Starsector - RT 2D indie space goodness

[Blaine]

I loved the combat and ship outfitting last time I played a few years ago but remember finding it a massive chore to keep supplies/fuel stocked up as they'd run out so quickly, has that system changed at all?

Nope.

It's manageable, but it remains a constant chore. Furthermore, there are intentional shortages of supplies and fuel. In the version I played (there's been a major update since then), one planet in one system produced most of the fuel, and all the rest of the planets in the entire game universe produced fumes by comparison. If you side politically with factions other than that one faction, then procuring fuel for very large fleets becomes double the chore, even with commander skills that reduce fleet fuel consumption.

I mentioned this on their official forums, but the official forums are populated by people who've been playing the game for thousands of hours, and don't tend to be able to see from any viewpoint other than the viewpoint of a longtime veteran.

 

[Blaine]

A couple of tips for beginners:

Set the fleet cap slider in the game options to maximum. Most computers can handle it, and if you don't do this, then enemy fleets will benefit asymmetrically: That is, if total deployment points are restricted, the enemy will get more than you, up to 50% more in the most extreme cases. With the slider maxed, this will usually only happen if you're taking on more than one enemy fleet at once, which you should rarely do until maybe the endgame when you know exactly what you're doing.

Normal difficulty is actually for-real normal difficulty in Starsector. In fact, don't be afraid to select the easy difficulty while learning the game, but try to switch back to normal relatively soon.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Set the fleet cap slider in the game options to maximum. Most computers can handle it, and if you don't do this, then enemy fleets will benefit asymmetrically: That is, if total deployment points are restricted, the enemy will get more than you, up to 50% more in the most extreme cases. With the slider maxed, this will usually only happen if you're taking on more than one enemy fleet at once, which you should rarely do until maybe the endgame when you know exactly what you're doing.

That's not how it works. With the cap in place, each side gets a share of the total cap based on their relative fleet size deployed in that fight. If the enemy has 60 points while you have only forty, it's because they brought 150 points while you brought 100. You can use it against them as well, though generally speaking it's rarely worth it to engage smaller forces with larger ones. You can also see the effect shange as the battle progresses: if you take out some enemy ships you will be able to deploy more of your own because your share of the cap has increased, while theirs has gone down so they can't replace the ships with equal amounts.

The main difference the cap has on a battle is that it favours long deployment times, more powerful, short range weapons, and better shields and mobility, since instead of being able to fight everything at once you have a few ships fighting and tagging out for fresh ships over a longer period of time. If you have bad deployment times it can be terrible because the enemy can just wait you out until you have to retreat your ships, then your share decreases since some of your ships left the battle and things get worse.

 

[track02]

Nope.

Bit of a shame, I'll give it another go anyway as there looks to be a huge amount of new stuff added since I last played.
And as long as I can get an Apogee I'll probably be happy for a while at least.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Nope.

Bit of a shame, I'll give it another go anyway as there looks to be a huge amount of new stuff added since I last played.
And as long as I can get an Apogee I'll probably be happy for a while at least.

Comrade Blaine did not played the last version in which the cost and rarity of fuel were both nerfed. I would wait a year or so for final version unless you are big fan of game Comrade though as in current version colony management is making game super easy and being planetary governor don't fit well with being captain of small task force/trade flotilla. You are not acknowledged as leader of new Stellar Policy in no way shape of form and your colony can be raided even when you do hold Letter of Marque from the same mayor power. Moreover 30% custom fees when you both buy and sell is very steep and makes legal trade totally unprofitable, I would change it to 10% so you still pay hefty tax of 20% which is comparable to RL sales taxes/VAT. in my opinion there would be no way you were allowed to start colony without charter from big four or act as independent power without independence war, the independent worlds are all just shitholes nobody claimed cause they are too poor and costly to defend but sure everybody would want his piece of pie if you found terran word of 75-150% hazard rate and with nice resources and withing 10years light distance from core worlds. Thats not saying game is not worth buying or even playing but its still far from completion.

 

[Blaine]

That's not how it works. With the cap in place, each side gets a share of the total cap based on their relative fleet size deployed in that fight. If the enemy has 60 points while you have only forty, it's because they brought 150 points while you brought 100.

Don't make me quote the developer himself from the official forums. I've had this conversation with the man himself. It'll be slightly annoying to spend time finding the exact passage, but I can do it if you insist on spreading wrong information.

You're wrong because if both your fleet and the enemy fleet both far exceed the cap but yet each have about the same number of deployment points worth of ships, then the enemy will still get to deploy 50% more than you. The algorithm favors NPC fleets.

