Ceres

It is buggy to the point of being almost unplayable without serious dedication to playing this game. I am talking multiple playthroughs just to get the tutorial mission to not bug out, because after finishing maybe two or three objectives, you need to reset the engine, because too many commands have already locked your HUD. Devs are not doing anything to imrpove it either, so don't waste the money.

Love the game. Some bugs, but such a deep and interesting game overall.
Such a shame we will likely never see a Ceres II.

Couldn't even make it through the tutorial without constantly encountering problems.

The audio sliders don't work and just blast full volume, completely drowning out voice over, the UI seems to only scale menu elements while ingame UI remains too small on a 4k monitor, there didn't seem to be a tutorial of any description, not even pop-up text boxes, there are rebindable keys but only for some controls - if you want to pan the camera with wasd for example you're SoL. Oh and apparently I hit level 5, but the only way I know that is because there's a steam achievement for it, the game didn't bother telling me. Terrible

Finished the game!

Took me about 35 hours of satisfying game play loop and never really reached all of it or got bored of them either.

You command your fleet in large open sectors of interest, where in you may trade, mine, pilfer, or do objectives and find anomalies. This is my favorite part. That lull of being in space. The vastness and unknown, but tangible and grounded. Very well executed here.

You will have as much time as you need to outfit your company, flank a target or just go mine and do repairs.

Mining and manufacturing is actually useful and meaningful, your on-board repairs rely on minerals and drones/ammo get expensive.

Variety of drones make the tide of battle or help you engage long range, they are your backbone. From mining and repairs to scouting or missile defense. Boarding drones are costly but worth the payout when you get your catch and the most profitable way to expand your fleet and make money.

Combat is variant, you never know what your opponent might be wielding. Could be a drone carrier, but you wont know if it has plasma or missile drones till they are launched. So hacking your target to gain control of their ship is a viable option to gain intel or infiltrate enemy lines.

Min-maxxing your ships load-outs and captain is paramount to victory, as everything has a trade off.

Cannons are powerful but targeting is bound by turret axial speed making it great against capital, but awful against corvettes or drones.

While torpedo's and missiles are expensive they dispatch targets quickly and come in many designs, some better for targeting while others for range. If you add a sensor suite they can re-target if enemy is destroyed.

However, lasers and plasma's are the most accurate and the most dangerous as they consume massive amounts of power when activated. This can leave your ship DOA after its first volley is loose. Its crucial to have experienced captain and crew, as well as advanced AI and high end components. Lasers are OP, ammo is free and the damage is infinitely scaled to your captains Lasers skill. Where as Kinetic and Targeted skills only increase ROF, which gets pricey fast.

The captain and their ship rely on each other for sound operation. If you have an inexperienced captain or crew, your systems will be sub-optimal. Possibly leaving you dead in the water from power run-offs or terrible damage/fire rate and weaker armor.
Captains should invest in the power management skill to mitigate core shutdowns.


The graphics have aged just fine, i ran a Re-Shade over it and looks better.

The story is not bad, but there is not much of it.

Its a pretty dense title but unfinished IMO.

Clearly some sectors of the map were meant to be used, or at least DLC.
Story is unfinished and the ending left me wondering if i beat the game or not.
Tons of bugs, some game breaking. Like if you board and control a mission ship or something tied to another event it will disallow UI interactions or CTD.
Fleet formations dont save.
I dislike how the turrets seem like an after thought, as they are brazenly slapped onto a protuberance from the hull of the smaller ships.
Drones will sometimes get stuck floating back and forth trying to fix their pathing.
Serious frame drops when crafting many items at once, or have too many drones on the field.
Sometimes you cant save, theres an undetected enemy or something?
Cant save if you command a bugged ship.
You have to have some patience and learn to play around them. Which sucks... but whatever.

All that aside, its still a fantastic game.
I had apparently played it before for 9 hours... i dont remember that at all lol
At any rate GET THIS SHIT if your a space junkie, and have the Home World cravings.
7/10 will play again for sure.

