Star Nomad 2
Available on Steam, iOS and Android.
Dev-blog Index for Star Nomad 2 (Latest entries will be added below):
#Starborn Federation – One of the Major Factions
#Player/NPC Skill & Progression
#The Universe of Star Nomad II & How it Relates to the Player
#Faction Conquest, What Happens during a Siege? (18/08/2015)
#NPC Side-quests & Merchants aint just about making credits! (21/09/2015)
Trailer:
INTRODUCTION
Star Nomad 2 is a space trader & combat sim set in a dynamic sandbox with an evolving conflict between three major splinter groups of humanity.
It distills elements of games that have left a very long lasting impression on me as a gamer over the years, such as:
Fallout 1/2, Star Wolves & FTL; inspired the tactical squad combat gameplay & random encounters.
Mount & Blade; inspired the dynamic factional conquest.
Escape Velocity, Privateer & Freelancer; inspired the space trader/simulator & dynamic universe.
Star Nomad 2 Features:
Space Trader: Dynamic chain of supply (each tradeship that lands on a port affect production), affected by events, piracy, supply/demand etc.
Squad Combat: Real-time, WASD flight, mouse weapons control with Tactical Pause.
RPG Progression: Player & NPC Progression via XP/skill trees as well as ships & a vast amount of modules.
Complex Faction Dynamics: AI conquer & defend systems with fleet movements. Your actions, big or small, have a major effect on the tide of conquest!
Dynamic Sandbox: A universe that is alive & responds to your actions, for good or bad.
Mining/Looting: Resource gathering to acquire elite ships & modules.
Random Events: Global events erupt to bring forth opportunities for a clever Pilot to exploit, profit & contribute.
Random Encounters: Run into situations where you are forced to make tough choices with consequences.
Freedom: Play as you wish, with many roles and a highly flexible skill customization for all kinds of character/squad builds.
Fleet Action: Engage in epic fleet battles between the factions, pick a side, or not, fly for yourself to become infamous!
Full Squad AI Control: Set and optimize each squad member’s behavior in combat to extract peak performance from your team. Don’t be caught flying with stupid ever again!
Clever Enemies: Small fast ships will abuse your slow big guns, capital ships will abuse their fast regenerating shields, only giving you a shot at their strong side, large fleets break up into squads (wolf-packs) and if the crap hits the fan, they can disengage in an attempt to flee!
Who doesn’t love hot & sticky balls of xeno-octopus??
Land on distant worlds, smuggle illicit goods in the process!
A neutral tradeport, where almost anything goes!
Dynamic faction conquest, where your actions, big or small, have a direct consequence.
STORY:
Humanity have long ago suffered an extinction-event of our own making. Few survived.
Those who did, committed themselves into the unknown with a leap of faith through an unstable wormhole, in a last ditch effort to save mankind.
The survivors, the best & brightest of our species, arrived on a distant planet, alien but with life-sustaining qualities similar to that of Earth. Determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past, colonists & those who led them toiled to create a thriving colony. They called it Liberty.
In time, humanity grew and spread, with new colonies on new worlds connected by technology that stabilize ephemeral wormholes. The colonies, under civil & corporate management together formed the Free Union, sharing the same goals & aspirations.
Humanity prospered, ushering in a new technological era, one where genetic diseases can be eradicated, broken limbs or failing organs replaced by better cybernetic or engineered variants. Progress was rapid, much too fast for culture or ethics to fully comprehend or contain.
Soon, humanity splintered into three distinct groups, those who were enhanced, through cybernetic or bio-genetically modified augmentations, and those who were considered “pure”. Inevitably, fear & loathing spawned tension.
The first spark was thrown by a terrorist of the Human Empire, a movement led by nobles who held the view that people who are artificially enhanced are no longer part of humanity. They are no more than a creation; “a droid or synthetic organ that talk or walk does not a human make”.
Jealousy & mistrust grew the ranks of the Human Empire, the terrorist organization grew too powerful to ignore. The Free Union exiled the Human Empire followers, sending them to an uncharted quadrant.
However, peace was short lived, the ideology divide between those who enhance their bodies and minds with cybernetics versus those who push the boundaries of genetic engineering was too great to co-exist. The Free Union offered newly discovered systems for the two groups to colonize, to build their own domains and live by their own prejudices & destiny.
With the passing of time, the divide has led to an even more polarization of views & beliefs among the three Factions, with the manifestation of their desires made a reality.
