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[metatron]

Greetings starfarers !

First, let me say that I found this game a week ago or so, and I've been totally enthralled by it.

The premises are great, and the gameplay is awesome, as far as top down games go.

Moddability is wonderful (currently having a go with Nexerelin) and browsing the setting.json to toy around the game default settings is sweet.

Now that everything is said, let's talk about the black spot : End Game.



As of right now, i'll just give my feelings, in the best fashion I can.

What i'll call end game, is that tipping point where you have a good fleet to take on about anything thrown at you (1 or 2 battleship, some carriers, some cruisers, I tend to run with Parangon, Astral, Heron x2, Aurora x2) and you start colonising planets.

Once you are there, what is the point of the game really ? Am I missing something ? With Nexerelin, I could push the line a bit further by having the self imposed goal of overtaking the core sectors under my name, but in the vanilla game, I found myself hanging, as if there were something missing. (Probably, given the game is still under development)

Then, the road to endgame feel a bit too easy, or fast, or maybe a bit of both.

I mean, sure, the first playthrough, the game seems impossible and want to kill you alright. But when you start your second, third, fourth playthrough, you realise that some stuff can be done more efficiently, you realise how bounties scale up, you realise what kind of firepower you need at which point of the game.

Without some kind of self challenge, I can be in a Parangon + Astral + Heron x2 fleet in less than 3hours (in vanilla setting.json) which then let me annihilate anything thrown at me as I spend into combat skills and level up my officers, as a reminder, I bought the game a week ago.

From there, it's just a matter of "grinding" bounties (missions in general) and finding the right planets to colonise, and then, what do I do with that ?




In any case, i'm glad I found this game. Great job Fractal Softwork.

[Grievous69]

The real end game has yet to be implemented, we'll probably see something new next patch. Right now the number of expeditions and annoying pirates is just a placeholder for when the end game gets fleshed out, so the players have something to do after mid game.

[metatron]

Sweet, thanks a lot.

Any header as to where I can have more info on what to come ? Or is it left for the surprise ?

[Grievous69]

Unfortunately no, the only thing we know so far is the reworked skill tree and the implementation of story points. Although my guts are telling me a new blog post should see the light of day soon-ish.

[Harmful Mechanic]

You could also play some Star Control 2 for a few ideas of what it could be like. I wouldn't expect 1:1 resonance but some similarities are inevitable on the basis of the way Starsector is set up.

[AgentFransis]

You could also play some Star Control 2 for a few ideas of what it could be like. I wouldn't expect 1:1 resonance but some similarities are inevitable on the basis of the way Starsector is set up.

Why, because we already have slave shields? Could be interesting to have an end game adversary if that's what you're implying.

The game could also go in the direction of expanding the 4X aspect in the late game with more involved colony management, more diplomacy and waging war on a strategic level.

[JaronK]

I'm guessing that the real end game is going to be almost a transition into Master of Orion 2 style colonies and empire building, hopefully with your fleet focusing on either conquest or fighting down major threats.  The text of the Military HQ suggests you can eventually have fleets that will patrol and keep pirate bases away from your sectors of space.

I'm pretty excited about that concept.

[SCC]

Actually Alex spoke against such scenario a couple of times. You are never supposed to retire your fleet. I assume this means that the player will have to play superhero in the endgame, with the sector watching the player struggle, while being helpless.

[Noviastar]

Well the question is do you want a "END" to a open sandbox game.

OR do you want a victory screen.  Like you united or destroy all in your path.  and now you set out to rebuild humanity.  bla bla bla.

[bobucles]

There are multiple approaches to an endgame type of scenario.

Should it be some kind of campaign crisis/climax? Story happens, something hits the fan, and the galaxy reaches an incredibly dangerous state that the player has to resolve. Should the crisis be time based (like the Ur quan doom fleet), story driven (sequence of missions) or player driven (when conditions are met, crisis)?  There could be a disaster looming beyond the horizon, or a break down of political intrigue into full scale war, or maybe the player collected a few too many alpha cores and sparked another AI war.

There are some scaling elements in the game, but they seem mostly centered around missions. Planets and such are pretty static. The player's growth will eventually surpasses those limits, and then they can start stomping across the galaxy burning everything in sight. The player's murder spree is an endgame crisis in of itself, at least from everyone else's perspective.

In the current scenario, the player grows until the game's scaling difficulty can't scale up anymore. Passing that limit is basically beating the game.

[JaronK]

Retiring the fleet would be terrible.  But having an empire and serving as the elite strike force of that empire?  Now that's pretty fun.  I could see one possible "ending" being a tip of the spear attack against some terrible enemy, where you have to break the lines with your fleet so your army can come through.

[cicobuff]

As Endgame approaches, one of the black holes spawn a "superbase", which can only be famaged by a special weapon, that generates an infection by a totally alien origin.

It generates periodic pulses of dangerous ships that can infect and take over ships if they do not carry any marines and starts creeping towards the core worlds.

It is a race against time following clues by found in ports to assemble a radiant technology lost in time for use against the superbase, the weapon can consist of parts found by trasvessing blackholes into special maps guarded by special radiant guardians.

Killing the superbase stops the infection triggering a new game+ which will generate an even more powerful superbase.

[isyourmojofly]

A few endgame "crises" would be nice.

- Luddic Crusade
- Pirate Empire
- Persean/Hegemony/Sindrian warfare
- AI resurgence

Something to "prepare for" with a defined goal, such as liberating a planet under siege or wiping out a network of pirate bases, or transporting a peace delegation without being intercepted.

These could also include more quests like the Red Planet or AI In A Box (and I'm sure we're going to see a lot more of these).

[Nuggnugg]

I also got the game a week ago.
The early and mid game is fun af. You have to be oppurtunistic and join your commission faction in wars, manipulate the markets so you can smuggle, trade and do bounties etc. All of these things makes the game feel really alive. Then after i got a few colonies, credits just became redundant. Making 1 mill per month makes all these things kinda pointless. At this point i was just stacking high DP ships so i wouldent loose because of DP score.
Sure, with nexerelin you can take over the sector, but that would take away from the sector feeling alive imo. Also, just having hard battles against some boss ships doesent really sound like a fix to endgame. Maybe something like a full scale alien invasion that forces the factions create mulitple strong alliances in order to deal with it, or something?

[FooF]

We get one of these threads fairly often and Alex is pretty mum on what he has planned.

That said, one of the topics that piqued my interest was the idea that the endgame can be avoided altogether and you just continue to play sandbox style -or- via a mission or some prompt, you initiate the endgame through a "point of no return" that gives the player some sort of pressure to get things done in a timely manner.

As it stands, there is no external timer that forces you act quickly and/or take acceptable losses so you can dilly-dally and wait for ships to finish or colonies to churn out millions per month. However, in an endgame scenario, infinite time and money wouldn't be an option so you'd be pressed to make tactical/strategic decisions and have to live with the consequences.

No matter what the impetus is (AI war, alien threat, natural phenomena, the Gates re-opening, etc.), just the idea that you're on a time-limit would change the whole landscape of the game completely. I hope Alex runs with this in a variety of directions, namely with the idea of multiple endgame scenarios that are all player-driven.