IF THE DEVS EVER READ THIS... PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! MAKE ANOTHER ONE!
Love this game, hope there will be a Ceres 2

Ceres,
Played Linux version, and completed game, has some bugs, just save as you go!
reload when needed.
once you figure the game out, its very playable, on my second playthrough.

It definitely has an old school and not fully polished feel, but the game itself is well worth it. The depth and intricacy of the space combat is great, and the open space provides a lot of exploration opportunities. The voice acting is hilarious at times but just adds to the character.

Update: How many hours? How long can you go before you do the Ceres event in game? Once you have this game figured out you can get quite OP (not by cheating!). Which you need in some places. It really is epic. Yes, I have played 500+ hours. There have been some frustrating stretches where I should have gotten a save in, and decided/had to go back. It can fight you it's true. Like everything in this game, you must learn the rules the hard way, lol.

Maybe I'll make a guide on managing the saving at least (just leave the zone), and drone wrangling (fly the ship towards the drone while recalling it, and other stuff), and other things like that.
This is a great game. It might not be for you.
________________________________________________________

I bought this during the the winter sale for four dollars US.

I love this game. It's great. It reminds me more and more of Mech Commander 2, in space. The replayability is similar; many of the same battles will be fought if you (me too!) play through again, but with different captains (pilots) and different skill trees. Later. Much later.

At first it seems impossibly hard to progress, but it is not. It takes some time; it's not for everyone. It's rewarding to win a big battle. The story missions lead you to ships that are appropriate to the level. The capture mechanics work also to build your fleet. (not too many during a mission). You don't have to get new ships by grinding minerals unless you want to! You can grind minerals and ignore the story and build a fleet that way (it would take forever though); I could go on and on.

The developer did not abandon it; the single developer worked on it for some time. Some buggy stuff remains, but not much really. You have a LOT of freedom in the game, including taking the NPC's ship if you want in the first area (demo!), ha ha! But it's final code now, so buyer beware.

There's endless discussion posts about things that used to go wrong and what to do, and the developer kept massaging the code, and experience with the interface handles the behavioural problems that still exist (drones getting weird; is your cargo full? click again. try explcit order)

It's hard anyways; save often. Nobody can be attacking you when you want to save; it's tense. You're sneaking around to get a save in before you get detected. Sometimes it doesn't want to save. Leave the zone or drag ships into and out of reserve.

Lots of the RPG skill factors affect lots and lots of things in the game.

IDK if you want to spend twenty dollars on this niche game, but otherwise wait for a sale again. If you are well off then send another whatever this guy in Iceland gets from your twenty dollars to him. I believe I read something about an infant two years ago. He made a great game that I never saw until a couple of weeks ago. I could have played the demo for hours and hours for free, dang it!

The demo is the first area (I assume; I needed ten minutes in the demo to drop four bucks); there's a lot to do in there; it's not the final version.

I've been playing too much; I've done three areas; headed to a fourth that's just side mission stuff (which was so amazing I wrote this review); I have a wicked powerful force of six ships but I'm pretty doubtful about these very hard difficulty missions, except that I've already amazed myself.

Again; it reminds me exactly of Mech Commander 2 in so many ways: combat and map mechanics, captain leveling and skill choices, weapon differentiation and upgrades; you can probably find more video of that game than you can of this one, unfortunately. (I'm going to have to play through MC2 after I finish this.)

Anyways: there's a manual. It's like the DMV guide; you are now released to learn the rest.
There's no walkthroughs, mission guides, nothing anywhere. I have looked.

There's some stuff in the discussion boards to help the hardy.

You will do OK. You will enjoy it very much.
GLHF
Big BIG thumbs up.

First I have to say that I really want to like the game. And I certainly want to support the developer. But I make the review for customers like me.

Its really hard to find a game to compare Ceres with. According to the developer it has been inspired by Homeworld. But in Homeworld you just do one fixed mission after the other. In Ceres you have a whole solar system to explore. So its like a mix of Homeworld and Nexus: The Jupiter Incident and a touch of Eve-Online in an Open-World setting. While this is in principle a good thing the execution lacks some basic things which make the game pretty hard to play (at least from my point of view).

