Endless Sky is a 2D space trading and combat game similar to the classic Escape Velocity series. Explore other star systems. Earn money by trading, carrying passengers, or completing missions. Use your earnings to buy a better ship or to upgrade the weapons and engines on your current one. Blow up pirates.

Endless Sky is a free-to-play single player game and it took me around 45 hours or so to get to the end of the Free Worlds campaign. I didn’t check to see if it had controller support, but I found keyboard and mouse worked just fine, with me just sticking to plain keyboard most of the time.It’s the early 31st century and like any bright-eyed youth on your backwater planet, you want to leave home and see the stars. You apply for a bank loan and drop the cash on your very first craftand now that you’re out in space, you need to figure out how you’re gonna pay off that loan before the interest gets outta control. There are plenty of options out there for the enterprising captain, and some of them aren’t legal. Decisions, decisions.Picked my poison with this one.I never played Escape Velocity, but Endless Sky is something of a homage to it made by one guy in his free time with the help of users and fans’ contributed content.

I wound up playing this since my last foray into scratching that “gotta do space” itch fell apart, and I’m honestly impressed with what I found. Here, space is a 2D ocean seen from the ‘top’ sorta like in SPAZ, but everything is on its own invisible layer/plane when asteroids and other ships are taken into account. This goes out the window when weapons are involved. You can’t ram ships but trying to down a target with missiles doesn’t work too well when you’re in the middle of an asteroid field.Controls were kinda different and this was one time I didn’t change anything. Arrow keys control thrust and turning (no strafing) and turning your ship around 180 degrees for reverse. From there, the keys are kinda weird because instead of them being in something resembling an array or shortcuts, they correspond to the action you want.

So you hit L to Land on a planet, you hit J to Jump between systems, you hit F to have your fleet Focus fire on your current target, you hit B to Board a disabled ship, etc. Kinda intuitive too, I thought. You can use the mouse to click on things but I didn’t do that too often except where the autopilot picked poor options for things I wanted to board or so on.There is a small variety of missions. You have your standard “deliver X amount of Y resource to Z system,” you have the same but with passengers, then you have those with time limits. When you jump between systems, the game’s calendar advances a day, you pay crew salaries as well as the current payment on any ongoing loans, and your ship uses up some hyperspace fuel. Landing on most planets refills your fuel and repairs your ships, but also advances the calendar when you leave, so there is some strategy in planning routes to your destination. You are able to hail ships to request repairs or fuel, but it’s not something I’d rely on, especially with several ships in your fleet.

There are also “escort ship to X system” missions where you need to help another captain get their ship to whichever system without the pirates you’ll undoubtedly face blowing them up first. And once you’ve won yourself some fights, you’ll get bounty missions where you’re to search nearby systems for a ship or a small fleet and destroy them for the bounty. I think on my save I have over a hundred of these left to do, mostly because the target has a wide range of systems it can appear in and I didn’t feel like doing hide-and-seek.This may look badbecause it is. Smaller ships are dead in the water (space?) when their hull gets below 50% like mine.But those are just the sandboxy missions. There are currently two longer quest chains that have characters and actual choices and there is a major branch in the Free Worlds storyline too.

The story missions are still kinda structured the same, but having actual interaction with characters makes it feel less samey as the random missions you get otherwise. Free Worlds deals with a terrorist attack and an investigation into the real culprit, while war with the Republic gradually becomes a reality. Or you can just ignore it all, but apart from explicitly timed missions, you lose nothing by putting things off for a few years. One minor gripe is that some story missions are unlocked by visiting random Space Ports on planets and hoping you trigger something to advance.For those who want to do trading to get by, the interface is extremely easy to understand.

Pick your destination system in the maps screen and look at the Ports submenu, and it’ll show you the price difference for each commodity between the two systems. While prices fluctuate a little as you travel, I didn’t see anything drastic like a 250cr profit per good dropping to -10 or something before I even got there.

An early strategy I used was to find a nearby system with several quests I could complete at the same time and I filled up the rest of my cargo with the most profitable commodity to get a bunch of cash for one run.This is only one part of the map. The game calendar has advanced about ten years since I started playing, so I’ve jumped over 3000 times so far. It’s not that big, but there are a lot of systems here.Space combat is a little overwhelming when you first start out because all three of the starter ships aren’t great at all and apart from friendlies in the system, you’re on your own. There’s an option to have the game automatically turn your ship to face your target so your forward-facing guns stay on target, and I’d suggest using that. You can later buy ships that have a turret slot and turrets fire independently of your ship’s orientation, a massive help. When you have more ships under your command, they generally follow a 'seek and destroy’ behavior, but you can have them either focus their attacks on a single ship, swarm around you, or hold position at a fixed point/current position. Mages of mystralia archmage.

