Starfarer

Starfarer is an independent role-playing/sandbox/strategy/trading/exploration/space combat game by Fractal Softworks.

You start your captaining career with nothing to your name but five thousand credits, a small crew, and a single light frigate. Through blood and sweat you will gradually build an army, amassing control of fighters, bombers, interceptors, carriers to repair them in, various frigates, supply transports, fire support ships, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, all the way up to massive capital ships. And almost every single one of these ships can be further customized to fit your needs.

Combat is hectic and extremely detailed, feeling like the love child of Star Control and Mechwarrior. You have direct control over your flagship, and use a tactical map to set objectives and standing orders for the rest of your fleet. Your AI officers will then assign available ships to complete those objectives, leaving your flagship to support the fleet however you feel is best. You have a limited amount of command points to set objectives with, and for the most part you can't regain them - once spent, the points are gone for the rest of the encounter. While this sounds like a Scrappy Mechanic, it actually works well due to some rather good AI.

Larger battles have an element of Capture the Flag to them, with various types of control points appearing on the map that give bonuses when captured. Taking them grants more command points, extra fleet points to call in reinforcements from your main army, and even direct boosts to your fleet such as maneuvering bonuses and radar extension. Capturing these early (and preventing your enemy from doing the same) helps to turn the tide of battle in your favor immensely.

The game is still in early development, with new versions arriving every few months. Don't be scared away by the fact that it's still in alpha; there is a massive list of features implemented so far, and combat is already more rich and rewarding than most finished games. At the moment it's only half price to pre-order, which gives access to the alpha.

Starfarer provides examples of:

 * All There in the Manual: There's an in-game Codex that gives a good level of detail on every ship, class, and variant in the game, down to individual weapon systems, ship stats, and even the in-universe history of that particular ship or weapon. It's missing a few entries in the current version that the campaign fleet overview shows, but nothing major. Just about the only combat-relevant information it doesn't tell you are the firing arcs of a ship's weapons. Those you learn from experience. Painful, painful experience.
 * Arbitrary Maximum Range: Sometimes the range of a ship's weapons will be barely more than the length of the ship itself.
 * Artificial Brilliance: The space combat has been the focus of development so far, and it really, really shows. Enemies flank, micromanage flux and shields, viciously take advantage of any momentary weaknesses, and otherwise perform well in combat. You can also set your own ship to autopilot and reap the benefits of flawless precision - it's actually recommended for large scale fights.
 * Toned down a bit since the introduction of crew - most enemy ships will only have regulars manning them, meaning their AI is artificially degraded. However, that same update also gave another boost to combat AI - enemies won't fire heavy flux-generating weapons when near overload, and they keep track of such things as where your weapons are pointing versus how long it would take them to raise shields. Omni-shielded ships border on Demonic Spider levels sometimes.
 * Asteroid Thicket: Battlefields contain asteroids in surprising quantities. Unusually, they do next to nothing to your ships, so you can simply ram them and continue on your merry way.
 * According to the developer, collision damage is based on relative mass, and the largest asteroids are only about the size of the smallest frigates. Collision damage also seems to be kinetic, so it's greatly reduced while you have armor remaining. It's still probably not a good idea to ram something with, say, a Hyperion.
 * Attack Drone: Wasp Interceptors. They have the largest squadron size (six ships), are extremely fast and maneuverable, and armed with a PD laser that makes mincemeat of missiles and unshielded fighters. Unfortunately, they are made of tissue paper.
 * Awesome but Impractical: A savvy forum-goer realized that bomb bays count as ballistic weapons. One of the most common frigates in the game, the Lasher, has five ballistic mounts. Bomb bays cost a very small amount of build points, meaning you can afford hull mods to boost ballistic ammo and range. Since each bay fires once per second, one of these bad boys can send dozens of bombs (each doing 600 damage) hurtling towards a target. It's kept in this trope because bombs are ridiculously vulnerable to point defense - to the extent that a well-defended capital ship might not get hit by a single one - and even with the ammo boosting hull mod, you can only make four or five runs before the ship becomes a flying paperweight. Not to mention, flying directly towards anything that requires this level of firepower tends not to go well for you if you miss. But against an undefended or disabled target, it's absolutely devastating.
 * Awesome Yet Practical: Salamander MRMs, an EMP missile with AI that automatically flanks ships and heads straight into their engines, disabling them. Incredibly useful even if it fails since it forces the enemy to focus defenses on their rear, giving you a clear shot at their front.
