Starsector: The 2D Space Sim That Ruined My Social Life 

Starsector is that kind of game when you can blink twice- And suddenly it is already a morning behind the window

A Starsector player with morals? Unheard of! Finally I’m not alone

One small correction about the game lore, I see this misunderstanding quite a lot actually. In Starsector our sector is located in the milky-way on perseus arm of the galaxy. The domain of man did not span multiple galaxies, in fact they didn’t rule the entire milky-way, they only controlled a chunk of galaxy, and implied to be a relatively small one compared to the entire galaxy. All this info comes from the ingame description of the cryosleeper.

Star Sector, give up your moral compass and start trading “recreational medicine” on the blackmarket, sell heavy weapons to the Luddic Path, start a food shortage to sell your stockpile at a higher price.

Man, I bought this game way back in 2012 when I was 13, back when it was still called Starfarer. I remember playing it late at night during a thunderstorm the day before the Mayan Calendar ended and at midnight a bunch of thunder and lightning occurred outside my house which made me think the world was ending. I have bought this game for so many of my friends and even family; I'm still surprised that so many people have no idea about this game. It's obviously come such a long way and you can really see the passion that Alex has put into the vision that he has.

Time for some (REDACTED) gameplay

This is the first time I have heard of Starsector, and you have instantly hooked me. Love these style of games and the devs that craft them into works of art.

There are a few games that i am genuinely scared to play... but because i know i would get lost in them, this is one example.

It's an incredible game, I just wish it had more in terms of story quests to do. Once I'd made a faction that had destroyed the Diktat and taken over Volturn, monopolizing the lobster trade and also unrelatedly controlling over 50% of the galactic market of all other supplies, pulling in 1,000,000 credits a month, there just... wasn't a whole lot left to challenge.

I love coming back to Starsector (nearly called it Starfarer then) once every now and again. enjoying the new updates and the continuing fantastic work of modders, especially in the realm of ships and the faction "building" side of the game. Glad to see you're enjoying it!

you're so RIGHT. how to finish my meanigless tasks at home / work to increase play / experimentation time is what i've been thinking about last week. ..non stop. love the game trying to understand modding etc. wow. a UNIVERSE within a UNIVERSE. what a grand time to be alive!

You come for the unparalleled exploration experience, you stay for the eldritch nightmare lying in wait behind the gates, singing a song that sounds oh so strangely familiar.

Has vibes of the Escape Velocity series from the 90s

Yoooooooooo Starsector vid, its been my jam ever since it was Starfarer.

I remember when I first played the game I used someone else’s key and I immediately fell in love with the game and I actually bought the game because I wanted to support the devs

I used Ssseth's Key he linked in the video, since then I've bought it like 5 times, once for myself and the rest for people who I knew would like it, because I knew they would never do it themselves.

I've had tons of fun with this one. My go to builds usually involve safety overrides and assault chainguns! Pure mayhem xD

0:57 Considering state of some plantes the "30h a day" line may very well be reasonable for a work shift in some systems

I hope eventually they flesh out the reputation and relationship aspect of the game, like being able to do missions for the quartermasters and base commanders, and have events trigger on planets based on your relationship with planet notables. A mod I like is the Mayasuran Navy, i like the idea of a storyline where you can rebuild that system, or a story where i can follow in the footsteps of warlord leonis

Ah yes! I was totally hooked on this a year ago. Ok, time for a reinstall. (oh, also bought it back then)

Reminds me a lot of Escape Velocity, the old shareware game from the 90s.

I've played over 1,000 hours of StarSector (possibly way more), but put it down two years ago after realizing how much time I was spending on it. I am spending a lot of mental effort not going back to check what the new update offers... because I don't know if I'll be able to stop again this time.

This looks like Space Pirates and Zombies but with sober artwork.

Having put in well over 200+ hours. I was so surprised playing as Luddic path or Pirates wasn’t in the base game. So used to modded gameplay I took it for granted playing as a raiding, smuggling and guns blazing pirate 😅

The best way I made money is by scrapping old stations at the edge of the sector. Multiple AI cores, tons of weapon data, and several large hi-tech components. If you can kit your fleet out to be speedy asf and have no issue with savescumming, it’s a great way to make cash!

Bought this game way back when scott manly first played it and you were only able to do battle scenarios, can confirm that it has grown into an epic open world game with unique stories to tell. I absolutely love the colony management aspect too.

It's nice to see more and more people are coming to understand the appeal of truly in-depth games like starsector and dwarf fortress. You should try CDDA too.

