Star Ruler

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[City Builder]

Star Ruler (a 4x strategy RTS game).

Official information below:

•Key Features
•Vast, Procedurally Generated Galaxies
•Intricate Ship Design and Exciting Combat
•Unique Research System
•Easy to use interface, complex gameplay
•Engaging AI Opponents
•Extensive Modding Support
•Multiplayer: Co-Op, Team, and Free-for-all
•Original Soundtrack
•Much more to come!
•Vast, Procedurally Generated Galaxies
•Choose however many systems you desire; you are limited only by the speed of your cpu
•Rich, diverse, planets whose type, size, number of moons, and other characteristics vary
•Full 3D too much to handle? Flatten maps for ease of interaction
•Alter the Galaxy throughout the game with advanced technology
•Intricate Ship Design and Exciting Combat
•Massive ship battles fought in real-time with particle effects and directional damage
•Ships whose individual components can be compromised, destroyed, disabled, repaired, and renovated
•Ships depend on key components to keep functioning, and failures can lead to catastrophic explosions which can turn the tide of battle
•Add components that modify the behavior of connected components, such as added health from bulkheads, or faster firing from coolant systems
•Save and load your custom ships and settings to your profile for easy importation and exportation.
•Fully simulated newtonian physics
•Unique Research System
•Unique Web-Like Research system with unexpected discoveries around every turn
•Choose between a structured, static web, or a highly varied web each game
•Develop technologies that lead to different strategies, rather than simply better tools
•Easy to use interface, complex gameplay
•Govern your planets with a simple yet powerful interface to customize the behavior of your worlds
•Numerous easy-to-use interfaces which provide quick solutions to specific problems
•Customize the GUI via scripting; add new windows, or change pre-existing interface behavior
•Engaging AI Opponents
•Choose from various levels of difficulty, with optional 'cheating' AIs
•Watch for the AIs to attempt different strategies to defeat their opponents
•Counter their new ship designs, as they adapt their designs to counter your own
•Engage in complex diplomatic interaction with your opponents
•Extensive Modding Support
•Modify data files and scripts in any editor as simple as Notepad
•Use developr tools to create particle effects and configure imported models
•Smart use of AngelScript allows users to create entirely new gamemodes, gameplay, and online experiences
•All files from the base game are readily available to learn from
•Multiplayer: Co-Op, Team, and Free-for-all
•Play with as many competitors as your server can manage, with drop-in-drop-out compatibility
•Supports both internet and LAN play
•Dedicated Servers
•Standard server controls
•Seamless transitioning: Multiplayer games can be saved and then played in Singleplayer and then brought back up in Multiplayer
•Original Soundtrack
•Experience an all original soundtrack by Artem Bank
•Much more to come!
•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

---END OFFICIAL INFORMATION---

[City Builder]

 
Being that Star Ruler is an 'indie' title, I have every hope that they will insert the game into the game, but for me currently, it's just not playable. I also try to cut it some more slack being an indie title than I would if it were a big budget title like well... You know all the others)  That isn't to say that it's not playable due to performance issues, on that front it seems to play fine, as long as you choose the size of your galaxy appropriately and don't try to overboard your CPU.  I have no problems playing on galaxies with about 18,000 to 30,000 systems, however with only 4 AI players in my galaxy, I may never even see them, in which case, boredom sets in.

On more reasonably sized maps, of let's say 150 to 1,000 systems I can usually eventually find the enemy AI, although they have a tendancy to contact me via the diplomacy panel even before they've seen me or I've seen them, which makes no sense to me at all.

But the biggest problem that I have with Star Ruler is that I never (NEVER) feel that I'm accomplishing anything or moving ahead anywhere.  Sure I can colonize hundreds of planets but unlike the 4x games that came before it like Sins of a solar empire, or Galactic Civilization or Swords of a star etc, I just never feel like I'm accomplishing anything of any importance in Star Ruler.  But yet, I have hopes that the developers will continue to develop the title as they say they will do as long as the finances afford them the ability to do so.

However, I'm already starting to see a trend in their own forums, it went from 'we can't bend over backwards enough to please you', to 'you don't like our game, you're a complainer, here, let me ban you' to 'sounds like an issue with your video card and or computer, we can't help you with that at all'.  Do you see a pattern here?  I definitely do.  However, I chalk it up to maybe the two men that developed Star Ruler are tired and need a break.  After all they just released the title and they're on their own forums day and night, I assume any other parts of the day that is available to the normal human being they are working on the game to make it better.  But yet, the game has still not been inserted into the game.

All in all, I fire up the game and stare at my screen, then I send out about 300 scouts to explore 300 nearby solar systems and then follow up with as many colonizer ships as I can to colonize as many planets as I can.  Meanwhile, I'm still staring at the screen trying to figure out what it is that I've managed to accomplish by doing this.

Overall, if they continue to improve the game, and put the game into the game, it will be worth picking up for those 4x gamers that we have amongst us, but in it's current featureless state (obviously, it's not completely featureless, but as I said, I don't feel like I'm accomplishing anything), I'd have to say... Put it on the back burner of your want list for now, and check it out in a couple weeks or a month or two and see what progress has been made, I'm sure quite a lot will have been done to it.

Other opinions greatly appreciated as I'd love to know what it is that I'm just missing in the game that makes me feel as if I'm not doing much of any importance in the game, where as in previous 4x space titles I almost always felt that every turn after about turn 10 or so was an important turn and something important to do, in Star Ruler, it doesn't matter, 2 minutes into the game, or 30 minutes into the game, I just don't feel like I've accomplished anything of importance.

