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 Now Available on Steam Early Access - transitioning from Early Access to Release on March 27th! Well, what is it? A 4X/RTS and the sequel/reinvention of our first game. Media https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OFhVtqfDBQ    Interviews, Reviews, and other Infos SpaceGameJunkie Podcast (Aug. 8, 2013) Developer Streams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0_q78Qwlgk Developer Diaries Diary One: Economy Diary Two: Diplomacy Diary Three: FTL Diary Four: Energy and Artifacts What do you mean by 'Late Alpha'? The Starflare Engine (which we have built from the ground up for this title) is more or less complete at this time and the gameplay design has reached a pretty stable and well defined state. What's left to get out of alpha is to get the gameplay design off the page and into the game engine which we are mostly through with, begin to introduce our art assets, and get the game ready for things such as save/load, multiplayer, mods, our art and sound assets, and to rubber-stamp/finalize most of our gameplay mechanics. So what do you do in Star Ruler 2? Survive. It's not as easy as it sounds. The galaxy may be alive with possibilities -- but it's also alive with danger. Backstabbing politicians who can change the balance of power and the rule of law in the galaxy; reclusive and powerful scientists whose inventions grant them powerful advantages and mutations biological, economic, and militaristic; divine and godly rulers who can with the snap of their fingers use vast stores of power to bend the galaxy to their will. These will be the sorts of opponents you will face in your quest to ultimately rule the stars for the glory of your species and the guarantee of survival. If you do survive, and if you do wrest control over the galaxy, then it shall be yours to command -- stars will turn to ashes by your demand; planets may be destroyed and re-built to better fit your ways of life; you may even-handedly decide ultimately whether there can be peace or one final war. The galaxy is yours for the taking -- if you can handle it. Star Ruler 2?! Alright, so what's the difference between SR1 and SR2? A lot! It won't just be a better looking/running/playing game, it'll be a better game. Diplomacy will have teeth; planet micromanagement will be painless and interesting; the base gameplay itself has been greatly improved and expanded in almost every direction. Oh, and we finally have a functional, working, smooth-as-butter movement system for our newtonian motion amidst a host of new features such as physically-simulated projectiles (e.g. torpedos that track targets, chase to intercept, and detonate when they strike an object -- whether the one you intended or not) and "Powers" which allow you to bend the galaxy to your will with terrific force at the cost of vast stores of energy. It's everything Star Ruler was but more refined, better looking, expanded upon in all directions, deeper in strategy, and easier to control and read in every way. But will I still be able to build ships the size of the galaxy/create worlds? If you can afford to, you can do whatever you want in SR2. What about the ship design? What'd you guys do to that? An improvement on the former design. All the ease of SR1's ship building system with a much richer depth and in a much easier to read and manage format; we'll be posting dev diaries which go over specific mechanics/portions of the gameplay such as ship design on our website if you'd like to read all about what we changed, what we added, what we removed, and why we did each of those things. You're selling this for how much? We haven't decided yet When are you releasing? Our target launch is (currently) sometime in the latter half of 2014. We are currently collecting folks for a semi-private playtest which should launch soon. See this post for details. System Requirements To be announced/determined. Will SR2 give in to DRM where SR1 didn't? Our company belief still holds that DRM is: too intrusive, too easily defeated, too hardware/software-error prone, and too much of a time-and-effort investment to be worth it; especially when that time and effort could be spent on adding value to the game. SR1 did nothing to change our minds on the subject. So are you going to stick around like last time or have you moved on from the 'indie developer'/'just another one of the guys' phase? As with before, feel free to ask me about the game or suggest/criticize. If I'm allowed to answer your question, I will do so as quickly as I can; if I can't or don't know the answer, I'll ask my boss and co-worker to lend an ear/hand/claw. Please bear in mind it may take me a little longer to respond than it did last time around -- we've all got our hands elbow-deep in SR2's guts at the moment though we're very excited to talk about it and hear your reactions/thoughts on it. Can I get an actual feature list? Certainly. There's a full list of features available on our newly minted website: Starruler2.com as well as additional screenshots, dev diaries (the one up right now goes over the fundaments of the game's economy and expansion), and eventually ordering information, video footage, and so forth. Note that this isn't the full list; we've got a lot up our sleeves that we'll reveal as we finalize them or are able to show them off. You can also expect the return of features such as "everything destruction", galaxy-spanning weaponry, select-a-scale ship construction, and planetary engines. Star Ruler 2 Feature List posted:The game is being developed with a focus on interesting gameplay with meaningful strategic choices and full scalability of the universe and unit counts. Firgof fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Mar 10, 2015 |
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Aug 1, 2013 19:46
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Can we get even more races this time around because I want a galaxy with 50 differant races and be able to form galatic allainces to attack a galatic empire.
