STARSECTOR REVIEW UPDATE

It'll take a while for modders to update everything to the new version, but I can't wait until Diable Avionics and their transforming mecha-ships return.ДЄ fine fleet, with an officer aboard almost every ship.

STARSECTOR REVIEW MOD

It's more of everything, top to bottom.В Starsector may not be 'complete', yet, but to top it all off, much like Mount & Blade before it, it has attracted a large and very dedicated mod scene. There's ruins and derelict old hulls to discover in space, guarded by robotic defenders. There's constant opportunities to get overconfident and end up prey to a bigger fish, but plenty more chances to avoid falling into those traps.ДЇleet-scale navigation presents many choices.ДЄs well as colony management, the new version lets you establish your own faction with a set military doctrine, if you get powerful enough. Internal components and systems can be customised on every vessel if you want, and the systems allow for some reckless behaviour, especially getting into and out of trouble.

STARSECTOR REVIEW FULL

Ships can turn off transponders and run silent to avoid being detected by enemies, or crank engines to full and put themselves at risk of interdiction by pirates. The game goes into a huge amount of detail on every level. The few ships that could, retreated.Д«ig, messy space battles.

Rushing into a battle, my heaviest ship's engines crapped out, while my carrier was struggling to get fighters off its crumbling decks. Not wanting to waste time, I did it with too few crew, and didn't give them long enough to bring the mothballed ships back online. The tutorial story mission asked me to reclaim a ship graveyard's worth of wrecked hulls, and see what I could get moving again. My first session with version 0.9a was an embarrassing failure, but in a way that highlights the interplay between its strategic and tactical layers. I've not had a chance to fight any orbital platforms yet, but they look impressive and very menacing, bristling with guns that can flatten anything short of super-capital class, and heavily shielded.

I've seen enemy frigates use my own transport ships as cover from my cruiser's slowly arcing main cannons, darting in the moment they see a chance to cut a hole in my battered flank armour. Privateers can now chat to characters in bars, getting side missions including cargo delivery, salvage and more direct combat runs.ДЄ very outdated trailer, admittedly, but it still looks nice.Д¬ombat still plays like a bit like a 2D, more complex version of Mechwarrior (with full fleet command), but there's been a lot of tuning done this update - the AI continues to be shockingly clever. Whether you play as a bounty hunter in a lone hyper-optimised custom craft, or an admiral hanging back and giving orders to a massive fleet produced by your own shipyards, it's all possible now. NPC empires poke and prod at each other, while you play your role as a freelance captain. While there's still no official 'endgame' to it, I'm not sure it even needs one. While Starsector is still a work-in-progress, today's version feels like a major milestone. The excellent real-time tactical combat has been improved too, including new battles against enormous orbital platforms.

STARSECTOR REVIEW PATCH

Today's update ( patch notes here) is over a year in the works, and vastly broadens the scope of involvement you can have in its still-expanding procedural space sandbox, including colony management. High praise at the time, but as of today's version 0.9a release, I feel it might be selling it short. I've previously described Fractal Softworks's space sim StarsectorВ (primarily the work of solo dev Alexander Mosolov) as ' Mount & Blade: Warband in space'.

Starsector review