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Stardrive 2 early game3/17/2023 The way players will do this is by first selecting the race they wish to represent. That is the premise behind zer0sum’s new strategy-based game where you eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate (4X), StarDrive 2. There are Vulfen (Wolves), Owlwoks (Owls), Kulrathi (Bears) and more oh my! And during our time traversing amongst the stars, the universe has taught stars has taught us one insurmountable truth, conquer or be conquered. This description almost feels like an understatement when it comes to the other races we’ve encountered! Consequently we’ve come to know the universe is a strange and wonderful place. The speed of light was constant, too, at least until the StarDrive was discovered and we learned how to traverse the universe at speeds greater than light itself. In this world, the known laws of physics are just a starting point. In the world of games, though, we can stretch the rules somewhat. There are no diplomatic options to keep them from doing it, so you always end up with potentially hostile fleets cruising around your own space unless you lock everything down first.What if the speed of light wasn’t a constant? In the real world, until some clever fellow proves otherwise, that’s what we have to work with. As the old saying goes, “Physics isn’t just a good idea, it’s the law”. You'll get a warning when you cross into another race's territory, but other races will colonize absolutely every rock they can lay their hands on, including planets in your home system. There is no real concept of territory in StarDrive 2, despite some coloring on the starmap. Take a wider view, however, and that simplicity proves very limiting – and at times a bit puzzling. Minute-to-minute, StarDrive 2 can be a fun, if simple, strategy game. Menacing and mysterious aliens ships conduct raids on your territory, your generals might give you special quests, and you might encounter strange anomalies in space that will reward you if you investigate them. The first game introduced a lot of the enjoyable goofy characters (like the Pollops, a race of sentient hippie plants) who are back for another round, and there are even more neat narrative touches and random events to spice things up. Submerged Jared Petty Outside of combat, StarDrive 2 is also a very familiar type of 4X, and this is where the results are decidedly mixed. My ship design choices still mattered, but most battles ended up turning into scrums as capital ships twisted and turned at close range, which made them far less tactically interesting than the ship designs imply. The AI seems to beeline for your ships almost regardless of what weapons it has access to. The real-time combat in which all these plans come to fruition, however, is slightly less rewarding. Are you going to be fighting the Draylok, who have a lot of long-range missile technologies but seem to be lagging when it comes to close-range weaponry? Or are you more like to end up at war with the Kulrathi, who have big ships with lots of armor, but whose focus on energy weapons requires massive reactors and power capacitors? You'd want a different fleet for each fight, and guessing at the right balance is the most interesting challenge StarDrive 2 offers. That means that your rivals can have very different threat profiles that you need to take into account as you build your ships. Once you've researched one technology from a trio, the other two are closed off to you, except through trade or conquest. That's because StarDrive 2 cleverly offers you mutually exclusive research opportunities in groups of three. It's not just a case of slapping the latest and greatest technology onto the old templates (though you can easily exchange outmoded equipment if you need to). It's an enjoyable exercise in trade-offs and forecasting when I'm sitting there in the ship designer, I'm thinking about how the carrier I'm building is going to support the battleship I just designed, and how their protection from long-range missiles will rely on an electronic warfare cruiser I'm planning to design next. There are a lot of different things to take into account when designing your fleet: the power draw of your weapons and engines, the weight of your armor and equipment, the output of your engines, and the overall maneuverability of your ships. At its very best, StarDrive is a space admiralty simulator. But these pieces don't all fit together equally well, and tend to get in one another’s way. StarDrive 2 lifts a page from Total War's book by having tactical space and ground battles that occur separately from the turn-based 4X layer, on which you do the usual mix of exploration, colonization, planetary development, and diplomatic negotiation.
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