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Aug 1, 2013 19:49
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Unfortunately, SR2 only supports up to 28 players/AI opponents at this time (though we doubt most network connections can handle it; 8 is what we're expecting to be the breaking point for most residential connections but if you've got a T-1+ line somewhere...?). The reason for the number '28' is because bitmasking magic. Hopefully 28 isn't too poor an offering for your ambitions. That said, we do want to build more preset races/empire configurations this time around. We haven't quite gotten to the AI so I'm unclear as to what exactly we'll be offering there. As always, our ambitions are grandiose, so there very well might be a large number of pre-built races. We are still limited by our art budget though so I'm unclear as to how many we could offer that would actually look different from each other if we tried to make 30-50 races. Edit: Next dev diary looks like it's going to be on the Influence system. Firgof fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Aug 1, 2013 |
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Aug 1, 2013 19:55
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Looking forward to this very much! Are there plans to do an alpha/beta over Steam? I participated in a similar thing with Loadout where they handed out a bunch of keys and you got to be part of the beta and that was cool.
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Aug 1, 2013 23:48
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We are planning to do an open/closed beta later this year; not clear how we're going to pursue that atm. At the moment we're in internal alpha testing but we should be announcing the hows and whens of the beta sometime in the future. Maybe in the next few months? Not quite sure yet. Edit: We may also be doing a podcast with SpaceGameJunkie sometime in the future; details about that to follow as they come. Edit 2: Looks like we'll be recording on their podcast this Wednesday. Updating OP to show that. Firgof fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Aug 5, 2013 |
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Aug 1, 2013 23:57
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Pretty excited for this. Can't wait to see what you do with it. I really enjoyed Star Ruler so this was a nice surprise! Best of luck to the whole team at BMS.
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Aug 2, 2013 02:04
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I want big ships with bigger guns. Can I do this?
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Aug 2, 2013 03:05
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We could hardly call it a Star Ruler game if we didn't give you the ability to have impossibly large ships firing impossibly large projectiles. Aye, you can make huge ships with huge guns; hell you could build a ship entirely around its gun like the A-10 if you wanted.
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Aug 2, 2013 03:14
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Being in a universe where ~crazy poo poo~ happens sounds great. More Space Opera, less 'gritty science fiction' I say.
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Aug 2, 2013 03:15
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That new planetary upgrade/resource system seems awesome, and much easier to wrap one's head around than Prime's 'Spam this building, or that building, oh but don't spam that other one or you'll crash your economy.' You know y'all want to do a Goon-only beta 
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Aug 2, 2013 04:04
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Sounds good! Me and my friends had a great time with Star Ruler, so let's hope this new one is just as fun. One question, though; any preliminary ideas in the specs required? My computer isn't a recent model, but it's a great model for four years ago. I can run, say Borderlands 2 and Crysis on full settings, but the simulation-type games can do a number on it, although this might be because of non-multicore support.
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Aug 2, 2013 05:37
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I'm running a pretty average rig that's about 3/4 years old. My "Windows Experience Index" is 5.1 with everything but the hard drive at or around 7. We'll definitely be developing the game so that it can run smooth as butter on our rigs and hopefully great on older systems too. Still no idea what the specs will be by release though; we're still a year out and there's a lot left to be added in to the game for us to be able to provide any reliable spec. guess.