 * The Tachyon Lance, which is basically a sniper rifle IN SPACE. First, the downsides: it's a large weapon, costs 30,000 credits, and requires an astounding 32 build points. That said, it's a borderline Game Breaker if used properly. It does very high damage (1,500, with an extra 500 EMP on top of that, so it's even good against shields), though the rate of fire is somewhat low (six and a half seconds between shots). Each shot is enough to destroy a single ship in a squadron, or cause massive flux buildup in a frigate. It has a range of 5,000 su (half that of a LRM, and more than quintuple the range of most other weapons), and this can be boosted to 7,500 with a single hull mod. As it's a beam weapon, it has perfect accuracy, infinite ammo, and virtually instant travel time, negating every disadvantage most other long range weapons have. If fitted to a turret and set to autofire, the AI will be able to snipe at ships with pinpoint accuracy from across the entire map, usually hitting them several times before they get close enough to retaliate. Did we mention that the Odyssey has three large energy turrets?
 * An Odyssey set up this way is still vulnerable to other capital ships (which have the flux stats to absorb the beams harmlessly). The primary Game Breaker aspect of an Odyssey fitted with Tachyon Lances is that it makes all other fire support ships obsolete - often outperforming several lesser ships at once. It can destroy most squadrons from across the map in two broadsides, meaning the enemy never gets to capture a single control point, which in turn means they can't bring in any larger ships that could stand a chance of countering the Odyssey.
 * Boring but Practical: Energy weapons. They bypass the Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors used by other damage types entirely. They tend to have decent range, and there are multiple cheap hull mods to boost this further. Most energy weapons either don't use ammo or recharge over time, making them very useful for protracted engagements. The only real downsides are that they generate more flux and are somewhat micromanagement-heavy due to the gameplay mechanic mentioned under Charged Attack below.
 * Sure, you could plan out massive fleet battles, risking your expensive capital ships and their crew to enemy fire. Or, you could just send in interceptors and speed-boosted close support frigates to capture and hold control points, wiping out the enemy's initial scouts and choking off their supply of points, preventing them from sending in their main fleet in the first place (see Unstable Equilibrium below).
 * Casual Interplanetary Travel: Fuel will be eventually used to travel between star systems, but navigation within a star system consumes no resources and costs nothing.
 * Character Customization: You can refit your ships with a wide variety of weapons, depending on what type of mounts they have (using a slot system reminiscent of MechWarrior 4). If you have leftover build points, you can use them to upgrade ship subsystems or flux capacity/venting speed. You will also be able to customize your character in a later version, but at the moment all you can change is the name and portrait.
 * Character Level: The ship's crew gradually level up as you fight (Green - Regular - Veteran - Elite), becoming more accurate in combat, speeding up repairs, and even increasing the efficiency of ship subsystems (represented by a slight boost to ship stats). You can reassign crew to different ships, where they will be just as proficient. Hull damage will kill crew members, meaning heavily damaged ships have basically undergone a Level Drain.
 * There are also plans for officers and a customizable main character, who will presumable follow this trope as well.
 * Charged Attack: An odd example. Energy weapons get a hefty bonus to damage (up to 50%) if your flux meter is high. This is the only situation where a high flux is useful.
 * Color Coded for Your Convenience: Various weapons are colored according to their damage type. High explosive rounds are yellow or orange. Kinetic weapons are white. Energy weapons are visually distinct enough to not need color coding. You can identify missiles by size, color, and how bright the exhaust is.
 * Continuing Is Painful: If your fleet is wiped out, you lose everything and are reduced to a single very weak ship, which could be anything from a personnel shuttle to a fuel tanker. Since it's likely that you've pissed off several factions by this point, you'd actually have an easier time starting over with a new game.
 * Not nearly as annoying after the introduction of the Abandoned Storage Facility in version .52a. Now when you wipe, you just need to make your way to Corvus I and grab whatever ships and supplies you have stored there (provided, of course, that you ever reached a fleet size where it was necessary to mothball some of your ships in the first place).
 * Not to mention that if you win a difficult battle, chances are you'll have lost several ships - probably valuable ones - and seeing as the chances of an enemy ship being in well enough shape to be boarded and used are very low, it's unlikely the ships captured and loot is valuable enough to compensate for the loss of your ships. Something one should also remember is that to be able to board the more valuable ships you'll probably need a good amount of marines that cost quite a bit as well if you buy them in bulk.
 * Controllable Helplessness: This is the main effect of a flux overload, where all you can can do is try in vain to get out of the way of oncoming attacks. Flux venting is similar, but voluntary and with beneficial effects.
