Starsector - RT 2D indie space goodness

[good little toastboy]

I watched the YouTube combat demo but I wasn't sure what was happening. A swarm of tinny little ships blowing shit up. I want to know if this is like EV Nova where you WASD the ship and Space to fire or whether you just click and scroll and sit back and watch in the much more boring GSB style.

I'll wait for some other sucker to make the first move before I lay my $10 down.

You control your flagship with WASD, you have different weapon groups on 1-4 keys, left click to fire, right click to activate shields. Weapons have different firing arcs, range and damage types. Missiles can be shot down. Kinetic is good against shields, explosives against hull, energy does more damage the more flux you accumulate. Flux raises when firing weapons or when your shields are hit. If flux gets to a max value (which depends on your ship) you can't fire and lose shields for a pretty long time. You can press a key to drain all your flux faster but you also can't fire, your shields are down and you can't abort flux draining. So you might be caught off guard by a torpedo or something for huge damage. Pressing Tab switches to a map where you can assign targets for your fleet.

Ships are kinda rock, paper, scissory, especially the smaller ones. Positioning seems to be quite important because of different firing arcs, slow turn speeds of bigger vessels and because shields build up in the front first and then slowly expand towards the back. Not every ship get's a 360 shield arc however, no matter how long you keep them up.

Every ship has some kind of ressource value, so you can only field part of you fleet in the beginning. By capturing objectives you can potentially field a bigger fleet than your opponent. If you capture every single one your enemy cannot reinforce his fleet at all.

Definitely has potential but not much content right now. You can only play six missions with a fixed fleet. A mission takes around five minutes.

Died 5 times on the second mission (medium difficulty, there's also easy, hard and impossible) before finally defeating the enemy fleet, with only my flagship and a frigate alive. If you get caught off guard you can lose half your ship in a single bomber fly-by shooting. I get my ass handed on the higher difficulties while figuring out the enemies weaponry.

 

[Tycn]

Necroing this because I recently bought into the alpha and am rather impressed.

There's a lot more content now, with a rudimentary campaign map in a single solar system. Next to nothing in the way of overworld gameplay yet but the combat system is very detailed, and what a combat system it is.

The number of meaningful variables when choosing and outfitting ships is impressive - fixed hardpoints vs turrets, firing arcs, shield coverage. Higher tech ships tend to have better shield efficiency but are more reliant on energy weapons, making flux management more important. Low tech ships are more reliant on armour and ballistic weapons and tend to be slower. Some ships have flight decks allowing them to repair and rearm fighter wings during battles. Most of the bigger ships have idiosyncratic firing arcs rather than front mounted weapons or full rotation turrets so positioning is fairly important.

There is also locational damage with module disabling. Armour is location-based and destroyed by damage so it's quite important to angle the bigger armour-reliant ships in response to fire. It also takes time to repair on the overmap so if one side of your ship is shot up you'll need to take that into consideration in the next battle. Hits to weapons or engines also have a chance of bringing them offline for up to 20 seconds while they're repaired. Disable both engines and they'll just drift along their current trajectory for a time.

The AI is surprisingly good. Enemies respond to the weapons you have fitted, with light frigates lurking just out of weapons range and striking when your back is turned. Fighters attempt to swarm unshielded ships and return to the carrier if taking too much damage. Outfit an AI ship with long range weapons and they'll provide support from a distance.

I imagine the actual release is still at least a year away but updates in the form of alpha releases or blog posts come often. I really hope this gets completed, but I already feel that I've gotten my $10 worth.

 

[Thane Solus]

Ah another indie shit that needs money before it's even finished e.g. mocap added.

Indies should fucking die. They are worse than EA. At least those finish their games before asking for money.

While i agree on some indies, this guy did a great job and there are few others, so dont compare EA with good indie developers u twat.

I pre-ordered and played the alpha more than i played Diablo 3, lots of fun, the combat is fun, and the final product with all the sandboxy features around should be great.

Let me get that video that made me buy it:



andz

 

[BaconAndEggs]

Update today, adds phase cloaking and ship abilities among other things: http://fractalsoftworks.com/2012/08/02/starfarer-0-53a-release/

 

[almondblight]

I also picked this up recently and like what I'm seeing. The sandbox element seems to be pretty different from EV though - the system map is pulled back pretty far, and you see different fleets of ships flying through the system. Engaging one then pulls you into a zoomed in battle in another screen, described in this thread. To echo what others have said, there are a lot variables to take into account when designing your fleet, outfitting your ship, and attacking. Your character also has a lot of stats, some of which affect your entire fleet, and some of which only affect the ship you command directly. In a nice touch, you can change which ship you command directly during combat, but doing so requires a shuttle to take you from the ship you're in to the one you want to take command of. When enemy fleets engage each other on the world map, you just see a quick abstraction of the battle and then the results - the complete destruction of one fleet, or the losers scampering off.

