Starsector (formerly Starfarer)

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Gavinmad

Mr. Poopybutthole
42,271
50,242
I liked Star Traders before it was cool!

I bought it in EA based purely on the fact that it was by the Trese Brothers, who did Templar Battleforce. I pick it back up every now and then, and yeah it's pretty crazy how much content there is in the game and how rapidly they churn out little updates for it.
 

a_skeleton_05

<Banned>
13,843
34,508
Disnof (Rimworld streamer some of you probably know) has started streaming this. He's always good to watch for some strats.

 

Sludig

Silver Baronet of the Realm
8,852
9,130
Interseted, until I saw it was the building blocks "MAKE YOUR OWN SHIPZZ!!!" that just turns into ugly blocky ships built for maximizing putting guns on it etc. I have no imagination, give me pretty ships to lust for buying.
 

Caliane

Golden Baronet of the Realm
14,424
9,792
Very big thumbs up on this btw.

Star sector. not those other ones that got posted for some reason.
 

a_skeleton_05

<Banned>
13,843
34,508
Star sector. not those other ones that got posted for some reason.

This genre is small and the people that are into it rely on word of mouth to get exposed to them. Are they as good as this? Not really, but they're still decent games that are worth checking out if this is your jam.
 

velk

Trakanon Raider
2,512
1,094
Starsector is good fun - thanks for the recommendation. I am beyond terrible at it though, I had to reload the tutorial fights and I get total choice paralysis with picking ships and ship builds.

Anyone got some newbie suggestions ? ;p
 

Caliane

Golden Baronet of the Realm
14,424
9,792
Still a noob too. But heres some of my thoughts.

Specialize your fleet. I started with "combat freighters" Mules, wayfarers, etc. and I think thats bit of a mistake. My playstyle is "scavenger/bountyhunter/high value transport/seigebreaking.. But, when deciding between 2 mules, vs 1 cargo ship and 1 destroyer... the 1/1 is better, because I can just deploy the destroyer into combat, and leave the cargoship out of it. theres no point in deploying weak ass half ships into combat.
buy/sell on the market seems not profitable due to taxes. but, the bar "I need x delivered to Y" payments did me well. as well as the occasional, pop up trade quest.

my fleet atm is, 1 Legion battlecruiser, 1hammerhead destroyer, 1enforcer destroyer, 2 condor carriers, 1 heron for combat. 2 colossus cargo freighters, 1 starline transport.

(atm, possibly a bit too carrier heavy. Carriers are easy to play, seem to be WAY more aggressive then most others in AI. but, are relatively defenseless vs assaults themselves. More ships in combat, means more distraction, and split firepower. While 1 ubership, can get focus fired upon. Granted, in the case of the Legion here... it IS more powerful then the rest of the fleet combined.. Pay close attention to supply cost, and fuel costs. Sometimes 2 weaker ships might be better then 1 more powerful. some "tanks" to distract for the carriers fighters to do their thing, might be a good idea here. A strat I might try is outfit my carriers with pure torpedo bombers, no fighers. Then, field alongside my carriers some mid range, high shield Frigates. these Frigates will be set to escort/defend the carriers, and outfited with LR (long range) energy point defense. To annihilate enemy fighters, and missiles. And also serving as a distraction to keep pressure off the carriers)

I hear best early game is to build a FAST explorer fleet. skip the combat ships, and just outrun anyone that attacks you. do explore missions to build up a cash stockpile. (I didnt do this.)

Equalize max burn. note on my fleet, most of the ships are 9 or above max burn. The legion and colossus are both 7. Giving each of them , the aug drive field mod, to get them up to 9 max burn is massive. 16 vs 20 max burn top speed for the fleet.

Abandoned space stations are FREE storage. I found that legion battlecruiser derelict pretty early. it was WAY out of my price range at the time. I had like 500 crew, and that thing is 1200 skeleton crew alone. tripled my fleet supply/fuel costs too. So I mothballed it, and took it back to civilization. I had no colony at the time either, so, had to store it. 5k upfront then was costing me 5k/month to store the damn thing. I did eventually move it to an abandoned space station when I found/realized it. And then shortly after to my colony, which I started a bit too early.

I had to put the Legion into action very shortly after that, as pirate raids on my colony were too strong without it. It could take out pirate bases.
Dont start a colony until you have 1mill credits, and a fleet that can take out pirate capital ships/stations.


Sensor str.
Easy to overlook. Sensor str is the top 5 ships of your fleet combined. They each of an innate value. you might see the apogee mentioned, it has an innate +Str hull mod.
This determines how far away you can identify other fleets, debris, etc. it is then further modified by pulses, transponders, etc.


Sensor profile.
Profile is also the top 5 ships of your fleet combined. Bigger/damaged ships have larger profiles. This is how easy you are to identify. Those colossus cargo are great for hauling, but are VERY easy to see, and would make sneaking up on pirates very hard.
 