Firgof fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Aug 2, 2013 |
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Aug 2, 2013 05:50
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Firgof posted:I'm running a pretty average rig that's about 3/4 years old. My "Windows Experience Index" is 5.1 with everything but the hard drive at or around 7. Why, that's the same WEI as me!  Good to hear; I may not be able to make HUGE galaxies like I could in SR1, but... well, my previous computer started bogging down at about 40 planets, so... I'll take whatever I can get, and be happy with it. Also good to hear that you're still supporting easy modding with SR2. I always get disappointed when sequels to games that used to be easily moddable suddenly aren't anymore. (Civ V, you still do not have mod multiplayer support!)
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Aug 2, 2013 06:07
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Oh god Star Ruler 2, I am so ready, bring it on. 
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Aug 2, 2013 06:29
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quote:Also good to hear that you're still supporting easy modding with SR2.
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Aug 2, 2013 18:26
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A question regarding AI, in SR1, I found and still do find the AI to be extremely difficult, even when put on easier difficulties or given non-agressive attitudes (like Defensive). This predominantly exuded from its ability to multi-task well beyond what any human could, and as a result I found the game fun (especially for its sandboxy ship construction, and open attitude to ship design) but also frustrating, as the AI always seemed to outpace me because he had 80 worlds while I had 30, purely because he spent a couple of microseconds looking through all the planets his scouts found, while I have to spend a couple of minutes (which, even if I pause time, is boring and unfun) to do the same. To get to the actual question, are you addresing these issues with the AI in SR2?
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Aug 3, 2013 20:22
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I feel that it's necessary for me to point out that I'm still super-mega-excited about this. It's going to be a long few months. Need more information, feed me Seymour. Especially any more info you can see fit to release about the automation stuff
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Aug 4, 2013 09:00
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I hope this will feature better automation. I want to be able to set build ques and things up so that I can build a colonizer, have it automatically colonize a planet, have the planet automatically build up and deploy a space station, have the station automatically build a dozen resource stations and a larger station, and have the larger station pump out a hundred warships. Edit: For comparison, in SR1 to do this you had to click on the planet after it grew enough and tell it to build a space station, then you had to click on the space station and load the que, then come back after all the stations are build, find the bigger station and que up the hundred warships. This becomes unfeasible once you get more than 10 or 15 planets, especially remembering to come back to the planets/stations when they were ready to move on to the next clickable step. Sibling of TB fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Aug 4, 2013 |
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Aug 4, 2013 15:33
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Sibling of TB posted:I hope this will feature better automation. I want to be able to set build ques and things up so that I can build a colonizer, have it automatically colonize a planet, have the planet automatically build up and deploy a space station, have the station automatically build a dozen resource stations and a larger station, and have the larger station pump out a hundred warships. Yeah, seriously, the big thing that made the original mediocre was the absurd amount of pure busywork it foisted on you, not to mention that a lot of the things that were available were just borderline useless or pointless. It was an ambitious game, but the execution was extraordinarily flawed, I really hope you guys manage to do a lot of streamlining and work on putting in automation for the more tedious aspects of the original (because there were a lot).
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Aug 4, 2013 16:11
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Firgof posted:It's everything Star Ruler was but more refined, better looking, expanded upon in all directions, deeper in strategy, and easier to control and read in every way. That's pretty much all I could ask for in a sequel to Star Ruler.
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Aug 4, 2013 18:13
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I'm always up for a new scifi 4x game.
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Aug 4, 2013 18:31
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Can you make it an option to have CPU player battles? In Star Ruler 1 there was an AI Empire mod that would even design new ships and let you turn off and on various automations. Doesn't have to be that complex but I've always like watching Darwinism on a grand scale and taking bets with people.
