Played this too for a while, was not bad at first but after i've got myself a corvette and some fleet it all went downhill.
In a non-overworld fight the AI fleets will lose pretty much every time agains't player fleets due to active and passive upgrades which the AI doesn't have. Amor plating for every ship seems like a nobrainer, costs next to nothing and significantly decreases received damage from enemy light guns (like 30-70%).
Bough some boarding ships from black market and started capturing frigates & other boarding ships. So pretty much every fight have gone like: pull all the boarding ships back so that they are not killed, let the fighters and gunships do their thing, slaughter the enemy big ships using the main ship except for the ones i intend to capture. After everything else is dead, attack the big ships using fighters with crew killer ammo then board them. ??? profit.
Enemy fleets pose little threat even to a player controlled corvette with active abilities (like 3 different abilities to quickly get out of range, auto repair, reset cooldowns). In a frigate i rarely had to flee, in a destroyer i just press the auto repair once in a while and don't even have to move + destroyer gets a "mind control enemy frigate" ability.
Also destroyed both story corvette and destroyer on the first try because they didn't try to attack me for some reason when i was shooting them from max range, they just held their position. So i jammed the right mouse button and gone to make some tea.
The UI is fucking atrocious, both the strategic one and tactical one. Every simple thing will require 10 clicks and then lead to unintended consequences.
Wanted to make a "boarding fleet" and "combat fleet" and switch between the two depending on the mission. But of course it turned out that in order to do that i have to detach all ships from the current fleet one by one, then make the other fleet join my main ship, then create a new fleet from one of the ships (because of course when you remove 10 ships from the fleet they go to the global map as 10 separate ships not as a new fleet) and then select all the ships that i detached and make them join the new fleet. Then do the same again when i want to switch my main ship back to the other fleet.
Also i've found the "remote interface" feature after i've captured the first base which lets one control any owned ship on the map in a ship mode. It turned out that in order to use it one has to close all the windows after docking to the station which allows to walk in first person around the base using wsad and then there is this big red door that opens on approach.
Never would have found it without google. But of course you can't control the currently docked fleet like that, cant take missions and can't order ships built on global map. So not very useful.
Its only possible to order ships built at a certain non-controlled station by docking with that station. For controlled stations one still has to dock but its possible to order ships at other controlled station. So strategy much wow.
Anyone knows a good similar game to this one?
I would love to play one that is more complete and less buggy.
I looked at Star Sector but it also seems unfinished and Avorion has you creating your own craft from zero which is something I never cared about.
Maybe Space pirates and zombies. The first one is more story driven and 2d and the second one is more sanboxy and 3d.
No trading, base and fleet management there though, so not so similar. You only control one mobile base and may have a maximum of 3 AI controlled ships helping you (which are largely useless except for having the AI mine asteroids for a hour of real time to grind money) in spaz 1.
Not entirely sure about the spaz 2 but i didn't like it much so i dropped it quickly. There is a ship constructor there though, like you have these blocks of engines, reactors, weapons, hangars, special systems etc and you may combine them any way you want, limited by hull stability or something. These blocks were bought and sold separately at friendly stations and one could even saw some off the enemy ships.
So far I am stealing any enemy corvettes I find. Enemy Frigates are much much harder, including big transport or mining ships. You need like 15 boarding craft to capture one of those.. or a group of crew killing ammo Fighter or Gunships but only TSF seems to have that upgrade and I can only get their ships at Black Market when they appear there and they are much more expensive.
I've upgraded all my fighters and gunships with crew killer ammo, i think it depends on the station at which you are doing the upgrades, not on the faction to which the ship belongs. Done it to pride, kind, and beggar ships. Black market should be doing them.
