So..the game has been released and there's a demo on the
official site that grants 90 minutes of gameplay. Playing the tutorial doesn't count down the demo time.
By playing the demo and making money to skip to the parts I was interested in checking out, it's essentially the same game as Evochron Mercenary with some improvements.
It's been a long time since I played Mercenary, but the only really 'new' things are the improved build mode and structures and the "fleet" control. Crafting seems to have been improved, but I never really checked that out much.
The building part is the same as before, you build stuff to improve the 'Technology level' of a system in the hopes that new items start being sold there, or that more crew gets available for hire, or that prices get raised and things like that. It's not really clear the effects of new Stations and Cities (which you can only build on planets, not moons) are other than that, but you still don't own the structure. In singleplayer at least, it's your chosen faction that holds it, and I don't think you even get free refuelling.
"Fleet Management" is more like "Squad Management" - you can hire up to 9 ships that will always teleport to you. You can tell them to attack hostiles, attack target, mine, form up, or repair/refuel. So it's not really that useful.
The universe is still 100% random. But it was nice to see ships and transport start warping in the station and city I built..too bad they are just decoration.
I also liked the fact that random ships don't spawn in deep space anymore. Back then, it could really freak you out being in the middle of nowhere with pirates or whatever coming out of warp around you.
In the end, it's still the same game to me. It might appeal to some people, but "meh" is my opinion.
This is probably a re-re-release (Legends - Mercenary - Legacy IIRC), which doesn't really make any sense in my head, but the dev has a loyal following.
And here's the
possible exploit method I use to make quick money before the demo time ran out:
Hire some ships and tell them to mine. Try to make they all mine the same asteroid. They'll jettison what they mined in a few seconds in a crate behind them.
Grab their drops and repeatedly sell it to them, use it to hire more ships. With 9 ships you can easily make 1 million fast - it'll be faster if you upgrade your hull to get 10 cargo slots and better thrusters. Remember to bring a mining/tractor beam.
You can also do this to collect Metal Ore for base building - get 10 cargo slots and sell everything else to your fleet ships until all your cargo is filled with metal.
This is probably an oversight, but it's sad that this is the 3rd installment of the game and NPCs still don't have their cargo holds or bank accounts tracked.