Mostly posting this to know if anyone else here plays it. I've only been playing for two days, so I'll try to make a basic OP:
PULSAR is best described as a mix between Guns of Icarus and FTL in a open-world, more sandboxy setting.
It's basically a starship very-light-simulator where players take different roles. There's The Captain, The Pilot, The Scientist, The Engineer and The Weapons Specialist. So 5 players per session.
It's not as complex and hardcore as it might sound (at least for now), so you can easily jump read the compact manual about a certain role, take on a game, and most captains will be really helpful if you're a new player. The game doesn't seem to be intended to be a hardcore sim.
Regarding content, there's enough fun stuff to get an idea of what's coming:
General:- Crew levels up, each level grants 2 talent points which makes the crew more efficient. Each role have general and specific traits to pick.
- Quest system in place that gives good amounts of money, experience and helps slow down 'Chaos' build-up (more about that later).
- Inventory system. Different guns are available, and improved tools (+3 Fire Extinguisher, etc). There's also a Scanner that helps to detect enemies and loot on planetside missions. The Captain can access and move items between crew members.
- Every class has its station. Pilots have the helm, Scientists deal with computer programs and viruses (like heals, buffs and debuffs), scanners, and also have passive area healing, Engineers deal with the power system and warp drive, Weapons Specialist with the main guns, missiles and nuclear devices. Captain have talents that benefit the whole crew, and he'll probably be too busy coordinating missions, routes and checking fuel/components/cargo/equipment/crew request to do anything else - but generally he can do whatever he wants.
- Captain can add money to a shared crew account ("allowance") which crew can use to buy better personal equipment. He can also, of course, withdraw money from there so a new player don't spend the last 12k on a gun that someone already have in their locker.
- Ship can be upgraded and slightly customized (component-wise). Maybe go full kinetic, or focus on beam weapons? Faster or longer jumps? Not enough money, so should you buy better guns or better thrusters?
- There are AI bots if you decide to play singleplayer (or if nobody joins on multiplayer). They are not ideal, but it enables you to learn the game, and they perform well enough on their roles.
However, as soon as you jump into a good session with a real crew (even on public games), you'll not want to play with AI. I already added around 10 good people in 2 days.- There's a save system, so you can revert if things go badly or if someone griefs you. I believe there are options like an "Ironman mode", and probably more difficulty options are planned.
Combat:- Space battles that could have catastrophic results if your engineer decides to overheat your ship and eject your core, or if your scientist is drunk and refuses to set the shields properly or activate the Emergency Shields program.
- You can already board and capture enemy ships, which include bosses that have the best ships and gear on the game (this MIGHT be unintended, though). Or you can tell one of your crew members to take a walk in an enemy ship, disable their shields, destroy their Engineering Subsystem and come back.
- Subsystems can be destroyed and repaired. They can also be set on fire, which can spread around the ship if no one looks at the Ship Status screen.
Exploration:- Planets that require the team to beam down and engage different enemies, find loot (including some good finds that might make the whole crew yell in excitement), and have everyone hug the Scientist and his passive healing when evil robots start firing everywhere.
- Minefields with scrap, different systems with different features, black holes.
Chaos: Chaos is the difficulty meter of the game. It raises little by little the more you play, and the more "evil" things you do (I only know of one 'evil' thing - not sure if there are more ATM).
It also raises the speed by which civilized systems become "Infected" systems. I have no idea of what the infection is all about, but infected systems have very strong ships that can instakill noobies.
There is something of a plot and NPCs on stations tells you some stories, but I'm not sure there's much info about plot-stuff already in the game.
You can go to
the Steam page for more information, as I wanted to write a nice review but simply can't at the moment.
There's a decently sized update coming up later this week (or today. Was planned for Dec 31st but devs bumped into bugs).
I admit it's currently not even close to feel like a finished game, but I had a lot of fun on it.
It also reminds me of Star Quest Online, an old obscure MMO - except PULSAR won't have multiple player ships
You CAN board an enemy ship, take it over, split your crew between ships and enable distress signals to experience larger scale combat. But only one ship is identified as a player ship, the other one is still considered enemy..so doesn't seem to be a finished feature, and developers already stated they aren't aiming for multiple ships (some people want fighters and carriers, though).Feel free to add me on Steam and we can play hide and seek and try to glitch through walls while our ships are being rammed by huge ships with grinders.
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Topic: PULSAR: Lost Colony (Read 7150 times)