I have been playing starsector and this is now what, my 6th run? AND IM STILL FINDING OUT NEW SHIT ABOUT THE GAME its unreal It took me all that time to now realize.. if you double tap your frigates during a pursuit battle you can deploy them to the sides And then the secret encounters and missions that you just have to sorta find by yourself and theres no indication that they exist or how to get to them, have fun knowing your not 100%ing the game :)

Ok, less then 20 euro.. Social life is way more expensive. I did this for financial reasons 😁😁😁

I giggle like a schoolgirl each time I pull off a successful ramming maneuver and send a burning pile of twisted scrap from a capital hurling towards the enemy at 400 su/s

TRI-TACH-Y-ON

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes you’re on the ball

Ahhh yes... Starsector My Beloved

This looks just like space rangers, and space rangers 2 rise of the dominators. Love those games. Would love to see a reboot.

Find omens, buy omens, put reaper and whatever energy on omens, Fill omens with officers, Wolfpack tactics. Enjoy

I really appreciate that you touch on the story and writing because my god it is so well done for what it is currently and quite a lot of people seem to just either ignore it or never fully engage with it (which i don't blame them for). I'm a sucker for good writing and I have never dropped anything so much just to be able to read a screen of text thoroughly like i have while i was doing the various story missions you can find and just be absolutely sucked into the immersive and powerful storytelling that they have

Starsector: Spend the late game raiding all the factions as payback for what they did to your colonies! Grab the phantoms, have your marines pry their nanoforges off their corpses, and take their DRM blueprints for yourself!!

I rp as a galactic "Aid" agency, delivering "vaccines", "donor organs", and "agricultural equipment" across the sector!!

i'll say this, i might have bin spoiled, since i started playing the game with mods from the start. GOD BLESS THE UAF! Good video man, and awesome game.

I had it since it was called Starfarer. Every few months or when there is a big release, I install it again to listen to the music of the Janus Device while I sell drugs and bombs to terrorists while striking deals with the [REDACTED]. And the mods, oh the mods. Just... just buy this game.

Hello, so during the intro you were stuck in a slipstream, the only way to get out of it during most of the playthrough is to emergency burn and manualy controll your fleet. You are welcome.

Your commentary was spot on. The list you mentioned are “labor of love” games. I am hooked as well. One thing I would stress is the economics of the game. Basic trade is almost impossible due to the 30% tariff… unless you want to trade on the black market and be hated by everyone. Trying to keep your fleet in fuel and supplies is just as important as keeping every Ghengis Khahn wannabe from jacking up your fleet. The most recent patch has really applied a hard mode to late game play. I guess it’s time to learn new tactics. Burn brightly!

Hey hey people, Soul here

The lore of starsector has a lot of similarities to the x4 story

Damn......I remember hearing about this game like 10 years ago, but I always thought that it was kind of jank and shallow, but you've really sold me on this. I'm getting this.

@Soul Tomato , I fear I have bad news to you. This game has a large, thriving, active modding community. I literally cannot play Starsector anymore... without like 30 mods installed.

I always just love being a low-tech mishmash fleet and just using burndrives with mass gun emplacements to win the day.

I already had no social life, and now I'm in negative social life because of this game.

Solid vid. Loved the overall pacing, concise explanations, and sense of humor!

tri tachyion is not evil, they are perfect, they are managed.. they are.. great.

Just discovered your channel through After the end CK3 Lore videos and I would absolutely love if you did a playthrough of modded Starsector! I've been playing this game for almost a decade and the modding community is what keeps every new campaign fresh and interesting!

Only a few games have captured total immersibility in my life. Skyrim, The Witcher 3, Halo 3, Rimworld, Rocketleague and Starsector. All of these games have captured something inside of me that first playthrough that took forever to get rid of. Technically speaking, Rocket League is still the only game I've never "quit" or "given a break" too. Consistently for almost a decade now I've played that game once a week at MINIMUM. Starsector must've been around a 600+ hour journey before I finally took my first break. These games are rare, but fuck I love them

Im playing Starsector and needed more Starsector in my Starsector, so i ended up here. Nice vid man.

The idea of giving away an Alpha Core hurts my soul

I know the feeling. This week i lose about an hour of sleep every night because of this game - "just one last thing to do before i go to bed" uh-huh. It was even worse last weekend when i set up the alpha core farm and couldn't get myself to save and exit until ~2AM because i was having too much fun blowing up wave after wave after wave of drone ships and raking in all that sweet loot. P.S. You can in fact get a comission from Luddic Path or Pirates. But without mods there is literally no reason to do so except to make everyone hate you for some kind of twisted challenge.

Promise worth the buy ppl. Finally built my on gaming rig at the end of last year and this was one of the games I had my eyes on. It's not that expensive either like 15 bucks. And I'm addicted to the game as well and I'm not best either. And already put so many hrs in it. Lol great game 10/10.

Too bad it's not on steam. Anyway, looks much like Space Rangers.

