Star Ruler might look like a typical 4X strategy game, but it isn’t. It’s a real time strategy game(RTS) much in the vein of the excellent AI War: Fleet Command. What Star Ruler does differently is that it mixes elements from the Sword of The Stars game like custom ship building, 3D galaxy, fleet management with an RTS like AI War or Sins of A Solar Empire.
I have to confess off the bat, I’m not a big fan of ship customisation in 4X games. I did enjoy Gratuitous Space Battles quite a bit with its ship building, but Star Ruler is a very different ball game. The ship customisation is a lot more complex and not as easy to get into as in GSB. It’s also not a game solely about designing your ships, and games like these always make me feel impatient. I want to get back to managing my empire not fiddle around ship building.
It doesn’t hold your hand as much as other games and there is no visual representation of the hull such as in GSB. The only hint you’ll get is a single description on the right hand side panel which tells you what's wrong with your design. It’s unclear exactly what are the necessary parts that make a working ship. While I’m sure there was a lot of thought that went into designing this portion of the game, perhaps more effort should also go into designing the user interface to help ease you into designing ships.
Star Ruler is a game that is about scale. A lot of 4X and RTS games really exaggerate the size of planets and don’t focus on portraying a realistic space. In Star Ruler, planets scale right up to the solar system and then to the bigger galaxy. Zooming out of a planet elicits the same feeling you get when you play the Spore space stage. A feeling of awe.
It doesn’t quite have the graphical aplomb of a triple A game like Spore(it is being developed by a small indie studio), but it does a good job of demonstrating this scale. Speaking of which, you can build some enormous ships in this game(the developers have been making this point clear in their trailers).
Despite the realistic ginormous scale, Star Ruler does a really good job of making it easy for you to manage everything from a macro level. From the option to set auto colonisation to setting an appropriate governor type for a planet(an AI characteristic that will weigh building certain things depending on its priority), Star Ruler never becomes too overwhelming(in Empire management that is). It feels like a very macro focused game which is how I like my space themed RTS games.
The main resource in Star Ruler is ore. How much ore rich a planet is underlines how productive a planet will be. On top of ore, you have stuff like electronics and advanced parts which actually help your fleets repair themselves faster if they have enough of it, metals which help speed up ship construction times and food which increases population growth. All these other resources(other then ore) require a factory to get them.
There are also goods and luxury goods which affect you planets happiness or mood. Yes, there is happiness modeled in Star Ruler. Not only that, but worker population also matters(not to the extent of say Paradoxs Victoria II) as a lack of workers can stall your production and resource production of a planet.
Production speeds also depend on the mood of your people as production moves faster or slower depending on it. Give them goods and luxuries to keep them happy and working hard for you. Goods and luxuries is an empire wide value. It gets automatically distributed across your empire. You don’t need to micro manage their local availability which helps in keeping you concentrated on the bigger picture.
Star Ruler looks promising(it might not be done yet and is a work in progress). It’s trying to add a lot of depth to an RTS game while making empire management streamlined using AI to help manage things(not to the extent of Master of Orion 3). Diplomacy is pretty basic at the moment and the user interface is rough and requires more work. They have to do a better job at giving players information in an intuitive manner(not by opening up different menus).
Star Ruler is on a variety of digital distribution platforms for USD$24.99. Try out the demo here.
FYI : Star Ruler is constantly being updated and improved. This impression shouldn’t be seen as a final review of this product.
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