The geneticists have pushed beyond the boundaries of the human genome by incorporating xeno-genetics, splicing beneficial variants into embryos of each new generation. Desirable traits such as physical appearance, strength, speed, reflex & resilience along with neural processing capabilities were greatly enhanced. No longer fully human, they call themselves: Starborn.
Meanwhile, the Omni, more cybernetics than flesh & each a host to millions of nanobots, have achieved the singularity event. With the digitization of their consciousness, the Omni have achieved immortality, the long sought destiny of mankind. This gift is one that must be shared with those who have yet to transcend the flesh & mortality…
Additional Screenshots:
Be a Smuggler!
Be a Bounty Hunter!
Be a Miner!
Be a Merchant!
Be a pirate & plunder, to the victorious: glorious loot!
Engage in large-scale Warfare!
Be swept up in the grand dynamic conflict!
You know… Pretty awesome!
And still I cannot wait. You are awesome and this game looks really like something I would love to play. And to buy, surely! Keep the good work up. It’s great and I would love to see this game on Steam or get it from you directly!
Thanks Alex, I’m working on it! It’s up to the “universe building” phase now. Basically assembling it to come all together. Then I need to add the dynamic random event system & AI Conquest to give it depth, and it should be a lot of fun to play! 😀
Ohmygod… Now I get an adrenaline spike just because of this news! Man I am really sure that this will be a gemstone of Indie development. And something I crave for a looong time! Played Star Nomad on my iPad like a million times. And now there will be a much greater title with much more features… Gods I am so waiting for that! 😀
I don’t buy much games on the Play Store, but I’ve been a space buff ever since my first day playing X-Tension, the follow up to X Beyond The Frontier. Your work is inspiring, and so exciting to keep track of! A sure buy from me, and once this comes out, I’ll definitely let my fellow space buffs on the other forums I’m in know about this wonderful project. Kudos, man!
I like the direction you’ve taken where the stars and backdrop are darker, more realistically beautiful compared to Star Nomad 1. Not too realistic though, since I prefer beautiful systems to realistic ones (think X Rebirth vs Elite Dangerous).
Are you planning to retain the cartoony style of the original Star Nomad, or make it more hardcore sci-fi?
Excellent project. Can’t wait to see what comes next!
It’s designed for the PC setup, mouse/kb first. I hope I am able to translate it well to the iPad or iPhone 6. As for the art direction, a few of the recent images are representative, the early alpha ones were placeholder. But yes, I am going for a darker backdrop of a dynamic nebula that swirls around, then stars shimmer randomly. The character style is cartoony realism, similar to Shadowrun though slightly more cyberpunk/sci-fi. The ships as you see, I wanted them to look 3d, but its 2d. Luckily it turned out really well, more than I expected.
The core direction I am taking with SN2, is that everytime you jump into a system, you never know what to expect (FTL inspired). There will be lots and lots of random encounters, many of them offer choices with branching consequences, which may show up later when you least expect it!! ;D
And now I feel tortured just because you say all those great things and I know it will take time until you finish it. 🙂 The concept in itself is great, I like this open world settings combined with space and the ability to upgrade the ship. It’s not true 3D, what i definitely like, because this way it’s faster paced than X or Elite:Dangerous. It feels a little bit like Wing Commander Privateer but with much more depth and more opportunities and features. I am so looking forward to this! 🙂
Is this coming to Android? Loved Star Nomad Elite.m
Hopefully. Thanks!
I second that (Android). While I love gaming on a PC there are just too many good games and I rarely get to sit down for long enough to play through many. Good games for my phone are gems and star nomad is one of my favorites.
Hello! Amazing development and game design – simply put: looks like my kind of fun! Since I am unfamiliar with Star Nomad 1 (SN1) how does SN2 compare/differ? Not to oversimplify or slight SN2 in any form; I was wondering if SN2 – at it’s core – is more of a evolutionary refinement & expansion of SN1’s gameplay & design, including new features (but Im not including game engine in this question just gameplay), * OR* is it more revolutionary; SN2 now differs significantly enough in gameplay and design compared to SN1’s play-scope, -style & -features that familiarity …um, if I do get familiar with SN1 it wont matter because SN2 plays/styles differently. Apologies, english is tough and mine ..ainte well. lol and I lost my train of thought….
Thanks! SN2 compared to SN1 is revolutionary, significantly different in gameplay on top of similar open world mechanics.
