Much as it hurts my space-bear pride to admit. I got completely swamped on normal and hard difficulty until I lucked into the perfect starting spot, and ultimately I had a lot more fun switching down to easy mode. Peaceful AI species struggle to survive very long, while those with military bonuses soon expand to an intimidating size. Luckily, you can usually afford to skip it – only random side missions typically force you to send a strike team in, and even if you have to oversee things personally, encounters are typically over pretty quickly.Īnother issue people will probably run into is that the faction AI leans towards the ruthless. Whereas I’m excited to send my fleets into battle, I groan when a random encounter asks me to fight a land battle. There’s lots of little annoyances like this that aren’t deal-breakers on their own, but add up to an unfinished feel. For example, there’s no auto-attack function, so to strike an enemy you have to click on the weapon icon and then on your intended target. Maps are dull, grey boxes that jar with the lively art on your units displays, animations are very poor, and controlling your team through the turn-based system is too fiddly. Despite some winningly eccentric unit types (if you don’t fall a little in love with the gun-toting Rambowl, General of the Owlwoks, you must be dead inside), it feels bland and unpolished. Your just reward for being a monstrous dictator – a galaxy painted in your primary colour That’s a minor concern next to the satisfaction of seeing a squadron of your elite ships tear into battle, watching all those hard-earned technological advances tear your opponents apart. Ships, especially capital vessels, are very slow to respond to orders, and have a nasty habit of wobbling back and forth rather than correctly aiming their heavy weapons where you want them to. The lack of direct tactical control can be annoying at times. Damaging close-combat vehicles can instead be thrown straight in the enemy’s face, soaking up hits and punishing them point blank with evil broadsides. 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.
#Stardrive 2 build full
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
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