Game Modes
Career Mode
Build, fight, and scavenge to become a legendary Cosmoteer whilst exploring a galaxy.
Career Mode is the main game mode in Cosmoteer, and largely involves exploring star systems throughout the galaxy, completing missions, and acquiring resources in order to build the most powerful ship and reach the highest tier of fame.
Career mode can be played either alone in single-player or with up to three other people in multiplayer.
Difficulties
Cosmoteer offers two ways to increase or decrease the difficulty of Career mode, in order to better tailor the experience to suit the player. The first way to modify a Career Mode's difficulty is by changing the Combat Difficulty, which affects how much damage you deal to enemies, and how much damage enemies deal to you.
| Name | Difficulty | Damage Modifiers | Other Modifiers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Civilian | "No Death" |
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| Ensign | Easy |
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| Captain | Standard |
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| Admiral | Hard |
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| Grand Admiral | Very Hard |
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The other way to modify Career Mode's difficulty is through the Economic Difficulty setting. This impacts how fast the player moves through the game, by modifying the resource drop rates, credit rewards, fame rewards, and resource sell prices.
| Name | Difficulty | Resource Drop Rates | Money Rewards | Fame Rewards | Resource Sell Price | Starting Budget | Other Effects |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Imagineer | "Free Build" | Normal | Normal | Normal | 50% of Buy Price | (unlimited) | Can build anywhere |
| Builder | Fast | +100% | +100% | +50% | 100% of Buy Price |  75,200
|
N/A |
| Architect | Standard | Normal | Normal | Normal | 50% of Buy Price | 70,200
|
N/A |
| Starwright | Slow | -50% | -50% | -25% | 25% of Buy Price | 65,200
|
N/A |
Both Combat difficulty and Economic Difficulty can be modified at any time throughout the play through of a Career Mode game. Simply open the Settings panel in the middle of the game, navigate to Current Game > Difficulty, and make the desired change.
Gameplay
When playing Career Mode, the basic objective is to complete missions in order to gain credits, fame, and resources. Stations play an integral role in the gameplay of Career Mode, and when hailed, they allow you to accept missions, buy and sell resources, hire crew, and purchase blueprints to upgrade your ship. They are regularly visited by NPC Ships, which restock the station with resources and can also be hailed for resource trading and hiring crew.
There are several types of missions that can be accepted, and they can be characterized as Bounties, Faction Conflict, Deliveries, and Exploration. Missions can have different levels of rewards and level of difficulty, even within the same system.
Creative Mode
Design ships with unlimited credits and all blueprints unlocked.
In Creative Mode players can design ships with unlimited credits and resources, and with all blueprints unlocked by default. Saved ship designs can be loaded at any time for testing or roleplaying. By default, galaxies generated in Creative Mode will feature Stars, Planets, Moons, and Hyper-Jump Relays, however they can be disabled if desired.
Ships saved in Creative can then be used as a starter ship for Career, loaded into Career (via the Ship Editor) at a later point, or used in various Multiplayer game modes.
Multiplayer Exclusive
Elimination
A fight to the death! The last surviving player or team wins!
Arena
Earn points by damaging and destroying other players! You will respawn when destroyed.
Domination
Capture control points to earn credits and use those credits to warp in new ships. Achieve victory by capturing all control points!
Build & Battle
Played over several rounds, competitors build or upgrade their ship using a randomly limited selection of parts and then battle against the other players.