Info about Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander:

Official game description:
Roadmap
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Click **READ MORE** below to view the whole roadmap.
About the Game
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A starship builder perfect for fans of games like FTL, Starsector, SPAZ, Space Engineers, Escape Velocity, Avorion, and more.  
**Design awesome starships using intuitive ship creation tools** that are easy to learn but hard to master. Fully customize your ship's shape and floor plan, choosing where to place individual modules including weapons, engines, hallways, and crew's quarters. Your ship's design is key to its survival, and every decision you make will impact its performance in battle. Easily share your designs with others through the Steam Workshop, Forums, and Discord.  
**A ship's crew is its lifeblood.** Numbering from half-a-dozen to a thousand or more individually-simulated people, your crew will pilot your ships, operate their weapons, and carry munitions. How efficiently they operate determines how well your ships will perform in combat. Your crew are autonomous but you can optionally customize their behavior with specific roles and job priorities.  
**Command your ship or fleet in real-time tactical battles.** Combat is physics-driven, explosive, and immensely satisfying. Each module can be individually targeted and destroyed, and whole ships can even break apart into multiple pieces. Target an enemy's weapons to eliminate its offensive capability, destroy its shields to lower its defenses, or go for the kill by taking out its reactor.  
**Become the most famous "Cosmoteer'' in the universe** by battling A.I. ships, taking on contracts for factions, earning loot, and upgrading your own ship while exploring a procedurally-generated galaxy, alone or in online co-op with friends. Then test your ships design and command skills online against other players in multiple PvP battle modes. Or let your imagination fly free in the Creative Mode where you can build whatever you want with unlimited resources.  
Still want more? **A powerful modding framework and Steam Workshop** will keep Cosmoteer constantly feeling fresh with new player-created weapons, modules, and other enhancements.  
**Cosmoteer has a friendly and growing community on Discord. Join 20k+ fellow Cosmoteers today!**

Release date: Oct 24, 2022

Categories: Vehicle Customization, Crew Management, Tactical Combat, Mod Support, Cooperative Multiplayer, Procedural Generation, Resource Management, Sandbox Creation

Feature scans:
- Proton/Linux: score 60; verdict: Tinkering Required; summary: Linux/Proton compatibility is mixed. Some users report the game is unplayable or unstable, while another finds it works fine. An audio bug is also noted. The evidence does not support a consensus of being completely broken, but the negative reports indicate significant tinkering or configuration may be required.
- Steam Deck: score 80; verdict: Broken; summary: User feedback indicates significant technical barriers on Linux/Steam Deck, including instability, crashes, poor performance, and an audio bug. While one user reported good compatibility using community profiles, the majority of reviews describe the game as unplayable or unstable.

