* Key Features
o Vast, Procedurally Generated Galaxies
o Intricate Ship Design and Exciting Combat
o Unique Research System
o Easy to use interface, complex gameplay
o Engaging AI Opponents
o Extensive Modding Support
o Multiplayer: Co-Op, Team, and Free-for-all
o Original Soundtrack
o Much more to come!
* Vast, Procedurally Generated Galaxies
o Choose however many systems you desire; you are limited only by the speed of your cpu
o Rich, diverse, planets whose type, size, number of moons, and other characteristics vary
o Full 3D too much to handle? Flatten maps for ease of interaction
o Alter the Galaxy throughout the game with advanced technology
* Intricate Ship Design and Exciting Combat
o Massive ship battles fought in real-time with particle effects and directional damage
o Ships whose individual components can be compromised, destroyed, disabled, repaired, and renovated
o Ships depend on key components to keep functioning, and failures can lead to catastrophic explosions which can turn the tide of battle
o Add components that modify the behavior of connected components, such as added health from bulkheads, or faster firing from coolant systems
o Save and load your custom ships and settings to your profile for easy importation and exportation.
o Fully simulated newtonian physics
* Unique Research System
o Unique Web-Like Research system with unexpected discoveries around every turn
o Choose between a structured, static web, or a highly varied web each game
o Develop technologies that lead to different strategies, rather than simply better tools
* Easy to use interface, complex gameplay
o Govern your planets with a simple yet powerful interface to customize the behavior of your worlds
o Numerous easy-to-use interfaces which provide quick solutions to specific problems
o Customize the GUI via scripting; add new windows, or change pre-existing interface behavior
* Engaging AI Opponents
o Choose from various levels of difficulty, with optional 'cheating' AIs
o Watch for the AIs to attempt different strategies to defeat their opponents
o Counter their new ship designs, as they adapt their designs to counter your own
o Engage in complex diplomatic interaction with your opponents
* Extensive Modding Support
o Modify data files and scripts in any editor as simple as Notepad
o Use developer tools to create particle effects and configure imported models
o Smart use of AngelScript allows users to create entirely new gamemodes, gameplay, and online experiences
o All files from the base game are readily available to learn from
* Multiplayer: Co-Op, Team, and Free-for-all
o Play with as many competitors as your server can manage, with drop-in-drop-out compatibility
o Supports both internet and LAN play
o Dedicated Servers
o Standard server controls
o Seamless transitioning: Multiplayer games can be saved and then played in Singleplayer and then brought back up in Multiplayer
* Original Soundtrack
o Experience an all original soundtrack by Artem Bank
* Much more to come!
o As time goes on, more and more features, graphics updates, and so on will be added to Star Ruler. We won't be satisfied until we're the best in the genre
Multiplayer: YES
System requirements:
Quote:
Minimum (lowest tested):
Operating System: Windows XP, Vista, 7
CPU: 1 Core, 2.0 GHz, SSE2 Support (Pentium 4 and higher)
System Memory: 512 MB
Graphics Memory: 256 MB
Graphics Driver: OpenGL 2.1 or better
Screen Resolution: 1024x768 or Higher
Free Hard Drive Space: 500 MB
Warning: Long-winded, technical, explanation ahead
Technically, Star Ruler should work okay on a pretty fast Single-core processor and work better on a dual-core processor of almost any speed or kind (we recommend 2.8GHz and higher for smooth performance). Of course, the more cores you have and the faster they run the better Star Ruler will perform as it is built to work best with multiple cores. We have not forgotten about our single-core audience however so we are doing our best to try and support what we can in that category. I would say that if you can run UT3 or X3 on medium or better settings you should probably be okay for Star Ruler (in particular, if your machine can't handle better than 5x SETA in X3 in a new game Star Ruler may run a little ragged by its default settings if things get particularly crazy and there are a thousand ships duking it out).
However, in the face of all that, Star Ruler would probably be okay if a fan modded in scale restrictions. We currently support ships as small as 0.00001 and as large as 1,000,000,000,000 (roughly 5% bigger than the width of the default galaxy). If there were less than 800 ships on screen at any given time the hardware requirements are lessened considerably. Similarly, a smaller galaxy will yield better performance on all platforms. And then you could mod the galaxy itself to not have any gas, which saves even more render time, and so on and so forth. Most systems which can run HL2:EP2 on Med-High settings should be able to at the very least support a 1-4 system galaxy with up to possibly 300 ships.