I did the tutorial and double clicked on the instrucotrs ship as it requested from me and my ship launched some missiles. The instructor fired back and my "mission" was over. I left the game frustrated for some weeks and came back. Tried the tutorial again. Got stuck somewhere and left again. Tried 3rd time after some weeks and it hung somewhere but I could solve it in the end. So from my point of view the tutorial leaves much to be desired.

Then I tried a normal game. There was a large "level" with coulds, asteroids and stuff. I killed some pirates with my starter ship and followed the mission. After finding a destroyed station I tried to approach it to make the requested scan. The ship flew 3 times around it, collided with an asteroid nearby and it took some minutes until I was finally in the right position to do the scan. Did not know how to proceed so I decided to investigate the wormhole nearby. Accidentally double clicked it and my missiles started to attack it (a wormhole!). When I came close 4 alien ships appeared and quickily ended me.

So you see this game is a bit rough around the edges. Especially the user interface is one of the worst I have seen in a game so far (and I have seen alot).
The controls are unresponsive (giving a flight direction with double right click works 1 out of 10 times).
There is no information about your targets (health bar, faction etc.). So you don't know who you shoot at and why.
I would have liked a list of points of interest (missions, discoveries) where i could quickly navigate to without searching 3d space.
I had no clue how many loot is there to collect by the drones.
I have not tried fleet command since I just had the starter ship but when I can hardly tell one ship what to do how am I supposed to control several of them?
I had never the feeling I know what I do, it was more like try this and that. So I was simply lost in the complexity and had no real guidance.

I'm sure when one learns the ropes and quirks of the game it is fun and interesting. But a game must be accessible from the beginning to investigate the player with it. When it "prevents" the player from playing it does not a good job. I don't know if its just me and wether I'm "spoiled" by easier games or plain silly. But I could not grasp the game to a level where I could be confident with playing and enjoy it. I just fought the UI and thats sad for me. Because I think its a pearl of a game just unecessarily difficult to control and to get into.

So if you are a fan of spacegames or you like to figure things out and can handle a hard UI you should give it a try. But I think most people will be frustrated with the game. Thus a negative review albeit I really like the concept.

Note: I play Steam in offline mode and thus my time played displayed is wrong (it seems to count only when online). I should have played around 4 hours now.

Not an easy game .... The story is not bad.

U need to use your mind sometimes to take over on enemys.

The ship control is hard for the first time but after an hour gameplay u will get used to it.

An another important thing that the dev still working on this game... I like it :)

If u can catch it on sale... Grab it straight !!!


I miss some stuff : enemy just shows up.... Not appearing from a wormhole or hyper space...

The saving - loading time is a bit long... (No I am not running this game on a toaster ) (and an another thing... if u load up your saved game.... Something always changes in the space universe... )

It would be nice to sit in the drones and control them from the cokpit. :)

More ship upgrades please!! More "playgrounds " :)

Thank you for updating this game continously!!

July 2021 Update. Still abandoned.

June 2018 Update. one word, "Abandoned"


old review:

I am a fan of Space games, and I loved Nexus: Jupiter Incident and felt I would feel right at home here. For the most part, I like the game, story, and just about every aspect of the combat, strategy, customization, and adventure. The game is not complete, so I cannot recommend it to strangers unless they absolutely loved Nexus: Jupiter Incident and other incomplete space indie games. Should this game complete its development cycle and is finished, I believe it would be a great game for space junkies and strategy RPG fans alike, and a definite favorite of mine. The potential is certainly there, and despite lack of feedback on the bug forums, the game is being patched, and many of the problems I reported are eventualy resolved.

This is an updated review, about 8 months since the first. Not much additional content or gameplay changes have been made over the past 8 months, from september 2016 - may 2017. There are monthly patches, but the game seems to be just as wonky as it was 8 months ago. I was enjoying the space exploration and combat, but the bugs, horrible pathfinding, terrible UI, and cookie cutter map obstacle placement really hurts immersion. It's identical to when I first played the game, and it is placeholder content at best.