In fact, if you go up against two large enemy fleets, they can continually reinforce each other with ship after ship after ship, while your own reinforcements sit on the sidelines until you finally destroy enough of the enemy to make room. This will only occur long after the 3:2 ratio of enemy ships:your ships.

That's the ratio, by the way, straight from the man himself. It's a maximum of 3:2 in favor of NPC fleets. Beyond that point, enemy fleets will be capped, but before it they'll get asymmetrically more deployment points than you do.

Having said that, the fact of the matter is that endgame enemy fleets in Starsector (say, max-difficulty bounties) are fucking huge, bloated with frigates and destroyers and at least one or two more capitals/supercapitals than a player will typically field, so either way you're still going to get fucked by deployment points if the cap is exceeded because you simply can't supply and fuel a fleet of your own that's nearly as massive as enemy fleets.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

this game looks awesome, but have been waiting for 1.0. Am worried 1.0 will never happen or maybe even is not even planned to happen. Reminds me of the steam rogue game I have been waiting forever for as well, caves of quid

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well I just brought a fleet of ~320-330 points vs an enemy fleet of 147 points and I got to deploy 120 out of the 200 cap. During battle by blowing up some stuff then retreating a bunch of my stuff I got it to 98 points vs 91 and I had a 95 point share of the cap. Seems fine to me. It is somewhat skewed in the enemy favour but certainly not enough that I'd raise the cap and risk having all my high tech destroyers blown to bits by a massive amount of firepower when they can instead dance around the edges of a small fleet and tear them apart. Might be other factors influencing that cap too like officers effects or general fleet readiness or god knows what.

I can't be assed to find some huge monster fleet to throw my fleet away at so maybe you're right in cases of like 500 vs 500 point fleets, but my 300 point fleet beat even the endgame fortresses out in the boonies and the giant fleets in the same area, so I can't imagine we were at those levels. And fleets much bigger than mine, while perfectly affordable in the inner system, do become a god damned nightmare to manage in the massive fields of storms so I can't imagine wanting one unless it's in a modded game.

 

[Blaine]

Commander and officer statistics, fleet readiness, etc. don't affect the maximum deployment cap or ratios at all. It's a purely metagame consideration.

This was my final fleet when I last played vanilla, before loading up DynaSector and a bunch of mods, and just prior to the new update:

It's about 270-ish points, which is a huge fleet by anyone's standards. This was a supplies- and fuel-hungry fleet to run, so I imagine something's changed since the update if you're able to run an enormous 330-point fleet with no issues. That's an entire additional capital ship and change.

Even with the fleet cap slider maxed in options, bounty fleets were regularly worth significantly more total points than my fleet, so I was usually fighting at a DP/numbers disadvantage. The Paragon helped to even those odds, since it's retardedly overpowered in a player's hands.

That said, if you significantly outclass enemy fleets, then sure, I can see smaller fleet caps being more helpful than larger caps. Even so, those do tend to drag on longer than larger battles, creating CR issues for you but not for the enemy. I rarely had significant CR issues.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Fuel and supplies honestly seem quite cheap to me, though to be fair my fleet included a ton of the tachyon cruiser that has significant fuel and cargo space, and I'm not a big fan of capital ships, since they recover CR from lightning strikes too slowly. Though I never got my hands on a Paragon. Tachyon has like 2 weak military bases in my game. I did have some very lucrative bases going though.

I do recall fighting pirate fleets larger than mine, but the deployment cap wasn't a problem, since my strategy wasn't to overwhelm them to begin with. I played the logistics game, which the pirates are terrible at. All my officers have extended combat time on high tech ships with full CR. The capital ship can sit around for something retarded like 15 minutes iirc while the Tempests pick off every fighter and anything without really good shields from a safe range. The enemy has way more CR issues when it's deploying more ships AND those ships have shorter durations.

The one spot the deployment cap did annoy me was when entering as a third party to some major engagement, your share of the cap is paltry and it's hard to get anything done, especially since you show up from the edge of the fight while the armies are already fighting.

 

[rashiakas]

Dont listen to blaine, he does not know what he is talking about.

Theres a ppve tournament going on right now if anyone is interested, round 4 will be streamed this weekend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VILKvhVwl6I&feature=youtu.be vod of round 1 of the underdog league.

 

[LizardWizard]

This was a supplies- and fuel-hungry fleet to run, so I imagine something's changed since the update if you're able to run an enormous 330-point fleet with no issues.