I did write up a review but it turned out to  be more of a rebuttal of the feature list, listed above and didn't want to post that on GamersGate before the two man development team has had a fair enough amount of time to try to fully develop the title and as I put it, get the game into the game.

I do hope that they manage to get it all together and really make it feature rich, it would be great to have an alternative to the others that I've already played.  Hopefully they'll take a little break too (the developers) and get some rest, I'm sure they must need it about now.

Khalan?  How are you getting along with Star Ruler?

[Khalan]

Here's what I posted on the Star Ruler forums:

Yeah, I've pretty much shelved the game for now.  Still happy I bought it, I'm sure it will become a great game.  For now though, I'm sticking with X3 and Elemental.

As far as ship information, I think an expanded sidebar similar to Nexus or Sins would help greatly - a list of systems that have fleets in them, within each listed system the number of ships, flashing if they're in combat.  Click to zoom to the fleet.

One thing I really don't like though is that you can basically click in the production queue, and the ship is completed almost instantly.  That's way too much micromanagement; ie. you can click 30 times in quick succession and you have 30 ships almost straight away.  I'd rather 1 minute build times for small ships, up to say 10 minutes or more for the big ones.  Would make your ships, and acquiring new colonies, that much more important then.

I'm just not really a fan of massive scale spaceship rts games; I prefer smaller scale ones like Homeworld or Nexus.  Games like Sins and Stars work, and are enjoyable, thanks to better interfaces.



On another note, Elemental is starting to become quite enjoyable now that the initial issues are mostly ironed out.  3 patches and a hotfix in a few days, and apparently Elemental is all they'll be working on throughout this year and into 2011.

[City Builder]

Ahhh yes, good ol' X3, I keep forgetting about her, even though I bought the boxed copy in the local best buy, and then bought a copy on Steam to make it convenient to load.  I'd rather download it and install X3 that way rather than sit around shuffling CD's that were shipping before they switched to DVD's.

My biggest problem with X3 is how huge it really is.  I sometimes have a difficult time trying to remember what I'm doing in what sector, I might have some factories in one sector and completely forget about them for the longest time, early on in the game can be detrimental if I'm the sole hauler moving their necessary supplies to them to make their products.  Still, such a huge game to me and so much stuff in it that I've never even touched.  I kept waiting for a mod that would allow X3 Terran Conflict to allow me to fly my ships like the previous X3 game (what was the name of that.... Reunion I think), but never found one to allow me to do that.  I guess people like the current 'open map, point and click to destination' rather than clicking in space to move where you wish to go to.

I saw a video on Elemental, and honestly having a tough time pulling the trigger on that.  I wrote up a small little uproar / rant about companies that create games and leave them with known rather large bugs in them and then move onto their next title expecting their consumers to live with the bugs in their previous title AND buy their latest title because their reputation which to me is tarnished when they do something like that.  Understood they need to move on to make their income, but not nice to buy a title and find out that they're done with it but have left a bunch of bugs behind.  I guess the older I get and the more games that I own, the less I want to allow this to happen to my purchases.

Do let us know how you get along in Elemental.

[Firgof]

Not to bring our forum's business into another forum, however:

'you don't like our game, you're a complainer, here, let me ban you'

The person who was banned was not banned because he didn't like the game; he was not banned because he was complaining.              He was banned because he was 'yelling' and for the overall hostility of his post, both towards myself personally and toward other members of the forums.            I, personally, do not whatsoever mind people expressing their frustrations at me or our product; demonstrating hostility to other members of the forums through name-calling / flame-baiting is simply intolerable by comparison.         

The ban you speak of was also a one day ban.                   

'sounds like an issue with your video card and or computer, we can't help you with that at all'.                   

Yes, regrettably, we cannot rewrite the Windows OS nor write new drivers for your graphics cards.         There are certain issues that can only be the fault of the hardware, for instance, if shaders such as shipGlow were failing to compile because the card doesn't support GLSL 2.      0 or doesn't support render-targets; in these cases we can only recommend that they disable their shaders, etc.        as the card does not support the behaviors the game is polling for.         We also do attempt to provide support in those cases by attempting to resolve the likely source of the problem, whether they be graphics card related, installation / patch procedure, or the version of the Operating System and its related patches and offering potential solutions related to hardware incompatibilities (e.           g.            having an old single-core processor which doesn't support multi-threading when the game by default requires multi-threading)

Some things are simply beyond our control; we cannot help customers with them because we do not have the capacity to fix what we are literally not given access to fix nor can we work around these things easily or at all in most cases short of rewriting huge pieces of the code or rewriting the operating system; especially when those bugs are likely to be resolved soon by the operating system provider/graphics card provider sooner than we could work around the issue.       


Also: RE: Breaks:  We would love to, but we simply cannot take a break while this game is in the status it currently is in.      It would be unfair to you, the customers, if we did.      We are taking small ten to thirty minute breaks every couple of hours to keep ourselves from pulling our hair out, but you paid for this product and we aim to deliver in as short a timespan as possible.   

[Khalan]

Thanks for the response Firgof.
Here's the fixed url (they're scrambled for new users as an anti-spam measure):
http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=933349

[City Builder]

Thanks for fixing the url Khalan.

Firegof, I have no problem being corrected where I am wrong, and don't have any issues with your bringing what you brought here since I did write what I wrote above and you clarified/corrected what you think is right.  I actually admire that you took the time to respond and stood up for what you do.

Thanks for stopping by.

//CB walks off to the corner and is heard talking to himself, something about how the Internet isn't as large as many thought it was