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[Star Ruler] Indie 4x game of greatness? Signs point to yes.
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My Backloggery PSN: Bigisy24
In fact, its laughably easy to churn out fully developed worlds this way and once you have 2-3 systems your economy will have reached critical mass and you no longer need haulers. I can do this in 30 minutes and have 10 fully developed planets.
I still can't figure out how to make decent combat ships though, anything I try to build gets chewed up by remnants and pirates.
What are the haulers for in this scenario? I'm still trying to wrap my head around the demo, debating whether or not to buy it. At this point I either leave the governors running all my planets and feel like I have nothing to do, or I manage them myself, have no idea what to build, and just end up constructing random junk.
A planet without a cargo storage facility can only hold a few hundred of each resource, or whatever is required for its current project. If you have one, it can hold 20k+ of each and you can stockpile them there easily from your homeworld and new planets will only be limited by labor, which is nothing for buildings.
So all you do is make the first building cargo storage and start lifting thousands of resources over. A good way to do it is to make your first 5 largest planets economic worlds and upgrade your spaceports. Once this is done new worlds will develop quickly without the need of haulers and you can start churning out research worlds and build super massive ships.
Makes sense. Do haulers do a good job of spreading resources around if they're doing automated trading or does it need to be managed manually? Do they automatically trade between systems or just planets within a system?
Edit: I'm not sure what the trade order does on haulers, but mine just seem to sit idle by default. If I have a hauler selected and right click a planet and tell the hauler to supply the planet once, it will gather resources that the planet is currently using from some other planet and then bring them back, but this only happens once. I figure I'm missing something basic to have them continually do this.
P.S. Steevl this is a pretty hardcore 4x to start out on, you might try Alpha Centauri or Moo/Moo2 off of GOG if this strikes you as insanely complicated.
I believe the Updater was added in a later patch. You should see a button in the top right of the main menu that says Check for Updates or Update Game or something.
I can get 10 fully developed planets up in around 18 minutes without using haulers or leveling metallurgy.
The secret is to micro your first few planets, INTENSIVELY micro them. Also, on your homeworld at the beginning you have too much production facilities for your space port to export reliably. I usually kill an Adv. Parts, make a ship yard, then a colony ship, then nuke a metal/electronics plant and make 2 more space ports (This is if you're not using the trait to get +10 homeworld slots).
Your first couple of worlds need to be tailored for metal heavy production followed by elec/adv parts. After that, micro to fill any gaps based on world traits.
At this point I've got a decent grasp of most of the mechanics and am able to make ships that don't come out as derilects anymore. I can usually get myself a good economy going in the early game but almost every AI game ends around the time I'm colonizing my 3rd or 4th system. I'll notice that one of the computers who's ludicrous demands I couldn't fulfill earlier has expanded to just about every available system and is sending fleets of scale 10-15 ships with millions of hitpoints my way.
It seems like I may need to strike a better balance between microing my early planets and letting the AI handle my empire automatically once I have enough resources to expand en masse. And maybe teching up faster too?
I am in a similar boat (had the game since launch, but there's always been a bug or 2 that prevented me from getting far, they seem to be fixed more or less now).
In my third try in the past few days I finally kept my economy from crashing. First time: Not enough metal factories, ran out of metal, couldn't do anything. Second try: Plenty of metal, not enough food, populations all starved off.
So, now, I got past that. Seems I got it balanced, though running into some Goods shortages and a constant Luxury shortage/just breaking even situation. Expanding out nicely, getting all the open systems around (by open I mean Lacking Remnant Death Ships), up to about 8-9 systems in my control. Research is going well, just started replacing my main fleet (older ships going into system defense fleets) with Computer controlled Drone ships. Then, the other Empires, which have been constantly bugging me for supplies that I don't have, start getting pushy. First one demands 100k+ Lux, I have 32 Lux in the galactic bank, so they declare war. That's okay, I haven't even seen them yet outside of scouts. Of the 5 AI Empires, one by one, they demand huge amounts of Luxury Goods, I can't pay, they declare war. Only one doesn't, which is also the only empire I know of in my corner of the galaxy. They don't even demand anything, just go straight to war. "That's okay," I figure, as my main attack fleet now consists of 36 upgraded Capital Ships, 20 Heavy Dreadnoughts (shields, heavy armor, lasers), 3 Carriers and 2 Drone Carriers loaded with Torpedo Bombers. On my western edge (if South is galactic center) I'm expanding into a asteroid heavy 2 planet system, already have the miners out and 1 planet colonized, the second with a ship on the way. Well, it turns out, as my scouts find, that guy who just declared war on me without demands, is just a couple systems away in that direction and he's wanting to expand into that same system, getting a colony to the other planet before I can. "Well, time for my first non-scout action!"