This could be a good game, but it's being developed seemingly by a single person that only patches bugs that are reported and adds content when he gets around to it. This game will never be an A rated game at the rate things are going. It's more of a man's side project than anything. I say this with love, the guy does a good job, but this serves as a warning to customers that want results, not a farmer building tables and chairs in his wood shed when he gets around to it.


Pros:
- Good space tactical adventure strategy game, in theory.
- Story is interesting so far
- Ship customization is pretty good, you can specialize ships and upgrade parts
- Character development matters, and you can specialize class
- Strategic, I save scummed a few times and strategy certainly comes in to play in most battles
- Manage a small fleet, like Nexus

Cons:
- Bugs... Dang near unplayable in Ubuntu, runs fine in Windows 10, for a short while at least. The wonky game mechanics will eventually creep up on you and ruin your immersion.

- Audio is generic, lasers, booms, etc. Voice actors are hit and miss. Your ship AI, a main story character, sounds like a Pakistani tech support lady that barely speaks English. Some are pretty decent, but a lot of them sound like they have a crappy mic recording some stripper from the night club down the street. Don't get me started on the pirate voices... If you are using Ubuntu and the pulse audio driver, just turn the sound off. It doesn't work half the time.

- User Interface: The user interface is absolutely terrible. The ship's tactical interface isn't too bad, but the stations and just about every other menu is place holder level at best. I spend most of my time trying to dart my eyes across the screen to compare values or find where I need to go. The design is not streamlined at all. The same bugged out menus that I experienced in October are still present in May of the next year. Formation menu has extra 3d bits and ghost ships, it also doesn't do anything. Ship customization menu doesn't refresh inventory properly. The 3d modeled ships is just a camera set up in a scene with your ships in it, and it flips between your ships. You can actually see the other ships clipping through the UI because it's lazily made. Has Unity3d written all over it.

- Movement: Ship navigation is broken. You have to drive your ships manually if you don't want to bounce off of asteroids, or friendly vessels. Formation behavior is still broken, even after being patched. It took a while for me to get the formation I wanted locked in and driving my ships. Don't expect to use the M key to move your ships much, as it leaves ghost ships and the formation reticle artifacted in your map until your reload the game. I have to pretty much drive everything manual because path finding doesn't exist during jumps or near structures / asteroids. I had to run the tutorial again, a 7 month hiatus made me forget how to drive, it's complicated. New players be warned.


1) If you are somewhat affraid of abandonware during early access, walk away, progress is slow, and the title is more than likely to be abandoned, or be developed really really slow over the next 6 or 7 years.

2) Buy it on super duper clearance if you really want to play a Nexus like strategy RPG game. Fire up the developer if you really want to see this get worked on. If you do play, make sure you post on the forums. The developer does read it on occasion. He is watching...

3) Wait for the game to finish the dev cycle and pick it up if you don't want to risk losing your money. Though there is no telling just how long this will take. At the current pace, years. May 2017

4) This game is still worth following. I recommend following them if you liked Nexus and are unsure. Kick the tires on it for a while and read the patch notes. The game is somewhat fun, but the bugs and lack of new content are making me uninstall it. I will wait another 6-8 months and review again.

The game's interface is sadly anything but intuitive. When the game seems to freeze but you can still move cursor and interface stuff around, press the space button to unpause, because it has gone into a pause and you cannot do much when it's paused. Te tutorials seem kinda clumsy because of that.
Sadly the controls are kinda unpractical and are also seem quite unreactive most of the time (either that or the ship's crew does what it wants and ignores orders as soon as combat starts). The tutorial seems a bit bugged since most of the time it deactivates the control menu and no button press can get it back in, even when the tutorial text says "press this symbol".
So i guess it may be a bug or some interface error ? I'll check back in a few patches.

Honestly cannot reccomend this. The UI is terrible, the scaling is nonexistant, and the options for changing any of the above are equally nonexistent.

It's a shame because this game haas a lot of potential, in my opinion, but its just not polished enough. If someone waas able to look past the User Interface and clunky, non-intuitive controls, the tooltips that always seem to say 'utility drone' no matter what you're pointing at, the poor movement schema, the terrible missions interface, and the occasional windows that pop up full of norwegian text (I presume it's norwegian) that you can't get rid of, I'm sure its an excellent game. I spent 1.9 hours on it and never got past the first mission.

