STARSECTOR - Best $15 you'll ever spend

The I Scream Man

The next adventure awaits 💔
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Feb 4, 2013
I know at least @Fuck Taxes has that sweet avatar and when I ran a search I saw multiple Kiwis of character and distinction making references to what is honestly my favorite game right now, so I made a thread to talk about it!

If you're looking at this and you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, get some education homeboy:

MOTHERFUCKIN STARSECTOR
describes itself as "an in-development open-world single-player space-combat, roleplaying, exploration, and economic game", which is like describing your favorite sandwich as "some stuff inbetween bread". I initially found the game by searching for something that was like Escape Velocity (first finding Star Valor, which is also fun but is a pale imitation) and that led me to this shit, arguably the most fun I've had with a game in a long time.

Currently $15, it claims to be in "alpha" and has been declared as such for a long time (10+ years I believe), but anyone who's played any amount of this game will tell you that there's more here than you can find in some AAA games. You may expect a game in alpha to have a million and one awful bugs but I haven't encountered a single one except for needing to quit every so often due to memory leakage, usually around hour 5 or so.

Here's some of what you can expect when you mainline some digital space crack:


  • Pilot your own space ship and do space ship things, like shooting at stuff and collecting things, with fine graphics and physics interactions as well as awesome particle effects and sweet sounds
  • Don't wanna fly solo? Good news fucko, you get a whole fleet of ships that you can modify and rearrange to your autistic hearts' content
  • Wander around a procedurally generated rectangle of space filled with all sorts of crazy bullshit, stellar formations and individual star systems filled with lots of goodies and neat things to discover, exploration is a big part of this game
  • Interact with different factions, communities and individuals, who offer procedurally generated missions and content
  • Fight, steal, salvage, and get shat on by all kinds of ships, weapons, devices, ship systems and fighter craft
  • Engage in covert ops, large engagements and everything in between
  • If that shit isn't enough then there's also deep skill trees for you and your fleet officers, allowing you even more customization and build configurations
  • If THAT shit isn't enough then there's also the economic aspects, including a fleshed-out economy and procedurally generated economic dynamics
  • If THAT SHIT isn't enough then there's ALSO the colony and industry aspects, wherein you can found your own colonies and create your own little empire on cool planets you find with sweet resources. Find a dope blueprint but don't wanna pay a fat markup for some space bro to put the shit together for you? Well if you put together a good colony in a good place and defend it well then eventually you can make your own stuff and custom order your own ships and weapons to really get your fleet put together how you want it
  • If THAT SHIT isn't enough then there's ALSO a fun little storyline, its not complete yet but what's there is cool as hell and decently engaging, at least the first time
  • If THAT SHIT isn't enough then there's ALSO HELLA MODS, tons of mods for the game with a very active community putting together all kinds of new content, seriously with mods there's like three or four whole new games buried inside, even without the whole game makeover-type mods you still have hundreds of new ships, portraits, utility items, functions, weapons, fighters/bombers/whatever, factions, there's even mods that fundamentally change and fix the way the game interacts with you and with itself to make it seem even more fleshed out and immersive

This game is seriously some of the most fun I've had on the PC in a long time, its made in Java so theoretically it'll run on any system that can utilize Java, and its system reqs aren't terribly arduous either.

real ones don't like Hegemony, all space cops are bastards
 
Highly recommend the mod that turns it into a 4X game. It's even compatible with the story if you turn off random universe generation (so it'd be fine even on a first play-through), although if you don't also install some extra mod factions the Hegemony will steamroll everybody (both options being maybe not so fine).
The one that adds a bunch of new industry stuff goes great with it too.

Most mod factions are pretty good and you can pretty much just throw em all in, with the exception of the clearly stupid furry type shit and the Imperium of Humanity or whatever which are dumb and will rape your ears with embarrassing ersatz Doom music played at triple the volume of everything else.
 
