Let's Not Play Space Rangers 2: ITZ Here

[Balor]

Unfortutanly, best quests (and I I'm 99% sure one that Skyway mentioned too) are cut from English version.
Master of Ikebaana and Citadel certainly are. Not sure if they were put back in the expansion.

 

[Balor]

Love the ski-resort text quest. It's one of those, once you figure out what to do, winning becomes trivial.

Not quite so with the pizza-championship one. You really need to luck out on the judges there.. Getting one of each makes baking a winner a nightmare.

Just make sure to bribe the right one .

 

[MetalCraze]

I remember another awesome quest, managed to complete it from the 3rd try. The one where you have to do a reconaissance on a planet and get out of there on a small spaceship iirc. It was awesome and full of random encounters too.

Another quest was where you've found yourself in the virtual-reality playtesting RPG. Great quest too.

There is even a strategy text quest where you go to the galactic championship - you build bases, defences and attacking forces in it and fight enemies and each one of them has his own playstyle.

There is even a Magic: The Gathering inspired one.

Hope english version has these too.


@Jimbob: Also when you'll have a chance - buy probes and probe planets. Don't underestimate them. There is a very good chance you'll either find some stuff to sell or nice equipment/artefacts to upgrade your ship (I've found quite a number of neat upgrade modules for my ship's equipment this way). Btw you'll select an orbit to place the probe which means that if you'll want to cover the whole planet - you'll need several of them. I like such details.

 

[Balor]

"There is even a Magic: The Gathering inspired one."
That is the Citadel, and it was cut for sure in vanilla english SR2.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOPpVzaKzrw for your convenience. Loop whenever appropriate.

Also, thanks for the advice, all. I'm slowly and painfully starting to get somewhere.

 

[Apoc_Tao]

Also, thanks for the advice, all. I'm slowly and painfully starting to get somewhere.

Well, don't give up. This is a game that actually requires a modicum of intelligence. That's why so many dumbfucks put it down. Unless you are a complete idiot you will get the hang of it eventually. This game is certainly worth the effort.

I once posted this little hint on a forum. Hope it helps:

The ship. Until you upgrade your ship quite a bit, you have zero chance to take out enemy vessels. If you are underarmed, then pirates will harass you mercilessly, too. Generally, almost anyone will leave you alone if you pay some small bribe to them, though, thankfully.

Your upgrades have to be done sensibly, or you may as well just give up the game. Early on the technology is far different than it is later in the game and your space is much more limited. So, the first thing I do is dump my shields. They are just too bulky and they do absolutely no good. Blocking 6% of all damage is completely, utterly useless. Later in the game you will be able to get shields that block up to 60% of all damage. When you combine this with heavy armor, you are basically untouchable by most ships. Early in the game, armor matters much more, and a good droid matters the most if you will be fighting. I recommend skipping the droid until you can find a really small one though, too. Same with the gripper. As for radar, it is IMPERATIVE you sell it off as soon as you find something as small as possible. Then you will have some room for weapons and cargo, and can start upgrading to better, smaller weapons.

As with defensive equipment, offensive equipment priorities are much different in the beginning. In the very beginning if you want to blow someone to kingdom come, you use missiles, plain and simple. Why? There are several reasons. First, later on a lot of ships have weapons that are very good at targeting swarms of missiles and destroying them. Second, missiles have the highest overall damage potential of the weapons initially available, because each salvo fires three shots - this is great in the beginning when shields and armor are nonexistent, but later the individual damage potential of each missile will be too low to cause any damage at all to the more protected ships. More important, missiles take a little while to hit their target. As the enemy maneuvers around, he tends to get a big swarm of missiles following him just like in galaxy quest with the mines - then he suddenly gets hit by all of them at once; this is important, because you can get a lot of missiles in the air headed for a target (fired from beyond the range of their cannons) before they realize they are in danger so by the time they try to retreat they are finished. The only problem with missiles early on is they run out, and they are sort of expensive to reload. Also, if you don't pay attention you will wake up and finally realize they are obsolete...usually as someone is attacking you.