Refund Requested.

The Bad:

• Bugs, and lots of them.
  Most of them aren't game-breaking, but they range from annoying to downright obnoxious (e.g., duplicate "outlines" when in tactical mode, formation bugs that prevent you from placing ships properly, drones stuck hovering ~100m off your ship that won't return, mods that stop working, repair systems showing offline even when idling at shipyard with no damage, etc.). I did encounter one bug on the final mission that did break my game, and reloading from saves didn't resolve it. GG I suppose.
  
• Poor Optimization
  Generally the game performs well, but send out 20-30 drones, or turn on tactical mode with active scan up during a larger fight, and I've found the game will often slow to a crawl. There also seems to be an issue where the game becomes painfully slow regardless. My only recourse has been to save/load which fixes it for a time.
  
• Ship Control
  It's VERY difficult to manage your ships properly aside from pausing and issuing orders one by one. The fleet formations don't work very well, and something as simple as jumping to a location or ordering your fleet to follow something will cause untold numbers of collisions, to the point I almost lost one of my battlecruisers during a fight before I realized two of my ships were tangled in a dance of death.
  

The Mediocre:

• Not Early Access
  I know, I KNOW! In the age of early access letdowns, I too hope the next person to say "this game has potential" dies in a fire as much as the next guy, but this game does have potential, and if it were in early access I'd definitely recommend watching how it turned out for anyone even remotely interested. Unfortunately, it's in a relase state so I'm uncertain how much effort is still going into it.
  
• Mediocre Story/Voice Acting
  To each his own here, and while I consider myself pretty forgiving, the story/voice acting are both very underwhelming. The story overall is your typical save the human species trope which is fine, but it's telling is mediocre at best.
  

The Good:

• Customization
  One of the places this game really shines is how much customizing you can do on your ships. It's almost too much for me, because I got OCD about that shit, and spent way too long on it. XD
  
• Boarding Mechanics
  While it needs a little balancing (boarding and capturing a ship is too easy to accomplish once you figure it out), it's incredibly satisfying to snag a top tier ship in a fight where you managed a lucky hack and if you miss your next hack you're very likely to get obliterated before you can successfully capture the disabled monster in front of you. Epic stuff.
  
• Combat
  The combat is fun, to a point. It becomes slightly monotonous later in the game when you're fielding a fleet than can wreck an entire zone even if they rushed you all at once. Still, firing a beam of megadeath right through an enemy frigate is absurdly cathartic. Overall I enjoyed it.
  
• Sounds/Music
  The sounds and music, while not top notch, fit the theme well and add to the atmosphere. They won't be winning any awards for it, but that doesn't mean they're not enjoyable.
  
[*]Graphics
This area I considered placing in mediocre, but I can't bring myself to. Yes, it's what you're thinking, it's exactly because the game is indie that I consider them good. There really aren't any issues with them, and while it's easy to make space beautiful, they're still good for what they are.

Final Thoughts
The game could do with some polish and bug fixes. I realize it's just the small (I think one-man) dev team working incredibly hard and I respect that, but that should never be used as an excuse. Besides, I voted with my wallet here, and I sincerely hope the guy behind this goes on to make bigger and better worlds.

Overall, buy this game if you're a fan of the genre and are a patient person. Just remember to save often, lest the bugs eat you. If you're on the fence, or are not a forgiving person, either wait til it's on sale or pass on it. Either way I recommend following the team behind it, there's clearly some talent there.

Potential FAQ
Q: "But why did you put "the bad" up front if you're recommending the game?"
A: "Because I want people to know what they're getting themselves into. It takes effort to look past those issues and still enjoy this for what it is."

Edit: Formatting

Deep space rts/rpg with awkward controls

The game is hard, with a lot of micromanagement (which is good in my book) but the controls are awkward and hard to learn. I kinda liked this game, but I don't think it's for a broad audience.

PRO

• Very deep, a big map, lots of factions.
  
