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Alexander Mosolov

@amosolov.bsky.social
4.3K followers 22 following 956 posts

Developer of upcoming indie sandbox rpg Starsector. fractalsoftworks.com

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Reposted by Alexander Mosolov
dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
If you choose your loyalty wisely you too can "Do you know who I am?" your way out of a transponder violation while (allegedly) doing a secret mission for the Supreme Executor. (And yes, I do have a job to smuggle 2000 units of metal into Sindria. Um, it's for the war effort, I swear!) #starsector
Starsector screenshot where I say "Do you know who I am?" to a patrol to get them to stop bugging me while I'm trying to do some honest smuggling.
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Does this count, the only officered ships being LG Hammerheads? Feels like there's room for refinement here, both in tactics and builds. The Prometheuses are there to provide capital-grade bonuses for the Escort Package Hammerheads, which are *vicious*. And the Ion Pulser's EMP is super nice!
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Off-meta builds, round two! Officered Lashers, Falcons XIV (because I hear those are bad), Champions (ok, these did get a solid buff in-dev) with Support Doctrine. This time every ship set to "steady". Vs same 2-fab fleet; zero losses this time. Character even has 5 skill points in industry!
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Trying out some off-meta builds just to see how it goes! 11 Lashers with officers, 8 Dominators (with Support Doctrine, set to Reckless via faction doctrine), a Retribution flagship with a bunch of Heavy Mortars, vs a 2-Fabricator fleet Took some build tweaking to get this one working :)
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Made some tweaks to the Cobra bomber - much stronger 360 degree shield, faster turning! Had a Condor with one of these for a while and it was a nice, reliable Reaper-delivery machine. Might be a bit strong, but on the other hand: it's still just one bomber per wing!
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Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 14/09/2026
It's TIME! TO! GET! HYPE! Today, I get to proudly unveil Steam Hype, the project I've been working on with the help of @hookshot.media for the past two and a half months. A new PC gaming site which aims to demystify PC gaming, cut through the 100+ daily releases and spotlight indies as much as AAA
steamhype.com
Steam Hype
Steam Hype is your go-to destination for discovering the latest, greatest, and most talked-about games on Steam.
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Working on scenario 2 wherein Wormsy is trying to free Kreeee from captivity. Poor Kreeee! Wormsy gets a crow friend of negotiable loyalty (this will require payments of Shinies, you see). This means I need to set up Things so the crow can follow Wormsy around the map, and allow them to talk.
A screenshot of my goblin game. Here we see Wormsy at the Mudcrab Beach with a 'friendly' crow who wants to earn shinies. If Wormsy gives the crow shinies, the crow might prove useful helping Wormsy free Kreeee...

(This requires various technical things: I need to be able to set a flag on the crow to make it follow Wormsy around the map. Just wrote this, but haven't tested it *nervous laughter*.

I also need to allow the presence of the crow, and Wormsy [or an arbitrary goblin] to add an interaction button so the goblin can initiate dialog with the crow. The whole crow-goblin relationship should be important to the game, so I gotta do this sooner or later.)Meanwhile, we see that Kreeee has found himself locked up in a terrible cage! Note that he has a whole pile of negative status effects and limited options. As time passes, some of these status effects will naturally go away which will improve Kreeee's stats - perhaps to the point where he can escape by himself.

Otherwise, he's going to have to wait for Wormsy's help!

Otherwise... Jorten the Fighter is going to try to sell Kreeee to whoever he can find that's willing to pay, which means there's a turn countdown 'til the scenario hits a lose state. (Still implementing this part, but I have a _framework_ in place!)
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Started a new playthrough in between other things; should be quicker than the previous. Lucked into recovering two (!!) Tempests, one even had an s-mod! Not sure about keeping this Enforcer, tough when it's the only bigger ship. Main goal is to test out Industry and fighters in survival mode.
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
For a fun teaser, here's a glance at the names of some of the (large) pile of QA testing saves; some are mine, some are from our brave testing team of two. (I had to redact a pretty spicy spoiler there, btw.) We're getting there slowly but surely. #Starsector
A screenshot of my save-load dialog in the current dev version of Starsector, mostly involving the names of a lot of Persean League characters.

