Starway Fleet (Tribute to Wing Commander / Elite / Freelancer & Freespace)

[JulianFB]

Hello everyone

My good friends at Stormcube Games are about to release their Early Access title Starway Fleet on Steam. I'd really like to support them and since this is a game about space battle I believe it could be something for the Wing Commander community.

I am a huge Privateer and Wing Commander fan myself so please give it a try - you can also test a free Demo (Has a tutorial and a mission).

For now it has a six mission singleplayer missions and Co-op multiplayer + a very cool feature to let you use tons of controllers and joysticks.

store.steampowered.com/app/610680


Have a great day everyone.

Cheers


Julian

 

[JulianFB]

So, anyone here already checked it out?
Any wishes or input you like to share

Here is a small piece of roadmap for the next days/weeks/months of development:

"We plan to have 6 game modes at release: 3 single player and 3 co-op multiplayer. In the single player mode we plan to have 10-12 missions at release which then will be extended with time as free updates. We won't have a campaign or story mode, only mission based challenges. We'll add a survival and a custom battle mode to both single and multiplayer modes. In the multiplayer game mode all single player missions will be available to play in co-op."



Me playing the Demo with my Microsoft Sidewinder joystick

 

[JulianFB]

Hello everyone.

I have an update about Starway Fleet for you.
The team just released the full game on Steam and managed to add different game modes, coop multiplayer (Up to 3 players) mode and even HTC Vive support.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/610680/

Anyone here has a VR device? Would be cool to hear your opinion on the game while playing it with a HTC Vive.

Have a great day

 

[Death Angel]

This looks really nice. I might get it and give it a try with my Vive.

Since I primarily prefer to play solo, do you know if there is more single player content coming?

 

[Mace]

Tried the demo, here's my 2 cents.
+ 1 It does look great, and the atmosphere is very nice
- I'm not that big a fan of the auto-aiming and auto-targeting..
- Some "space junk" would be nice because you don't really get a sense of speed

Smal bug: There is some issue with the menu that when you assign joystick buttons and axis, even though joy.cpl confirms you are completely centered, the 0 and 1 axis seem to "float" through the menu, even when applying very large deadzones. This only happens in the menu after you assigned an axis or button, and disappears when you enter spaceflight. If you then restart the game and do not modify any buttons or axis it does not occur at all..

Tell the guys to keep up the great work!

 

[JulianFB]

This looks really nice. I might get it and give it a try with my Vive.

Since I primarily prefer to play solo, do you know if there is more single player content coming?

Hey Death Angel. Would be cool to hear your opinion there is one LetsPlay with the Vive on Youtube (maybe worth a look):

There are currently 10 single player missions (not combined into a campaign). The team has to see how the sales are doing first in order to be able to add more missions - they are currently improving controls.

 

[JulianFB]

Tried the demo, here's my 2 cents.
+ 1 It does look great, and the atmosphere is very nice
- I'm not that big a fan of the auto-aiming and auto-targeting..
- Some "space junk" would be nice because you don't really get a sense of speed

Smal bug: There is some issue with the menu that when you assign joystick buttons and axis, even though joy.cpl confirms you are completely centered, the 0 and 1 axis seem to "float" through the menu, even when applying very large deadzones. This only happens in the menu after you assigned an axis or button, and disappears when you enter spaceflight. If you then restart the game and do not modify any buttons or axis it does not occur at all..

Tell the guys to keep up the great work!

Thanks for your feedback Mace, very much appreciated. I have forwarded your report to the devs.

Btw you are not the only one asking for space junk, currently it only appears with the small fighters (for several seconds) but the capital ships, cruisers etc dont have it. Could be a problem with the overall performance... but I will check with them

The bug was fixed today:
http://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791457863261/announcements/detail/1449452067253465144

The Demo is now offline, it was removed right after the official release. But since Steam allows Refunds, this should not be a huge problem + you can test all features incl Multiplayer, Vive etc and the team (2 people) can focus on the game.

 

[Mace]

Thanks for your feedback Mace, very much appreciated. I have forwarded your report to the devs.

Purchased it, and I'll purchase another one for my friend so at least I'll have someone to play with...

There still could have been done so much more with this game.. less, but more powerfull opponents(Even on Elite level they drop like flies), the ability for locking your target would have been awesome, A brightness/gamma setting would be nice.. and I do miss a force feedback option(The Freespace2 engine has some issue that the performance drops with FF enabled, other games I play with my stick do not)

I would still like to adress the lack of target lock.. you don't need it since the opponents are not very strong, but it would be a bit more emersive if they did and there is something about the flight model that gives me the idea I'm flying a cockpit without a fighter around it.. can't put my finger on it though, but people working on combat sims probably know what I mean and how they did it.

I also posted this on their discussion thread on steam.

 

[JulianFB]

Hey Mace. Thanks for giving it a try

Unfortunately the number of active players is not very high which makes the multiplayer mode a bit sad

Things like stronger fighters or Brightness/Gama Settings sound like something that might be possible. The force feedback option is probably too much work... not sure how that works on Unity.

The target lock feature is definitely something I would love to see get some additional improvements too. Not so much for the smaller fighters (as they go down very quickly) but for the captial ships weapons and shield generators. I am happy to talk to Csaba (One of the Devs) and see what they are up to.

I believe I saw your posting on Steam

 

[Mace]

Yes, that was me... On the market only a very small selection of Joysticks have FF(I purchased spares again since my HOTAS is out of production now after 5 years), and it would not really be missed(It proved it's worth in Starlancer, prophecy not so much)
Someone else also commented and "knew what i meant"

As for how I saw and played the game.. 10 missions is very limited.. The game engine has awesome potential though. I would like to see something like a mission editor where I could also edit the stats of the fighters to make it more WC/TF-ish, it would get the game "rolling" and the devs might always sell official campaigns with voice-overs

There still is the flight model that should be easy to implement/fix.. but I have the idea that the dev's don't play with flightsticks but with mouse.