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Aug 4, 2013 18:56
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I'm certainly looking forward to this game! I played the demo of the first SR and the full game at a friend's for some time, and enjoyed it but had some reservations. It certainly rubbed the "many options" vibe that I often miss in other 4X's but it felt soulless. I'll compare it to something like Galactic Civilizations 2. SR1 felt limitless. Literal battle planets, making extremely high speed scouts, Ringworlds, Solar System Artillery, and so on. This was extremely awesome. This in contrast to Gal Civ 2, where you didn't have half the options and it was much more a numbers game instead of getting increasingly interesting options. However, and this was the great fault in SR1 for me, making battle planets was ultimately "empty". The universe in which you played was soulless. Technology gave extra options (fuel or no fuel, smaller, bigger, ...?) but was dry. Other alien races were similar. The universe as a whole was ultimately uninteresting. While in GC2, you had humour in most aspects, the other aliens felt like they had a certain personality. Random events and storyline added quite some spice and everything felt more alive. This had as a result that while the sci-fi nerd in me was extremely fascinated by the options in SR1. After a single complete game with my friend where we discovered and did everything (and consumed countless planets in the process), I didn't really felt like going for another game. While GC2, I sometimes still come back to, due to it's soul. I can't exactly say why this is so and this is not meant to disrespect SR1, which has many unique accomplishments and so many options. It just lacks "soul". So, finally, I'll get to the point. While SR2 will have undoubtedly the same wealth of options and cool sci fi concepts, are there plans to spice up the universe? Storylines, more unique aliens, etc... Does my post make any sense for you (or others)? I realize it's probably badly worded, just thought of giving my 2 cents.
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Aug 4, 2013 23:08
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Kalenden posted:I'm certainly looking forward to this game! No, it makes sense to me. I was playing SR1 earlier (doing shockingly well economy-wise, for once) and it still has the same problems I remember. Some sort of flavor text, distinct looks for things, that sort of stuff is missing from SR1. It's got a lot of cool stuff you can do, but it's missing the veneer of story stuff. I had a similar issue with Sins of a Solar Empire - it was fun to explore each race's ships and abilities, but the lack of any serious attempt at world building made it feel empty. I hope SR2 has some world building is what I'm getting at.
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Aug 5, 2013 03:54
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Shugojin posted:No, it makes sense to me. I was playing SR1 earlier (doing shockingly well economy-wise, for once) and it still has the same problems I remember. You've easily made a summary of my post: World Building. That indeed was probably SR1's biggest flaw. Understandably, considering it was a (I think) 2 man effort which is kinda mind boggling when you think about it. Still, I'm really curious what you guys will be able to do for the sequel, considering the quality of the first!
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Aug 5, 2013 13:56
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Holy crap, steam says I've Much of that time was just messing around with ship design and finding weird effects, like putting the smallest possible weapon on a giant Rack Mount to get asymptotically ridiculous damage/time. Also it was amusing to make carriers with Quantum Compressor hangars so you could dock several copies of the same ship inside itself. Then set the controls to auto-dock-in-carriers so a 500+ ship fleet condensed itself into a singularity of absurdity with zero acceleration. Please make Mind Sappers insanely overpowered again. Must destroy all the brains in the universe. Sword of the Stars 2 added an AI race but the interface is just impossibly unwieldy...
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Aug 5, 2013 15:15
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Is this still going to have the newtonian physics because after a while that really killed it for me the first time round. Nothing worse than ships just shooting past their targets and not being able to turn around to get back before the enemy has glassed your worlds.
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Aug 5, 2013 15:20
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Whew. Sorry for the delay, folks.quote:Is this still going to have the newtonian physics because after a while that really killed it for me the first time round. quote:I hope SR2 has some world building is what I'm getting at. quote:Can you make it an option to have CPU player battles? quote:I really hope you guys manage to do a lot of streamlining and work on putting in automation for the more tedious aspects of the original (because there were a lot). quote:Especially any more info you can see fit to release about the automation stuff quote:To get to the actual question, are you addresing these issues with the AI in SR2? GGLucas, bringer of your woes (coder of the Erudite AIs) posted:As the writer of Star Ruler 1's AI, I can tell you that it actually played the game with an extremely low APM compared to average human players. Probably no more than 5 or 10. All it really checks from systems is the amount of planets that are in it, and it expands exclusively to systems in its direct vicinity. Firgof fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Aug 5, 2013 |
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Aug 5, 2013 17:06
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I noticed the ship designs are now hex based. Does this mean you ditched the "stick anything you want anywhere" model, and gone for designs based on a limited number of discrete "slots" instead? Edit: Ah, I see this will be part of an upcoming dev dairy. If you don't want to talk about it until then, no sweat. tooterfish fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Aug 5, 2013 |
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Aug 5, 2013 17:13
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quote:New ship design stuff 
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Aug 5, 2013 17:22
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Firgof posted:I'm not sure I understand. You mean an option to spectate an all-AI game? Yes precisely this. It may sound strange but its something that I really enjoy.