Last edited:
Absolutely, Nexerelin is amazing and a great example of what the game can be if you want it to be, and the love the devs have shown for it is also really heartening to see

Highly recommended, since as stated in my OP its like peeling the top layer off of the game and finding a whole new sweet game underneath, which doesn't happen often enough if you ask me
 
I remember getting this 9-10 years ago back before it changed names. It was fun as hell but not a whole lot to do. I'll have to dig it up and give it another go.
You absolutely should, it’s a lot different than Starfarer was but it still retains the vision that the devs had for it, it’s real smooth now (with the caveat that I barely remember the old game because I only played like 15 minutes of it back in the day)
Will it give me anything I'm not getting from X4?
It will run without needing a pact with some extraplanar entity and I consider it every bit as deep, there’s not quite as much overall content as there is in X4 I don’t think but it is presented much more fluidly and authentically.

I think both are fine games and both do share some common pitfalls (the AI in both is sourced directly from hell) and I’d say check out the trailer and YouTubers talking about it if you’re interested
 
Oh man, I'm mostly waiting for the new patch to drop before diving back into this game, probably with mods this time.
 
  • Like
Reactions: The I Scream Man
Oh man, I'm mostly waiting for the new patch to drop before diving back into this game, probably with mods this time.
Do you not like the current one? I admit I haven't really looked for anything regarding a new patch but I'm mostly hoping it doesn't break all my mods lol
 
Do you not like the current one? I admit I haven't really looked for anything regarding a new patch but I'm mostly hoping it doesn't break all my mods lol
Oh it's more that I'm taking a break from the game at the moment, but a new patch dropping is a good excuse to get back into it. (I always restart with a vanilla-esque run first, before starting any modding, so plenty of time for the current mods to catch up when they inevitably break.)
 
  • Feels
Reactions: The I Scream Man
Oh it's more that I'm taking a break from the game at the moment, but a new patch dropping is a good excuse to get back into it. (I always restart with a vanilla-esque run first, before starting any modding, so plenty of time for the current mods to catch up when they inevitably break.)
Understand completely, I feel like I might burn out soon once I've seen everything there is to see but there's at least one whole "complete overhaul" mod I wanna try that'll undoubtedly steal my attention for another month
 
  • Like
Reactions: Kane Lives
What version is the game on now? I had to dig through an old email from 2013 just to get the key. Right now it says 0.95 for me and I want to make sure that's correct.
 
What version is the game on now? I had to dig through an old email from 2013 just to get the key. Right now it says 0.95 for me and I want to make sure that's correct.
0.95.1a-RC6 is the current version, all of my RC5 mods are working swimmingly with it
 
  • Informative
Reactions: White Devil
Starsector is good on it's own but mods are what really make it shine. The mods for this game are so fucking good man 😩
In my last playthrough, I had all the Rosenritter blueprints from Tahlan Shipworks and the unique Traumtanzer Battlecruiser (a.k.a. the Traumatizer). I used that ship, along with several other battlecruisers similar to it, to wipe out the entire Hegemony. The whole thing. Gone. Try auditing me for AI now, bitches. :smug:

Vanilla Starsector is okay, but with Nexerelin and at least a dozen ship/faction mods, like Blackrock Drive Yards, Imperium, Outer Rim Alliance, Scy, Diable Avionics, Legacy of Arkgneisis, Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority, Dassault-Mikoyan Engineering, Magellan Protectorate, Xhan Empire, Hazard Mining Incorporated, Neutrino Corp, Mayasuran Navy, Tahlan Shipworks, and then a few weapon packs and some terraforming/industry/station-building mods, et cetera, it becomes something truly transcendent.
 
If any of you don't have a key,Sseth's review of Starsector features his key around the end of the video. Keys can be used a infinite amount of times so you can share it with your friends too :)
 
If any of you don't have a key,Sseth's review of Starsector features his key around the end of the video. Keys can be used a infinite amount of times so you can share it with your friends too :)
If someone is hard up enough for $15 I'd probably buy them a key tbh, I've been downloadin shit since I couldn't legally drive but I feel like these guys deserve the money

Not to question anyone elses' choices of course, just sayin pay it if you can friends :feels:
 
Last edited:
Back