It's a little bit of a grey area because we don't have a wide variety of hardware that Star Ruler has tested on just yet. We're working on expanding that base of knowledge but for now that's as much as I can get you; and we'll also need to do some re-testing as we recently added in the ability to downscale texture quality so even computers without a lot of graphics memory should be okay (it's about 46MB of graphics memory at the moment on lowest settings).
But our goal is to support as many platforms and operating systems as is feasible (for instance, currently, the game runs through WINE on Linux -- though I should clarify that we can't officially support the Linux platform).
I'd also like to add that you save 5€ or 5$ if you preorder it, and theres only 5 days till release.
Further Q&A with a developer.
Quote:
Do you colonize planets to help get resources to build your empire?
Yes, with the aid of a subsystem which allows a ship to send down a quick colony maker. Planets come in various different sizes and richness. That in mind, the larger the subsystem which colonizes the planet is, the more people and structures are immediately built on the planet's surface from the resources you send down with them.
You have the assistance of a Planetary governor on each planet which is toggleable and will allow you to easily set how you would like your colonies to develop.
The universe scale seems large, is the universe different every time you play? Is the universe procedurally generated?
Yes, the universe is procedurally generated; guided by an editable AngelScript map creation file which tells the game how far apart to place systems, how big or small planets can be, how many moons a planet can have, and other important things. The actual size of the galaxy is decided by the user by the user selecting how many systems there are in the Galaxy. The Map script and the Scenario script take over from there and then generate the galaxy intended. We will possibly have an in-game scenario editor which allows you to create 'preset situations' for players to play through (and set up conditions such as 'players can't build ships', 'can't research new techs', or have to do trigger events to unlock certain things).
There is a mention that with tools we can add/create ships and other items. How will balance be maintained with new items that are added?
Naturally, we cannot guarantee the balance of user-generated content but server operators and clients should have ease-of-use in enabling and disabling addons, scripts, and so forth.
Could you describe some victory conditions to winning without doing a lot of combat?
Exploration: You find something or a set of somethings in the galaxy that is/are a unique resource(s)/asset(s). By finding this/these things you gain control of something very strategically important to the game and by controlling that it is very likely that you will become unstoppable. Other players may stop you by destroying the resource(s)/asset(s) but that is very difficult to do; but it also takes you a while to gain control of it/them. To find this/these resource(s)/asset(s), you must explore the Galaxy and find clues to it's/their location.
Economic: Basically you can indebt the whole galaxy and if you dared to call your debt you would essentially destabilize their entire economic system. Or you could pump so much money into a corporation (or even the pirates if you feel lucky) that you favor that going up against you means going up against them -- and going up against them is not something an Empire would consider lightly. Basically, though you may not control other Empires directly with your money you can influence them -- even get them to surrender their planets to you.
Peaceful Diplomacy works essentially this way: you make your Empire so benevolent and peaceful that their citizens have a very strong likelihood of revolting when they would ever attack you -- and the more benevolent you become the more easy it is for your Empire to simply request planets from other Empires and take them from them.
Aggressive Diplomacy forces other Empires to submit to you by frightening their people with the prospect of war and as such, cripple their ability to fight you by restricting how many ships they may have built at any given time/whether they can or can't use certain weapons/and how large or small their ships may be. Eventually you could simply force all Empires to only ever have one to twelve, relatively small, ship(s) and then simply tell their people 'join us or else' as you amass a 'diplomatic fleet'. The citizens could either then revolt against the Emperor if the Emperor does not yield or offer to join you and crush the new 'loyalists' you have created.
Research can be done through a variety of ways. (Making your ships and planets practically impenetrable to enemy weapon's fire, evolving your society beyond the 'pithy' morals of other societies, building your own "asset(s)/resource(s)" from the Exploration victory emergent condition, and et cetera)
Espionage can trigger revolts in Empires, (possibly) destroy or disable planetary defenses for a short period of time, steal tech., make some systems more attractive to pirates, and so forth.
Everything is editable and moddable, besides the engine of course. So you can create new UI's, new effects, new units, new gameplay etc.
This game and it's design is very innovative and signifies what makes me like pc gaming, it's remarkable that a small indie studio is far more innovative than one of the largest and most successful ones "Blizzard".
With the procedurally generated galaxies and the use of scripts to build conditions you have limitless playability options available to you.
That's the idea, yes; also, with the ease of modding we hope that people will continuously improve the game and add on to it, creating exciting new content for everyone to enjoy.
Is there any roundabout time frame on how long a two player match would take? Either facing a CPU AI or human player?
