echo2361 same here

[AK_icebear]

Is it possible to turn down combat speed? I guess that could help a lot.

Or make liberal use of pause to reassess and issue orders.

[athelasloraiel]

can someone do a tutorial about combat finesses?

[Gregorovitch]

Some notes for useless pilots (like me):

1. Rely on the skills of your officers flying your best ships until you can afford, and have access to, fuck off battleships. They will do fine,, certainly much better than you.

2. Choose weapons systems that do not expend (much) flux for your own ship. The most effective weapon systems and load out combos tend to expend flux and rely on extremely accurate twitch play to strip the shields, strip the armour and deliver the finisher to the hull fast and efficiently enough not to get overloaded. You don't need to bother with that shit. Just stick to a conservative build using simple guns and don't be a hero.

3. Combat is a cat and mouse game. The pilot that goes for glory in this game is the one that's dead at the end of the battle. There are certain ships (phase ships and the like) that are designed to harass enemies solo for extended periods but in general the game is about trying to entice one of the enemy to venture withing range of several of your ships at once so it can be ganked. The AI does exactly this to you. That's why your own ships appear to be so cautious and also why the inexperienced player gets killed all the time.

It's very similar to legend difficulty XCOM2 play where you have to learn to resist the almost overwhelming temptation to rush forward to try to finish off that last enemy in the pod before you lest it get another shot at you - and of course trigger two more pods in the process. Frequently in XCOM the right move is to fall back and force them to come on to you and this is also true in Starsector combat.

4. Try controlling movement by tapping WASDQE keys rather than pressing. Newtonian space physics apply, not terrestrial (which is why controlling your ship is unintuitive and initially difficult to get the hang of). Tap E to strafe right. Then tap Q to counter. Same thing forwards and back. Two or three taps forward, two or three taps back to stop (relatively) etc, try to keep tap counts. Sort of the same thing turning with AD, especially when you're trying to target your foe and the blighter won't stay still for you. Use pause liberally to collect your thoughts and plan a series of movement commands you need to make. When in doubt press pause.

5. To start with keep your ship safe in the middle of your fleet, let your other ships do the heavy lifting and just pop forward cautiously occasionally when you see an opportunity to get a few shots off safely. In particular watch what your other ships are doing. Take your lead from them. When they see the moment is right they will gank an enemy, so follow them in for the kill - and then skidaddle. Fast.

6. Remember that your mere presence deters the enemy from trying to gank your own ships even if you don't do very much. You may be a useless pilot but the enemy AI doesn't know that. Staying alive is more important than killing enemies in many ways.

7. To start with be very conservative with your flux. As soon as you see something start blitzing your flux meter GTFO and vent. Fast. Getting overloaded = death. This is the first and most important skill to learn - when to GTFO to vent.

While your shields are up and you flux is down the enemy can't hurt you - at all. The key is to learn to keep it that way.

8. Once you have got the basic skills to manage your flux to stay alive and your movement control nailed so you can stay safely in formation you can start to learn to kill targets. Hovering over a target and pressing R gives you a detailed readout of their ship condition/loadout etc. They keys are a) don't waste shots that cost flux (i.e. no fire button spamming) and b) stand off and vent as soon as your flux starts to get over 50%. Experts can push this harder but useless pilots not so much.

You will probably have secondary weapons on auto-fire that cost no flux and will drive up your foes flux. Let them do that and hold back on your main weapon until you've got a sure fire shot and plenty of flux in the bank. Once they are overloaded they die real fast. Boom.

With any given ship you personally use try out different main weapons on it until you find one you're comfortable with. Note that there are no perfect uber-weapons that have huge range, perfect accuracy and do massive damage from a safe distance. You'll have to get in there and mix it. Flux management + cowardice is the order of the day for the useless pilot.

