Obligatory mention that you can download the game for free, it's just the activation key that costs $15. Also, you can use Sseth's key from the end of his video review:...
Obligatory mention that you can download the game for free, it's just the activation key that costs $15.
Just three days ago, I started a "mega modded playthrough" with all the mods I've meant to try out, in anticipation of this release coming soon. So it's pretty typical that the release would arrive now, when I expected it to be in like, June or something.
Anyways, I'm playing with my usual roster of 60+ mods, but also all kinds of other ship, faction, and weapon mods. Plus Emergent Threats, Hivers, and several mods that buff the Remnants and Explorarium. It's been great fun so far. I had a lot of luck in the early game, and put together a strong fleet very quickly. The timeout on invasions has ended though, and the Hivers are starting to "come online" with nearly endless raids, invasions, saturation bombardments, etc. I've mostly been able to pre-empt their fleets, and even managed to found my own colony, but it looks like my focus for a while will basically be "shoot bug".
I also realized last night that I won't be able to "just" fly into the Hiver systems and satbomb them into extinction, because then Sierra and the Dustkeepers will get mad. I'm going to have to... invade them, I guess? That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
Doing a playthrough like this though, where you have to think more strategically about the sector and your place in it, rather than just flying around from battle to battle, is a lot of fun. Of course, I'm still mostly just flying around from battle to battle, but at least now there's strategy involved in my constant fire extinguishing.
As for this release, it eliminates (at least) three mods from my modlist, so that's cool. I think Refit Filters is the last QoL mod I play with, that I would like to see integrated into the game.
That mod has since been kept up-to-date as new info about the ship has come out. So if, like me, you're going to be playing 0.97 for a while, but want to try the new ship, then there you go.
It is not like either. The strategic portion is similar to Mount & Blade but in space. I cannot find a single comparison for the combat portion. It is eminently worth the buy. I put countless...
It is not like either.
The strategic portion is similar to Mount & Blade but in space. I cannot find a single comparison for the combat portion.
It is eminently worth the buy. I put countless hours into the game, several releases ago. They just keep on chugging along making improvements! And the mods add so much more.
As far as the mods go, do you have recommendations? I found the Mod Index, but it's a fairly large list with very little info up front. Any suggestions you have would be lovely.
As far as the mods go, do you have recommendations? I found the Mod Index, but it's a fairly large list with very little info up front. Any suggestions you have would be lovely.
Starsector is worth doing at least one vanilla playthrough, imo, just to get a baseline. The major mod that is in most installs is Nexerelin, which massively enhances faction AI and strategy. It's...
Starsector is worth doing at least one vanilla playthrough, imo, just to get a baseline. The major mod that is in most installs is Nexerelin, which massively enhances faction AI and strategy. It's one of those mods that is basically vanilla for most people. Most of my playthroughs are just Nex plus various faction and ship mods to suit my fancy.
I'd also recommend doing another vanilla or maybe vanilla+Nexerelin playthrough if you haven't played in a while. That being said... Here are all the mods I am playing with in my current "mega...
I'd also recommend doing another vanilla or maybe vanilla+Nexerelin playthrough if you haven't played in a while. That being said...
Here are all the mods I am playing with in my current "mega modded playthrough":
Mod table
Off the top of my head, the only mods I wouldn't recommend for new players would be Hiver Swarm, and maybe Emergent Threats. I would also disable the Legio faction from the Tahlan Shipworks mod (you can do that from the mod's setttings menu in-game). Also, for the Ruthless Sector mod, I actually use its vanilla-defaults preset and tweak it to my liking, not the mod's default preset. Honestly, you could probably leave that mod out too. I only use it to add roaming [REDACTED] fleets in the fringes of Sector hyperspace.
Note that all of these mod versions are for 0.97 or older.
This is me when I play Rimworld and was me when playing SS. I'm due to pick it up again as I assume the story has a bit more flesh on its bones. I played through it once before already.
