As mentioned, the factions (save for one addition) are the same as before too – though can be customised with traits of a player’s own choosing. Aspects like custom ship design and colony management are very similar (or even the same) as the original title. StarDrive 2 also adds a Battle Arena mode, which in this preview build had a couple of multi-mission battles and the option to set up your own customised combat scenarios.īeyond that, my first impressions are of a sequel where the policy of “keeping what works and altering the rest” is in effect. There appear to be more random events (like wealthy industrialist war pressure) to deal with and space anomalies to investigate, as well as the evident visual benefits of switching to the Unity engine. The more overtly turn-based structure (which shows you how many ‘turns’ a fleet will take to reach a given destination,) separate real-time battles, and the newly transparent diplomatic wranglings are the most significant changes introduced by StarDrive 2. The only way to scoop them back up is to talk to a bunch of other outer space weirdos and hope they understand the concept of a fair tech-trade. Research in StarDrive 2 is a fragile thing, because once you’ve selected something to learn, all the other items in that tier crumble away into memory dust. This department will be pumping out all of your agricultural, military and socio-cultural improvements even if you lack the incredible leadership foresight necessary to put an elephantine hero in charge of all scientific affairs. Your new galactic empire can be given a helping hand with automated freighter shipments (assuming you’ve built some freighters – which you absolutely should,) and will hopefully be backed up by a robust science sector. Your work force won’t enjoy the irradiated soil and crushing gravitational penalties, but that ancient sprocket might make it all worthwhile. Planets (and habitable asteroid belts) come in all manner of shapes and abundance, along with occasional tantalising bonuses like mysterious mines or weird objects. In StarDrive 2, as with most 4x space games, scouting and colonising some resource-rich worlds is the way to generate all things of value. Or at least an economy that’s imploding at a tastefully slow rate. Of course before you can build any of that stuff, you’ll need a functioning economy. For those who’d rather not spend hours playing ship inventory Tetris, preset designs are available. To avoid ending up with delightfully curated space brick and breaking your poor naval commander’s heart, minimum levels of power, ammunition and thrust have to be adhered to. Beginning with basic grid-divided hull shape, it’s possible for players to pick and choose from any researched technology and design all manner of space variants. In-depth ship design returns from the original StarDrive and is just as exhaustive/exhausting (delete as applicable) as before. These ponderous capital vessels can get swifter with technological improvements, but rapidity in battle is provided by fighter supports (launched from the bigger hulls) and corvette-sized units. Just like galleons of old, you can toggle the firing mechanism on all ships to deliver broadsides rather than forward aiming. Despite being set in a sci-fi universe, aspects of these conflicts resemble the ship battles from the more recent Total War games (better than Rome 2 though, in case you’re worried.) Larger vessels are the equivalent of a gigantic metal space-vault full of lasers, and turn about as swiftly too.
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