Your ships stop attacking (but fired projectiles keep going!) when an enemy ship suffers enough hull damage to shut down, and you’re able to board the ship at that point. You can either take the ship’s equipment like their thrusters or weapons, or you can try to take it over altogether with your crew fighting the other ship’s crew to the death. Win and the ship is now yours, albeit likely heavily damaged and easily blown up if more enemies pop up. You could keep the ship along and have it help you with fightingor sell it off for a quarter of its base value. It’s kinda funny that you can get a lot of money by playing pirate against the actual pirates.I really liked capping ships for some reason.

I set up my fleet with lasers and sometimes sat in areas pirates kept hitting. I’d end up with a bunch of disabled ships and I’d just go between them and steal them, then set them up with lasers and repeat.

At one time I had over 120 ships! Not efficient since each ship needs to be staffed and that comes out of your funds every day, but it was pretty fun just seeing how many ships I could swipe in a single sitting. And since I could just dump the ships at any planet with a Shipyard later, that was even easier money. Nothing like claiming the bounty on a ship and then selling it to double-dip.Easy money is never a bad thing.Customization in this game is pretty deep. Each model of ship has its own stats like hull integrity, mass, and a default loadout of engines and other systems as well as weapons sometimes, and there’s a comprehensive stat screen for each ship that shows this as well as other information like how many degrees a second it can turn and how much heat total it can generate before it overheats. On planets with Outfitters, you’re able to install different hardware on each ship in your fleet, provided you respect the limits placed on you.

Every piece of equipment takes up Outfit Space, weapons take up both Outfit Space and Weapon Space, and engines take both Outfit Space and Engine Space. You also have only a set number of Gun and Turret Slots, and you also also have to mind the power generation and heat generation that comes from operating each ship. A lot of limits but there’s still quite a lot of play with how you set things up. If taking enemy ships isn’t your speed, you can outright buy ships from Shipyards, but of course not every system has a Shipyard or Outfitter, and not all of them carry the same stock. At least you can also check which ships and outfits are sold where once you’ve visited the planet/bought a map.There’s a lot of description too.

The planets all have text that describes the planet in general accompanied by a picture, and the Space Port has its own description too about how it looks and the surrounding area, etc. Ships in the Shipyard and equipment in the Outfitter all have descriptions too. Like the Tyrant-class Plasma Engines coming in an enormous crate with a big dinosaur bearing an improbable number of teeth printed on the side. A bunch of nice little touches. The ship names are pretty varied too, with Republic ships all starting with R.N.S., or pirate ships having names like Death By Lorelei or Satan’s Madness or other tryhard names. You can rename anything you own at the Shipyard but apart from my primary ship, I left everything as default.

Try to hail a pirate ship you’ve disabled sometime to see all the various insults they can think of.The pictures are almost all taken on Earth or source images, some of which have been edited for color to make them feel alien.I didn’t really dislike much about the game. I would’ve liked an option to slow down combat since trying to give individual orders (hey you, nearly-dead ship–get outta here!) kinda didn’t work, but you can click on the ship’s icon on the bottom-left to sorta target it for commanding. I’d sometimes reload just because I lost a ship I liked. I mentioned the thing with the random nature of starting story missions and that kinda sucks.

I really only had lag when I had a ton of ships on the screen fighting each other, and I could see how badly my system suffered by having the CPU and GPU% usage overlaid on top of the screen. I wound up bumping my fleet back from 120 assorted ships to about 30 robust ones just for that.

To me, as said before, it looks like an amature game developed by amature developer/s. It so hard it seems like you need dozens of hours in the game to achive only one upgrade. Big hunter. Getting new weapons is a complete hell!

And shuffling parts between ships is a little bad because you have to sell the part to an Outfitter and then buy it back (at no net loss, thankfully) with the other ship selected to install it there. In the original review, I complained about not being able to buy outfits and put them directly into cargo, but CTRL+click the currently-selected ship and there you go.It doesn’t have much variety but I still got nearly 60 hours out of it. There’s a lot of space for personal challenges, like “I want to have every node on the map unlocked” or “I want to amass a billion credits any way I can” or “I want to conquer Earth”, but completing the Free Worlds story is really only part of the game and there’s always more storylines to come someday. And if you like the game, you can contribute with plugins or new ships or outfits or entire quest chains if you want!

And it sits under 100MB for me, so I’m keeping this installed probably forever.The adventure continues.

