Ever since the apperance of Minecraft. Indie games have definately been on the rise since Minecraft tells everybody that good games don't need to come from the big triple A companies.

Which is good for both sides since it promotes competition which equates to better made games in theory hopefully.

 I wouldn't say it came out of nowhere, this game was released a while ago, about 2 years. It runs on an Athlon 64 3000+, 1GB of RAM and an X1950Pro video card. But how it actually performs depends on how big you want it to be. I'm not kidding in the slightest when I say you can make a galaxy with a million star systems in it, that is it's best feature, you can make incredibly large galaxies. 

 When I reviewed it in 2010, the game had  a lot of rough edges, being launched like that so that the devs could afford to continue working on it, but they had a monster list of stuff to add to it, that would just about make it one of the most awesome 4X TBS space games ever. Sadly, I haven't been amble to keep up with the game, but updates have been cracking out constantly since then. If I get the chance, I'll probably give it another go, it's still somewhere on my GamersGate account.

And yes, I think there was multiplayer. 

And there's also a demo somewhere around the internet if you want a closer look at it.

The specs required really depends on how large a game your gonna play. More systems the more CPU you need.

There is Multiplayer. Though I rarely see games going, unless they are GA(its a mod) games.

The graphics are a step down from Sins if thats your base for comparasion. Made that way as far as know on purpose to help gameplay on that scale.

Its a great deep game for the Real Time aspect of it. Expect to die often and alot as you learn it. In the end though the combat is about numbers and the scale of ships is a huge factor thats hard to quantify at first.

There hasnt been an update since they did the box release. They have a new patch on the backburner with a few fixes, but they have moved on to their next game. There was some discussion on an offical expansion, but Im not sure Blind Man, will make it soon or ever. 

New question:

My older brother hates sins, mostly because of how slow it is.

Is my brother going to hate Star Ruler even more, or is there faster gameplay speed options than sins? A mod or plugin maybe?

Yes. Yes he will.

You can speed up the game in SP and slow down to fit your managment needs. But Im not sure you can in MP. Dont quote me though.

You will spend a large chunk of your time in SP, with the game paused as you created and tweak your blueprints and either custom que your planet structures or setting up a governor.

Some of the slower parts of the game (the creating of ships blueprints and planetary ques) can all be saved in SP and then during a MP game just load your preferences(there are few things to note, like you must have all the tech for any item in your blueprint before the game will port it over). 

Again while Ive not played MP, I have heard of a few people who play often for a time. Usually on ~30 system maps with 6 people. Games they said lasted around 30mins-1 hours usually. 

From what I gather from the banter most battles didnt go above size 30 ships. most of it fought with just fighter sizes ships.

You might try to get your bro to try it but dont expect he will stick around through the 4x style managment.

Also fair warning, ships use Newtonian style movement. Unless they are small and fast, best use hold postion alot. 

Burned.

Sorry there Firgof. 

Did I spread anyother rumors while I at it?

Good to see you lurking about.

I liked how the 'blow up a star' manoeuvre sort of backfired and wiped out most of the galaxy.

Wait... so it cant be changed? Or am I speaking out of ignorance, and the server operator is essentially whoever is hosting the game?

Also, downloaded the demo; what features is it missing that the full game has?

Graphics arent too bad actually, aside from the less-than-smooth polygons. The textures look quite sharp.

If I wanted to showcase this game to my brother, what would be the best video to show him? I dont think this video would do, because my brother might automatically assume the game is boring. I need a video that sums up all the strengths of the game, from its scale, to its features, to its graphics.

Also just remembered, the music in that game is GREAT!

So I played the demo and, great game, but heres a few of the things that bother me.

Ships do batshit crazy erratic things that you never told them to do. My ships got stuck inside a star and wouldnt come out, and other such things.

UI is sometimes nonresponsive and/or retarded in that you have to double click certain things that you shouldnt have to.

I miss certain user interface conveniences that I previously enjoyed in sins. In sins simply zooming in on a ship will center the camera on that ship. While the same is true for SR, it only centers on the ship when you zoom in as close as you can, making it impossible to center on moving ships. The same is true for double clicking on a ship; it annoyingly max zooms the camera and its hard to double click moving ships.

I had some other gripes but cant remember them at the moment.

Question: No matter what a blueprint looks like, it does not change the appearance of the ship correct? What does determine the appearance of a ship, is its class determined by its scale correct?

Just what is different from the main game and the demo. What problems are fixed? Do fighters and bombers look different from cruisers? Is the UI updated to be less confusing?

Depends on which demo you played.  It may have been the 1070 demo or the 1100 demo (which is current).  

The UI did change somewhat between 1070 and 1100; mostly presentation wise.  Functionally it's the same system with a few tweaks; e.g. when you zoom to an object now it'll keep the same distance between you and the camera as there was previous I believe.  I did rework it to make much more information exposed and at-a-glance however.  If your object information panel had a nebula in the background and a representation of the object you had selected on it, you were playing the 1100 demo.

I'm unsure what to make of your ships getting stuck inside a star; they should be pushed out by the collision system unless the ship fought back with very powerful thrust.  Even then, it would be 'bouncing' into and out of the surface, not stuck inside.  It also would only occur on moving to a Star, as it's attempting to reach a point near the star's center but is unable due to the enormity of the star's surface.  In summary:  No idea what's going on there; no idea how they even got stuck inside in the first place.

Most unexpected behaviors I expect a player would encounter from ships' AI settings and the player not being aware of those settings.  For example, deploy a Cruiser without looking at its blueprint and you may find it prefers targets between 4 and 8 scale, even late-game where the average ship scale might be 1.2k; resulting in it going after "fighters" in mid-game as large as it is before the bigger fish.  Or that your scouts decide to leave hostile systems or etc.

Not to say ships can't behave unexpectedly on their own.  Movement, for instance: the movement solution isn't perfect and a number of steps can be taken to reduce its imperfection.  Ships can go beyond their intended 0-velocity point during their deceleration phase, resulting in a 'slingshot' effect, but the problem is augmented if you're above normal speed.  Groups of ships also can perform aberrantly when moved as a cluster; moving a group of ships tends to result in a more accurate stop than a fleet of the same ships moving over great distance.  

Finally, having less than X ships in your game, where X is the limit of ships your computer can support before beginning to slow the game down will reduce a significant number of problems that might arise (ships suddenly losing power and dying, etc.).  Unfortunately, the only way to know what X is is to run the game and approximate how many ships are in the galaxy at the time it slowed down.  I'd say with modern hardware start with 1000 and adjust from there.

On Blueprints: The looks of a blueprint (read: where subsystems are placed) do not change the ship.  It is what the ship has aboard that changes its appearance.  Combat ships by and large go off the same 'line' of model; if a ship has a weapon system and no special other system, and has some means of propulsion, it's a combat model.  

Adding special subsystems, such as a ShipBay or a Colonizer will give the ship an appearance representing those subsystems (A carrier and colony ship, respectively). Were there enough models to all possible types of ships they would roughly facsimile your blueprint.  Unfortunately we were unable to obtain enough art for the ships to do so.  Modders can certainly achieve full approximation for nearly any 'type' of ship; it's not the game's fault it doesn't have variety in ship design.  Our lack of money and staff that did that, unfortunately.

Differences between full and demo:  Mainly the addition of more types of subsytems, additional research options, multiplayer, the removal of the ship size cap, the ability to mod and run more than light substitution mods, more music, some additional planetary constructions, and our gratitude.  The long and short of it being:  If you like the demo, you'll like the full game more.  If you didn't like the demo, you probably wouldn't like the full game.

We wanted our demo to represent the end product, and so (we hope) it does.