Ascent - The Space Game

This game requires and email verification to start but it never comes I should have looked at the forums before hand. NO one has been on there since 2018. This game doesn't appear to be running or supported anymore. Just another of the hundreds of games on steam that aren't live but still being offered for sale.

This is not the way.

This game had a lot of potential based on its description and the review from RAM. However, upon buy the game, and trying to register a new account to play, I never got the activation email. I waited two days to receive it, and I looked into the problem. There are several other users that posted about this issue, and the developer even replied to them in the forums with a BS response about how the new method requires any new account to activate before you can log in, but he never addressed the issue the original poster was asking about, that being that the activation email never arrives, in spam or otherwise. I waited 24 hours for an email, never arrived. This is why I have refunded the game, and leave this review.

I wanted this game to work, it has a lot of what I am looking for in a good sim game, but if I can't even get into the game, I wonder how good the game its self may be.

So, I spent just shy of $20.00 to give this game a chance. And after 46 hours of total play time, I think I have seen enough. While there are a few good points to this game, it is clear that its sole function in the gaming world, is to provide ideas and lessons to other indie game developers out there of what not to do.

Lesson 1: Have a plan for revenue development before launching a game. This game clearly suffers from lack of funds to be properly developed. And little sign of any significant updates down the pipe. The local diehard community of the game (all 4 or 6 of them) discuss in global chat ‘Go Fund Me’ schemes to be able to provide more content to said small community. Yet the last game news, dates to Nov 7th of 2016.
If you are developing anything at this point. It should be for a wide audience. Not people who have clearly ground the hell out of the game, to be where they are now. Unless your point for having the game, is to have a small group provide you with beer money.

Lesson 2: Hooks do not maintain interest, if they are just that. This game advertises 270 Billion stars to explore. If that is your thing, you will be supremely disappointed to discover that the 99.9999825% (that is a real number btw) are completely out of reach. There are only approx. 48 systems available to a new player. 9 are NPC systems, and another 39 or so that have gates to systems presumably built by thos diehard players. You do get a ‘jump drive’ that allows for limited access to stars not yet connected (I was able to get to about 10 other systems, but the galactic map is 'over the top' bad to use). It requires Hydrogen for fuel though, and the only ship it can be fitted on, holds all of 8 units of Hydrogen. Greatly limiting your ability to go forth and explore. Also the only way to get more hydrogen after jumping is to 'scoop' it from gas giant planets. If you land in a system that has none, you can only emergancy warp back to the start system. There are a couple of them like that I found. You also need a certai skill level in gas mining as well to even mine Hydroge. So one more thing (of a HUGE list) to grind.
To get a better ‘jump drive’ and go farther with a higher cargo capacity ship, requires a litany of things and time to accomplish (Did I mention more things to grind yet?). Making the game very cumbersome. Currently I have just ‘researched’ a level 2 one, and after building a large space structure required to manufacture one, I finally got one in production. But a this point I have no interest in bothering to see how far that will take me. am sure it won't be much farther.
So, while the concept of a tremendous galaxy to explore is intriguing. The fact that it is just a gimmick to get you to spend money and time to get there, is a tremendous letdown.

Lesson 3: A player based market only works if you have enough players in the first place. It seems simple enough, but if you have to manufacture virtually everything in this game, there should be a working market to trade that stuff. There is attempts by players to do this, but the limited number of them, combined with the lack of a good system in the first place, leaves the new player with a HUGE grinding curve. You can trade from NPC stations, and you can set up your own station with trading in it(If you pay money to maintain something other than the free starbase). But, there is limited ways to find what you are looking for. Also, the game mechanic that is supposed to let you know what is for sale, does not work well at all. Just searching for something simple like Electronics turns up nothing. But you can find plyer stations selling electronics if you look in the right place. It takes a tremendous amount of time however, to find something like that available. If you even know where to look.
Simple solutions would be to 1) provide a better trading system. And 2) seed more items through NPC markets until enough players are building the things themselves. Of the 9 previously mentioned NPC systems, each local market only sells 1 item. And those are items at the lowest part of the production chain, like Iron, or Grain. So, Electronics or Mechanical parts are nowhere to be found. Unless the “Galactic Market” tab happens to work and show you something available.

