Starcom: Unknown Space

absorbing and addictive....

It's good fun if you're in a relaxed mood. Flying from place to place can take a while so if you're already in a hurry, don't play this :-D

wenn du scifi magst wirst du es lieben.

TL;DR Great Game, with Great Problems -- worth every penny. Ignore the playtime, I left it running for a good bit. You can blast through the main campaign in ~20 hours -- 30+ if you are a completionist / love tinkering with your build. This game is a great value buy -- the writers clearly love scfi and have baked Stellaris level storytelling into the universe. As many have said, it's a mixed bag but charming and addictive. It is also greater than the sum of its parts. The controls are clunky, you can't assign firing groups, the UI doesn't give you any indication that your weapons are overheating (I slept on heat venting since I thought I only needed it for high energy weapons), the power scaling is wonky, the quest system is obtuse, stats for individual systems and weapons are opaque -- AND YET this game is so damn fun. Every time I got a new technology or accumulated the right materials i went back to the shipyard to optimize my vessel to squeeze a little more speed, gain a tick more peak firing efficiency, adjust the placement and angles of my fusillade, and so on. And what must you do after that? Stress test your build of course and the loop continues. My true criticism of the game is the overall unevenness of it, you are overwhelmed with a massive universe with seemingly endless points of interest, but it fairly short order it gets smaller, and smaller until it feels quite empty. You start off absolutely dwarfed by your opposition, then quickly gain a few improvements that end up being the workhorse of the game. The cost of specing into a tech tree is so high (an it's the only nonrefundable resource unless you find the singular event that resets your tech tree) its hard to justify experimenting with some exotic techs when what you have just works. I completed the game having never tried warp, shields, havok, drones and only added (ph)Lasers at the very end -- they didn't even have a core module upgrade (only mk1, when most at least have two). To cap it off, By the time you can afford the best upgrades, the game is nearly over. I skipped building a dreadnought because it was the final mission already. Devs: *We need an onboard UI that shows us where damage and heat is accumulating shipside. *Same for targeted enemies -- it's satisfying to gradually break down their armor and weapons, but the only way to see it is to zoom in midbattle which is too risky given how much can go wrong in a short time. Pause functionality could be a solve for when switching out different weapons. *Targeting needs to be smoothed out -- often I would target a friendly (and while it wouldn't actually target them) I could never figure out how to switch targets (controller). I wound up just not using the feature because it was distracting and unhelpful. *There needs to be a way to strafe, say if you have lateral thrusters and in addition control over yaw -- this will break up endless looping around in battle and to improve overall time on target. This would also improve the possibilities with precision weapons. The reason it can't be done (at least on controller) is because the entire right joystick is co-opted by plasma cannons -- just let them be auto fire and call it a day. *Custom Firing Groups -- another big reason I wound up not trying anything other than plasma, missiles, cannons, then lasers. It felt like adding anything more would be a hassle to manage mid firefight. Cycling through weapon types on the fly feels horrible when you are also trying to keep your nose on the enemy. When I have a shot with my missiles I want to press a button that fires ze missiles, when i have lined up a weak point with my cannon i want to pull the trigger on my forward cannon (NOT my rear cannon for example, and NOT also my missiles that I'm saving). If I can pilot an entire Anaconda, manage power distribution, and juggle a dozen different weapons in Elite Dangerous on an Xbox controller I should be able to do it in a top down game. Bigger Ideas: more officer interaction overall -- the stat system is simple and makes sense for events but outside of that they they just provide passive bonuses. It would be more interesting to assign them to stations and for them to passively gain experience as opposed to all as a group all at once. Optimizing them should be as fun as optimizing my ship. More depth to diplomacy and faction relations -- right now it's just Hostile, not Hostile, and Will Trade with you -- lots on the table there. You would think this sounds like a negative review, but despite it's flaws this game scratches in itch similar to Morrowind. It's obtuse, it doesn't hold your hand, you have to read your logs and try to suss out a solution in the text and it's so rewarding when you break through and can confidently take on cruisers, dreadnoughts, then whole armadas. New players: If you bridge dies, you die. armor your bridge. Deflection and engines keep you alive. You can hang in a firefight for longer and zip out to heal if it gets too hot. Range is your friend, being able to hit the enemy when it can't hit you will give you the edge against even the most powerful ships. Try mounting a cannon on your rear as well, you will spend a lot of time running, with practice you can turn this into a great offensive maneuver. Take note of the materials you need and don't need, and get the trade tech as soon as it's available. Whenever you encounter a trader dump what you don't need for the best price -- gold is generally king -- turn that into the rarer mats you do need. Needless to day, I'm sat for DLC or any next installment.

A very good classic 2,5D type space exploration and combat game. You explore, encounter races, research and upgrade your ship... and the story is pretty good too. :)

Saw The Mighty Jingles videos on this and had to try it, 16h in and i love it!

Nice chill game