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Starsector is an open-world single-player space-combat hyphenated-description game
mittens
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Starsector (formerly “Starfarer”) is an in-development open-world single-player space-combat, roleplaying, exploration, and economic game. You take the role of a space captain seeking fortune and glory however you choose.
https://youtu.be/eAvo3S0MD-o
This game has been in development for something like 9 years, which you would think was in some kind of development hell, but it's a passion project from a very small team (I think like 3 or 4 people), so the updates have come slowly but very regularly.
I actually first heard about this game in a PA indie games thread about 3 years back, then promptly forgot about actually visiting the website and checking it out. My loss. A couple weeks back however, the game was re-recommended by Axen in the Space Sims Mega-Thread and I went to check it out. $15 bucks? Sure I'll give it a shot. I'm glad I did. And you'll be glad you do too.
What is this game like?
Starsector's FAQ wrote:
Axen mentioned that a good way to imagine it is "Mount and Blade: In Space" and I think that's a pretty apt description! There are two strategic layers: a star system level where you can fly around and visit planets and space stations. Because space is very large and very empty, the way to travel between systems is using hyperspace. This is the second layer where your fleet can jump out of a system from certain nexus points and burn antimatter fuel to travel through hyperspace to new star systems. There is also a tactical layer where actual ship combat happens. There are ships from tiny shuttles and fighter craft all the way up to massive capital ships and enormous battlestations guarding particularly important worlds.
Did I mention the game has a huge array of mods that have made some pretty extensive changes to the game and are well supported by the dev team? They've even incorporated some of the more popular mods into the base game over the last few years. I haven't gotten into modding at all yet so I can't give any recommendations but I'm sure someone here will be able to share some details.
Now let's all talk about this great little game that's gone dark to avoid interdiction pickets flown under the radar!
https://youtu.be/eAvo3S0MD-oThis game has been in development for something like 9 years, which you would think was in some kind of development hell, but it's a passion project from a very small team (I think like 3 or 4 people), so the updates have come slowly but very regularly.
I actually first heard about this game in a PA indie games thread about 3 years back, then promptly forgot about actually visiting the website and checking it out. My loss. A couple weeks back however, the game was re-recommended by Axen in the Space Sims Mega-Thread and I went to check it out. $15 bucks? Sure I'll give it a shot. I'm glad I did. And you'll be glad you do too.
What is this game like?
Starsector's FAQ wrote:
We are glad you asked. Let’s use a food analogy: Take a slice of Star Control, mix it with cubed Master of Orion 2, add in a dash of MechWarrior and stir it all up in our special development pot. As indie developers and old school gamers we are going back to the Golden Age of Gaming with our design choices and presentation. Of course, if you load up one of those games now you may be cringing at the graphics: that’s where our modern game engine and art department come in. In addition, sound effects and music really set the stage for a memorable experience.
Axen mentioned that a good way to imagine it is "Mount and Blade: In Space" and I think that's a pretty apt description! There are two strategic layers: a star system level where you can fly around and visit planets and space stations. Because space is very large and very empty, the way to travel between systems is using hyperspace. This is the second layer where your fleet can jump out of a system from certain nexus points and burn antimatter fuel to travel through hyperspace to new star systems. There is also a tactical layer where actual ship combat happens. There are ships from tiny shuttles and fighter craft all the way up to massive capital ships and enormous battlestations guarding particularly important worlds.
Did I mention the game has a huge array of mods that have made some pretty extensive changes to the game and are well supported by the dev team? They've even incorporated some of the more popular mods into the base game over the last few years. I haven't gotten into modding at all yet so I can't give any recommendations but I'm sure someone here will be able to share some details.
Now let's all talk about this great little game that's gone dark to avoid interdiction pickets flown under the radar!
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As to my mod recommendations:
Nexerelin- Factions will form alliances, there are diplomacy events that'll change everyone's relations to everyone, you can join a faction or start your own and you can start in a procedurally generated map. Highly recommend this mod, pretty much all other mods make themselves compatible with this mod and even the Devs will take features from it.
GraphicsLib, LazyLib, MagicLib- These are the three libraries that most all mods make use of. May as well download them all if you plan to use mods.
As for Faction Mods I recommend, all the ones in blue? Grab em. A single Faction Mod on its own can sometime be a bit OP. The modding community does try hard to make things balanced, but eh it isn't always perfect. On the bright side grabbing all the available Faction Mods actually balances everything out. Plus more Factions is always fun! All the Faction Mods are compatible with Nexerelin's features.
Utility Mods on the other hand really is personal preference. I use Combat Chatter, Audio Plus and Lightshow.
And if you haven't already, and have a good handle on how the game plays, Definitely pop in the Nexerelin mod. And an added portrait mod. And all of the new faction mods.
