Starsector - RT 2D indie space goodness

[cw8]

Combat is the main thing I didn't like about Starsector. I wanted more depth. I loved SR2s semi turn based combat.

Starsector's combat is definitely deeper than any 2D space game I've played thus far. Every part of a ship in the game has damage modelling. The ships are varied and have different abilities. Assembling an effective fleet is always fun and challenging. And the game has the best carrier AI in any space game I've seen, that actually works.

 

[anvi]

Thanks I should really give it another shot.

 

[Naraya]

Which 3D space games have better combat?

Freespace 2, Everspace is more arcade-y but feels great.

 

[tindrli]

How I did not hear about Starsector until a few weeks ago is a mystery to me.
MAN I am hooked! Been playing it non-stop since I got it.

Really scratching that my Space Rangers 2 itch.

Next step is to try all the mods at once. :D

same here just that im hooked for more than month damn i dont even look anything else. now with 30+ mods and no burnout in sight

It's much better than Space Rangers 2, well at least the combat is. Starsector has the best space combat in any 2D space game.

im a loooong SR2 player. and i just cant compare those two games...

Can anyone comment on the 4X aspect of Nexerelin?

im using it for a month. and to be honest i dont know. im havin a blast with all the mods and ships just install and play it. it does not break anything at least in my playthroughs

 

[AgentFransis]

Can anyone comment on the 4X aspect of Nexerelin?

Factions will send invasion fleets against other factions and if they win they conquer the planet. Makes games more dynamic as systems change hands. You can do the same as the player but here it gets very bare bones as factions won't field a very meaningful resistance. I once conquered like half the sector just to try it and it was just tedious.

 

[Perkel]

Playing it so far like it. My main issue though is that you control only one fleet. I would love for my officers to control more than one.

Secondly there are no battle formations. You can't really make frigate with kite class ships defense because AI will live with its own mind and soon whole thing will collapse.

 

[AgentFransis]

Yes more robust battle formations are an often requested feature. Standard practice right now is to anchor your battle line with defense markers. Escort orders are not recommended as the escorters tend to just hover behind the escort target and not do much, or dive in front and get killed. That being said you should expect most frigates to get blown up almost no matter what (exceptions being elite frigates like Omens and Tempests that can be ridiculously hard to kill with the right builds).

 

[Damned Registrations]

If you tell ships to escort another ship they'll do exactly that. Frigates are the smallest ships though, they're the ones that should be doing the escorting, generally speaking. Also, escorting a ship doesn't mean forming a clump so the enemy can pick off whoever they want- the AI escorting a ship will circle around the flanks of ships attacking the ship they are escorting, to force them to turn away and stop firing. It generally works extremely well, provided the escorting ships are fast and aren't terribly outnumbered/outmatched.

Controlling more than one fleet (presumably so you could send fast ships ahead to slow something for your big ships to catch/escape?) is something that never occurred to me. I can see the appeal, but I think it'd completely break the balance of ships if you could do that.

 

[tindrli]

im still having a blast playing it

 

[Perkel]

Controlling more than one fleet (presumably so you could send fast ships ahead to slow something for your big ships to catch/escape?) is something that never occurred to me. I can see the appeal, but I think it'd completely break the balance of ships if you could do that.

I mean sort of yeah like in this case but overall i think of something different.
Basically you set up colonies and then you get few fleets or 10s if you want and each can do something different.

One is placed in key sector that gives access to several stars.
One is patrolling around kingdom
Two fleets go from each side to join and regroup to invade other sector
etc.

I got Starsector as people recommended it in X4 thread. But from what i see it is more like warband than X game. I do have a lot of fun with it but it feels limiting as you ever have one fleet. You can't create different fleets for different purposes. You can't create strikegroup like in X series where you set up core of your power into that group and set up few ahead forces for scouting and drawing enemies into smaller fights etc.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I mean, you do get fleets that patrol your area and even shipping lanes later on. It would be nice if you could give them so more specific orders though, yeah. I think that Nexerlin mod or whatever it's called lets you send out strike forces to attack other systems. And if you want one set up permanently in a particular system, well, that's what a colony is for. You can make one that is just a military outpost and simply bleeds money if you want. It might even be more efficient in some regards; it's easier to find a low cost planet than a low cost planet that also has valuable resources.

You can store ships in a colony (even one you don't own, although that costs a storage fee) so that you can swap between say, a merchant fleet and a pirate hunting fleet. But yeah, it's definitely closer to mount and blade than anything else.

