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[vorpal+5]

I wonder now. I believe I bought the game 10 years ago (Starfarer) and played it off lightly every year. I'm still waiting at least for a complete story line, as I guess there will always be extra gameplay features added.

[Grievous69]

That very much depends on your living habits and your family's history with health. But if I were to go on the average life span of someone, you'll 99% live to see 1.0.

Even if it takes 4-5 more years you'll be functional enough to enjoy the game.

[vorpal+5]

I believe I'm in good shape with my 6 hours of sport per week 

It was more of a plea to Alex. I remember an old friend saying "Perfection ruins progress". Wrap the story, and then add or refine game play features over time...

[Network Pesci]

I'm with you there.  I'm not quite as old as Vorpal+5, but when I bought StarSector (it was advertised to me as StarFarer but by the time I bought it they had renamed it) it took me a week to grow enough fuzz on my face to call it a beard.  Now I have more grey than brown in my beard like a dwarven thane and D-Mods on all my joints and half my internal organs.  If you got Clamavi De Profundis to cover that one Warren Zevon song that the title is mostly cusswords that would near about be my theme song.

Cool stories, bro, any of them true?

I've been blown up more times than Kurt Russell, taken more baths in toxic chemicals than the Joker's entire love life, and fought more dangerous wildlife than your Monster Hunter character.  I don't believe there's anything on four legs or zero in this entire state that can kill me if I see them coming, and that includes the imaginary beasts out of horror flicks.  That said, I've been lottery-winning-twice-in-a-day lucky to have survived this long, sooner or later I'm going to jump off the tractor in the tall grass and land on the biggest rattlesnake in the county instead of five feet from it, or when I get run over by the tractor it's on hard red clay instead of soft swamp mud and I get ground to a pulp instead of just some badass bruises, or the next time I fall ten feet headfirst onto a big boulder I crack my skull open instead of just getting a cool scar, or the maestro of Monsanto plays its final solo on the tangled strings of what's left of my DNA, or, or, or...

[close]

I honestly believe it will take another 5-6 years before StarSector 1.0 comes out, and statistically, I'm not going to live to see it.  Regular humans get threescore and ten, I read that in a book somewhere a long time ago, but Florida Mans are old if they get to 40, and I passed that years ago.  I don't hold it against Alex, he's got his vision and he doesn't want to compromise it.  How many days of my life were better because while I was wearing out my joints hammering T-posts in the hot sun I got to think about how when I got home I was going to throw a beatin on them Templars and get some of those cool overpowered weapons?  Now we have overpowered unfair bossfights and mod weapons that break vanilla balance in half, in vanilla.  I don't even hold it against Alex, I paid him 20 bucks and if I consider ten cents an hour to be a good fair price for entertainment, I honestly owe him a couple hundred more dollars.

Pure Lunacy He Almost Certainly Unironically Believes

Take your time, Alex.  I got all kinds of plans and I'm learning more all the time, this life is not the end.  I already died once, when the roof fell in on me in that damn hurricane cleanup, and I came back because I had unfinished business with The Radiance in Hollow Knight and the Reaper in Subnautica.  I'm GOING to play 1.0 if I look like Uncle Frank while I'm doing it.  There's going to be some empty house with a Windows 7 PC playing StarSector 1.0 even though the computer's not plugged in and if you listen closely, there will be a ghostly voice saying, "wooooorth the waaaaaiiiiiit......"

[close]

Even if it takes 4-5 more years you'll be functional enough to enjoy the game.

I wish I could be sure about that.  When I heard of this game, my minimum reliable perceptual interval was on the order of 1/30 of a second.  Today it's more like a twenty-fourth of a second.  A couple of years ago, I resolved to buckle down and finish some unfinished business.  Among other things, I finally beat that Sword Saint Isshin fellow on Sekiro, it took me a couple of days and it left sunburn on my brain like arc welding without goggles would do to your eyes.  Ten years ago, it would have took me a couple of tries and I would have wondered what was all the hype about.  Five years from now I wouldn't be able to do it if you offered me a million dollars, honestly don't know if I could do it today.  I'm not even going to try, I've got an appointment with these Draco fellows from the HMI boss factions.  These punk bloodsuckers have had it too good for too long.

Not gonna play games today, they pull my plug the picture fades

I had a dream about the end of StarSector.  I dreamed I was playing 1.0 and at the end of the story there was this thing that was basically Warning Forever, but he was Hypershunt blue instead of green.  That was the worst nightmare I had all year, I woke up with tears in my eyes, not because he was so scary, but because in the dream I was no longer worthy to face the worthiest adversary ever.  You know what Hell is?  I'm not scared of barbed wire or hooks or blades or flames or swarms of stinging venomous vermin or snarling toothy creatures, that's my day at work, not my eternal punishment.  Hell is knowing that Ultra-Redactoid Warning Forever and his five cousins is at the end of my videogame, but I'm not man enough to face them anymore.  Hell is admitting, "well these days the CPU pilots do a better job than me, I don't control the ships myself, I just set the battles up and watch them happen.  Back in my day, ballistic weapons used to run out of ammo and I'd solo a whole system defense fleet with a Tempest, took me a half an hour, man, those were the days."