• Customisable ships, with tons of options from weapons to cargo bays.
  
• Fast paced combat/slow paced game.
  
• Lots and lots of micromanagement (which is good if you are into it, like me).
  

CONS

• Awkward, hard to learn controlls.
  
• 'Big' UI, with a bunch of submenus.
  
• Buggy.
  
• Lame graphics.
  
[*] Ugly 'mechas' (imho). Most spaceships in this game look like metal shellfish.

When i first found the game and played the demo for 5 mins, my first thoughts were "why isn't this in the top sellers?"

I played EVERYTHING since homeland, and it left me wanting. There was always something missing.

When i first started battle, i did bite off more than i can chew.

Usually i would just have given up.

But i was playing Ceres - so i turned my armor towards the heavy hitters, where it was thickest, moved all power from weapons into engines and systems, and commanded the crew to focus on repairing the most critical parts of the ship, while preparing to jump the hell out of here.
I send all the drones to attack, hoping they would catch some of the fire, and took over control of the ship manually - there were heavy slugs incomming, and someone had to dodge them after all.

With my mineral resources used up by the repairs, the energy almost out and modules in critical damage, i got just enough space in between me and the bulk of the enemy fleet, to speed up for the jump, except for the pesky frigate that was fast enough to catch up with my ship. But this was one of the possibilities, that i had accounted for.

Some hours before all this mess, i was sitting, docked, at the nearest station, browsing through the shopping list for the latest ship AI, that would give me just the right edge. Selling off a large laser, that i was saving for my next ship, i decided to buy the most costly AI - i was a Cyber-mechanic after all, and preferred hacking skills over pure firepower.

Who would have known at that time, that those hacking skills would allow me to disable the ship of my nemesis, saving my ship and crew in the battle to come...

Holy shitballs where do i start. This game is HUGE, by that I mean in depth. Yet it still manages to deliver a huge open world.

You are able to trade, Mine, Bounty hunt, Take missions, Retrofit your ships, Hire mercenaries, Captains, Crew, Train crew.

There is an entire fleet system mechanics, Formations a loot system and there is what seems to be a very indepth Drone system that I haven't even touched yet... I'm addicted and haven't even scratched the surface at how much depth this game has. For example there is a very fleshed out character progression system in game where experience points can be converted to skills, the system is incredibly similar to how fallout 3 handles this, with each interest having a skill point from 0-100 and then perks for each captain in individual ships of your fleet.

It's a fully 3D game with Homeworld esque style controls, However it's more centered on individual ships and the mechanics therein.

So far, I'm intrigued by the story.

It's got beautiful fleet combat, epic brawls and the combat is very stylised. Some might find it very difficult, So tactics is everything.

Only downsides thus far is dated graphics which can improve and the need for more optimisations to allow a lag free environment with lots and lots of individual ships. I might also nitpick about the voice acting which is painful sometimes, But it can improve - Augment.

I very much enjoyed playing "nexus - the jupiter incident" and was very happy to see, that this kind of game has a rebirth with Ceres.

Ceres is a very deep tactical game with tons of possible tactics with different type of ships. You can modify your ships very nicely with different modules and together with the huge amount of possible ships you can try more or less anything you want.

Pro:
- very deep tactical game.
- many different ships and modules/weapons
- perk/skills for captains,AI and crew
- board, hack or schredder the enemy to pieces
- trade, bounty hunt, explore or be a humble miner (to some extent)

Con:
- trying to maneuver in combat is a bit tricky (micromanagement)
- graphics are a little bit old/simple, but i find them very appaeling anyway
- there are some bugs/glitches left, but they are minor.

for beeing developed mostly from one coder, this is really great.

I been playing the game from the point it came out. It is a very good game. I love space sim's and this one up there. I see great potential. You can salvage ship's. I like looking for them. You can also capture them free money. Or just blow them up cuz u can. U can hire people and send them to there death's for your ship's are worth more then there. Mining easy and it helps on your repairs. You can also build.

Like all new game's it has it bug's. But i posted what one's i found and almost immediately i got a response from the Dev.

All in all it a great game. I really enjoyed it and will continue to enjoy it.

