Star Corsairs: Fractured Frontier — the shipyard now shows where each hull can actually shoot before you buy it (solo dev, Early Access)
Star Corsairs: Fractured Frontier is a single-player top-down 2D space RPG: trading across eight nations' markets, boarding, an escort wing, wormhole pockets, and 46 ships from interceptors to capitals. I'm a solo dev, and it's been in Early Access since August 31. This is the first big update.
Combat in it is about positioning. Guns have firing arcs, enemies turn broadside to fire, and a hull that hits hard off the bow can be nearly toothless off the stern. But the shipyard showed none of that. Worse, a ship's gun count came from the turrets drawn on its sprite, so six cruisers at the same price differed 5.3× in damage, and you only found out in a fight.
Now damage is set by class, and every hull shows its firing arcs and damage by facing (bow, broadside, stern), overlaid on your current ship, before you buy. Upgrades within a class cap at about 2×, so moving up a class is always a real step, and pirate waves scale to your ship.
The other half of the update is a side story expedition, Beyond Contact. A scientist hires you to find a missing research team; I'll leave the rest unspoiled. It's built as proper scenes: the camera frames what matters, every speaker has a portrait, you can turn back at key points, and a failed defense retries from a checkpoint with different lines.
Two things I'd love feedback on:
- Do you prefer ships with a strong broadside you have to turn to use, or bow-heavy ships you just point at the target? Right now the roster has both, and I'm not sure which feels better in a top-down game.
- From the screenshots: do the story scenes read clearly? Is it obvious who's speaking and what the camera wants you to look at?