This is me when I play Rimworld and was me when playing SS.
I'm due to pick it up again as I assume the story has a bit more flesh on its bones. I played through it once before already.
Okay that piqued my interest. I still play those old games from time to time. I’m also a backer of Cosmic Frontier, for which development has been slow but they do post updates on Discord that...
Okay that piqued my interest. I still play those old games from time to time. I’m also a backer of Cosmic Frontier, for which development has been slow but they do post updates on Discord that continue to show progress. That’s the closest thing to an “official” modern EV game I’m aware of. But I’m always interested to hear about more in that genre.
There's jump points but FTL is not portrayed like Escape Velocity or Stellaris where systems are linked to another with hyperspace lanes. Starsector is more like an open world game where you're...
There's jump points but FTL is not portrayed like Escape Velocity or Stellaris where systems are linked to another with hyperspace lanes. Starsector is more like an open world game where you're dropped into the eponymous sector and you're free to move your fleet between systems from the get go.
Navigating through hyperspace and the moment to moment traversal forms a huge part of Starsector's gameplay whenever you're not in combat.
Ok you're getting a lot of "it's not like either" when my first reaction to the game was "oh thank god it's just like EV!". It's not 1 to 1 by far, but there's missions, trading, and building of...
Ok you're getting a lot of "it's not like either" when my first reaction to the game was "oh thank god it's just like EV!".
It's not 1 to 1 by far, but there's missions, trading, and building of fleets. Fights aren't on the same map (there's a sub battlefield so you're not aggroing the entire damn system), but if you liked those games you really should check it out.
A lot of Starsector's mechanics feels heavily inspired by Star Control 2. From the starmap that shows your FTL range, how ships move and rotate in combat (entire fleets in Starsector instead of...
A lot of Starsector's mechanics feels heavily inspired by Star Control 2.
From the starmap that shows your FTL range, how ships move and rotate in combat (entire fleets in Starsector instead of just 1v1), how you physically move between systems by going through hyperspace (red in Star Control, blue in Starsector) and how you fall into a star's gravity well to approach your destination.
It combines my three favorite games of all time, star control, mount and blade, and mech warrior. You navigate the world similarly to mount and blade, just with all the theming of being a...
It combines my three favorite games of all time, star control, mount and blade, and mech warrior. You navigate the world similarly to mount and blade, just with all the theming of being a spacecraft. Last I played they were just adding to the world, so honestly I'm probably 10 years behind stuff that has been put in the campaign, but it looks like there are a lot of systems in the world to interact with.
For combat, you have the inertia movement of star control, but add in fleets of a large variety of ships to command. There are systems in place to limit your micromanagement of the battles as well so you don't have to feel compelled to babysit the action and just give general directives for capture an area or escort a ship etc. The AI is honestly quite good at piloting, much better than I ever was, and will do a great job avoiding or engaging ships as needed.
The mech warrior part is basically the combat systems of a mech except on a spaceship. There is hull armor and shields. Weapons have properties like kinetic (missiles) that hurt shields but less to armor, or high explosive that does armor but not as much to shields, and a few in-between. Ships have hardpoints for the types they can mount at different points on it. Shooting generates flux, which is essentially heat. The flux is also used to power your shields. If your flux goes too much you overload, just like shutting down in mech warrior when you blow your heat.
Starsector takes the great systems from many game and builds on to them and does it's own thing, it's one of those special kinda games not enough people have heard about and really worth experiencing at some point, even if you just do the preset battles a few times, it's totally worth it IMHO.
I used to love EV Nova, so I’d totally be up for this - can anybody tell me if you can dial back the combat? I’m an old man now with not much time for gaming, I much prefer the...