- Hardware Profile:
  - Summary: Performance varies across VRAM tiers: users with less than 8GB and 8–11GB VRAM report generally playable experiences despite some lag, while those with 12–15GB VRAM frequently encounter serious frame drops and slowdowns, even on recommended hardware.
  - Sample size: 43 (3% coverage)
  - Audience skew: Review sample is mostly Windows-based.
  - Windows <8GB VRAM (positive, 17 reports): Users report consistent playability under normal conditions, with only intentional attempts causing lag.
  - Windows 12-15GB VRAM (negative, 9 reports): Users frequently experience serious FPS drops and lag, especially with mods, high particle counts, or at increased time rates.
  - Windows 8-11GB VRAM (positive, 7 reports): Users report a solid experience with few crashes, though some lag occurs with large end-game ships.
  - Caveats: 43 of 1639 reviews expose hardware metadata.; Review sample is mostly Windows-based.
Feature extractions:
- Community Price:
  - Community fair range: $14.99 - $24.99
  - Reasoning: The majority of positive reviews consider the current $19.99 price to be a great value, with some even calling it 'an absolute steal' or saying it's 'worth every penny'. However, a subset of reviewers advise waiting for a sale, indicating that the price may be slightly high for some players' expectations. The mention of 'worth 40$ more for what will be added' suggests that future content could justify a higher price, but the current fair range centers around the existing price. Balancing these views, a fair base-game price range is $14.99–$24.99, capturing both sale-seeking and full-price advocates.
- Playtime Metrics:
  - Game completion: N/A
  - Story completion: 90.0h
  - Session length: 3.5h
  - Endgame: N/A
  - Reasoning: The only explicit story/campaign completion time comes from a non-English review stating ~90 hours to clear without guides or mods, which is taken as a typical figure. Session length is consistently reported as 3–4 hours when fully engaged, but short 10-minute sessions are also possible; the average session appears to be 3–4 hours based on multiple quotes. No reliable evidence for game completion (total time to finish all content) or endgame hours exists: reviews mention early burnout, repetitive lategame, or unlimited tinkering, but no typical hour values. Therefore those fields are null.
- Time-to-fun:
  - Summary: The game offers immediate fun through intuitive building and combat, but loses steam in the mid-to-late game due to repetitive loops and balance issues, leading to a sharp drop in engagement after roughly 15 hours.
  - Stance: Fun then drops
  - Anchor: First combat after tutorial
  - Time to anchor: 0h 5m
  - Friction: tedious resource management and crew mechanics; repetitive mission types after first system; overpowered Ion beam weapons kill late-game variety; lack of meaningful progression beyond reputation; no asynchronous multiplayer (must stay together); controls limit tactical finesse in later systems
  - Unlock drivers: understanding ship-building and crew assignment; using mods to extend content; playing with friends in co-op; disabling resource costs in settings; switching to sandbox/custom battle modes
  - Conditions: playing in multiplayer co-op with friends; engaging in creative building without progression pressure; using mods to add depth and endgame goals; focusing on early-to-mid game content rather than min-maxing; adopting a mindset of experimentation rather than optimization
- Player Archetypes:
  - Creative Ship Engineer (buy)
    - Motivation: Self-expression through ship design and system optimization
    - Playstyle: Spends most time in the ship designer, tinkering with layouts, testing configurations, and using creative mode or mods to push boundaries. May neglect story or progression for the joy of building.
    - Experience: mixed
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: engineer; builder; tinkerer; old-school shipbuilder fan
    - Reference games: Space Engineers; Factorio; Satisfactory; Battleships Forever; Gratuitous Space Battles
  - Social Co-op Player (sale)
    - Motivation: Shared ship design and cooperative combat with friends
    - Playstyle: Plays exclusively or primarily in a group, using multiplayer to collaborate on ship designs, run missions together, and compete in PvP. Frustrated by the inability to explore separately or play asynchronously.
    - Experience: familiar
    - Purchase stance: sale
    - Labels: co-op enjoyer; multiplayer enthusiast; friend group player
    - Reference games: FTL (co-op mods?); Overcooked? (for coordination) – not explicit
  - Career Progression Grinder (buy)
    - Motivation: Progression through missions, upgrades, and economic growth
    - Playstyle: Focuses on building and improving a fleet through missions, salvage, and trading. Enjoys the risk/reward of losing ships and rebuilding, and engages with the fame/wealth systems. May bounce off shallow endgame but loves the early to mid game.
    - Experience: veteran
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: grinder; sim enthusiast; long-time space game player; FTL fan
    - Reference games: FTL; Event Horizon Frontier; X4; Elite Dangerous


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Deep ship customization and building (weight 0.87): Players frequently highlight the ability to design and customize ships with intricate detail, including crew, cargo, armaments, and layout. This feature is considered highly addictive and offers a wide variety of strategies and ship types.
- Strong modding community support (weight 0.29): Reviewers praise the active modding community and the abundance of mods, which significantly enhance and expand the gameplay experience. The mod support also includes Steam Workshop integration.
- Addictive and highly replayable (weight 0.28): Players describe the game as highly addictive and offering significant replayability due to its deep customization and varied gameplay. The building and testing cycles keep players engaged for hours.
- Engaging co-op and multiplayer experience (weight 0.23): Players enjoy the multiplayer co-op and PvP modes, noting that the game is fun both solo and with friends. The cooperative progression in early game bounties and resource harvesting is particularly appreciated.

