It's been a long time since I last visited this site! Hello again Space Sim Central!
Solo-indie developer of Sector Space here.

After a few years of not working on the game I am back working on the game. This is a long term passion project which I do not really expect to go very far but I will keep working on it for as long as I can. I enjoy adding new ships, gear, and mechanics etc. With most of the core of the game systems completed I should be able to shift focus towards adding a narrative to the game world. With this should come missions, unique bosses, and more variety to encounters. I would also like to improve the building and crafting systems to make them more interesting.

I have started an Itch.io recently to make the game more visible and accessible.
https://robinfarrell.itch.io/sector-space

I will continue to upload to games website as well.
https://www.sectorspacegame.net/

You can download from both locations. The website will also continue to have .jar files posted for those who want to try to run it on Mac OS or the many Linux OS. I primarily only support it on Windows as bugs found on other platforms are usually not game code related and require me to modify the game engine which at this point is easily 15 years old.

For those who haven't seen the game (most people). It's a single player space game with a top-down view that has relatively simple graphics. The galaxy it takes place in is procedurally generated but is reasonable size for the scope of game it is, so it keeps that open world feeling while having finite resources to exploit. Generally you wont see more than 3000 star systems spawn. I didn't want the game to have so much randomly generated space that it felt like you were always lost. There are some pre-generated unique systems mixed into the game to anchor the players experience and provide them with basic resources. At the same time there is a lot of RNG and that can be exploited to get rare items or farm specific desired items.

World files are seeded by what you name them so you can always remember that name if you want to play on the same world again at another time or restart that world with the same conditions and locations familiar to you. I have some plans to make the world feel more alive by adding in trigger-able events such as super-nova's, invasions, shifts in power between pirate factions, or natural disasters on planets.

Character files can be loaded into any world file similar to games like Terraria where you keep whats on you between worlds. There is only a small penalty in waiting for your fleet members to respawn at a station when you move between worlds.

There is a levelling system and you can choose between 4 class skills and train 6 of 20 secondary skills to customize your build. Depending on the class you pick you can have anywhere from 2 to 6 fleet members which are fully customization by changing their gear setups. There are over 100 ships and 800 items in game and most of them can have random modifiers applied to them. Most items have a upgrade path through crafting and some can be obtained from rare drops only.

There exists something a kin to dungeons and ruin zones similar to games like EVE's deadspace zones where you will find these boss ships and more elite NPC's to fight. There will eventually be bosses with unique mechanics but they haven't been implemented yet.

You can place your own space stations in star systems as well as lay drones (stationary weapon platforms) to defend them. There are extraction items that can be slotted into planets and you can establish colonies on suitable planets that become a taxable source of income.

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Recent updates have been made to make the early game a bit easier. I have boosted experience game to help get the player past the first level gate (level 10) where the gear variety and ships get more powerful making it easier to progress. That said the game is still rather grindy and this is intentional. If you do take the time to try out the game I hope it brings you some joy even in its current unfinished state. It was primarily made out of desire to feel nostalgia for old space sims and some modern classics. It is heavily inspired by games like Hostile Space, Star Sonata, EVE Online, Elite Dangerous, No Man's Sky, Dwarf Fortress, and Terraria. The goal was to make something even I would enjoy playing despite knowing all the secrets and mechanics in the game the RNG aspect of it and the challenge of endless combinations of skills, gear, and world generation make it fun even during play testing. I typically spend a few hours everyday tweaking or adding new things so slowly over many years it has crawled its way closer to being an actual game.