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[Star Ruler] Indie 4x game of greatness? Signs point to yes.

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Posts

  • LykouraghLykouragh Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Endomatic wrote: »
    Is there a certain way to utilize the governors at all?

    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?

    If you go on the wiki, there's some way to manually edit and create new governors. So far, I haven't been using them at all, but I'm pretty sure that's not feasible long term.

    It seems like you need about 1 farm for every 2-3 cities.

    Lykouragh on
  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Well, this game is officially crack. I'm still on my first game and haven't actually had any huge scale warfare, but I did manage to clear out a remnant sector and some pirates. The ship design is great, I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out a way to fit this damn coolant on my lasers while still balancing control and power on the ship, and once I managed it I felt like the coolest star ruler out there. Now I have a bunch of awesome drone piloted high tech fighters flying around to defend my awesome drone piloted capital ships.

    Fiatil on
  • EndomaticEndomatic Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    The tutorial isn't very in depth about the more complicated parts of the game.

    I watched those videos by the Manapool.co.uk guys, but most of the stuff they taught is the stuff you can figure out for yourself.

    The harder part is dealing with the fact that the enemy scouts you and declares war within 5 minutes of the game starting even on the lowest difficulty. Does the AI queue X (system count) scouts at the beginning of the game and just scout every system? They keep spamming these completely unreasonable requests for resources in return for nothing, right at the beginning of the game. That's annoying. This includes the "Poor" AI. They all do it.

    Also for some reason when I build haulers, they frequently do nothing. Does this mean there are no supply gaps? New colonies are not getting metal transfers (what they actually need) unless I supply them manually with "supply this once". I've tried refreshing their automation and I don't really want haulers taking a percentage of resources each time forever. What's going on here?

    Endomatic on
  • DemiurgeDemiurge Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Endomatic wrote: »
    The tutorial isn't very in depth about the more complicated parts of the game.

    I watched those videos by the Manapool.co.uk guys, but most of the stuff they taught is the stuff you can figure out for yourself.

    The harder part is dealing with the fact that the enemy scouts you and declares war within 5 minutes of the game starting even on the lowest difficulty. Does the AI queue X (system count) scouts at the beginning of the game and just scout every system? They keep spamming these completely unreasonable requests for resources in return for nothing, right at the beginning of the game. That's annoying. This includes the "Poor" AI. They all do it.

    Also for some reason when I build haulers, they frequently do nothing. Does this mean there are no supply gaps? New colonies are not getting metal transfers (what they actually need) unless I supply them manually with "supply this once". I've tried refreshing their automation and I don't really want haulers taking a percentage of resources each time forever. What's going on here?

    Default traders are awful, part of the problem is that colonies without a cargo storage facility can only hold a few hundred of each resource, the other part is that haulers will drop off 5000 of a resource on a planet that needs it, then immediatly take them all again to take to another planet.

    I micro manage my haulers in the early game to colonize my home system, then I scrap them and rely on the galactic bank with trade ports. Your homeworld will also produce vastly more than it can export, so nuke a few buildings and build more trade ports.

    I've also been experimenting with asteroid miners and export docks but it doesn't seem to be worthwhile for what you get out of it. Once your empire is big enough you can't spend your resources faster than they come in.

    Demiurge on
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  • EndomaticEndomatic Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Do you recommend using "Supply Once" then?

    Or do you use the percentage method under the Fetch/Deposit resource?

    Endomatic on
  • DemiurgeDemiurge Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    I don't recommend using haulers for trade at all. They're great for depositing large amounts of resources on new planets in your home system, but after that all they're really good for is supplying orbital shipyards.

    A fleet of super large haulers in a system full of resource producing or economic planets with large amounts of storage space is the best means of supplying an orbital shipyard. The construction bay module produces almost infinite amounts of labor on its own so the only limit on construction is resources.

    Demiurge on
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  • EndomaticEndomatic Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Should I build space ports first then? How many is appropriate?

    Even with slave labor it is taking my planets way too long to get established, and if I leave the governor on, it fucks up everything.
    This game feels needlessly obtuse when it comes to trying to manage things.

    Everything is automated, but it sucks! So why does it exist!?

    Endomatic on
  • MikeManMikeMan Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    so how good is this game?

    MikeMan on
  • DemiurgeDemiurge Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Endomatic wrote: »
    Should I build space ports first then? How many is appropriate?

