I’m a scavenger and salvager by trade. My fleet is half reclaimed ships, free to obtain and cheap to run. Maybe a little less capable, but I have a solid set of four frigates and a combat shuttle. One of those frigates is an armed merchantman. Not only does it have some teeth, it’s hard to kill, and it has a big fuel tank. Refueling the other ships, it can get the fleet out of the core worlds and into the outer sector. I’ve been taking a few scouting and exploration jobs on the side to pay the bills.

The one that landed on my desk last night was a run to Gindraum, a blue supergiant ten light-years from the nearest inhabited world, to scan a derelict ship in the system’s outer reaches. That’s on the edge of my fleet’s range. That shuttle in particular takes just as much fuel as a frigate, but carries less than a third as much as my armed freighter. I left it at Jangala, the world I started out at, along with my shortest-legged frigate.

We set out, stopping briefly to beat up on a pirate fleet which decided to run us down. A week and a half later, detouring around some tremendous hyperspace storms, we came up on Gindraum. By the inner system jump point was a flashing beacon. I brought us closer. It was a message from the Hegemony Navy:

“Warning. This system is known to contain automated weapons systems. Extreme caution is advised.”

Well that’s a little worrying. I turned away from the insystem jump point and headed for the fringe jump point. Hopefully that would drop me a little further from any potential nasties.

We came out of hyperspace in between a ring system and an asteroid belt at roughly a Saturn orbit distance. Turns out that the fringe of this system is really big. I went counterclockwise, finding an awful lot of nothing much for a month and a half. Around a gas giant inside the rings, our sensors found an old frigate carrying a single sleeper pod. Inside was a very confused lieutenant who agreed to join up with me and warned me about some dormant combat drones around the backside of a nearby moon. I kept my distance.

Finally, we found the derelict we were after, in a nebula out beyond the rings by the old hyperspace communication relay. An active drone flew a patrol pattern around it. I’m not averse to a scrap (or the scrap following a scrap), but nobody likes fighting combat AI. At my order, the fleet went dark, creeping through the nebula at low signature while the drone was on the far side of its orbit. We came up on the derelict, ran the scanner package the client gave us, and turned to run, just as the drone came back around. Between the nebula and the silent running, I made my escape. Fuel and supplies running low and money in hand, I set a course for the jump point. Time to head home.

I’ve written about Starsector before. Two and a half years ago, it turns out. That, in part, is the story of Starsector: a game which has been available in pre-release form for at least six years. I first played it in college, in fact; one day, I put it up on a projector and hooked it into the suite’s sound system, and sold several copies on the spot.

Since then, it’s seen little updates: ship fitting, an economy here, a random battle generator there. Yesterday, though, the developer released version 0.8, and finally, we have a closer approximation of what we can expect on that glorious day when release arrives.

It’s spectacular. I’m not given to hyperbole, or indeed to statements without hedging of some kind or another, so don’t miss the import of this statement: Starsector is going to go down in history as a timeless classic. I fully expect it will end up being the best space sandbox game of the decade. It’s that good.

The story above gives you some idea of what’s been added. Surveying and salvage flesh out the list of things to do, and a procedurally-generated outer sector adds an enormous playground in which to do it. (To say nothing of the massively expanded sector core—there’s plenty to do before you start to dip your toes in the outer system.)

Honestly, I don’t want to say too much, because I don’t want to rob you of the sense of wonder you’ll feel when you play through it yourself. Rest assured, though, Starsector was good two and a half years ago, but it’s an incredible experience now, and it isn’t even done. You owe it to yourself to pick it up. You can do so here.