Having a station that is a Free Port is pretty handy. Allows traders to legally sell, uh, illegal commodities.
It will cause some factions to send an Expeditionary Force from time to time, but if you have solid defenses it's typically not a big issue. I believe the there is a log somewhere that lets you know how powerful the Expeditionary Force is and the likelihood it will beat your defenders (in my experience it is rarely).
Class FIVE?
Shit. I pounced on some Class III's like they were epitome of planets. I was even nervous about selling the scan data before I colonized them because I thought it might trigger the AI to dispatch colonists to these hand crafted treasure-worlds.
So Class goes to V... good to know.
Also good to know you can mine AI cores out of ruins. Made the decision to part with a Beta Core (the blue faction pays triple) to cover my loan much easier!
I don't even know how I found my Class V planet. I got the scan data from somewhere, but I don't remember getting it. Maybe from a derelict.
I thought it would be cool if you sold scans and the AI sent ships out. It would make you think twice about selling it. It might show up later. I'd be surprised if mods don't add it first.
I have a blueprint for a Luddic Path Colossus MK II that sells for ~60k
I also have a blueprint for all the Luddic Path ships, including the above, that sells for ~20k
Is this just a balance bug, or am I missing some implied limitation of the latter package?
In general you want
1 planet with low hazard rating. This can get you started and achieve decent income with no industry. It also makes production and refining cheap.
1 planet that can farm.
A total of planets which encompass all mining options (volatiles is optional). The higher the better.
Once you can mine everything that is input for your production (fuel production is not necessary, just get waystations) the hazard rating of your planets will barely matter anymore
Are logistics handled automatically or do you have to manually shuffle things around? Like if I have a planet just for volatiles, another for ores, and one for production, will they share amongst themselves?
If I have a planet set with tech mining (and extensive ruins) do I get a notice if/when they find a blueprint or AI core or whatever? Because I don't seem to have received anything yet that I know of (though that planet is a bit out of the way so I don't visit often).
https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Accessibility
So, from the sounds of it, if accessibility is a measure of your market access bandwidth, with a handicap on the multiplier for your internal market, then as long as your accessibility cap is less than your demand for a given product: it will be met; and your less accessible colonies can still service each other when the general market can't.
Having read it, it's not clear if you even "pay" for the goods you import. Curious if goods sourced internally boost your bottom line by generating additional revenue for the internal producers rather than reducing the expenses of the internal consumers.
Also, Dominators are life. They are my current favorite armored fatties, pre capital ships. I have the blueprints to manufacture them and they're doing wonders to save my besieged system from pirates. They can take out Atlas MK 2s (the pirate capital ship) one on one, and I just love some tanky dumb ships in my fleet. Bonus points for still having an 8 burn, getting to 9 with the navigation skill which is my current sweetspot to not die to doom capital fleets.
Logistics are handled automatically(and you can thank me for this
The way it works is that each building has a desired import volume. If this any planet exists which, modified by accessability, meets that level of supply then any number of buildings and planets will have global demand met. If one doesnt then that planet is affected by global shortage
Periodically every planet has fleets generated that fly to and from a planet. If a fleet flying to a planet is destroyed/damaged this inparts a malus on available materials(based on what was being imported). Putting those buildings into local shortage and reducing stability snd output.
Edit: you also have a global domestic volume. If you could prevent a global shortage without using planets you dont own you get a reduction in upkeep for all buildings. (Techincally its function of the percentage of input you can sustain domestically)
Is there an indirect, rep-neutral way to deal with these fuckos? I've just temporarily written the system off while I slowly grind up pirate rep (the primary goal).
That's a pretty neat way to do it! Does the malus falloff after a fixed period of time, or persist until another "Route inspector" successfully arrives and updates your rating?
Seems fun and if it reaches the scale you guys are describing that’s pretty cool
My soul belongs to Stellaris currently, as it's my goto game to casually play while catching up on podcasts, but I'm intrigued enough by the depth this game offers to invest enough time to git gud at it.
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Either or. Alternwtely the local shortage produces a value for the shortage and it can be cleared by selling enough goods to the market (or putting stock in resource storage and having “use stock to deal with shortage” ticked)
Dumped it into colonies without considering the ROI first... one of which has now completely devolved, two of which are pegged at 0 stability by pirates I can't contain. Two are doing well, but they just offset the losses at this point. Might need to just shut them all down and regroup while I spend the next year dumpster diving in the outer rim.
You probably figured this out by now, but: Yes!
They seem to get shipped to a collection point, which I don't know how to change, but is either your oldest colony, or the closest colony (both are the same for me). You get a message when they arrive there. Presumably those shipments can be intercepted; but the target system in question is lousy with constant pirate raids and they seem to get through.
