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[Torch]

If you're into the RPG aspect of the game, what particular fantasy did you want to see play out? What hopes do you have for the ideal, finished Starsector?

I've always had fun really immersing myself into whatever games I play, to the point of disabling vital HUD elements in a competitive FPS because "muh immersion." I really want to play the role of a struggling bounty hunter just barely scraping by because I love the combat mechanics and ship customization in this game and frequently spend half of my playtime in the refit screen and simulations.

Also, bonus round: Post your current fleet!

I can't post mine now but I've got a fleet of Neutrino capitals with a variety of Diable Avionics and Legacy of Arkgneisis cruisers and destroyers (mostly cruisers), and the black/red/blue fleet aesthetic looks soooo good.

[Draba]

Searching for something like X3 or Sword of the Stars ran into a Cynical Brit video.
Hoped for roughly what the game will be with the upcoming economy adjustments.
Wanted something a bit more on the 4X side, turns out the deeper fleet mechanics also work

[DaLagga]

I actually discovered Starsector on Fileplanet (remember that old site?) back in 2012 or so.  I remember Alex had just added the first solar system so there wasn't really a galaxy yet to explore or interact with.  It was basically just a combat sim at that point which is what endeared me to the game because even in that very early state, the combat was amazing.  

For some reason, combat seems to be something that hardly any space games get right, even those that are fully 3D.  I enjoyed Space Rangers 2 for example and the world was extremely well designed and dynamic but the crummy combat really crippled the experience because 90% of your success was based on stats rather than strategy or skill and later in the game you could just stack defenses to become virtually invincible.  I've tried to get into Eve: Online half a dozen times or so over the years but the lame hands-off combat ends up putting me to sleep and so I quit.  

Starsector on the other hand basically took the Mount and Blade approach to game design and I love it for that.  They focused first and foremost on building a fantastic combat system to serve as the foundation and then built a world around it.  And as much as I love having an immersive, dynamic and believable world in games, the combat system (assuming it's that type of game to begin with) really needs to be solid for all of that other stuff to be enjoyable for me.  Other people are the complete opposite which is fine, but for me, the combat system and ability to build and customize your own ships/fleet is what sold me on Starsector.  Exploration, factions, reputation, colonies and the like are just gravy.  

As for my current fleet, for the longest time I've always liked to command a powerful capital ship myself like an Onslaught or Paragon.  Although when I first started playing all those years ago the Hyperion was an unstoppable god-ship of doom and so I mainly used that.  As for the rest of my fleet, I absolutely love Eagles spec'd primarily to disable enemy ships with kinetic and emp weapons.  The AI piloting an Eagle is actually extremely good at staying alive and harassing the enemy which is why I typically have 5-7 of them serving as the backbone of my fleet.  So basically I have the AI max out the enemy's flux and disable them while I finish them.  Currently I'm using 4 HIL's on my Paragon which just burn holes right through most ships in a couple of seconds once their shields are out of the way.  I also like to have a pair of Auroras to flank, harass and capitalize on overloads which the AI is remarkably competent at.  I'm not a huge fan of fighters though so I usually only have 1 or 2 cruiser/destroyer sized carriers to harass and/or torpedo large targets.      

[Euphytose]

I played a game called Space Pirates and Zombies, absolutely loved it. I looked for a game just like it for several years, nothing even came close, forgot about it.

Then they announced SPAZ 2, so once again I started looking, and found a post mentioning this game on the Steam forums.

SPAZ 2 turned out to be nothing like the first one and a huge disappointment for the people who just wanted SPAZ 1 but better.

Starsector is exactly that, it's SPAZ on steroids.

[CopperCoyote]

I first stumbled across starsector via tvtropes.org. I was reading about starbound (it wasn't out at the time just some alpha builds) and when i got to the bottom the next scifi game alphabetically was starfarer (which is what Starsector was called at the time) I started following the development then, and when TotalBiscuit did his second video on starfarer i saw the gameplay and decided "yep it's time to buy it now"

[Deshara]

loved SPAZ, but actually only liked the parts of it from an overhaul mod I discovered on my second playthru.
So I googled "game like SPAZ", found a reddit thread and the rest is history.

[Midnight Kitsune]

Came from SPAZ I think. Found the game RIGHT after the name change. (54.1 to be exact) And I fell in love with this game. I've always hated how most games you fly in a sense a super fighter while I wanted to fly a REAL ship damnit! And many games that DO have flyable cap ships like SS don't make them "feel" right as they are usually really floaty and stuff. Not SS though! SS feels just right to me!

[SCC]

Now that you mention it, I think that I have found this game because of my earlier interest in SPAZ. I'm not entirely certain, since I don't actually remember finding Starsector at all, but it sounds plausible, since I have played SPAZ before.

