Разработчик: Blind Mind Studios
Описание
Twist other Empires into submitting to your galaxy-class wit with diplomacy and wheel-and-deal your way to supremacy.
Research new kinds of weapons, engines, shields, and more, all of which retain their unique benefits as the game progresses, with a research web whose contents are shuffled every game at your option.
Exploit interstellar phenomena such as asteroid belts and stars and exploit them for yourself or destroy them to deny your foes. Create and destroy new worlds through advanced technological research.
Match your strategy against up to 10 other opponents (online or LAN-linked). Save the game when dawn breaks and boot it back up at dusk. It isn't over until you say it is! Drop in and drop out at any point; disconnecting players will not disrupt the game!
Your weapons, your ships, your rules: Almost the entire game can be modified through Notepad! Easily add new models and particle effects to the game with “out-of-the-box” developer tools. Create new weapons in seconds; create new AIs through scripts! The Galaxy is yours!
Key features:
- Vast, Procedurally Generated Galaxies
- Intricate Ship Design and Exciting Combat
- Unique Research System
- Race Creation
- Easy to use interface, complex gameplay
- Engaging AI opponents
- Extensive modding support
- Multiplayer
- Original Soundtrack
- Much more to come!
Поддерживаемые языки: english
Системные требования
Windows
- OS *: Windows XP, Vista, 7
- Processor: 2.0 GHz w/ SSE2 Support
- Memory: 256 MB
- Graphics: 1024x768 minimum resolution, 256 MB memory
- OpenGL: 2.1
- Hard Drive: 300MB
- Sound: Any
Отзывы пользователей
I absolutely love this game!
What have you done to this once good game?
The UI is now completely and utterly useless. Ships and planets will just NOT follow "automation" orders and will just shamble around aimlessly or do nothing at all.
The map scrolling sometimes works well, other times it just stops working altogether. By this I mean "map panning" sometimes it will scroll quick, then all of a sudden it's panning speed will crawl to near zero.
It is near impossible to get the camera looking at what you want, when you want.
Don't even mention mining ships and construction ships. They just will NOT do what you want whether you attempt to let them run on their own AI automation or try to micromanage them.
Most fleet/ship commands are done with the RMB. Well good luck with that, it takes on average between 10 and 100 presses of the RMB for the orders menu to actually show!
I'm sure this game was NOT like this when I last tried it about four year back! I recall rather enjoying it then! Now it is just a broken, shoddy mess.
But of course, the usual lame excuses that "I'm doing it wrong", or "I don't understand the mechanics of the game" will come pouring in. Well, "experts", show me how to do it then.
"Firgof Umbra", is this one of your games along with Star Ruler 2? Or did you just take control of this game since I last played it, and wrecked it completely? If you've anything to do with this game, no wonder it's a turd!
I like the idea, but the interface is awful. Controlling and managing ships is completely unbearable.
Disregard playtime; played it a great deal off steam.
It's an amazing game, for its time. A little underdesigned and underpolished, too heavy on micromanagement and not much to look at, but it did so many things that no other game ever tried at the time, and few have attempted since, that it deserves recognition in spite of its shortcomings.
It's a thoroughgoing shame that Star Ruler 2 had so little in common with its predecessors ambitions, and that Blind Mind Studios had to close down.
The most unique thing about Star Ruler, in my opinion, is that it makes absolutely zero attempts to railroad the player into specific play-styles. It's systems are intuitively understandable, plain as day, there are no smoke and mirrors to direct and distract you. And just how much freedom it gives the player! You can take as many positive and negative traits for your species as you like (as long as the balance is maintained), and lock yourself out of entire areas of the game in exchange for various bonuses. The game setup screen lets you change various basic variables of the game and utterly break the balance if you want to. You can build tall or wide. Focus on colonizing planets or building orbital infrastructure or on mining asteroids or on waging war. Decide completely freely how heavily you invest into research or into economic development or colonization or shipbuilding.