My fleet, already in that side of my empire, moves in to the contested system. And meets the enemy fleet. My Capital Ships are class 12. His small destroyers/ships-of-the-line? 46. He also has a mass of "Light" fighters and interceptors flying ahead of them. The time this battle takes? My Main Fleet against his? Just under 2 minutes. It only took that long because part of my fleet overshot the system and had to be mopped up. His "Light" Fighters take out my Capital ships in 2 shots each, his interceptors blow my fighters/bombers out of space before they can fire. My Heavy Dreadnoughts, with their massive armor and state-of-the-art shields? He blows up one in the middle of the pack, and did I mention they run those shields with Fusion Generators? Chain reaction. Entire fleet, gone.
It seems the military is my next step on the learning curve.
Also, make sure you're designing your ships properly. Critical systems should be placed near the center with your non-critical components surrounding them.
Another note, armor position is almost irrelevant. Until your shields/armor have taken enough damage to allow bleed-thru the only thing positioning does for armor is determine which armor plate is hit first. If you know you're facing a heavy missile user for instance you can try putting reactive armor on the front of your ships so that when the missiles hit they favor the reactive armor (Assuming a straightup fight).
If the AI's were already pushing 40+ size ships how far into the game were you? You need to work on your economy/tech more before testing military, since your tech level is a huge difference in a fight.
Not sure how long into the game it was. The steamroller of a fleet started towards my home systems so I just got out of there and don't have a save around there.
It's less an issue with the design of my ships and more an issue of timing. Namely the timing of when you start upping the scale of ships and stop producing what was the larger early game ships in bulk and start producing the massive 40+ers. Up until my contact with that fleet my only sign of scale was the Remnants, which I was matching. The other issue is I think I try to research in too many different directions (going for what's fastest instead of working higher up a small number of subjects). I got the specialty armors too late to outfit most of my fleet because of this and was counting too heavily on shield systems.
My new game is going a bit differently. I set down the difficulty on the AIs to mostly Trivial with 1 at Easiest, just for training wheels while I get balanced. It's still very early, but just as I got my second system up and running (which I do quickly, right after filling my home system) Pirates hit my home system. A lot of them. I hadn't even gotten my first military ships out. Cue desperate scrambling to get Capital ships and bombers out to meet them and finally push them away, but not before they empty my coffers and jack my Haulers. They've hit twice more in different systems as my sudden hit in resources have meant I can't get a fleet out to defend each new colony fast enough. Production has improved this time in the Lux department, so hopefully I can at least bribe off the other empires if they try and take advantage.
I pretty much just ignore pirates and slap a cannon on the worlds, even early game. The starter designs work fine at the tech 1 levels but they are rapidly outclassed (As it should be).
Using the above strategy can have some amusing results, I've had systems sieged for 40-50m by pirates that simply wander up to the planets and get instagibbed. I'm sure if there was some sort of kill counter that was displayed in game it'd be hilarious to see
The way I look at it is I can either stock each world with a fleet, or just put a cannon on it. Early game it's pretty expensive to maintain a decent sized fleet not to mention putting one in every system as you start out.
Depending on what opening strategy I'm going to use, I usually just tech projectile weapons to 4 at the game start as I do my normal expanding, etc. since once you get a few planets early tech will catch up very rapidly once you get a few labs down. It'll also make your starter ships hit very, very hard early on (Make sure you update all blueprints before building, since by default they only update once every 10 tech levels gained).
How do I attack enemy planets (to re-colonize them as my own)?
It seems like I should just be able to attack them (since that's what the AI seems to do), but when I select my fleet and tell them to attack there will only be maybe 1 ship that actually does it and the rest of them sit in formation. Maybe I don't have the right sort of weapons for attacking? Most of my ships are decked out with lasers (antiquated ones built with default design revisions trend more towards rail guns), but I also have some missile launchers and torpedo launchers.
It seems like they're maybe doing 1-3 million in population damage per shot, but when the AI attacked one of my planets (with my capital ships and fighters harassing them) they destroyed all my buildings. There doesn't seem to be obvious feedback of my attack succeeding or ...even proceeding, really.
My scale 80 ship has a range on its lasers of 0.1AU (and the planet is supposedly 0.088AU away), so even range shouldn't be an issue.
Do tankers actually refuel things and are they necessary?