I used to love EV Nova, so I’d totally be up for this - can anybody tell me if you can dial back the combat? I’m an old man now with not much time for gaming, I much prefer the story/trading/strategy aspects of these games. A little combat is ok but I can never dedicate enough time to become satisfyingly good at it anymore #casuslgamer
I love Starsector but I am shit at the combat. I always get to kinda late mid game when I have a fleet with a battleship, a couple cruisers and chaff then get totally destroyed by literally...
I love Starsector but I am shit at the combat. I always get to kinda late mid game when I have a fleet with a battleship, a couple cruisers and chaff then get totally destroyed by literally everything because of the balancing.
I dunno what I'm doing wrong, if it's my fleet composition, builds or just me flying personally in combat, but I've always had this difficulty spike that made the game super unfun suddenly.
Except for that, it's a top tier game, I used to really like it.
A general note on difficulty/combat for those having trouble: The economy is not very hard to break wide open if you want to look at ways to do it. I'm not going to spoil anything in this topic,...
A general note on difficulty/combat for those having trouble:
The economy is not very hard to break wide open if you want to look at ways to do it. I'm not going to spoil anything in this topic, but there's lots of ways to functionally make tons of money and brute force your way through combat. Further theres some mods that let you choose how you start the game, (one big one that escapes my mind at the moment that's about making it more open world). You can start with a much bigger, and well rounded/built, force to help ease past some of the growing pains. Also with a bunch of money and skills if you want.
That said, it does take a little getting used to because you can easily over extend, and it helps if you properly group your ships in the mid to late game. With that in mind:
A. Make sure you get that things like harpoon missiles are very very good vs ships that have overloaded their shields. A very simple strategy is to have some missiles on your ship along with some railguns (like the default hammerhead). Let the railguns autofire at your target until they overload/are close to overloading, adn then let the missiles rip them apart. You'll notice the AI is smart enough that if you've got a missile boat just sitting on harpoons, they'll normally wait until something gets overloaded and then just dump missiles into it until its dust.
B. With that in mind, try to think of fleet composition. Carriers are VERY good generally, as are missile boats. Having a few ships that can hold the front line is of course nice, and I also like to have small packs of highly mobile ships like the wolfs all grouped up to send out to hold control points or hunt down weaker/support ships.
C. This brings up formation. An eaaaasy way to do it is to just have everything group up on you right at the start of a fight. That way everything stays centered and you don't wind up splitting your forces and wiped out. You can then split off small groups as you feel necessary, or just set things to "murder this ship" when you're sure you've got the superiority.
I know I saw at least @maple@kaffo worrying about combat, so I hope some of this helps. It really is a game that can reward skill if you want to try and be some expert pilot, but "meh fuck it i'll just throw more at them" is viable as well, and once you start understanding what ships/weapons are very good and where to find them, you can often run away with the game outside of fringe situations.
Obligatory mention that you can download the game for free, it's just the activation key that costs $15.
Also, you can use Sseth's key from the end of his video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acqpulP1hLo
If you want to try the game out first.
Just three days ago, I started a "mega modded playthrough" with all the mods I've meant to try out, in anticipation of this release coming soon. So it's pretty typical that the release would arrive now, when I expected it to be in like, June or something.
Anyways, I'm playing with my usual roster of 60+ mods, but also all kinds of other ship, faction, and weapon mods. Plus Emergent Threats, Hivers, and several mods that buff the Remnants and Explorarium. It's been great fun so far. I had a lot of luck in the early game, and put together a strong fleet very quickly. The timeout on invasions has ended though, and the Hivers are starting to "come online" with nearly endless raids, invasions, saturation bombardments, etc. I've mostly been able to pre-empt their fleets, and even managed to found my own colony, but it looks like my focus for a while will basically be "shoot bug".
I also realized last night that I won't be able to "just" fly into the Hiver systems and satbomb them into extinction, because then Sierra and the Dustkeepers will get mad. I'm going to have to... invade them, I guess? That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
Doing a playthrough like this though, where you have to think more strategically about the sector and your place in it, rather than just flying around from battle to battle, is a lot of fun. Of course, I'm still mostly just flying around from battle to battle, but at least now there's strategy involved in my constant fire extinguishing.
