Starways Saga (WIP) ~478k words (Updated 1/20/2026)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
, , ,
284

Hello Owen!

Finally, The Deckies got the long-awaited update!

I won’t lie—I’d been waiting for it a long time, and it didn’t disappoint. It was fascinating to see the Navy from this new angle. Honestly, I didn’t expect things to take such a darker turn, with all those political games cutting into efficiency. It really drove home that the Fleet isn’t as flawless as it looked—bureaucracy, flattery, intrigue, political expediency slicing it to pieces.

SPOILERS ALERT

That’s why you end up respecting the Star Pilots even more—no-nonsense folks who show up, get the job done, and save the day. If anything, this update lit a fire in me to finally step into the cockpit as a Star Pilot. Now I get the MC’s motivation so much better, and I’m right there on his wavelength. I’ll admit, I used to be skeptical about those daredevil pilots. I thought the Alliance Navy was the biggest, most efficient machine out there, perfectly capable of handling whatever needed doing, and I didn’t quite get the protagonist’s digs at it here and there. Well, damn it, now I do—and how. If the Marines planted the seed of doubt, the Deckies blew my eyes wide open.

In my view, the Alliance should be about protecting people and carrying the light of civilization into the darkest corners of the galaxy. That’s why I broke orders and flew out to save lives. Even if I rescue just one ship and its crew, and take down some pirate scum along the way, it’s worth every consequence that comes crashing down. No regrets.

Besides, a certain Mademoiselle can smooth things over—fine gal, if you ask me.

And even though the Colony Ship Path didn’t win, I’ll be waiting for Ship Builder Path with anticipation. Once again, thank you for your wonderful work. Have a great day, Owen, and take care!

6 Likes
285

That’s strange it doesn’t seem like there’s anything wrong with the code. I’ll do some minor tweaks. Sometimes it can be a COG demos issue. Put a save down on the choice and see if it goes through. If it stalls again, reload and try again. Let me know if this persists

1 Like
286

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the deckie finale! I really enjoyed working on and especially had a lot of fun adding in a surprise appearance from those star pilots! Your feedback is always very rewarding. I’m glad you’re picking up what I’m putting down. I look forward to sharing the first update of the ship builder path with you. Have a great weekend!
Cheers!

4 Likes
287

I mean, I tried three times with a save from a few pages earlier. That’s usually enough when it’s my connection being spotty (sometimes it drops when a game tries to load a new file and then it just gets stuck eternally even when I reconnect). But I’ll try later with a save on specifically that page, I’m too sleepy now to continue.

2 Likes
288

True, although I am less looking forward to the getting started in the super tiny one person craft than I am with what will probably, hopefully be the third book in the series where mc can get a proper hero ship of their own and their own ragtag band of misfits, aka a crew, going. :persevering_face:

As for playing politics, I think star pilots are a highly diverse bunch by nature, some will probably be more or less ethical, some may even play the reputation and politics games just as much as the navy, albeit in a different way, in their corners of the vast frontier.

Well not my main mc, he hasn’t got that leader perk for nothing after all. :wink: So I think my mc would prefer at minimum one partner and a ship that is a bit bigger than a fighter. His (and my) ideal is probably a true bunch of misfits crew like Mal had on the Serenity in Firefly but at minimum something like Han and Chewie had with the Falcon. So a not too small ship with at least one, but preferably a bit more than one, crew/partner.

4 Likes
289

I don’t know yet, but I think that’s a possibility for the second book. Though some star pilots always prefer to fly solo.

2 Likes
290

Can’t argue with that.

Especially if a Star Pilot flying a seriously advanced ship with skills to match, he could wield enormous influence/power—like quietly taking out inconvenient political figures and make it seem the work of pirates or slavers, destabilizing one small faction while propping up another. With a beast of a computer onboard, he could crack databases, dump the contents to whoever’s interested, or use the intel himself for political or financial gain.

If you play your cards right and don’t bother with moral scruples, you can stir up way more trouble than any pirate ever could. I don’t know how high-spec a ship a Star Pilot can realistically own, but even without some kind of wunderwaffe in the arsenal, sheer reputation and a smooth tongue could sway wavering crowds—whole planets, maybe even systems—one way or the other. Simply because, “hey, he’s a good lad with a kind heart, he only wants the best for us! He’s a Star Pilot, for God’s sake! Right?”

2 Likes
291

There’s a whole lot of formatting errors during people’s dialogues. Everybody’s just crammed together in the same paragraph, all the time, and it makes it hard to read/follow on with who is saying what, when. There’s supposed to paragraph breaks between one speaker an another, so it’s easier to read and less confusing.

1 Like
292

I know the merchant path still has some big chunks. I’ll go back and work on that at some point soon. The Navy path is better formatted.

2 Likes
293

How do I do spoilers?

2 Likes
294

Go to the + icon and click on it then scroll down and select Blur Spoiler or type [ spoiler ] and then [ /spoiler ] (remove the spaces.)

2 Likes
295

Ship Builder Path Underway

I’ve started work on the Ship Builder path. It requires a bit of a hard reset when starting a new path. Because when finishing a path, my mind is filled with ideas for what’s next, what comes after. So I need to restart and forget about the other paths, to start anew. Starting from day one again is daunting, but I’m excited to bring the Ship Builder Path to life.

