Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander

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.

I don't know if it's just me but this game feels... boring. No real sense of progression or an end goal. After years it still feels like a part of a bigger game, but the bigger game is not there yet. Currently there is just the same, small gaming loop: destroy enemies, collect resources, quickly unlock everything, make a slightly bigger ship, repeat.

There has been a glitch in this game for literal years where you will give your crew an order to harvest something, and they will instead decide to deconstruct your entire ship and send you back to a 10 minute old autosave. The developer saw this glitch, and figured the best way to address it was to ignore it an add an ironman mode instead so it can go from being a minor annoyance to a game-breaking run ender. The weapons are stale, the shipbuilding is too rigid, the AI is too stupid, and the things to do are too few. This game is a fun sandbox for a few hours, and then becomes frustrating with how little freedom there actually is in how you approach things.

The mechanics are incredible, and fighting is satisfying, but the world itself is boring. Building the ship is complex and the larger the ship, the harder and more satisfying it becomes to optimize. The game is still early access but the developers seem to be only focused on the ship building aspect of the game, and it's a shame if the decide not further work on the world. 10/10 for the ship building and fighting 4/10 for the world

It needs actual progression. Do some bounties, get resources, sell them or upgrade your ship. But there's no...."hey this is the next ship or goal". aimless-ness kicks in for me. Then I fly around doing the same old until its more stale.

It's like 2D minecraft shipbuilder. I like it, but I don't like that all the AI ships just awkwardly crash into you instead of doing what a sci-fi spaceship is kind of imagined to do. They don't have to be smart, but they could at least appear to not be unga bunga. Besides that, bloody good game guvnah, really. I'd play this alot more if not for the above thing. I'm really into creative ship building. I do wish there were more parts though. The arsenals still feel pretty limited for my taste, but I'm a former perfectionist so maybe I'm not the best reference for that. Happy huggy table door floor blue orange oxygen Type-A confidence bone marrow Nokia

Even if it is still in early stage... it is already worth the money. Attention to detail is awesome. One of my favourite games.

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..