The dev team is pretty small, but from the perspective of having that "Star-trek like experience" they have actually done a pretty good job of really capturing it and making it engaging and fun. Up to 5 people can play cooperatively, but myself and two friends have sunk probably 30-50 hours into the game exploring and progressing (the AI controls the roles that you aren't able to fill). It's also got a pretty active community with games to jump into but it's kind of hard to find other people with equal skill level as you when you are just starting out.
The gameplay is there, but it feels pretty unpolished in terms of bugs and graphical assets and it would really be something special if a AAA studio bought the game and added in some professional-grade assets because it's otherwise a really well-made experience.
Desperate for more in this genre we ended up playing a bunch of Pulsar: Lost Colony. It has a lot more depth (but can be a bit rough around the edges).
You and your friends in charge of a spaceship would probably feel like commanding a PBR in Vietnam, but I don't think a game can capture that Vibe (it's a cheap term but I genuinely think it fits).
Pulsar looks cool though, will check it out.
I don't think so. Game design is a whole art form in itself. Some games suck at it and some games succeed. I haven't played with the linked game, but played with Artemis. That one sucked. The good part of it was being nerdy and role-playing out a fantasy with friends. The bad part was that after the first "battle" engagement we quickly learned that the enemy is very predictable and the game won't provide any challenges to us. Basically yelling "Aye captain, proton torpedo loaded" was fun, rolling up to the next sprite and demolishing it within seconds no matter what "tactic" we employ was not fun. Basically our mistakes didn't matter, and we just had to shoot down everyone who was moving about. There were no commercial traders, everyone comms contacted immediately opened fire on us. Furthermore there was nothing we were protecting other than our own skin. The game forced us to be amnesic murderhobos going nowhere, doing nothing of value.
> You and your friends in charge of a spaceship would probably feel like commanding a PBR in Vietnam
I never commanded a PBR in Vietnam, but I don't think you did either. Probably you have a feeling of what you think it means, maybe action? Daring charges? High speed chases? Maybe inspired by the plot of Apocalypse Now?
In reality it was probably 95% boredom, batting mosquitos and flies away, trying to stay hydrated, and maintaining the bilge pump while doing routine boring work. Punctuated with 5% "damn, we are dead because we just got ambushed" or "damn they are dead because we got the jump on them".
A realistic PBR simulator would suck. One written to follow the feeling or vibe you were thinking when you wrote that sentence? Now that would rock!
Making a bridge simulator is really hard. You are not just balancing one experience but a different one for each crew member. In a real ship if engineering is bored out of their mind 99% of the time that's not a bad thing, in a game that means you just ruined the experience to one of the players. You have to keep all of your players busy, and occupied with meaningful choices, while not pushing them accidentally into task saturation. If you want to make it fun you have to treat each station as a separate game interacting with the others. Which is naturally harder than just making a single game.
Sea of Thieves solves that pretty cleverly, by having fewer players than roles but letting people switch roles as required. There's no point having anyone man the cannons while you're not in combat.
Well, until you find yourself in combat and the cannons won't fire.
Maybe it can if you have a different brain to mine, that's entirely possible, but I just don't think it can work. I hit a point where the only thing I want is more detail, so you need a holodeck in effect.
Basically every battle sequence in the original Star Trek. It's why they had to invent Tribbles.
Yeah. This is why I can spend hundreds of hours with a game like FTL: Faster Than Light. Its 2D and very simple pixel art give way to fantastic gameplay rife with difficult decisions and lasting consequences! It would be really cool to have the gameplay of FTL with immersive, high-end VR but I think such a game would never be made due to the risks of alienating the audience.