Common complaints:
- Missing story and endgame (weight 0.26): Players frequently report the lack of a coherent story or overarching goal, making the game feel aimless. Clusters 1, 10, 13, 23, 24, and 30 highlight absent narrative, campaign, or endgame purpose, leading to early abandonment.
- Lack of content and variety (weight 0.25): Overall content feels insufficient, with too few weapons, modules, missions, and points of interest. Clusters 11, 22, 31, 32, 36, 38, and 39 point to barebones exploration and weapon selection.
- Career mode lacks depth (weight 0.19): Career mode is criticized for being tedious, repetitive, and lacking story or roleplaying elements. Clusters 5, 15, 18, and 31 describe it as dry, barebones, with same missions, and no progression.
- Performance issues and crashes (weight 0.17): The game suffers from crashes, low FPS with large crews, and lag in later stages. Clusters 7, 8, 29, and 37 report these technical problems.
- Slow development and updates (weight 0.16): Multiple players note that major updates are slow, development has slowed down, and content release cycles are infrequent. Clusters 3, 16, and 26 express frustration with the pace.
- Crew system restricts ship building (weight 0.12): The crew cap severely limits fleet size and forces players to avoid powerful ships. Clusters 4 and 28 also dislike the battery-carrying mechanic, calling it nonsensical.
- AI pathfinding problems (weight 0.1): AI pathfinding is poor, causing ships to ram the player or behave irrationally, making fleet control tedious. Clusters 9 and 17 highlight this issue.
- Railgun balance concerns (weight 0.08): Railguns are seen as either useless or overpowered, limiting creative design. Cluster 2 calls them beyond overpowered with no counter.
- Economy needs rework (weight 0.05): The economy feels unbalanced and 'funky,' requiring a structural overhaul. Cluster 20 mentions this directly.
- Fire mechanics too fast (weight 0.05): Fire spreads too quickly and starts too easily, making management frustrating. Cluster 21 points this out.

Gameplay feedback:
- Deep spaceship customization (weight 0.52): Players love the freedom to build and design spaceships from the ground up, with detailed mechanics for interior layout such as crew paths, power management, weapon orientation, and armor placement. This core feature is highlighted through multiple clusters, emphasizing the game's strength in offering granular control over ship construction.
- 2D sandbox shipbuilding (weight 0.19): The game is frequently described as a 2D space simulator with shipbuilding reminiscent of Minecraft or Space Engineers. This 2D perspective is a key differentiator, appealing to players who enjoy top-down construction and engineering simulation.
- Build and battle sandbox (weight 0.17): A dedicated sandbox mode where players can build and immediately test their ships in combat is a popular request. This mode encourages experimentation without campaign constraints.
- FTL-like combat with freedom (weight 0.16): Combat is often compared to FTL but praised for offering more freedom in ship customization and design. Players appreciate the strategic depth that comes with building their own vessels for battle.
- Career mode depth (weight 0.15): Career mode includes missions like bounty hunting, mining, salvaging, and fleet expansion, providing a structured progression system. This mode is a significant draw for players seeking purpose beyond sandbox building.
- Multiplayer and co-op (weight 0.08): Multiplayer modes including co-op and PvP are requested or appreciated, allowing players to collaborate or compete with others. This social aspect is important for replayability.