    Even with slave labor it is taking my planets way too long to get established, and if I leave the governor on, it fucks up everything.
    This game feels needlessly obtuse when it comes to trying to manage things.

    Everything is automated, but it sucks! So why does it exist!?

    5-6 space ports on the homeworld is good, lets you export a good amount of resources to the galactic bank. Make your first few worlds metal production and then add on some adv. parts and electronics. Later on when you have things settled you can start restructuring your worlds to fit the planet type.

    Edit: I can strongly recommend the Galactic Armory mod though, its pretty sweet.

    Demiurge on
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  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Endomatic wrote: »
    Should I build space ports first then? How many is appropriate?

    Even with slave labor it is taking my planets way too long to get established, and if I leave the governor on, it fucks up everything.
    This game feels needlessly obtuse when it comes to trying to manage things.

    Everything is automated, but it sucks! So why does it exist!?

    I've never even thought to use haulers and I'm doing fairly well. You should research economics a bit to pump up your spaceports and just rely on them to do all of your trade. I've had no problems with the governors so far, the worst offense has been picking balanced whenever I want to focus on electronics or something like that. The AI knows to build lots of space ports on the worlds that are going to need to funnel lots of resources, and they don't seem to eat up a noticeable amount of the galactic bank. I don't have a particularly high level of technology or very many planets but I seem to be able to get a planet up and running from nothing fairly quickly, which is something I love about this game compared to a lot of other 4X games.

    Fiatil on
  • StregoneStregone VA, USARegistered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Can someone explain how the different types of armor work?

    Stregone on
  • DemiurgeDemiurge Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    They absorb damage in different ways. Reactive armor absorbs a lot of explosive damage (missiles), power armor absorbs beam weapons and so on. Absorbtion works on the principle that whatever the absorbation value is that is damage you don't take. Regular armor plates don't absorb but have much higher HP than other types.

    Edit: For example power armor works best against remnants, because they only use beam weapons. For AI's you'll have to use an analyzer to see their ship designs and design your own to counter theirs.

    Edit2: I just realised my explanation is based on the galactic armory mod, so use the post below :P

    Demiurge on
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  • FirgofFirgof Blind Mind Studios - Co-lead Developer Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    It's actually very simple:

    Plate: All-purpose armor with decent absorption and HP
    Ablative: Specifically geared to diminish the destructive force of low-damage weaponry (Beams, small arms, etc.)
    Reactive: Specifically geared to diminish the destructive force of high-damage weaponry (Torpedos, DSMs, Artillery, etc.) Does not activate its diminishing ability if the incoming fire is not powerful enough to trigger it
    Nano: Similar to Plate, except with lower relative HP and the ability to regenerate itself.
    Powered: An evolution of Plate Armor but requires supporting systems.

    Note: All armor absorb damage until destroyed. Whether the armor has DR is important to consider. DR is applied before the damage is applied to the armor -- but only up to 80% of the damage potential.

    As a correction to the above: Armor always applies to all forms of weaponry; it's their unique benefits and drawbacks that should be considered, not the type of Damage. To Armor, any type of Damage is Damage. (The only two exceptions to this rule being the Muon Cannon and Phased Beam Emitter; all stat-based weapons (Reverse Inductor, Repulsor, Boarding Parties, etc.) bypass armor by necessity. Armor is only useful for blocking Damage.

    The reason why Ablative works well against Beams and so forth is just inherently designed. Beams do 4 hits per shot, which means Ablative gets to apply its DR and so forth 1 time to each of those hits, greatly decreasing the amount of actual damage dealt to the armor. Same with Reactive being great against Torpedos: Torpedos do huge amounts of damage so the Reactive part of the Armor is practically guaranteed to engage and, thus, cripple the damage that would be dealt.

    Firgof on
    Co-Lead Developer, Blind Mind Studios
    Click here to visit our thread on Penny-Arcade
  • StregoneStregone VA, USARegistered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Ok. In my current game I'm having a bitch of a time with pirates. At first they attacked here and there, and I fought them off no problem, but then they caught me off guard in a new system I settled and are pretty much permanently camped there. Then with this big influx of resources they are nearly continuously attacking 3 out of my 4 systems. Only my homesystem isn't under constant attack. I can't get any defenses up quick enough between attacks. I've started demolishing alot of structures and replacing them with planetary lasers, and it seems to help. Would planetary shields prevent pirates from stealing from a planet?