There are some good ideas here in the game. Going seamlessly from space to planet surface is a good idea. But with little to do on the planet other than setting up a base, makes it unfinished. All you can do is land on a planet, leave your ship, and take a soil sample. That tells you what kind of surface base you can build, and what resources are available (By build btw, I mean queue where in a grid you would like the Factory or whatnot to be built). There is literally nothing else to do. No flora or fauna to explore. You can’t mine it, unless you set up a base (which by the way, requires real money spent to keep and maintain). So, the idea in this game is incomplete. And/or it falls under the hook/gimmick lesson.

Ultimately, while I tried to like it (I did put a work weeks worth of time playing it). The real lack of content, and the promise of what the game coulda, shoulda, woulda been, are too much for me to give it anything but a thumbs down.

Look-out! This game is no longer in active development. There are serious bugs and quality-of-play issues that are not being addressed. No updates have been made in the last 10 months.

The whole point of this game is to build and run colonies and space-stations. There are dozens of building/module types that all have to be present and in balanced quantities. You will need to track several dozen resources used in construction and operation of your colonies/space-stations. Be prepared to spend more time building your spreadsheets and working your project-planner than playing. If you fail to account for everything, precisely, you risk causing a cascade of failures that is very difficult/time-consuming/costly to correct.

Colonies can have over million buildings, each one placed by hand, by you, from a spaceship that only turns and goes forward, while being thwarted by the effected of local gravity and having your ship block the view of where you want to build. The process of laying out your colonies/stations is very and unnecessarily, tedious and frustrating.

You are also responsible for moving resources between producing colonies/stations and where they are needed for building, consuming, finishing, or sale. This becomes your ‘chores’ that need to be done everyday, or it will mess-up your production. The amount of time needed increases as you build more colonies and they get larger. The process includes manually loading/unloading the cargo and flying thru multiple ‘gates’. There are the same cut-scenes to watch between having to pick what gate to fly to next. I am at a loss as to explain how boring this is.

There are some resources you will need that can only be found if you mine asteroids. It is the usual; find the right rock, chase it down while your both moving, a long wait while maintaining aim and distance, watch the cut-scene. If you do it right, you are rewarded. Failure gets you nothing. This quickly turns into a tedious and boring ‘have-to’.

The game lacks many quality-of-life features. The type-face and its small size makes reading prone to mistakes. Most of the UI is not movable or sizable. The chat-box is extra difficult to use. There is no mail system for players. Field boxes for typing quantities are not big enough to hold the numbers. Information you need while flying is in the far corners of the screen. While traveling, you can’t select a destination, just the next way-point. There is no compass. You have to visit the actual module/building to see its status or manage it, there is no central facility. The game crashes. And more, a lot more.

The final fail for me was realizing the resource map does not actually tell you where the resources are. The colony map grid, the resource map, and the actual resources placement are not the same grid. I used several days worth of resources to build hundreds of buildings only to find I failed to build my colony the way I expected/wanted.

I did get out an explore with a mid-size ship and only for a few light-years. All the stars I saw except three were already ‘discovered’. The ones with my name on it was hidden behind a larger star in the corner of the sector. It is my understanding that you have to get many jumps out before finding anything new and the needed ship is very expensive. Note that exploring requires a lot of time scooping Hydrogen and there is a limit on how far you can go before your jump-drive wears out. If you are searching for a colony site, you must take the time to manually land on the planet/moon. With hundreds of ‘test’ I found none that were suitable.

The one positive thing I must say about the game is the other established players. There were only a few people on the server with me, but everyone in chat was friendly and helpful. They quickly filled in any information missing from the wiki. Some even make their extra resources available to new players and it helped move the game along for me.

Someday, someone will write a space game that does not require spread-sheets, slay you with time wasters, or club you to death with the ‘space is really big’ thing. Sadly, this is not it.

After 26 hours of game play I decided to make a review of this game.

This game echoes of EVE online, without the pvp and the rage. If you have not played games like EVE, you may have a bit of difficulty learning this game, because of the very small tutorial. There is a wiki for it, and a few youtube vids about this game, which without them, I would of been lost. The game is in a full release state, but it is very buggy/glitchy. Some functions work, then stop and require a restart to gain them back. Restart fixes most problems with this game.