And the shipbuilding. Yes, there are the memes: "circles lol". Its positioning system is abstract, true, but it also allows you so much freedom in picking hull sizes, component types, component sizes, component modifiers. It lets you define ship AI in good detail, and there are no fixed ship roles. There is nothing pre-defined about it, you just sit down, consider your strategic needs, and build a ship or station to fulfill them. And there are no fleet limits or other game-y factors that force you to build your ships one way or another; your limits are what your economy cannot sustain and what your enemies will too easily destroy.
Star Ruler just lets you do your thing, and if your thing sucks then you lose. It's always completely up-front about what its systems do. And then it's not "this quest was unfair" or "this race is unbalanced" or "this random event fucked me over" or "this part of the game makes no sense", but simply "I made mistakes, my plans were bad, and now I must learn and do better".
There are other things, of course.
The tech tree is one of the better ones among 4X games, IMO, because instead of just unlocking binary technologies, you can continue to invest in each technology type and thereby specialize your empire. I'm not personally a fan of the scaling of equipment powers with technology levels (especially at the madcap 1.40 default factor), because that largely devalues ship design compared to brute-forcing research, but I think the base idea of the tech tree is quite good.
The economy. Above all: Localized resources. Yes, you have a galactic bank - but putting resources in there and getting them out actually involves specialized infrastructure. Often it's better to build a transport ship and actually move resources around. And storing them is a factor as well. And to get more advanced resources, you need to process simpler ones. Overall the resource system, even though it's fairly simple at face value, is both very intuitive and tangible.
And all of it is tied together very well. Each part of the game influences each other part in very obvious and very sensible, ways. The game just plain makes sense! It's realism done well. No warp-lanes or subspaces, just a distance, a propulsion system, a fuel tank. No myriads of mystery resources, just plain metal, electronics, food. No thousands of components that are all functionally equivalent but slightly superior iterations on the same thing; each component in SR has unique advantages and disadvantages. Unlike most so-called space games that might as well take place in a fish tank, Star Ruler actually takes place in space, and having basic knowledge of space travel gives you an intuitive understanding of many of the game's mechanics.
I won't go into its many flaws in detail for now; they're probably fairly obvious.
Flaws:
Game looks bad
Diplomacy is ass
The AI can barely play the game
Game relies heavily on bare numbers, doesn't visualize them
Fleets are uncontrollable
No intelligence system except for sending scouts
Cannot design apperance of ships
No tactics in combat
Me learning the game: Oh wow, these game mechanics are so esoteric and the UI is so awkward and messy. This must be a really deep and immersive experience.
Me after actually learning the game: Oh, this is actually an extremely bare bones 4x game.
I swear to god, there are so many "complex, high-learning curve" games out there that actually have pretty straightforward mechanics, but they're just implemented in convoluted ways, and bundled together under a crappy UI.
It doesn't really deserve a thumbs down, but neither is it particularly good.
Detailed ship design. Massive space battles. You can build a Death Star if you want. I'm dusting this one off because the senseless glee of throwing hundreds of ships against each other is stress releaving.
My new favourite space 4x game. I've previously played Master of Orion 3, StarDrive and Space Empires 3 and 4.
I have also played Homeworld and the combat and commanding ships in this game is reminiscent of it which is a big plus for me.
Star Ruler has a lot of neat features I really like, such as:
+Research system based on levels
+Economy based on resources which can be transported
+Newtonian ship movement
+Freeform ship design
+Scalable ships
I'm very happy with this purchase
This is a 4x RTS that is very old at this point, and in the beginning I had a few technical errors, but once those were resolved it turned out to be an excellent game that allowed fo a lot of creativity with designing ships. It's ship design is the best feature of the game and combined with the ability to have as many star systems as your computer can handle makes it pretty fun. If you haven't tried it yet you won't be disappointed.
Wish the developer would have stuck with this. Sequel sucks.
I would listen to The Tron: Legacy soundtrack while playing this. It was fuckin epic. And if your CPU can take it, you'll see some crazy stuff go down, in some HUGE galaxies. 100x better than Galactic Civ or Sins of a Solar Empire.
