I don’t quite understand this mechanic, especially since the friendly AI has had little trouble in the fights I’ve seen. The tactical view allows you to submit orders to your ships, though this takes up a Command Point, and you have a limited number of these to use at a time. Pressing Tab brings up a tactical view and pauses the game, which can also be achieved by pressing space at any time. When the flux meter is completely empty, for some reason your ship can go faster, and while I suspect this is because more energy has been transferred to the engines, nothing really tells you that. You can also vent flux, but this makes your ship very vulnerable. Most weapon fire creates “Soft Flux” which dissipates when not using weaponry, but shield damage creates “Hard Flux” which only goes away when you’re not using the shield. Your ship might have a shield to block some incoming damage, but instead of having a shield health Starsector uses flux, a kind of heat bar that increases as your shield takes more damage or you fire weapons. Most ships have multiple weapons, and while you can manually control each of these by switching with the number keys, by default these will fire by themselves. You control your flagship with WASD, and have to aim your primary weapon by maneuvering your ship. Starsector uses the age old RPG mainstay of instanced battles, and this is clearly where most of the development time has gone. Set in a 2D universe, the aim of this game is to build a fleet of ships, earn money and kill pirates and space-mormons. I’m really impatient, so to help pass the time I’ve been playing an Elite-lite in the form of Starsector this week.

I will soon be finished with my second year of university, and I’m looking forward to summer mostly because I’ll finally have time to play Elite: Dangerous than anything else. Previews // 11th May 2016 - 7 years ago // By Jinny Wilkin Starsector Preview

Best starsector ships