Idiot's guide to Space Rangers 2

[DefJam101]

I originally thought the game's ground combat was more along the lines of MechWarrior... Once I tried it, the terrible translation and shaky combat mechanics got to me.

I might give it a shot one of these days... does it get better later on?

 

[Disconnected]

The RTS bit is OK as a minigame, if you don't take direct control of a bot.

The main game has a number of flaws, the serious ones being fucked difficulty (by the mid-game, there's little challenge and the gubbins become increasingly unbalanced), too little depth to the stuff the player does, and increasing, rather than decreasing, trouble figuring out what's where & when as the game progresses.

But... It's also really fucking charming, it has by far the best realised sandbox of any game I've ever heard of, the graphics are nice, the soundtrack is cool, and if you don't suffer from Obsessive Completion Disorder, it's the kind of game you'll most likely find yourself playing for an hour or two, every time a boring Sunday sneaks around for the next few years. Because although the gameplay isn't very deep, it is great fun.

 

[Monocause]

I've been thinking about picking SR2 up, but I've been somewhat less enthusiastic after reading the things about leveled item lists. So, are they really leveled like some people here claim or is the tech advancing along with the game time like some other claim?

 

[Zhuangzi]

The RTS bit is OK as a minigame, if you don't take direct control of a bot.

The main game has a number of flaws, the serious ones being fucked difficulty (by the mid-game, there's little challenge and the gubbins become increasingly unbalanced), too little depth to the stuff the player does, and increasing, rather than decreasing, trouble figuring out what's where & when as the game progresses.

But... It's also really fucking charming, it has by far the best realised sandbox of any game I've ever heard of, the graphics are nice, the soundtrack is cool, and if you don't suffer from Obsessive Completion Disorder, it's the kind of game you'll most likely find yourself playing for an hour or two, every time a boring Sunday sneaks around for the next few years. Because although the gameplay isn't very deep, it is great fun.

Well, I agree that the game can be too easy on 150% difficulty, but I cranked it up on Impossible (200%) and it's just about unplayable, because the Dominators have taken all but two systems! That's absurd. How am I supposed to play the game like this?

So I think it's back to 150% difficulty for me.

 

[Ogg]

You also have the option to choose selective difficulty, which in your case would mean decreasing the Dominators power only.

 

[Balor]

Well, some 'pro' players beat the game on purely impossible game while blindfolded and with their arms tied (read - while performing other difficult objectives).
I'm not one of them, though, but you can see the online scoreboard and see that I speak truth.

 

[MetalCraze]

You know that you can refuse to install RTS battles and totally avoid them, right?

 

[Zhuangzi]

Why do that though? The RTS battles are fun. Now I'm having a try at 193% difficulty, i.e. everything maxed except for Dominator strength. (Thanks Balor) That still only leaves me with 18% of systems though. Is it just me or has the difficulty increased a bit in Reboot? Or maybe I'm just rusty.

Anyway, I am in a bit of trouble in my 193% game. Pirates keep extorting me, my wingman (a Maloq) said he didn't want to know me, and no one has any work! It seems that quests don't 'spawn' unless the system they would lead you to is free of Dominators. If things don't improve, I am going to be reduced to picking up minerals and maybe mining some empty planets. I never bothered with this in the past, seemed too marginal an activity, but I might have to.

Any tips for surviving on max difficulty? I breezed through the game on 150%, I believe, but that was over a year ago. :

 

[Lightknight]

Why do that though? The RTS battles are fun.

Ehh...no.

Is it just me or has the difficulty increased a bit in Reboot? Or maybe I'm just rusty.

In theory it should include all the patches, and the game DID get rebalanced and get harder progressively with each patch.

 

[Heresiarch]

Why do that though? The RTS battles are fun. Now I'm having a try at 193% difficulty, i.e. everything maxed except for Dominator strength. (Thanks Balor) That still only leaves me with 18% of systems though. Is it just me or has the difficulty increased a bit in Reboot? Or maybe I'm just rusty.

Anyway, I am in a bit of trouble in my 193% game. Pirates keep extorting me, my wingman (a Maloq) said he didn't want to know me, and no one has any work! It seems that quests don't 'spawn' unless the system they would lead you to is free of Dominators. If things don't improve, I am going to be reduced to picking up minerals and maybe mining some empty planets. I never bothered with this in the past, seemed too marginal an activity, but I might have to.

Any tips for surviving on max difficulty? I breezed through the game on 150%, I believe, but that was over a year ago. :

It seems the Dominator strength is greatly increased in Reboot - upping the Dominator strength by just one level has made all the systems pwnd by them in the first year! Even on normal difficulty I'm still shivering at the aggresiveness of them, attacking and conquering systems faster than the old version.