I have a suggestion for a feature, Player used Distress Calls, they would call in pirates and as your rep increases the number and strength of pirates does as well, and if you upgrade it. it’ll be tuneable to a faction and depending on your standing with them or your prefrence, they will send in better ships to assist you, and the Distress system would be a seprate thing from the mod and active items to not ocupy a slot, it would be a seperate system. And maybe a item that you can make that lets you change the strength of the call so you can lure two or three ships for you to ambush.
THE FONT SIZE!!!!! TOO SMALL!!!! OH MY EYESSSSSS!!!!! Seriously now, have an option for us to increase the font size 😦
I’ve increased the font size in a recent update already, its not reflected in these screenshots.
Where exactly do you buy this game? I think I found it on steam before, but is there another place, like GOG where I can purchase it without the drm?
There’s no DRM in the game. You can get it on Steam, and once installed the folder can be moved elsewhere and launched with the .exe, without Steam.
Oh, so I can just copy the game from my desktop (with steam) to my laptop (without steam) this way?
Yes. Just copy the folder that Steam install the game at to anywhere else, it will run just fine without Steam. I made it like that on purpose, no DRM.
Will it come out on GOG I don’t use steam?
GOG is an exclusive store, they do not let small time devs sell on there, usually.
Taleworlds was a small time dev once upon a time…
Can we get this game on GOG? Or get a non steam version for people that don’t have steam?
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Hi could you please make an optional option to make the fonte size a bit larger on android? I often dont hit the buttons because their too small. Als reading the text is a bit hard. Thx
The game does not load on my iPad Air 2
iOS 10.0.1? It seems to have an issue first time loading, because it’s the first-run compiling process. Force close it and run it again and it should work. There’s a few code compatibility changes with the latest iOS version that’s causing some issues. I will update the game when the game engine is updated to resolve these issues.
make it compatible for devices that has 1 GB RAM by adding graphic resolution changing option and an option to limit the number ships on star systems for better optimization in slower devices (I have it on steam but i want to enjoy the game outdoors by having it on Android)
It actually runs on low end devices, I’ve tested it on Samsung Tab A 9.7, with really weak CPU/GPU and low resolution 1024 x 768 display and it runs just fine. However, with Google Store, there’s no way to filter out based on hardware specs and developers have to black-list individual devices (there’s over 35,000!) based on specific device IDs. There’s many low-end devices that simply won’t run the game that have 1GB RAM, while there are many that will run it just fine. Because the CPU/GPU in those devices are so different, it’s just safer for me to suggest a minimum spec with > 1.5 GB RAM as the chance of these devices having a really bad CPU/GPU is lower. Definitely give it a try on your device, if it doesn’t work then do the refund. Google Play is quite good with refunds, and if there’s any problems I can personally manual refund as well.
Yeh I cannot do that since its incompatible in my device I think because of the black list? I’m using a Lenovo A7600-H I think its a yoga tablet?
I checked and the hardware specs are fine, the reason you cannot see it is the game requires Android 5.0 onwards for code compatibility reasons. Your device maker has not kept up-to-date with the recent Android OS and is still stuck on the 4.0 era Android. It’s a common problem with the Android market since each brand likes to customize the Android OS, so if Google release new OS updates, the brands would have to re-customize the new version and they eventually stop supporting that and only update their latest devices.
How do I purchase it if I cannot see it on Google play?
http://www.gsmarena.com/lenovo_a10_70_a7600-6282.php my device
Can you remove it from the blacklist? Im happy to personally test it on my device to see if it will run good
I don’t have any device on the black list since there’s just so many of them to do it individually. My only hard-coded requirement is Android 5.0 or newer and this is due to code compatibility.
alright thx i know what to do now
Where are Mac Saved Game files stored?
The Mac user folder. Though its using a different save-system made to be OSX compatible.
Where is the save file on android?
On Android, the OS encrypts it using the LocalStorage API.
Hi, awesome game! I joined the Starborn and just finished conquering the Human Empire and the Omni Collective. I’m guessing this is as close as it gets to ‘beating’ this game, but just wanted to make sure… Is there some way I can invade Free Union systems? Or is the Free Union going to attack me at some point?
Congrats, you did beat the game when you succeed in helping your allies defeat the other 2 major factions. The Free Union remains neutral, and they may be working on something in a sequel. 🙂
Thanks
Hello, i have a question: could you tell me why you didn’t add the option to choose a mercenary career please?
I want the Destiny more than anything else in the game.
Hello, returned to play this jewel after a long while once more and whoa, there is even a new patch, awesome….
Love the game and love your dedication to it.
I am curious:
is there any way to mod on android? (like you can for the Pc via .txt files? )
Thanks