    Stregone on
  • DemiurgeDemiurge Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Stregone wrote: »
    Ok. In my current game I'm having a bitch of a time with pirates. At first they attacked here and there, and I fought them off no problem, but then they caught me off guard in a new system I settled and are pretty much permanently camped there. Then with this big influx of resources they are nearly continuously attacking 3 out of my 4 systems. Only my homesystem isn't under constant attack. I can't get any defenses up quick enough between attacks. I've started demolishing alot of structures and replacing them with planetary lasers, and it seems to help. Would planetary shields prevent pirates from stealing from a planet?

    Pirates are pretty easy to deal with, if you have 4 systems I'm going to assume they are fairly well developed. Put 2 shipyards on one and build 100 fighters, that ought to do it. If not build more.

    Demiurge on
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  • Salvation122Salvation122 Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Is there any way to have systems scale differently from the overall ship scale?

    So, for example, have a 120-scale capital ship that's almost entirely made up of 20-scale railguns?

    Salvation122 on
  • FirgofFirgof Blind Mind Studios - Co-lead Developer Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    While technically possible, Scale 20 subsystems on the blueprint would entirely engulf the view of the layout I'd think (unsure as I'm not sure if it hardcaps the graphics or has no limitations).

    If you'd like to mess around with the most basic balance of the game, check out settings.txt in Game Data. We define there what the minimum and maximum subsystem scale on a blueprint is along with many other hidden default multipliers (weapon damage, thrust output, etc.)

    Firgof on
    Co-Lead Developer, Blind Mind Studios
    Click here to visit our thread on Penny-Arcade
  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Is there any way to have systems scale differently from the overall ship scale?

    So, for example, have a 120-scale capital ship that's almost entirely made up of 20-scale railguns?

    Probably important to point out that guns scale with ships. A 1 size railgun on a scale 2 fighter is a lot lot smaller than a size 1 railgun on a scale 100 capital ship. Your 120 scale capital ship does have 20 scale railguns on it; they scale up in size with the ship. The ship design system seems to have been made so you can easily scale up like that, so that the components within the blueprint are more of a % than an absolute size. A size 2 railgun on a heavy hull (14 slots I believe?) is 14% of the ship, no matter what you scale. So if you want a huge dreadnought with tons and tons of relatively small (for the ship) but still huge guns then you could throw a bunch of .25 size railguns on a scale 200 or what have you ship.

    Fiatil on
  • Salvation122Salvation122 Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Fiatil wrote: »
    Your 120 scale capital ship does have 20 scale railguns on it; they scale up in size with the ship.
    Right, I just figured that it'd be worth seeing if having a fuckton of small guns would end up doing more damage than a couple of really big ones. Tons of small guns would have lesser power drain, etc.

    Salvation122 on
  • DemiurgeDemiurge Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    I find lots of smaller guns to be preferable to single big ones. I like to put 4 scale 1 guns and a scale 2 on most of my larger capital ships. The guns are still super powerful in relation to smaller ships and they fire more often. For smaller ships I use 2-3 guns with buff subsystems.

    Demiurge on
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  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Has anyone found out a way to appease the AI? I'm having lots of fun playing 1 on 1s against the AI or multiplayer, but I'd kind of like to be able to do a traditional 4X style huge map toppling empires on my way to the finish. It seems every time I put on more than one AI they all wind up allying eachother and declaring war on me for no real reason. I've got the teams set separate, which makes it sort of lame that they decide to team up so often and destroy me. Has anyone had any luck with setting the starting conditions to war? I figure it will save them the trouble of declaring war on me and make them actually fight each other a bit as well, but for all I know they could just declare peace and ally within a few minutes if the AI acts like it does without war to start with.

    Fiatil on
  • DrovekDrovek Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Fiatil wrote: »
    Has anyone found out a way to appease the AI? I'm having lots of fun playing 1 on 1s against the AI or multiplayer, but I'd kind of like to be able to do a traditional 4X style huge map toppling empires on my way to the finish. It seems every time I put on more than one AI they all wind up allying eachother and declaring war on me for no real reason. I've got the teams set separate, which makes it sort of lame that they decide to team up so often and destroy me. Has anyone had any luck with setting the starting conditions to war? I figure it will save them the trouble of declaring war on me and make them actually fight each other a bit as well, but for all I know they could just declare peace and ally within a few minutes if the AI acts like it does without war to start with.