(One save game description is mostly redacted because it would definitely have given away some Interesting Things.)
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Oh hey, LT Gaming posted a Starsector video, super cool! www.youtube.com/watch?v=30Rj...
youtube.com
Is Starsector the BEST Space Game of All Time?
YouTube video by LT Gaming
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Some changes to the XIV Onslaught - 45 DP, with built-in Armored Weapon Mounts (which also gives a "free" s-mod), and the missile mounts changed to composite for more potential Big (well, medium) Guns. (Seems like a heavy MG/elite point defense + other range-boosters build might be fun, hmm.)
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Changed Recovery Shuttles to be fleetwide; it now allows a number of additional fighter pilots to be recovered post-combat. It's also now a Logistics hullmod (meaning, it takes up a logistics mod slot and can only be installed/removed while in dock.)
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Happy #GoblinFriday! Decided to do a test run through first two scenarios to find if any recent work broke any old content, plus noted any UX things that annoyed me. Figured the first End Turn in the tutorial needed a bouncy arrow (this one is a bit too insistent, I did pull it back!):
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
#Starsector rulesmaxxing writing update: quantitative data only (I forget if @amosolov.bsky.social mentioned adding the ability to have more than one rules file, but that's a feature. Also: new writing is split between the files; size of new file is not indicative of size of that category of data.)
Showing off the growth of the rules data in Starsector for the next update.A handy chart showing how the in-game dialog has grown, in megabytes.
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Happy #GoblinFriday! Finished most Troll Bridge dialog. Finnicky bits remain; I had? to add a null memory type for reasons. Copying a memory that doesn't exist should make it "false" - but not just a bool. So this is a universal false for almost all conditionals (vs. int, float, string, bool). Hm.
Screenshot of my goblin game, just a bunch of goblins in the Goblin Swamp ready to move into the world and cause KAOS.

I added shadows under the tokens. That's all I wanted to show off here.
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Survival mode fuel-saving shenanigans
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Reinforced Bulkheads now give the ship some hull/CR if it's lost and then recovered! This should help with the too-high recovery cost of especially low tech ships, which are the ships that hullmod is most likely to already be useful on. (Pictured: a Venture from my current playthrough!)
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Just going through a few random notes before diving back into playtesting. This feels like a fun bonus for the Tactical Laser, giving it more of a support niche by having it increase hull/armor damage taken by the target, like the Graviton Beam does for shields!
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Ok ok I think I've finally for-real fixed the "ship might burn or phase-skim forward for a few seconds after being told to retreat" bug :)
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Happy #goblinFriday! Sorting out the Troll Bridge. Been here a while, I know - but it's helping debug dialog/rules logic. You can cross by offering 1d6 snax to the troll. If the troll rolls higher than your snax, the troll just eats them and you can't cross. It wasn't hitting the fail state! 1/2
Dialog screen from my goblin game. Here, Bennybog is attempting to offer the Troll snax to cross the Troll Bridge. Bennybog only had 1 snax, so the troll would have to roll a 1 to accept this offering. 

Unfortunately, the Troll rolled a 2 and just ate Bennybog's 1 snax anyway. Fortunately for Bennybog, this still hit the "success" outcome for some reason. What the heck is going on???Here's a look at the dialog rules logic behind the scene.

... Unfortunately the full condition for the fail state is cut off (sorry!), but it is: $scenario.lastResourcesRollBlockChangeAbs > $snax_just_had