Colonies make the game way to easy. Only takes a couple months for it to be profitable, even high hazard planets. Throw a pristine nanoforge and synchroton core on a low hazard colony and credits/supplies/fuel become virtually non-issues.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[track02]

Had time to play for a few hours yesterday

• The Salvage / Exploration stuff was all new to me but I really like the idea and ended up spending one 'run' exploring planets, recovering derelict ships and salvaging junk from battles
• Combat is still as good as I remember, fighters seem more effective now which is neat although I couldn't figure out how to control them
  
• I get the idea but don't really like Combat Readiness, mine seemed to expire really quickly while enemies would sit at ~70% until my ships started exploding from the inside out
  
• Supply management didn't seem as bad and with salvaging I could usually keep my supplies at a good level
• Still had some fuel issues, especially with a larger fleet although maybe I expanded too quickly after finding two Legion Battlecruisers in the first 15 minutes - it's cheap enough to buy but you burn through it so quick
  
• Haven't tried the colony stuff yet but did find some AI cores and other bits for them
  
• Hyperspace still isn't much fun, I was spending a lot of time in there just waiting to reach my destination and the storms are annoying (the hyperspace jump graphic hasn't changed either)
• I forgot you had to manually save so when I lost my fleet and went to reload I was back at level 1

I'm going to grab a few mods and jump back in over the weekend

 

[Sarissofoi]

New update.
http://fractalsoftworks.com/2019/05/10/starsector-0-9-1a-release/

Starsector version 0.9.1a is now out! This is mostly a bugfixing-and-polish release, though there is also some new content and a few new mechanics.

• Rebalanced colony progression so it’s both not as demanding of constant attention and doesn’t immediately catapult the player into the endgame
• Improvements to ship AI, in particular escort behavior is much better (see here) and carrier survivability is much greater
• Two new capital ships, used by the pirate and Pather factions, and a new pirate skin for the Shrike
• A “randomized start” option
• Various quality-of-life improvments (can set speed-up time to be a toggle, etc)
• Reworked high-end fleet spawning – generates more large ships, and fewer ships overall, instead of just a larger number of ships
• Large fleets can now disengage without being pursued if they can deal enough damage in a pitched battle first, even if they lose it
• Added ambient sound track when visiting a portside bar
• Assorted combat balance tweaks
• Many bugfixes and modding-related improvements

The new version should be save-compatible, although some mods may require a few adjustments to work.

At last.

 

[anvi]

Is this game like Space Rangers?

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Is this game like Space Rangers?

Not really, no "adventure" stuff. Much closer to Mount&blade-ish in space, has some very light 4x elements (for now). Amassing a fleet is fun though, enough load-out stuff to fiddle with, battles are excellent.

 

[anvi]

Thanks. Sounds fun.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

how finished is the game? or is it always going to be in early access? I have been watching it for what seems like a decade and it looks great but I notice there are already endless mods and shit like a complete game. Is it ever really going to be done or is this how the game is going to always be, a constant work in progress?

 

[HeatEXTEND]

how finished is the game? or is it always going to be in early access? I have been watching it for what seems like a decade and it looks great but I notice there are already endless mods and shit like a complete game. Is it ever really going to be done or is this how the game is going to always be, a constant work in progress?

The development is pretty glacial but what's there right now will keep you entertained for quite some time if you enjoy the fleet-building/combat, which are quite polished. Think 50-60 hours rather than 10 (very rough estimate). For reference SPAZ got boring after 8 or so hours, Starsector did not; pretty much the same gameplay loop (get stuff > get fleet > get bigger stuff > get bigger fleet). Would highly recommend, especially at a measly 15$.

 

[Puteo]

how finished is the game? or is it always going to be in early access? I have been watching it for what seems like a decade and it looks great but I notice there are already endless mods and shit like a complete game. Is it ever really going to be done or is this how the game is going to always be, a constant work in progress?

Starsector is far more polished and feature-rich than many popular indie and mainstream games released today. It is well worth your time in its current state. Personally I've backed it since ~2011 and every 1-2 years I download the latest build and get 20-30 hours out of it each time. The changes he makes are very significant as he is quite a bit of a perfectionist and working on the game full time.

That said, I don't think we are that far away from release (relatively speaking) as major gameplay is pretty much complete; all that's really left is some balancing and then implementing the main story and quests. The fact that he has been so quiet on the blog front leads me to believe that he's spending most of his time implementing the story already and full release is probably not much longer than 1-2 years away.

 

[tindrli]

how finished is the game? or is it always going to be in early access? I have been watching it for what seems like a decade and it looks great but I notice there are already endless mods and shit like a complete game. Is it ever really going to be done or is this how the game is going to always be, a constant work in progress?

Starsector is far more polished and feature-rich than many popular indie and mainstream games released today. It is well worth your time in its current state. Personally I've backed it since ~2011 and every 1-2 years I download the latest build and get 20-30 hours out of it each time. The changes he makes are very significant as he is quite a bit of a perfectionist and working on the game full time.

