I mean some weapons fire quickly, but while you can make some relatively zippy ships in the earlygame, by the lategame you're going to be piloting a hulking dreadnought.

And there's tactics to where you fire and which angles you present to the enemy. If you shoot off the hex that holds one of the enemy's guns, that gun flies off. Same with their shields and other systems.

But it is an Action RPG, so if you're looking for FTL, this ain't it.

FWIW, the trailer linked to announcement (thanks @GoG for that) looks very well built. Must complain the game card(the one with the price tag) is not linked however.

Overall impression is "Unknown Space" tends to be "friendly".

I very much agree. It references Escape Velocity lore and humour which are endearing; has Space Pirates and Zombies talking heads; and has ship design lifted from Space Run: Fast and Safe Delivery. But the sheer volume of typos and bugs (breaking the main story, subvertng trade scarcity, removing NPCs and exploration progress from the map, etc.) make it nigh prohibitive. Consider the first one to be an abandoned late alpha or early beta prototype of this one. For the first year or so, the author was soliciting bug reports and asking for typo fixes via the Steam forum but when I submitted a list of bugs at that time I was told development efforts are focussed on a followup rather than trying to rescue Nexus.

Here's my bug list of things to be aware of if you're playing through it unaware: https://jackpoint.neocities.org/starcom/ ordered from super easy low-hanging-fruit (run a spellchecker over your string table) all the way up to navigation avoiding crossfire. I concede that the abrupt and senseless Game Over map is pretty indicative of dev enthusiasm expiring more than anything else. And for a development team consisting of exactly one human, Nexus is an impressive proof of concept, even though it's far from complete.

If you are spoiler averse, just build the Dreadnought blueprint the instant you research *Behemoth* Class (yeah exactly) and don't be too surprised when the story plot devolves into WTFBBQsauce.

Given that the provided screenshots for "Starcom: Unknown Space" contain: "has the ability cause any" (word missing) and "This CXRA vessel has <span class="bold">refuged</span> to pay our demands", quality control and attention to detail (ie the tester team) might again be frustratingly inadequate.

Ah, sure, i won't hold those faults of the first one against this one.

I'm more interested in seeing what gameplay and story are about because i had no idea the first game existed before i spotted this thread

Even then the type of things you mention usually don't paint a game in a bad light for me, i tend to give games a lot of latitude.

I loved Insomnia: The Ark and that one, besides a myriad of issues and odd design decisions, even has a few sections of text that i had to translate online from the original Ukrainian :)

I already have Nexus installed so gonna check it out soon, thanks for the heads up.

I have a question about the game.
The first game was excellent but lacked controller support, does this game have controller support?

Seems like it (see features on sidebar), but apparently not great, and dev admits it and is looking for player input, though just elsewhere.

Thanks!

Is there any story in the Starcom games? I mean, do I miss anything if I skip Starcom: Nexus?
SplatterCat put this one on my radar, so I'm wishlisting it for now. :)

Yes. In Nexus, you get the setting exposition immediately and launch into what the game offers so the initial 25% is engaging. There's then a lot of exploring with no progression so the next 25% is stagnant. Then you discover a particular artefact that cinches a whole bunch of clues, so the next 25% is story and action. The last 25% never got written so there's just a planet with a Game Over sign on it and dialogue that indicates the first 25% of the story was bogus anyway. It's pretty unsatisfying.

The game page for Unknown Space explicitly explains: so I'd say the only thing you miss out on by skipping Nexus is some Escape Velocity humour and some frustration at a story with potential that never saw it through. Unknown Space has its own story.

and i just started playing Starcom :/

Thank you for the ample reply - appreciate it! :)