5/6/2023 0 Comments Best race in stardrive 2![]() You can choose to let the computer control your ships if you wish, but for those who like to protect their precious creations you’ll find some simple tactical options speedy, long-range ships can be kept out of range of the enemy’s heavy hitters, slowly wearing down their hull with sniper fire. Space combat takes a leaf out of the RTS book, ditching turn-based play in favour of a real-time system where the player can mess around with facing, engagement rules and movement. Thankfully the game provides several efficient templates for those intimidated by the sheer array of options. You can set up your battleships as long-range broadside specialists, or speedy cruisers that close with devastating EMP blasts. Laser cannons can be installed as turrets, with a wide firing arc, or set up as main cannons, which lack manoeuvrability but pack more power. There are thousands of possible combinations, with specialised versions of all the main weapon types. If you’re the kind of person who spends hours constructing the perfect battle fleet, you’ll find lots to like in StarDrive 2’s robust shipyard. In contrast to the cheap-looking land battles, naval encounters are exciting and full of spectacle It’s the opposition AI that’ll cause you trouble, not the basics of the game itself. Even when you’re controlling a zone that stretches from one side of the galaxy to the other, you never feel like the game’s forcing you to juggle a billion plates. It’s a great system that takes a lot of the frustration out of managing your empire. They’ll ship food to non-agricultural worlds, carry ground troops into battle, and trade goods with the space neighbours. Built in the same way as your regular ships, upon construction freighters act as a kind of automatic resource any utility needs that your empire has, these freighters automatically carry out. One feature I really, really love is the freighter system. I’m also not a huge fan of the way your unique racial techs are researched at random - sure, it’s nice every now and then to have a surprisingly impressive option pop up when you gamble at researching a racial tech, but in a game that punishes you hard for wasted effort, rolling the dice on potentially gaining something useful seems a poor gamble. The UI here does a poor job of informing you of the direction your research will take you, so it’s annoyingly hard to plan out a path for your tech acquisition. Research itself is a little more cluttered than it should be. If you’re desperate to unlock that new plasma cannon tech, you can shift workers into research roles temporarily at a hit to your production capability. Switching your civilians to different roles depending on your needs is simple. Planetary governance is kept pleasingly simple, though it's always a good idea to specialise each of your main strongholds A hex grid shows the planet’s available building space, where you can place specialist structures in order to customise each planet to your needs - you might use a series of asteroid belts as your starship construction base, while a resource-rich ocean world can be used as the bread basket for your empire. Or economic and social advances, if you happen to be a hippy space-plant. Each planet has three citizen roles farmers create your food, workers build your stuff, and scientists research various nasty things to do to your enemies. Whereas a lot of space 4X games can bog you down in excessive subsystems and fiddly micromanagement, StarDrive 2 keeps things pretty simple. As you can probably tell from those brief descriptions, StarDrive 2 isn’t a game that takes itself too seriously, remaining charmingly irreverent despite some intricate, complex mechanics. Each faction is markedly different in both appearance and focus, from the brutal Nazi werewolves of the Vulfar Imperium to the peaceful, plant-like beatniks of the Pollop Symbiosis. You can choose your race from a list of pre-set options, or create your own horrible chimera using a point-buy system that covers everything from how capable your citizens are in combat, to how fertile, to whether they think the galactic slave trade is a fun hobby for the over-40’s. From the off we’re in pretty familiar 4X territory here.
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