Spacefleet fight sim Nebulous gets carriers in biggest update yet

If you love the streaking torpedos, violent maneuver burns, and streaking tracers of semi-realistic space combat like you’ve seen in shows like The Expanse, then the best game for you just got better. Nebulous: Fleet Command is a simulation-heavy strategy game about spacefleets bashing each other to bits in engagements that have realistic radar, electronic warfare, and in-depth spacecraft movement controls. Its latest and largest update yet released this month, adding carrier craft stuffed with smaller fighters, lighters, scouts, and bombers.

The hefty Carriers Update brings with it two new big ship hulls: An escort-carrier size hull for both Alliance and Protectorate and the hulking Moorline container liner serving the role of big ‘ol fleet carrier. With Nebulous’s trademark customizability at the fore, each of those hulls can carry its own wings of individual strike craft, unique to each faction, that can themselves be refit between missions with different loadouts. You can send out your fighters on one mission as a screening force, then refit them mid-match to attack enemy fast warships with missiles—which then plays immediately into Nebulous’ dizzying system of missile payload customization.

It’s certainly a power move of an update that also includes new stuff for missiles, a new tutorial for carrier operations, and a major overhaul to the AI. Developer Eridanus Industries says that “The AI opponent has been completely rewritten from scratch to be able to give even experienced players a run for their money.” That certainly bodes well for those who prefer to play as a team against the AI.

Released about three years ago into early access, Nebulous has been steadily updated into the real-time space combat sim par excellence. You take your squadron of warships into battle entirely customized to your own whims, and much of the strategy and tactics in Nebulous are all around that information war of figuring out what your enemy’s armaments are and how to beat them with your own—and how to team up with whatever weird stuff your allies have brought in multiplayer.

The latest update has, of course, totally upended the metagame of what’s good and what’s best and all that—how, you might ask, should I equip my fine little fleet of fighters? What missiles are best for them? How do I protect my enormous and beautiful giant battleship that I spent all my points on from the enemy’s swarm of attack craft? Why would I bother with bomber craft when my weird space insurgents are happy to cram shipping containers full of rockets and radar jammers for suicide runs?

You can read the full text of The Carriers Update on Steam, where you can also find Nebulous: Fleet Command on sale for $15 until February 3.