As for this release, it eliminates (at least) three mods from my modlist, so that's cool. I think Refit Filters is the last QoL mod I play with, that I would like to see integrated into the game.
Final note:
When the last devlog (back in December) announced the new Anubis-class cruiser coming in 0.98, a mod was posted that same day that recreated it in 0.97:
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=31189.0
That mod has since been kept up-to-date as new info about the ship has come out. So if, like me, you're going to be playing 0.97 for a while, but want to try the new ship, then there you go.
Is this like Escape Velocity and Endless Sky? I used to love playing those games.
It is not like either.
The strategic portion is similar to Mount & Blade but in space. I cannot find a single comparison for the combat portion.
It is eminently worth the buy. I put countless hours into the game, several releases ago. They just keep on chugging along making improvements! And the mods add so much more.
As far as the mods go, do you have recommendations? I found the Mod Index, but it's a fairly large list with very little info up front. Any suggestions you have would be lovely.
Starsector is worth doing at least one vanilla playthrough, imo, just to get a baseline. The major mod that is in most installs is Nexerelin, which massively enhances faction AI and strategy. It's one of those mods that is basically vanilla for most people. Most of my playthroughs are just Nex plus various faction and ship mods to suit my fancy.
Yeah, I think I last played it in 2020 or before, so a fresh vanilla run will be just the ticket. Thanks for the recommendation!
Yes, Nexrelin! Truly a game changer. Glad to hear it's still WIP. Nex turns SS into a 4x strategy game.
I'd also recommend doing another vanilla or maybe vanilla+Nexerelin playthrough if you haven't played in a while. That being said...
Here are all the mods I am playing with in my current "mega modded playthrough":
Mod table
Off the top of my head, the only mods I wouldn't recommend for new players would be Hiver Swarm, and maybe Emergent Threats. I would also disable the Legio faction from the Tahlan Shipworks mod (you can do that from the mod's setttings menu in-game). Also, for the Ruthless Sector mod, I actually use its vanilla-defaults preset and tweak it to my liking, not the mod's default preset. Honestly, you could probably leave that mod out too. I only use it to add roaming [REDACTED] fleets in the fringes of Sector hyperspace.
Note that all of these mod versions are for 0.97 or older.
This is me when I play Rimworld and was me when playing SS.
I'm due to pick it up again as I assume the story has a bit more flesh on its bones. I played through it once before already.
I'm so very behind the times so I'd give poor advice.
Okay that piqued my interest. I still play those old games from time to time. I’m also a backer of Cosmic Frontier, for which development has been slow but they do post updates on Discord that continue to show progress. That’s the closest thing to an “official” modern EV game I’m aware of. But I’m always interested to hear about more in that genre.
There's jump points but FTL is not portrayed like Escape Velocity or Stellaris where systems are linked to another with hyperspace lanes. Starsector is more like an open world game where you're dropped into the eponymous sector and you're free to move your fleet between systems from the get go.
Navigating through hyperspace and the moment to moment traversal forms a huge part of Starsector's gameplay whenever you're not in combat.
Ok you're getting a lot of "it's not like either" when my first reaction to the game was "oh thank god it's just like EV!".
It's not 1 to 1 by far, but there's missions, trading, and building of fleets. Fights aren't on the same map (there's a sub battlefield so you're not aggroing the entire damn system), but if you liked those games you really should check it out.
Are those also spiritual successors of Star Control? Because this looks like the spiritual successor of Star Control.
A lot of Starsector's mechanics feels heavily inspired by Star Control 2.
From the starmap that shows your FTL range, how ships move and rotate in combat (entire fleets in Starsector instead of just 1v1), how you physically move between systems by going through hyperspace (red in Star Control, blue in Starsector) and how you fall into a star's gravity well to approach your destination.