I think the idea of having a smaller fleet for scouting and harassing enemies to let your main catch up makes sense, but would make things way too finnicky. After all, if you can do it, the AI can too. Would be pretty obnoxious if ever fleet you ever tried to attack sent out a couple frigates to stall your fleet, so you'd have to send scouts out vs their scouts, and then send out more scouts to try and catch them and they'd repeat the process until you've got 5 fights going on instead of one.

 

[Perkel]

So what mods you people use ? Mod catalog kind of sucks because it is forum based and most of threads with mods are rarely updated. Tried that total conversion mod and it had under it "compatible mods" where almost half of them were not compatible and game didn't even allow me to switch them with this mod.

That Archean order mod seems to be nice but i don't like how i can't use grand sector and have bigger map.

 

[rashiakas]

Best Factionmods:

Blackrock
Everything from Tartiflette
Dassault Mykonian
Shadowyards
Interstellar Imperium

Shippacks:
Thalan
Ship/Weapon Pack
Disassemble/Reassemble
Arsenal Expansion

Must Haves:
Nexerelin
Starship Legends
Ruthles Sector
Speedup
Trailer Moments
Combat Chatter
Common Radar

 

[Perkel]

When you are so poor that even pirates take pity on you:

 

[Perkel]

Really like pirates rework in mods. Instead of being just attack attack attack this time they reasonably argue, set tolls etc. They feel now like proper pirates instead of basically plague.

 

[Doma]

Really like pirates rework in mods. Instead of being just attack attack attack this time they reasonably argue, set tolls etc. They feel now like proper pirates instead of basically plague.

What other mods do you use?

 

[Perkel]

mostly what rashias said.

I also like Grand Sector. It increases map by 30% and nearly doubles amount of stars for that marathon grand game.

 

[The Wall]

Respect to Russian devbro behind Starsector for everything so far, but I gotta s a y from what I read on forums that he adopted Sid Meier's mindset: for every new feature, two old need to be lined up and shot. After nine or so years in development, I think this has become his moskvich in garrage. He really likes to tinker with it, but he finds it perfect and except hula-hula girl on board and new lemon freshener hanging, don't expect anything more from him. Maybe 28 new paintjobs only to return to original one. Also if anyone will ever finish this, it will be modders. Astronomically fun game, still!

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Must Haves:

Vanilla is fun, no need to go mod-crazy for first char imo.

 

[Perkel]

One thing i definitely don't like is how easy is to salvage ships.

Just few minutes ago got myself capital ship for nothing. Sure it doesn't have most of its armaments and is (D) but this thing has so much armor, 4 fighter bays etc 1000 people and 600 cargo.
Price for that ? barely 20 supply crates...

And (D) doesn't even make sense as it gives barely any difference in practical therms.

Is there any mod to increase restoration price ?

I spend nearly 1000 hours playign X-tended for X3 and there getting capital class ship was true achievement either you got it via sucking dick to one faction and having shitload of money to boot or making yourself whole empire which was easily 200-300 hours to get some chains going let alone making even bigger ships which would easily be 500-600 hours.

 

[AgentFransis]

The Legion (XIV)s are special sorta easter eggs. There's about 6 of them in random locations in every game and you're guaranteed to be able to salvage them. No other capitals (and barely anything else for that matter) can be randomly found like that except rarely as salvage after big battles (though older versions of Diable used to spawn a salvageable Pandemonium orbiting a random start, which was hilarious).

The cost of salvage is D-mods. One or two you can usually live with but some are much worse than others (lowering weapon range, speed, armor, hull, flux). Many D-mods together is often crippling and barely worth using. You can try for yourself - there are normal and D-modded versions of the Eagle, Falcon, Hammerhead and Sunder in the simulator. The cost of removing D-mods from a ship is about the price of a brand new ship of the model per D-mod, so usually only done for rare and special ships (or if you're loaded and don't care). The main reason why pirates are so weak is that all their ships are D-modded to hell and back.

Also I'm pretty sure it takes more than 20 supplies to restore a Legion from 0 CR.

Regarding your final point: I do agree, it's too easy right now to progress from a destroyer to a capital fleet. Bounty prices just snowball too fast.

 

[Perkel]

I am yet to do even one bounty. I just wait for some invasion go there and pick up pieces from fight while everyone is fighting. Just now i got like 4 capital ships from fight, plenty of weapons 2000 support crates and plenty of weapons and other things to outfit them.