In this first update, I’ll cover your trip from Verdant Bright to Earth, your arrival at Pierce and Brown, and I’ll introduce a lot of integral characters for this path. It’s still early days but we’ll shoot for sometime in January. I’ll update you when I have a clearer picture. At some point before that I’ll also update the romance option tab to include the upcoming romance options for the ship builder path. I’ll let you know when that happens.

Feel free to voice any question or comment. And I’ll say Happy Holidays now! In case you don’t hear from me until after.

Cheers!

17 Likes
296

Ship Builder Progress Notes: New Challenges
I’m well underway with the first update to the Ship Builder Path. I took a nice break off for the holidays but I’m back at it now. I hope to be done with it within the next two weeks. I also promised you to update the romance tab with the new options for this path. I plan to get to that tomorrow.

Writing this new path has brought about new and unique challenges. The other paths span across the stars, but they also happen in much more enclosed spaces. It’s easy to remember and have the layout of the Venetian Prince play out in the story. And in terms of planets, stars and systems, nobody can tell me Station Bumfuck isn’t ten days travel from Planet Dogbreath and they’re both a part of Asscrack cluster which is in the central part of Marchand Sector. I’m being silly here, but you get my point.

In this path I’m dealing with Earth, with a real planet with real cities with real history and geography. I’m guessing none of you are probably from Detroit, because if you were you would have called me out earlier when I said, Detroit was on Lake Michigan. Look that up if you want a laugh. Clearly I’m not from Detroit either. I have spent three or four days there back like six years ago. Not enough to form a mastery of a city. Apparently, not enough to remember it’s Lake St. Clair not Lake Michigan.

And this worried me, because I love attention to detail and realism. I would hate to hear that I totally dropped the ball and completely misrepresented Detroit. But ultimately I have come to a conclusion. Nobody, not one single one of you, has been to Detroit in the year, 2413. So you can’t say whether or not it’s accurate, because you have no way of knowing. Four hundred years is a really long time. A lot can change. It would be more unbelievable to present a Detroit in which little had changed in that time.

What this means is, I’m not gonna stress too much or get too bogged down in the details, when your MC ventures out into Detroit. The neighborhoods names will remain the same and I would never take down “The Fist”, but I’m not going to spend two hours googling where the high end night clubs in 2026 Detroit are. Like I said a lot can change in 400 years.

Detroit is known as the Motor City because it used to be a big hub of the auto industry. With the factories moving overseas, white flight and a variety of other factors, by the year 2000 Detroit had lost more than half it’s population from it’s boom times in the fifties. Detroit became known for it’s huge number of vacant properties, poverty and crime. But in recent years the population has started to rise, some industry has returned and the city is slowly recovering. My vision of Detroit is one of boom times again as a major hub of spaceship building and other industries thanks largely in part to Pierce and Brown. It is a town of wealth and opulence, but also one of blue collar factory workers in strong unions to protect against the robot revolution. Gone are the dilapidated industrial neighborhoods, rows of vacant houses and the empty, crumbling mansions of days gone by. In 2413 the boom times are here again!

12 Likes
297

RO Tab Updated
The RO tab has been updated to include the ROs for the Ship Builder path. Just to be clear, the first update for Ship Builder path is not out yet. But I thought I’d do this now to give people some info, peak some interests.

Most of the romanceable characters if not all, will be met in the first update, but the romances will not start until later.

You’ll also notice for the first time, there will be a gender selectable character. I know some people prefer every RO to be gender selectable. Personally, I’m not one of those people as a reader and haven’t tried it as a writer. But for reasons relevant to the plot that I can’t reveal, it could work or even be necessary to allow for the character to be gender selectable. We’ll see how it goes. If I feel like it’s too much work then the game will have one random, gender selectable character. If I think it’s doable I might choose to make some characters gender selectable in the future. But I will not be going back to the merchant and navy paths and making established characters, gender selectable. That would be way too much work. Let me know how you feel about gender selectable characters.

Also, the vast majority of this path is still unwritten so this may be subject to change.
Cheers!

13 Likes
298

28k Word Ship Builder Path Update
The first update for the Ship Builder path is here at last! It should serve as a healthy introduction to the corporate world you’ll be diving into and it’s key players. You’ll journey to Earth in style, meet your fellow interns and start work. Have a chance to show your value and impress some powerful people.

Let me know if there’s any typos or errors. Let me know what you think of the path so far and what you expect is to come.

Cheers!

14 Likes
299

Looks like a typo.

Screenshot

изображение_2026-01-21_071210566
изображение_2026-01-21_071210566477×255 4.42 KB

“The” at the end should be “then” I think.

1 Like
300

Will be nice if there option to skip to the start of newest update. Tiring to start from beginningrevery update

1 Like
301

Thanks, I’ll fix that!

302

You can blaze through the intro in like a minute, skipping the text and only focusing on the choices. It really wouldn’t save you much time, If I coded in a skip because you’d still have to work through the important choices from the intro before you could start the next part.

2 Likes
303

Honestly I agreed with the skip to most recent update chapter but yeah but if it’s your decision then it’s okay, also hope someday the romance able character have illustration. stay healthy and nice update :+1:

4 Likes