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[Majestic7]

Yeah, when I can afford it, I only use frigates for pursuit then on. They are too fragile. I know that a really good could player can make wonders with an agile frigate, but I'm not that good. Plus I prefer tanking to kiting anyway. 

[Blastbeard]

Monitors are kind of slow but reasonably good at not exploding, provided their shields are up. They have a habit of drawing enemies away from the main fight and typically require more force than you might expect to off a frigate. All in all, a fairly reliable distraction.

At the very least they can survive getting clipped by a stray tachyon lance, which is all I ask for.

 They also taught me something about fortress shields: Weapons can be fired the instant fortress shields are deactivated. At first I thought the Monitor could fire with fortress shields up, but what was actually happening was the ship was dropping fort shields just long enough to fire before raising them again. Clever girl.

The armor and hull integrity are a joke though, and it can lead to some pretty bullshit moments if they get caught with their pants down. I lost two Monitors in a single engagement against a bounty target and I call hacks on both.
The first was the ICV Can't Touch This, which for some reason decided not to raise its shields before engaging a Shade and promptly died in a single salvo.
The second, ICV Pulling Aggro, actually survived up until near the end, but was caught in the blast when an enemy Paragon was destroyed and was instantly disabled, despite having its (normal) shields up. Oof.

[Hanzoku]

The second one is fair. If you’re anywhere near a Paragon when it goes critical, you’re in for a world of hurt, even for a fellow capital ship. Anything smaller can easily be overloaded and fried, depending on how close they are to the epicenter.

[wereboar]

Just chiming inm guys. This has been in development since 2011 and its still in Beta? Unless this is a game of DF magnitude, this sounds extremely fishy. Can someone explain what's up with this game?

[Parsely]

Just chiming inm guys. This has been in development since 2011 and its still in Beta? Unless this is a game of DF magnitude, this sounds extremely fishy. Can someone explain what's up with this game?

It has a small team. It has regular updates with a lot of content and the game has evolved a lot since it first went into beta. I've been following it since it was called Starfarer and playing the releases on and off since then. I used to be fairly active on the Starsector forums and the guy in charge is probably one of the best indie devs out there; I say that because, while the game has been in development for a long time, I wish all devs were as active, patient, and reliable as the team behind Starsector. Nothing fishy going on at all, it's just an ambitious project with a dedicated and flexible team behind it.

My strategy for enjoying ambitious, incomplete indie games with a long development time:
0. Choose an interesting game that is in a playable state with good reviews.
1. Pick it up to support the devs and play it, with zero expectation that it will ever be complete. This way you're not actually losing anything if the devs stop supporting it.
2. Get bored, put it down, play other things, and revisit it in a year to get a whole new experience.
3. Repeat until it releases.
4. Be salty/happy.

[Egan_BW]

Just chiming inm guys. This has been in development since 2011 and its still in Beta? Unless this is a game of DF magnitude, this sounds extremely fishy. Can someone explain what's up with this game?

Short answer: it's a game of DF magnitude.

[Paul]

It has been playable and fun for years. One of the best purchases I've made in terms of replayability and fun had - every time I go back to it it's like finding a new game in a series. More content, more features, even better combat.

[Majestic7]

Yeah, dollar-for-fun this is my best purchase ever since buying Mount&Blade in early beta (back when they had only Zendar).

[Sirus]

Just chiming inm guys. This has been in development since 2011 and its still in Beta? Unless this is a game of DF magnitude, this sounds extremely fishy. Can someone explain what's up with this game?

Short answer: it's a game of DF magnitude.

I'm not sure I'd go quite that far. There's no proc-genned megaships or legends to battle, the "world" isn't truly randomly generated, and of course there are only a small number of different personalities for NPCs. But it certainly is fun.

I played this way back when it was Starfarer and you only had a single system to fly around in. It certainly has expanded nicely in the intervening years.

[Parsely]

Now I kind of wanna go back on the Starsector forums and give the dev some love, I remember he gave me some 1-on-1 customer service in PMs when I couldn't access the new patch, that was nice

[Paul]

Yeah he provides good support for sure. In the past I have seen him take time to help modders figure things out, even adding functions to let people do stuff they were wanting to do but couldn't. It really reminds me of Mount&Blade - just in space. Both the dev cycle and the gameplay are quite similar.

[JimboM12]

starsector has these little moments, where the game is creative enough to spark my imagination to make scenes more awesome.

for instance, i was listening to paranoid by black sabbath. i have a legion i've mounted with cheapo heavy mortars and autocannons. its actually not a bad combo with the gunnery ai i picked up from adventuring. anywho, i also have 2 pairs of fighters and bombers, broadswords and piranhas. i have the "combat chatter" mod which adds a quip from one of your ships at random in the beginning of a fight. in this case it was "kick the tires and light the fires" from hot shots as the bombers and fighters flooded out of my ship. i immediately targeted the enemy eagle and the wings soared towards the enemy with me shortly behind. with paranoid playing at full tilt, the bombing run went perfectly. the eagle focused on the broadswords and their flares as the piranhas unloaded a wave of bombs that quickly overloaded and damaged the ship a bit. i engaged shortly after, with my 3 main heavy mortars, quickly destroying the ship.

you can just almost imagine the scene, like from kong: "*static* echo 1-1-3, this is red talon 0-3-3. releasing payload. *static* payload away."

[AzyWng]

So, quick question:

What kinds of mods do you use all the time? I'm asking because I'm trying to get my own mod collection set up.

I don't intend to use Nexerellin (I don't think I'm quite ready for the much different gameplay style of actually being tied to a faction), mind.

[Sirus]

Right now I'm just using portrait mods (including one I put together myself) and a mod that bumps the level cap up while also changing the experience point curve past the vanilla cap so that getting to high levels is actually achievable in the average lifetime.

I like the sound of that combat chatter mod that Jimbo mentioned, though. Might look into it.

[AzyWng]

I've mostly been going down the Mod Index trying to get everything because it all sounds so cool...

Yeah, Combat Chatter is a nice one. Apparently it's even persistent between the officers you hire - if you hire one and the dialogue set they have is one where they talk like a cowboy, they'll have that dialogue no matter what ship you put them on, which is a nice touch.