I recently got the game StarDrive 2 and have been enjoying it. It has its shortcomings but it’s enjoyable (I think its $30 price point is at the edge of its value…$20-25 might have been more on point).
I thought Star Ruler looked a little more interesting, but this looks pretty cool. I’ve seen a lot of complaints about this game that the AI is polarized between braindead and “and exactly where did you find that fleet, again?”
Ouch, zinged again. I hate the game Star Drive because I keep thinking they’re talking about the abandoned TSR campaign setting Star*Drive, about which I’m still excited.
I picked it up Friday and still trying to figure it out. So far it’s pretty cool…reminds me of the old Master of Orion where you can actually build out your star ships then fight them. It seems to have a rather steep learning curve, to me anyway…I always seem on the verge of disaster between not having enough food for my colony worlds (so far in 3 game starts I’ve found one exo-planet where I could farm at all right off) and running out of money. You build up your planets and it seems you go into deficit, though the aliens have no problem spreading rapidly and encircling you in. The best I’ve done at this point is to have 3 systems colonized and some descent star ships in place before being overwhelmed. The ship crews level up and you can refit your ships to leverage your experience which is cool.
Also, no idea how to use or even get the heroes. They periodically pop up, but as I said I’m generally hovering right on the verge of deficit spending, so paying 4BC for a new hero would send me off the deep end. Anyone used them? What do you do with them? How do you afford them and how do you use them to best effect?
At any rate, I think the game has potential and I’m enjoying it a lot. It’s sort of a mix between Sins of a Solar Empire wrt tactical real time combat and the Galactic Civ games…or maybe kind of sort of like a Total War in space game with turn based strategy and sort of real time tactical combat between fleets. Oh, and turned based ground combat (sometimes you can use troops to attack a derelict ship or something as well…the turn based squad combat has been the lamest part so far though, IMHO).
Yeah, I’ve been having learning curve issues too. Lik
A couple points that may help:
You can build freighters which can ship food from planets that have food to those that don’t. This is necessary to colonize some less than hospitable worlds.
You can change your tax rate to make more money. It does not seem to affect happiness. Rather it reduces your production (so trading hammers for money essentially). I found it necessary to use taxes to keep a positive money flow.
Like you I find myself surrounded by the other races which seem far, far better at expansion than I am. Having a hard time stopping that.
I am also finding the command points a little too limiting. I have a hard time having more than one fleet where both are at least marginally effective.
I did stumble on one good build. I put four Mass Drivers on a Frigate hull (I think it is the Frigate). Made sure it is all powered up and good to go. I have four of these and they have such a long range and high damage they kill most things long before they come close. They even one-shotted a Starbase. I then keep a couple flak ships (next smaller hull from the Frigate…I forget what it is called) to handle any small shit that gets close.
I have had a couple fights when I had no flak ship and just those big mass drivers and killed everything except fighters which were left over. I had to leave the battle and despite having won it in every meaningful way it is considered a loss so yeah…flak ships are good.
That said there are undoubtedly answers to those Mass Driver frigates but so far the game hasn’t sent anything they can’t handle.
Yeah, I had found the slider to increase revenue, but they keep strapping you until you are out of money anyway. Same with the food. I build tons of freighters but it seems like eventually even my best worlds can’t make enough food to keep up. The command points are definitely too limiting…a single fleet of 6 ships will max you out and the initial star base, as far as I can tell, isn’t upgrade-able…it seriously needs shields in the mid game when the computer opponents start really pushing you since in a lot of cases that’s your only defense for your more remote planets. You can research a star fortress, but I haven’t been able to play long enough to make one yet.
The best ship I’ve made was a battleship with a center line Gauss gun and a pair of advanced mass drivers, shields, laser turrets and point defenses and those ridiculously long range and fast swarming missile thingies. I started out putting tons of armor on but I go with only a thin shell now or nothing and rely on being able to hit from long range and absorb the blows with the shields. The computer will throw stuff at you that will defeat all this though…they get a ridiculous huge dreadnaught thingy that is just massive and has an unreal amount of armor and weapons. I played the last game out and they basically kept throwing ships at me in 4s and 6s until they wore my fleet down and took planet after planet. It was fun but a bit of a bummer, especially since I was still getting various kinds of pirate raids (as if the computer needs the extra help by weakening me more)…those master fleet guys especially are a pain in the ass, as well as the crystal ships.
All in all I think they still have some issues. I ended up figuring out how to use the hero units…if you wait long enough you get some with good admin skills that you can use to manage your worlds, sort of like governors and generals in the later Total War games. You can also use some of them to go with your troops to look at derelict ships and the like, as well as join for planet invasions.
Well, if anyone is playing the game or has the game and wants to put it in easy mode, try switching your star configuration from random to clustered. That made the game a LOT easier, for me anyway. I was able to turtle and tech up, building up my planets and my space fleet and then taking on one alien at a time. If you create more clusters than you have races then you can get 2 or even 3 clusters before you really start getting pressed by the aliens.
There is something in the AI that says if you get some number of planets they have to attack you, though, so you have to watch out when you start getting up there. Even races that were historically friendly and well disposed to you will suddenly declare war just because you’ve reached some threshold…even if you get to that threshold simply because some other alien race attacked you and you were taking their planets away from them.
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I’ve been watching a Lets Play of this. It also seems like the computer players will build towards the player. Another AI behaviour that really bugged me in the original Civ game.
Oh definitely. The AI, especially if you play normal or harder difficulty will move towards the player. Also, it seems to me that all raider events go after the player. It makes the game somewhat annoying, which is a shame, since it’s really kind of a cool little game. But nothing like having a species that has been friendly with you for a long time suddenly decide that that planet you haven’t colonized yet on the far side of your empire and that no one is near is something they just HAVE to have right now, and once they get it declaring war on you…and hitting your border planets with ridiculous numbers of ships right after a Master raid has hammered you (often bypassing the enemy fleets and planets to go right for you).
I’ve yet to be able to play through a game on a difficulty setting above easy, and even on easy the game is no cake walk. You still need to build up a credible fleet in case a worm hole opens in the middle of your empire (I’ve had them open up in my home system twice now…and both times to very aggressive races that immediately came through and started attacking me).
I picked it up yesterday because it was (slightly) on sale and I was looking for a new game to play. It is the most unapologetic ripoff of Master of Orion II I’ve ever seen; I’m glad, because I love MoOII.
I’m playing a game on the easy difficulty, and have gotten to the end of the tech trees. The future tech system is interesting. I’m currently dumping most of my research points into a glitch that I’m shamelessly exploiting: The anomaly “Krazy Eddie’s Tech Emporium” can be visited multiple times. For most of the items on offer (each item gives you a special project), you get something like a new piece of ship equipment, so there’s no point in doing the project again. The vial of silver liquid, however, gives you a +6 AU boost to your ship speeds on the strategy map; the bonus stacks with itself if you do the project multiple times. I’m up to about 79 AU per turn for all of my fleets.