What's notable here is I'm comparing two int 'memories' stored by the dialog system referenced by string 'keys', and it turned out to be the root of the problem.
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Changing how crew salaries work to be based on the ships being crewed, plus a fixed rate for "extra" crew. It's nice to have this as a balance lever, e.g. the Onslaught might - and now does - have a lower crew salary (lots of low-skilled positions!) to compensate for its fuel use.
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
A deep dive into the Arma Armatura Starsector mod, by IroncladLion: youtu.be/Yq16EzJ-jQo Arma Armatura looks absolutely amazing and the amount of detail is wild, animated mechs that even somehow have legs (!!!), and it goes so much deeper than that. Genuinely impressive stuff, wow!
youtu.be
The BEST Starsector mod I've played in YEARS! | Arma Armatura Mod Review
YouTube video by IroncladLion
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Super fun game with excellent board-game-like systems that tell a story, with art from @dgbaumgart.bsky.social, and judging from the number of reviews, it criminally undersold
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
In the vein of "real concept art looks like crap", here are some #Starsector concepts for remnant/explorarium ships It's basically just dumping a bunch of shapes and colours and swapping bits around and seeing what hits the right vibe. (Some small ideas even get used way later in other places!)
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
New Starsector blog post: Extended Mode fractalsoftworks.com/2026/06/14/e... A new game mode that's a lot more challenging without being a new difficulty level. Rather, it aims to change the pacing and focus of a playthrough!
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
Working on a new blog post - at a bit over 5k words, so definitely on the long side, but doesn't feel like it would make sense to split it. Hoping to put it out tomorrow or Monday! (Random screenshot from recent playtesting, just for fun.)
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Empowered Widow Who Murdered Her Spouse and One Cyclist @gibbey.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
149 Luddic Path Hounds vs Church Invasion Fleet. @amosolov.bsky.social i'm still trying to understand why 21 of my hounds immediately rammed themselves into a venting invictus and then exploded (gloriously) (for no damage) but I stopped playing to just laugh at it. youtu.be/1snVqxMG02M?...
youtu.be
149 Luddic Path Hounds vs Luddic Church Invasion Fleet
YouTube video by Gibbering Eevee
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
I gotta say, I'm having SO much fun playtesting some of the recent additions! This is ~6 hours into a fresh playthrough, trying hard to grow the fleet and get ahead - make of that what you will :) Going to talk about this in a new blog post, just need to get more testing done first!
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Happy #GoblinFriday! Added interactions to another area today: the Windy Path (I love the double meaning. Could actually draw it to be windier though, come to think of it.) This location is a transition zone meant to be a moderately dangerous/costly place to linger. Encounters reflect this.
Screenshot of a dialog encounter from my goblin game.

This is the default long description you get when you first enter this location, ever. I think maybe I'll add a location name title drop to emphasize that this is supposed to be a "congratulations! you found a new place!" moment.Screenshot of a dialog encounter from my goblin game.

Here, Wormsy has a bad encounter trying to hide from crows. (Crow-goblin relations will be an important factor in this game. And making crows friendly? That will cost you lots of shinies, my friend, because there's little that crows love more than shinies.)Screenshot of a dialog encounter from my goblin game.

Here, Eyeball has run into an encounter with not just high winds, but a Gale Spirit of some kind. Luckily she's *very* skillful at dealing with spirits, so can easily talk this one down.

There are a few other ways to deal with the windstorm, and failing them comes with great risks considering the high altitude...Screenshot of a dialog encounter from my goblin game.

Eyeball is successful! This will give her more of the Oooos resource that will allow her to call upon spirits and their boons.

Note: only 6 dice in the top row! It should max out at 7. I have some work to do...
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
A work in progress - removing individual d-mods from ships using "Domain-grade Parts". Makes more sense in the context of a much larger set of changes; not 100% set on it but it's feeling pretty good so far. Also: this may end up replacing the normal "Restore" functionality entirely!
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Fixed: Orcus Rao would keep giving the player credits as a reward for serving the Hegemony in an infinite loop until the game crashed #starsector
Oh no guy wearing a little Hegemony cap & eyepiece

(Made with apologies to Alex Norris of https://webcomicname.com/ )
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
Follow your dreams y'all; circa ~2001 (I somehow conned this school program into giving me credit for making Counterstrike maps.)
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Jake Birkett - Veteran Indie @greyalien.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
LAUNCH ANNOUNCEMENT Forbidden Solitaire is out now! We are immensely proud to release this awesome game made by two veteran indie studios and we hope you really like it. Steam: tinyurl.com/ywj43ptj GOG: tinyurl.com/2s3sv45j Itch: tinyurl.com/3k4bjt8m Please share, many thanks! #indiedev #FakeOS
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Working on a dialog sequence related to the finale of the next #Starsector update. Don't screw this part up, captain!!!
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
I hate to ask, but Meso - you might know him as a Starsector modder/community member, and he's also a contributor to the game - is in debt after caring for his sick mother, and now in real trouble. Any help would be amazing. Thank you for reading this. www.gofundme.com/f/help-me-ca...
gofundme.com
Donate to Help me care for my senior mother and pay bills, organized by Zeke W
Hello, my name is Zeke, you might know me by my online handle MesoTroniK. I did… Zeke W needs your support for Help me care for my senior mother and pay bills
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
Had a longstanding item to redo the "fog of war" feature, so I did that today. Had to wrap my head around just a little weird math and some shader coding. (And still need to make the location circles & connection lines go under the fog.) Also redid font rendering. Everything looks weird!
Screenshot of the main map of my goblin game with a new "fog of war" implementation.