It its an open world space game with little direction or guidance. Freedom is the watch word for this game.
The focus is on space exploration, mining, space station/settlement/colony construction and operation. This aspect of the game is very well thought out, and works well. The game designers vision was for everyone to be able to share everything in this game universe, but the player base decided to change that. The star bases, settlements, and colonies you build are yours, and yours alone, as designed. The astroid betls throuout the universe are another thing. The game is designed that any and all astroid belts are for everyone, but the player base has impossed a rule that if you discover an astroid field it is yours, and yours alone. This player impossed policy is a heated topic on the games official website. The gaming community will not tell you about this rule, until you accidentally discover said astroid fields and mine them. Then that community will turn against that player uniformally. They call this "roid raiding" and consider it theft.
There is a tad of pve, set aside in its own small sector for you combat pilots to play in, but the rewards are minor and not worth the effort. Pve is not the focus, and its not done well.
All ships are multi-purpose except one of the premium ships, which is strictly for mining/freighter work. You can take just about any ship and make it a combat ship or modify it to hold more cargo to better assist you in your mining/freighter needs.
There is a 3 months premium package that comes with the game, that let you access certain aspects of the game. To keep your premium status it is very economical, one of the appeals of this online mmo.

Overall, if your looking for a game like EVE, but without the pvp this is it. If your looking for a space combat pve game, this is not it.

I rate this a thumbs down, purely based on the online community and the unfinished state of the game.

Hope this helps.

I've played Ascent for 2 months now and I'm giving it the flick. Frustrating, unfinished game with lots of potential. The everything is just too hard to do. Only the most basic trading and crafting what there is in the game to do it so damb hard to do. Try building an Outer Star Base! Good luck.
The most disapointing thing is, nothing is getting fixed. Two months after release and nothing has changed. Prime continues to crash, your research takes forever to update, making you fly into and out of systems just to get the database to up date to tell you where your research actually is.
Just annoyingly frustrating.
Fantasic group of people though.
might drop in and see how it is going in 6 months or so, it may be playable then.

The best thing about this game, is the players. Unfortunatly the game sucks, dot because its a bad game concept. There are some critical bugs that the dev is ignoring. In fact hes ignoring everything, ever his loyal subscribers, which is another issue. I 1st thought this game was brilliant, untill i got to the poosition of having a big enough ship and credits behing me to go exploring and setting up new bases. 1st issue is the time investment needed to set up a base. You have to wait 50 hours for the dome to build, and hope it do not float, or sink after you have built it, making it useless. Then You must wait 24 hours to purify gasses, and then 22 hours for anything else to build. That is not the real issue except for the floating,sinking bases. You are charged stella credits for each base you have, no problem, the problem is the feature to "abandon base" was ommited recently, so You will be charged real world money for every base you can not abandon.
My count is at 8 that im being charged 80 Stella Credits per month for, that are totally useless to me and can no longer abandon. So i write bug report, what reply do i get....nada,zilch, nothing, zero... except from as i said "best thing about this game is the dedicated players" especially a character called "ram" who is so dedicated to this game, the dev should make a deal with him to manage its development, and the dev should get back to doing what he is able to do, and thats code.

There is no option to cancll your subscription, so only way is to make a new real world bank account.

Dev really needs to get his act together and prioritise critical issues, especially 1 that involves taking money from peoples bank accounts, and not run around trying to raise money, something that should have been done prior to release, or employ/make deal with someone who is experienced in doing so. People would make deals with the dev, but it appears the dev wants to do everything, and be in total controll, without anyone else advising him how to do it, and delegate responsibilitys to them.

Very fun concept, but crashes *CONSTANTLY*. Monthly subscription system is a major turnoff, too. Comes with a few months by default, which is nice, but there's a huge wall of grinding between you and getting to a lot of the features the game is advertised for. I have over a dozen hours and I'm still literally just grinding cash, trying to get a spaceship capable of going exploring out into the systems outside of the base 9. Most of this grinding is done by clicking autopilot buttons. Settlement and star base construction system has absurdly dumb crafting times (time per module is measured in a number of real time hours, often numbering above twenty - freaking - hours!). Number of colonies and star bases you can have is based on how much real money you spend per month - you can go and buy bigger subscriptions to get more planets. Your control over the planets you colonized is based on how many people have built colonies there and how willing you are to involve yourself in the politics process. As in, in-game elections and such. Which is an interesting concept, but I hesitate to see it in practice as it strikes me as a potentially nasty means of griefing. Combat is *extremely* clunky and awkward, and the radar system is in desperate need of a revamp. Indicators are small and difficult to make out unless you expand the radar, which makes it difficult to aim your frontal guns, which are fixed with your movement. There are broadside and 90 degree cone turrets, but those are totally automated and have no player input beyond placing them on your ship. As far as I can tell, there are no variety in weapons, and combat is restricted to one zone.