9. As a useless pilot do not bother taking individual pilot skills for yourself (i.e. the top row). There are a plethora of skills that make you much richer, find much more stuff and make all the ships in your whole fleet much better. These are spread around tiers two, three and four. You officers should get the combat skills. As a useless pilot your job is to able to afford to buy and find good ships for them to vanquish your foes.

10. An important part of strategy in this game is managing the burn speed of your fleet which is obviously limited by the slowest ship. Every ship has a max burn up to 10 which is doubled on continuous burn to 20. Nobody in the game can fly faster than 20. It follows that if your fleet can fly at 20 nobody can ever catch you if you are careful, you can escape from virtually any situation if you have your wits about you.

This means that if you select your ships carefully early-mid game to all have a max burn of 9 and take three pips in the navigation skill (which is a pretty sound set of initial picks for your first level ups) which gives you +1 burn across your fleet you can venture pretty much anywhere you have the fuel capacity to get to and this enables you to do a lot of far flung missions and find a lot of top quality loot, therefore making a lot of money, without having to fight anything nasty if you don't want to. Note that civilian ships, such as freighters and tankers which often have a max burn of 8, can have the militarised sub-systems mod installed which gives them +1 burn. Add your L3 nav skill +1 burn bonus and you get your 10 burn across the fleet.

The "noob trap" early ship is the Venture - a surveyor specialised cruiser that is also a bit of a bruiser. It's a tough ship and has many attractions for the early game, not least 'cos it's ubiquitous and cheap for what it is, but It has a max burn of only 7. A fleet sporting a Venture is a fleet beloved of pirates since it's a fleet they can actually catch.

[Nasarog]

Gregorovitch eredeti hozzászólása:

Some notes for useless pilots (like me):

1. Rely on the skills of your officers flying your best ships until you can afford, and have access to, fuck off battleships. They will do fine,, certainly much better than you.

2. Choose weapons systems that do not expend (much) flux for your own ship. The most effective weapon systems and load out combos tend to expend flux and rely on extremely accurate twitch play to strip the shields, strip the armour and deliver the finisher to the hull fast and efficiently enough not to get overloaded. You don't need to bother with that shit. Just stick to a conservative build using simple guns and don't be a hero.

3. Combat is a cat and mouse game. The pilot that goes for glory in this game is the one that's dead at the end of the battle. There are certain ships (phase ships and the like) that are designed to harass enemies solo for extended periods but in general the game is about trying to entice one of the enemy to venture withing range of several of your ships at once so it can be ganked. The AI does exactly this to you. That's why your own ships appear to be so cautious and also why the inexperienced player gets killed all the time.

It's very similar to legend difficulty XCOM2 play where you have to learn to resist the almost overwhelming temptation to rush forward to try to finish off that last enemy in the pod before you lest it get another shot at you - and of course trigger two more pods in the process. Frequently in XCOM the right move is to fall back and force them to come on to you and this is also true in Starsector combat.

4. Try controlling movement by tapping WASDQE keys rather than pressing. Newtonian space physics apply, not terrestrial (which is why controlling your ship is unintuitive and initially difficult to get the hang of). Tap E to strafe right. Then tap Q to counter. Same thing forwards and back. Two or three taps forward, two or three taps back to stop (relatively) etc, try to keep tap counts. Sort of the same thing turning with AD, especially when you're trying to target your foe and the blighter won't stay still for you. Use pause liberally to collect your thoughts and plan a series of movement commands you need to make. When in doubt press pause.

5. To start with keep your ship safe in the middle of your fleet, let your other ships do the heavy lifting and just pop forward cautiously occasionally when you see an opportunity to get a few shots off safely. In particular watch what your other ships are doing. Take your lead from them. When they see the moment is right they will gank an enemy, so follow them in for the kill - and then skidaddle. Fast.

6. Remember that your mere presence deters the enemy from trying to gank your own ships even if you don't do very much. You may be a useless pilot but the enemy AI doesn't know that. Staying alive is more important than killing enemies in many ways.

