How to Play Starsector

so you saw those Etsy attached video too good get ready to jettison your crew into space learn to hate tariffs and violate the laws of physics and ethics you can call me Ezekiel this is star sector let's jump in welcome to star sector when you start a new game you'll have a bunch of parameters to customize including what fleet you start out with pick whatever you want the last thing to do before starting the game is allocating your first skill points on the left are the skill categories a skills level can't be higher than its categories level I find these skills to be the most useful now we're ready to take on the galaxy even though the galaxy is randomly generated the core worlds are always the same with maybe an extra planet or star system from the random generator inhabiting the Core Worlds or six regular factions and two hostile factions the political map looks something like this something to notice that the factions can only control individual planets not whole star systems so multiple factions can be present in the same system you interact with the galaxy through your fleet the combined stats of your ships determine how much fuel cargo and crew it can carry the most important kind of cargo is supplies it's used to maintain your ships combat readiness combat readiness isn't exactly an accurate description though while it is true that low combat readiness makes a ship worse in combat it's more representation of a ship's overall condition ships with low combat readiness will suffer damage and eventually be destroyed to do anything in star sector you need money a great way to make money in the core systems is trade star sector features a simulated economy that means supply demand NPC traders and everything else you'd expect when visiting a planet you can bring up information on the producers and consumers of goods when you find one planet with a surplus and another with a deficit you'll have found your trade route but wait what's with the stupid tariffs in star sector the open market is subject to a 30 percent tariff even the best trader you'd stop being profitable when the tariffs are that high luckily the black market exists not only is the black market exempt from tariffs but it also includes illegal goods the downside to using the black market is that you'll lower your standing with a faction in charge of the planet this means their patrols will stop you more often if they catch you with illegal goods they'll confiscate them and you'll lose even more standing with that if your standing gets too low you'll have problems luckily there's a way to avoid government scrutiny this brings us to navigation getting around the sector has a surprising amount of depth the first issue you have to deal with is your transponder when in civilized space it's illegal not to have it on in practical terms having the transponder on does two things first it increases your detection range you can see how close you are to being detected by other fleets from the pulse emanating from them second any business you do including on the black market will be tracked this means that the only time your transponder should be on is when you're engaged in legal business in civilized space otherwise keep it off next is your burn type the first type is going dark when you go dark your speed will be cut in half but so will your detection range overall good for sneaking past patrols the next option is sustained burn it massively increases your fleet speed but it lowers your maneuverability you also have to stop moving to activate it this makes a stained burn best for long distance travel last is emergency burn it does more or less the same thing as sustained burn but it doesn't affect maneuverability and you don't have to stop to activate it however its effects are only temporary this makes emergency burn useful when trying to pursue an enemy or when you need to make an escape to get between star systems you have to go into hyperspace traveling in hyperspace is the same as in regular space but moving burns antimatter fuel if you run out of fuel you'll get pulled into the nearest gravity well usually this will only damage your ships but if the gravity well happens to be a black hole you're screwed to get into hyperspace you need to use a jump point to get back into real space you also have to use a jump point planets and jump points orbit stars in real time so every time you arrive in a system nothing will be where it was last time to avoid the limits of jump points you can use the transverse jump ability which lets you exit a system from anywhere regular trading is great in all but there's a better way to make money missions first we'll talk about trade missions of which there are two kinds regular trade missions and trade contracts missions originate from a planet the further away you are from that planet the longer it'll take you to receive the mission when you get a mission you like accept it immediately missions go away after a certain amount of time to complete a trade mission you'll have to buy whatever the mission asks for and deliver it to the listed planet the reward for these contracts is always multiple times the market value so it doesn't matter too much where you get the goods from trade contracts are found in bars if the text says something about a concerned man or woman that's a trade contract unlike trade missions a contract gives you the goods that need to be transported all you need to do is deliver them so they're really delivery missions if you're sick of the core world you should consider exploration exploration involves going to unexplored systems and looking for ancient treasures in habitable planets all the while trying not to get killed by the remnant you'll want to bring a lot of fuel and supplies with you running out of anything well away from the Core Worlds is a death sentence another thing you'll want to bring with you is heavy machinery you'll need it to survey planets and perform scavenging operations there are four ways to make money exploring the first is surveying planets you only need a certain amount of crew supplies in heavy machinery to perform a survey larger and more dangerous worlds are more costly to survey at the end of a survey you'll get the survey data for the planet which you can sell the better the planet the more valuable the data will be if the world has ruins on it leave the survey menu and return to the world you can explore the ruins for valuables some ruins can have a lot of valuables next or domain era treasures these are usually where you'll find the best loot including AI cores sometimes they'll have automated defenses as soon as you destroy the defences even begin salvaging third or debrief fields and derelict ships to scavenge a debris field line into it and activate the scavenge ability if you find a derelict ship you can either salvage it for materials or try to recover it in which case it will join your flee 4th and last or exploration missions you get exploration missions the same way you get trade missions usually these missions are to survey a planet or explore a domain era probe these missions are great because not only do they direct you to a planet or probe worth exploring but you also get to keep what you find and get paid to do it by the way if you spend enough time hanging around bars you might find a special mission a very very special mission combat and this game is good really good it only took me 20 hours to figure that out you'll see why that isn't a bit the sector is a dangerous place combats inevitable fighting with civilian transports and fuel tankers probably isn't the best idea so you'll want to include