A new Star Ruler 2 update is about to hit your computer at relativistic velocities, do not attempt to adjust the picture. As always, read about some of the highlights here, or scroll down for a full detailed changelog. This one's going to be a doozy so buckle up for impact!
Steam Workshop and the Mod Editor
Star Ruler 2 now has full support for mods and the steam workshop! Simply subscribe to your favorite mods in the workshop and you'll be able to enable them in-game for direct use. (A guide will be put up on ModDB describing how non-steam-workshop modding works - it's much the same process)
To help along anyone who wants to mod the game, we've also developed an extensive Mod Editor. The mod editor lets you easily create and edit mods, upload them to the workshop, and has tools for editing the game's many types of data files.
Planet Surface Improvements
Along with improvements to the graphics of the planet's surface, we've also added a few new buildings for you to place. The build and maintenance costs of certain buildings is now affected by which biome you place them on as well, so be sure to check out which buildings go best where!
Shields
The research grid now includes Shields for you to unlock and equip your ships with. Shields cost a lot of power to operate, but their regeneration can absorb quite a bit of damage.
Research Overhaul
We've completely overhauled the way research works, changing it over to a grid-based approach with different technologies spread around for you to research.
The Expanse
A new galaxy map has also arrived in this update. In The Expanse, players are located in between the remnant homeworld in one direction, and a vast expanse of uncharted space in the other.
You will have to defeat strong remnant fleets in order to colonize new systems in the expanse, and each system cleared will reveal new systems with even more powerful remnants!
Graphics Improvements
Planets can now have rings, and we've improved the aesthetics of stars and their coronas.
Full Changelog
Added
- Added Steam Workshop Support!
- Added in-game tool (Mod Editor) to edit many types of game data files.
- You may enable your various installed mods.
- Added news pane to the main menu.
- Added temporary-final art for all weapons.
- Gave more buildings better/more distinct temp art.
- Added new music track
- Added Shield Generators.
- Added new buildings: Warehouse, Metropolis, Megacity, Refinery.
- Commerce Stations now have 4 abilities, one of which can be used every 3 minutes to purchase some bulk influence, energy, research, or labor with money.
- Outposts now protect their system from capture and generate and use empire defense to create support ships.
- Added completely overhauled research system!
- Large maps will now start containing barren planets - planets without a resource - in order to keep resources scarce and the game playable. Can be controlled with the "Resource Scarcity" slider.
- Ships in move or attack orders now path around stars instead of moving or shooting through them.
- Added Emergency Supplies, Self-Destruct Device, Skip Drive, Ion Cannon, and Shield Generators as unlockable subsystems.
- Planets can now have rings.
- Added quickbar for pending auto-imports.
- Added new map: The Expanse. Full of remnants, it expands as you defeat their ever-stronger fleets.
Changed
- Planet surfaces in planet management screen have been redone.
- Planets switch to icon view further away.
- Portraits and flags can now be added to the game without editing data files.
- Influence sites (e.g. Mall) can be played when only one empire or team exists.
- Destroyed ships now spray some graphical debris.
- Bulkhead and Targeting Sensor now need to be unlocked through research.
- Improved the aesthetics of stars and coronas.
- Joining in progress no longer pauses the server while the player connects.
- When defense destinations are set, defense is distributed equally from all sources across all destinations.
Balanced
- Building in oceans or on volcanic lands increases the cost of construction.
- Civilians expand more slowly through oceans, volcanic lands, and ice.
- Tweaked cost and effect of some technologies.
- Generally reduced amount of HP given from tech to prevent combat from slowing to a crawl.
- Various structures are cheaper to build on specific biomes.
- Building ships on orbital shipyards is now 20% cheaper in build cost than on planets.
- Increased pressure from level 3 resources.
- Hydroconductors now give +40% labor generation.
Fixed
- Music volume would significantly change from the menu to the game.
- Fixed graphics memory corruption during loading periods.
- Numerous small fixes and usability improvements.
- Various bugs that affected modders.
- Images with specific widths would appear greyed/striped, and could cause crashes.
- Fix gate constructors being able to deploy without a maximum range.
- Various performance improvements related to memory garbage collection steps, should reduce lag pikes in large games.
- Animation was not properly threaded, leading to significantly reduced framerate in large galaxies.
- Various notifications in multiplayer were blank or incorrectly labelled.
- Fixed various issues with icons being rendered out of order.
- Attempt to fix shader issues with specific graphics cards.
AI
- The AI would not recognize its fleets if it upgraded their designs while the previous was being built.
- The AI will use partially finished fleets if immediately necessary.
- The AI has a basic understanding of Revenant parts.
- Improved the AI's logic regarding remnants and internal defense. Notably, it can deal with The Expanse.
- Improved the designs created by the AI.