Instead of splatting sprites all over, there's now two texture layers drawn overtop the map, a "gray" fog (transparent, to show what you know but don't currently see) and a "black" fog (opaque, to show where you've never seen). 

It basically works! Going to need to add some features and adjust lots of details, but I'm glad the texture method was so simple to implement and I don't have to do the weird fog tile system that I was considering before.
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
[Back on my hex bullshit.] Basically: had some thoughts on terrain hex assets over the past ... (god, 12?) ... years I've been selling these things. So these have: smaller size, all seamless tiling (not all done in image) (thus fewer biome variants), flat top/bottom, less visually noisy style.
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Starsector 0.98.5a in-development patch notes: fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.... A conclusion to the Sindrian Diktat storyline, alongside a number of smaller features and QoL changes. (Not yet available for download; this is just a preview of what will be in the next release!)
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
Happy #goblinFriday! Working on Scenario 2: "The Small Escape", where the game becomes a lot more freeform after some linear tutorial scenarios. Need to write a TON of content for locations - much of the 'meat' of the game is random events hit while running around. (more in alt text for images.)
This is how the map for Scenario 2 starts, more or less.

In the upper left are tokens for Jorten the Fighter and Kreeee the Goblin - Kreeee has been captured (note the bars on his hotbar element in the lower left) and Jorten's goal is to sell Kreeee before Wormsy can help him escape.

Wormsy, meanwhile, is on the right side of the map, across the river. Based on decisions at the start of the scenario, she can appear anywhere between the Goblin Swamp (lower right, bushy trees) and the Tavern itself, where Kreeee is. 

Crossing the bridges requires being sneaky, clever, or having lots of resources. And Wormsy starts with *nothing* on this map, so basically the player has to figure out the basic mechanics of exploring locations and acquiring resources in order to solve the problem presented by the map in order to fulfill their objective(s).

Like I said: open-ended. 

_However_ this requires that all those circles have something interesting to do in them! That's a lot of scripting and dialog to write, but: it'll pay off, because once I have something there, they'll be useful for every other scenario I make in the game.This shows off how the custom CSV scripting system works to set up Scenario 2. Starsector modders will recognize this, some with horror, as essentially a copy of Starsector's rules.csv system.

And yeah, I coded my own version of it! Because I'm already using it almost every day to create content for Starsector; my brain thinks in it now.

Anyway, just reading through as plain text should tell you more or less what is happening there: setting up the map, the player resources, and character in-play, and the basic properties of the scenario.

In the second row the game actually starts, with the "StartScenario" trigger. The script block, the next column over, executes each script in order from top to bottom and in my implementation it is possible to add time delays, or a condition to fulfill, before firing the next line of the script.

SetBoardModeTo has a default delay that waits for UI elements to fade in and out before proceeding (0.3 seconds, if I recall correctly.)

CameraPanToEntity will pause execution until its at the target position.

Wait, of course, simply holds a position for the given number of seconds.

(And so on.) -- Because the game is turn-based, not real-time, I can safely script on-map sequences like this using the rules.csv system. The possibilities are pretty wild, but for now it's all pretty simple "move camera here, pause meaningfully, then open a dialog" type stuff.Here's my token worksheet. I think I've showed this off before, but here I've added a bit more to it - at first I experimented with more naturalistic renders of characters, then figured it'd be better to make them more symbolic, like little carvings on an ancient chess set.

