Heeeello
nurse peoples !
Long time no see...
Anywho I'm here to talk about Starfarer (duh)
This game here is a 2D space opera action RPG game in a "bird's eye" point of view
('cept there's no birds in space you're gonna say, DURR, what I mean is that the viewpoint is similar to the original touhou games as in you see the action from "above")
for peoples that are well knowing of video games: this game is Mount&Blade in a futuristic setting
for peoples who are NOT familiar with video games outside touhou here:
This game is a action-RPG with a little bit of strategy, you can control one of your own units (Spaceships in this case) manually while the rest of your troops are A.I. controlled and will follow your orders should you issue any, if you don't they'll just happily roam about and kill ennemies during fights...
The game brings A LOT of things to consider
-Your ships are customisable, they have weapon slots wich each have a size, you CANNOT fit a weapon larger than the slot's size but you CAN fit a smaller weapons on a bigger slots
-Adding weapons consumes the ship's "Ordinance Points" or OPs, each ship has set amount of OPs that it cannot exceed
-OPs may be used for "hull mods", Hull mods are modifiers of the ship's stats they affect the ship in multiple ways but consume OP like weapons
-your ship comes in with a Shield, shield can help a ship shrug off damage for a set period of time before they are over-burdened and short circuit your ship due to flux
-Flux is a sort of "heat" indicator only applied to energy, taking shield hits and firing weapons will raise the flux levels of your ship, let it be known however that if your ship is not submitted to ANY flux at all, your engines will get a boost and allow higher top speeds, however when the flux is high the ship achives the "supercharged" status in wich all energetic weapons see their damage output boosted, should the flux reach 100 percent of its capacity, your ship will be overloaded and is deprived of weaponry and shields until flux levels go back in order, note as well that firing may not overload your ship but shield hits WILL provoke an overload however.
And there's much more to it yet !
You'll need to hire crew to man your ships, purchase the weapons to put on your new ship hulls, purchase supplies to proceed to repairs, purchase marine troopers to board that CAN be boarded and thus allowing to use them as your own...List STILL goes on
The game features 4 main categories of ships
Fighters, Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers and Capital Ships
Fighters being somewhat fragile they excel at harassing bigger ships, forcing their flux levels to rise and even pack firepower to slowly burn away their armor and possibly take down ships, their usefulness skyrockets if paired with a ships dotated of a Flight deck wich allows them to repair and rearm damaged fighters as well as replacing missing/destroyed ones
(note: thoses cannot be used by the player directly and are only A.I. driven)
Frigates are scouting ships, able to reach high speeds and a decent firepowers, they are extremely fragile compared to bigger ships however and are much bigger than fighters, flying thoses ships require a good bit of skill and cautious tuning, note also that some frigates made in such way that they purely rely on speed and have no shields...
Destroyers are where the big boys start to roll out, thoses ships do not require quite as much skill given you know how to properly outfit them, thoses ships are built to be able of totting bigger toys and medium sized weapon slots are somewhat common to the ships of this size, they are a bit less maneuverable than frigates but have a MUCH higher destructive potential mostly due to the fact that this tonnage of ship is the one were the use of flight decks become possible...
Cruisers are much beefier than destroyers and frigates, they pack armor and weaponry to suit such size increase but their maneuverability is a total joke compared to frigates although their shields and armors are way to resistant for frigates to even dent thoses in one on one engagements, thoses ships are very capable and can take on Capital Ships with actual chances of coming out the victor
Capital Ships are hulking spaceships packing a weaponry FAR exceeding that of destroyers and frigates, theses space monsters have the bility of filling half of the map with lead, lasers and missiles at a ridiculous rates, they are not to be trifled with and are utterly devastating in the right hands
I think thats most of the game covered here...
Currently the game is still under developpement but available for purchase at a quite good price (less than 10 euros), by doing this you access the game in its current state with a sandbox campaign mode where you can do whatever you want in one system, the game also heavily supports modding and even encourages it...
From entire fleets to just new weapons, EVERYTHING can be done, all you really need is an ability to make sprites and coders from the community won't mind doing the coding part of it...
....
Yes I AM hoping for someone to make a touhou mod for it cuz it would just be a load of fun
Link to game's site
http://fractalsoftworks.com/Link to the official forums of it
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/AND a lil' vid to show it off
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwFqzilbnnkNOW i hope thats enough info if you got questions just fire away...
