What is Starsector?Starsector is a single-player sandbox style space role-playing game with strategic elements. That’s quite a mouthful, though, so here’s what it boils down to – fly around with your highly customizable fleet, explore, build stuff, blow stuff up, advance your character. The goal is to give you lots of meaningful choices in a malleable world.
What is the combat gameplay like?You have direct command of your flagship, and can give orders to the officers aboard the rest of your fleet. Their personalities and skills play a role in how well they execute those orders – for example, you probably don’t want a recklessly aggressive officer flying a support carrier, or a timidly cautious officer piloting your close-range support destroyer. Battles can vary from small frigate skirmishes to giant fleet-on-fleet battles. You may find yourself running down pirates attempting to flee from your superior fleet, or sometimes you will be trying to escape from a hostile patrol – do you sacrifice some ships to slow the enemy so your freighters can escape?
What will the strategic gameplay be like?You start small, with only one or two ships. You have a few ways to progress in your career- build up your personal ship, make money through missions, bounties, smuggling, and scavenging, expand your fleet by salvaging derelicts or buying new hulls, invest in an outpost or two on a resource-rich planet, or any mix of the above. You’ll also want to build up your personal character skills and officer corps to best excel in your chosen path.
Can you say more about the economic model?The economic model in Starsector strives for one thing – to allow you to make meaningful choices. Say you found a cache of illegal drugs while scavenging in the outer systems. Do you smuggle them to sell on a populated core world, potentially causing instability as you enrich the criminal underground and undermine the rightful authorities? Do you make a risky trip to a pirate base, dodging raiders, to sell the drugs where there is no law? Or do you pass up this profitable opportunity and instead take up an offer to ship surplus food supplies to a starving colony? The choice is yours.
When you found your own colonies, you should choose carefully what resources you specialize in. Perhaps you simply fulfill an economic need – or perhaps you carry out a raid on a competitor’s industry to cripple production and allow your faction to dominate the market. Beware however, because a strong faction may do the same to you if they take offense at your attempt to move in on their cornered market.
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