Ascent - The Space Game

***NOTE**** GAME HAS PREMIUM ACCESS which is not made clear, the free version of the game is availiable on the website and runs EXACTLY the same as this version ie with the lag and bugs. By buying the game on here you are merely paying a 3 month subscription to the game and getting nothing any differnt to the unity browser game on the website. The game has amazing potential but atm its a total rip-off. All the people writing comments regarding my playtime, i played many hours BEFORE i got the steam version...... To state that the steam version offers more features less bugs etc is total balls, it plays exactly the same the only thing you get is MORE of the same whcih in an mmo these days is akin to Pay to Win. As stated hiding the fact its premuim access you are actually buying on steam is the issue that no one really has agrued with......

I started playing this game late in 2013. I registered in the beginning of 2014, and my adventure started from there. This game has been unique to me in so many aspects, I really don't have the room in a review to talk about them all. The sandbox aspects, the fact it's an indie game by basically a one-man-team, or the fact it's the most expansive space-sim I've played to date, bringing back nostalgia of Freelancer. One thing that has kept me going is the continuous rise of the community. Slowly, we had less than five active players for weeks on end. Then a few dozen in the next months. Eventually, the game expanded and more players joined, and I really felt the small part of the mysterious galaxy we were all in come alive. Industry was a boon, mining operations became a thing, and eventually the galactic market was properly being utilized which was surprising to many of us so early on. I eventually had to take a break to focus on real life, but this game was always great about treating you right. I could play for 15 minutes or 12 hours a day, didn't matter - I progressed. I could skip weeks or months at a time, didn't matter, I could start off right where I left off. It's always been a pleasure seeing the game constantly updated on a daily basis. It's been even more of a pleasure having a dev who will directly communicate and give his time of day to the players. I was a skeptic at first, but soon came to truly believe in there being billions of solar systems to explore, everything procedurally generating to be a unique experience every time. Eventually, players started exploring and graphing charts of planets and moons to settle on. Then players started constructing gates, expanding the inner systems, and really bringing the heart of the game to life - the reconstruction of the empire of humanity. It's been over a year now, and myself and other older vets have watched this game bloom like a beautiful flower, and I'm proud to write such a positive review for it. I could sit and try to come up with excuses all day long, but I honestly can't, this game has been going in the right direction nonstop, and has never ran out of *ahem* Steam. If you want to see what the game looked like a year ago - and my basic introduction to it, check out my youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/sinstrite There are also new videos being uploaded right now, based on my attempt at a Let's Play of the game. I don't think a Let's Play has been attempted with a game quite like this, so I find it interesting myself how tough it is to actually product the content. Here are some helpful links! http://www.thespacegame.com - play in the web browser for free http://forum.thespacegame.com/index.php - the official forums http://wiki.thespacegame.com/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page - the official wiki http://www.facebook.com/TheSpaceGame - the official facebook page http://thespacegame.uservoice.com/forums/194252-general - vote for player ideas I really do advise the new player to visit the wiki. Many veterans have put in a lot of work to build it from the ground up, and even as one of the oldest players I still find myself using it constantly. Let it be your space-bible. Keep in mind that you purchased the game for $10.00 and paid another $10.00 for the three months of premium bundled with the purchase. When you first start, do not use your premium right away, save it for when you will most be able to use it. Planetary Premium - $0.99 monthly - You get access to the six other planets to build settlements on. As a free player you can only access Ceres for grain and Vulcan for Iron. You will also be able to produce: titanium, carbon, aluminium, meat, fruit, vegetables. This is very good for expanding your starbase later on which brings us to... Industry Premium - $0.99 monthly - Use this to expand your Apollo starbase to 100 rings (600 modules) and really pump out some products with your factories. You can make a lot of progression this way as a new player, and I highly advise you to get all 100 rings going if you plan on building a colony later on. This also allows you to use modules above class 5 such as the mining beam, ram scoop, salvage beam, etc. This really is the best premium to purchase in my opinion. Combat Premium - $0.99 monthly - If you want to make some credits fighting in Janus A, you want to throw some