7. To start with be very conservative with your flux. As soon as you see something start blitzing your flux meter GTFO and vent. Fast. Getting overloaded = death. This is the first and most important skill to learn - when to GTFO to vent.

While your shields are up and you flux is down the enemy can't hurt you - at all. The key is to learn to keep it that way.

8. Once you have got the basic skills to manage your flux to stay alive and your movement control nailed so you can stay safely in formation you can start to learn to kill targets. Hovering over a target and pressing R gives you a detailed readout of their ship condition/loadout etc. They keys are a) don't waste shots that cost flux (i.e. no fire button spamming) and b) stand off and vent as soon as your flux starts to get over 50%. Experts can push this harder but useless pilots not so much.

You will probably have secondary weapons on auto-fire that cost no flux and will drive up your foes flux. Let them do that and hold back on your main weapon until you've got a sure fire shot and plenty of flux in the bank. Once they are overloaded they die real fast. Boom.

With any given ship you personally use try out different main weapons on it until you find one you're comfortable with. Note that there are no perfect uber-weapons that have huge range, perfect accuracy and do massive damage from a safe distance. You'll have to get in there and mix it. Flux management + cowardice is the order of the day for the useless pilot.

9. As a useless pilot do not bother taking individual pilot skills for yourself (i.e. the top row). There are a plethora of skills that make you much richer, find much more stuff and make all the ships in your whole fleet much better. These are spread around tiers two, three and four. You officers should get the combat skills. As a useless pilot your job is to able to afford to buy and find good ships for them to vanquish your foes.

10. An important part of strategy in this game is managing the burn speed of your fleet which is obviously limited by the slowest ship. Every ship has a max burn up to 10 which is doubled on continuous burn to 20. Nobody in the game can fly faster than 20. It follows that if your fleet can fly at 20 nobody can ever catch you if you are careful, you can escape from virtually any situation if you have your wits about you.

This means that if you select your ships carefully early-mid game to all have a max burn of 9 and take three pips in the navigation skill (which is a pretty sound set of initial picks for your first level ups) which gives you +1 burn across your fleet you can venture pretty much anywhere you have the fuel capacity to get to and this enables you to do a lot of far flung missions and find a lot of top quality loot, therefore making a lot of money, without having to fight anything nasty if you don't want to. Note that civilian ships, such as freighters and tankers which often have a max burn of 8, can have the militarised sub-systems mod installed which gives them +1 burn. Add your L3 nav skill +1 burn bonus and you get your 10 burn across the fleet.

The "noob trap" early ship is the Venture - a surveyor specialised cruiser that is also a bit of a bruiser. It's a tough ship and has many attractions for the early game, not least 'cos it's ubiquitous and cheap for what it is, but It has a max burn of only 7. A fleet sporting a Venture is a fleet beloved of pirates since it's a fleet they can actually catch.

Damn good info. Keep it coming.

[AK_icebear]

I also found this super useful.

[aReclusiveMind]

I agree with what Gregorovitch has said. This game's combat system will punish you if you overextend yourself. You are just asking to be picked off if you lack both the skills and ship required to be successful as a lone wolf. Stay with your pack.

When I started playing Starsector many years ago, the combat missions were the meat of the game. There was no campaign to really dive into at that point. As someone who typically ignores standalone missions in these sorts of games, I'd urge you to consider trying them out.

The missions offer a safe place to practice and learn a lot of important combat fundamentals, especially in the harder missions. They also give you access to try out a few ships of varying sizes, try out different abilities, and get used to the controls. The battleships generally don't reward twitch skills as much as the smaller ships, but I'd argue strategy and tactics are just as critical to your combat success regardless.

[AK_icebear]

The latest update is out. See you in a few years.

http://fractalsoftworks.com/2021/03/26/starsector-0-95a-release/

[Kursah]

Hell yes! This update sounds pretty epic. Downloading now.

How you liking it so far?

[Gregorovitch]

Fortunately I had my silver cross and garlic ready to hand. As well as the new X4 DLC.