And if you get this, check out a mod called Galactic Armory
Woa this one is a bit hard to review. It's an old game from an old distant galaxy in the olden times...
Fast review: If it's 10$ or less, you can buy it, over that go buy starforce 2 instead! Much better in everyway!!!
Now for the detailed review:
- Space strategy 4x game realtime with pause and adjustable speed. Colonize planets, develop them, build ships, conquer
- There ain't much graphics in this game. An old windows xp can run this game fine. Ship battle are kinda 2D boring affair.
- There is far too much bass in the background music! I had to turn it off after a few minutes, i was THAT annoyed by it.
- The gui is unpolished. It's not buggy, but it's not intuitive. It takes quite a while to find out where everything is and how it works. Because it's not a big AAA game, there ain't much information either in forums or elsewhere. It's pretty sparse. But on the other hand, if you stick with it, the learning curve is not that bad. Nothing compared to Distant Universe for example.
- The ship design is unique compared to any game i've played. Designing a dreadnought or a cruiser is the same, only the amount of armor and the hull choice seems to decide what amount of HP the ship has, but they both will have the same amount of components. A bit dull if you ask me. Clunky too. But, god it's complicated at first with something like 20 stats that you can affect with the components you include. Example: Amount of ammo your ship has, the amount he will spend by second, the amount of fuel, amount of fuel spent by second, amount of energy generated and on and on. I think it's a bit too much detail, but you can design your ship to your heart content! Also, all ships pretty much looks the same, only difference is size (which you can also set. If you want a fighter bigger looking than your dreadnought, you can do that too!).
- The research graph is interesting and kinda fun. I like it. It's also one of the few part of the game that is intuitive and easy to understand and use.
- The zoom and map movement is pretty horrible. It made me think of the first 3D game i've ever played where they had not yet mastered how to move the camera in 3D. Haven't found a good way yet to move around my empire except by planet name. And the funny part is that the game may look like 3D, but you actually move only in 2D. HAHAHA!
- The amount of ships you are going to lose because of them reaching empty fuel is pretty crazy. You need tankers everywhere and in large numbers. Yeah if a ship or fighter reach zero fuel, they die and can't be 'revived' except maybe with boarding ships.
On the other hand, there are no cash and no ship maintenance in this game. So if you want a fleet with 1 million ships, you can go ahead and do it. You seem to only be limited by the amount of ore that is on planets and asteroids.
- You can automate each ship with pretty detailed orders, but you can also shoot yourself in the foot repeatedly with a bad automated order. It does not always act like you think it does. And there are no explaination anywhere about them. So go go experiment.
- Everything in the game will improve with the appropriate tek researched. Every building on planets, every component on a ship including armor and hull. There are a lot of research fields.
- You can retrofit ships as long as you kept the same design name. For example, 'Carrier' blueprint. If you changed the name, then it is not considered the same class of ship and no retrofit for you. So you keep the starting design from start to end game. Does not matter that you completely change a ship vocation and components, as long as the design name is the same you can retrofit it.
- You will make millions of ships. Eventually, you won't even bother and you will put your planets on repeat order so they crank out the same ships forever. And you send them attacking the frontier. You can have a biiiiiiiig empire. A bit hard to manage properly thought.
- They kept the physics in the game as newtoninan as possible with even ship mass and thruster power. Depending on mass, a ship can take awhile before changing speed or even direction! It sure is pretty realistic, but i don't think it makes for very fun battles. The amount of errors you will make in your designs before you get them just right is going to be huge.
- I've looked at the starforce 2 game and it seemed much better than this one. They kept the same concept, but graphics are loads better, the gui too is a lot more friendly with nice icons that do what they look like, spying and improved diplomacy to do dirty trics and the design of ships seems much more interesting and fun. Also, unlimited galaxy that you can generate! You decide the shape of the map and how many stars there is and they generate it for you! You are only limited by the speed of your computer! So you can 'in theory' generate a billion star map! It won't play well but you can do it!
