Apt142’s Blog

Ahoy ye space scum! I’ve been caught up playing a new game. I periodically find myself playing turn based or relatively slow paced games. With my current schedule, I find it enjoyable to take a 5 minute break every hour or so to mess with something before jaunting back to work or whatever. (Maybe that’s my inner infovore speaking.)

Star pirates is the latest of such games for me. I was turned on to it by none other than Hap Banning himself. Or at least his alter ego Tauhid, creater of Good Ship Chronicles. A comic of which I’m also a fan.

Star Pirates puts you in the game as a captain of a ship in a faster than light, post earth destruction universe. You can salvage wreckage, raid other pirates and upgrade your ship. The mechanics of which are surprisingly detailed yet not overwhelming. There are a lot of strategic avenues. They raise interesting questions for a game like this. Some of which can be counter intuitive. (I’m currently deciding to limit my leveling since my combat stats are not directly decided by that.)

Many of the players online seem to be fairly mature. That’s always a plus in any free gaming environment. The game survives economically by offering the purchase of points and other aids that surprisingly aren’t game unbalancing. The use of points, for example, allows the player to pull off heroic feats such as faster ship repair, refueling or even cloaking. While these feats will allow you to cut short turn around times on certain actions none of them make the non-paying players feel useless.

If you happen to find this interesting, feel free to join the game under my referring id (9188) and look me up.

Here’s a sketch I did of my ship (SS Duct Tape with Rockets).