All in all, this game strikes me as something I would expect to see out of an alpha. The graphics are rather weak compared to performance (I have a Radeon r9 380, 8 core AMD processor, and 16 gb ram, and my FPS on the second worst setting ranges between 60 to 30 in normal play, but the game's actual material in peak settings is on par with something that's like, ten years old?), it crashes pretty much once per hour. Sometimes those crashes are severe enough to require a hard restart of my PC -- I checked on the forums and this isn't an isolated incident, either, and has happened to people on a wide range of systems - on high end to low end computers. Combined with the massive grind wall to get access to the content with even a shred of depth, and this game was a huge let down for me. I *really* wanted to like this game, but *DO NOT* let the trailer fool you. It is *not* what it's advertised as.

Once I got past the game's rocky start, I've found that, thus far, this is the best "free to play" I have ever played. There is stuff you can buy, but the top tier stuff you have to get by earning it...or building it yourself. Meanwhile, as a free player, there's a lot you have to do: mining, settlement building, space station building, wreck salvaging, trading, and so on. My best advice is use the help function (the question mark at the top middle-left of your screen), the wiki, and the help chat and you will muddle through to competence in the various endeavors in about 8 to 10 hours.

One thing I really appreciate (and the gankers from Eve looking for fresh blood hate) is that there is no PvP, at least not yet, and the PvE is optional. You are free to mine and build and colonize in relative peace. If you're a builder / logistician tired of having the apple cart kicked over by a 12 year old who hijacked daddy's credit card and bought themselves a ride, welcome to Ascent.

Let me preface this by saying that yes, this game does run on a premium system, however the pricing is quite reasonable, and the game comes with a generous 3 months of full Premium time already paid up. (The best part about this is that the Premium time from buying on Steam isn't immediately applied to your account, you can activate it whenever you feel you're ready to start using Premium features). After that, Premium is priced on what features you want to use - managing colonies on planets in the Inner Systems, managing large-scale Industry, and taking part in combat are all counted separately, so if, like me, you plan on mostly running a manufacturing operation, you can pay just $1 a month and still enjoy what the game's got to offer for you. Personally speaking, I'm planning on going the full $3 a month anyways, this developer can definitely use the support!

As far as space games go, I've been looking for one that allows me to participate in trade and industry in a non-combative manner, and I've gotta say Ascent so far has pushed all of the right buttons! Think of a large galaxy and a player-run economy like in EVE Online, except entirely PVE, so there's no need to worry about more experienced players rolling by and ruining your fun.

Quite the opposite, the community has been super helpful for me so far, and I've gotta say I appreciate that kind of spirit!

The controls for flight are simple but not overly so - You can navigate between gates and stations using just the mouse, and flying your ship in combat uses the WASD keys to pretty solid effect.

The mining in the game also feels just right - No sitting around like in EVE, and no chasing asteroid chunks like in Elite Dangerous, but you have to match the speed of the asteroid to get a good bead on it, and then use your mining laser to heat it up to just the right temperature to get the best yield out of it.

I'm still just getting started with regards to building colonies and space stations in the game, but I really like what's been done so far! There are still some minor issues regarding framerate and loading screens, but the developers have been super active and engage the playerbase on a frequent basis, so I'd say even if you decide not to buy the game today, definitely keep a close eye on it!

I've been playing this game for about 2 weeks now. First I want to address the most common complaints:

a) It's pay to win? The DLC Bowhead certainly gives you a lot of cargo space with which to make money, since the game doesn't lock ship size to any player stat other than affordability. But the game has access to bigger ships than the Bowhead, all without the DLC. Making credits is ridiculously easy. I have the next ship in size to the DLC one, the Archon, and could have an even bigger one if that's what I chose to focus on. That's after 2 weeks play.

b) hidden subscription? The game does tell you that the $20 current purchase price includes 3 weeks of premium. Not having premium does restrict what class weapon you can mount (meaning you mount more, smaller weapons) and other restrictions. But the sub price is 1, 2, or 3 dollars a month depending on what you want to do in game. Really, I spend that much daily on coffee. Ever since I've been playing MMO's I've been used to $15 a month subscrptions, and that seems fair.