huge guns on your ship. With this premium, you can access all weaponry over class 5 which allows you to move to the highest rank, making around 60,000,000 each mission ;) For you want-to-be colony builders... You need Stellar Credits. Each premium gives you 100 stellar credits a month, so if you have all three premiums going, you get 300 SC a month. A colony costs 80 a month to upkeep, so you can have three colonies just for having the three premiums. OSB - Starbases that can be attached to your colony in high orbit. They costs SC if they are not attached, but are free if they are. Other acronyms: MB / ML - Mining Beam, Mining Level RS - Ram Scoop TS - Trading Skill SB - Starbase HD - Hyperdrive CL - Class MD - Module SY - Shipyard GH - Gas harvesting Hydro - Hydrogen (used to power ships when hyperjumping) MP - Mechanical Parts EL - Electronics GR / Graph - Graphene (made from carbon) SC, SCC, SCoil - Superconducting Coils Nio - Niobium (mined from Columbite) Aut - Autunite (gives uranium for contracts) SS - Space Station KS - Kickstarter Steamie - What the players who came in through the Steam purchases are called Elders - Players that have been around for a year or longer Vets - Players that have played months before the Steam release If I think of more I will add them, and one more thing... /ignore PLAYERNAME is your best friend.

I've been playing this game for a very long time, as you can see because of the many hours I've been in it. In spite of that my opinion about it is utterly negative. This isn't because of the community, one of the best I've encountered so far, or the idea behind the game. The reasons I've come to dislike this game are the following ones: 1) the developer is too slow in implementing new features and doesn't fix many existing bugs for very long times. He's a one man team, true, but if he doesn't have much time why does he waste time in implementing nonsense like "Cargo now ejects into crates - these can't be re-captured but they're fun to kick around". This nonsense while there are lack of many fundamental functions like a decent in game chat or the ability to change the game login password!!! 2) the developer is too self centered in developing features he likes the way he wants without listening to the community. Take as an example the npc traders: they trade whatever they like at the price they like and get only half of the goods you've in a stock market. Not to mention the stock markets are opened to anyone and you cannot implement your own close loops. This kind of implementation is nice only in the developer's mind! 3) the game learning curve is scary! Forget to log in the game and have evreything you need to learn or to do right in one place: in the game itself! You have to read pages and pages of wiki and forum and even after that you will need plenty of help from many experienced players. If you don't have too much time you play OR you spend hours reading poems about learning HOW to play. 4) the in game chat is a joke... there is only one global room and nothing more. No trade chat, no private chats, no personal chats, no messaging system between players. Something you would expect from day 1 from any game developed in this age. There is barely an ignore feature, too bad it gets reset evrey time you log out. VERY useful!!! 5) The interface is ugly and ludicrous. There are tons of textbooks explaining how to properly develop a nice basic game interface, but the developer is too busy developing useless features like the cargo crates mentioned in point 1). 6) The game is gradually becoming a pay2win kind of game. Recently the developer added two addons to the game: the bowhead and the hawk. If you don't pay you can't have them and they cost more than the game itself, which is utterly ludicrous. 7) The game mechanics are grind galore. To make money there are basically two ways: keeping hauling goods from point A to point B or to mine asteroids. The hauling part is especially boring because doing the same set of actions hundreds of times per day evrey day cause alienation in one's mind. 8) the game is open ended, but in the sense it doesn't have any purpose after a certain stage. At the beginning you keep grinding to become bigger and bigger. After you have reached the top, meaning biggest ship and some colonies, you don't have nothing to do basically. I don't like games which tell me what to do in a strict way, but mechanics to keep me busy at evrey stage of my gameplay are essential to keep my interest up. 9) To extend further point 8) one of the best game mechanics would be npc space pirates attacking colonies and/or trading ships. Too bad the developer will implement this feature in his usual self-centered way: the npc pirates will be enabled/disabled using a checkbox... Who in the hell would enable such checkbox is beyond me! 10) When there is too much noise about the way a feature is implemented the developer just closes the threads in forum telling "this isn't up for debate" and that's it. What's the point of having a forum? To exploit experienced players' knowledge to compensate the lack of any kind of decent tutorial/help in the game itself of course. Conclusion: Stay away from this game. There are much better options out there, better priced too!

