This game looks really interesting! Just had a quick look a few videos and I'm pretty impressed. Does anyone know of any good LPers that are playing it?
It's pretty much my favourite game ever ... even after playing and modding it for the past 4-5 years it's still pretty much my go-to game for maximum enjoyment (not so much recently, as the last major update release came out nearly a year ago - but when the next one drops - which should be pretty major in terms of gameplay content additions - I expect I'll be back to it for a while).
There were a few historic LPers who did some vanilla and modded runs; I can't remember all the names so it's probably as well searching YouTube for Starsector and hoping for the best (NemoNaemo, EverLazy spring to mind ... although they are likely all earlier versions). Current LPs are a bit light, as the release cycle is slowing down general community involvement.
(This isn't a slight on the development process, byt the way - The Dev is great, and really intent on creating a coherent and complete game - the stability and quality of all major releases is absurdly good - but game dev takes time)
Interestingly, the artist is David Baumgart of Dungeons of Dredmor (Roguelike) / Gaslamp fame - hence the superb visual aesthetic running throughout.
If you can catch
Cycerin on Twitch, that's always good fun, and he has a few stored videos of him testing out the thoroughly beautiful and brilliant BlackRock DriveYards mod (as well as other stuff).
Vanilla really does stand out on its own as a great game, and for a bit of added longevity there really are some very high quality mods. It seems to have attracted a small community of likeminded artists and creative types who work together to put out
some very high quality and complementary content.
Try Starsector+ for a majorly tweaked vanilla experience (but still maintaining the general feel), Nexerelin for a procedurally generated sector and system-conquer mechanic, and notable high-quality content mods (typically adding factions / systems and sometimes new mechanics);
Scy, Blackrock Driveyards, Shadowyards, Exigency are some of my favourites and all contain original artwork and interesting twists on Vanilla gameplay.
Knights Templar is frighteningly beautiful and polished, but adds a super-scary, ultra-high-tech faction (and I don't personally tend to play with them switched on). There are more, and they are all generally very good.
Oh, and ShaderLib, where modders have added support for normal mapping / pretty shader-driven lighting to the experience.