About the positives- love the depth of the game. The longer you play the more you realize there is a lot out there to do, and to learn, and to build! I even tried combat route, which isn't my forte, and found it interesting. There are updates coming to the UI and the combat system. Me, I love the building starbases and colonies aspect of the game.

It's crazy interactive. Take mining for example. Find the right asteroid, match speed and direction of travel, open up your mining beam and heat it up to the precise temperature- less and you reduce the yield, more and you might explode it. All while moving! Swap out ship modules to optimize the ship to your playstyle, balancing space vs utility.

It's.. huge. At my stage of the game I look at the systems far away waiting for me to investigate... and procedurally generated space means there will be more when I get there, generated as I arrive- named after the discoverer! That is still a month away game wise for me.

The dev is extremely involved, and very positive. Check the game forums, won't cost you anything, and see the bug reports and the actions taken. The community is extremely helpful, in advice as well as hands-up, and will steer you right. They are eager to make the game as good as it can me.

Hey, this is where I spend my free time. IF you like social interaction, building, mining, combat, this is it. If you prefer to play with cooperative players and away from player harrasment, this is definitely the place.

The developer of this game has many good ideas, but is trying to reinvent the wheel, and does it at a snails pace. Many people say "yes, but it's early access!", yes it is early access, it's been that way for a very long time now, and I suspect it will stay that way.

Graphics, Interface, controls, documentation, storyline, and many other things are poor or missing entirely.

Developer does not implement major game design based on the communities likes, nor takes ideas that worked well in other games, that people liked, and instead uses his own ideas to try and be "unique" or "innovative" regardless if people like the features or not. The mining mini-game is a good example.

It's a good game if you don't mind 90's graphics and want to play a game for 20 hours before your awaiting release of another game comes.

Ascent made mining fun!!. Imagine that.
I can't tell you how many hours I played EVE PVE and Mining. God, such a simple task and just plain boring after awhile.
What no Ganking?? Freaking awesome!!. So I can have fun without someone always trying to kick over my apple cart...
I don't care much for in-game corporations or groups. I just want to play w/o chatting or having to attended meetings. lol
Their are a tone of pvp games out there. No need to make this one as well. Just sick of the pvp debates. open vs solo play in Elite Dangerous, EVE etc.
Ascent is truly a breath of quiet fresh air...!
Runs really well, no crashes, and the wife says I'm playing too much, so there ya go. Its a hit!!
Keep up the good work Mr developer.
See u out there...

***NOTE**** GAME HAS PREMIUM ACCESS which is not made clear, the free version of the game is availiable on the website and runs EXACTLY the same as this version ie with the lag and bugs.

By buying the game on here you are merely paying a 3 month subscription to the game and getting nothing any differnt to the unity browser game on the website.

The game has amazing potential but atm its a total rip-off.

All the people writing comments regarding my playtime, i played many hours BEFORE i got the steam version......

To state that the steam version offers more features less bugs etc is total balls, it plays exactly the same the only thing you get is MORE of the same whcih in an mmo these days is akin to Pay to Win.

As stated hiding the fact its premuim access you are actually buying on steam is the issue that no one really has agrued with......

Ascent is a fantastic concept, a PvE version of EVE Online without the real time skill training. It is still early access, but it is my opinion that the direction of the game is going in such a way that a negative review was needed as a warning for future purchasers. If there was a "neutral" button for the review I would have used it.

User Interface
The game’s user interface is horrid. You will notice it the minute you hit the startup screen. Instead of a login and character selection screen it has a button series that looks like a single player game, up to and including a “LOAD” button. Fitting ship modules is a complex and clucky text selector box maneuver.

Community
The community is friendly, and will answer basic questions in game chat. There is only one “global” game chat, and no in-game guilds or other such mmo “norms”.

Graphics
The game uses stock Unity graphics for the most part. The ships and starbases may have been a unity resource pack purchase. The game had a kickstarter specifically to add ship graphics, but everything else is very simplistic. Planets are little more than a multicolored globe and your character avatar is a guy in a tee shirt and jeans. Still early access.

Player Cooperation
The game might as well be single player. Your “cooperation” with other players will be limited to buying stuff from them off a market board. Even such grand ventures such as building a new jump gate basically boils down to hauling loads of minerals. There is no “grouping” for combat, no sharing ownership or access to buildings, no real reason for other players to be in the game aside from a chat based social and game-economy aspect.