My issue is that it cost nothing. Even if you get 3-4 D mods capital ship will still roll through most of non D frigates and destroyers.

Imho D-mod is good idea and i really like that you need to pay way more than what ship is worth to remove those mods but getting capital ships from 1% hull to 100% shouldn't cost 20-30 supply crates. Imho it should be similar to D-mods. Getting from 1% hull to 100% hull should be more expensive than buying new one.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Did you specialize your skills in salvage or something? Because normally it's way more expensive than that and ships salvaged from a battle tend to have 2 or 3 d mods at once, often crippling ones like reduced max speed or -50% hull. I think you're misjudging the cost of the repairs; a capital ship is 15-30 supply crates per DAY, and generally recovers 4-8% each day, so going from 0 CR to full can easily cost 500 supply crates. It's also one of the reasons not to use them all the time, since they often expend a large amount of CR per battle. You might chew up over a hundred supply crates just to deploy a single capital ship- definitely not worth more than the rewards for killing a handful of frigates. Travel gets bad too, especially with a large fleet going through the clouds.

Also, 4 capital ships from a fight sounds crazy, unless they were the shitty pirate ones that are converted fuel tankers. It sounds like you generated an odd map with some massive war going on between factions. Sometimes nexerilin does that; puts 2 very high level planets with capped out fleet bases in the same system from different factions. I never bothered salvaging them, but you can get crazy smuggling from wars like that too.

 

[Chunkyman]

I'm disappointed with the ship mods I've looked at for this game. I really like how StarSector mixes in the both various tech levels of ships, and various civilian/military orientated ships into the game with reasonable balance. Most of the ship/faction mods go very heavy on high tech (and military focused) designs and cruiser/capital ship sizes, and pretty badly throw off the feel of the game's world as a recovering post-post apocalypse where industries are still feeble and trying to recover and most people are stuck with refurbished junkers and other lower tech/cheaper ships for use. I get that's what people find cool, I just think when the mods are pretty much all focused on that end of things it ends up being jarring and makes the entire world feel less real. Sort of like with New Vegas weapon pack mods that just add in a shitload of pristine, over-the-top mall ninja AR-15s, SCARs, etc. with quad rails and EOtech optics. It's like they just don't get it.

Great game overall though even with just vanilla. I'm really looking forward to the next updates, the entire vision for this game really speaks to me. The Mandate ended up dying a sad death, and I've played FTL: Faster than Light a billion times, so it's good to have this genre of space captain rogue-similar see more titles.

 

[AgentFransis]

I'm disappointed with the ship mods I've looked at for this game. I really like how StarSector mixes in the both various tech levels of ships, and various civilian/military orientated ships into the game with reasonable balance. Most of the ship/faction mods go very heavy on high tech (and military focused) designs and cruiser/capital ship sizes, and pretty badly throw off the feel of the game's world as a recovering post-post apocalypse where industries are still feeble and trying to recover and most people are stuck with refurbished junkers and other lower tech/cheaper ships for use. I get that's what people find cool, I just think when the mods are pretty much all focused on that end of things it ends up being jarring and makes the entire world feel less real. Sort of like with New Vegas weapon pack mods that just add in a shitload of pristine, over-the-top mall ninja AR-15s, SCARs, etc. with quad rails and EOtech optics. It's like they just don't get it.

Great game overall though even with just vanilla. I'm really looking forward to the next updates, the entire vision for this game really speaks to me. The Mandate ended up dying a sad death, and I've played FTL: Faster than Light a billion times, so it's good to have this genre of space captain rogue-similar see more titles.

Meh.

Firstly there are plenty of mid-techish mods like II, DME, SCY and Diable. All major mods have a balance of ship classes so dunno what you're on about with capitals and cruisers. Some general ship packs add civilian ships too but the faction mods are obviously focused on making a single cohesive military faction. Most of these make reasonable sense in the lore if you consider Tri-Techion as a template for a corporation with a private navy and R&D that managed to preserve itself much better than the Domain at large.

If you want to larp that's cool. But this isn't an RPG really and I don't think most players and modders are larpers and are here mostly for the combat. Because really that's what the game is all about and in that spirit most mods seek to provide more variety for combat and fleet building. Personally I'm not overly enamoured with the setting as the game offers very little in this regard. There's barely anything to interact with beyond basic market transactions and combat, no real NPCs, no logs you can read, nonsensical pirate mechanics etc.

Personally I think most of the big mods offer far better content that the vanilla game in presenting cohesive factions with a unique style and they make the game way more fun.