Star Ruler: Difference between revisions

''Star Ruler'' is a 3D real time 4X title from indie developers [http://starruler.blind-mind.com/ Blind Mind Studios]. The game focuses on annihilating every other empire in the galaxy.

 

 

Although it is completely lacking in narrative, its main appeal is probably... see the page image.

* [[Design It Yourself Equipment]]: The ship design menu allows you to set the size of your ship (anywhere from smaller than a can of Coca-Cola, to larger than the galaxy)), place subsystems (armor, engines, support equipment, guns, storage bays, etc), and set how the AI handles targeting and automation (automatically distribute goods, automatically refuel, etc)

* [[Earthshattering Kaboom]]

* [[Fragile Speedster]]: Ships with "Fighter" or "Bomber" hulls, and scout ships (typically smaller than a soda can).

* [[Game Mod]]: The game is easily modded to include more subsystems.

* [[Ghost Ship]]: Crew death, loss of power, or running out of fuel will cause a ship to go derelict, and drift until it's destroyed by the game several minutes later. Derelict ships can be salvaged and reclaimed if it's only the crew that died - doing so on an enemy ship will also allow you to steal the design and build it yourself.

* [[Glass Cannon]]: Ships with little/no armor, but a ''very'' big gun. Works well when the gun is paired to a Targeting Computer, allowing it to fire much longer distances.

* [[Inertial Dampening]]: Appears to be present, as to stop human crews from becoming human paste on the walls when their ship suddenly accelerates at 100 g.

* [[ISO Standard Human Spaceship]]: All of the ships models follow this design philosophy.

* [[Mighty Glacier]]: Ships with lots of armor and/or weapons, but small engines. The ship has no top speed, but it'll handle like the state of Wisconsin, and have trouble getting to its destination in a reasonable amount of time. However, it'll be able able to absorb tons of damage, and instagib much of what dares to attack it.

* [[Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds]]: Some time in, you will be building and facing ships more durable than planets and with the firepower needed to destroy each other. This can easily mean that you target a planet to cleanse it of enemy life and end up accidentally fragging it because you underestimated just how just firepower you have in play.

* [[Mobile Factory]]: Placing a Mining Laser, storage, the 3 part refineries (Metal, Electronics, Advanced Parts), and a Construction Bay on a ship will allow it to start building ships once it has an asteroid to mine. It's possible to build what are essentially Von Neumann self-replicating ships using this - order them to build 10 of themselves, then order them to mine a large asteroid. Keep repeating this, and about an hour later there will be several hundred ships mining the asteroid.

* [[Necessary Drawback]]: A key part of the game design; new subsystems unlocked through research are not just incremental improvements on the existing ones but have their own flaws to balance the advantages they bring.

* [[Ringworld Planet]]: The player can eventually research how to build ringworlds. They take several gigatons of material, and will take several real-time ''hours'' to build without sufficient infrastructure, especially if you're fool enough to try and build them as soon as available.

* [[Rock Beats Laser]]: Hyper-averted. A technologically advanced empire will absolutely ''crush'' a lower level empire. To emphasize this - A fighter with level 40 armor, engines, and weapons will curb stomp a level 1, mega-battleship

* [[Space Fighter]]: Present. Very cheap and fast, but thoroughly useless at killing most enemy ships beyond size ~50 without a large tech disparity, though they make [[We Have Reserves|very good cannon fodder to distract enemy guns]].

* [[Space Friction]]: Averted, hard. The game utilizes newtonian physics, so ships will need to use fuel to both speed up ''and'' slow down. If a ship runs of out of fuel mid-flight, it'll just keep on drifting towards its destination, then keep on drifting past it until the effects of space dust destroys it.

* [[Space Pirates]]: Pirates will occasionally attack poorly defended systems. As such, it's best to have a small garrison force on each system, or a big carrier with a jump drive for fast response.

* [[Space Station]]: Player designs usually fall into either "Defense Platform" or "Dry Dock". Space stations armed with weapons have the advantage of being ridiculously hard to kill, and Dry Docks don't have the labor requirements to build ships (or other stations) like planet based shipyards do. It's also possible to build refinery or trade docks. Refineries will take Ore from the planet, and refine it to Metal, Electronics, or Advanced parts, allowing the planet to focus entirely on just mining out the ore. Trade Docks will simply take material from the planet and put it into the "Galactic Bank", which any planet with a Space Dock can get materials from.

* [[Stealth in Space]]: There is stealth tech, but all it does is make ships harder to hit.

* [[Subsystem Damage]]: Damaging enemy ships will cause their subsystems to fail (destroying their generator, ruining their ammo cache, killing the entire crew, etc) once you get past their armor - which is also a subsystem.

** [[Crippling Overspecialization]]: Don't do jack against physical things like armour or hull.

* [[The Battlestar]]: The mod adds two hulls meant for this; the Carrier Hull, like the name suggests, leans more to normal carriers in being relatively thin-skinned and trades some space away for having strikecraft bays integrated right into the hull, while the Mothership Hull is closer to a Battlestar, trading out some space and not having the option of extra ship bays in order to accommodate more weapons and stuff.

* [[Macross Missile Massacre]]: Missile numbers scaling with level has been removed, but there are now Barrage and Cluster launchers.

* [[Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions]]: One Trait allows you to invert this. It prevents you from using certain esoteric tech, most to do with Spatial Dynamics, with the reason that your people's religious beliefs forbid it.

* [[Point Defenseless]]: An explicit PD efficiency mechanic has been added. It caps out at 80%, meaning that statistically you will never have perfect PD.