Looking for an open world, immersive space sim?

Starsector can be your last stop

I’m always looking for ways to improve with this newsletter, so if you are reading this, please don’t hesitate to fire off an email with things you’d like to see me cover!

Hello Scientist Gamers!

There are a few gems that stand out from the crowd in the indie gaming world. These are games that provide extraordinary value to me as the player, but also support a thriving player community. It’s heartwarming to know that small indie teams are supported by so many dedicated and devoted players.

One of those is Wildermyth, a game I’ve been playing since before its official 1.0 release. You guide a group of completely customizable characters that age and grow with you throughout a story. The neat thing is, this story changes from game to game because of the procedurally generated mission system. The overall campaign story arcs remain the same (there are 5 official campaigns) but how you get from the beginning to the end of that campaign will change based on the randomly selected missions. It’s an ingenious system designed to create memorable stories — I’ve never played a game where I’ve been able to recall every little thing that happened to all my characters. Pair that with a legendary hero system that lets you recruit heroes from past campaigns and you’ve got a game that’s capable of generating an infinite number of stories.

But the focus of today’s post is not Wildermyth, it’s another gem that provides a similar outsized replay value: Starsector. Originally developed as Starfarer way back in 2010, Starsector is a sprawling open world, real-time with pause strategy RPG and space sim game. You control a fleet of ships (one of which you can pilot or let autopilot do its thing) as you explore the universe, collecting bounties, blowing up enemy ships, or liberating large sums of money through trade. The game is not yet fully released, but I wouldn’t wait to pick it up — there’s SO much content in the game already with more on the way and enhanced by mods.

So in today’s post, I want to provide a look at the game, to help you decide if this is the game for you.

What is Starsector?

Starsector is an open world, real time strategy space sim RPG. You’ll be managing a cast of characters that pilot ships in your fleet and outfitting those ships with weapons to poke holes in your enemies.

The most appealing part about Starsector is that you can play it however you see fit. Fancy yourself a Han Solo? You can smuggle illicit goods from planet to planet, making sweet cash and avoiding the authorities. Feel like conquering the known universe? Build yourself an armada and unleash your philosophies (and destruction) on any who stand in your way. You can play as a merchant, a pirate, a bounty hunter, an explorer…it all works in this Starsector world.

If you’re worried about Starsector playing like a space version of Civilization, and all the number crunching that it entails, let me assure you by saying you don’t have to worry about any of that. There is some colony management in the game, especially if you are playing with mods that enhance that experience, but you can completely ignore colony management and just go around blasting stuff in space. Granted, if you do want to go deep on colony management, Starsector might not go as deep as Civilization or even Stellaris, but there’s just enough to keep it interesting for me.

How to approach the game

Starsector can be a daunting game to play because there are so many different ways to play it, most of which you’ll discover on your own. So, instead of telling you what to do, I think in this case, it is most helpful to talk about what to look for or keep in mind as you begin your journey.

1. There’s a survival element to the game
   There are three resources that you need to manage: crew, supplies, and fuel. Each ship will have a minimum number of crew that it requires for it to function properly. If you fall below the minimum, your ship may not perform as well during combat. You can replenish your crew at markets where they are sold, but you’ll need to make sure you have the cash. Most often, you’ll be doing this after particularly difficult battles when your ships take heavy damage.
   
   Supplies are used to keep your ship running and conduct repairs. Certain emergency maneuvers on the map, deployment in battle, and traversing difficult terrain will all drain your supplies at a faster than normal rate. If you run out of supplies, your ships will start to take damage, including loss of crew.
   
   Fuel gets you to places, so it’ll be the resource that determines how long you can stay out exploring before needing to refuel. If you run out, you’ll be stranded: if you happen to be in hyperspace, the game will force you into the closest system and leave you there (the idea being, you have no fuel to overcome the gravitational pull of the system). There, you can issue a distress call to see if an NPC will come to your aid: be prepared to pay a hefty sum of money though or fight your would-be rescuers to steal their fuel. Sometimes, the help is hostile and you’ll be forced into a battle anyway.

