Happy #goblinFriday! Working on Scenario 2: "The Small Escape", where the game becomes a lot more freeform after some linear tutorial scenarios. Need to write a TON of content for locations - much of the 'meat' of the game is random events hit while running around. (more in alt text for images.)

Changed the Carrier Group skill to substantially reduce damage to fighters. This feels pretty good so far, you really get a sense of how much it contributes and some fighter/bomber support that *really* sticks around!

Not quite there yet, but to give an idea of what's been cooking in @amosolov.bsky.social's #Starsector ...

How playtesting is going:

It is #GoblinFriday! Diving (back) into the third scenario "The Small Escape". It starts w/ Wormsy escaping from a caged wagon. Or not. I'm diving in & fixing anything broken, slightly broken, or annoying. Example: big gob of weird execution order/timing problems at game start (more in alt text).

These guys turn 2 today. <3

Apparently, the fix for the <local4> crash that's been happening for some people is to uninstall "Intel Graphics Command Center" (which is apparently outdated?) and update the graphics drivers. A bit more info here: fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index....

Changed up how the basic personal bounties work - there's more of them with a spread of difficulties, and their average difficulty follows which ones you're completing, rather than just going up as you do them. So, just naturally, you'll keep getting more of the kind of bounties you do!

Working through a list of assorted notes I've got; currently: buffing/changing up the Polarized Armor skill. The top speed bonus is flat (rather than a percentage), meaning it'll be especially impactful for larger ships when they need to back off.

Folks, it's once again the first Friday of the month, i.e. "Frecommendation Friday" (I think that name's locked in by now), where I recommend a game that I like and I think you should play. Today that game is #Starsector by @amosolov.bsky.social, @dgbaumgart.bsky.social et al. 1/4 #indiegames

Goblin Friday! ... ugh, whew. Spent part of last night and most of today entirely rewriting the scripting memory system. Fixed some old structural errors (and added news ones - fixed, eventually). It's cleaner, more efficient, easier to use. Also here's an "item gained" dialog element! (Turnip.)

Question: has anyone been noticing the forums hang for like... 10 seconds to a minute when refreshing, *very* occasionally? Trying to figure out if this is a me thing or more general; wasn't happening pre-upgrade.

This game is SUPER fun and has art by @dgbaumgart.bsky.social, which is an added bonus!

Reminder:

Just a heads up that there'll be a web server upgrade doing on early Monday morning. Hopefully all will go well but the site and the forums will be down for a few hours at least. Everything's backed up etc but if stuff *doesn't* go well, it could take some time to sort out. Fingers crossed!

An extremely cool fan-made 3D render of the Conquest! I love all the detail here, the interpretation of the greebles (and the rest of the design) in 3D. And it's even an asymmetric loadout, so you know it's legit :) www.artstation.com/artwork/oJVnPm

Having a little too much fun putting together an (optional, though it might come looking for you) battle. Might be the toughest fight in the game; at least *my* endgame fleet isn't up to the task right now - and it's not even at its full strength yet.

Re. last repost: yeah. My thought re this was about the idea of ambiguity, specifically in media/art (specifically Starsector 'cause I'm writing it right now). LLM's output is tuned to deny ambiguity -- it confidently supplies answers. It teaches users that there ARE easy answers to all questions.

Alex: It's also in line with your tradition for every next mission chain etc to be about 10x more complex than the previous one 🙂 (Feeling called out by @amosolov.bsky.social) (But, but- it's going to be *so good*!) #starsector

Got an actual #Starsector thing to talk about: revision to the dialog for giving weapons to Moyra Standfast, insurrection grandma. I've redone this so instead of being an open-ended resource dump you make 3 one-time deliveries to fulfill the needs of the Volturnian Self Defense Covenant... (cont)

Happy Goblin Friday - and a new Goblin Year! Today: among other things, shifting around locations to fit adjustments to how bridges work (they need two sides) in order to fit in the ending of the tutorial scenario on Troll Bridge, West. (I should not have drawn the map so detailed so early, argh!)

Happy Goblin Friday! My approach: play the game until I hit something that breaks or annoys me, or hit a spot that still needs to be written. We're up through stealing the turnip (though need more fail cases), and now the NPCs aren't triggering their events (which will probably explode, also).

New Starsector blog post: Support Fleets! Calling in friendly fleets to help resupply or for combat support, and: a side bonus of pawning off all that useless metal to a scavenger. fractalsoftworks.com/2025/12/08/s...