 * Crippling Overspecialization: Very possible with the customization system due to the limited build points on most ships. Many default ship variants can only perform one role well, and get torn to shreds if they try to do anything else.
 * Critical Existence Failure: Any Subsystem Damage apart from armor damage is only temporary, so ships can still perform at peak efficiency in terms of speed and firepower as long as they have even 1 point of hull integrity left.
 * Also applies with crew, where even having one less than the skeleton crew required makes a ship completely unusable in combat. It makes sense with frigates where that one person could be ten percent of the entire crew. When you can't use your Onslaught because you are missing one person out of the needed five hundred, less so. Justified, however, as this is the skeleton crew. Most ships can hold around twice that many people, this number is just the bare minimum needed to run all systems.
 * Damage Sponge Boss: Or at least the closest thing to a boss in this type of game, capital ships. Early on, you can have your entire fleet ganging up on a single capital ship for several minutes before it is destroyed. Special mention must go to the Onslaught, which has 1,750 armor and 20,000 hull integrity. There's a reason they form the backbone of the Hegemony System Defense Fleets.
 * Ships with 360 degree shield coverage are worse, since they're immune to flanking. Have fun trying to take down that Paragon before it wipes out half of your fleet!
 * Deflector Shields: Many ships have them, and they come in two types: omni and frontal. Omni can point in any direction, raise very quickly, and can be rotated towards threats, but tend to have a narrow arc of protection. Frontal only point forwards, raise slowly, but tend to have much wider coverage - sometimes up to 360 degrees. Shields work by transforming damage against them into flux. However, flux added from shield damage does not drain over time like regular flux, meaning ships have to drop their shields eventually or risk overload.
 * Dueling Games: Screenshots will inevitably draw a comparison with Space Pirates and Zombies. However, whereas S.P.A.Z. has very simple arcade-like gameplay, Starfarer took the simulation route.
 * Easy Logistics: Ammo and missiles are replaced for free after every engagement. Ship mods and refitting cost nothing but time. Any ship, no matter how damaged, can be (eventually) repaired provided there are enough generic "supplies" in your inventory.
 * Averted with crew. It can be a lengthy and expensive side trip to replenish killed crew, and you can't use ships that aren't fully manned. It also takes a very long time to train them to elite status, so protecting ships carrying high-level crew is a priority. Also averted for squadrons, which get a massive penalty to repair time if there isn't an empty carrier or other ship with hanger slots in your fleet to repair in.
 * This will also be eventually averted with fuel, which does nothing in the current version but will be used for inter-system travel later on. The fuel consumption stats are already listed in the game, so you can do the math and realize a fuel tanker will be a very good investment.
 * A recent update added accidents, which occur when you go over capacity in any of the four supply types (fleet size, cargo, fuel, crew capacity), or when you run out of supplies to maintain your ships. Since everything is shared between ships, this means the loss of a capital ship (and its massive storage space) forces you to make some very hard decisions on what to toss out. The effects of accidents range from minor cargo loss to hull breaches and the complete destruction of ships.
 * Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: Very common, though they actually have a five degree arc to make lining up a shot slightly less frustrating.
 * For Massive Damage: Reaper torpedoes, at 4,000 high explosive damage a pop. For reference: the Onslaught, the most durable ship in the game, only has 1,750 armor (and high explosive does 150% damage to armor). Nothing in the game even comes remotely close in terms of pure per-shot damage (runners up are the Tachyon Lance at 1500+500 emp, or the Plasma Cannon at 750x3; and both of those are large weapons). It has a variant for each mount size, from a single torpedo for small mounts to twenty torpedoes fired in pairs for the large one. They are also one of only three missiles with a travel speed described as 'very fast', so they aren't easy to shoot down or avoid either. There's a squadron that mounts these, the Dagger-class, which consists of three ships armed with a single torpedo each. They are somewhat fragile, but the ability to do 12,000 damage in one run (and being able to rearm at a carrier to do so again) makes them amazingly devastating strike craft.
 * Game Mod: The game has excellent mod support, especially considering it's still in alpha. Several mods have already been created that add new ships, stations, and even factions to the game. It helps that much of the game's content is stored in easily edited text files and spreadsheets, and there's a mod API allowing you to implement new features into the game.