2. Combat is a flux management game
   During combat, the number one thing you’ll want to be keeping an eye on is flux. It is the thing that determines how much damage your ships can take and how much firepower you can unleash on your opponents. If you take too much damage or fire too many weapons and go over the limit, you’ll overload the ship, making it temporarily unresponsive (and therefore vulnerable) to everything.
   
   Making flux management a little more complicated is the concept of soft versus hard flux. Soft flux is generated by keeping your shields up and firing weapons. You’ll build up soft flux, but it is passively dissipated by your ship components. Hard flux is generated when your shields take damage. This type of flux will stay with you until you actively vent it away.
   
   This system provides interesting play choices and styles. Because the amount of flux available for firing weapons decreases as a ship takes hard flux damage, one tactic to overcoming your enemies is to do as much damage to enemy shields, rendering them unable to use their weapons.
   
   If you apply that tactic but in reverse for your own ships, you can forgo shields entirely so that you leave all of the available flux for firing weapons, relying instead on heavy armour and maneuverability to minimize the damage.

3. Experimentation is key
   There are a lot of ship components, weapons, and ship types to choose from and it's hard to say if there is a “best” combination. A lot of “the best” will depend on your own skill level and play style preferences. I’m generally horrible at anything fast paced so I like my ships on the slow and deliberate side, electing to rely on my tactical prowess (or what passes for it).
   
   Thankfully, the game has a handy simulation feature where you can pit yourself against any number of ships that you might see in the game, which allows you to test out different ships and combinations of weapons for your piloted ship. There are missiles, lasers, and ballistic weapons to choose from, all with different characteristics like projectile speed, firing frequency, accuracy, and effectiveness against shields/armour/hull. I’m in love with my ballistic weapons and I rarely ever use missiles, but I’ve seen some pretty cool missile spamming builds that can quickly take down large enemy ships.

Barriers to playing

I think the biggest barrier to playing this game is the overwhelming amount of content. There’s just so much to see and do, it’s hard to know where to start. It’s also a daunting task to try and research every single piece of content in the game.

My advice to players just starting the journey is to play through the first hour of the game, flying around, getting lost, running out of fuel, and eventually getting your ship blown up. It’s how I arrived at the considerations for approaching the game. There are a ton of guides out there but it’s a lot to keep in mind at once, and experimentation and experience can be good teachers.

If you got past the initial part of starting the game and just flying around in the vast universe, the other barrier to navigate are the mods. At this point, mods are an essential part of the experience for Starsector, and there are some extremely talented modders changing the game in various ways. The Starsector forum maintains a list of the official mods and you can read descriptions about each of them — it’s worth taking the time to read through them to figure out what you want your experience in Starsector to be like.

Admittedly, I made things hard on myself by starting with mods right away — I went down a rabbit hole adding features and ships that I thought I would like and never looked back. But that initial barrier of the overwhelming number of mods quickly turned into excitement about playing this game over and over again, with new and different mods.

Replayability

One of the key things I look for in a game is replayability. Not whether I can play through the same story again, but if I can get a fundamentally different experience in a new game. As I wrote above, Wildermyth is one of those games that lets you play the same game and experience something completely different. Starsector is another.

Because you can change the game however you like with mods, there are hundreds of combinations of experiences you can have. Everything from different ship sets, to harder endgame content, to more exploration options, bigger threats, punishing combat…it's hard to say if there will be an end to it all. With a thriving and devoted player community, I think Starsector is one of those games that’s going to be loved for a long time to come.

Final thoughts

Technically, Starsector isn’t a turn-based game. But with the ability to pause and issue individual orders to your ships, I think even the most hardcore turn-based fans can appreciate and enjoy this game. If you’re an action RPG kind of person, I think there’s a lot you’ll love about this game, including the looting component of it, as you find different ship components in your battles throughout the universe. Quite honestly, at $15 USD at the time of writing, it’s an absolute STEAL to be able to enjoy this game for this long and this much.