It combines my three favorite games of all time, star control, mount and blade, and mech warrior. You navigate the world similarly to mount and blade, just with all the theming of being a spacecraft. Last I played they were just adding to the world, so honestly I'm probably 10 years behind stuff that has been put in the campaign, but it looks like there are a lot of systems in the world to interact with.
For combat, you have the inertia movement of star control, but add in fleets of a large variety of ships to command. There are systems in place to limit your micromanagement of the battles as well so you don't have to feel compelled to babysit the action and just give general directives for capture an area or escort a ship etc. The AI is honestly quite good at piloting, much better than I ever was, and will do a great job avoiding or engaging ships as needed.
The mech warrior part is basically the combat systems of a mech except on a spaceship. There is hull armor and shields. Weapons have properties like kinetic (missiles) that hurt shields but less to armor, or high explosive that does armor but not as much to shields, and a few in-between. Ships have hardpoints for the types they can mount at different points on it. Shooting generates flux, which is essentially heat. The flux is also used to power your shields. If your flux goes too much you overload, just like shutting down in mech warrior when you blow your heat.
Starsector takes the great systems from many game and builds on to them and does it's own thing, it's one of those special kinda games not enough people have heard about and really worth experiencing at some point, even if you just do the preset battles a few times, it's totally worth it IMHO.
I used to love EV Nova, so I’d totally be up for this - can anybody tell me if you can dial back the combat? I’m an old man now with not much time for gaming, I much prefer the story/trading/strategy aspects of these games. A little combat is ok but I can never dedicate enough time to become satisfyingly good at it anymore #casuslgamer
Man, it's been ages since I played it. I should go back and see how the latest updates have changed things.
I love Starsector but I am shit at the combat. I always get to kinda late mid game when I have a fleet with a battleship, a couple cruisers and chaff then get totally destroyed by literally everything because of the balancing.
I dunno what I'm doing wrong, if it's my fleet composition, builds or just me flying personally in combat, but I've always had this difficulty spike that made the game super unfun suddenly.
Except for that, it's a top tier game, I used to really like it.
A general note on difficulty/combat for those having trouble:
The economy is not very hard to break wide open if you want to look at ways to do it. I'm not going to spoil anything in this topic, but there's lots of ways to functionally make tons of money and brute force your way through combat. Further theres some mods that let you choose how you start the game, (one big one that escapes my mind at the moment that's about making it more open world). You can start with a much bigger, and well rounded/built, force to help ease past some of the growing pains. Also with a bunch of money and skills if you want.
That said, it does take a little getting used to because you can easily over extend, and it helps if you properly group your ships in the mid to late game. With that in mind:
A. Make sure you get that things like harpoon missiles are very very good vs ships that have overloaded their shields. A very simple strategy is to have some missiles on your ship along with some railguns (like the default hammerhead). Let the railguns autofire at your target until they overload/are close to overloading, adn then let the missiles rip them apart. You'll notice the AI is smart enough that if you've got a missile boat just sitting on harpoons, they'll normally wait until something gets overloaded and then just dump missiles into it until its dust.
B. With that in mind, try to think of fleet composition. Carriers are VERY good generally, as are missile boats. Having a few ships that can hold the front line is of course nice, and I also like to have small packs of highly mobile ships like the wolfs all grouped up to send out to hold control points or hunt down weaker/support ships.
C. This brings up formation. An eaaaasy way to do it is to just have everything group up on you right at the start of a fight. That way everything stays centered and you don't wind up splitting your forces and wiped out. You can then split off small groups as you feel necessary, or just set things to "murder this ship" when you're sure you've got the superiority.
I know I saw at least @maple @kaffo worrying about combat, so I hope some of this helps. It really is a game that can reward skill if you want to try and be some expert pilot, but "meh fuck it i'll just throw more at them" is viable as well, and once you start understanding what ships/weapons are very good and where to find them, you can often run away with the game outside of fringe situations.