Starfarer Manual
The alpha is coming, soon. In preparation for this, ahem, momentous event, allow me to present the first official version of Starfarer’s manual. Don’t worry, you don’t have to read the whole thing just to be able to start playing – the tutorial is supposed to take care of that.
There are a lot of mechanics in play though, and several missions are hard (and indeed, they’re supposed to be). So, if after playing for a while you keep losing horribly and tear out your hair screaming “WHY?!?” (or have some questions), the manual is a good place to find answers. It also features a handy 1-page summary of all the controls and shortcuts.
You can find it here.
Let me know what you guys think!
Tags: controls, hints, manual, tactics
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on Sunday, April 24th, 2011 at 11:34 pm and is filed under Development.
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Just wanted to let you guys know, I’m quite excited about this, and will probably preorder the moment the alpha becomes available.
Its a tall order building a game like this, and I wish you guys the best. Everything’s looking pretty good so far. Can’t wait to actually play it.
The mechanics look like they’d make a pretty fun game. Comments:
1. “Heat” as a buildup of running systems would probably be more sensible than “Flux” (Heat buildup is a big issue in spacecraft because the vacuum of space is a terrible medium to dissipate heat into)
2. Is there collision? Some of the gameplay videos show what look like elastic collision between ships, or perhaps just the ships changing direction and speed too rapidly for something of their size. Hopefully in the final release they’ll be less agile and have more inertia.
Thanks Brian!
1. Would you believe we actually considered heat as a name for that mechanic? 🙂 Ended up with flux because it’s more abstract and easier to use for explaining away whatever effects it has that might not fit with something as specific as heat (such as an energy weapon damage bonus from flux buildup – which I’d forgotten to mention in the manual, but just added in). The other reason was that heat would be a total Mech Warrior ripoff, though maybe that’s not a big concern.
2. Yep, there are collisions – painstakingly combining real physics with a good “feel”. Large ships are already very ponderous – I think the videos just don’t show them much.
Manual needs superfluous lore! What kind of a manual doesn’t have at least dozens of pages of that?
I shall inform the superflous lore department immediately!
Speaking of lore, we do have this.
Does the flux bonus apply from the victim or shooting ship?
From the shooting ship. It used to be both, actually, but it was confusing… though it might change again. It’s fair to say that this mechanic is currently… in flux. <rimshot>
Don’t forget to sent this out to the mailing list!
Good call. I have a bit of trouble judging whether something is email-worthy sometimes 🙂
Looking fun –
Great to hear the alpha will be out soon!
Will there be keymapping?
Thanks! Not in this alpha release, but it’s definitely planned.
This is the Superfluous Lore Department, checking in.
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