 

[MetalCraze]

Is it just me or has the difficulty increased a bit in Reboot? Or maybe I'm just rusty.

You are.
I've played with only dominators at 150% and erosion at 50% (because it's a damn annoyance at higher levels where you have to fix your shit after 4 or 5 intense battle turns, considering that an average battle with dominators goes for 30-40, and that is just ridiculous) - and as soon as I got the cool new special hull and lots of stuff for it I became virtually immortal. I could clean the whole systems in just 2 raids all by myself - and my ship was the fastest in the galaxy with 1300-1400 speed without afterburner and had the biggest firepower this side of the Milky Way. It felt like I was Cleve in his deepest hallucinations - an ubermensch covered with thick metal hull that could take on the whole world. And what's even worse - noone in the galaxy were buying those new special items. So the only way to balance things out is not to buy new stuff - but who will do that in a game where moving forward is the only strong motivation?

 

[Zhuangzi]

Why do that though? The RTS battles are fun. Now I'm having a try at 193% difficulty, i.e. everything maxed except for Dominator strength. (Thanks Balor) That still only leaves me with 18% of systems though. Is it just me or has the difficulty increased a bit in Reboot? Or maybe I'm just rusty.

Anyway, I am in a bit of trouble in my 193% game. Pirates keep extorting me, my wingman (a Maloq) said he didn't want to know me, and no one has any work! It seems that quests don't 'spawn' unless the system they would lead you to is free of Dominators. If things don't improve, I am going to be reduced to picking up minerals and maybe mining some empty planets. I never bothered with this in the past, seemed too marginal an activity, but I might have to.

Any tips for surviving on max difficulty? I breezed through the game on 150%, I believe, but that was over a year ago. :

It seems the Dominator strength is greatly increased in Reboot - upping the Dominator strength by just one level has made all the systems pwnd by them in the first year! Even on normal difficulty I'm still shivering at the aggresiveness of them, attacking and conquering systems faster than the old version.

Yep, the Doms are definitely a lot stronger. On 150% difficulty, the coalition had only 16% of the systems (like 8 in total, with little prospect of improvement in year 1). So I toned it down to 143% and the coalition now have about 35% of the systems. This is playable. The game is much the same otherwise.

 

[Gwendo]

I think I'm getting the hang of it.

My only problem is that I still have my initial hull (i'm a fighter), which with all the machinery leaves me only with little space (13). Of course I try to trim my weight, by buying lighter parts as they become available, but right now I stored my gripper. I can't grab things, but my main income is doing missions anyway, so fuck it.

The problem is that I'm starting to meet dominators and they drop nodes and other shit, and I guess I should grab those. BUt my hull has 13 base armor and a good storage space, so it's difficult to find anything better. Is that really necessary to contribue to the scientific research of the dominators? Or can I just cruise between systems, doing missions, entering some fights and still finish the game?

 

[Lord Chambers]

Or can I just cruise between systems, doing missions, entering some fights and still finish the game?

Absolutely. 13, or even a 100 nodes, every three months or whatever rate you're letting slip by, is a splash in the bucket relative to how many you can bring in via concerted effort against the dominators. In my first game I beat all three dominator factions without ever completing their research. This second time I've gone out of my way to complete research to see how it affects the end game, and it takes tons of nodes to do so. At least it doesn't take tons of effort, since you'd already be at the science station selling dominator parts for 2x anyway.*

*2x only applies to equipment you salvage which can't be use by your ship, i.e., Coordinators but not Trasion Reactors. Sold items also boost the research rate, though not as much as nodes since they are generally fewer.

 

[MetalCraze]

Is that really necessary to contribue to the scientific research of the dominators? Or can I just cruise between systems, doing missions, entering some fights and still finish the game?

Scientific research is needed only if you want to remove dominator factions from the galaxy peacefully. Otherwise you will have to fight three leaders - which isn't that hard considering that you will constantly pimp up your ship with more firepower.

The game is kinda balanced that way - traders can collect more nodes with their large storages - which boosts research and gives them more technology to fight dominators without great firepower - which is of course good for them because they don't have firepower.
While as a fighter you don't need those technologies much.

 

[Ghoulem]

So, I've been trying this game for some time now. I say trying, because I can't really say that I'm playing with it just yet. I've started to get a hang of the basics with trading and equipment. The only way I've been able to kill _anything_ is with 5 lasers keeping my distance. Usually when I fight the repaircosts outweigh the loot and glory. Read Bryce's strategy, but it just seems .. uncool and boring. I just want to blaze in with crazy lasers and space the shit out of everybody who is weaker than me..

Anyway.. I have some questions.

