I’ve been playing Starsector for the past couple of weeks. At first glance, you might look at it and say “but where’s my sweet, sweet 3D graphics?” and yes visually it is 2D but the combat have an incredible look to them (watch some gameplay videos). The UI could definitely use some tweaks (sometimes you have to press G, and sometimes 1, and sometimes 2 to back out or sometimes Q, it is strange). But overall, this is a very fun game.
Especially combat. Ships move with purpose. Ship captains (mainly) don’t want to die. You can send a frigate to harass and draw off a cruiser, and they’ll just dance outside of their firing range. It really is something to see. There is a concept of “flux” in the game, which limits how much damage you shields can take. There is soft and hard flux. Soft flux goes away constantly, hard flux requires you to take your shields and engines offline! Yeah. Wild. And the AI handles it incredibly well.
The trading game is what you would expect. Buy low, sell high. It is complicated by a 30% tariff on both buying and selling. So if you buy a good at $10, you really bought it at $13. And if you sell at $15, then you’re really selling at $11.5, and losing money (on top of fuels and supply costs). So you either need to really look for the lowest and highest, and not just grinding out place X is lower than place Y. You can buy and sell on the black market and play no tariffs but in much more limited quantities, and it annoys the base owners.
Of course, why buy when you can steal and sell? Yes, you can be a pirate. There are a multitude of ways to gain intel on merchant fleet movements. Making contacts, comm sniffers, just knowing the trade routes (to some degree).
All in all, for $20, I’m super impressed with this game made by a very small indie studio (it might be on guy, I’m not sure). Expect some UI quibbles. For example, with trade, it would be helpful if the game did all of that math for you to know whether the sell would be profitable. But, I’ve been having a great time with the game.