Fractured Space: The Battle for the Best Space MOBA

[getTwitchRail scgame=”Fractured Space”]
Created by: Edge Case Games
Game Site: Fractured Space
ESRB Rating: M for mature
Support: support website
Terms and Conditions of Use: Fractured Space TCU

Hellcat5 Connect:

I came to Fractured Space after someone from the Dreadnought community recommended it. Right now there’s a war going on for who will end up being the League of Legends of space MOBA. While Dreadnought’s gameplay has a more robust feel to it (you can live longer during fights), and more survival options for the smaller corvette ship, Fractured Space, on the whole, has more advanced development. Edge Case Games well designed the controls, layout of the UI, and clarity of how to play. Granted, Dreadnought still isn’t out of closed beta. But, they should do well to look at what Edge Case Games did to entice players to play more.

Make no bones about it – Edge Case Games paid attention when Blizzard setup Overwatch to reward players with a lotto style of rewards from cash shop items. Sure, the chance might be small to receive skins, but it’s there, and in time through play, you can unlock cash shop skins for ships. I hope that Dreadnought will pay attention to this model too, because the gameplay is fun for Dreadnought, but they’ve got many other areas to improve before that game becomes something I’d go back to.

As a new player, Fractured Space walks you through each step of progression, explaining all the details of how to advance your career, and how to play. I love how easy the tutorial mode made sense for play. If all games did this, players would enjoy the games more because gone are the days when players read the game manuals. I might be one of the few old school gamers who still do.

At the end of the tutorial, I experienced a demo space battle with my new ship – the Pioneer. After this short battle, I gained credits and unlocked the “Solo Frontline Mode”. In this, I learned the basics of the MOBA battle. Capture the mining points to be able to upgrade the ship as it levels. Then, go for capturing the enemy team’s Base. If you can’t capture the enemy base before the timelimit, you go into sudden death mode, and which ever team survives, wins.

Frontline mode is a much smaller map than the later unlocked Conquest mode. Both map modes have available the option to play in either solo vs. AI, players vs. AI, or player vs. player. While not yet implemented, they have scheduled development for ranked play also.

Like League of Legends, you must buy ship upgrades, which are similar to rune purchases in League of Legends. These ship upgrades give play options for the ships depending on what play style you need for the battle you’re going into. They don’t actually upgrade the ship, but modify it according to your needs. You can decide that based on what other ships players decide to pick, or according to your own weaknesses during play.

Like League of Legends and Overwatch, you can buy skins for your ships. You can also buy credit boosters, crew, and crew implants. You can also purchase ship mods with cash. That doesn’t hurt the gameplay at all because the ship mods don’t give advantage over someone who doesn’t have the mods. You can play with the starter ship, the Pioneer, for your entire career if you want with no negative effect.

While you can spend your hard earned cash to purchase any of the above, you can also use the in-game credits to by all ship mods, crew, and crew implants. Each day you can earn three drop pods (these are lotto boxes) from playing 6 games. Through these drop pods, you can, by chance, win skins similarly to Overwatch.

During battle, I find that the battles themselves are very short, and the death timer is too long. Dreadnought does better keeping the action and excitement going for players in this regard. Few ships have escape options once you enter battle. If you’re not in a tank class ship, don’t expect to live long, or be able to warp out of battle before you’re destroyed. You might escape if you account for how many ships are shooting at you, and if those ships can disable your engines. Otherwise, stay behind your tank ship, and think about positioning like you would in Dota 2 or League of Legends because it matters.

I’ve only ran into one glitch so far (but others exist, and they have it pasted right into the the UI). At the pregame ship select menu, sometimes the ships and button text don’t load, and so you can’t select a ship in those instances. instead you get placed into the default Pioneer ship. At that point, you can either tough it out in the Pioneer, or alt+f4 the game, and re-open. There’s no punishment for leaving the ship selection screen, and so far doing this has fixed the issue.

Both Fractured Space and Dreadnought have their issues and their high points. I’m curious which game will come out on top, taking it’s place as the new League of Legends for Space MOBA. Or, will another game step on the field?

Core Resources:

Community Resources:

Leave a Reply