Ascent is a fantastic concept, a PvE version of EVE Online without the real time skill training. It is still early access, but it is my opinion that the direction of the game is going in such a way that a negative review was needed as a warning for future purchasers. If there was a "neutral" button for the review I would have used it. User Interface The game’s user interface is horrid. You will notice it the minute you hit the startup screen. Instead of a login and character selection screen it has a button series that looks like a single player game, up to and including a “LOAD” button. Fitting ship modules is a complex and clucky text selector box maneuver. Community The community is friendly, and will answer basic questions in game chat. There is only one “global” game chat, and no in-game guilds or other such mmo “norms”. Graphics The game uses stock Unity graphics for the most part. The ships and starbases may have been a unity resource pack purchase. The game had a kickstarter specifically to add ship graphics, but everything else is very simplistic. Planets are little more than a multicolored globe and your character avatar is a guy in a tee shirt and jeans. Still early access. Player Cooperation The game might as well be single player. Your “cooperation” with other players will be limited to buying stuff from them off a market board. Even such grand ventures such as building a new jump gate basically boils down to hauling loads of minerals. There is no “grouping” for combat, no sharing ownership or access to buildings, no real reason for other players to be in the game aside from a chat based social and game-economy aspect. Ship Design Each ship “class” is just a different skin. The only technical difference between the base ship “skins” is that each class increase basically doubles the cargo space. There is a marginal difference in turning, but basically the only real game mechanic-based difference in the ships would be cargo space. A higher level ship can equip higher level modules, such as a better mining laser. Grindy and Repetative Ascent is extremely grindy. You will buy and sell resources via NPC contracts, or buy and sell resources for other players, or mine. Your ships cargo is the only limiter, when you purchase a new ship you gain more cargo space, thus the grind starts anew for the next ship. You will also need to grind to purchase blueprints, planet plot deeds, and a hyperdrive. Exploration This seems like a fun concept, and the developer brags about 300 billion star systems; however, you need cargo space to carry fuel for the hyperjump so you will need to grind a lot of money to purchase a decent sized ship and hyperdrive (ships on the NPC market do not come with them). The ship’s hyperdrive allows you to explore and discover new star systems; however, they get more expensive the larger your ship is (almost always being the same price as the ship itself). For a game that brags about exploration, they sure do make it hard. Also, you get a star system named after you just for being the first person to jump to it. No real planet exploration is required. Basically, you are getting credit for a "discovery" that was already made by some guy with a telescope years before. Pay To Win You can skip the grind and buy a bowhead, one of the largest ships in the game. Complex The game has a steep learning curve. I did not mind this too much, but it is worth mentioning. You will be doing a lot of wiki research and youtube video watching.

I've been playing this game for about 2 weeks now. First I want to address the most common complaints: a) It's pay to win? The DLC Bowhead certainly gives you a lot of cargo space with which to make money, since the game doesn't lock ship size to any player stat other than affordability. But the game has access to bigger ships than the Bowhead, all without the DLC. Making credits is ridiculously easy. I have the next ship in size to the DLC one, the Archon, and could have an even bigger one if that's what I chose to focus on. That's after 2 weeks play. b) hidden subscription? The game does tell you that the $20 current purchase price includes 3 weeks of premium. Not having premium does restrict what class weapon you can mount (meaning you mount more, smaller weapons) and other restrictions. But the sub price is 1, 2, or 3 dollars a month depending on what you want to do in game. Really, I spend that much daily on coffee. Ever since I've been playing MMO's I've been used to $15 a month subscrptions, and that seems fair. About the positives- love the depth of the game. The longer you play the more you realize there is a lot out there to do, and to learn, and to build! I even tried combat route, which isn't my forte, and found it interesting. There are updates coming to the UI and the combat system. Me, I love the building starbases and colonies aspect of the game. It's crazy interactive. Take mining for example. Find the right asteroid, match speed and direction of travel, open up your mining beam and heat it up to the precise temperature- less and you reduce the yield, more and you might explode it. All while moving! Swap out ship modules to optimize the ship to your playstyle, balancing space vs utility. It's.. huge. At my stage of the game I look at the systems far away waiting for me to investigate... and procedurally generated space means there will be more when I get there, generated as I arrive- named after the discoverer! That is still a month away game wise for me. The dev is extremely involved, and very positive. Check the game forums, won't cost you anything, and see the bug reports and the actions taken. The community is extremely helpful, in advice as well as hands-up, and will steer you right. They are eager to make the game as good as it can me. Hey, this is where I spend my free time. IF you like social interaction, building, mining, combat, this is it. If you prefer to play with cooperative players and away from player harrasment, this is definitely the place.

