Why Space Rangers 1 is worth a look

[chaedwards]

Been playing this for about a month now, on and off, and I'd recommend having a gander at it:

Pros
2d, top-down, phase-based system.
Truly dynamic universe - all ships are tracked and continue to go about their business when you're not around. Not only that, but they remember you... and if you ran away from them in the middle of a firefight, they'll remember that when you next meet.
Interesting Avernum 3 style invading enemy - star systems are invaded, and can fall to the invaders. The computer will then organise a group to retake the system, which you can join.
Fun arcade subgame when travelling through hyperspace - and more importantly, *it can be turned off.*
Persuade other ships to join you in attacking pirates, or to join your squad.
Enemy AI has enough brains to run when outmatched.
Occasional 'choose your own adventure' style adventures, such as when you're imprisoned.
Stats system - deliver Klissan(the invaders) bodies to Ranger space stations to get points towards one of five stats - attack, defence, charisma, trading and leadership.
Technology is continually developing and becoming available as time passes
A lot of character, and a load of good ideas all thrown together


Cons
No mission BBS - just occasional misions from gov'ts, and no choice of missions, just yes/no
Always stuck with the same sort of ship - no battleships or superfreighters for you my lad
Quite tough to get going.

The game gels together well to form a rather pleasing whole, and its the sort of game that allows you to tell stories about it afterwards, such as the time that I got caught in the middle of a Klissan invasion fleet, made a hasty jump to hyperspace and then realised I'd jumped to a system where the locals all hated me, bar one planet. Trying desperately to land on that planet to refuel, I got intercepted by hostile military ships and had to buy them off with an enormous sum of money so that I could land.

Anyway, I got it from some dodgy guy in Malaysia, but if you're in the UK or Scandinavia, you can get 1+2 together around June - they're being published by Excalibur, who also published Space Wolves
http://www.excalibur-publishing.com/space.htm
The Developers site is also worth visiting:
http://www.elementalgames.com/eng/r_all.php

All in all, well worth checking out.

 

[LlamaGod]

Sounds okay, Phased Based kinda sucks.

It was cool with the Combat Mission games, but I didnt like it in Laser Squad Nemesis.

 

[chaedwards]

The phase based does take away from the tactical aspect somewhat, but is mitigated by the fact that you can see the planned paths of all the other ships, and plan accordingly. Nevertheless, combat is usually decided by the relative power of ships rather than any skill on your part.

What makes up for it is the ability to contact any other ship to help you out - which makes for quite good fun when three cruise liners and a military ships are chasing some poor unfortunate pirate.

 

[Balor]

By the way, Space Rangers 2 is better in many aspects... and got thru in Russia by the sheer 'word of mouth' alone. Think M&B - that really means something.
Get 1+2 pack - it's really worth your money.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Phase based combat is annoying. It doesn't have the suspense of turn-based (or even RT with pause, when I think of Space Wolves) and it's fairly annoying having to give each guy his movement orders not knowing exactly what is going to happen - it feels a bit like a hassle. In turn-based, at least you can see what's ahead when you move, and interrupts help with giving orders, which is far more interface-friendly than running blind.

That said, I'd like to check out SR2.

 

[LlamaGod]

Yeah, my problem with it is that in Laser Squad Nemesis for example, it's more of a guessing game then a strategy game.

I wanna play JA2, not freakin Picture Memory.

 

[chaedwards]

Hey Balor, could you be more specific about the improvements SR2 makes? Looking at the screenshots, it looks remarkably like more of the same.

 

[Balor]

Well, more of the same it is, but first one was near-perfect anyway, so 'not broken - don't fix it'. .
So, new campain, new enemies, artifacts, Neither Earth rip-off ground battles (rather fun, btw... not exactly worth buying as a separate game, but only as one type of quests is really nice), interface inchancements, ability to buy ships of different kinds (like Ranger's, Trader's, Warrior's) - they vary in terms what addons you can place in them, armor, size, cost and, of course, outlook.
Also ablity to 'explore' planets with probes (you can find nice things there, even artifacts) and ability to modify (upgrade) items with modules.
First SR1 were really fun. SR2 is almost perfection.
And btw, SR's combat system is not unpredictable - you can see trajectories of ships, asteroids, etc between 'turns' - for instance. It gets messier in combat, but not by much. Anyway, combat there is very fun, if not very tactical. But developers never claimed SR to be 'tactics' anyway.

 

[Deacdo]

Phased based combat systems work well for large scale battles (ala CM), but aren't very good for squad based tactical games, IMO.

 

[Balor]

Well, if SR is "squad based tactical game" - then I'm a Spanish hedgehog.
And it works fine there.
Oh, and btw, battles like 20vs20 are not all that uncommon there.

 

[chaedwards]

Thanks Balor. I'll probably wait for the double pack to hit the bargain bins before getting it - I think SR1 should keep me interested for a while.

 

[Saran]

This looks fairly interesting, though its funny the way they appear to have "borrowed" some of the ship designs from MOO2.

Whats the writing/translation like, are there any VO's and if so are they good or bad?

I know you only have the original at the moment but it should give a fairly clear idea of what the sequel should be like.