This signals to players the board game-like interaction metaphor of the game map.
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Changed the Carrier Group skill to substantially reduce damage to fighters. This feels pretty good so far, you really get a sense of how much it contributes and some fighter/bomber support that *really* sticks around!
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Not quite there yet, but to give an idea of what's been cooking in @amosolov.bsky.social's #Starsector ...
This shows the file size of rules.csv from two previous Starsector updates - and today, in dev.
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
How playtesting is going:
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
It is #GoblinFriday! Diving (back) into the third scenario "The Small Escape". It starts w/ Wormsy escaping from a caged wagon. Or not. I'm diving in & fixing anything broken, slightly broken, or annoying. Example: big gob of weird execution order/timing problems at game start (more in alt text).
Here's a bit of dialog where Wormsy is escaping with the help of a friendly crow. (I see crows and goblins as potential allies, provided the goblins are willing to give up some number of snax and/or shinies.)

Note also: the objectives widget on the right side has an expand/collapse button (WHICH WORKS).

To explain the significance of this dialog, which is quite old: I changed how a lot of dialog script commands and basic timing things work ie. how a camera moves and how the game waits for it to finish, or not, before executing more commands.

So when I loaded up scenario 2 (this one) I found that telling the camera to spend 2 seconds panning to Wormsy wasn't working - it'd move in about .3 seconds then fire the next thing. Turns out the time wasn't being used *at all*.

Fixed that, then: the map was pitch black until *after* the camera finished moving. What? It turns out the map fog wasn't updated until the next step of game start. Fixed that.

Then: no fog at all, no map connections drawn 'til the camera got to Wormsy. I was calling the functions to update map fog and refresh map connection visuals too late in game start.

Fixed it. Then: opening the dialog flashed the background then faded quickly to black. Weird! Well- this is actually a dev command I set up, but I'd like to be able to *start* the dialog with a black background because it involves Wormsy waking up from unconsciousness with no idea where she is, so it fits to have the black fade to the background art after a few lines of text. So: made it so dialog BG color can be set from outside of dialog mode.

And so on and so on like this. Just lots of little fixes and adjustments.

(I am, of course, going to have to go back and fix the start of the other scenarios because they were janked together using slightly broken commands that now work correctly. Such is game dev!)
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
These guys turn 2 today. <3
Tiny kittens that were only 6? weeks old when this picture was taken.Two year old kittens that are now much less tiny than they once were.
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Apparently, the fix for the <local4> crash that's been happening for some people is to uninstall "Intel Graphics Command Center" (which is apparently outdated?) and update the graphics drivers. A bit more info here: fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index....
fractalsoftworks.com
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Changed up how the basic personal bounties work - there's more of them with a spread of difficulties, and their average difficulty follows which ones you're completing, rather than just going up as you do them. So, just naturally, you'll keep getting more of the kind of bounties you do!
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Working through a list of assorted notes I've got; currently: buffing/changing up the Polarized Armor skill. The top speed bonus is flat (rather than a percentage), meaning it'll be especially impactful for larger ships when they need to back off.
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Stark Raving Sane Games @verysrsgames.com · 07/02/2026
Folks, it's once again the first Friday of the month, i.e. "Frecommendation Friday" (I think that name's locked in by now), where I recommend a game that I like and I think you should play. Today that game is #Starsector by @amosolov.bsky.social, @dgbaumgart.bsky.social et al. 1/4 #indiegames
Screenshot of a number of starships of different sizes engaged in a tactical battle around a space station, with colourful laser beams and explosions.
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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Goblin Friday! ... ugh, whew. Spent part of last night and most of today entirely rewriting the scripting memory system. Fixed some old structural errors (and added news ones - fixed, eventually). It's cleaner, more efficient, easier to use. Also here's an "item gained" dialog element! (Turnip.)
A dialog from my game. Bennybog the goblin finally manages to pull a giant turnip out of the ground. He was, of course, spotted in the moment of victory, so we'll see how that goes...

As for the memory rewrite, the weirdest error that resulted was the arrows showing what direction you were moving on the map were pointing the wrong way... sometimes. Turns out this was caused by an erroneous "check if value is greater than" call where I put the "return" keyword on the wrong line... and it worked, but was wrong.

On the upside, I can do things like pull out chunks of memory grouped into a "context" and do stuff with them - save, delete, re-add later. Plus a bunch of other stuff works really cleanly, particularly save/load to file.

What's next? I just need to make sure all the existing stuff works correctly so I can get an ultra secret test build out to a couple people.
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Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Question: has anyone been noticing the forums hang for like... 10 seconds to a minute when refreshing, *very* occasionally? Trying to figure out if this is a me thing or more general; wasn't happening pre-upgrade.
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