Performance notes:
- Positive performance experiences (weight 0.23): Some players report good optimization, running at 60 FPS on low-end systems (potato PCs), with efficient CPU/RAM usage and no bugs encountered.
- General performance issues and lag (weight 0.15): Overall lag is prevalent, especially during battles, with large ships, or at higher time speeds, though some players only note occasional lag.
- FPS drops with large crews and ships (weight 0.14): Players report significant FPS drops and slowdowns when crew size exceeds 200 or when building large ships, with some experiencing FPS below 30 or dropping to zero.
- Multiplayer performance problems (weight 0.13): Multiplayer experiences lag, stutter, desync, and micro-freezes, especially with large ships, non-ideal internet, or in late career, requiring a very good connection for stability.
- CPU and RAM limitations (weight 0.13): Performance is constrained by CPU usage, with single/dual-core limitations, low CPU utilization (40-50%), and overload issues, along with high RAM usage causing slowdowns.
- Long loading times (weight 0.12): Loading times are reported as excessively long, over a minute, and slow, with lengthy load saves and mod updates also contributing to delays.
- FPS drops at higher time speeds (weight 0.11): Using faster time rates like 4x or 8x causes noticeable lag, unbearable slowdown, or crawl, with some players experiencing FPS in the 30-55 range at 4x speed.
- Overall performance varies widely (weight 0.11): Feedback ranges from 'most well optimized game ever' to 'runs worse than Star Citizen,' indicating performance is highly dependent on system configuration and game progression.
- Crashes and errors (weight 0.1): Players encounter crashes, frequent micro freezes, and errors on game startup, with mods also causing crashes.
- Late game and end game lag (weight 0.1): Performance degrades in later game stages, including lag from giant dreadnaughts, campaign map lag at higher difficulty, and general slowdown as ships and crew sizes increase.
- Low-end system playability (weight 0.08): Despite complaints, some players successfully run the game on very low-end hardware (4GB RAM, integrated graphics, potato laptops), achieving acceptable performance.
- Low FPS in specific scenarios (weight 0.07): Some players experience extremely low FPS (1 frame per second) during ship combat or when nearing build limits, with huge FPS drops reported.
- Hardware demands for large builds (weight 0.06): Large heat systems and massive ships require powerful hardware, and the game is generally difficult to run on low-end systems except for a few positive reports.
- Performance worsens over time (weight 0.05): The game runs well initially but degrades after prolonged play, e.g., running worse than Star Citizen after an hour, indicating memory leaks or accumulation issues.
- Optimization issues on Linux (weight 0.05): The game runs poorly on Linux, with audio bugs and overall worse performance compared to Windows, even after optimizations.

Recommendations:
- Best for ship builders and strategists (weight 0.41): Numerous clusters emphasize the game is ideal for creative players who enjoy building and designing ships, tactical combat, and strategic gameplay. It appeals strongly to sandbox ship-building and space combat enthusiasts.
- Warmly recommended overall (weight 0.26): Multiple clusters express strong general recommendations, stating the game is worth buying and players do not regret purchasing. This indicates high satisfaction among most players.
- Good value for money (weight 0.19): Reviewers frequently mention the game is worth its price, especially on sale, and provides good bang for the buck. It is considered a solid purchase for the intended audience.
- Wait for sale or updates (weight 0.15): Some players suggest buying the game on sale or waiting for more updates before purchasing. This indicates price sensitivity or a desire for more content.
- Niche appeal for genre fans (weight 0.12): The game is described as having limited depth and being best for die-hard fans of ship building, space combat, and strategy genres. Casual players may not fully enjoy it.
- Creativity and imagination essential (weight 0.09): Some reviewers recommend the game specifically for creative and imaginative players, indicating that those who enjoy open-ended building will benefit most.
- Multiplayer limitations noted (weight 0.08): A cluster warns that multiplayer is limited and not recommended for those seeking robust multiplayer experiences. Players should accept the game's current multiplayer constraints.
- Try demo before purchasing (weight 0.06): Reviewers advise undecided players to try the demo before buying, suggesting it is helpful to see if the game fits their tastes.
- Requires powerful hardware (weight 0.06): The game is reported to run poorly on weaker PCs, with recommendations only for those with powerful computers. This highlights performance as a potential barrier.

