#Starsector ships guide manual#

I ended up trying out the game, and have an idea of where it lands on a scale from Endless Sky to Starsector. It might be better for you at those scales, but it's always going to feel a bit more action-oriented than Starsector, where the fighters aren't exactly something you fly a single one of against endgame fleets (something the top yachts are more than happy to do in Star Valor). There comes to be a far larger focus on your 'stats', tanking and dishing firepower out using your crew and a few main guns hooked to your mouse. With a much bigger ship, reflexes stop being a thing and it becomes more about basic positioning, like 'who has the most guns in range and firing angles of the other guy' and 'how many can fire at us at this time'. We dodge shots, find blind spots, outmaneuver and gun down targets far larger than ourselves with wild abandon. There's no denying in Star Valor that small craft (size 1/2 in particular) make things an action game. There may be a more RTS-style approach much later on for fleet work when stations become a thing and all that, but for now you'd probably have to see if you prefer life in a large battleship. Naturally I prefer the small end, where you can punch way above your weight if you can understand what you're doing even as little as I do. It's certainly possible to do so, but loading saves more often involves either your death (not much choice there) or you having screwed up like forcing a near-dead fleetmember to warp back into the fight where they then get blown up, or that sort of thing.Īs for skill vs stats, that partly depends on your size: shuttles and yachts live almost entirely on your skill, but if you WANT it's also possible to just set yourself up in a giant brick of a dreadnought with the express intent to f-off for a sandwich while you and another dreadnought or two's auto-gunner seats do all the work. It's also possible to escape, and so can your fleet-members (not just if you're a carrier there's also an emergency warp-out ability). iffier here: you don't have to set permadeath or anything, but some things like random encounters and boss weapon layouts get re-randomized if you load from another sector. You even get, through the 'space pilot' knowledge track, bonuses when not in a fleet that add up to quite the performance upgrade. Fleets require quite the investment, and if you do put in the money and effort they become insanely powerful as you'd expect, BUT if you want to be a snubfighter taking on armadas, you can do it here. If you don't want a fleet, don't get one, it is not a problem. Star Valor is also much more solo friendly. So if you want a giant ship, not a problem, and with Star Valor too you don't have to switch to larger slower ships (which often in some of those games end up faster anyway due to the best outfits being that much more powerful).

#Starsector ships guide manual#

You can even go halfsies on large ships by having your rear turrets and the like handled by gunners, while those installed in what you want under your mouse can simply be set to manual controls so as to give their bonuses without trying to shoot for you. The combat's much more fun than Starsector's I find, with less of a focus on logistics too. How much comes down to piloting/commanding skill versus overall fleet power? Is it a sit-still-and-shoot-until-one-side-is-dead kind of thing, or is it actually fun?Īny size is completely playable here. Starsector makes it easier to recoup losses, and good commanding can allow you to face a powerful enemy force without any expensive losses. Does it encourage savescumming? In a lot of space RPGs, you have to savescum to make any progress, since even if you have a stronger force than the enemy you'll likely take losses that would take a substantial amount of time to financially recover from. In all other space RPGs, the player is heavily encouraged to switch to slower, larger ships. Is there a reason for the player to not pilot the biggest, strongest ship they can? In Starsector, it's often a better choice to pilot a fun smaller ship and let the AI handle your slow larger ships, since the AI handles cruisers/capitals extremely well. So on a spectrum from Endless Sky to Starsector, how good is the combat? Nothing else I've tried even comes close, they all just suck in comparison. There are countless open-world space RPGs out there, but the only one I've ever seen with good combat is Starsector.