Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander

---{ Графика }--- ☐ Ты забудешь что такое реальность ☐ Красиво ☑ Хорошо ☐ Норм ☐ Плохо ☐ Не смотри на это слишком долго ---{ Геймплей }--- ☐ Очень хорошо ☑ Хорошо ☐ Просто Геймплей ☐ Нуу... ☐ Лучше посмотрите как горит огонь ☐ Просто не надо ---{ Аудио }--- ☐ Оргазм для ушей ☐ Очень хорошо ☑ Хорошо ☐ Неплохо ☐ Плохо ☐ Теперь я глухой ---{ Аудитория }--- ☐ Дети ☑ Подростки ☑ Взрослые ---{ ПК Характеристики }--- ☑ Даже калькулятор потянет ☐ Обычные ☐ Требовательно ☐ Нужен дорогой ПК ☐ Попроси у НАСА Компуктер ---{ Сложность }--- ☐ Просто жми 'W' ☐ Легко ☑ Легко научиться / Сложно стать профи ☐ Нужно использовать мозги ☐ Сложно ---{ Сюжет }--- ☐ Нет сюжета ☑ Какой-то сюжетик ☐ Средний ☐ Хороший ☐ Интересный ☐ Он заменит тебе жизнь ---{ Игровое время }--- ☐ Длится как чашка кофе ☐ Короткая 2-5 часов ☐ Средне ☐ Длинное ☑ Бесконечность не предел ---{ Цена }--- ☐ Бесплатно ☑ Стоит своих денег ☐ Если по скидке ☐ Если у вас есть лишние деньги ☐ Не рекомендую ☐ С тем же успехом можете сжечь деньги ---{ Баги }--- ☑ Никогда не слышал ☐ Совсем немного ☐ Могут надоедать ☐ Рассадник багов ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☑ 9 ☐ 10

I enjoy the game, but the biggest hurdle is variety. The way you build your ships are basically going to be the same. You need flak, you need shields, you need lasers, and you need ballistic weapons. There's not really a reason to specialize unless you have multiple ships, but even then they ALSO need the above to really work in combat. Also, combat is kind of janky. You can control individual ships in your fleet, but there's rarely a reason to until you get to the harder fights. The enemies and your ships just kind of do a dance while shooting at once another without any strategy involved. I think you can target certain systems with your emp weapons, or your missiles but every time I try my entire arsenal just focuses on that specific ship section. Trying to have a fighter squadron just isn't viable ether since the only way to do it is to manually fly the ship and that is a bit... unwieldy imo. Also there's no carriers, so every ship you build WILL BE a battleship, capital, or destroyer. No sorties or screening really. Just very rudimentary combat. The career mode is pretty lackluster too. Just do basic procurement and attack missions until there are no more missions in the area, then move on to the next system. There is a faction system but it's kind of meh. So that's a lot of negatives, so let's look at the positives: I enjoy the progression a lot. Your ship and fleet size scales with how many missions you've done, and what your reputation is. As such there's a clear goal to achieve. I love the physics, and how asteroids can be broken apart to provide an "arena" for you to fight in to defeat some of the harder pirates. The ship builder is a lot of fun, and it reminds me of Rimworld crossed with Factorio. The music is a bop. I love the art style and how you can tell at a glance which enemy ships are going to be annoying to deal with so you can counter them.

I played this a long time ago and recently came back. They're improved on some things but at the same time it feels rough around the edges. It does scratch some fun ship building but it's not the space exploration type of game I had hoped it would become.

The thing thats begun to irk me most is the sense that you're supposed to be building small fleets and such but you're not rewarded for that. It's typically better to go all in on one ship that you can just create as overkill due to the game not really rewarding any other form of play or style for most of it. I've been looking at various ships I encounter and have a pretty solid ship myself but the fundamental parts of the game still feel rough and space itself, empty... I still lament the lack of ship parts and sizes and how they fit into the ship.... AI is certainly a spectacle to witness at times, but more like Yamiks landing a ship than impressive. It's still simple to get into but ship designing just feels more cheesy than having made a successful design and yet it may be the only way to design functional ships? Perhaps the only thing that irks me enough to not recommend is the irritation in ship building and the vast emptiness of space. EDIT: Further thoughts when playing further in... will update as I go probably... The major resource factories often have atrocious requirements and then proceed to insult you by having asinine payoffs for the amount you need to mine, this further reduces a playstyle outside of "shoot things and be worse vehicle builder than multiple unnamed games"... Hell, factories in general are often sore, most of them demanding far too much for the return being such an intensely long payoff, due in part to either a lacklustre resource count or awful cost on manufacturing resources; typically both... Building mechanics again, Heat exchangers are far too small for a system that demands taking up more space on your ships and crew... another sizable negative in the building system that bloats far too much..

