Space Game General All-Platform Thready Discussy Thing :)

Brian I watched one of your videos of Avalon. If Star Traders wasn’t about to come out, I’d probably grab it. Hadn’t heard of it before.

You’re better off getting Star Traders. Avalon is just frustrating.

Thank you for watching!

I’ll be grabbing Star Traders as soon as it releases next week. The Trese Brothers are such amazing developers it’s really a no-brainer. I started playing Templar Battleforce again and they are still adding new content and tweaking stuff in that game after all this time. TB is really, really good by the way if you haven’t tried it. If you like turn based Warhammer 40K, deep skill trees, lots of equipment, relics, and turn based tactical battles it’s very much worth a look.

I’ve been playing Star Traders for the past couple hours, and I’m pretty engrossed! It plays to one of my favorite fantasies: managing a ship (starship, square-rigged vessel, WW2 destroyer, whatever) and its crew. The story is interesting. No real complaints yet. OK, the crew portraits leave something to be desired, but in general I like the look and feel of the game.

I’m curious whether the storyline changes from one game to the next. Also, there’s some in-game documentation (the “consult” button), but I’m going to poke around for more info. I recall finding a wiki the other day.

Anyway, so far I’m pretty impressed.

I’ve spent my game budget for this month; otherwise I’d be getting Star Traders. Keep the reviews coming!

I paid my cash for this, what, four years ago? I don’t even remember.

One of nice things about Kickstarter (or at least those campaigns that actually finish) is that by the time you get the game, you have forgotten you spent money. Its like a gift!

Anyway, I have my key and going to play now!

Star Traders… you know, this is pretty good! Its like a Fading Suns vibe about it.

Is it just me/a Linux gaming artifact, or are there no quadrant/system/planet names on the maps?

I’m enjoying the game, but I’m not fond of some of the UI choices here. Lots of place where the mouse scrollwheel doesn’t work, very few tooltips, and so on.

Well it’s not finished…

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“We estimate that Star Traders: Frontiers will be in Early Access for about six months.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“According to estimates, Star Traders: Frontiers has about 75% of the planned features and about 40% of the planned content and storylines. In total, we estimate that STF is around 60% to 70% complete. The full game will be expanded and polished based on community feedback and from our existing roadmap. There are new system-level features planned such as fighter support in ship-to-ship combat – and we will continue releases of new and evolving story arcs.”

Though I guess ‘working mouse wheel and lots of tooltips’ shouldn’t need to come from community feedback. :)

My main UI gripe is pretty minor. I can’t quite tell who’s speaking when I’m talking with NPCs. It’s as if my screen resolution is too low: I can see there’s some sort of text at the edge of the screen, probably identifying the speaker, but most of it is clipped by the screen edge. Maybe I should fuss with video options? But most other UI elements fit the screen fine, so I’m reluctant to mess with it.

I do like all the hotkeys. I’d like a few more, but I’m mostly happy. The arrow keys don’t scroll fast enough for my taste on the galaxy map, but not a big deal.

The gameplay itself is pretty addictive! Yeah, the game needs more docs and tooltips, but the wiki has answered many of my questions about skills, attributes, jobs, etc. Now I get that 0 (4) means a character has a “bonus skill” of 4 that is only used by officers/captain. Ordinary crew don’t use the parenthesized skill unless they’re promoted to captain, or unless that parenthesized skill is a combat skill.

I picked this up last night and played it just a bit. I’ve been posting some of my initial gripes on the Steam forums and the devs responded right away. I also wasn’t thrilled about the crew portrait choices but they said they’ll be adding a ton more. I requested they add some of the portraits from Templar Battleforce since the games share the same universe (I liked those a lot more) and they said they might redraw some of those and add them. I’m also not all that fond of their artist’s particular portrait style but what can you do.

They don’t really have a tutorial yet and that’s a problem because some of the navigation and map stuff at the start is kind of hard to figure out without any explanation. It would be fine if the game had manual save slots. You could just experiment and reload. But you can’t since it plays as iron man.

These are really responsive devs and they’re all over reports of problems and suggestions for improvements. They usually respond to posts within minutes. I do expect there will be a lot of changes based on feedback they get in EA. If anything bothers you I encourage you to post it over in the game forum and see what they say about it.

This is helpful:
https://startraders.gamepedia.com/Getting_Started_Guide

It turns out tooltips are a Linux problem, and presumably that’s where planet/quadrant names are hiding. That fixes my biggest complaints, I think; I really like what they’re doing otherwise. It’s a much better take on the character-centric space universe a la Crusader Kings than Pocket Space Empires/Stellar Monarch was.

Really, a computer version of WH40K: Rogue Trader is a great hook, and a game I’ve been looking for for a long time.

I’m not sure that’s a fair comparison, since Stellar Monarch is an emperor simulator, and this is a captain/crew simulator.

I think it is, as long as we limit ourselves to the impact characters have on the universe. Stellar Monarch’s characters could have been replaced with an ideals/morals system with very little change to the gameplay, whereas Star Traders’ characters are characters in a fuller sense. They have an existence outside of your interaction with them, and opinions of you based on what you do both for them and for other people.

I dunno, I felt like a character in Stellar Monarch, but I see what you mean. I think the differences are the levels. SM is so high level you could make it more abstract and lose less of the character flavor, whereas here…not so much.

So, it sounds like its a bit early to buy in? Maybe wait a few patches, or is the game at a place where its fun and playable?

I’m only around an hour in but it’s super playable already.

Thats not what you were supposed to say :-D Also, maybe it deserves its own thread? Or a Trey Bothers thread?

That might be a better idea, actually, since all their games are great.