Ship Design
Each ship “class” is just a different skin. The only technical difference between the base ship “skins” is that each class increase basically doubles the cargo space. There is a marginal difference in turning, but basically the only real game mechanic-based difference in the ships would be cargo space. A higher level ship can equip higher level modules, such as a better mining laser.

Grindy and Repetative
Ascent is extremely grindy. You will buy and sell resources via NPC contracts, or buy and sell resources for other players, or mine. Your ships cargo is the only limiter, when you purchase a new ship you gain more cargo space, thus the grind starts anew for the next ship. You will also need to grind to purchase blueprints, planet plot deeds, and a hyperdrive.

Exploration
This seems like a fun concept, and the developer brags about 300 billion star systems; however, you need cargo space to carry fuel for the hyperjump so you will need to grind a lot of money to purchase a decent sized ship and hyperdrive (ships on the NPC market do not come with them). The ship’s hyperdrive allows you to explore and discover new star systems; however, they get more expensive the larger your ship is (almost always being the same price as the ship itself).
For a game that brags about exploration, they sure do make it hard.
Also, you get a star system named after you just for being the first person to jump to it. No real planet exploration is required. Basically, you are getting credit for a "discovery" that was already made by some guy with a telescope years before.

Pay To Win
You can skip the grind and buy a bowhead, one of the largest ships in the game.

Complex
The game has a steep learning curve. I did not mind this too much, but it is worth mentioning. You will be doing a lot of wiki research and youtube video watching.

I Almost Missed Out

This week marks my first month in Ascent, The Space Game. What a ride! First off, everyone has a different reason for playing these types of games, and for the most part this game should satisfy an itch whether it's in trading, crafting/production, economies, exploring, discoveries, colony building, and much more. The emphasis is PVE, but there will be a PvP component in the future. But I really want to discuss my play this past month.
I am one of those guys that enjoy the journey, rather then the destination. And this game hits my spot. Yes, the beginning is tough when you start on a small ship and 1,000 credits and you hear people on chat talking about millions and billions of credits. But I decided at the very start that I would invest on a foundation to support future play. I did the early quests, and settled on the inner 8 planets. As I did this I slowly raised my ship level. In my style of play I did not use chat to beg and cajole people to give me ships or money to move along quickly. I had watched Sinstrite's videos before playing and then looked a little at the wiki, so I had an idea what to expect. After my 8 settlements I built my ISB (Inner Starbase). It has 100 rings but I found that I only needed 60 or so to be productive. I scanned dozens and dozens of wrecks and claimed many blueprint fragments for higher level ships.
So where am I today? I am still in a Mammoth, and not a Seraph, which is a much bigger ship, but I am fine with that. Amazingly, I have already built 5 Mammoths in my shipyard which I sell to other players. I have built my first colony and outside starbase (OSB) so now I have two shipyards working, increasing my production effort. My colony is growing, and I am looking through the 100 new systems I discovered myself to find a suitable second colony.
The game keeps going. It is what you make of it. The people in the game are extremely helpful. Hey, if you want someone to give you a leg up with a better ship and credits you could probably fine someone, and there is nothing wrong with that. This game has something for everyone. This economy is player driver for the most part.
I heartily recommend this game. If you see me, wabasco, in game.. give a shout!

Great idea for a game,..A very sandboxy PvE universe to explore and build your own little (or big) space empire in. I honestly really like it and will keep playing, but it has at least a couple big problems that I will deal with for the moment considering it's still early access but it would be a joke if they weren't addressed before the official launch. It pains me to give a thumbs-down but I will definitely change it if they work on these areas.


1. The Starship Computers:

Holy Carap! I don't know if it is meant to be somehow more gritty and "realistic" or if it is just a placeholder until someone gets around to making a menu and/or GUI interface.

The current situation involves a command console type interface (think DOS or UNIX) to interrogate the computer for a lot of important information and functions especially when it comes to exploration. It takes like 40 keystrokes to do what should be done in 4. In terms of gritty it doesn't get much better than this but in terms of realism I think in an age of faster than light travel they would have a post-Apollo interface for their computer systems. Getting to the point of making your own probes and figuring out what all the data means is hard enough...having to beat the info out of the computer is just plain unnecessary. They certainly don't have to dump the console for people who want to think they are computer scientists, but a more user friendly option should be available for the rest of us living in the 21st century.