Scientific upgrades. Upgrade. UPGRADE. At the science stations they can upgrade your weapons so they do more damage, and your shields so they block more, etc, etc, etc. the most important upgrade is to upgrade your hull, however. Upgrading the hull increases it armor rating by 5-6 points if you do the best technicians upgrade (which is the only one worth doing). Early on, this makes you nearly immune to lasers and missiles, and otherwise missiles will chew you up with ease. The next most important upgrade is your droid - you have to get a droid that can repair significant damage during combat or eventually you will get smoked, especially early on when shields are worthless and armor ratings are generally low. The weapon upgrades can also basically double your damage early on, so upgrading the weapons is important if you want to fight a lot.

After a while, you will want a new hull. The key early on is to realize that you don't have enough space for 5 weapons anyhow, and you don't have space for shields, so just get the largest hull that can hold 3 weapons and has a radar and gripper slot. Not much to it. You might be tempted to get a hull that has more armor, but through most of the game what really counts is hull space - especially because you can upgrade your armor level 1 hull to armor level 7 early on, and even an armor level 3 hull will be much more expensive and much smaller.

Now, the game is not without its flaws. Actually there are only two flaws that I can even think of, but they are sort of annoying. First off, it costs a lot of money to repair your ship - probably as much as just buying new equipment! It's crazy. Thankfully, you can kind of avoid this to a degree. Gaalian equipment degrades much, much more slowly than other equipment, and peleng equipment much faster. For hulls this does not matter and in fact peleng hulls are the best in the game because they are the largest, and because there is a micromodule that can make peleng or human hulls EXTREMELY tough. For weapons I don't worry too much, but I always buy gaalian engines when at all possible to do so. Your engine is the only thing that really needs to be repaired. Never just accept the repair all option blindly. There is no manual worth mentioning, but over time I have figured out that you slowly repair your stuff based on your tech skill. The higher your tech skill the longer it lasts. When it is in tiptop shape it repairs much more slowly, though. Early on, the Cent micromodule is easy to find, and it is very useful for your engines. It makes their cost much, much lower, and since repairs are based on cost this saves you a ton of money. Very useful early on. The most useful thing to have in the game is the nanitoids. Once you ahve them, you can totally stop repairing your ship...which later on becomes a huge drain in resources. Get used to going through black holes, because that is by far the fastest way to collect artifacts, many of which are incredibly useful. Once you get the nanitoids you will be able to face the dominators alone cost effectively - and make sure you have a big hull so you can haul plenty of loot back to the science stations.

The other flaw is that equipment prices go drastically up over time. The price of goods goes up a little, but really not much. So, trading is profitable early on, but it's useless later. By then, the only way to make any money is either raiding the dominators and getting equipment, or doing missions. And the dominator raiding actually tends to lose money until you have the nanitoids. Actually, you can still make a lot of profit, but it takes effort to do so - you cannot do casual trading to make tons of money in this game but have to plan out trade routes or bloackade planets or do other clever things that take more time and effort than I am willing to spend on trade.

 

[Dark Matter]

Game looks pretty cool, I should probably check it out. Is it similar to Star Control 2 in any way?

 

[MetalCraze]

Not really, it is a different beast pretty much - more like a mix of several genres. It is worthy of checking out - being a low-budget project it actually pulls off stuff that AAA projects fail to do *cough*stalker*cough*. Like a truly living universe with each ranger (and every other ship basically) being unique and constantly tracked by game - on the lower difficulties they even can complete a game for you if you will be slacking - it happened to me on "normal" the first time around - in 20 game years bastards killed off all dominators. You can even do a local "google" search for their names to see in which system they are - they don't just disappear to nowhere (unless they are getting killed off by other inhabitants of the galaxy). I think it's a pretty cool feature.

 

[Heresiarch]

SR2 feels much more alive compare to SC2. It's one of the few games that NPCs doesn't just sit and cry for "OMG hero pls save us" while hostile aliens keep pwning them. In fact, at default difficulty, late game would become fast and boring not because the dominators are weak, but because the NPC pwns them so hard and fast that leave you little else to kill. Except the 2 "homeworlds" (the one in hyperspace doesn't count) which are next to impossible to be killed by the NPCs.