    How are you keeping up with them? As in, what's your ranking in Econ, Army, Research and Colonies?

    Usually when I'm lagging behind in all/most it's when they try to make unreasonable demands, which I refuse and thus ensures a conflict.

    Drovek on
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  • DocshiftyDocshifty Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    A good way to see if your ship designs are functional? Send them to another system.

    My 100 scale rail gun beast exploded midway. Turns out the antimatter generator failed and kablooie.

    My 60 scale plasma throwers have to stop and go between systems because the process of moving draws too much power.

    Docshifty on
  • tyrannustyrannus i am not fat Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    anyone have any starting tips for this? I'm kinda gettin' into it

    tyrannus on
  • BloodsheedBloodsheed Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Docshifty wrote: »
    A good way to see if your ship designs are functional? Send them to another system.

    My 100 scale rail gun beast exploded midway. Turns out the antimatter generator failed and kablooie.

    My 60 scale plasma throwers have to stop and go between systems because the process of moving draws too much power.

    I designed a heavy drone bomber with the most powerful weapons I could (the one that tears a hole in space and time). To power them, I went with antimatter generators, figuring that "Hey, if they blow up they should be close to the enemies". Do not mass produce a design until you are sure of its stability. I had 6 of the Drone Carriers I had built to house the bombers forming in a system while waiting to meet up with my main fleet. A enemy scout showed up in the system, cue the 6 carriers launching 5 Bombers each... which all blew up instantly, destroying the carriers, 2 nearby haulers and a passing tanker. Then, the sudden rush to stop the nearby shipyards from resupplying the instantly exploding bomb(er)s while I redesigned.

    Bloodsheed on
    Xbox Live, Steam, PSN: Eclibull
  • Vi MonksVi Monks Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Bloodsheed wrote: »
    Docshifty wrote: »
    A good way to see if your ship designs are functional? Send them to another system.

    My 100 scale rail gun beast exploded midway. Turns out the antimatter generator failed and kablooie.

    My 60 scale plasma throwers have to stop and go between systems because the process of moving draws too much power.

    I designed a heavy drone bomber with the most powerful weapons I could (the one that tears a hole in space and time). To power them, I went with antimatter generators, figuring that "Hey, if they blow up they should be close to the enemies". Do not mass produce a design until you are sure of its stability. I had 6 of the Drone Carriers I had built to house the bombers forming in a system while waiting to meet up with my main fleet. A enemy scout showed up in the system, cue the 6 carriers launching 5 Bombers each... which all blew up instantly, destroying the carriers, 2 nearby haulers and a passing tanker. Then, the sudden rush to stop the nearby shipyards from resupplying the instantly exploding bomb(er)s while I redesigned.

    This game.<3

    Vi Monks on
  • EndomaticEndomatic Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Why would they just explode? Unstable power numbers in the blueprint? Scale too small?

    I've finally managed to get the hang of reading all the resources numbers and what they mean in different screens. When you first start the game, it's not obvious how all the resources correlate with the galactic bank and stuff. I read about it in the tutorial, but it isn't until you play the game in practice for awhile to see how everything functions.
    I don't even use haulers any more. I realize that they are probably the culprit in my economy fuck ups with their unpredictable trade patterns.
    Researching Economics really early for a few levels is super important for this.

    Is there a way to manipulate the governor behaviors? I find that the economic governor creates too many mining facilities and thus too few Adv parts/Elec factories.
    I'd also like the governors to always build 1 planetary cannon.

    I'd also like to create a simple Adv/Elec factory governor for geothermal planets rather than having to choose electronics OR adv parts, but without choosing economic for the over zealous mining facilities.
    I usually do it manually and that's fine, but I'd like to make it easier on myself so I don't have to every time.

    Endomatic on
  • arcatharcath Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Is this on steam yet?

    arcath on
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  • Hahnsoo1Hahnsoo1 Make Ready. We Hunt.Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    arcath wrote: »
    Is this on steam yet?
    Not only is it on Steam, it's on sale right now.

    Hahnsoo1 on
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  • BloodsheedBloodsheed Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Endomatic wrote: »
    Why would they just explode? Unstable power numbers in the blueprint? Scale too small?

