Space Pirates and Zombies 2, now with more neon!

I am still waiting for Starsector to go into beta… 3 years or more and counting…

I feel like the developer does not realize what (i feel) made spaz great. That or they just decided to go YOLO with spaz 2 and start anew.

I collected all the lore and is at level 5 going unto 6 now I think. Not sure what I’m supposed to do. Probably build up my ship. Currently have only 4 out the 5 possible cores filled. And I still have my starting crappy weapons.

What do you guys think I should do? Side with the biggest faction and wack the rest into submission? But I think the infection will come when I hit a certain level. So maybe that’s not a good idea. A better one would be to place nice with everyone. Maybe.

Yeah I am seeing this sentiment repeated in a lot of different areas. I’m going to hold off and see where this ends up.

-Todd

Honestly it’s feeling pretty grindy so far, with that feeling made worse by lack of opportunities. The map should feel like I am constantly being torn between interesting choices, but it feels more like picking what’s the least boring to do.

Also, the world map feels like a pale imitation of space rangers. It does not feel anywhere near as alive. It is possible they just couldnt add a ton of depth to it in order to support the faction ruling elements later though.

That was kind of my take as well, after an hour. There were some resource sites and some ships to fight, then that’s all there was, with the campaign goal of making my ship not suck. Since I really wasn’t anywhere near the scrap needed to do that, it was time to get to grinding. The problem was, the battles I could grind weren’t very interesting. Jump in, pew pew for 10 seconds, emerge victor.

In any case, I like the idea of the map and the factions and I absolutely love being able to look at a NPC and seeing the history of what he/she saw. They could do some really cool stuff with that, but right now my first impression is that it is reeeeeeeally bare bones. Which is totally OK, it’s the start of Early Access after all, and they said they planned to be there 6-12 months.

The game has the pieces to do something really cool. I’m going to sit on this and watch where development goes.

Hmmm. Starsector does resemble Mount & Blade in many ways, but SPAZ 2 and Starsector have different takes. Starsector doesn’t have the equivalent of M&B lords, for instance, while SPAZ 2 is all about the “lords”. Starsector is also arguably a lot harder, at least from my experience.

I felt the first game was quite grindy, not surprised to see it here as well. Was my biggest complaint about the last one other than the difficulty ramping up drastically.

Most of the things mentioned aren’t things I would expect to change in a beta or early access. Which is not to say it is not impossible though.

Any impressions of the combat using a controller? I hated the first game’s mouse+keyboard combat, so admittedly I’m coming at it from a different perspective than fans of the first game.

I think it could work. I tried it very briefly with the Steam controller and something was most definitely not working right with the aiming in default setup. I’m sure it could be corrected, but I didn’t want to take the time. It seems like it would work OK with the Xbox controller, it’s a similar setup to Rebel Galaxy and that one worked fine.

The game right now reminds me of Drox Operative with Starpoint Gemini Combat. At a slower pacing on the strategic/RPG layer.

Have not reached the gameplay where I can build bases yet, so cant comment on that area.

That’s a shame. When I (very quickly) realised how empty Drox Operatives Galaxies (did they call them Sectors?) were, I quickly lost interest. I imagined a more replayable and actiony Space Rangers with limited scope. Having slightly better gear felt empty. Everything felt empty. I loved SPAZ.

Wow, I never found Drox Operative empty. Always another quest to do or another monster to kill.

Yea, to feel that it’s empty is a strange take on Drox. Drox requires one to pick a faction. After the decision, the action is fast and furious. I have a feeling it’s the same for SPAZ2 but right now i am afraid of messing things up because annoyed captains come straight to you for revenge! And if you piss off the wrong guy…

Right now, I’m visiting all starbases to quickly complete the 1st 2 arena battles. That should get me some more levels.

I am such a small fish in a big pond right now that I do not dare harvest from areas that belong to captains. So picking are slim.
Bandits do not appear frequently enough for me to pick on them (with assistance from other captains).

So the progression for a VERY conservative start is first Lore and open up the map. Then do the easy Arena battles (First 2 levels) in each start base.
I should be able to reach level 10 easily.

Will keep you guys posted on how the game play opens up. I am interested in how the mysterious infection come into play and how it changes the tempo of the game. But I’ll get some levels and equipment before I investigate the infection quest.

I didn’t mean empty of things to do, I meant that the game felt empty as an experience!

I find the missiles to be very meh compared to projectiles weaponry. Having the red pews pews hammering into the enemy ships feels much more “intuitive”. The aiming seems easier (even when compared to lasers). I’ll be retooling the ship for at least 3 projectile weaponry per side.

An interesting thing is that you can probably get away with upgrading just the left or the right broadside weaponry and keep the other side as is. Since you will be circle strafing like ships circling each other, having only 1 side kinda makes sense.

The only exception from what I feel from the numerous arena battle is that when the ship turns, sometimes the far side weaponry can shoot due to the line of sight suddenly becoming exposed when your ship bank. In those cases, the missiles or lasers can sometime take a shot.

So a projectile on left and missiles on right layout can bring the full weaponry to bear from the 3D mechanics of the game. Will be trying that out as I progress further!

How do i pick up weaposn i shoot off in battle?

I shot off two parts in a battle but couldn’t figure out how to pick them up. I assumed i would just get them if i left in the salvage screen, but they didn’t show up.