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Starsector is an open-world single-player space-combat hyphenated-description game

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Posts

  • Casual EddyCasual Eddy The Astral PlaneRegistered User regular
    Yikes, the high warning systems are no joke

    I cleared one system and the one next to it has 8 or so large remnant fleets flying around in a big blob

    Even with an end game fleet that’s a no-go

  • swphreakswphreak Registered User regular
    Yikes, the high warning systems are no joke

    I cleared one system and the one next to it has 8 or so large remnant fleets flying around in a big blob

    Even with an end game fleet that’s a no-go

    What's your end game fleet composition? I've been farming a nearby Remnant system with a fleet headed by 6 Paragons and 2 Domain Onslaughts. I can take 3 or 4 at once no problem. I'd be retreating and calling in reinforcements forever, but it'd get the job done.

    I'm at the point where my Founding colony system in unbeatable, and I've conquered the Luddic Church as punishment for taking one of my original planets a long time ago. I don't see a point in continuing anymore. No one can stop me.

  • Casual EddyCasual Eddy The Astral PlaneRegistered User regular
    swphreak wrote: »
    Yikes, the high warning systems are no joke

    I cleared one system and the one next to it has 8 or so large remnant fleets flying around in a big blob

    Even with an end game fleet that’s a no-go

    What's your end game fleet composition? I've been farming a nearby Remnant system with a fleet headed by 6 Paragons and 2 Domain Onslaughts. I can take 3 or 4 at once no problem. I'd be retreating and calling in reinforcements forever, but it'd get the job done.

    I'm at the point where my Founding colony system in unbeatable, and I've conquered the Luddic Church as punishment for taking one of my original planets a long time ago. I don't see a point in continuing anymore. No one can stop me.

    I don’t have access to paragons or onslaughts sadly. I do have a battle carrier and the high tech giant carrier that do good work though

  • HeirHeir Ausitn, TXRegistered User regular
    My Remnant clearing fleet is a mix of Paragons, Astrals and some Onslaughts. I love it. But yeah, game is getting a bit boring now that I'm kind of unkillable.

    Will have to look into some mods to see what looks interesting. I've only got a couple QoL mods installed. One of my favorites is one that just allows me to speed up time during battle.

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  • HeirHeir Ausitn, TXRegistered User regular
    In the base vanilla game, the Hegemony don't like me because I told my forces to resist any AI inspections. So now they're hostile. Any ways to get them to like me again?

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  • StrikorStrikor Calibrations? Calibrations! Registered User regular
    I know killing them to the point of wanting a ceasefire is a thing but I'm 99% certain that is from the Nexerelin mod and not vanilla. You could maybe fly around a bit and do any random missions (scan derelicts/probes/etc) that pop up for the Hegemony.

    You might also be able to grab a commission with a faction that doesn't hate them.

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Heir wrote: »
    In the base vanilla game, the Hegemony don't like me because I told my forces to resist any AI inspections. So now they're hostile. Any ways to get them to like me again?

    Grabbing a commission with a faction that hates them but doesn't always hate them can fix it. When hostilities end it will reset your relationship]

    Alternately you can run missions for them and make sure to NOT get into fights with them with your transmitter on (that will reset you to -50).

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  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    Kamiro wrote: »
    I didn't realize that setting your colony to Free Port ramped up the growth. When I first toggled it to see what it did, I was disappointed at the minimal change (I think it starts at +5?). But I left it since it was still a lot better than the .5% growth I had before.

    Then I came back after a bit and it was at +25!

    Since my colonies are about 20 days out from the core, I've been doing some exploring around my immediate area and once I start getting to around ~700 fuel, I take my fuel tankers and head to the core where my main battle fleet is in storage. Then I go harass whoever has hostilities until I max out my fuel and refill on supplies plus make some cash on the side then I put my fleet back in storage and head back to my colonies. Rinse and repeat.

    Yah! It starts out slowly but once it ramps up to its fulll effect its super nice. The stability penalty ramps up too, but the net growth is still great.

    Note free ports will piss some factions off over time. For some reason they don't like your colony being a rampant smuggling cove.