I started playing this game several days ago before the Steam release because I couldn't wait for the release (with over 40hrs of playtime) I'm glad I did as well. This game is amazing on so many levels. It's well worth the $20. There are some caveats however that are worth noting to those thinking about purchasing. The game purchase will get you most of the features in the game except for full colonies. To have full colonies you will need to have a premium account. For all three premium features it costs $3 a month. The point to the premium is to help support the cost of running the servers. Without premium you'll also only have access to one space station ring, with premium you get up to 100. When you purchase the game you will get a 3 month trial of the premium service so you can try out colony building if you so desire. Even with the above caveat this is still not a pay to win game. You don't need to have premium to have a full immersive experience of the game. Here's a list of the pro's/cons of the game: Overall rating 9/10 +Huge universe with 270 billion star systems with only a handful having been discovered so far. +A very friendly and helpful community +Fast space travel (seriously fast autopiloting system & warp gates) +Resource harvesting including asteroid mining, gas harvesting by skimming gas giants, colonies that mine resources +Smooth stable game play client & server (In over 40hrs of playing I have had the client crash once and almost no lag or latency issues) +Developer that logs into the server and gets input from his players! +Good tutorial that isn't overbearing (think breadcrumbs) +Good selection of ships that aren't too difficult or time consuming to get. -Registration is a tad confusing for new players and is on the list to be reworked/fixed -Graphics are not the best compared to other games out there however with graphics at max it still looks amazing -Need premium to access colonies (as noted above) Some special notes: Mining: Mining is not the boring thing I've experienced in most space games where you just find the rocks and shoot them to harvest. In this game the different asteroids have different compositions yielding different minerals/metals. Also the asteroid fields move, so the rocks don't just float in space. You have to match speeds with them and carefully fire your mining laser. The idea is to heat up the rock to a certain temperature to yield the materials. Too cold and it doesn't work, too hot and the rock explodes yielding you nothing. So, you have to pay attention to your mining beam and shut it off at the right time. Also, the range of each class of beam is different, at first you have to get within 1,000 meters to mine an asteroid. Trading: The game has a very well thought out trade infrastructure and system. Each of the core systems has a NPC Space Station that has a local market where you can sell goods & materials. Each station also specializes in producing one material for sale. Each core station also has a contract board where npc's offer contracts for needed items, passenger ferrying, blueprints for sale (for colonies & player stations), specialized colony supplies/materials, package deliveries etc. The contract board changes every hour, :15 after and :45 after the hour. The Galactic Market (or player market) is where players can offer goods for sale across the whole galaxy that can be searched from anywhere then when bought players have to travel to the selling location to pick up the goods. Also player colonies have stock markets where player harvested goods are bought and sold. With a little bit of time and help from the players you can make a lot of money trading on player stock markets or selling mined goods to colonies. Warp gates: outside the core 8 systems traveling requires a hyperdrive that burns hydrogen. So if you want to explore you will need those things and have some good skill in gas giant skimming. Also over the last several months several of the colonies just outside of the core 8 have developed into core systems and have built their own warp gates to the core systems. There are several gates being built now (requiring huge amounts of resources) these could be opportunites for traders and miners alike providing the resources for such gates. Also if one were to invest enough time and resources into a new system they could build their own gates to and from the core systems making player trading more viable and cost efficient.