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Reactions: 1 user

wamphyr

Molten Core Raider
644
539
Whatever you do, do not install faction mods. You will go crazy, spending all your time on the Refit screen, playing endless simulated battles to establish the best combo for the almost 100 types of ships you have access to now...

The easiest ship to pilot is the carrier, at least in the beginning. Use the z key a lot to recall fighters and plan the strikes. Keep back and retreat often.
If you are an adrenaline junkie, use this load-out:

Brawler Hammerhead Destroyer
  • 2 Heavy Machine in the medium ballistic slots
  • 2 Double Light Machine guns in the small hybrid slots close to the front
  • 2 Ion Cannons in the small hybrid slots near the back
  • 2 Annihilator Rocket Pods in the missile slots
  • Safety Overrides for high speed.
  • Extra vents
    Put all the MGs in the first control group on autofire, the Rocket Pods in the second for manual control and the Ion Cannons in the third control group on autofire.
This is your capital ship for the early stages of the game and it's simply a joy to fly. It's blindingly fast, can close to short range very, very quickly and pump out an amazing amount of kinetic damage.

Basically, you fly in, pop the Accelerated Ammo Feeder, F key, and unload into the enemy shields with ~2000 kinetic damage per second; this is enough to overload pretty much everything up to Destroyer-size within the blink of an eye. The Rocket Pods then deal a decent amount of HE damage to breach enemy armour, which exposes their hull to your MGs. The Ion Cannons disable the enemy weaponry so that, even if the enemy ship survives its overload, it won't have any weapons to fire back with.
 
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khorum

Murder Apologist
24,338
81,363
Carriers were still pretty OP pretty late in the game for me. Had six colonies and an insane income. This was 0.91a stock though. Never did play with mods.
 
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Reactions: 1 user

Sludig

Silver Baronet of the Realm
8,852
9,130
Several sick mods, most of them fairly balanced. Been a bit, but the one with all the red ships some of which are kinda mechs sorta I think is my favorite.

Plasma cannon > all. Take the starting exploration cruiser with 1plasma cannon and a few PD can last you a long while. Eventually upgrade into something that can run 2 of them and I'll sit there and solo multiple pirate capitals at a time and 1v1 any of the other factions super capitals. (The high tech battleship with fortress shield is basically gg to everything at that point, 1-3 of those and some smaller ships that can chase down frigates etc) So generally it's me in one heavy ship, 2-3 fairly large ships to just kinda run interference, then a lot of medium/heavy carriers with a mix of emp fighters and bombers.
 

Caliane

Golden Baronet of the Realm
14,424
9,792
yeah. I hear nexerelin adds the ability to send npc fleets to deal with the constant pirate/luddic path station spam. Which seems worth.. as well as a bunch of other cool, faction/diplomacy elements.

I never really learned how to play combat directly. I was doing shitty combat freighters, till I upgraded directly to a 14th BG Legion as my flagship. all have shit maneuverability, making personally flying them, kindof pointless. Typically yeah, you want a Sunder, Hammerhead, or Doom to fly personally. fast, mobile, and deadly. so you can fly around/behind,a nd hit unguarded rear shields, and unload all your weapons in a way, the A.I. wont.
Otherwise, yes carriers are far more aggressive with their fighter focus fire then most other ships. Not so say, the others are useless. The A.I. will use faster ships to peel off attackers.

14th BG legion is significantly better then the craftable regular Legion.
 
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Funkor

Molten Core Raider
733
618
I've been doing a modded run and using a carrier heavy fleet with my capital ship using the Operations Center hullmod to increase Command Point generation along with the skill to increase it by another 50% and give extra points to start. This lets me constantly assign fighter strikes from my fleet to whichever enemy is most exposed, and cancel the command if they withdraw too far back into the pack and still have points coming in fast enough to send out other strikes constantly.

Carrier spam does seem to be a bit overpowered right now so I expect them to tone it down in future updates. Only fleet that has given me trouble so far was a very top heavy Redacted fleet that I got cocky on, but might be beatable with tons of patience.
 

Caliane

Golden Baronet of the Realm
14,424
9,792
I'm not sure I think carriers are expressly overpowered. I would probably just argue the cost, in terms of crew, maintenance is met a little too trivially. as, they ARE more expensive like that. needing way more crew. so needing crew space, and paying paychecks. and then crew dying during even successful fights, so you need to restock eventually... (unless taking prisoners and conscripting is added..) but at the same time yeah, its expensive early game. but at this point I have over 10million with nothing to buy, and unlimited crew from my colonies as needed.
Although I suppose, the range and ability to focus fire is also an issue. other ships fight for space, in order to focus fire on a target. While carriers can sit back 4000u away, and all attack at once. Cutting fighter range to 2000 or 3000 would force carriers up into the danger a bit more


My fleet is still split. 1 14th bg legion, 2 astrals, 3 apogees as my main fleet. herons, sunders, hammerheads as backup. (along with colossus, fuel tanks, a valk, and salvage)
45 deployment cost on the astrals is rough. legion is 40. apogees are 18 each.