 

[chaedwards]

No VOs, thankfully. The translation is pretty good - the phrases have that slightly strange foreign ring to them, but are grammatically fine and make perfect sense. And, in my opinion, that they add that little bit of alien flavour.

 

[Saran]

Good, looks like ill be keeping an eye out for this one, thanks for the help chaedwards.

 

[Trash]

Well, space rangers is out now in europe thanks to excalibur publishing. Still no luck with finding it in the shops, so I had to order it at www.bol.com. Seems like excellent value, for 39 euro you get a double pack named space rangers containing both space rangers 1 and space rangers 2. It should be in the mail next week, I'll post a little review once I get it. The game really seems like a potential underdog candidate. Hardly anyone knows it, it's not in the shops, not to be found in the warez but everyone that played it is full of praise. Made me curious...probably the first game I bought out of sheer word of mouth.


http://www.excalibur-publishing.com/space.htm

 

[DarkUnderlord]

When it comes to space, I'm strictly a skills only player. Why can't there be one single space game that contains everything I want? They're either all in development and ever so slowly maybe might get there one day perhaps or they just plain suck.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Holy crap. It looks like Space Rangers 2 is coming out in English after all. The planetary combat is in real time rather than phase based, and that's a good thing. The galactic conquest stuff is turn-based.

 

[Trash]

Damn Rex, I told so in my previous post. There is an english language doublepack named space rangers containing space rangers 1 and 2 in the shops in europa. I ordered it a few days ago and hope to have it this week.

 

[chaedwards]

And so did I in the first post:

but if you're in the UK or Scandinavia, you can get 1+2 together around June - they're being published by Excalibur, who also published Space Wolves
http://www.excalibur-publishing.com/space.htm
The Developers site is also worth visiting:
http://www.elementalgames.com/eng/r_all.php

Tch.

 

[Trash]

Well, I've been playing Space Rangers 2 for awhile now. It's one hell of an addictive game, that I must say and for me ranks among the best free roaming space games (star controll 2 and starflight remain my favs though)

The game seems alot similar to space rangers 1 (that is included on the dvd) but a bit more polished and ironed out. Not only that, but it's a shitload tougher. Most of the pro's and con's seem to be the same although there are some cool new things.

In this game you're not fighting the klissans but the dominators. They are intelligent machines that form 3 factions all seemingly bent on conquering all systems. It gets a lot deeper later on and you can win the game and deal with the different dominators in a number of ways.

The universe is huge and interesting. It seems that a lot of things you can do have repercussions and effects on a large scale. Sponsoring the build of warships, military ops and bases can slow down and even stop the dominators. Killing lots of pirates helps in the universal economy. Grabbing dominator artifacts helps in the research of the enemy and doing missions for the governments seems to actually strenghten them.

The game is hard, very hard. You start out as a lowly ranger and will probably stay that for a long while. Pirate attacks and dominator combat is often lethal, even when you get better stats, equipment and ships (yup, there are now loads of ships available, though they are very expensive) It's best to get other ships together for an attack on a dominator held system, but even then it often ends in a bloodbad. Makes it feel like a huge accomplishment when you do succeed though.

The new rts game part is a fun addition. Not worth it on it's own but its a nice diversion. It needs quite some skill to win but still doesn't take to long to distract from the main game. Winning these battles feels very rewarding though (big money and often a silly medal) There is also a small arcade game when you enter a black hole. In it you fight another ship. It's quite simple and can net you some nice items. Best of all is that it's completely skippable.

There is quite some humor in the text based quests and in conversation and descriptions. It was great to get a "mario" medal for getting enough "coins" (money) The diseases that you can get are also quite funny. How about one that makes it impossible to be a pirate. Yet you do get visions and money from an unknown organisation.

Few bad points:

Still no mission bbs, when you visit a government you may get a mission. Not really a choice in them, so it's often that you have to visit multiple planets before you get something that you like and then accept it.

If you want to play a quick game, forget it. Building your character and ship takes a lot of time and never do you feel truly powerfull. More like an important part of a machine. It's great though to amass a lot of money and then sponsor military campaigns and new bases. Guess thats why I'm playing a merchant right now. Nothing stops you from being a pirate and a huge annoyance to the other races though...well except the advancing dominators perhaps.


In short, they kept the good parts from space rangers 1 and made them better. Did some new additions that are fun and made the game even tougher and bigger. If you like a deep space game, get it.

 

[Balor]

That's strange.
A lot of people complaned that SR2 is much easier then SR1 and I second them (on the other hand, they might have changed something).
Did you play on Expert (harderst) setting?

 

[Trash]

Nope, I've been playing both games in normal difficulty. Perhaps it's because I played sr2 first removing the learning curve. Starting sr1 I kinda knew what to do and expect. Absolutely love both games, it's wierd to see that they don't seem to get that much press.

 

[Balor]

Well, they had a lot of mouthing in Russia.
Word of mouth advertising, the best one out there, and cheapest, too. (And pretty much nothing else besides it.).
So, second Rangers were already greeted and waited when they came out, despite lack of any coverage.
So, it's not strange, it's tendency