{"id":11243,"date":"2014-07-22T10:59:43","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T14:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/?p=11243"},"modified":"2014-07-22T11:22:20","modified_gmt":"2014-07-22T15:22:20","slug":"star-ruler-2-hits-steam-early-access-beta-first-impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/star-ruler-2-hits-steam-early-access-beta-first-impressions\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Ruler 2 Hits Steam Early Access – Beta First Impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Star<\/a><\/p>\n

Star Ruler 2<\/a> by Blind Mind Studios has gone live on Steam Early Access<\/a> last Friday July 18, 2014, as a recent addition to the list of smaller studios who have taken this route to gain early feedback as their game enters the later stages of development. Back in our interview<\/a> the developers said they wanted to wait till the game was very playable and fun for the customer before they put it up on Steam; there is no release date\u00a0confirmed, however,\u00a0they plan to\u00a0have a final release version by December but leave the door open for\u00a0delays:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe intend to release no later than December. Any delays would be to add additional content we didn’t anticipate being able to develop within our release schedule.\u201d ~Blind Mind Studios<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Basically, the game is a space 4X game set in pauseable real-time where the player can control the time-lapse considerably by both accelerating and decelerating the speed. Everything happens on the same layer, as fleets engage combat on the star map as the player manages their empire.<\/p>\n

The aspects of the game which stand out the most, in my opinion, are the ship customization system – which lets the player scale-up the size of their warship to whatever size his industry can manage, a diplomacy system that involves swaying votes in a senate like system for such actions as annexing worlds, and an empire-wide economy where the player sets up resource networks that influence the development of their planets.<\/p>\n

Stability and Ship\u00a0<\/strong>Customization<\/strong><\/p>\n

The game seems to be stable enough as an Early Access title. Game performance is smooth and unless you go overboard on the size of the galaxy, games load quickly, and I only experienced a few crashes. The largest source of stability issues I experienced stems from running longer games, which seems to make the game more prone to stalling and crash when reloading an older save state. Usually a restart of the game clears these. However, even this was relatively rare in my playtime.<\/p>\n

I will cover diplomacy and the economic model more in my “First Impressions” section below. However, I will cover ship customization here as it was one of the defining and memorable features of the first title.<\/p>\n

Ship customization has changed a bit from the original Star Ruler. The player can still size their vessel as they wish. Subsystems are now added on a hex grid, but depending on the subsystem the player decides between number and size. There is a difference in having a single 6-hex large railgun or having six 1-hex railguns on your vessel. Increasing the size of a ship doesn’t change the number of hexes it has (that is determined by the model template), but it will increase what 1-hex is worth and does. In addition, placement matters as there is directional damage.<\/p>\n

It should be noted the game is still in Early Access and there seems to be a good number of missing features. I have not seen the special weapon systems that were discussed in a previous live stream<\/a>, nor does the tech tree seem to be complete.<\/p>\n

\"Star<\/a><\/p>\n

List of Features<\/strong><\/p>\n

Game Set-up:<\/p>\n