2. Chat Channel:

...as in singular chat channel for the whole universe.

No trade chat, no private chat...group or otherwise, no in game e-mail system....Wow! You'd think that kind of stuff would be in any MMO on day 1.


3. Galactic Market (player auction house)

Apparently the galactic market computer system is much more advanced than the on board ship computers because at least you don't have to shop via command console LOL.

...but...

The only way to search items is by keyword, quantity, and price point. Also, only 1 page can be displayed so if there are more results that you want to see you have to narrow your search to get them on the first page.


The Good:

1. Friendly Community

2. Working Economy

3. Not overly buggy or crashy

4. Generally playable and fun

5. Freemium model at $3/month is reasonable

Game is Good for its current early access state. It combines an open universe, resource manangement, exploration, and a little combat. The free content in the game is limited though.

The universe is a PVE environment so there is no worry about end gamers getting board and one shotting the little newbe's, like happons in EVE online a good deal. The non-hostile world is very relaxing, you travel, mine astroids, manage your holdings, make money, spend more money, make upgrades with little to stress you out.
You can do anything in game you want, although you really can't get away from mining, at least not until later in the game when you own a lot of production, and even then the late game is when mining is most productive.

Making money can be be easy most of the time, you can take contracts to buy and sell goods, deliver people to other places, but mining tends to best for time verses money. There are 2 main astroid belts in the core systems, the roid respawn rate is good but there is usually an over abundence of people in the belts competing for the good ones. Its best to get out of the core systems to make mining less crowded, though early game your mining with suck too much to make the long hauls worth while. You will be able to buy plots of land on the core planets and set up resource gathering, each core planet supports a different resource type. These plots take a lot of time, money, resources, and planning to get set up. Its best to reseach this aspect of the game before blindly dropping buildings down. Same applys to your first space station, early game the only thing your spacestation dose i suck you dry of money and materials. One day mine will make things but for now i have spent a weekend marathon gathering what i need to make the 6 buildings its supports, it will likly be another week or so before it produces anything.

The combat is clunky early game, later when you have access to turrets and broadsides it might be better but i am not there yet. There is only 1 location at this time where you can fight, and have to start missions to get the enemys to spawn. There are no hostile forces anywhere except that one system, and you cannot run into them accidentally. So thats nice in many ways, though i would not mind a couple of pirate systems where there is more combat to be had.

The game is a grind, its take a good deal of time and resources to get anything done, but your ability to procure stuff tends to scale with you as you progress in the game. For example early game the idea of mining 1000 ore for a project is brutal but later in the game you can mine that and more off 1 astroid.

The community does not seem overly large but is generally helpful. At this time there tends to be a good amount of "help the new guys" mentalitly out there, it's not uncommon for someone to sell you their ship cheaply when they get a new one. The market however is driven by the players and in the week i have been playing has been driving to rather insane levels. In the first few days of the game for me one of the ships i wanted was running around 100k, a good grind for my skill level and equipment. Now after only a week the average price for the same ship is hovering around 1mil. The ship is not worth half that but thats the nature of these games. You have to be patient when buying and wait for good deals or just suck it up and pay ripeoff prices. Late game vehicles are a different story, the price tag can hit the billions mark but for the time and resources thay take its understandable.

You must watch ship your buying, there are real A-holes out there who can ripe you off, a ship must have every peice of equipment on it to leave space dock, (with the exception of weapons and hyperdrives). There are people out there who will look at the average price of the ships of that type and put one up for sale very cheaply, many people seeing the low cost buy it up quickly thinking they got a good deal. When you click on a ship in the galactic market watch out for a red warning at the bottom of the ship data, the warning will tell you and ship cannot fly becuase its missing a piece or peices of equipment. If it something like a mining laser or armor its no big deal and you can take those off your current ship. if the item is a ship teir specific item like a reactor the ship is junk. Most of the ships systems have to match the level of that ship, so you cannot take stuff form a smaller ship to put on it. At this time you cannot sell ships to the AI only to other players, so once you upgrade you leave your old ship where ever you picked up the new one at. There is not a way to bring all your ships to one location so a common tactic, once you have a space station running, is to part at your station, build a shuttle and take the shuttle to pick up your new baby.

