I am wondering about that as well, because they seemed strangely absent in the part they would have been most needed on Tom’s stream (it struck me in the exploration phase of the game).
Let’s be super clear for thread watchers:
Star Traders: Frontiers is now out of early access, they released 1.0.
It’s a good game, especially if you like space trading and ship upgrading.
I think the systems are transparent enough. The travel incidents that @justaguy2 mentioned are documented well enough. Just pause the game and go over them if you want. You can even sort your crew by traits and see who prevented which mishap. This will also give you a sense for what abilities to choose when crew members level up.
But my concern, which I think @justaguy is touching on here by bringing up decisions, is that there seems to be a lot of detail for detail’s sake. And I’m not convinced the different parts relate. There’s the ship-to-ship combat, the Darkest Dungeon ground combat, the faction grind campaign level gameplay, and a bit of Pirates-esque resource/crew management. Each of those things felt like separate self-contained modules, all peppered with occasional level-up or upgrade options, most of which seemed not very important. Motes of swirling space dust.
-Tom
Could anyone compare and contrast this with Space Rangers 2, one of my favorite games of 10 years ago or so?
A pale shell by comparison. I agree with Tom (this is somewhat rare) that there are many systems but they seem perfunctory. My experience with this so far is that it is significantly less than its parts.
I’m convinced nothing will ever top Space Rangers 2 in its ability to create a living, breathing (and crazy ass) universe. This one doesn’t come close. But I haven’t found any space game since that comes close.
That said, I have 67 hours played in Star Traders: Frontiers. I find it enjoyable and relaxing. I agree with Tom and @Granath that the parts don’t mesh well into a whole. But 67 hours later, I keep coming back.
The problem I see with the game is that none of the three main “minigames” (card game/ crew combat/ ship combat) are actually that engaging.
The character progression system is nice though, as is the general system of contacts. The writing for the storyline bits is very good (by the standards of such things). If combat was a bit more interesting this would be a great game.
This sums up my feelings about the game precisely. For the minigames, I do the same thing over and over. And over and over. The rest of the game, I loved while I played it. I will return when the iOS version comes out. I suspect it is better suited for mobile.
At every point, Star Traders gives you more options than you probably think you need. Even without permadeath, it invites additional journeys. In the middle of writing this, I realised I could probably make a prison barge, filling my ship with cells and hunting down all the galaxy’s ne’er-do-wells. It’s that or the party bus next. My imagination is all fired up, ready to embark on another disastrous experiment.
Even if I do dream of having an auto-resolve button for fights, I’m still pretty smitten. It’s an exceptional space sim that’s happy to let you just while away the years, smuggling spice and getting into bar fights, all while this elaborate and galaxy-shaking space opera plays out behind you. It’s shining a spotlight on the Bossks of the universe, sort of just getting on with their job and sometimes being tangentially related to important stuff. And Bossk is the best.
Nice review. As an aside, RPS’s recent recent re-design took it from ugly to uglier.
I’m a little baffled that Templar Battleforce has a tutorial, but Frontiers, a game with like 5x as much stuff to figure out, has sweet fuckall.
Tutorials seem to often be a casualty of Steam Early Access, now that that’s a thing. Templar Battleforce predates Early Access. (Edit: oops, this is not true. But I don’t know if TB got an early access release – in 2015 not as many things did.)
But in this new dystopian world where developers release their unfinished games for purchase and – for some reason – players eat this up, It’s a waste of time to make a tutorial while the game’s constantly changing, and a low priority when the game reaches 1.0 because the majority of the players have been teaching themselves the game all along.
Probably because Templar has 5x less stuff, so is 5x easier to make a tutorial for! :)
Templar released on mobile before pc I believe.
Just curious roughly how many systems there are in the galaxy the game generates? Thanks.
A Galaxy is composed of Quadrants. Each Quadrant contains multiple Systems. Each System contains one or two Landing Zones. The default Galaxy contains 38 Quadrants. Creating a custom Galaxy allows one to specify between 12 and 40 Quadrants and the density of the Galaxy (Minimum, Very Sparse, Sparse, Scattered, Standard, Packed, and Maximum).
@Mysterio OK, thanks for that. Game seems to be getting good reviews. Just when I thought it was time to stop buying more games… :)
I think you may have just hit upon a profound truth about software development. Huh. Thanks!
Just picked this up. Going to play as an explorer in my first game. No idea what I’m doing, but that’s part of the fun I guess. :)
I’m playing an Explorer (using my own template) for my first run, too! Everything was going swimmingly (Captain at level 6) until I decided to engage a Pirate ship rather than surrendering.
I chose poorly. The Pirate ship knocked my ship components with Pilot points to 0, which left me dead in the water for the Pirate to board me and take all of my cargo. Bastard. Although my ship components were wrecked (no functional weapons!), my hull was still intact, so I was able to keep my ship.
After repairing some of my components at a shoddy starport (expensive!), I managed to limp to a friendly system with a doc. But now I’m heavily strapped for funds and keep running into ships that mean me harm. It’s tough deciding on what to spend my limited funds when my crew’s battered and pissed, and I owe many of them multiple months in back pay.
Loving the game thus far and looking forward to the devs continuing efforts to polish it!