I have a few odysseys, but they seem garbage. 45 deployment cost. high maint cost. not nearly as effective in combat as the legion, astral, or 2 apogees..
 
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Funkor

Molten Core Raider
733
618
As you said eventually you pull in enough income via colonies/bounties/trade that the added costs for carriers is trivial. Add in some skills, farm for carriers with inconsequential D-mods and you can cut it down even more. If the AI had better loadouts to counter fighters they'd be less strong (mod for this: [0.9.1] Improved Stock enemy Loadouts v0.2).

I find the Odyssey and Conquest capitals to be pretty awkward to pilot compared to easier ones like the Onslaught. I think it is the fastest out of the stock caps available so if you're good at hit and run piloting then you can excel with it. Too hard for me to thread the needle with it in and out of fights as the screen gets too crowded with ships for it to fit in. Phase ships are a lot easier for running around, or ships with a teleport.
 

velk

Trakanon Raider
2,512
1,094
Whatever you do, do not install faction mods. You will go crazy, spending all your time on the Refit screen, playing endless simulated battles to establish the best combo for the almost 100 types of ships you have access to now...

Too late ! After playing a few games on vanilla, I added like 10 different factions. I think I spend more time working out loadouts for ships than I do fighting battles with them heh. The mods for this game are amazingly high quality. I like that a lot of the mod weapons are interesting mechanically rather than being just powered up versions of existing stuff or random range/speed tradeoffs - like the anti-armor cannon that bounces off shields and explodes into shrapnel.


Brawler Hammerhead Destroyer
  • 2 Heavy Machine in the medium ballistic slots
  • 2 Double Light Machine guns in the small hybrid slots close to the front
  • 2 Ion Cannons in the small hybrid slots near the back
  • 2 Annihilator Rocket Pods in the missile slots
  • Safety Overrides for high speed.
  • Extra vents
    Put all the MGs in the first control group on autofire, the Rocket Pods in the second for manual control and the Ion Cannons in the third control group on autofire.
This is your capital ship for the early stages of the game and it's simply a joy to fly. It's blindingly fast, can close to short range very, very quickly and pump out an amazing amount of kinetic damage.

I ended up with something very similar, only using assault chainguns instead of heavy machineguns, and machineguns instead of ion for the rear - I figured it was better to stick with all ballistic to take advantage of ammo feeder, although I had great success with long range ballistic mixed with beams on some cruisers.
 

Gavinmad

Mr. Poopybutthole
42,271
50,242
Conquest is more of a super-heavy cruiser than a true battleship. It's ok in the hands of a human pilot but it's fuck awful in the hands of the AI so never field one unless it's your flagship. Also don't care for the Legion because I don't like split roles. Onslaught, Paragon, and Astral are A+ though.
 

Pancreas

Vyemm Raider
1,121
3,809
One of the most cost effective vanilla fleets I had was all drovers and tempests with a couple tankers, colossus cargo haulers, and salvage rigs geared up for surveying and faster burn rate.

The drovers equipped tridents and longbows. The tempests had ion pulsers, heavy blasters and swarm missile launchers. Each ship had an officer attached with appropriate gunning or carrier skills. Those ships could punch way above their weight. The tempests acted like heavy fighter escorts for the carriers that could cycle three flights of fighter each despite only having two decks thanks to their special skill. It was like a swarm of angry bees. Get a few D-mods on things as they got dinged up and the cost to run it went even lower with the salvage skill. My character focused on fleet wide skills. This fleet tackled just about anything including some capitals and stations while costing next to nothing to operate.

But yeah once you have some colonies pulling in big money you can run whatever you want.
 

Caliane

Golden Baronet of the Realm
14,424
9,792
Starting a new run now, with Nexerlin installed, and a higher difficulty.

Vanilla does peter out a bit "end game" as the core factions are static. They don't explore/colonies the outer rim. so, peaceful win is just kindof, "well I can defend myself, and do whatever I want".

Nexerlin does seem fantastic, adding so much more life to the systems. I would not suggest installing it for first playthrough though. It's content is not really gated. so, a new player starting fresh will just get hammered with WAY too much information they can't possibly comprehend. So, start a vanilla playthrough, play for a few months in game, or even years. When you feel like you got a handle of handling ships, missions, etc; start over with nexerlin. Probably about the time you establish a colony.

Also, totes took the time to learn how to pilot a ship this time...