Starsector! A cool space game with awesome explosions and space horrors

[VioletHeaven]

This is the long awaited Starsector thread! All about the alpha game Starsector. It's been in development for 9 years and I've honestly fallen in love with everything about it, because you can really play it how you like, align yourself with specific factions, whatever you like!

My very first playthrough saw me play as a lone salvager barely scraping by on fuel and supplies until on a whim I decided to chase a sensor ghost, and found a PARAGON FUCKING CLASS BATTLESHIP appear out of the Hyperspace void. While my sensors officer was extremely confused as that vessel was sighted doing independent maneuvers mere hours ago, I decided to nab it because even if it was fucking haunted, it is extremely powerful.

Below is a screenshot of my live reaction while my fiancé was sleeping, and here's also another screenshot of what your sensors officer says when that sort of thing happens.

So basically overnight I went from being a lonely scrapper with a half functional cruiser I'd salvaged after a war between Hegemony and the Persean League, to a fleet with one of the most powerful battleships in the whole sector. I was elated! And then every single faction started reaching out to me, trying to get me to run missions for them because I was an unflagged fleet. Perfect for disrupting a critical military trade convoy between Hegemony worlds for a Sindrian Diktat milop, or finding and extracting an officer from a Tri-Tachyon blacksite. Within 5 cycles I had enough credits to buy my very first Atlas freighter and a Prometheus class tanker... and it went from there!

Captain Bunny is a very loyal, diplomatic, and steadfast fleet commander. She doesn't take many risks, at least in part due to her lonely lifestyle as a scrapper, and this shows in a very cautious combat doctrine. Even with a fleet comprised of two Paragon class battleships, and her flagship [REDACTED] capital (received as captured material from a Tri-Tachyon blacksite raid), among other escort cruisers and destroyers, she prefers staying well outside of enemy range, only dipping in to exploit weaknesses.

After receiving the Paragon class battleship, she got entrenched in the mire of Faction politics in the Persean Sector. Eventually, after a pilgrimage around the great Luddic churches, she decided to reject this lifestyle of playing messenger, assassin, and spy between Factions, and so started a small colony on an icy world well outside the reach of most of the big players.

Anyway, so this is a thread about my love for Starsector! And yours too, if you play!
Created in part with inspiration from @invader_gvim's Starsector post.