Starjack Online - F2P RTS MMO

Huw · 2 Sep 2011 at 11:51

Starjack Online is a newly-launched free-to-play online RTS. I just got started last night and was impressed enough that I thought I'd spread the word!

The screenshots will tell you a lot. At first glance it looks like a typical tick-based F2P MMO with a vaguely LCARS-like interface, but in Starjack you also get to see your ships moving around in real time and (presumably) duking it out with other players' ships.

I haven't got through the enormo-tutorial yet but my first impressions are really positive. The game takes you through everything you need to know about building up your initial colony, mining materials to fuel construction, and building your fleets. Your starting system is locked down to your ships only so you'll always be safe there, but you're encouraged to seek fame, fortune and all that crap in the outside universe, where you'll quickly encounter the other players.

At this point I'm not sure how PvP works. It's definitely in, from what I can gather, but like Eve for example, there seems to be some kind of faction system in effect. A lot of stuff I encountered was labelled CORE - maybe the equivalent of Empire in Eve?

I plan to play a lot more tonight so I'll post more impressions if anyone's interested. But it'd be great if a load of us signed up and got an angry alliance together to stomp over everyone else!

Oh, as for the F2P thing, at first glance it looks much like the rest of the genre. There's plenty you can do without ever paying, but you can subscribe for benefits or make one-off purchases of "crystals" to buy stuff, at least some of which is vanity stuff (like being able to design a more detailed crest for your empire).

Edit: Forgot to add, since I'm still doing the tutorial I don't want to comment about any negatives in case they're just down to my own ignorance, but I have to say the interface can get very busy and elements of it will overlap. You can drag windows around though.

Edit edit: It's client-based, not browser-based.

Jsbeer · 2 Sep 2011 at 12:14

I can't say that I'm particularly thrilled at the idea of FTP with respect to something like an RTS, but your initial comments seem very favourable. So let us all know how it pans out since sometime it is only late on that you realise how much you need to pay to be competitive at the highest levels...

Neutralmilk · 2 Sep 2011 at 12:28

Quite like the sound of this and will be giving it a go when I go home tonight. I'm a fan of Star Trek Birth of the Federation and the screen shots are pretty simelar so looking forward to it.

Huw · 2 Sep 2011 at 12:57

Jsbeer said:
I can't say that I'm particularly thrilled at the idea of FTP with respect to something like an RTS, but your initial comments seem very favourable. So let us all know how it pans out since sometime it is only late on that you realise how much you need to pay to be competitive at the highest levels...

Yeah, if my previous experience with F2P games is anything to go by, undoubtedly it will reach the stage where you kinda feel like you have to pay to continue to enjoy it. Who knows - maybe this will be the first F2P I actually do pay money for!

Neutralmilk said:
Quite like the sound of this and will be giving it a go when I go home tonight. I'm a fan of Star Trek Birth of the Federation and the screen shots are pretty simelar so looking forward to it.

Cool. I'm in as Cobalt Empire (Cobalts in chat). You'll see me asking inane questions in the help channel.

Huw · 2 Sep 2011 at 22:51

Bah. I try to log in this evening and the server is down for the latest patch. I finally connect and it goes down again less than an hour later. So while I wait, I may as well post some more thoughts.

I've played some more of the lengthy tutorial, and still haven't finished it! The more I play, the deeper I realise the game is. Well, is deep the same as complex? It's certainly complex. There's a research tree which, on the face of it, doesn't look very big. But then you realise that's only tier 1. Research a tier 1 technology and you get access to all the tier 2 techs under it. Research those and you get tier 3 techs. Each tier 2 and tier 3 tech gives you a new design (facility, ship etc) which you must then prototype. The resulting prototypes can then be further refined in specific areas; in other words, you can tweak certain attributes of the prototype before finally putting it into production.

It will seem somewhat familiar to veterans of Eve Online and Perpetuum Online. There's plenty to do in this area, and will lead to choices between grabbing as much tech as possible and specialising like hell in one or a few areas.

Speaking of Eve Online...if you like all the number crunching of that game, you'll love Starjack. Everything has attributes within attributes, there are loads of different techs and facilities and ships, you often have half a dozen info windows open with all sorts of readouts on them. It's geek heaven really.

All the time, your main view is a starmap which can be panned around and zoomed in and out at will. Unless I'm misunderstanding the scale of what I've seen, the game universe does look pretty bloody big. Plenty of room for everyone! I still don't know how the mid-late game will play out, but the early game is starting to look like it will consist of getting mining going, building colonies and claiming new systems.

There's a lot to this game. To build that lovely new ship you need to mine the required ores, which means surveying worlds until you find good enough ore, then building and sending out a coloniser to start extracting it, then realising you don't have a good enough extractor so you have to research and build a new prototype, then hauling the extractors to the new colony, then researching the ship itself, realising your tech is nowhere near advanced enough to build it, etc...

In fact there are even shades of complex 4X games like Space Empires in there. For example, your colonies need certain numbers of inhabitants to perform various functions, so you can wait for the numbers to grow on their own, or use some haulers to bring colonists in from other worlds. You can have each world specialise in certain activities.

Oh, and the command editor is good, too. When you select a fleet a little box appears in the bottom-right corner showing a few stats and the fleet's orders. Orders are automatically queued as you issue them, so if you have a big job for a hauler, say, you can just get clicking all around your empire, queuing up the orders, and watch as the hauler gets underway with the first task as soon as you've issued it.

Anyway, I've talked enough! Time to see if the server's back up...

PoD · 3 Sep 2011 at 07:24

Is this basically a graphical version of Ogame because if it is then I have one thing to say.....Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Huw · 3 Sep 2011 at 09:29

Well, it's the same genre. But at its core it's a 4X which you happen to play online.

kieves1 · 3 Sep 2011 at 22:56

Tried this for an hour earlier.It seems very complicated with so many screens and layouts.I got stuck trying to set my skyportal or whatever it is called at the edge of my solar system.Tried follwoing the tutorial but gave up lol.

Huw · 3 Sep 2011 at 23:31

Yeah, it is a hell of a lot to take in at first. Its complexity almost rivals the Space Empires series, and the idiosyncratic interface is about as much help as Eve Online's. Starjack is most definitely not for everyone. However, the more I play the more I'm convinced that there's an extremely involving, decent 4X game there.

It seems the devs have a huge amount of content updates planned too.