Stardust Exile

This game is the most excruciatingly barebones space game I can think of, with a very smooth interface. The game has no techs, no trees or development branches of any kind. You build collectors to harvest material from planets, you build dyson swarms to harvest energy, you have storage ships to receive these resources in the same system, end of economy. All resources are globally pooled. Ships have a boolean interstellar bit, so for instance, you build your collector local or extra solar (about double the cost), and that's it. You need a resource storage ship in system to receive resources from any collector/swarms in that system. You have a ship yard to build the 3 types of weapons platforms (and economic ships). It too can be build solar or extra solar. Star systems are on a flat grid, evenly spaced close together with no ort clouds. You take possession of one by being there. Fight it out, that's the game. By far the most involved (only?) system in the game is the ship appearance customization. Note the word *appearance*. The actual options to modify ships are limited to engine speed, armor and the FTL bit. 4 options for each of the first two, btw. All available from the start.

There are no logs. The game is real-time persistent, so ships destroyed with you not around to witness simply disappear. I can't speak to the combat mechanics per se, as I have not witnessed any combat first hand, yet. The chat system is rudimentary (no channels, no filters, no time stamps, etc.). Similar the ship list "ui". Extremely bare bones.

It is EA, so perhaps these things will emerge. No roadmap I've been able to find either. At this juncture, it does not feel worth playing. Caveat Emptor.

This game has currently enought content to hold ones interest for 0-5 days, depending if you quit immediately after fiddling around a bit and realising how limite the current game is or basically do everything you can do in this game and a bit more.

The economy is very simple, there are 2 types of resource, two refinery ships and two types of collector ships. Resources teleport from harvesters to refineries (there is an animation about transporting it which is nice, but in reality the resources just teleport).

The combat is very simple, there are 3 weapons, 3 armors, 3 engines and you can mix these. You will only be using 1-2 of these weapon types though after day 2, because once you hit the ship cap, there is no point in using the weakest and cheapest of the weapons.

The ship cap is 256, which is very low considering you need 150+ ships to get an economy where you don't constantly have to wait to be able to do something.

On the other hand, if you are willing to take some miminmal risks during expansion, it takes 2 days from start to hit that ship cap.

OK. So what do you do once you hit that ship cap? Nothing really. I mean, you can attack other players and wait 24h to get trough their distruptors to gain a single system, but why would you bother? At that point you already have more systems under your control than you can ever use, you have hit the ship maximum and there is nothing you can achieve or gain.

The combat itself ends up being very simplified due to the distruptor mechanic and it's highly likely you won't even be online to see the combat. There is not even any way to replay what happened.

There is no diplomacy, no objectives, no long or even mid term goals. You just build up to max size in two days and then you are supossed to fight other max sized players in slow motion battles with nothing to gain from winning.

There is something about this game I do like, and I really wish it grows into something great, but right now it's just too bare bones and I would not recommend anyone to spend any money on this until it gets signifcant updates or even a roadmap and a plan on how to get the game from bare bones to a proper long term mmo game.

In the meantime, you might want to check out something more fleshed out and free, like starborne. Or even some of the browser based ages old games as even they give more long term incentive to play.

My playtime is this high only because I kept the game in the bacround alot while waiting for stuff and actually doing somethign else. I also REALLY wanted to like it and made sure I have actually done everything in the game that there is to do currently.

The game's charm lays in its simplicity writ over a grand scale. There is a layer of depth to ship design, but gone are the exacting details in some other sims. Instead, your attention is driven towards the macro scale of the universe in a competitive environment full of other players also seeking to expand.
While space is limitless, the area around the central POI and ultimate goal of the game is cramped and full of potentially hostile players. While reclaiming SOL seems like a simple goal, acquiring it while old empires lay guard to the environs around it is anything but simple encouraging an ever growing expansion on the frontiers to fuel the sinews of war.
No bugs or crashes were experienced in my first few hours playing, although I prefer to queue up orders then return after a while rather than play continuously. There are jump defense units that can create a defensive field that delays attacks by 24 hours, allowing players who aren't online all the time to protect themselves as long as they invest in the infrastructure needed. You can also set out to deep space to build up and avoid the hectic churn near the central area and then plan to invade the core at your leisure. There is no fog of war, so watching other player's moves and planning your own movements with what you learn from them is part of the charm.