Cannot wait for the add on, tho i know it too soon.

From what I could experience in the first 10 hours of game play its clear this title has a lot of potential. The graphics are good without being too demanding so heavy fighting hardly slows down at all, making for some seriously nasty battles. It feels balanced and the ship modification adds a real personal feel to what I do and how I play the game. The only time I failed at a mission so far was due to the tricky nature of disabling a ship without destroying it, as you need lasers or boarding drones which turned into a bit of a game of hide in the bigger ship's blind spots. The learning curve can be a little hard but if you played and loved games like Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, Freelancer & Independence War, then this game is right up those lines.

For the new players, heres a few quick things I learned that were the most useful starting out:

1. Create a group for your ships with ctrl+F1-F4 to make fleet orders easy, else you will have a lot of trouble with collisions and having to give orders multiple times.
   
2. Double right-click is your friend, it tells your ship(s) to fly in a given direction relative to themselves until told otherwise.
   
3. Nav points / points of intrest are the best way to travel. Full of loot? Just set a point of intrest where you are, then just order your ships to jump to the nearest station. Its faster than normal speed and your ships WONT CRASH enrout!
   
4. Turrets are picky, make sure you dont buy a FIXED weapon (instead of a turret) or the wrong size for the mounts on your ship. Its a costly mistake to make.
   
[*] Repairs are a big deal, so think about having a ship just for utility drones if you dont have any. They can fix as well as mine for the minerals used to repair your fleet, plus you need them to grab more booty!

As with any game, there are bugs and issues to be sure but so far none have been game breaking or even all that troubling. A few graphics oddities with the tactical view for instance, or autosaves in the system view getting bugged. Nothing that impacted my enjoyment even a little, so way to go testers and devs! Compared to some reacent big name games, thats actually saying something, keep up the great work.

The good:
- System Designs are well thought out, robust, and add depth to the game.
- Concept is great: Squad/Small Fleet in space (been waiting for something like this for awhile).

The bad:
- The art style falls into that awkward category of games that look old but don't pull it off in some charming way.
- Character portraits look like they were made in EVE Online in 2003.
- It's difficult to get into without going through the tutorial which is bland and more or less like reading a manual.

The ugly:
- Precise navigation feels impossible. I can only guess I'm doing something wrong, whether in map mode or in 3d space, I can't seem to get my ships to arrive at the right x,y,z coordinates without major headaches.
- Interaction with objects is difficult as well. Non-ship interactible objects seem to be the worst offenders.
- NPC Ships can (and will) follow you across the map. While I don't generally mind that idea, it only leads to frustration. One time I was trying to read quest text, and a bunch of little drones were swarming me, so I bolted away, then started reading the text again. They followed and blew me up. Several hours lost since my previous auto save. Another time I had traveled to the main space station. I was docked with it, changing loadouts when I was attacked and destroyed by... Well I have no idea what it was, but it wasn't fun.

Final thoughts:
- I'd be more excited about the game if it were early access so the "ugly" issues could get addressed, I don't feel this game reached the quality level that you would expect for an actually released title. (indy or not)
- If you can get over the old-style art and initial learning curve, there could be dozens of hours of fun.
- If the game were $10 I'd probably give it a thumbs up, but only for those who are system design nerds and/or are into sci-fi ship management.

Very deep, very detailed tactical game with very deep, very detailed character, crafting, ship, customisation, mining, looting mechanisms...

I liked it.

I always waited games like this one...

Yes, it is not an AAA game from a big game company... But the trick is that...

You cant get a detailed game like this one, from a monsterous game company... They just want suck the money fast, so they create same games, with different graphics and stories, over and over... But, at the end, they are same games... same details, same mechanics, same, same, same...

You can get a game with this detail level, only from a "dedicated- one person-idealistic-young developer", and of course, you know the story... The game is so detailed, so good, so dreamy for core players but not for the casual mainstream players...

And game will not sold too much, so the developer and the distrubutor have to change the next project to less detailed, more mainstream, more casual game...

A great game, not for everyone but core strategy/tactics/RPG gamers.