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Aug 5, 2013 17:35
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quote:Yes precisely this. It may sound strange but its something that I really enjoy.
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Aug 5, 2013 17:50
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I'm tremendously excited about what's been shown so far about SR2, since it pretty much solves all the issues I had with the first game. I don't know quite why, but the complete freedom I had in the ship builder made it feel less satisfying to me, and I had no idea if my designs were performing well or not. One thing I was wondering is if ship fleets will be a major part of the game? I'll be buying the game either way, but I'll be very happy if I get a nice organized system with C3 flagships, support vessels and picket ships.
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Aug 5, 2013 19:03
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Bug Squash posted:I'm tremendously excited about what's been shown so far about SR2, since it pretty much solves all the issues I had with the first game. I don't know quite why, but the complete freedom I had in the ship builder made it feel less satisfying to me, and I had no idea if my designs were performing well or not. You just need to find someone to play against. My design before: No defense and bad guns. It worked great against the AI though! After three games against another player: That stack in the center is a mass-mounted phased railgun, then two separate AI control centers each with enough command to run the entire ship and their own emergency power, then a 4x nanite repair unit with a 4x bulkhead and its own emergency power, then a third AI control center with just enough command to run the nanite unit and its own emergency power. Externally mounted guns and engines take hits first to absorb armor-piercing weapons, concentric layers of reactive and power armor absorb everything else, and the ship will repair itself down to the last hit point. I'm sad that SR2 is going to be more restrictive, but after how weirdly quiet the SR1 thread was I think it's for the best. RTS games aren't much fun without a community and it's hard to have that when you can tweak a few settings and basically be playing a different game. Hole Wolf fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 00:15
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Just my two cents here but I thought Star Ruler 1 was too complicated. I know that there's a lot of people out there who liked the game, though. But seriously, even after all these years I keep firing MoO1 and I just stand back and have to say "this is the best space 4x ever" and you have to admire the simplicity of the game's design. Planets? Some sliders control everything. Ship design? Add stuff from a list. Fleets? Just tell them where to go that's all. And it has enormous strategic depth. Basically I recommend simplifying, streamlining. Or maybe I just want a new MoO and the closest I've gotten to that in the last 20 years or so has been Endless Space.
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Aug 6, 2013 01:11
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Entorwellian posted:Yes precisely this. It may sound strange but its something that I really enjoy. I'm with you here. Agreed it sounds a bit strange but there's a certain level of fun just being a spectator.
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Aug 6, 2013 14:52
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quote:Basically I recommend simplifying, streamlining. quote:I'm sad that SR2 is going to be more restrictive, but after how weirdly quiet the SR1 thread was I think it's for the best. RTS games aren't much fun without a community and it's hard to have that when you can tweak a few settings and basically be playing a different game.
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Aug 6, 2013 14:59
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quote:The key to the AI's performance is in the way it expands rather than how many actions it does. It knows how fast it can expand without crashing its economy, and spends most of the game optimizing the size of its empire. This gives it an economic advantage over human players who expand at a slower pace. This was one of the major flaws in SR1s gameplay design: there is no better strategy than a zerg expansion rush and the AI becomes rather a pushover against players who execute that strategy themselves. Also that the AI used atrocious ship designs.
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Aug 6, 2013 15:12
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Looking forward to picking this up. I played SR1 early on in its life quite a bit and enjoyed it. You guys put so much effort into it, so you've got me in a second go around. I agree with the lifeless part of the game. I'd like to see legions of foot soldiers to be deployed to enemy planets, watching the power struggle for each planet feel like it actually means something. Not just a blip you inhabited in a few moments.
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Aug 6, 2013 15:19
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Kylra posted:Also that the AI used atrocious ship designs.
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Aug 6, 2013 15:28
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