  • StrikorStrikor Calibrations? Calibrations! Registered User regular
    Pfft your system your rules. If they don't like it they can contribute to your experience pool by way of exploding.

  • HappylilElfHappylilElf Registered User regular
    After spending way too long fumbling through the UI I gave up and looked it up

    who thought this was a good idea

    On the plus side I'm now cranking out capital ships and phase ships so prepare to get fucked all of the factions that have been trying to crush me for no reason.

  • HeirHeir Ausitn, TXRegistered User regular
    After spending way too long fumbling through the UI I gave up and looked it up

    who thought this was a good idea

    On the plus side I'm now cranking out capital ships and phase ships so prepare to get fucked all of the factions that have been trying to crush me for no reason.

    Looked what up?

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  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    The UI is very much not final/done. Though if you were looking for fleet composition i am susrprised it took so long

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  • HappylilElfHappylilElf Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    The UI is very much not final/done. Though if you were looking for fleet composition i am susrprised it took so long

    Not fleet composition, ship building.

  • Casual EddyCasual Eddy The Astral PlaneRegistered User regular
    I'm making 400k a month off of 3 (well-developed) colonies! My only capital ship blueprint is the astral though T_T

    I need some front line chonky bois

    I am flying around in a dominator with saftey overrides and my goodness that is satisfying. I overwhelm their shields and then quickly toggle my reaper torpedos on and off

    you can wreck so much shit that way.

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    The UI is very much not final/done. Though if you were looking for fleet composition i am susrprised it took so long

    Not fleet composition, ship building.

    Yea its the same menu. Just one tab over

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  • Moridin889Moridin889 Registered User regular
    I'm making 400k a month off of 3 (well-developed) colonies! My only capital ship blueprint is the astral though T_T

    I need some front line chonky bois

    I am flying around in a dominator with saftey overrides and my goodness that is satisfying. I overwhelm their shields and then quickly toggle my reaper torpedos on and off

    you can wreck so much shit that way.

    I mean, you know the astral with torpedo bombers is one of the most terrifying ships in the game.

    Look at its special ability

  • Casual EddyCasual Eddy The Astral PlaneRegistered User regular
    Moridin889 wrote: »
    I'm making 400k a month off of 3 (well-developed) colonies! My only capital ship blueprint is the astral though T_T

    I need some front line chonky bois

    I am flying around in a dominator with saftey overrides and my goodness that is satisfying. I overwhelm their shields and then quickly toggle my reaper torpedos on and off

    you can wreck so much shit that way.

    I mean, you know the astral with torpedo bombers is one of the most terrifying ships in the game.

    Look at its special ability

    It's super good but pretty fragile

    I need some frontline ships

  • HappylilElfHappylilElf Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    The UI is very much not final/done. Though if you were looking for fleet composition i am susrprised it took so long

    Not fleet composition, ship building.

    Yea its the same menu. Just one tab over

    Maybe with a mod? There are no other tabs on the base Fleet or Refit tabs. The only place I can find the Custom Production tab is on the Command tab.

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    The UI is very much not final/done. Though if you were looking for fleet composition i am susrprised it took so long

    Not fleet composition, ship building.

    Yea its the same menu. Just one tab over

    Maybe with a mod? There are no other tabs on the base Fleet or Refit tabs. The only place I can find the Custom Production tab is on the Command tab.

    Yea both the fleet composition tab and the custom production tab are on the command menu.

    Not your fleet composition. That is just ship purchasing. Your colonies fleet composition.

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  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    People who have drugs as illegal will send expeditions to shut down your port as a result. So it will accelerate negative relation gain.

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  • HappylilElfHappylilElf Registered User regular
    I wish I could turn an Onsalught into nothing more than a Gauss platform for murdering battlestations but alas

  • ironzergironzerg Registered User regular
    Ok, my fine friends. I just noticed this thread, but I've had Starsector bookmarked for weeks. So now I own this because this is what Penny Arcade makes me do.

    Any tips for someone start out entirely fresh?