 

[RK47]

Can someone explain research probes to me?

 

[MetalCraze]

You just fly to a uninhabited planet - enter its atmosphere - there will be a button to place a probe - you then select an orbit and the timer is placed on your control panel telling when the probe will finish research. You then fly back to that planet and collect loot.

 

[Raapys]

Speaking of difficulties, has anyone actually had a chance at Hardboiled? In version 2.0 I think I last maybe a year at best before the entire galaxy is overrun. The number of rangers go from 25 to 5'ish in maybe a month. Actually seems quite impossible, because the NPCs certainly don't have a chance at stopping it, and you don't either because all the equipment and ships are crap at that early stage.

 

[Balor]

Speaking of difficulties, has anyone actually had a chance at Hardboiled? In version 2.0 I think I last maybe a year at best before the entire galaxy is overrun. The number of rangers go from 25 to 5'ish in maybe a month. Actually seems quite impossible, because the NPCs certainly don't have a chance at stopping it, and you don't either because all the equipment and ships are crap at that early stage.

Hah! Hardcore Russian SR fans eat them for breakfast. I'm certanly not among them, but I'm more then sure it was done and more then once, and I've seen high scores submitted.
Perhaps the latest patch changed things drastically, though - I didn't not follow things for some time.

 

[MetalCraze]

Hard-boiled is certainly playable, but it depends on luck - for how long the galaxy will be able to hold against dominators before the normal technologies appear.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Again, I fight my way through the black hole and emerge into a Dominator-dominated area of space. This time, Hatman has a secret weapon up his sleeve.

See this little arrow next to the engine?

I am a leaf on the wind.
Watch how I

I think it might be best to avoid the black hole for the moment. I carefully make my way from system to system instead.

Campaign for a drug-free galaxy
Just say No

oh ****
leave me alone I don't have anything worth stealing I'm just a poor hapless space scavenger in a World Gone Mad

I don't pay taxes I am a free man (vote Ron Paul)

Hah
I wait on the planet for a bit for the pirate to forget I existed and fly away, then I head on to the next system.

A... Anarchy?
Could it be?
Ron Paul has heard my call!

I stop in and refuel in Paultopia, then prepare to move on to the next system. The news system delivers a bit of distressing news; Vitta Pryonis, the system I dodged in and out of once or twice, has fallen.
While peeking at the news system, I have a quick glance over the ranger rankings. I discover that I am bottom of the list, which isn't entirely unexpected.
What is not acceptable is the person directly above me.

The bitchboy.

Oh Jesus he must have been making up rumours about me
He probably let the dominators into Vitta Pryonis too
Bitchboy gonna get his

Stopping in at a medical base, I ask about sponsoring them to see what it does, beyond the obvious of presumably making them offer better services.

Pay 11360 credits to share my battle experience with you?
Yeah I'll do that let me just go home and get the cash. I might be a while. And I might die or otherwise mysteriously disappear en route. These things happen. Sorry and all that.

I have a look at their equipment, and briefly considering buying a droid shaped like a Guar, but decide that saving up for a new hull and better weaponry is my current priority.

I stop in looking for quests at a planet in... uh... the next system along. I'll be honest, I've lost track of where I took half of these.

Oh ****

Well, it looks like there's only one. There are other ships about. We might have a chance.

(CUE: FAVOURITE SONG)

Missiles?? Your missiles don't scare me. Missiles can be shot down. Bring it.

Hint: neither of these things helped.

Oh god damn bitchboy I am going to make you suffer like your puny mind cannot even imagine.

Completing the quest and docking at a nearby planet, I decide to treat myself to a new hull with improved armour and storage space...

