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Is for informative and interesting gaming content and discussions. Please look over our and before posting. If you're looking for 'lighter' gaming-related entertainment, try!The goal of is to provide a place for informative and interesting gaming content and discussions.
Submissions should be for the purpose of informing or initiating a discussion, not just with the goal of entertaining viewers.For an in-depth explanation of our rules don't forget to check our andSubreddit CalendarWant to schedule an AMA with us? Read our for more information! To see previous AMAs,. So I came across a post here recently about a blog update to a game called Starsector.
I had never heard of this game before, and I'm always itching for more space games. Someone had posted a video of (I guess) a popular Youtuber covering the gameI was thrilled with what I saw and was wondering why I had never seen or heard of this game before. It's very similar to Mount and Blade but in space. I think the reason it fell under the radar for me is it's not sold on any online platform like Steam. The developers sell it on their site exclusively as the game is still in development (And has been for like 10 years)You start out as this tiny nothing of a person trying to build up a fleet so you aren't running away from everyone. You can ally with other factions, conquer planets and form your own faction, collapse economies, run missions, etc.The best part though are the battles.
Starsector Ship Tiers List This is a resource and an ongoing effort to categorize ships, both vanilla and modded, on a scale of general usefulness. Be sure to comment if you feel that certain ships should be in a different tier! Please post your own tier lists (especially for mods I missed) and explain why you think that way. This video is unavailable. Watch Queue Queue. Watch Queue Queue.
There is a certain amount strategy and complexity. The spaceship customization is really awesome and has a bit of depth to it as well by picking up different weapons, ship modifications (Maybe you want more armor, or more speed). You can fly capital ships, small frigates, and everything in between.Lastly, there is an active modding community who have created things like diplomacy, quality of life improvements, new ships, weapons, all sorts of things. Seriously check it outLook I'm not good at giving awesome reviews or descriptions to why some games are worth checking out. I'm just someone who came across something that flew under the radar for me and I wanted to share. Maybe it flew under the radar for you too.
If you have an interest in space games, or Mount and Blade style games, do check out the video I posted above or just go to the site for the game.It's only $15 bucks, and it's worth every penny. I probably came about the same post, the same comment and the same video, and I gave the game a shot.Looks great, but Jesus the AI is just better than me at combat.
And I don't mean 'the enemy', I mean 'the AI'. I put my own ship on Autopilot it just outperformed whatever ship and weapons handling I could do.To be specific, I had to retreat from a vastly bigger and faster fleet of pirates that I had quicksaved myself into not being able to avoid. I spent about an hour quickloading and trying the scenario over and over with no success. On the battlescape they would just catch up to my fleet, slowly shoot out my engines and then kill me while I was a sitting duck. I almost gave up but I tried one more time and I went 'I'll just let the auto-pilot decide what happens and keep going from there'.
I activated the AI command for 'full retreat' and let the AI command my main HammerHead ship. The AI let the HammerHead stay behind on purpose, shields up, facing the oncoming pirate ships while my weaker ships escaped. I thought it was setting it up as a sacrificial lamb, but it somehow fended off the entire enemy fleet, killed off a few weaker enemies, and escaped with about 20% hull integrity. It was smartly turning to take damage on different sides, popping shields up and down to block some hits but take some others without going over on flux, and focus firing all weapons on whichever enemy was the most exposed.So yeah, I'm gonna play a lot less with manual battle controls I guess. There's definitely a significant learning curve to 'getting good' with manual control.
High-level manual play almost feels like cheating, honestly, because it imbalances fights so dramatically.That said, the AI is pretty damn competent so watching it play is a good way to learn some basic tricks. The primary one used by that Hammerhead was understanding armor and the weapons that damage it: some weapons do explosive damage that will wreck armor, others do kinetic damage that will quickly overload your shields.
Knowing what kind of damage is coming allows you to 'dual-tank' on armored ships (the Hammerhead has average but respectable armor for the destroyer class) by swapping between shields and 'face-tank' depending on your opponent.It has some real similarities to other more complex games like Mechwarrior, where facing and armor strengths matter a lot. Mastering that system is complex but hugely rewarding.
The AI can also explicitly 'cheat' a bit in a few circumstances to do things the player cannot; the most obvious is with Omni Shields, since they face wherever you're currently aiming the player can't fire their active weapon group in one direction and have the Omni Shield facing a different direction to block shots. To emulate this as a player, you have to have a weapon group with a single 'useless' weapon that you switch to in order to move your shield around while all your other weapon groups are on autofire.Everything else (rapid shield flickering, kiting, etc) can at least be somewhat emulated/mastered by the player. A utility mod that adds some rebindable in-combat hotkeys:.
Deselect All Weapon Groups: Default key 6. Deselects all weapon groups, even if all 5 weapon groups are defined. Useful if you want to autofire everything and just sit back and pilot. Toggle Fire Mode: Default key 7.
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Switch selected weapon group between alternating and linked fire type. Quick Hold Fire: Default key 8. Hold down to switch off all weapon groups that do not contain a point defence weapon (or small non-missile weapons when Integrated Point Defence AI is installed) as long as hotkey is held down, re-enabled when key is released. Depends on the ship you're manually flying.A Hammerhead Safety Overrides build is pretty cheater in the player's hands. You're faster than most things and you just fly up to them and make them pop.Something like 2 chain guns, 4 LMG, and 2 reaper/atropos/hammer torpedoes as you prefer.
You just fly up and play bumper cars with your target, turning shields off as necessary to keep from overloading. (Just make sure they're on when you pop your target so you don't take a bunch of damage from the explosion.)Then you let your fleet distract everything and you fly in from the side going pop, pop, pop, pop. I say stick to it, I got completely trounced so many times but you do learn when and where you can engage.It also helps to find the right ship for you, some ships are easier for a player to pilot than others.My initial favourite was the sunder, it has immense firepower and can destroy superior ships when given the chance, however if you find yourself out of position and you use too much flux firing you can quickly find yourself destroyed. You often need your other ships for support. Other ships are more mobile and have an easier time to escape.Later on I found phase ships like the afflictor, harbinger and doom quite neat - they can escape quite handily using their phase system but they are quite flimsy, you have to pick your targets carefully.Either way it’s fun trying and failing at this game until you get the hang of it.
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