[Torch]

I actually came from SPAZ, too! SPAZ 2 is alright, but didn't live up to my expectations from the first, which I never actually finished. There was an even older game much like SPAZ and Starsector that I forget the name of (basically a spiritual predecessor to them both), that and Chicken Invaders were my childhood introductions to loving space combat.

[Megas]

I played Transcendence (and Star Control 2) years before reading about Starfarer and SPAZ in chat.  I watched the videos and was more impressed with SPAZ than Starfarer.  But, since Starfarer did key verification for offline install like older games, and SPAZ did not, Starfarer won.

Similarly, I read about Endless Sky from the Transcendence developer, and got into Endless Sky for a while too.

What I liked about Starfarer was I could pilot a big capital ship with lots of guns, not a space fighter with a single weapon and maybe a special ability (or second gun) in every game before I played.

[billi999]

Noticed on the Minecraft website there was a link to the LWJGL website, and a page on that website listing games developed with LWJGL. Saw Starfarersector and thought "Hey, that looks like a more mature version of SPAZ!". First downloaded 0.35 when it was only missions, or the version in which Conquest had weird hardpoint broadsides. How different the game is now... It's come so far.

What I liked about Starfarer was I could pilot a big capital ship with lots of guns, not a space fighter with a single weapon and maybe a special ability (or second gun) in every game before I played.

Have to agree with this, part of the appeal has to be that you can fly any non-fighter ship and be an active participant on the battlefield. I loved Homeworld 2, never had the original or Cataclysm, but imagine if you could take control of one of the ships and still zoom out to sensors mode and command your fleet. That's what the scope of the old release of Starsector was to me, though now it's so much more.

[SapphireSage]

I also joined around the SPAZ era as well, as far as I remember it I actually heard about both starsector and SPAZ at the same time. I remember them both getting a fair amount of publicity at the time and starsector being the slower, more methodically paced form of spaceship combat like a simulator, while SPAZ was the more actiony, arcady style of combat. Of course, at the time I believe SS was still corvus only mode and fairly bare bones while SPAZ was a completed game at that point sans Bounty Hunting addon. Personally, as nice as SPAZ was I preferred SS combat and just wished it had fighter controls for carriers since drones in SPAZ were awful. Lucky me, come 0.8 and we do now.

[Torch]

Finally got a chance to take a picture of my fleet! All about the aesthetics in this one. It was really hard getting them all positioned like that, because if I went too fast then the AI controlling the ships I wasn't manually controlling would move away to avoid the potential collision.

I was still in the process of properly arming all of my ships (and finding the ships I want most), but I decided my fleet composition would be:
1 capital flagship for station cracking/other capitals
4 assorted battlecruisers, each tailored to fight/counter different enemies
2 heavy escorts (top right and bottom left) to assign to one of my two aggressive/reckless-officered battlecruisers (the cruisers on the left)
2 cleanup frigates for hunting down remaining ships
And some other assorted destroyers/frigates

[Flying Birdy]

I used to play a top down space sim game called flash trek as a kid, like 10 years ago when miniclip and mofunzone were the bomb. I kept looking for a game just like that for years and couldn't find one.

Then one day I saw a DotA2 streamer called Cyborgmatt stream starsector. When I first saw it I thought the guy was playing my childhood game, but it turns out it was something different. I actually pirated the game (yea I'm scum), but basically bought it after 10 minutes of playing because I NEEDED the latest and best fresh from the developer. The experience was actually exactly what I had been looking for for the better part of a decade.

[Grievous69]

I used to play a top down space sim game called flash trek as a kid, like 10 years ago when miniclip and mofunzone were the bomb. I kept looking for a game just like that for years and couldn't find one.

Then one day I saw a DotA2 streamer called Cyborgmatt stream starsector. When I first saw it I thought the guy was playing my childhood game, but it turns out it was something different. I actually pirated the game (yea I'm scum), but basically bought it after 10 minutes of playing because I NEEDED the latest and best fresh from the developer. The experience was actually exactly what I had been looking for for the better part of a decade.

Woah almost the same exact thing as me. I was also looking for a childhood game (that was just a sidescroller, nothing close to Starsector), couldn't remember the name for the life of me so I just typed words like ''space'', ''star'', ''spaceship'' and so on into google hoping I'd find it. Somehow I ended up on Starfarer page, went to see gameplay videos and then pirated it because it looked cool. As others, immediately fell in love with the combat (back then combat was basically all there is) and the direction where the game was going. Then I bought it when I actually had the money and since then I'm pretty much every day on this forum (I may have a problem).