The fuel depot itself isn't unlocked from the early game, so ships must be getting fuel from somewhere (other than Bussard collectors). I found a forum post from near the game's release where it seemed like the tankers didn't supply others, but their AI settings imply that they can and do.
Is there a way to set rally points to the absolute point in a system instead of relative?
My ships keep congregating at the edge of the system closest to the enemy, but they seem to (rightly) be in orbit around the star just like my planets. Maybe there's an option to set every planet's rally point to the same spot in a system?
Is there a way to name stars?
Naming seems to be limited to objects you 'own,' but even if you own all the planets in a system there's no option to rename the actual star.
Is there a way to queue up ships from all over the empire to rally in one point?
I know there's the system tab, and I think there's even a way to select every planet you own - so hypothetically you should be able to use "build on best" to build stuff all over, but there doesn't seem to be any way to actually make a global (er... galaxial?) rally point.
It seems like I must be missing something, because I don't know how you could play a game with 150 systems, because the micromanaging of where to build stuff would be overwhelming, so there must be something I am missing.
We have since then added some AI orders which make that kind of behavior more enforced. Space Ports provide a small amount of Fuel. Whether they are necessary or not is really up to how you design your ships.
There is not. There are a couple of technical and design questions that would need to be answered before that could even become implemented. Even so, it's a minor cosmetic feature so it is at the bottom of our list.
I use Groups to manage my production assets; making sure that all planets within a Group all produce ships to the same Rally Point. The System Window is in fact how you manage a large Empire, there's just some pre-investment and post-group sweep-up stuff that needs to get done for it to be truly effective.
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I appreciate the response (and can understand the spreadsheet hell that nameable stars could create).
I hadn't changed any of the AI settings (and just learned I can automatically have ships join a fleet); they're based on the initial designs so probably keep the same Target Planets settings (so my Carrier design doesn't have it). If one unit in a fleet is not set to attack planets will the rest of them also not attack planets?
Some of the ships attacking have ammo-filled weapons, but their ammo bar says they have plenty of it. I had a ship I called a beamer (coincidentally enough because I made it after I unlocked the beam-based weapons technologies) - it has 3 laser-based weapons and sits in formation with the rest of my ships.
So I guess does the fleet commander's AI override everything else's AI?
Managed to design a torpedo ship that blasted to hell everything in front of them (it costed just as much.) Their ammo capacity, however... :?
Which is why I designed a "lamprey" ship that only supplied them with ammo (damn thing blew up pretty easily, though.)
Those things managed to hold on pretty good... except I was seriously out-econ'd, so it wasn't as heroic...
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We're at 66% off for the entirety of the Summer Sale ($6.80)! Grab 'em while they're hot! We're not liable to have any other sales for quite some time, folks, so get it while the getting's good!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/70900/
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I hope this nets you many many sales.
Welp, buying time.
GFWL: ObsoletePaper
PA Steam Coupon List
It looks like SotS in strategic mode, but more like Homeworld in battlemode, any truth/comparison there?
Earlier this week I got in my friends car and he had a copy of SotS on the back seat (who buys discs???) and I was like "SotS" and he was like "Yeah. Pretty mediocre."
More micromanagement, no separation between tactical and strategic mode, fully real-time, more elaborate ship design.
I like them both.
If not, is there at least a good deal of variety?
I'm getting the demo so I'll find out soon enough I guess.
You don't design them physically, but you can choose every component they have and even size of the ship and each individual component. There is a great deal of parts and moving around you can do (it's a lot of fun by itself to try to find good, working designs.)
Me blogging about my (amateur) indie game programming
You can convert all usable material in a star system into a single, enormous ship armed with a mega death laser that blows up planets
And one bit here, in this game working design doesn't just mean "Can beat the enemy". Working design means that AND "will it continue to work as a spaceship and not become a derelict due to an oversight on power management that caused an undersized life support to fail and the crew to suffocate".
Which automaticly makes it magnificant.
I will buy it.
Instead, I gifted it to my brother.
Mwahah.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
I also found out that orbital 50 scale stations armed with artillery can in fact oneshot 49 scale ships with 1.49m HP so I know how I'm gonna work defence in the future.
I'm using the galactic armory mod as a btw.
Every time I assign one they build to the max immediately and there's absolutely no regard for the economy of the system/empire which usually leads to me running out of metal really quickly.
There's a lot the tutorial doesn't tell you.
What the best way to build planets? According to their strengths?
How many people can a farm support?
Should I just go around building whatever is in the red in my economy summary with my non-military planets?