  • BasilBasil Registered User regular
    edited October 2019
    Do the tutorial, it has a bit of a story component that doesn't show up later but it'll lern yew gud and give you some ships you'll promptly lose in an ill-fated tech mining expedition or whatever you get up to.


    The backbone of the player economy is smuggling, looting corpses and founding a sovereign nation built on drugs and all those corpses you looted.

    When you learn about transponders, turning them off and on again, as well as going dark, understand that they are not fucking around. Visibility is the most visible invisible mechanic in the game and is the toast that breads your butter under any and all circumstances.

    Supplies and Fuel are the least visible and most vital mechanic that will ruin your day if you don't pay attention to them. F1 while hovering over the numbers on your ui will expand upon those numbers to suggest what is happening in the background.

    Volturn, trapped in the iron lung of the Sindrian Dictat, is the only source of Lobster in the sector.

    Volturnian Lobster is said to be delicious.

    The Lobster must flow.



    For realsies though, you're going to love it here! The Persean Sector is a sort of post-post-apocalyptic backwater wallowing in the shattered dream of a mandatory Utopia enforced by



    [REDACTED]



    Something else worth pointing out is that shit is old. Even the new shit is old. When you see something labelled Low Tech, what you're really looking at is a piece of tech that was already well established centuries back, during the Domain's heyday. Heavy armor, kinetic weapons, and the occasional afterburner style movement ability shows up here. Low Tech is not bad, it is just old. Midline stuff is sometimes referred to as the cruiser school in fluff. Kinda yellow, varied loadouts, more fighters popping up. High Tech ships are almost new, they're blue, include fancy space magic, and tend to be laser heavy. Ships and equipment of all eras are still in use today because Domain tech is akin to that of the Empire of Man over in 40k, in the sense that they use templates fed to space magic factory machines. So long as they have uncorrupted blueprints and mostly functional Nano-Forges, they can make mostly functional equipment.

    Modifying the blueprints is extremely difficult, as they're encrypted in such a way that folks built careers off changing random numbers and seeing what their Nano-Forge spat out. There's no cracking the DRM, only Zuul. This is why you'll see mention of modifications in the vein of converting cargo holds to house fighters or hooking feeder A to bin B.

    Pristine or Corrupted Nano-Forges are the sorta thing you might go tech mining for, so as to support your own colonies when you found them. Cyclotrons are the space magic tech for helping fuel production along, look out for those too!

    There are ruins all over the core worlds, which the locals won't object to having you show up to survey and loot. Going graveyard diving is a great way to see the sights and get murdered by pirates.


    Starsector has an enthusiastic modding community, too. The Mod Index includes a load of neat factions, graphical enhancements, quality of life greebles and all in one packages designed to make things play nice. Nexerelin is the one most folks try to make their stuff compatible with, as it supports all these factions going ham on one another. Peruse it and grab what suits your taste! Quality varies, but the faction mods tend to play nice with vanilla tech. I enjoy having the different takes on the same tech base interact in my game, so I have a bunch running at once.

    Over here I posted some explanatory pictures and gushed about a few mod factions that I enjoy in particular. They're pretty eye-catching, while factions like the Kadur Remnant or Mayasura look more at home while glassing Hegemony worlds.

    Basil on
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  • HappylilElfHappylilElf Registered User regular
    Is there a way to keep pirate bases/luddic bases from just popping back up in the same systems over and over again? I've essentially spent two years now hopping back and forth to the same three systems to blow up stations.

  • HeirHeir Ausitn, TXRegistered User regular
    Is there a way to keep pirate bases/luddic bases from just popping back up in the same systems over and over again? I've essentially spent two years now hopping back and forth to the same three systems to blow up stations.

    Luddic bases, as far as I can remember, always pop back up as sleeper cells, but sleepers don't do much of anything. There's a config setting that can delay how long it takes for the sleeper cell to switch to Active, fwiw. I think I set mine to like 2 years.

    There may be something similar with Pirate bases.