It is difficult to say at this time. I would expect a wide range of times, depending on the skill of the players and how they're approaching attaining victory. If there were two players both at the same skill level both going down, say, the full combat path (burn, loot, and seed across the stars) and they're both pretty good at designing ships, and they're playing just against each other in a 50 System galaxy... then perhaps 40 to 90 minutes, I'd say, depending on which races they're using, how their start location worked out, and how aggressive they were in their initial expansion. This is all based on just combat, excluding diplomacy and so forth, and we're far from release so that number may fluctuate wildly even in the upcoming month of development!
In the Star Ruler, the use of the camera in zoom seem very important for managing all your resources and assets. With the scale of the game I take it that your units will have native orders they follow unless you change them so you don't have to constantly micro manage all aspects of the game?
Yes. You can also give them automated orders appropriate to the subsystems they have on their vessels. For instance if they have a subsystem which salvages parts from enemy hulls and stores them in a cargo bay, you would simply tell it to use that subsystem and whenever it sees a disabled ship in the system (and, if it has weapons, if there are also no enemies to fight) it will fly over to it, salvage until its cargo holds are full, and go to the planet it feels can distribute the gotten goods best. It will repeat this order endlessly until there is no more room for the salvage to be stored on any world, until there is nothing left to salvage, until it is told to do something else (and then it will return to its prior duties), until enemy fleets pass through, and etc.
Automated orders can also be cleared off a unit with just a keystroke so you may give that unit a clean slate if you wish.
That's just the problem though. This game sounds way too good to be true, judging by the feature list and promises. I'd be skeptical even if this was coming from a huge and rich developer. This game will either be bug-ridden, have about half the features on the list, or have barely working features. Most likely all of the above.
That's just the problem though. This game sounds way too good to be true, judging by the feature list and promises. I'd be skeptical even if this was coming from a huge and rich developer. This game will either be bug-ridden, have about half the features on the list, or have barely working features. Most likely all of the above.
Of course it's going to be lacking in polish, I wouldn't expect Blizzard level of polish, the developers have stated that they're gonne be relying on feedback regarding balancing from players in version 1.0.
And yes I'd expect bugs as well, but it seems like they're giving as much of the game back to the community as possible without open sourcing it, so the community can be part of the future implementation and development effort.
And again it's currently 20$ not 60$ like StarCraft 2 or 50$ like most AAA games. 4x games are a niche and as such one shouldn't expect AAA level of polish as theres just not budget or audience for that unless you're Sid Meier.
Sounds amazing, will probably buy at release (to support them) but wait until a few patches has been released before i actually play, gonna do the same with Elemental: WoM.
I usually like the look and idea of these space rts a lot more then I enjoy playing them unfortunately. The feature list is bordering on the ridiculous in its length although it sounds interesting and suitably complex enough should one have the time to get to grips with it..
They have the 'original soundtrack' down twice on that feature list is it that good?!.
4x = explore, expand, exploit, exterminate.
Games like these or, more commonly known, Civilization. Other than that Master of Orion, Galactic Civilizations etc.
sabin1981 wrote:
Now you're just arguing semantics. Getting fucked in the ass with a broom stale is an "improvement" over getting stabbed in the eye with a fork
Haven´t been suck in a space game since.. Nexus the Jupiter incident
The videos don t show anything.. from the feauture list, the UI will make it or break it.
Some in-game play video could convince me... or not
Waiting for a demo or review from someone here before I buy it. Sounds really interesting, and I did see the stream where the developer built a HUGE (extragalactic) ship that dwarfed entire solar systems all by itself.
But the interface looked difficult to navigate (and I play Dwarf Fortress) and I'm not sure how the gameplay stacks up to the stunning scalability.
Watching with interest.
Look at these ship sizes. One is larger than the neighboring galaxy.
Sertorius wrote:
Just be careful to your ass while surfing on the net and NOTHING will happen to you.
Likewise.. For those who bought it through Gamersgate, make sure to check the site again. The very first version they put out was a pre-release build. A proper version has now been placed on the website.
I just read a pretty crummy review on another reliable forum I frequent. Pros: scale is impressive. Cons: control scheme, pathing, AI, ship designer (cannot delete or refit old designs), can't refit existing ships, on and on. Serious bugs. Multiplayer = desync.
Sounds pretty horrible, but could be good with serious patches and interface redesign.
Sertorius wrote:
Just be careful to your ass while surfing on the net and NOTHING will happen to you.
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