This guide describes the efficient way to go around problems, usually in the beginning of the Game.I promise to keep it away from 'Hot' contesting issues and do no spoilers, even though some, concerning early missions are unavoidable, so pardon me and bare with me.In the Beginning there Was ChaosSo you are about to start the game, having signed up a mortgage at an exhorbitant interest rate you surely wonder which ship ino your money range should you start with.There are three availlable, actually displaying the levels of difficulty you want to face.A. The ShuttleThe cheapest of the three with the longest Range, most Passenger space and small Cargo space.Most obviously it's the 'easy' start of the game.B. The BargeMidlle (comparative) in price, sort Range, small Passenger space and the biggest Cargo space of the three.Obviously a mid-tier difficulty.C. The FighterThe only one with guns (albeit pop guns), short Range, even smaller Passenger space than the Barge and almost noexisten Cargo space.Talking about xtreme difficulty.Just like the program says the choice is your's, then again, there is an Ancient Greek proverb that goes like this (translated) Everything (done) in measure is best, therefore it is recommended to start wih the Barge. At least it has a 'decent' free outfit space and lots of cargo space to play with, converting to outfit if necessary (hopefully not).Baby StepsA start with the Barge is supposed to have happened for the duration of this guide.As you exit the Shipbuilder, on the tarmac of the Spaceport you are aproached by James, an old, retired Captain.Maybe he's been put there for a reason by the programmer, maybe he's just a distraction, but anyway be polite enough to listen to what he says AND follow his advice like the good person you are (still).OK. Maybe not all of it.

Afterall he's old generation right?Of course you agree to take James along.Nevertheless go to the outfitter and get a map. A pilot is always as good as his maps, a trader even more, as they also provide trading prices for the 'known' systems. After that it's time to be a more 'modern' captain than James. PAY 100K TO THE BANK IMMEDIATELY It will leave you with only 4K in your pocket BUT your mortgage payment is down to 1,9something, so you will make it to the next stop without defaulting.

To the brave go the spoils. Of course you follow with his 3 'missions'. After the First mission you have some money, start buying Luxury Goods on your empty cargo space making sure you have the mortgage ballance for the next mission. Now it's time to give your best Danny De Vito impression of Other people's money. Finally you arrive at Hestia in the Talita System, time to get rid of let James to his destination and sell all those Luxury goods you've been pilling for dear money.If you payed attention on the job offer board, even though you didn't take any, you must have noticed that People Transferring is double the money from cargo haul per 'unit'. Furthermore there is no time limit in it, on the contrary to the 'lucrative' cargo hauls that are timed.So, let's make the Barge a transport shall we?. By now you must be a bit short of 100K in your account.

Buy a big bunk (4 extra passengers) with the 20 availlable outfit space (fits exactly in), Now you can carry 6 passengers, 1 more than the shuttle. Sell your power source and buy the next smaller to get 10 more outfit space. Power is mainly used by the shields (your's is paper thin so small amount needed) and the guns which you don't have, so get that space!!!.

Buy a fuel pod to increase your range to four (same as the shuttle).Et voila!!! You have the range of the shuttle, one passener more than the shuttle and your cargo hold intact which is 50 against 20 of the shuttle, plus 40K in hand and a mortgage of, let's say 2K instead of 2.5K plus.Job HuntingIn general there are 3 kinds of jobs and 3 kinds of missions. I'll explain the basics:JobsThese are offered in the Job Board usually or, in some occasions, when you hit the Spaceport button. Be carefull accepting a job offered this way. It is always timed and it can mess up your route. There is also an 'illegal' job offering to sell drugs, better decline it, you know why.Finishing with ethics, let's move to general tactics that are intewined with the type of jobs/missions.There are TWO GOLDEN RULES among Couriers (been there, done that):. Pick a most lucrative not time sensitive remote job offering, then fill the in between with jobs, to pay for the ride, so in the end the whole amount of the big one gets to your pocket plus 'change'.

If you have to go back and forth, like pass the same system twice in your route i.e. Going in a 'cul de sac' system, go all the way in before stoping, then make the stops on your way out.

This allows you to get more distant (and lucrative) jobs on the way.So, on with the Job Descriptions:. Untimed Cargo Haul: Transfer cargo from A to B. Price depends on cargo, quantity and distance, usually the less paying ones BUT they are not time restrained, very good to fill up a route. Timed Cargo Haul: Same as above but with a time limit, seemingly more lucrative than the above BUT you must allow AT LEAST one star system without stopping and always on the fastest (shortest) route. Avoid them unless you are absolutely sure you can make it on time. Passenger Transport: 95% untimed, by far the most lucrative.

ONE EXCEPTION the ones saying 'Transer a bussiness executive blah bla' it pays ahem ahem. AND it is timed. Later in the game you'll find some real gold mines in Passenger Transport, so always make sure you have the bigest bunk space possible at all times.MissionsThere are four kinds:. Plot missions to advance the plot of the game.