Star Ruler 2

[LupusExMachina]

The genre is nothing I usually see here, but the game is still worth a mention.
For all those that like 4x and feel the titles coming up and out are somwhat stale, there is help. I play the genre since quiet a while now and think most new titles just take the same game mechanics, mix them together, and execute them sometimes good, sometimes bad. But in the end it's all just the same.

Star Ruler 2 shook those game concepts up significantly. A lot of the systems used in there are things you have never seen before (or at least I havn't) and they work exceedingly well.

Sad thing is, even though the game is massively innovative and plays very well, the studio has to shut down in a while. You know, three guys, a lot of good ideas and well execution, but absolutely no marketing.

So every 4x RTS lover should take a look. It's a very deep and complex game which suprisingly needs very little micromanagement. It's all grand strategy. Maybe Paradox would have made a title like that if they went for 4x.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/282590/

[Larmantine]

I have tried this. The best thing about this game was it's scale. I don't think any other RTS offered such vastness. However, I disliked that the ships only have 3 kinds of weapons, and the concept of colonizing/managing new worlds for your empire was a little repetitive minigame. These were the biggest gripes for me, eventually they set me off completely.

There is a similar series of games more to my taste called Stardrive (and Stardrive II). Personally, I liked the first one better, since it wasn't turned based. The ship designing is magnificent as well with much more subsystems and weapons than in Star Ruler. Scale was satisfying as well although not as grand as in SR2 and once having larger fleets, the lag was quite noticeable. Stardrive II is basically a total war series in space, offers both turn based ground (rudimentary Xcom) and real time space combat in instances (SD 1 had everything real time).

AFAIK all of these games had diplomacy, they worked, none of them were particularly stunning. Both of the series have decent UI. I only wished Stardrive took itself more seriously. Fighting naval wolf pack or a bear samurai shogunate factions in space was frustrating at start, but after a while I got immersed.

BTW: Forgot to tell, in Star Ruler 2 you can not only destroy planets, but whole galaxies (yes, galaxies) as well by firing some sort of super-weapon at their core. So, kudos to Star Ruler there.

[DaveYanakov]

The scale on Distant Worlds: Universe is pretty huge and also real time

[LupusExMachina]

I played distant worlds as, but found it to be rather unresponsive in its mechanics. it works and is good for some very long games, but i felt some of its mechanics are just meh and it is absolutely unsuited for mp games.

take the fuel of distant worlds for example. your ships always do the same damage as far as i can remember, but they start to slow down once fuel is gone and it takes away your control over the ship.
star ruler on the other hand has a supply system as well, but instead of making your fleets slow, it makes your fleets weak. it has a similar effect, reducing the power of your fleet when it is in low supply, but it doesn‘t take away your control.

stardrive i played as well. it was kind of good, not bad, but i think i shouldn‘t talk about it as i am biased. the dev dropped it like its hot and even removed features before release. things like an event system which in the end just had one event. i‘t take distant worlds over stardrive everytime.
And it really isn‘t similar to star ruler. a game in space where you design your own ships, thats about it. those games are as similar as an apples and oranges. round and sweet.... very similar ;)

and as for the weapons. there are actually six types and nine if you count in those not direvtly linked to ship to ship combat. while i see that it doesn‘t look like much, i learned to love it more than tons of weapons, as all weapon systems fill a specific niche. it is absolutely non trivial what you put on your ships. In addition you got some modifier subsystems for weapons which allows for some interesting tactics. ever tried making a ship with a ridiculous large laser with a targeting subsystem inside? space glass cannon snipers ftw :D

this is a theme that moves through the entire game. there went a lot of thought into the game mechanics and a lot of them came from outside the box.

anyway, i can just repeat it. if someone is looking for a well designed game which is easy to learn, hard to master (and you have to learn it, applying knowledge from other 4x doesn‘t work out as the mechanics are so different) and very scaleable not only in size but also mechanics (you can still play it in huge settings as there is only minimal micro) which has a good mp on top of it all, take a look.

i think its only around twenty dollars or something.

[Larmantine]

Yeah, Stardrive 1 really felt broken at one point. Still I liked it. Stardrive 2 felt really slow paced and the turn based-like gameplay was a dealbraker.

With DW:U, I haven't played, and I really doubt that I will because of the two things - the price, the price is a whopping 60 dollars. Thats like a good AAA game. The thing that turned me off even more was the graphics, yes, I do usually prefer gameplay over graphics, however the 2d graphics remind me of the old asteroids game. Shallow as that might sound, that was really a dealbreaker for me. Still might pick it up on a sale though.

The things you mention about SR2, seems I didn't give it enough time and love. I'll definitely try it out once more with a more open mind once my studies are through.

[DaveYanakov]

So I saw this on sale and checked out some gameplay/review videos. Is it me or is this a lot like an Anno title?

[LupusExMachina]

More like a distant relationship.
The economic part is complex but not the main part of the game. There are far less ressources and almost all are available globally. It‘s all very macro up to the point where only something like giant planetary building or a system spanning ringworld require some micro to construct.

Most systems are macro oriented.

The main part that makes this interesting is the budget cycle. Every five minutes or so you get a budget to spend. Unspent budget doesn‘t carry over to the next cycle but gets invested into some ressource gain of your choosing, which is not very efficient. So you micro that money away every five minutes. It offers a nice pacemaker to everything you do.

The main part is large scale confrontation between huge empires.