Other player notes:
No miscpoints

Emotions:
- Frustration (weight 0.16): The main causes of frustration are severe performance issues like FPS drops and crashes, especially in late game or with large ships. Additionally, poor AI pathfinding and combat behavior, imbalanced weapons, and a lack of meaningful story or progression make the experience tedious.
- Excitement (weight 0.11): Excitement is driven by the addictive and creative ship-building mechanics, intense ship battles, and the vast potential of future updates. Players also find joy in designing increasingly absurd ships and exploring the game's deep customization options.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.1): Enjoyment comes from the satisfying gameplay loop of building, testing, and fighting with ships. The sense of creativity and freedom in ship design, along with engaging combat and multiplayer coop, provides long-lasting fun.
- Satisfaction (weight 0.09): Satisfaction stems from the rewarding depth of ship optimization and progression, where players see clear results from their design choices. The game offers great value for money with flexible building, tactical combat, and consistent updates that improve the experience.
- Disappointment (weight 0.07): Disappointment arises from the lack of a compelling story or meaningful late-game goals, along with slow updates that fail to address core issues like balance and performance. Many players feel the game has unrealized potential, with updates sometimes making the experience worse rather than better.
- Fun (weight 0.03): Fun is derived from the primary activities of flying around and blowing up ships, combined with the addictive ship-building loop. The game remains enjoyable despite a learning curve, especially in easy mode or when exploring multiplayer and PvP modes.
- Appreciation (weight 0.03): Appreciation is tied to the regular updates and active developer communication, which shows a commitment to improving the game. The deep ship-building mechanics, good sound design, and strong community support also contribute to positive feelings.
- Love (weight 0.02): Love for the game comes from its polished core mechanics, extensive customization freedom, and the sense of a labor of love from the developers. Players enjoy the ability to relax and build creatively, finding the game a brilliant gem despite some criticisms.
- Anticipation (weight 0.02): Anticipation is focused on upcoming features like Career Mode 2.0, carrier aircraft, and other roadmap additions. Players are hopeful that future updates will bring more content and improvements, especially in deep strategy and customization.
- Desire (weight 0.02): Desire reflects specific wishes for more players, online multiplayer modes, and deeper game elements such as advanced AI and mission variety. Players also hope for features like boarding, save sharing, and improved crew management to enrich the experience.
- Admiration (weight 0.02): Admiration is for the exceptional ship-building quality, impressive attention to detail, and the dedicated developers and modding community. Players consider the game a masterpiece in its genre, with well-optimized performance and creative depth.
- Hope (weight 0.02): Hope is directed at future updates that could realize the game's full potential, including a complete story mode and improved systems. The active development and promising roadmap give players confidence in a better experience over time.
- Addiction (weight 0.01): Addiction is caused by the game's addictive build-test-die cycle, leading to hours of uninterrupted play. The time-sink nature and design challenges keep players returning for more, often losing sleep or free time.
- Boredom (weight 0.01): Boredom sets in due to repetitive tasks like mining, monotonous missions, and a lack of variety in late-game content. The initial fun fades quickly as the game becomes a grind without meaningful progression or engaging objectives.
- Enthusiasm (weight 0.01): Enthusiasm comes from the many cool features, ongoing content drops, and excellent mod support. Players are excited about building enormous ships and fleets in a game tailored to their interests.
- Joy (weight 0.01): Joy is found in watching ship explosions in glorious detail, designing and imagining ships, and peaceful activities like mining asteroids. The improved gameplay and ability to create unique ships bring a sense of fun and relaxation.
- Annoyance (weight 0.01): Annoyance arises from specific mechanical issues like the fire mechanic, poor music, and thermal missiles that divert crew. Long loading saves and a high failure rate in trial and error also contribute to mild irritation.
- Surprise (weight 0.01): Surprise stems from the game exceeding expectations, especially given its early access status. Accidental time sinks and high-quality tutorials catch players off guard, making the experience feel better than anticipated.
- Amusement (weight 0.01): Amusement comes from chaotic combat moments with big cannons turning enemies into confetti, as well as humorous comments and weird interactions like scooping stations. The game's sadomasochistic nature provides entertaining and funny moments.
- Interest (weight 0.01): Interest is driven by the detailed ship and mechanic development, strategic depth, and the game's overall design. Rare early access purchases are made due to compelling gameplay and consistent updates that keep players engaged.}