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  • Lord_AsmodeusLord_Asmodeus goeticSobriquet: Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered User regular
    So I've recently decided to try a run as a pirate. To make it easier I randomized the pirate faction attitudes (which still means most people hate me, just not EVERYONE) and fortunately one of the groups that likes me alright are the Persean League, which is handy since they have so many planets.

    Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
  • Lord_AsmodeusLord_Asmodeus goeticSobriquet: Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered User regular
    edited November 2019
    Unfortunately my Pirate run has come to an ignoble end - I updated a mod I was using with it and the save doesn't work. Sad, but I decided to start a new game as the faction whose mod caused the issue :P

    I am considering playing as the Fringe Syndicate since that mod basically just adds Star Destroyers and some other SW style ships

    https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12243.0

    Edit: It apparently used to be SW mod and the author is slowly moving away from that. Is also planning on at some point moving the sprites away from a SW look.

    Lord_Asmodeus on
    Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
  • HappylilElfHappylilElf Registered User regular
    Ok reading this disclaimer:
    Disclaimer:
    Any similarity with anything "Star Wars" related is a mistake and will be erased as soon as possible. This mod has no intent to be related to this franchise anymore and from now on the only similarity that will prevail is the shape of the ships, which will too eventually change.
    « Last Edit: October 15, 2019, 02:42:23 AM by Johnny Cocas » Logged
    And then scrolling down to find
    Yeah, that is what I meant by setting the time location on the period that goes from the 4th to 6th episodes of the Star Wars saga (Galactic Empire vs Rebel Alliance).

    However, I see no harm in including "some" ships from the clone wars like the Venator or Providence as salvaged ships from those past times, the Venator at the very least has been used after the clone wars for some time with the new Imperial colours instead of the red stripes from the Republic era.

    People usually don't mix the periods when making Star Wars mods because it will cause confusion and it's weird to see the republic fighting the empire or the rebels fighting the separatists :P Plus, each period had it's technology and ships, so including them all would both be a pain due to the sheer number of ships to add and there would be no lore behind the mod, people usually kind of notice the lore even if they don't really care about it, if a player was piloting an Imperator class Star Destroyer while fighting early Republican Venators and knows the Star Wars story by just a bit he will know something is not right...
    made me laugh really, really hard

    The ships look awesome but I got about halfway through before I was cringing at the naming scheme.

  • Lord_AsmodeusLord_Asmodeus goeticSobriquet: Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered User regular
    Ok reading this disclaimer:
    Disclaimer:
    Any similarity with anything "Star Wars" related is a mistake and will be erased as soon as possible. This mod has no intent to be related to this franchise anymore and from now on the only similarity that will prevail is the shape of the ships, which will too eventually change.
    « Last Edit: October 15, 2019, 02:42:23 AM by Johnny Cocas » Logged
    And then scrolling down to find
    Yeah, that is what I meant by setting the time location on the period that goes from the 4th to 6th episodes of the Star Wars saga (Galactic Empire vs Rebel Alliance).

    However, I see no harm in including "some" ships from the clone wars like the Venator or Providence as salvaged ships from those past times, the Venator at the very least has been used after the clone wars for some time with the new Imperial colours instead of the red stripes from the Republic era.

    People usually don't mix the periods when making Star Wars mods because it will cause confusion and it's weird to see the republic fighting the empire or the rebels fighting the separatists :P Plus, each period had it's technology and ships, so including them all would both be a pain due to the sheer number of ships to add and there would be no lore behind the mod, people usually kind of notice the lore even if they don't really care about it, if a player was piloting an Imperator class Star Destroyer while fighting early Republican Venators and knows the Star Wars story by just a bit he will know something is not right...
    made me laugh really, really hard

    The ships look awesome but I got about halfway through before I was cringing at the naming scheme.

    Well. They're very SW Empire names.

    Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
  • ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    Oh hey, thanks to the newer posters in this thread for reminding me that I grabbed this game a year and a previous computer ago only to forget about it after a couple of weeks.

    My impending doomed productivity thanks you all in advance.

    Now I'm eyeing the list of game mods, too...

