Though perfectly well defined in terms of their characteristics, I’ve yet to find any of StarDrive 2’s nine options play as uniquely as Endless Legend’s Cultists (only one city) or Roving Clans (no official army, moveable cities.) Well done Endless Legend, you’ve slightly ruined 4x faction design for everybody else. It’s possible to create your own custom set-up from a sizeable list of pros and cons, but Endless Legend has set a pretty imposing bar in terms of 4x faction design and their direct impact on style of play. I didn’t fancy this, because the Chukk empire was quite daunting and the war-happy industrialists’ offer of 500BC (billion credits) would barely cover the cost of some handsome new wing-mirrors for my naval vessels. The war-happy industrialists mentioned earlier wanted a jolly war with the Chukk. Unfortunately, they were also an unrelated cog in that game’s downfall. The Chukk are malicious, fecund, polluters – but they signed a trade agreement and taught my Draylok people how to be better at farming, so they’re alright by me. As already indicated, they’re the same as in Star Drive (right down to returning art work,) with the addition of the carapace-sporting insectoids, the Chukk. That means I’m not going to be reporting any late-game stuff in this preview, but it has given me a chance to mess around with several of the Star Drive 2 races. In 4x games, I have a tendency to re-start campaigns when it looks like everything is either stagnating or actively sliding towards collapse. 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. If, for example, you’ve created a bunch of frigates with large amounts of frontal armour but little protection on the sides, you’ll have to use other ships to hug the flanks like little protective blankets. In combat, vessels take damage to their outer components first (which, depending what’s housed there, can affect their functionality,) followed by the more vital inner workings (power reactors and the like.) Once the center has taken too much punishment, the ship explodes. Ship construction in StarDrive 2 can direct, or at least supplement, your tactics in the main battle sequences.
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