[close]

[Fenrir]

...I'll make an optimistic estimation, according to the game develop cycle history, you will probably see Ver1.0.0 by your 70s. With your claimed life style you will be most likely more alive and kicking than half the forum by then.

[Not a Pirate]

I read on Twitter that Alex and George R.R. Martin are really the same person.

[Schwartz]

Certainly. 1.0 is not that far off. If I had to make a bet, I would say 2 years-ish.

[Grievous69]

Certainly. 1.0 is not that far off. If I had to make a bet, I would say 2 years-ish.

People have said that 2 years ago... The obvious situation is the game as a whole becoming quite complex and rich, which means playtesting and hunting for bugs takes exponentially more time.

Just look at older releases vs new ones. Updates that aren't even that massive taking a year or more. But I'm happy either way, I got my money's worth and enjoyment a long while ago, these updates are more like cherries on top.

[Dri]

I don't know about 1.0 but Alex should be getting into the final phase of playtesting for the current patch and we should be getting it soon. Hopefully in a ~week.

[SafariJohn]

I don't know about 1.0 but Alex should be getting into the final phase of playtesting for the current patch and we should be getting it soon. Hopefully in a ~week.

Months, more likely.

[Dri]

I don't know about 1.0 but Alex should be getting into the final phase of playtesting for the current patch and we should be getting it soon. Hopefully in a ~week.

Months, more likely.

Bro I hope you joking cause this patch is already the longest dev time in Starsector history. We are well over a year and going on another 4 months. If what you said is true then we will be looking at like a year and a half of dev time and that is frankly outrageous—nothing in this patch that I have seen in all the blogs and previews justifies this long of cycle. I could see the large amount of time needed for patches back when colonies and such were being worked on...but what is the justification other than uncontrolled feature creep for this cycle?

[Princess_of_Evil]

They've entirely redesigned, like, half of colony cycle. It's very much a year and a half patch.

[Grievous69]

They've entirely redesigned, like, half of colony cycle. It's very much a year and a half patch.

Only thing changed is that now we won't have simple intel notification of expeditions but fancy intel notifications that are much more complex and nuanced. Like ok sure that was a big thing and is the basis for future end game but come on a year and a half for this patch means 1.0 patch (not even counting ones between) is going to take three years with this pace.

I truly think we should now start with the smaller bite sized patches because it seems Alex gets lost in perfecting a bigger patch that has a lot more moving parts at once. I remember his response on twitter being that he fears the patch is not sizeable enough just yet (when I asked about one blog post). That was EIGHT months ago and beyond that we gotten one more blog post about hyperspace topography and a bunch of twitter teases about buffs/nerfs and QoL changes.

I truly realize quality work needs time but at some point we get to a critical spot where it needs to get wrapped up. Imo he needs testers, I don't know the exact numbers spent on playtesting, but one man hunting for bugs and gauging balance takes a huge toll on patch cycles. Can't even imagine how will it look like for 1.0 where everything is expected to be in tip top shape.

[Embolism]

Only thing changed is that now we won't have simple intel notification of expeditions but fancy intel notifications that are much more complex and nuanced. Like ok sure that was a big thing and is the basis for future end game but come on a year and a half for this patch means 1.0 patch (not even counting ones between) is going to take three years with this pace.

I truly think we should now start with the smaller bite sized patches because it seems Alex gets lost in perfecting a bigger patch that has a lot more moving parts at once. I remember his response on twitter being that he fears the patch is not sizeable enough just yet (when I asked about one blog post). That was EIGHT months ago and beyond that we gotten one more blog post about hyperspace topography and a bunch of twitter teases about buffs/nerfs and QoL changes.

I truly realize quality work needs time but at some point we get to a critical spot where it needs to get wrapped up. Imo he needs testers, I don't know the exact numbers spent on playtesting, but one man hunting for bugs and gauging balance takes a huge toll on patch cycles. Can't even imagine how will it look like for 1.0 where everything is expected to be in tip top shape.

I gotta agree with this. I'm excited for the next patch, but I'll be honest; when I saw the patch notes in Feb my first thought was "that's it?" Was honestly expecting more after such a long patch cycle.

[David]

(Okay, keeping in mind that I respect general griping about waiting and the need to do it. But I think there's also an interesting question hidden in here.)

Imagine a world where Starsector was declared 1.0 a few years ago and the updates came out as DLCs; the "Paradox-style" release, if you like. I ask earnestly, is that a preferable product model?

I suppose another alternative is to declare 1.0 with a possibly rushed 'technically hit all the feature bullet-points', then update post-launch. I struggle to remember a game where this worked out well rather than fizzled, though maybe Brigador kinda did it and managed to turn a rough start around with a viral social media post? I don't think they even rushed their release though, and it is also a game working in a far less maximalist design space, eg. standalone arcade-style maps.
... Are there any examples of this? No Man's Sky? (But that was a publisher-backed project with millions in dev funding, wasn't it? Too big. Different beast.)

Another option: I'm loathe to compare Starsector to Dwarf Fortress because I don't think we think about Starsector the way Tarn/the Adams bros think about DF, but maybe the way the game updates relate to players feels similar? Would DF benefit from declaring a 1.0? Possibly their Steam release and UI update is a stealth-1.0, in the sense that that game state is declared 'provisionally definitive'. (Do people who play it agree? I have no idea, I haven't played DF in 15 years or so.)