Starsector my beloved I love this game.sadly I haven’t gotten to get the nexelin mod to work for it so haven’t played in awhile 😢

The game also works natively on linux. But dude, why even mention "looking for keys online" or "sharing keys", the game is death cheap AND by a tiny team. The whole video now got tainted with that single comment for me. 😞

Been playing this game for over 10 years, such a hidden gem, can't wait until the world discovers Starsector

Good to see this gem getting more coverage. I know SSeth got a lot of people into the game years ago, but since then the game has developed and expanded further, and there's a lot of cool stuff. Just an awesome space game, it's a shame that so many are turned off by the 2d top-down aspect.

...I must buy... Opens wallet, buys game.

Glad you are bringing more attention to this game! It’s amazing and the developers deserve all the success in the world

Oh god star sector I feel I like many got introduced to this by Szethzeench, only game I played for weeks. Incredible writing and love a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story

you can not join the pirates? hmm .. then i was able to trough a dlc .. but i definitively did a start as pirate run

Songs of Syx is doing this to me right now the game has been running 24/7 for 2 weeks even when I sleep lol

I could join the luddic path by joining the luddic church first, putting me at peace with them. Afterwards I could do a few quests and join them

Would be great that on the trade screen - if I'm checking best prices I should be able to right click and set nav to the system/planet that has the best price. Right now it just gives a general heading and distance and you have to go to map screen and find it yourself.

Persean League lore seriously missed here. They prey on independent colonies.

Strong recommendation on nexerelin and Luna lib mods you can then set the game up to have random sectors so not everything is in the same place every game and with Luna lib you can configure the game to prevent invasions and colonization until you found your first colony otherwise while your enjoying the game often times the war for the sector can more or less be finished by the time you start your own world

Fractal should really put Starsector on Steam, but I know they don't want to.

Live where there's actually winter. Play this game. Itll be spring before you know it.

Such an amazing game. I've been playing it off-and-on for over a decade and it still manages to stay on my mind.

Oh and for those wondering it's $15, it's not on steam, and save the email (or code) they send you with the key. The game does not auto update and you may need to enter it again when you re-download the new client. Also even if you suck with piloting you can always let the AI take over until you figure it out.

Such a fun game.

another game that capable of doing that is space rangers a war apart its a really old game just that version is the HD remaster cause choose your own adventure games especially in 2000s is very rare

Never heard of this game buy it looks really good!

Ludd has truly blessed discerning captains with D-Mods and Derelict Operations.

I'm surprised and a bit sad people rarely compare Starsector to Space Rangers, the games are very similar

For the old folks around here this game has (pen and paper) Car Wars or Mech Warrior vibe to it. It’s the game 13 year old me would have loved to play. Some of the mods do compliment the game well. Buy it, it’s worth it. Independent developers like this amaze me. Great video, I need to reinstall this game!

well for easier battles you can hold shift and the ship will turn to your mouse

Makes me happy to see this game get some love and views

"Social life?" You mean... like things were before 2020? Unpossible.

Reminds me of old school 'Netrek' Too bad this has no multiplayer

Attention spacers! You can now update to j23 just check the forums!

The game is great, the comunity is cringe. Change my mind

I've grown to hate the Persean League and their directed energy missiles.

I agree with everything this man said. I spent at least 3k hours in the past 2 years on this game.

Really entertaining chill review. Subscribed.

If you enjoyed this game you should try Avorion!

Why did you turn in an alpha AI core? why tho?

What an amazing game. Thank you for this video.

remembers kids, 2 ships for every [redacted], good rule of thumb. also installing this bad boy again, 100+ mods, 800 battle size, 4k tv, lets go.

The day before it hits 1.0/there's a price increase, I'm buying everyone who likes games a copy. I'm also buying myself a copy all over again.

Brother Cotton saying "We can't expect Ludd to do all the work" is peak meming. You, sir, have deserved my subscribtion.

Welp, you might have just restarted my descent into madness with starsector again. Have you given battle brothers a try yet, its another cool combat, exploring the world, and never seeing your friends kinda game.

I recently participated in a game jam and i was trying to make a game i would love to play that i didn't think existed, just found this today and i must say this is what i was going for!!! Are you able to fly the ships manually or it's entirely point and click?

Nexerelin, HMI, industrial evolution and various QOL mods are amazing for the next playthrough. It basically quadruples the amount of content of an already content dense game.

Amazingly you can still get this game for free. Our friend Sseth gave out a CD key in a video years ago that still works.

When I first got the game I nearly put it down because I didn’t quite get the combat. Glad I didn’t. It’s in my top 5 all time greats Also, I’m not a fan of the default combat controls. Thank goodness they have a more intuitive alt mode.