There are a number of things that annoy new players, the tutorials can be a little vague and do not explain what to do clearly much of the time, those of us to game a lot get through them fine but many flood chat with the same questions over and over. You are frequently told to go to the Wiki or check online, i find both those lacking. Much of the time you will not find the information you need online or on the wiki.....(least not on google seachs anyway)(anyone know of a real seach engine so i can stop the google uselessness).

The game is only arond $20, it also offers a subscription. If your going to play this game seriously your going to need to pay. For Non-prem players you can own anyship you can buy or build, but are limited to Class 5 equipment (Equipment goes to class 12 i think). You can buy and use higher class equipment but it will only function as class 5. Mining at class 5 is good for early to mid game but for end game needs will not cut it. Your starbase is limited to 6 buildings without premium, once again good enough for early game but not acceptable for late game unless you like projects taking several real world months to complete. You cannot make colonies in the outer systems unless you have premium. So there is a lot of pay to get anywhere in this game. At this time there are no micro transactions though, you can't buy ships, resourced and such with real money, all has to be aquired in-game with in-game money. I guess this game is larger an MMO of sorts.

I like the game but have already started making spreadsheet and such to manage my small and pathentic empire, so yes the game is already becoming work. I have not decided if i want to pay the subscription or not and thus contiune playing. But at the point i am at in game the lack of premuim is not hurting me yet, one more ship upgrade and i will have to make the money decision though.

My updated video review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0ZaF8WzqDo

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My older text review:

Wow...where do I start?

Absolutely amazing game. The game is very immersive. Asteroids orbit around planets, you can land on planets to build things there, the crafting system is very complex and interesting, and you can even build your own space station which you can expand with many different kind of modules.

Pros:
- Very immersive environments. The space art is very nice and the planets look cool. Asteroid fields feel 'alive' with a lot of movement.
- Great mining system. Mining is terribly boring in EVE, X, Elite Dangerous and Starpoint Gemini. However, here the mining is spiced up due to two facts:
1) the asteroids have their own speed and your mining beam only has a 1km range, so you need to keep up with it (or fly very close to it)
2) The amount you mine is dependent on the temperature of your mining beam. Beam too little and your yield is bad. Beam too much and you get nothing at all!
- 250 billion systems to explore, that get named after you if you find them first! These systems can contain planets, which you can do geological research on to find out what it offers in terms of minerals etc. Other people (and you) can then colonize these planets, building factories etc. on them to profit from this planet.
- Player-made economy! Everything except for the most basic resources are farmed/mined/made by the players to sell on the market!
- You have to work for your things, and feel accomplished after you get a new ship or some other nice thing. Some people might mistake this for grindyness, which I wouldn't agree with (this comes from a person that absolutely despises 'daily quests' etc.).

Cons:
- some people dislike the graphics. I must say, when you're playing it, I think it looks gorgeous. Yes, the shipmodels are undetailed, but somehow they still look nice when you play it. But then again, I never cared for graphics that much (love Dwarf Fortress for example), so I might not be the right person to ask
- complicated at times. If you want to play this game, you'll have to be ok with reading up on the wiki. While features are being added, things like ejecting cargo is done at the moment through a command console. I expect buttons for this will be made at some point, but they're not implemented yet (you can program in keybinds to eject cargo etc. though, but for this you need to read up).

All in all, I'm in love. I would summarize it as a PvE version of EVE online. It's very much focussed on industry etc. instead of PVP/ganking.

For such a small development team with limited funds and an Early Access state, the game is amazingly stable. Granted I've played for about 4 hours as of writing this, but I have the graphics maxed out and have not experienced a single crash. The game could be a bit better optimized, but I wouldn't expect that at this stage. There's a few little strange graphical glitches but nothing game breaking. For example, if you buy a new ship your UI doesn't reflect the new stats unless you go back to the Main Menu and then load the map again.

On that note, this reminds me of Eve. It's a massive grind to get good progress and the game is insanely overwhelming; however UNLIKE Eve, you can get a solid grasp on the game within a couple of hours and it's all easy from then on. If you have questions, the community is very nice and mature and is always willing to help you.

So far I haven't had the opportunity to build anything yet, the few hours seem to be all about delivering goods and giving people rides to other space stations so you can earn anough credits to buy bigger ships. I haven't even touched the surface of the game and so far it's pretty impressive.

It's about as intuitive as you can get for such a massive scale space MMO. Until my view of this game changes, this post will reflect my current opinion. An excellent game with a very active developer.