Dominators seem to pop up randomly, I've been able to pick off some smaller ships, but how do I rid them from the galaxy? How do I organize an attack? How do I liberate a galaxy? How can I retake a planet controlled by dominators? How can I improve galaxy-defences?

I've delivered dominatorstuff to Science-stations and located them into different researchprograms, but every time I return to a Science-station the end-counter for those researches seems to stay the same. What's up with that?

What's the point of all the different funding at the Business stations?


Here are some opinions I've formed by playing this game(feel free to go bananas on me if you disagree):

1. The RTS-minigame sucks and can at best be described as mechwarrior for toddlers with a cheap imitation of Red Alert's legendary Construction Complete-voice.

2. Being in prison rocks. As a matter of fact all text-adventures in this game rocks.

3. The economic system is by far the best I've seen in a computer game..yet.

4. Driving around in the universe for half a lifetime just to find a decent hull/engine/gaydar/shieldgen is a goddamn waste of time. They should've made equipment-buying customizable by adding sliders to weight and power etc. Or at least more organized.

5. I consider this game to be the equivalent of a dad throwing his 5 year old kid in the water to teach him how to swim (in lava).

6. Soundtrack is übercool (Oh, he said über, that's so 90s')

7. Translation isn't good, but it's bearable. I would not by the translator any bears, though.

8. This game could've been very kick ass if they made landing on a planet like a town in Fallout/a location in KOTOR. It would've also benefited from a deeper character system.

9. A similar thing in the Star Wars-universe would be pretty cool.



Keep on space truckin', astro-niggaz.

 

[ady5]

You flush the doms out of a system by killing all their ships in that system. You can improve your chances by sponsoring the construction of military bases, and assisiting them when they jump to liberate a dom infested system(you will find when a military base does that through the news bulletin, i think)

I don't think that the research is shared between science bases...

The RTS minigame is pure rush tactics. better firepower doesn't necessarily mean winning the battle. On some maps, numbers decide the king of the hill.

Driving around for half a lifetime in this game to find something to put on your ship is not meant to be happening. That's why you have the search function, with which you can find absolutely everything you need(read the manual, every hull type has a name). Good weapons are harder to find though, since you can't find their power through the search.

Implementing towns a la Megatraveller would have been an overkill for me anyway. This is a space game, and putting explorable towns/stations would have been a bit of a stretch

Played this game 4 years ago, and bought the Reboot from Stardock for 4 bucks which i plan on replaying these days. Quite a bargain i got.

 

[Ghoulem]

I liberated a system last night. We kicked some serious ass. I also found this strange technical item which summons dominators. Everything became a little clearer when I found a bunch of warships and fighters waiting to jump into hyperspace next to a dominator controlled system. Now my only concern is to make enough money. Got a pretty large hull so I can trade lots of stuff and I'm doing some missions. Damn, I probably spent another half-a-lifetime on winning some weird game with Big Blue Circles and Small Yellow Lozanges - whatever that is. I started keeping track of the days remaining in research, and it goes down, but not as fast as they show you when you submit your dom-stuff.

I'm starting to enjoy this game more now. Having a repairdroid really helped a lot, but I'm still getting raped by torpedos.

About that searching for equipment thing: You can find a lot of engines in the search center, but you never get to see how powerful those engines are, just how much they weigh. I know that the name of engines indicate quality, but there's still discrepancies between the same type of engines.

 

[Raapys]

Huh? You can see their ( jump- ) range and their speed. What else do you need to know? The only thing you can't see is if they've been upgraded already, which is a bit annoying.

At any rate, just get a ship with tons of defence. Not the shield-defence, but the +x defence. My end-game ship had like +23 defence( and a good shield) and pretty much the only thing that could hurt me was the bosses.

 

[Ghoulem]

How can you see their jumprange and speed?

 

[Raapys]

 

[Ghoulem]

You must have the expansion, that doesn't show up to me.

 

[Micmu]

I could see them and don't have the expansion. At least that's how I remember, because I did use the search engine a lot to find better equipment.

 

[RaXz]

Replaying the game when I read the Space Rangers LP, what a great game even for the flaws.

I get my butt kicked when I try a game on hard, with equipment on easy and the Doms on hardboiled. Is there some strategy that will make the start easier? It feels a bit like the Civilization spearman vs. tanks battles. One game there was only one system left, and I was the only ranger alive. I already made it to the end with the Doms on hard, I want more of an struggle mid and end game.

 

[MetalCraze]

There is some random element to the game. When I played with hard-boiled dominators I was lucky to gain the power to fight them when anti-dominator forces had some 10-12 systems left.
Apart from that - play and pray. And take part in military operations - your task is not to win this one in the beginning because that's impossible, but to slow down them as long as you can to let scientists come up with a better stuff. I started raping dominators for real in 3307 and it is a norm.