Been following and playing this one since probably the 0.6 to 0.7 builds, playing nearly every update and unfortunately I cant say I reccomend this one, not yet. This game should be right up my alley, but unfortunately in its current state, I cant say it is.
I want to say to the devs: you should be very proud of what youve made so far. Theres a strong base here that with a lot of refinement can turn into something amazing, but in my opinion you went into the full 1.0 version too soon, and with no easily visible roadmap, nor promise of content to come (that I'm aware of at least), I sadly cannot reccomend this, much as I want to.
In short:
There isnt enough content here for a 1.0, (or recently 1.1 release) Too few weapons with any meaningful differences, too few ships with too few guns on them at such a short engagement ranges, with too few highly repetetive mission types and no story to speak of. Sectors feel just about dead/empty except for a couple mining ships and an occasional transport that flies from point A to point B, sometimes getting blasted.
That combines with fleet restrictions that dont allow for true build diversity, even at maximum level with all weapons/ships unlocked, and its a particularly painful grind to get there in the first place.
Hell, you cant even customise the paint job on your ships, though you can at least name them, upgrade them a bit, n level them up. Though being honest even those systems still feel undercooked and somewhat meaningless. Extra health is nice, but what if we could say, unlock extra gun slots for the ships, or even choose different builds with those slots. Say, swapping out a size 2 weapon slot for two size 1's, or a size 3 weapon slot for two size 2's or four size 1's, letting you add weaker but extra more weapons.
Additionally, the largest ships especially are gigantic, and theres often an insane amount of empty space where there *could* be extra guns or even utilities. Repair bays, or attack/repair/salvage drone launchers, or inbuilt missile silo's/rocket pods. Hell, even tractor beams or shield projectors to protect yourself and your fleet if you REALLY want to lean into the sci-fi angle. Just, something to make each ship have a unique factor beyond its stat block. The ships also lack proper individual identity, with the larger ships especially all feeling more or less the same except for the amount of guns onboard and a few barely notable speed, health, and turn-rate tweaks.
Theres also unfortunately no modding support either, something the game desperately needs if it wants to survive, and to truly leave a mark. Modders have historically had no qualms fixing, adding to, or entirely changing entire sections of the game, improving and adding their own spins and tweaks. For example, modders enabling players to drive boats and tanks in nuclear option. It completely changes the gameplay, while still keeping to the core of the game itself.
I mentioned it briefly, but the complete lack of story leaves players such as myself lacking context on why we should really invest into this world. Building our fleet and OBTAINING WEALTH is all well and good, but...theres only so much *to* that. The consistent use of synthesised AI voices also gets rather grating, with the same voice lines playing over and over and over, while the user interface can also bug out fairly often. Ships will change their stance on their own, meaning ships that were otherwise set to aggressive behaviour can sometimes turn their brains off and go passive, or defensive. Additionally, the ai enemies in general lack strategy, with larger ships just tending to float at each other until theyre in range, and unloading everything instead of staying in formation or flanking, or staying at maximum range to snipe at you. Sure you can set your own larger ships to engage at a set range, but...theres no "engage at the maximum range of all your collective weapons" button, for example. Hell, the larger ships dont even rotate to angle the most guns at what theyre shooting at, meaning often less than half the ships available weapons will be firing at a target.
On the note of angling things: fighters for whatever reason seem to fly like fighter *jets*, instead of space craft. This also applies to the larger ships, but its far more notable in the smaller ones. Theres an entire axis of directional movement missing across the board for all ships that COULD lead to far more interesting gameplay, and higher skill engagements.
God, gigantic paragraphs out of the way, I hope this was at least semi coherent and wasnt harsh, as my intent is to provide feedback without attack. If you're the devs and are reading this, I wish you guys the best with this project. Theres so much potential, but itll be a lot of work to shape it into something iconic.
And to you, random person reading this: I hope you have a good day. Thanks for stopping by n giving my rant a read. Good luck commanders, o7