They cannot be intercepted. They appear immediately when the new month rolls over
To help you deal with pirates
They drive garbage. Get a couple of condors with decent fliers and shred them. Or a cruiser that can keep up pressure. Your ships will be better than theirs unless you only salvage derelicts.
For colony support vs pirates.
Every colony needs a starbase at least lvl 2. And every colony needs a patrol hq. If it's the only colony in system, use an industry slot to upgrade that to a military base.
A level 2 space station (battlestation is the name I think) can hold off any pirate fleet until they start spamming atlas mk2s forever. You'll likely be able to counter it with your own capitals by then. With minimal assistance (2 decent cruisers) they can hold off expeditions too. A lvl 3 one (star fortress) is hilariously tough with how indecisive the AI is.
Both of these will also add stability, both directly, and indirectly by keeping pirates from completing raids and trashing your traders.
Oh well :P
To be fair I AM only trading on the black market because 30% tariffs are fucking retarded and highway robbery. That and I'm only trading drugs to local pirates, why do they care if I help them with their pirate problem by making money off those assholes overdosing?
How do I stop them from assuming I'm trading illegal stuff on the black market?
Also why doesn't this game warn me before I enter a system where the locals are murderously hostile towards me? I took a delivery mission from some guy in a bar and he sent me to some system with a green colored faction that immediately sent a fleet I had zero chance against with no warning, no comms, and I had never interacted with them before that point either.
The green colored faction is the Luddic Path. They can be bought off(open a comm link).
The yellow green faction are the luddic path which have some of the best markets(shortages) for selling illegal goods. In system they are are actively hostile and can't be bargained with, but in hyperspace the small patrols can be bought off with a couple thousand credits.
The best advice for beginners is to stay small and stay fast with hounds and cerberus's as you're primary cargo and fuel carriers. Their speed on the combat layer lets you disengage from 99.9% of combat encounters you can't handle. also their shielded cargo bays can be handy.In the refit screen when you are docked you can add logistic mods that increase their cargo space and fuel capacity by 30%.
As for combat vessels I strongly recommend the tempest class frigate which is a rare chasis that can be found in pearson and tri tech markets for around 45K. Wolves are ok alone but great in packs.
Unless they changed it the threshold for being caught on the black market is going over 100k in credits it'll be a while until can check.
I noticed this last night! Got pounced on by an equal size fleet, and my one Support Condor with HighTech fighters eviscerated them one by one while my other ships tanked. Refitted the other one from Strike to Attack, and Bob is now, as they say, wedded to my Aunt.
I also learned that abandoning your colony, rather than letting it devolve, actually reclaims a shit load of cash. So I broke down the two failing colonies to build up the defenses on the good ones before the Pirates find them.
If so... oops.
Any black market, or at pirate bases? I thought I'd read it was latter; if not... uh oh.
I covered my loan payback with three capital ship blueprints, and I, uh, don't think I was keen to pay taxes on those.
Well I got my rep down to the mid negative 60s. Been slow going between +5 missions and penalties sweeping them out of my systems, but it's going.
Will they actually fuck off if you get in their good graces?
1) Sustained Burn increases your burn level thereby increasing your speed and your rate of fuel consumption, but it seems that overall fuel consumption is tied to distance traveled. This means that traveling the same distance with Sustained Burn on or off consumes the same amount of fuel. However, you save on supplies as supplies are consumed per time and you have less travel time using Sustained Burn.
2) Your fleet doesn't maneuver very well during sustained burn, if you are trying to get your fleet to a specific point you can sustain burn up to it and if you fleet misses the point turn off sustained burn so the fleet can easily maneuver to get to the point.
3) In the refit screen you can see a blue bar in the upper right that has a fraction on it, for example 45/45. This shows Ordnance Points of the ship, used / total. Guns, hullmods, and fighter craft all cost an amount of Ordnance Points. It took me a longer time than I would like to admit to realize that you can also use Ordnance Points to directly increase the flux capacity and flux vent rate of the ship. This is done beneath the blue bar in the upper right. Many ship start with Ordnance Points already allocated to capacity and vents and you can unallocate them to free up some points.
4) When traveling through the hyperspace or system your fleet moves at the speed of the slowest ship. The speed of a ship in hyperspace or system is its burn level.
5) How detectable your fleet is is quantified in the sensor profile number. The sensor profile number for you fleet is the sum of the sensor profiles of the five ships with the highest sensor profiles. Don't waste Ordnance Points reducing the sensor profile of every ship in your fleet like I did; only worry about the five ships with the highest sensor profile.
6) If you do the tutorial, you will get some storage space at a planet. It costs money every month to store things there! Depending on how much you have in that planet's storage there will be a fee. You can find abandoned stations where you can store things for free.