this game is a super lightweight arcade game you spend 5 - 10 minutes a week. for what this game is, it is good because it does not expect the player to over do it. there are numerous suggestions relating to the game features among the reviews the players were not satisfied with, and the devs have actually fixed some if not all of those issues
for example there are no numeral representations of stats in the game, because the game does not expect you to master it, neither to play hours, and hours with it. it is not addictive the slightest. i am surprised that there are tiers in the game because those are very easy to unlock
the game is advertised with "ship building", but there is no building in the game, rather the player can buy ships, and in place of a "buy ship" list with "buy" text on it, the player has got to select ships to buy from a list with "build ship" text on it, so there is no actual ship building in the game, which feels like a back stab, because it makes the assumption of building ships contrary to what the game makes the player do, namely to just buy ships instead of building those. in place of building a ship there are modules the player can equip on its ship
this game also advertises itself as a real time strategy game (rts), that it is not, because there is no resource, neither territory management, but arcade combat only. on the starmap territories change, but the player is not securing those by helping the local faction, rather the player is excused to do more arcade combat by the enemy claiming back its lost territories
there seems to be only a single currency in the game, which i am extremely glad for. i think all games should be like this. however due to the game is advertised as a "ship building" game that single currency is portrayed also as a material, which is not bad in the context of bank, nand currencies, it is also not bad in a "lore" perspective, but bad in the context of this is not a "ship building" game, rather a "ship buying" game
i entered the game for the first time. buttons "continue", and "load game" were very confusingly "saying hello" to me in the main menu. i wondered who could have played this game before me. thankfully these buttons were yet to do anything
i started tutorial. the very first message welcoming the player states that it is very easy to control the game. in this message window there is a hint of how to see the next step in the tutorial in the bottom left corner. it is a small icon of a left clicking, and scrolling mouse. neither left clicking, nor scrolling, nor both in the same time work instead the player needs to click right on the mouse icon, because it is actually a button that calls the next tutorial message. other windows, and messages in the game are very not like this. hindsight i understand what happened, i assume this part of the game was over tested
the tutorial is incomplete to the extent that when the player starts a new game, other ui elements, gameplay features are described. the player can click on question mark buttons in its respective windows, however those question mark icons are not introduced to the player during any tutorials, except the player is told to open those with it being able to open just any tabs
when the player zooms in, the hud elements of ships do not remain a constant size, but are zoomed with the ships. on top of this the player can not see this meaningfull information anywhere else on the screen, not even on the right side where it can select its ships without looking at them, not even mentioning enemy vitals, because those are also lacking the same
in the tutorial it says "there are several ways to deselect ships", this means the ships are actually selected when you enter the tutorial by default. it then says "left click on the player's ship to select it" with two by now deselected ships on the screen how do i know which one is the player's? later in the tutorial it becomes clear that the tutorial messages are not aware of multiple ships being present in the tutorial. when i select any one of the two ships on the screen the tutorial does not go to the next step. okay, i don't know what to do, so i just select both ships just in case, now i should click on the mouse icon manually i guess. i pressed it, and to my relieve i don't need to control a ship on the next step of the tutorial, it just continues with explaining how to select multiple ships by mouse dragging. i am so relieved i did not break anything
during the tutorial as the player is clicking through with the mouse icon button, the game will spawn things, and populate the hud of the player gradually. the player is able to click the tutorial through without interacting with anything the tutorial presents it, or without doing anything but clicking on the mouse icon. it is just a bunch of text the player needs to read. the player can do the things the tutorial is telling it very optionally
when the player starts a new game, it is also strarting a tutorial with it during which the player is asked to open certain tabs, but when the player opens any, the tutorial messages disappear until the player closes all the windows, then once it has closed all the windows, the tutorial continues with telling the player open an other window, and so on
the game is very combat oritented. the player can not mine, can not trade goods, can not do anything else but combat. combat is relatively slow, and the artificial intelligence is not very good to the extent it is not intelligent. i am yet to notice any bugs with it myself, if any
the player can only trade, take missions, change loadout, save the game in safe sectors, and when the player loads in a game, pirates are spawned right on top of it, so the player can effectively turn off progression in all reachable sectors locking itself in case it forgets to buy weapon, and runs out of currency. i am yet to see what will happen that case
the music is not good because it is very repetitive, and it is like a constant high stake combat music
in some places the game is calling the areas around space stations "scenes" instead of calling those something more immersive like "sectors" that it actually does in other parts of the game
interestingly time passes by one "jump" unit when the player switches sectors, this of which i am also very glad for. it does very well fit the arcade, or pick up and play elements of the game
in the research tab via selecting a research the player is told that it must "use" equipment in that category in order to gain research points for that category, however this is not true to multiple extents, because if you click on the question mark icon in the research tab, you will see that the player is expected to jump from sector to sector with equipment related to that category, and that jump will earn the player research points, not the "use" of it, and because currently the research system will show the player what equipment tier to use in order to reach the next tier, but it appears to me that no matter what tier the player is using, it will just earn points regardless
i like the research system because the player earns points by spending time (number of costly jumps) with their equipment in that category in order to research those. this in conjunction with the single currency also fit the game's arcade, super lightweight elements
currently sensor range, and hyper drive researches share visited sector count for researching maybe intentionally