For such a small development team with limited funds and an Early Access state, the game is amazingly stable. Granted I've played for about 4 hours as of writing this, but I have the graphics maxed out and have not experienced a single crash. The game could be a bit better optimized, but I wouldn't expect that at this stage. There's a few little strange graphical glitches but nothing game breaking. For example, if you buy a new ship your UI doesn't reflect the new stats unless you go back to the Main Menu and then load the map again. On that note, this reminds me of Eve. It's a massive grind to get good progress and the game is insanely overwhelming; however UNLIKE Eve, you can get a solid grasp on the game within a couple of hours and it's all easy from then on. If you have questions, the community is very nice and mature and is always willing to help you. So far I haven't had the opportunity to build anything yet, the few hours seem to be all about delivering goods and giving people rides to other space stations so you can earn anough credits to buy bigger ships. I haven't even touched the surface of the game and so far it's pretty impressive. It's about as intuitive as you can get for such a massive scale space MMO. Until my view of this game changes, this post will reflect my current opinion. An excellent game with a very active developer.

[h1]Ascent is a deep colonization sandbox economic sim with unparalleled tech & scientific design. It's a combo of running the stock market, while setting up a space station for your own business in the stars. You mine, research, build, & generally act like a galactic Marco Polo, with as much or as little emphasis on either as you choose.[/h1] You also take roles that resemble a tech tycoon like Steve Jobs, or an Admiral like Chester Nimitz of the US Navy. It also features political roleplay. The game is PVE focused. Combat is an option. You can choose to gain loot fighting pirates, as well as looking for wrecked ships by buying the location coordinates off the markets. You scan the wreckage & receive blueprints to design your own ship parts. You may choose to build a smuggling operation, by contacting npc’s on starbases & asking them to buy contraband. Once you’ve set up your contacts, you call them when ready to deliver, & bribe or avoid the guards to make the deliveries. &, best of all to me, you explore uncharted stars & they are named after you on the map. [b]Gameplay:[/b] In Ascent, you have a persistent universe that provides a validity to your actions, a sense of player agency, because what you do matters. If you terraform a planet, other players can colonize on your planet also. You’ve created a new world with a breathable environment. To move around in the universe, you use the autopilot to take jump gates from planet to planet (or moon.) Or, you can use hydrogen & hyperdrives for FTL jumps. It has a few bugs. Nothing that affects enjoyment of the game, but IMHO, it probably was rushed out of EA a little fast (unlike some who flounder there forever.) Usually restarting the game clears any bug. They are regularly introducing new features, & working out the bugs. But, there's lots of info in the community wiki & on Waervyn’s World YouTube. [b]Narrative:[/b] The game is built upon the premise of a world that has fallen into chaos. Your mission is to reorganize the world by setting up bases of operations in the inner 9 systems, then push outward to explore the stars beyond. The game has incredibly good voice acting & numerous missions that guide you through the story. The actual flight tutorial doesn’t seem very good, only causing stress to the new player, leaving you confused as to the focus of the game. Just say no to that, open the wiki, & jump right in with the WASD interface. The early Susan Steele Missions function as a de facto tutorial. After you do the few Steele missions, you then have a while to explore & expand before the later missions pop up. A simple & clear guide to the early game missions is Learning to Ascend’ by Max Power [b]Mechanics:[/b] The mechanics let you feel like you are doing more than button pushing. Mining is like a dance with the asteroid. You pilot your ship to within close range of the rock, engage your gravity anchor to slow you down, & maintain a speed that matches the velocity of the asteroid while beaming it with your mining laser. You have to watch the color of the laser to know when you’ve heated it long enough to get the max elements from it. Too long will burn it up & you get nothing. If you are good at playing the market, you can search the stock market for incredible deals on most rare elements, available for you to just pick them up at the seller’s location. [b]Graphics/ Sound:[/b] Ascent has simplistic graphics but is very deep technologically. It can be compared to