That said, I don't think we are that far away from release (relatively speaking) as major gameplay is pretty much complete; all that's really left is some balancing and then implementing the main story and quests. The fact that he has been so quiet on the blog front leads me to believe that he's spending most of his time implementing the story already and full release is probably not much longer than 1-2 years away.

and dont forget that there are plenty of GREAT MODS!!!

 

[Commissar Draco]

New Version of Starsector released:
Blog post/download links here.

Changes as of May 17, 2019

Miscellaneous:

• "Increased Maintenance" now increases supply consumption by a percentage instead of a multiplier
• High Tech station: reduced flux capacity of dedicated shield modules by 25%
• Increased price of Buffalo Mk.II to 18,000 credits
• Reduced propensity of small phase ships to bump into large ships they're escorting
• Fixed AI issue that was causing the Apogee to aim slightly away from enemy ships due to considering itself a broadside ship
• Hound (A) now has built-in Armored Weapon Mounts instead of Militarized Hegemony Auxiliary
• Improved placement of mines by the Mine Strike ship system, especially against ships whose center-of-rotation doesn't match the center of the ship sprite
• When joining a battle defending a station and the enemy retreats, non-station allies may now pursue instead of letting the enemy go
• Prometheus Mk.II and Atlas Mk.II now marked as "Luddic Path" and "Pirate" instead of "Low Tech"

Modding

• Fixed devMode crash when clicking on administrator at Culann
• Fixed issue with JUST_BELOW_WIDGETS rendering layer rendering below particles
• Weapon boost system AI without a weaponTypes defined in the .system file will assume all weapons are affected instead of crashing
  • Ideally, weapon systems like this would either have a custom AI or have weaponTypes defined
• Fixed missile contrail reappearing issue when missiles stop and then start accelerating
• Various getMaxCapacity()/getMaxFuel()/getMaxCrew()/etc methods for fleets and fleet members now return rounded-down values when the value is fractional
• Added to ShipAPI:
  • Vector2f getShieldCenterEvenIfNoShield();
  • float getShieldRadiusEvenIfNoShield();
• Custom textures in .proj files should be loaded by the game and don't need to be specified in the graphics section of the settings file

Bugfixing:

• Switched supply cost of Atlas and Atlas Mk.II
• Increased base price of Aurora to 200k credits (was left unchanged at 70k)
• Iron mode works again (will apply to existing saves)
• Fixed issue with intel for some of the destroyed pirate bases sticking around indefinitely
• Can no longer queue multiple orbital stations for construction
• Non-primary stars no longer show a survey level of "unexplored" in tooltips etc
• Fixed issue where autofit could occasionally go above the ordnance point limit
• Fixed planet data showing up twice in star system data screen for "2 + 1" type trinary systems
• Fleets with only mothballed ships will not try to engage even if set to be aggressive
• Fixed issue where ctrl-clicking to sell/remove all of an excess cargo/fuel/crew would sometimes be off by 1
• Aquaculture at Volturn no longer shows the Farming industry icon
• "Command network" display in combat now shows impact of Command & Control on command point recovery
• Can now issue additional orders when command frequency is open but command points are at 0
• Creating a new assignment no longer resets the command frequency duration if no command point was spent
• Player patrols should now recapture non-hostile objectives in player-controlled systems
• Will no longer auto-deploy player's fleet when it only has one ship in it when aiding a station
• "Analyze Entity" missions will no longer target the mission-related "Technology Cache"
• Weak expeditionary fleets will no longer pursue the player if the player is friendly to their faction

http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=15027.0

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

how finished is the game? or is it always going to be in early access? I have been watching it for what seems like a decade and it looks great but I notice there are already endless mods and shit like a complete game. Is it ever really going to be done or is this how the game is going to always be, a constant work in progress?

The development is pretty glacial but what's there right now will keep you entertained for quite some time if you enjoy the fleet-building/combat, which are quite polished. Think 50-60 hours rather than 10 (very rough estimate). For reference SPAZ got boring after 8 or so hours, Starsector did not; pretty much the same gameplay loop (get stuff > get fleet > get bigger stuff > get bigger fleet). Would highly recommend, especially at a measly 15$.

This game is what I am looking for in a space game. I have no doubt I will like it. I have watched many videos of the game play and fleet building and have been wanting to buy it for years I just don't want to spoil it....... but every so I often I consider that perhaps this is how the product will be released and it might always say early access and I should just buy it. I don't doubt I will like whatever exists at the moment. I have looked into the game pretty deeply. Whats more confusing actually is what mods to eventually add..I probably will go ahead and get the game sometime this summer..thanks for all your guys feedback

 

[rashiakas]

Remember to join the Discord if you have any questions https://discord.gg/5BYgZud