Star Ruler 2, A Massive Scale Strategy Game, Here's My Thoughts

Star Ruler 2 is a space strategy game I’ve been meaning to cover for some time, and I’ve given it a good go to tell you what I think. It’s interesting, but not quite my cup.

It was released for Linux back in July of last year in Early Access, and it’s about time we gave it some thoughts. My interest in these types of strategy games has never faltered, and with the release of StarDrive 2 it has spurred me to go over games like it that I missed out on covering. It also helps that StarDrive 2 is currently broken, so I have extra time to give Star Ruler 2 for this article.

Star Ruler 2 released out of Early Access last month, so it’s a perfect time to take a look now that it’s considered stable for everyone to play.

About the game
Star Ruler 2 is a massive scale 4X/RTS set in space. Explore dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of systems in a galaxy of your choosing, expand across its planets, exploit the resources you find, and ultimately exterminate any who stand in your way. The fate of your empire depends on your ability to master the economy, field a military, influence galactic politics, and learn what you can about the universe.

My thoughts
I was going into this expecting a turn-based 4X game like the recently released StarDrive 2, but what I found was quite different, and surprisingly interesting to play.

I find Star Ruler 2 to be a very different experience over traditional 4X space games, and I’m not entirely sure it’s for the better. It’s true that this isn’t just “yet another 4X space game”, but it’s also not the best either.

The tutorial is an absolute must, as the game has plenty of unique features that need your attention. Luckily most things seem to be laid out rather nicely, and it’s one of the few tutorials that doesn’t overwhelm – something that would have been easy to do in a game such as this. It wasn’t quite as comprehensive as I would have hoped though.

I really do quite like the graphical style of the game; planets actually move around their sun and you can see little asteroids floating about. It even has an insane zoom level to allow you to zoom right on top of your ships, and your ships have a surprising level of detail considering a lot of your time is spent zoomed out.

Everything is played out in real time, rather than ending any turns. From money coming in every 3 minutes, to research points generating over time. You even directly control your flagships in a traditional RTS type of way. Each flagship has a ton of support ships attached to them too, but you don’t control them directly.

I’m not sure if I like the fact that money doesn’t build up, but gets reset every 3 minutes based on your income and expenses. It’s an odd way to do it, and makes building fleets take quite a while sometimes. It doesn’t really allow you to plan very far ahead, and actually makes the game a bit slower to manage. I would have much preferred a standard pot that just builds up, as currently any money not used after the 3 minute cycle gets deposited into another resource if you have enough left over, and I’m not a fan of that. It's a nice way to boost up an area you're not producing well in, but I would still rather have money build up to utilise fully on building a massive fleet.

Space battles can become insane with lots of lasers and rockets flinging around, especially as we are talking multiple hundreds of ships once you get going into the game some more. It looks like absolute chaos and I do love that part of it.

Sending out ships to the far reaches of space also looks awesome, as you can tell them to plot a faster than light jump, which the animation for is awesome to see every time. You see lots of particles fuzz around then and eventually a POP/BANG sound with a flash of light and off they speed, awesome stuff.
Different races actually have different methods of faster travel, so expect to see more like this in the game.


The planet levelling system is one of the unique aspects of Star Ruler 2, and it can be more than a little confusing. I kept getting confused on what planet needed what resource to level up. That was until I realised you could colonize a planet, and tell it to auto-level up to the required level. You can only do that if you have planets colonized that have the needed resources free.
It does get confusing, and I have to say after pumping some time into it now I’m really not a fan of the resource system to level up planets. More than half your time is spent just scanning over planets searching for resources, and that feels stale quite quickly. I would go as far as to say the resource system is tedious to use, and makes the game a little frustrating.

Here’s why I don’t like the resource system
Let’s say your starting planet needs a food resource, and a “Tier I” resource to level up. You will need to colonize a planet with food, and export it. That’s fine, and simple. You then need to find a planet with a Tier I resource like Titanium, but to be able to export that Titanium you need to colonize that planet, and then level it up with a planet that has food, and then another planet that has water and export them to it. To get a Tier II resource you will need to go through that, twice. It’s a cycle that just gets bigger and more annoying to keep track of. You can only export a resource to one planet at a time too, which amplifies the annoying factor of constant planet searching.

I found the research section to be equally as confusing, as there seems to be no clear layout to it, with tiles just spread all over the place. I mean it looks nice, but I would have prefered one with a better category system to it, so that I can properly plan my research. I ended up just researching bits at random that I liked the sound of.

I haven’t quite got the hang of the game yet, but I learn a little more with each play through. I don’t quite get how in the time it takes me to build one fleet at 15K strength the AI has multiple 80K strength fleets, so I guess I have some digging to do to see how I can get stronger fleets a lot faster. Although the stupid resource system is making me not want to invest that time in it, sadly.

Performance
I did have a crash to desktop bug after a solid hour play time (that’s an hour after doing the tutorial). Luckily the game seemed to autosave about 1-2 minutes before my crash! I did notify the developer of this, so hopefully they will find a fix. I haven’t been able to reproduce that crash either.

Otherwise, performance on Ultra graphical settings has been perfect.

Wrap it up!
Truth be told, I do still prefer the more traditional 4X strategy games that don’t have the planetary levelling and resources system that Star Ruler 2 has, but it’s still interesting to try and play.

Final Verdict: If you love strategy games, and you’re a fan of 4X games then it’s definitely worth taking a look at. Especially if you’re after something a bit different that breaks the mould. It’s not my personal cup, but I am sure plenty of you will enjoy it.

Check out Star Ruler 2 on GOG and Steam. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.