games like Civ V & XCOM: Enemy Within, & fits somewhere in the middle as far as graphics design goes, with Civ V having the flat map, 2D perspective, with overlays for different actions, & popup messages; & XCOM having a 3d map system & voice-acting enrichment. You can really appreciate the fact that 1 man accomplished so much. The graphics are not of a quality you get from larger dev teams, with some flaws. But, they are totally immersive. As a matter of fact, the game ruined No Man’s Sky’s release for me. I got it a week before NMS finally launched, & now today stopped playing long enough to download NMS, only to find myself logging out again & firing back up Ascent. The maps are composed of a backbone of beautifully designed planetary art that you fly through in real-time within a celestial body’s range of view. These maps are lovely & each system has from 3-30 moons, gas giants, & rocky planets, each with their own design. For an idea of ship art, & to compare sizes, see my screenshots. The music is played at key moments, keeping distractions to gameplay to a minimum. The avatars are limited by 4, 2 each of male & female; with no choice for personalization. The ships can be painted, with rgb color sliders, so basically you have to mix the colors to get the color you want. It feeds the Science/Sci-fi feel to the game. [b]Multiplayer[/b] It is billed as an MMO simple enough for beginners to be able to get into. &, it does seem to be. The system seems less complex than other MMO's. I think that if there is a good starting place, this may be it. Ascent is the 1st MMO I’ve been able to successfully navigate. Being an older gamer, with a 20+ year gap in my gaming experience, I was thrilled to find an mmo that offers intelligently creative gameplay & still provides an ease of access for the casual gamer. There is a fanatic (& friendly) player base in Ascent. I’ve already clocked over 138 hours as of writing this review, & I’ve had the game about 9 days. [b]Money (& Time) Matters:[/b] Ascent is underpriced at $20 bucks. I’ve enjoyed it more than Stellaris, because of the gameplay. The premium is unnecessary for those who just want to play normally. You would have to subscribe for a year for the cost to even approach the normal price of games like this. The 2 dlc ships are not only unnecessary to gameplay, since one is a class 1 support ship, & the other is a huge Bowhead too bulky for mining. Rather, they are novelties from the kickstarter reward tiers sold to finance the dev team, keeping the price of the game so cheap for others not interested in novelties. The best ship I’ve found so far for mining is the Mammoth class 10, because of its cargo capacity & maneuverability. I do love flying the different ships. You are sure to find many hours of your life lost to this game. It comes bundled with 3 free months of the premium access, which is not auto activated when you begin playing. I waited to activate my premium access until I had over 90 hours in the game. I could have waited longer, but I was limited to settlements on only two of the inner 9 planets, & only one ring on my inner starbase, &, I couldn't equip a hyperdrive above class 5 on a ship. (Same goes for ship combat weapons.) Trading cards for collecting art; as well as a nice artbook & music dlc package would be nice for those of us who like to see the creative process behind the game. [b]Pros:[/b] *Space flight is all very realistic *Experience of a space traveler/ merchant miner *Results are skill-based, rather than luck or an old RNG *Pure Sic-fi …game backed by real Science *Provides a command line computer for conducting research & geological surveys [b]Cons:[/b] *Preset instructions flash for only a second. Change that in options before you start *While in Shipyard, offers flash too fast for choosing, needs to be changed *Small bugs can be corrected by exiting game & reloading (works fast) *Needs an in-game logbook & a Transaction/Travel Record * A stock ticker on the hud would be a nice addition [h1]Sometimes artistry is lost for the sake of making money. But, Fluffy Kitten Studios have created a work of heart, which is apparent in their pricing model as well as their gameplay. I highly recommend Ascent for those of us for whom the world is not enough. One world, that is. In Ascent, many worlds will open up before you; worlds of celestial bodies, worlds of gameplay, & worlds of scientific exploration.[/h1]