data combat ships in your fleet combat ships come in many sizes from tiny tugs to massive capital ships these ships will usually specialize in roles like combat carrier missile boat or even a physics violating phase ship ships can then be further customized with weapons and modifications in combat you control your flag ship directly and the rest of your fleet from the tactical map each ship has a shield and a flux capacity if a projectile hits the shield it won't do any damage however each time the shield blocks an attack the ship will build up blocks flux also builds when a ship fires its weapons if the flux gets too high the ship will overload while overloaded the ship is defenseless to prevent this a ship convinced it's flux early that's all simple enough but combat gets really interesting when capital ships get involved you see shields usually aren't powerful enough to protect whole ships this means they need to be directed toward the enemy because of this smaller nimbler ships have an important role to play while the capital ships distract each other escorts can sneak behind the enemy shields and deal damage directly to their holes battles like this or where the combat really shines that's also why it took me so long to get the combat in the early game you'll be too poor to afford capital ships and battles between only escorts aren't any fun when you finally do get a fleet big enough for a proper fight you should consider bounty hunting factions post bounties on pirates deserters and stations to get their reward you'll have to find the target using the hints the bounty gives you then you'll need to beat the target in a battle you can see the composition of a targets fleet from their bounty as your wealth grows you might start to ask why are these jerks in charge why aren't I in charge luckily you can be you can create colonies on uninhabited planets well you can create a colony anywhere you'll want to consider the planet stats a high hazard rating means that colony will be more expensive to maintain the accessibility rating determines how easy it'll be to import goods and export products last you'll want to make sure the planet has good and plentiful natural resources usually Terran and similar to Terran worlds will fit these criteria even with a good planet starting a colony isn't easy the second a colony becomes profitable it'll get attacked by pirates pather z' and even the regular factions a successful attack will lower the planet stability stability gets too low the colony will de civilize and be destroyed you don't want that to happen to keep your colony secure and profitable you'll want each colony to have these buildings a Waystation and an upgraded spaceport to increase accessibility an orbital station patrol HQ and weapons batteries to increase stability and massively improve the colony's defenses by the way all three of these buildings can and should be upgraded except for the patrol HQ upgrading a patrol HQ takes an industry slot on most colonies you'll want that slot for something else and last a comms array to increase stability although these are both unstable locations found in the system not in the colony itself once a colony is secure and stable you can invest in its industry a large population means a planet's industries will produce more goods and have more slots for new industries larger colonies will also have better defenses while a colony's population will grow on its own you can increase the population faster by spending money on growth incentives and by declaring the colony of Freeport free ports also increase accessibility but the lower the stability the last thing a planet needs is an administrator you can administer planets yourself though to do it well you'll need a lot of skills why waste your precious skill points when you can hire someone else to manage the planet for you if human administrators are in your style you can put an AI in charge you can also put a is in charge of individual industries just remember that this is extremely illegal and the AI might have its own ideas on who should be in charge doing all this is expensive though really expensive I'd recommend holding out on founding colony's until you have several million credits so now our colonies are set up secure and profitable but the Pirates keep attacking them and these paths are sell sound like trouble if the pirates and pathos keep giving you problems you can give them problems right back by destroying their bases if you're having trouble finding these bases try visiting a bar on one of the affected planets there's a good chance that someone there I'll send you in the right direction well congratulations you now know everything you need to know in order to play star sector right now since this video is a little on the short side I want to dedicate this last part 2 tips and tricks first is to save often this game has no autosave feature it sucks to lose hours of progress because you forgot to save getting places can take a while you can hold a shift key to speed up time unfortunately this doesn't work in battles while you're out exploring fire off a sensor burst every once in a while you can find very valuable things doing this many unexplored systems have roamed in feats in them they seem to have something to do with the Tri tachyon corporation regardless of where they come from they're dangerous however destroying them often yields a I cores if you find a remnant fleet that's weaker than yours or even better a lone ship attack it the AI cores alone are worth it when selling AI cores never sell them on the market open up the comms directory and sell it to someone there I like selling to try tachyon because they pay out three times more than any other faction since try tachyon are coming up so much I might as well tell you about a lore about them according to their description the company's charter self modifies based on algorithms this might mean that the whole corporation is one massive AI that uses humans as part of its algorithms anyway back to tips if you get stranded never spam distress calls only use it once and wait if you use it more than once the game will just leave you stranded if you're wondering where your shields are during battles you have to right-click to activate them ships in your fleet will perform better when commanded by officers you can find officers in a planets comms directory you don't have to travel to your colonies to manage them you can manage them remotely from the command menu in fact you can do all sorts of cool things from the command menu and last check out the mods there's all sorts of great stuff out there so yeah that was star sector feel free to ask any questions you have in the comments I'll get back to you pretty quick up next we're going back to Victoria too but this time with a bit more flavor see you then [Music] [Music]

Channel: CallMeEzekiel

Views: 175,058

Rating: 4.9061809 out of 5

Keywords: CallMeEzekiel, How to Play, Gameplay Footage, Tutorial, Guide, Strategy, Memes, Funny, Review, Starsector, Starfarer, Star Sector, Space, Mount and Blade

Id: O6WNJyJsxEY

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 11 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Slavic_Superstar]

i will never not upvote this video

[u/Owlizard_Empire]

I just started without knowing anything, and I think I enjoyed the game much more because of it. I also only played on iron mode vanilla so that might also contribute.

[u/Space_Reptile]

My personal Favorite will still be Sseths, not so much a step by step 101 guide, but more a "look how fucking cool this is, play it" video

[u/Thesovietwrath]

That's Spiffing Brit's exploit, isn't it?