 * Goddamned Bats: An intentional example, and a rare case where they are just as useful on your own side: squadrons, several identical tiny ships fighting in formation. They are usually rather weak, but their high speed and maneuverability makes them excel at flanking. Not to mention the low crew requirement means it's very easy for them to have Elite status. It Gets Worse if there is a carrier in the enemy fleet, as if even one member of the squadron survives to make it back to the carrier, the entire squadron is rebuilt and rearmed. This is the main trait that makes the otherwise pathetic Talon interceptors and Wasp drones a threat, as their large squadron size and lightning fast speed mean it's very likely that at least one fighter will survive to resurrect the entire squadron. As counter-intuitive as it seems, if there's a nearly depleted squadron nearby, ignore all other threats to finish them off.
 * For the very early portions of the game, the Goddamned Bats would be anything with omni-shields, since it takes a significant investment in firepower to max their flux meter. Not to mention that they tend to drop their shields for a few moments to recharge, undoing a portion of your damage. On the other hand, it's a harsh lesson for newbies on why flanking is so important.
 * Guide Dang It: Some mechanics are very poorly explained in-game, and many aren't even mentioned in the manual. For instance, flux buildup from beam weapons against shields drains over time, unlike any other weapon damage in the game (which require the shields to be lowered before the flux will dissipate).
 * Heavily Armored Mook: Ships that lack shielding usually have higher armor and hull ratings to compensate. However, since shields can regenerate and armor plating can't, it really isn't enough to make them worthwhile.
 * Lethal Joke Character: The Hound. It's one of the pirate faction's basic frigates, and is so ridiculously easy to kill that most players never even consider piloting one themselves. Just looking at the stats paints a pretty bleak picture: it has a flux pool a third the size of the average frigate, one small ballistic turret with a massive blind spot, a single medium ballistic forward facing mount that will max out your flux meter in about seven seconds of sustained firing, two very large and easy to hit engines, and to top it all off, it's completely unshielded. But then you realize it's tied for the top speed of any pilotable ship in the game - with the 'augmented engines' hull mod, it outruns interceptor squadrons. The AI just doesn't know how to play to the Hound's strengths; it's pretty much built for kiting (being made of paper doesn't matter when the enemy can't hit you in the first place). It really shines when you rip out the default assault chaingun and install a long range, slow firing weapon such as a Hypervelocity Cannon or a Heavy Mauler, both of which deal significant amounts of damage and come with plenty of ammunition. The Hound is fast and maneuverable enough to run ahead of a target, spin around to fire a shot, then turn and keep running, and your high speed means the single turret has plenty of time to take out any missiles they send your way. It takes a while, but you can eventually whittle down even destroyers singlehandedly with this tactic.
 * Not to mention that since the Hound is a converted cargo hauler, it carries about 50% more fuel, crew, and cargo than other frigates, so you're less likely to run out of supplies at a crucial juncture. It even has the hangar space to support its own squadron of Talons, making it critical for a frigate and squadron only run.
 * Macross Missile Massacre: To a much lesser extent than most examples (as even single missiles can be deadly in this game), but certain squadrons and some of the larger fire support ships can send multiple salvos of missiles your way. Cue Oh Crap.
 * The Hurricane MIRV deserves a special mention, as each missile fired splits into seven smaller projectiles. There's also the Annihilator Rocket Pod, which fires two missiles per second. And since the Annihilator's a medium missile, many ships can have several of them mounted.
 * Overclocking Attack: The defining trait of combat in the game. Ships have a stat called 'flux', which raises when they use certain weapons, take shield damage, are hit by ion cannons, etc, and drains slowly over time. If the flux hits capacity your ship overloads, leaving you to drift helplessly while very slowly venting flux. At any time you can vent it manually, causing it to drain several times faster than normal but disabling your weapons and shield for the duration. One-on-one combat against shielded enemies usually revolves around dealing kinetic damage to their shields to force them to either drop shields, vent flux, or cause an overload, leaving you free to unload everything you have into the now helpless ship. Venting speed borders on a One Stat to Rule Them All since it affects combat so drastically.
 * Overdrive: If a ship has an empty flux meter and doesn't have their shields raised, they get a hefty bonus to top speed. This makes retreat feasible, as your enemy can't fire at you without losing their own speed bonus. There is also a hull mod that boosts your top speed and map travel speed, but it is extremely impractical as it costs a ridiculous amount of build points and cripples your flux dissipation.
 * Point Defenseless: Strongly averted. A good point defense system can usually take out the majority of missiles in a salvo, as well as wreak havoc against fighter squadrons. Most capital ships have several of them. With a certain hull mod, even small weapons not tagged as point defense can auto-target missiles. This includes tactical lasers, whose long range, high accuracy, and decent damage make them very useful for this purpose.