Happy Goblin Friday! Easy morning: messed w/ visual effects & story script review. Set up "vibes mode" button that turns off the UI so you can just hang out in a location and chill. Thank you to @mesotronik.bsky.social / soundcloud.com/mesotronik for the sound loop! vid: youtu.be/17diA0A4kzw

Looks like the website is down, some kind of SSL issue, checking into it - my apologies!

In Fun Art Land, I've been working on finishing up this swamp painting, which is where the goblins live. Because it's sticky and stinky?

Writing new Starsector story things: There's always room for Finlay Siyavong to show up! (And yes, you can also bring this to Arroyo if you want to give him a headache.)

This mod adding controller support to Starsector is very cool! Really impressive work. fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.... i.imgur.com/OlhhzeM.mp4

Here's a fun short interview podcast with my dad about winning a Spacewar tournament in 1972: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w... The irony? throughline? of me working on Starsector now is not lost upon me. And the sheer historical accident of that event happening to be a 'first' is not lost on him.

Pictured: a planet used to be here, until a bug let me "break it for salvage". Backing out of a menu made the game think the planet was a comm relay, and, well. At least I got some scrap out of it!

I released an update to my icon pack "Food, Spices, & Drinks"! Added 12 icons people requested in the comments over the past year or so. dgbaumgart.itch.io/icons-food-s...

The console commands mod just got one heck of an update, courtesy of @lukas04.bsky.social. Super impressive stuff! fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index....

testing new Starsector content at the minimum supported screen resolution

Super cool 3d rendition of the Wolf! www.reddit.com/r/starsector...

Ok ok, being able to cast like this in Java: if (x instanceof String s) And then use s as a string is so liberating, wow, how did I not know about this! (The only reason I found out is I thought "they *must* have made this redundant cast less annoying by now!" and went looking, and, yep.)

(Website looks like it's down, checking into it now)

Stock Starsector dialogs: - Harangue a planetary administrator into giving classified information - Buy a round for the space-bar - Someone standing next to you is shot due to convoluted political machinations - Use story point to convince someone that you are the literal devil. Somehow this helps.

New Starsector blog post: Officer Flexibility fractalsoftworks.com/2025/08/18/o... Talking about some changes that make officers easier to work with, as well as some changes to s-mods, and a quick update about the plan for the next release!

Added the ability to change the s-mods on a ship for a LOT of credits, at a player-owned colony with heavy industry. The original s-mods still require story points to add, but this should make it easier to revamp an endgame fleet.

Presented without comment www.reddit.com/r/starsector...

Reduced the leash range on the "Defend" (and similar) commands by a third. Seems to be working well so far - the actual performance of the fleet in battle is *much* better with the new leash range!

I wrote so much very specific-feeling dialog for a minor character that I felt like I might as well make them a unique person - then realized I had a stray character half-developed (portrait even!) for a very unimplemented narrative arc that fits perfectly into the role. ... Perfect! #starsector

First round of a community-run Starsector pvp tournament! Super cool to see all the different builds and how it all plays out. (The Anubis, hmm.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJK7...

I wrote a blog post for @amosolov.bsky.social's Starsector, "Creating Threat", about drawing spaceship horrors. (It starts with bismuth and deep-sea snails and ends in... well, HR Giger, basically.) fractalsoftworks.com/2025/07/03/c...

Over in Starsector news, writing a big chunk of new narrative and quite enjoying myself. Really fun intersection of Scifi!, characterization, & Sector politics. Also being an idiot and going convoluted & non-linear. BUT I think it'll work! Got some new structural concepts... Any excuse to DS9 gif.

every starsector player has 3 friends

I wrote a (really long) blog post about doing narrative design, writing a space religion, and having fun with mystery-solving monks in @amosolov.bsky.social's #Starsector. -> fractalsoftworks.com/2025/04/29/w...

Starsector 0.98a hotfix is now up! Fixes the shield AI vs [REDACTED] beam issue, along with a slew of other bugfixes and some other tweaks and adjustments. You can get it here: fractalsoftworks.com/2025/03/27/s... Just re-download and reinstall the game. Save-compatible with the previous hotfix.

Super cool video about Starsector! www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEfk...

The new Codex is pretty cool @amosolov.bsky.social. Very nice how customiseable you made it. People have been wanting me to add ingame documentation for my skill mod for a while.