You’ve also got phase ships – very loosely inspired by submarines – that are primarily about uncloaking at the right moment, doing a lot of damage, and getting out. Armor is a limited resource and is only repaired between battles, but using it wisely can tip the fight in your favor. Lower-tech ships also have shields but must rely on armor to supplement them, so a lot of the gameplay decisions revolve around when to take hits on armor. For larger ships, it’s a matter of planning much further in advance – what will what you do now mean for your tactical position 10 or 20 seconds later? Large ships have a much harder time getting out of trouble, so a mistake can be really costly.Īdditionally, you have higher-tech ships, which generally focus on mobility and shields to keep them out of trouble. What this means is that for small ships, a lot of piloting skill is second-to-second – dodge incoming fire, get around an enemy’s shield arc to get a shot at the engines, and so on. As far as having a variety of styles, though, there’s quite a bit, especially depending on how far one wants to dig down.įirst of all, smaller ships are a lot faster, while larger ships can be pretty ponderous. I’m not familiar with any critique of Star Wars or BSG on those grounds, so I can’t really speak to that. Bear in mind, I like boats in space, but from a function/technology/mobility standpoint, what have you seen as important in styles of spacecraft, especially with varied styles of play in mind?ĪM: Oh, it’s definitely boats in space! “World War II ships in space” was an explicit starting point for the design. There are also a couple of missions, and that’s the aspect that’s going to get built out more for the next release.ĮM: One critique of the ships in Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica involves the ships coming across as boats in space, from a design standpoint. With regard to in-game storytelling, how do you see past revelations and present calamities coming across best, given the play style of your game? What tools and mechanics (dialog, lore, ancient transmissions) do you employ as you reveal the larger forces at work?ĪM: Right now, most of the story in the game is backstory – the player encounters it in the various colony (and other) descriptions, bits of dialog at the portside bar, and so on.
And, thankfully, it doesn’t need to be.ĮM: In the history of the game, humanity has been fractured, scattered about the universe following the events of the great Collapse, a cataclysm that destroys the formerly stable space-faring society. How could you even balance something that, say, takes more player time vs something that’s more dangerous vs something that takes more in-game time? Generally speaking, if something is riskier or more difficult in some way, it should be more rewarding, but I don’t think it’s possible to quantify it precisely.
The different available options should all be appealing and viable, but they don’t need to be precisely balanced. An open world single player space combat game, Starsector blends tactical 2D battles with trade, exploration, and fleet customization as a project with a lot going on under the hood, I chatted with dev Alexander Mosolov of Fractal Softworks regarding the variety of player experiences in his work and the design goals driving the title.Įrik Meyer: Starsector gives players a lot of choice regarding roles – hot-shot pilot, a smuggler, a stern admiral, an industrial magnate – in addition to different ships and overall play styles, so as you’ve added options and elements to the game, have you felt a need to keep things balanced, or do you focus more on options that would be interesting for different archetypes?Īlexander Mosolov: One of the things about it being a single-player game is that balance – while definitely still important – doesn’t have to walk the same razor’s edge as it does for a multiplayer game.