Starsector (formerly Starfarer) is a top-down single-player indie role-playing game developed and published by Fractal Softworks for PC, with the Alpha released in 2011.

Set in the year 3126, the player commands a fleet of spaceships and engages in trade, exploration, and combat in a procedurally generated world.

Reviewers praised the game on release and have continued to do so on every update, calling it a sort of "Mount & Blade: Warband in space".

[2] Fractal Softworks have continued to regularly update the game with new ships, weapons, missions and gameplay features.

Starsector is an open world single-player space combat role playing and exploration game,[3] with a procedurally generated map.

Which goods are illegal vary between factions; for instance, "The Hegemony" bans the purchase and sale of recreational drugs, human organs, AI cores, and heavy weaponry.

Lead developer Alexander Mosolov has stated that the player is intended to uncover lore as they travel throughout the world.

However, exactly 206 cycles prior to the game's start, all transport gates abruptly ceased to function and humanity was plunged into a Dark Age where piracy went rampant and splintering factions began to form and exert their influence.

[2] Mosolov cited Star Control II as a "major" influence on the game's development, as well as Wing Commander: Privateer, Sid Meier's Pirates!, and Solar Winds.

[2] As of January 3, 2021 the game contains 14 missions, 3 combat tutorials, the steadily-updating campaign mode with several major gameplay systems (an economy that easily scales-up, planetary colonization, exploration and salvage, factional reputations, bounty hunting, player and non-player colony raiding).