First Cosmoteer iteration was OK. It was silly and it was quick, but it was fun. Later versions have been plagued by issues with the pathfinding. But, new major update, so OK, lets try again. Spoilers: the issues have not been fixed. The current direction of the game, with the possiblity to maintain several hulls and a gameplay that is designed to reward using several hulls, has always had an issue with friendly hulls moving into friendly lines of fire, or friendly hulls getting stuck on each other and going around in circles of death where they cannot stop and cannot extricate from each other. It is incredibly annoying - especially while an enemy is shredding your ships without getting stuck in anything. And it is not only a problem with friendly ships, but it is also friendly NPCs running into and getting stuck on your ships or on stations, or ships running into and getting stuck on stations, astroids, defensive platforms, your own ships if you are not paying attention for a moment. Everytime I try this, I regret buying the game because of pathfinding issues and unnecessary micromanagement. It is a good concept and it has such potential. But the current branch has had this issue for years. It is frustrating. It is not fun.

After 156 hours, I'll be brutally honest: this game isn't worth $20. The vast majority of those hours were spent in creative rather than the primary mode of career, something I'm sure I share with most people, simply because the game is barren beyond the designing and painting of ships. If you're an autistic weirdo such as myself and enjoy the endless optimizing and then testing of your designs against the built-in factions, then this might just be for you. But if you want what this game can offer but with infinitely more depth, then I'd suggest, well, From the Depths.

Brick wall. It starts out fun, and things are interesting. Really fun building your custom ship, exploring the universe. Then a few hours in, it is just a brick wall of difficulty. You can't get enough crew to man the size ship you can build, and then it is just no fun failing the missions.

Fun setup, but the campaign eventually becomes unplayable due to performance issues. Multiplayer load times end up several minutes long, and a mid-spec system will end up with < 20 fps and dropping. The game seems to save and simulate every single bit of space debris you don't collect and sell, and constantly having to clean up all the garbage after each fight is a huge pita.

Ich bin der Architekt dieses Schiffs. Zumindest steht das so in meiner Stellenbeschreibung. In der Praxis verbringe ich den Großteil meiner Zeit damit, neue Räume an Stellen einzuplanen, an denen bereits andere Räume stehen, zusätzliche Besatzung durch Gänge zu schicken, die dafür nie gedacht waren, und dem Kapitän zu erklären, warum wir für zwei weitere Kanonen leider das halbe Schiff umbauen müssen. Jeder Einsatz beginnt mit einem klaren Plan: Wir halten Abstand. Wir drehen die Breitseite zum Gegner. Wir schützen den Reaktor. Wir geraten auf keinen Fall in Panik. Wenige Sekunden später brennt Deck drei, die Munition liegt auf der falschen Seite des Schiffs und irgendein Besatzungsmitglied trägt gerade eine Batterie durch den Maschinenraum, während draußen die Panzerung verschwindet. Natürlich war der Entwurf trotzdem korrekt. Die Crew arbeitet zuverlässig, solange Wege kurz, Türen sinnvoll und Ressourcen dort gelagert sind, wo sie gebraucht werden. Sobald ich aber nur einen einzigen Korridor falsch plane, entsteht aus einem schwer bewaffneten Kriegsschiff sehr schnell ein logistisches Forschungsprojekt mit Todesfolge. Nach jedem Gefecht sammeln wir die Überreste des Gegners ein, schweißen neue Teile an den Rumpf und tun so, als wäre das genau so vorgesehen gewesen. Mit der Zeit wird aus einem kleinen Schiff eine fliegende Stadt: größer, schwerer, teurer und voller Systeme, von denen jedes einzelne ausgerechnet im falschen Moment zu wenig Energie hat. Der Reaktor ist sicher. Die Crew kennt den Plan. Bitte ignorieren Sie das Feuer hinter mir.

I usually don't review a game till it's fully released, but I guess after you get 1k hours in it's released enough. This is a fun little game with a very direct connection between simple engineering problems, combat and a touch of aesthetics. Really nice to just design and test ships, the campaign system currently isn't much, but it looks promising. Good fun!