  • Lord_AsmodeusLord_Asmodeus goeticSobriquet: Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered User regular
    So there have been a few new blog posts about upcoming features and changes to things like the skills system and they all look very interesting.

    https://fractalsoftworks.com/2019/07/08/skills-and-story-points/

    https://fractalsoftworks.com/2019/11/27/raiding-for-fun-and-profit/

    https://fractalsoftworks.com/2020/02/07/painting-the-stars/

    https://fractalsoftworks.com/2020/04/11/gif-roundup/

    Also just in case it hasn't been posted here's a link to the unofficial discord https://discord.gg/4CVaDME

    There's some good FAQ/troubleshooting information, and the mod updates channel has exactly what it sounds like which is nice to keep track of mods you might like, and there are some mods which are posted there which aren't posted on the forums, and sometimes new mods are added there before they make it onto the mod index.

    For awhile I've been using Grand Sector because A. I like it when there's more space and more to explore and B. I hate Hyperstorms, but I've recently switched over to Adjusted Sector. It was inspired by Grand Sector, but where Grand Sector stretches out the map but has the same spawn rate for loot and enemies and the like, Adjusted Sector lets you... adjust those parameters, to allow for a more even distribution, it even includes options for spawns from a few mods. You have to adjust the settings manually in the settings file in mods' folder, and there's a suggested guideline on the mods' front page and also a bit in the settings itself.

    https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=17331.0

    Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
  • stopgapstopgap Registered User regular
    I just bought this last week and I have concluded the developer needs to put this on steam. It's already amazing and the financial resources this could gather seem like they would be very helpful for the devs.

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  • m!ttensm!ttens he/himRegistered User regular
    stopgap wrote: »
    I just bought this last week and I have concluded the developer needs to put this on steam. It's already amazing and the financial resources this could gather seem like they would be very helpful for the devs.

    As much as I would love to see Starsector get the attention (and revenue) it deserves, I also don't want to see it explode in hype and popularity and then wither on the vine when everyone discovers the glacial development cycle and review bombs it back into obscurity. Then again, what is in right now feels pretty well polished so perhaps Fractal Softworks could capture the same lightning in a bottle that Iron Gate got with Valheim.

  • AxenAxen My avatar is Excalibur. Yes, the sword.Registered User regular
    Yeah that is exactly the reason they don’t want to put it on Steam. The dev team is very, very small and the game is something that is worked on on their spare time.

    That said, it is very close to 1.0 so maybe late this year it’ll be on Steam.

    A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
  • swphreakswphreak Registered User regular
    edited March 2021
    I enjoyed the heck out of it way back. Played vanilla and learned the game, then played with mods. Super cool game. Can't wait for 1.0 to give it another go.

    swphreak on
  • stopgapstopgap Registered User regular
    edited March 2021
    I am starting to get a better idea of how to build out ships, it's pretty exciting.

    I have gotten totally wrecked on trips.

    stopgap on
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  • stopgapstopgap Registered User regular
    edited March 2021
    I salvaged a legion. I have two colonies and I am having a blast. I can't afford to run the legion except for important things like killing mothership and pirate bases but oh boy its been fun to see.

    stopgap on
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  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    edited March 2021
    It's definitely an amazing game. They seem super close to 1.0, and the development has probably been too slow overall for a release on Steam. But he's kept at it, and I would be really surprised if it doesn't sell well once it finally releases there.

    Fiatil on
  • stopgapstopgap Registered User regular
    Fiatil wrote: »
    It's definitely an amazing game. They seem super close to 1.0, and the development has probably been too slow overall for a release on Steam. But he's kept at it, and I would be really surprised if it doesn't sell well once it finally releases there.

    I feel like the games style is timeless and I love it.

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  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Fiatil wrote: »
    It's definitely an amazing game. They seem super close to 1.0, and the development has probably been too slow overall for a release on Steam. But he's kept at it, and I would be really surprised if it doesn't sell well once it finally releases there.

    .95 is the next patch and its current in play testing. So probably only a few more months. Distance between .95 and 1.0 is... unknown. But at some point the planned "next release of 1.0" became .95. Patch notes went up in october: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=19253.0

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