Vermillion Online vs Star Conflict

First, respect where it's due. Star Conflict ran from 2012, kept a loyal community through a lot of changes, and was one of very few free space shooters on Windows, Mac and Linux. In the April 2026 announcement the developers said it had become too hard to support the game at the level it deserved, and set a schedule: new registrations closed on 14 May, purchases ended on 1 June, and the official servers went dark on 9 October 2026, a day ahead of schedule.

If you're one of the pilots looking for the next game, this page is a straight answer about whether Vermillion is it. For some of you it will be. For a lot of you it won't, and we'd rather say so now.

The big difference: matches vs a world

Star Conflict was at its best in matches. You picked a ship, the matchmaker found a fight, and a short while later you knew who won. Your ship was back for the next one. That's a great loop and Vermillion doesn't have it.

Vermillion has one persistent world on one EU server, and a fight happens because two people were in the same place. Maybe one was mining Titanite in Low security and the other heard their radar ping. Maybe a jackpot ore field got announced to the whole server and four ships showed up. You don't queue for it. You fly out, and sometimes nothing happens for a while. If that sounds boring, Vermillion probably isn't for you.

Ships: fitted hulls vs designed hulls

In Star Conflict you chose a hull from four classes and roles, then fitted modules and weapons. In Vermillion you can fly stock designs, but the point is to build your own in the Ship Designer at any station.

• You place 1 m blocks: 68 armour shapes in five materials, plus about 140 functional parts.
• Cannons are built from a firing piece, barrels, clips, autoloaders, gauge increasers and recoil absorbers. You pick the gauge, from 12 to 300 mm. One huge gun or many small ones is your call.
• Thrusters are a nozzle plus amplifiers plus coolers, and where you place them decides how the ship turns and strafes.
• Test flights from the designer are free, so you can try a build before you spend anything.

So there are no fixed classes. Your design is your class: a fast ship with one gun, a slow brick with heavy armour, a radar scout. Friends can crew your ship from gunner seats.

How fights feel

Flight is Newtonian on six axes, with flight assist you can switch off. There's no speed cap; typical ships run 150 to 300 m/s, set by thrust, size and mass. There's no auto-aim. Shells are real projectiles that fly, hit a block and chew through until their penetration runs out. Damage is per block, so you can shoot the guns off a ship, cut its thrusters, or split the hull into drifting pieces.

It's less arcade than Star Conflict and slower to start. A good fight can be over fast, but finding one takes longer.

Losing a ship means losing it

This is the big one. When your ship dies in Vermillion, it's gone. Half its cargo is destroyed and the rest spills into the wreck for anyone to take. Other players can salvage the hulk. Everyone aboard dies with it, and each body drops a bag with what that pilot carried. A new ship has to be fabricated from materials someone mined and refined.

You choose how much risk you take. Secure space has no damage. In High security an attacker becomes a Criminal and police destroy them after 20 seconds. Low security has no police. Lawless has no rules, and the best ore. A free Rookie Ship means you can always get back out there.

Where Star Conflict was better

• Instant action. Matchmaking put you in a fight fast. Vermillion makes you go and find one.
• Balance. Matches were designed to be fair. Vermillion fights are often not fair, by design.
• Content. Years of ships, modes, co-op missions and events.
• No grind to lose. A bad match cost you a match. In Vermillion a bad fight costs you a ship.
• Population. Even late in its life, Star Conflict had more players at once than our playtests have had.

Who should try Vermillion

Try it if you spent time in Star Conflict's open space and wished it mattered more, if you liked fitting ships and want to go one level down and design them, or if you were in a corporation and want a game where hauling, mining and protecting each other is the job. Skip it if quick team matches were the whole appeal. It's an early playtest on one EU server, on Mac and Windows, with no Linux build yet, and progress may be wiped.

Questions people ask

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