 * Crew level has a noticeable effect on point defense. Since crew experience affects accuracy, and missiles are small and hard to hit, an unskilled crew is very vulnerable to missile strikes. And since large ships have crew requirements an order of magnitude higher than frigates, they tend to be staffed with cheap rookies. This makes assigning point defense frigates as escorts very useful.
 * Played straight with certain point defense weapons like the Vulcan Cannon. Sure, it spews a ton of bullets at targets, but the accuracy is so terrible that it's actually less effective than systems rated at half the DPS.
 * Shows Damage: Ships glow orange where they have taken heavy damage, which means their armor plating has been stripped away in that spot. Yes, you create your own weak points in this game.
 * The glow eventually fades, but if you watch carefully you can see flashes of light emanating from the ship, and the hull shows cracks.
 * Space Flecks: It's either this or there's something very wrong with the 'starfield' that serves as the map view's background.
 * Space Friction: On the one hand, ships don't slow down if you let go of the 'forward' key. On the other hand, they do have a strictly limited top speed. How exactly that works is anyone's guess.
 * Space Marine: You can hire them by the dozens, then use them to take over disabled enemy ships.
 * Space Pirates: A surprising amount of them. They have fairly outdated tech, though, and are a great way to grind crew experience and loot.
 * Standard Sci-Fi Fleet: Ships are categorized as fighters, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, and capital ships, though there are further subcategories of each.
 * Starter Equipment: Other than the armaments of the frigate you start with, none. You buy ships as empty hulls, then have to track down the weapons separately. If you want the good stuff this means a trip to the hidden pirate base.
 * Subsystem Damage: Most weapons can be temporarily disabled if enough damage is done to them. This also works against engines. If a ship has two engines and you disable one set, the ship spins helplessly until the engine comes back online.
 * This addition dramatically changed combat. For one thing, it made overwhelming frontal attacks feasible. If you can get past an opponent's defenses, their powerful forward guns will be quickly disabled. Beforehand, they would chew you up even as you were dealing the final blows to their hull.
 * Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors: Ships have up to three layers of defense: hull, armor plating, and shields. Only hull damage affects the ship, so most of a fight is spent breaching the other ship's defenses to get to the vulnerable crew inside. There are four types of weapons to help with this: high explosive, which is excellent against armor but very weak against shields; kinetic, which is the opposite; energy, which is somewhat effective against all types of defense, and fragmentation, which does little damage against any defense, but will tear hulls to shreds once those defenses are gone (and is also good against missiles and squadrons, since they rarely have much defense). There are also ion weapons, which greatly raise the target's flux levels but do minimal damage.
 * Taking You with Me: Large ships go out in absolutely massive explosions when they die, dealing heavy damage to other nearby ships. Capital ships are easily capable of one-hit killing frigates when they blow. Thus, it's beneficial to get as close as possible to your enemies when you realize the battle is a lost cause to at least inflict some damage as you go.
 * Unstable Equilibrium: How most battles on maps with control points go. An example: there's a battle between two fleets, each with twenty ships. You spend your starting fleet points to send in a few frigates and interceptors and order them to capture nearby control points. Those points can be used to bring in heavier ships, allowing you to launch an assault on the remaining control points. You'll probably grab a nav buoy or sensor array at this point, which grant absolutely massive bonuses to your entire fleet. After you take those you'll have enough points to field your entire fleet, while the enemy is reduced to a trickle of four or five ships at a time; meanwhile your nav buoy gives you bonuses to speed and maneuverability, and your sensor array reveals much of the map and boosts weapon ranges (meaning you smash the enemy before they can even get into firing range). The rest of the battle is just mopping up the remains.
 * Vendor Trash: Eventually fuel will be used to travel between star systems, but in the current version it does nothing other than sell for a lot of credits.
 * We Cannot Go on Without You: Averted. You don't even need to send your flagship into an engagement in the first place. Even if your flagship is destroyed, you can transfer command to any other ship. This is accomplished by escaping in a personnel shuttle and flying across the map to dock with them.
 * With This Herring: As the intro states, you start out with only a single frigate and a small amount of credits. You have just enough to buy two squadrons of weak interceptors, but it will be quite some time before you can afford a carrier to repair them in.
 * X Meets Y: The developers describe it as Star Control meets Master of Orion 2 meets Mechwarrior.
 * With the .50 beta campaign release, it adds a touch of Mount & Blade as well.