And a new gun.
Feeling a bit more confident in myself and ready to take on at least, perhaps, a probe droid or something, I march up to the governor's hall and demand a quest.

holy ****
I'm going to defrost Elvis
this is the best quest ever

The transport seems able to take care of itself for the most part, and the system is relatively safe, so I decide to take this guy up on his offer. It'll be a chance to test out my new equipment, and hopefully the enemy will target him.

Um... that's very nice of them. Very sweet. I think it's just a token gesture, they still think I'm a loser.

get him guys
I'm providing moral support

Oh.
Bastard.

Spotted this on my way back. Didn't visit, but great name.

Dejected, we fly back to the planet, passing a black hole and resolutely not entering. Time to check on our transport.

There he is.
Also haha yeah right **** you

Um... Transport Duke? I'm escorting you. My formidable reputation is on the line here. Please don't start attacking people. I won't help.

Nervously, I watch and hope that he survives long enough for my contract to expire.

Hooray!

And then, er... he immediately jettisons "materials". Given his job at the time, I'm reasonably sure he just jettisoned Elvis.

**** you man this is my fare

Thawing rock god on board (note: may not be thawing rock god), I return to the planet and bask in my victory.

Huh. Guess political correctness isn't the way of the future. Maybe liberalism will finally be crushed beneath the iron heel of reason and civilization. I certainly haven't seen any black people yet.

That shield icon over Kephrone means it's currently defending itself from attack. I have little choice but to pop in on my way to Sheat. Hey, whatever, I'm reasonably well-equipped now... can't be that bad if I just fly through, right?

JESUS CHRIST

GET ME THE HELL OUT OF THIS SYSTEM I HATE THIS UNIVERSE SO MUCH

AND YOU LEAVE ME ALONE TOO

Wait... he's pretty small, and isn't doing that much damage. And the big one doesn't seem to be pursuing me.
I think it's vengeance time.

Nothing can stop us now
For we
Are the bravest of the brave
WE ARE THE SPACE RANG

 

[MetalCraze]

Holy fuck is that some rape

 

[Mantiis]

You don't seem to be very good at this game.

Hmmm, I hear Halo is good, maybe you should play that.

Funny stuff, your torment amuses me, please continue

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

I did chase the last guy around for a good five minutes before I lost the battle of attrition

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

No self preservation instincts.

 

[MetalCraze]

You should take on medium-sized dominators when you'll have something like missile-weapons - they are very effective in the mid-game, though you will have to spend considerable sums to keep them loaded, until you'll get better weapons that is.

Try hit-n-runs agains small drones if you just need to pick a fight with dominators. Also check news - there are sometimes requests coming from military bases to help them liberate systems - you can also order liberations yourself provided you have enough money - you'll then teleport with the whole space base to a needed sector and will clean it - the good thing about this is that military never retreats during such operations and the base is constantly there so you are able to do repairs whenever you want before rushing into a battle again. Not only that but if you had at least one dominator destroyed during the liberation and it was successful - you'll be able to get some good equipment and XP as a reward (it is random every time though).

 

[quasimodo]

Great LP! This reminds me why I love this game. It takes awhile, but when you are able to clean out an entire solar system by yourself it feel great. Payback is sweet.

 

[Raapys]

One important upgrade or piece of equipment you should get is an engine that has 30+ jump range. This way missions become alot easier, since you won't have to stop by so many systems on the way. Since good engines take a while before they become available, see if you can find micromodules which increases the engine's jump range instead. You'll also need the same amount of fuel in your tank, obviously.

If you can find a decent protection field generator( 15'ish% ) and upgrade it to 25+%, that'll help alot too, especially combined with good ship armor. And of course, find a good droid( 15+ points at least ) and upgrade it at a science base and try to find a micromodule to upgrade it even further. All of this is way more important than weapons, I'd say, because in most battles you'll probably be facing many enemies at once, so defense is the priority. Use the search function to find the items with the specifications you are looking for.

Though keep in mind that objects with green letters in the description have already been upgraded and thus can't be further improved at the science base.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

God this is great. Going to have to start playing this soon.

 

[sportforredneck]

Game looks fun. I'm going to see how it is.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Great update, very true too