- Diplomacy is pretty bare bone and pointless. Enemy ai don't seem too challenging either after you master the game. Everything looks a bit bland. Once you played one game to completion, you don't really want to play another one.
Superb 3D space RTS. Like the civilization games if they were massize 3D space RTS with no size limits or unit caps. This game delivers a true 3D universe (with the option to flatten it to a 2D pane if that's the kind of map you want) with real time flight between stars and clusters. Sins of a Solar Empire meets Sid Meier's Civilization with extras that both games lack like 3D spaceflight along individually determined paths, real time civil management and custom unit construction.
Really a lovely game, proud to have it in my library. A recommended collectors item to buy on sale or even off if you have the spare cash and would appreciate sitting down to play something like this singleplayer sometime.
Unfortunately multiplayer is fairly dead and with Star Ruler 2 available for purchase now likely to stay that way. Still a very nice game for even just a few 100 hours of singleplayer. Star Ruler 2 going to be even better I hope and with people online.
This is the sort of thing I think of when I think of a honestly priced classic high quality PC video game.
A shame it hasn't been much more popular. Hopefully that would not ruin it as it seems to have much of the industry.
Despite the obvious fact this planet was made on a nearly non-existant budget it's pretty good for how small it is. And the size some of the maps can get to is damn impressive, just be prepared for your borders to become a grind zone for fleets that can range from where in the hundreds to the millions. Add in that literally everything can be destroyed, and you have chaos unending near the end.
Don't like chaos? Don't play this. It runs on it.
If you like Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander types of rolling economies - then this is the 4x for you.
Tired of the constant back and forth over a single star system on the edge of your territory? Simply destroy all the planets and the star they orbit and your problem is solved!
Don't like how looooong it takes to build those 1,000,000 kilometer long ships? Simply build a Ringworld around a super giant star! You can build fleets in the 1,000's in just seconds!
But wait! "Building that Ringworld is going to take too long!" Sure, while that might normally be true, all you need to do is build planetary thrusters on each of your planets and fly them all into a single system. Take that logistics!
Great game! BUT - it does seem like this game is getting robbed by a sequel - the game description claims that features are "currently" being expanded... but to all appearances its NOT, its just the old sales pitch, while the expanded feature development is implemented in a new game (sequel). Does "seem" a little dishonest... . If this changes, I'll change my review.
A brilliant game. I play with the Galactic Armoury mod and absolutely love the game. There is a steep learning curve and some of the aspects of the game can be a little obscure and difficult to follow but, with potentially infinite maps (depends on how good your computer is) and almost limitless customisation of ships and stations I would rank this as one of my favourite games. Of course the fact that you can make ships that are bigger than the entire galaxy is a plus!
One of the detracting points for Star Ruler is the Diplomacy system but for Star Ruler 2 this is being completely overhauled.
On the whole I would recommend Star Ruler to anyone who is willing to take the time and put in the effort to learn an excellent game.
Before buying the game I ran across some reviews indicating that this is a 4X strategy game with a high level of complexity. Thats fine for me, after all that is what is intended to be for serious strategy 4X games.
But complexity needs the appropriate tools, interface and AI to work fine. Unfortunately this game lacks all of theme. Yes it is complex, but it turns out to become very chaotic in the end.
So you probably get fed up and let everything be managed by the AI. The AI governors will actually do a good job for you and the only thing left to do is designing ships (which is actually a cool part of the game), building them into thousands with out any limitations and penalties and sending them to massacres under a very aggressive AI which doesn't give you much choices than to go into meaningless chaotic wars.
Just curious, doesn't a ship have any maintenance expenses? And build by the thousands? It wouldn't be a problem managing such a large numbers of units, but you don't have the appropriate tools to do that or at least the ones provided are very poor.
Diplomacy is very poor, management of empire also poor and with out any perceptive, interface controllers and functions a bit strange and difficult to adjust even for experienced strategy gamers. The game also lacks a sense of personality, rather mediocre.
So finally in the end you have got this enormous in numbers ships and just send theme to battles, one after another, contentiously... ba ba doom booom... boring... still for some this might be enough and very entertaining.