So, I spent just shy of $20.00 to give this game a chance. And after 46 hours of total play time, I think I have seen enough. While there are a few good points to this game, it is clear that its sole function in the gaming world, is to provide ideas and lessons to other indie game developers out there of what not to do. Lesson 1: Have a plan for revenue development before launching a game. This game clearly suffers from lack of funds to be properly developed. And little sign of any significant updates down the pipe. The local diehard community of the game (all 4 or 6 of them) discuss in global chat ‘Go Fund Me’ schemes to be able to provide more content to said small community. Yet the last game news, dates to Nov 7th of 2016. If you are developing anything at this point. It should be for a wide audience. Not people who have clearly ground the hell out of the game, to be where they are now. Unless your point for having the game, is to have a small group provide you with beer money. Lesson 2: Hooks do not maintain interest, if they are just that. This game advertises 270 Billion stars to explore. If that is your thing, you will be supremely disappointed to discover that the 99.9999825% (that is a real number btw) are completely out of reach. There are only approx. 48 systems available to a new player. 9 are NPC systems, and another 39 or so that have gates to systems presumably built by thos diehard players. You do get a ‘jump drive’ that allows for limited access to stars not yet connected (I was able to get to about 10 other systems, but the galactic map is 'over the top' bad to use). It requires Hydrogen for fuel though, and the only ship it can be fitted on, holds all of 8 units of Hydrogen. Greatly limiting your ability to go forth and explore. Also the only way to get more hydrogen after jumping is to 'scoop' it from gas giant planets. If you land in a system that has none, you can only emergancy warp back to the start system. There are a couple of them like that I found. You also need a certai skill level in gas mining as well to even mine Hydroge. So one more thing (of a HUGE list) to grind. To get a better ‘jump drive’ and go farther with a higher cargo capacity ship, requires a litany of things and time to accomplish (Did I mention more things to grind yet?). Making the game very cumbersome. Currently I have just ‘researched’ a level 2 one, and after building a large space structure required to manufacture one, I finally got one in production. But a this point I have no interest in bothering to see how far that will take me. am sure it won't be much farther. So, while the concept of a tremendous galaxy to explore is intriguing. The fact that it is just a gimmick to get you to spend money and time to get there, is a tremendous letdown. Lesson 3: A player based market only works if you have enough players in the first place. It seems simple enough, but if you have to manufacture virtually everything in this game, there should be a working market to trade that stuff. There is attempts by players to do this, but the limited number of them, combined with the lack of a good system in the first place, leaves the new player with a HUGE grinding curve. You can trade from NPC stations, and you can set up your own station with trading in it(If you pay money to maintain something other than the free starbase). But, there is limited ways to find what you are looking for. Also, the game mechanic that is supposed to let you know what is for sale, does not work well at all. Just searching for something simple like Electronics turns up nothing. But you can find plyer stations selling electronics if you look in the right place. It takes a tremendous amount of time however, to find something like that available. If you even know where to look. Simple solutions would be to 1) provide a better trading system. And 2) seed more items through NPC markets until enough players are building the things themselves. Of the 9 previously mentioned NPC systems, each local market only sells 1 item. And those are items at the lowest part of the production chain, like Iron, or Grain. So, Electronics or Mechanical parts are nowhere to be found. Unless the “Galactic Market” tab happens to work and show you something available. There are some good ideas here in the game. Going seamlessly from space to planet surface is a good idea. But with little to do on the planet other than setting up a base, makes it unfinished. All you can do is land on a planet, leave your ship, and take a soil sample. That tells you what kind of surface base you can build, and what resources are available (By build btw, I mean queue where in a grid you would like the Factory or whatnot to be built). There is literally nothing else to do. No flora or fauna to explore. You can’t mine it, unless you set up a base (which by the way, requires real money spent to keep and maintain). So, the idea in this game is incomplete. And/or it falls under the hook/gimmick lesson. Ultimately, while I tried to like it (I did put a work weeks worth of time playing it). The real lack of content, and the promise of what the game coulda, shoulda, woulda been, are too much for me to give it anything but a thumbs down.

Мёртвая игра.