Not a whole lot to do in the sandbox mode yet except for hunting ships and building up a fleet. There are a couple of factions that you can piss off if you attack them, and you can talk to different fleets, but they don't have much to say (though what the pirates say to you depends on your relative power, which is a nice touch). There's already a fairly thriving mod scene, so hopefully once missions are added we'll see some interesting stuff.

 

[circ]

No. Just no. I can live with japaneeze style ships because someone doesn't have an original bone in their body, but capital ships handling like lego toys? No thanks. Less Star Control moar Homeworld dammit!

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

how long for the final version?

 

[Commissar Draco]

Did they changed the proto campaign? I see no Domination and 3 new factions.

 

[pocahaunted]

Any news on the economics front? That should make the game more appealing.

 

[almondblight]

how long for the final version?

They don't have an ETA. Personally I don't expect any final release in the next year and probably not for another two or three years. I'm not basing this on anything they've said, but rather on the scope of the project, the fact that it took about a year to go from 0.34 to 0.54, and the timeline for other indie projects. Overgrowth has been in development (with alpha funding) for over four years now, AoD for longer (or pick whatever indie game you're looking forward to - Stasis, KoTC 2, etc.).

Did they changed the proto campaign? I see no Domination and 3 new factions.

I don't know what it was like before, but now it consists of flying around the system and taking on different fleets (pirates that are hostile to you from the start, Hegemony, Tri-Tachyon and Independents that are neutral until you start a fight with them), capturing ships and weapons, and restocking/building your fleet at different space stations. Your character and crew also gain experience as you fight.

Any news on the economics front? That should make the game more appealing.

Nothing yet.

Also, for everyone who complained about the lack of a demo, they're going to release one later but want to get further with the alpha first.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i asked because i don't want to pay for a crippled beta.
thank you for the answer.

 

[Destroid]

You can 'demo' the game if you look for it.

 

[Raapys]

I demoed it. In-game after a few minutes it told me that "The RNG might know your game is pirated. Let the paranoia begin!". A nice touch, I thought.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Game is now called Starsector for some reason and it contains RPG system with 3... wait 4 stats and perks for your PC. Spend 10 hours playing with mod which let you Fight as subject of Imortal God Emperor Vlad Tepes Putin alied with space Chinks, Kwans and Jewrope, and Pirates flying space hulks.... ah don't forget space raping abducting Aliens... Also shame on fagots who pirate indie games, shame

 

[almondblight]

Which mod is it?

 

[Commissar Draco]

Which mod is it?

http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=431.msg3708#msg3708

Project Ironclad, this is why our Muscovite bros had to change game name:

http://www.starfarer.com/

F... MMO

 

[Damned Registrations]

That looks less like an MMO and more like someone squatting on a name they found a dev intending to use in hopes that they'd be able to sell it to them. Apparently they didn't realize that Starfoo is so utterly generic a name you could shove fucking anything in as the second word without changing the impression of the game one bit. Starseeker? Starwarp? Starbattle? Starsquad? Starspace? Who gives a fuck. I bet some of those have actually been used too even though I just pulled them out of my ass while trying to avoid the ones I do know about like trek, wars, scape, etc.

 

[potatojohn]

Domain - $5
Site hosting - $5
Destroying some tiny developer's laboriously built-up name - priceless.

 

[General Maxson]

Just please someone tell me is this anything like Star Control 2 exploration/adventure wise? So I can begin .

 

[Dim]

The space combat in this game is just like Sots but better. The campaign sucks atm cause after a few hours all the player does is run from bigger circles and twoards smaller ones. Wait it sucks because of grind, the FC of larger ships is too low and a few properly designed capital ships pwn anything. I really wish this was a full strategy game instead. Alternatively include multiplayer. I want to preorder (cause its 10$). Anyone know how reliable BMT micro is? Link

 

[Raapys]

Been a few months since I played it, but I don't recall there really being a campaign aspect. Basically just a few stations you could trade at and lots of random fleets flying around that you could fight with. It's still in like pre-alpha state, isn't it?

 

[Dim]

Well the mods add like five more but yeah that is why i said 'atm'.

 

[Sunsetspawn]

You never go ass to mouth!

 

[BaconAndEggs]

I'm hoping that a full fledged campaign will add more to the game. The combat itself is really fun to play with, and I like coming up with new ship compositions (and seeing them fail horribly ). I think once the campaign becomes grander (not locked to one solar system) and has a goal to set out towards, the rest should follow

 

[Commissar Draco]

They added full fledged perks system grouped in 4 parts: Combat, Command, Science! and Infrastructure. You unlock them by causing the wymyn of your enemies to lament but missions are planed and even implemented in some mods. So it is fully fledged cRPG now Bros and Trannies... ah and don't forget to check the mods... some of them are better than Vanilla setting Campaign.