On the other hand, graphs and layout are quite good, simple and minimal which in my aesthetic (and functionality) perspective is good. Music is also one of the best encountered in this genre of games, and the concept is fine but just stuck in the level of intentions.
+/+ Unique take on the 4x genre.
+/+ Great technology tree.
+/+ Infrastructure and starships receive updates with tech.
+/+ Excellent starship construction options.
+/+ Lots of options for how you set up the game.
+/+ Well supported by developers (over 30 patches).
+/- Star Ruler is played in real time with pausing.
+/- Micromanagement is handled by the A.I. by default.
+/- Swarm style warfare.
-/- Weak diplomacy.
-/- Mediocre user interface.
-/- Little purpose to using fleets.
-/- Graphics and sound effects are weak (not that important for genre).
-/- Lacks steam features.
Verdict: 7.8/10. Star Ruler is a very unique and deep 4x strategy game. It’s a great game, but as of writing this review, the sequel is being developed and looks to expand upon the strengths while fixing most of the weaknesses (such as the UI, fleets, and diplomacy). If you’re not a huge fan of the genre or can’t get it cheap, I’d wait for the sequel. That being said, this is a worthy game in its own right.
One of my favorite games, hands down. Nearly 400 hours and still rising every so often. If you like having the ability to customize your ships in Galactic Civ II or something along those lines then this is the next step up. There (were) also some excellent mods, at least two total conversion mods that added tons of weapons and the like but unfortunately those have become outdated. I hear, however, that the modding is easy (relatively) so that is another plus if you like messing around with your games.
Unfortunately, it does have some problems though. I am not 100% certain the weapons are all balanced and the diplomacy system is... lacking.. to say the least, but I still very much enjoy playing and still do.
If you liked this game, you should check out the sequel they are working on!
One of my absolute favourite space games of all times. Very open-ended, with a complex technology system that really lets you experiment with countless combinations and strageties. There is a learning curve on how best to design your ships for various purposes, and the AI is extremely difficult I find, but once you have it all down, it is a really rewarding and challenging game. I don't believe the game was fully finished, so there is something a bit unfinished about it, but the shear power and scale of the game make up for it with a little imagination.
Considering the price, it's definitely worth picking up by any space 4X fans!
Star Ruler is the perfect example of an indie diamond in the rough. The core realtime 4x gameplay gives you a ton of freedom and ship design is fun and open, while the game progresses to eventually become really hectic. The customization and stuff isn't overdone to the point of being spergy like in some of these types of games. However, the game is pretty graphically poor, there being only two visually distinct sets of ship designs and everything being sort of par for the course budget indie space game graphics. The studio seems tiny though so can't really fault em that. A bigger issue is that the gameplay tends to degenerate into walling off a section of the map well enough that the AI can't bust through easily, and then beelining a ship of such a large scale none of the AIs can deal with it as it blows up planet and sun after planet and sun. The basic resource gameplay is realtime resource chain management sort of similar to Anno games, at which the AI has perfect micro - the difficulty setting seems to be what bonuses they get, and I couldn't find a difficulty at which I could have a back-and-forth fight with the AIs. Either I would crush them outright, fight them to a stalemate then win after two hours of turtling like outlined above, or get totally raped. This game seems to have a lot of potential for multiplayer but there ain't nobody playin this obscure ass indie pile lol. With more dynamic and varied AI this could be great. The sequel will be something to look forward to, though I gotta say an expansion fixing some of this would be better, first.
It's a recommend if you dig stuff like Endless Space and Sins of a Solar Empire with a dash of Anno and a pinch of autism mixed in, then all the polish knocked off
How have I spent over 100 hours on this game!? I don't even....I should go design another ship.
I personally like this but I caution buyers as this game may not be for everyone. The Masters of Orion/Sins of a Solar Empire junkies will probably be dissapointed. If tempted, definitely pick this game up when it's on sale.
Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Blind Mind Studios |
| Платформы | Windows |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 24.01.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 85% положительных (232) |