    I think I finally figured it was a matter of the shields charging and the weapon drawing power at the same time the moment they came out of the carriers and the generator not keeping up with it (and with anti-matter blowing up if it runs out of power). I switched over to Fusion and changed some sizes here and there, tweaked the balance and now they hold up.

    Bloodsheed on
    Xbox Live, Steam, PSN: Eclibull
  • Lord YodLord Yod Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    So I picked this game up when it was on sale. It's mindblowing. I don't really have a clue what I'm doing yet.

    Lord Yod on
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  • DemiurgeDemiurge Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    I think you can keep the antimatter reactor from exploding if you put an emergency power generator on it, or use capacitators to store extra power.

    Demiurge on
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  • Salvation122Salvation122 Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Anyone have a detailed wiki for this? All that Google finds is the one on the official site, which is great if you're modding and useless if you're playing.

    Salvation122 on
  • StregoneStregone VA, USARegistered User regular
    edited July 2011
    I made a big scale 2000 ship, with a boat load of size .25 weapons: 3x phased energy beams, 3x muon cannons, 3x missile racks, 2x torpedos, and 2x flak. The problem is only the beams and flak are firing. Any idea what is up?

    Stregone on
  • Last SonLast Son Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Stregone wrote: »
    I made a big scale 2000 ship, with a boat load of size .25 weapons: 3x phased energy beams, 3x muon cannons, 3x missile racks, 2x torpedos, and 2x flak. The problem is only the beams and flak are firing. Any idea what is up?

    Does it have ammo? Missiles and Torps chew threw ammo extremely quickly.

    Last Son on
  • StregoneStregone VA, USARegistered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Last Son wrote: »
    Stregone wrote: »
    I made a big scale 2000 ship, with a boat load of size .25 weapons: 3x phased energy beams, 3x muon cannons, 3x missile racks, 2x torpedos, and 2x flak. The problem is only the beams and flak are firing. Any idea what is up?

    Does it have ammo? Missiles and Torps chew threw ammo extremely quickly.

    Damn, that was it. It really does chew through ammo like crazy.

    Stregone on
  • DocshiftyDocshifty Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Seriously, Cerberus has a higher success rate for dangerous experiments than newcomers to Star Ruler have for ship design.

    "Oh, it exploded, alright lets...hmm...yeah, that'll do it. Strange, now its just floating around. Oh, its derelict, well, what? Huh"

    Docshifty on
  • President RexPresident Rex Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    My problems stemmed from AI settings and functionality and maybe not caring about scale (I preferred a scale 92 giant battlecruiser with scale 16 support "destroyers" before even unlocking shields, armor and gravimetrics and such). And maybe how my ships take a long time to compensate for the Newtonian physics ("we over shot our target by 10 AU, Bill, bring 'er around again.").

    The warnings it pops up like "Flight time is under 5 minutes" or "Power may be unstable" seem to do a decent job of telling you when there might be a problem. Plus the detail panels or just hovering over the statistics on the right-hand side in the layout view.


    Focusing on Economics, Metallurgy and General Sciences (and/or whichever one upgrades space ports until at least level 3 or 4), building 2 space ports and a cargo bay, then removing an advanced parts factory for a metal mining factory seems to get the resources flowing fairly well. Then a colony ship and a group of scouts. Renovate your capital's buildings as possible. That way you can focus on increasing research and your resource production and thoroughput.

    The problem then comes with deciding to build colony ships or let the planet stockpile metal so that it uploads to the bank so your growing planets can more freely use it. I find I build too many colony ships, since the AI tends to have its planets fully developed (albeit fewer than me), while mine struggle to get enough metal.

    And the governors don't do a very good job of actually picking what you need (and sometimes they don't do a good job of even picking what a planet is best at, either).


    Sometimes the AI might give you an alright-ish deal, but usually it seems to want outlandish numbers of goods in exchange for a rate of other goods, and I doubt anyone's going to have 57k spare luxury goods in the first 10 minutes...particularly in exchange for a 30-80 metal/second for 400 seconds

    President Rex on
  • DocshiftyDocshifty Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    I especially hate when it wants a trade for luxury goods.

    Dammit, I don't make any, my population is always at 0.0 mood, fuckers!

    Docshifty on
  • Salvation122Salvation122 Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Docshifty wrote: »
    I especially hate when it wants a trade for luxury goods.

    Dammit, I don't make any, my population is always at 0.0 mood, fuckers!

    yes this

    jesus that shit is annoying

    Salvation122 on
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