Those wanting a static income should invest in a few planets here or there, especially since it makes trading a bit easier when you can cut out the middle man and make the products for selling on your own.Īs you survive, complete missions and earn income you will gain experience, levelling up yourself and your commanders. You need to make sure it gets enough food, create new buildings on the planet and even set up supply lines and shops. Settling planets is also an in-depth manner, with a system similar to Stellaris in some ways. Combat can take quite a bit of time to get used to, especially the larger confrontations that require more micromanagement to tackle waypoints, scouts and motherships. Different weapons deal more damage to flux or hull, some also having other uses like shooting down missiles. You have flux, which is essentially a heat meter that increases when your shields are hit or when you use weaponry and then hull which is your hit points. When it comes to combat, just like the main game, there are several mechanics at play which again can feel daunting. Ships have an array of weapons from normal sci-fi laser weapons, missiles and flak. Ships will automatically attack if you’re not controlling them, but with your mothership you can assume direct control. Starting off you will have a tactical view of the battle map, reminding me of Mount & Blade: Warband, selecting what ships to deploy into combat and then moving them into attack formations. On the flip side, if your ship comes into contact with other ships you will enter into a new viewing mode, the combat map. When coming into contact with planets you can talk with the local populace, quest givers as well as commence in jolly commerce. Both forms of movement are useful for evading ships or reaching a destination quicker, as well as covert ops to infiltrate bases or activate devices in enemy territory.Īlongside movement you have a plethora of other actions during traversal, from scanning the local area for ships and debris, harvesting debris fields, sending out distress calls and jumping to new systems. You may also go slower and go dark to make it harder for your fleet to be detected. Piloting the ship is simple, click on the map and go, you can also change the speeds at which you move and even go into burn modes to go faster at a risk of being detected easier. Movement is done on a top-down 2D view of space, condensing the 3D movement of other space games into a neat journey. If you follow the introduction you will be introduced to basic mission structure, from being contacted via comms to then reaching the planet to talk face to face. Plopped somewhere in space, you will have a small fleet to your name of varying ship classes. Easily landing in the pile of “just another hour” titles, Starsector will either grip you after the first few hours or push you away at the sheer openness.Īs you play through the open world of Starsector you will be greeted with several mechanics all at once, just like many other open games. With only small glimpses of an end-game or finale, you will go about levelling up your commanders, upgrading your fleet of ships and making your supply lines the most profitable. Similar to games like RimWorld or Factorio, Starsector is all about improving yourself as well as the things you own. The ride is smooth, but after completing the introduction it can be a bit daunting with all the options at hand. You can choose different starting points for your main game, with an easy to get into a tutorial portion of reactivating a warp gate to help traversal between systems. Starsector doesn’t start off grand or explosive, instead allowing you several helpful tutorials, some basic combat scenarios and then finally some open-world goodness.
Set up as more of a “do what you want” kind of game, you are free to stay as a bounty hunter, make your own settlements or become a trader akin to other games like Kenshi. In the vein of old games like Freelancer in 2000 or a combination of titles like Eve and Stellaris, Starsector has you traverse a large collection of planets, asteroid belts and communities. Starsector (formerly “Starfarer”) is a new open-world single-player space-combat, roleplaying, exploration, and economic game.