From United States

I wasn't sure where to post this, since I'm not playing the version on GOG but it didn't seem to fit in general, so I'll just chance it.
I'd heard of Space Rangers 2 for quite some time, specifically on these forums. One of those indy gems that people batted around every so often. It always peaked my interest, but I never bit. Last Saturday, I finally bit and bought the game for seven dollars on Amazon. Which begs the question why GOG offers the base game for more money then Amazon charges for the stand alone expansion, but regardless.
What an amazing game. It reminds me of a space based Mount & Blade, but ten times as difficult. The learning curve was steep, but nothing compared to games like EU3. I had to read the manual at points. And the learning process early was difficult. But now I've been playing for a few days, and I've gotten the hang of it. I finally have a ship that won't explode after two attacks and some decent weapons. Being able to actually kill things is nice.
I just basically solo'd a Dominator invested sector, only to have douche Rangers pop up and steal all the goodies, leaving me with no loot to pay for my repair bill. But still the very act of using strategy to destroy ships much strong then my own was satisfying. But my favorite part of the game was one of oddity.
I don't know how, but the Peleng's got really upset with me. They kept sending Battleships after me. I finally just docked on a planet and got hauled in. The text adventure from my stay in Prison was a lot of fun. I came out of the scenario so liked by the prison management & guards, that I was instantly restored to excellent relations with all Pelengs. Another was a banquet I had to manage with a Maloq prince. Again, a text adventure. At times tedious, trying to find the right answers but still fun.
It's not a perfect game. I've learned to never do auto battles. There's spelling mistakes. And at times all the fed-ex quests can get grating.
But for seven dollars? I recommend anyone on the fence pick the game up.

JHGT

From Finland

Yep, yep! I concur!
I have played standard SR2 through over 20 times and the Reboot version about 10 times. As you may guess, it's one of my favourite games of all time.
Living, interesting universe, loads of things to do/acquire, addicting equipment/upgrade system (must. have. more. gizmos), dynamic war against the Doms, different game-types put together (text adventures, arcade shooter, RTS) and all kinds of strange insider humor. I love me some of that.
It's really shame that GOG didn't get the Reboot version of the SR2. The expansion adds all kinds of nifty features and fixes some exploits and problems (like farming nodes at pirate stations).
Some of the new equipment could be considered slightly OP, but nothing is OP enough when you have to tackle the enhanced 'impossible' difficulty in Reboot. Doms are just batshit crazy powerful and aggressive on that level. Quad torpedo apparatus smershs and triple disintegrator shtipts wreaking havoc on your home sector on the very first years is always really fun.
BTW. Pelengs and Malogs will hate if you shoot down their pirates. Pelengs are back-stabbing pirates by nature and Malogs just respect any great warrior, be it pirates or heroes. Extremely fun way to play pirate is to just camp in Peleng systems and rob, steal and maim every transport, liner and diplomat that isn't a Peleng.
Yep, auto battles = suicide. I find the spelling mistakes to be a part of SR2s charm. Maybe I've just gotten used to 'em, go figure. Some text quests are indeed quite rough, but beating them in the end is just satisfying.
7 dollars for one of the best freeform space game is laughably little if you ask me.

Hawk52

From United States

I'm considering starting a new game to up the difficulty. I had to play on Easy after a few failed Normal starts. The game was unrelentingly beating me down on normal.
But now I feel like I have enough experience with the game to try Normal again. The random generated nature of the game makes it more interesting to start a new game.

catwhowalks

From United States

It took me like 4 or 5 starts to get going. It gets a bit easier once you have a better ship and equipment, so hold on there if you're new.

Hawk52

From United States

I started a new game. My easy game just wasn't very interesting. The Dominators were easier to kill then Pirates, and they were barely active. The new game is on Normal, and they've already taken over about a third of the planets I can currently visit.
I'm up to 10,000 credits trading around. No one's offering me missions for whatever reason. I learned a valuable lesson in my first game, as I saved up 80,000 running around in my rinky dink ship for seven in game years to buy a 'dream' ship. Only after I started playing around with ship designs did I realize that I could buy a good ship for 20,000 and then mod the hell out of it with droids, scanners, shields, and the like for less then the 80.000 ship and have more bang for my buck.
The hardest part of the game is definitely the beginning. You can't kill anyone. You can't afford anything. And the only thing being offered is 2,000 credit odd jobs, and in my normal game it's been 'go here and kill X', who are people I can't kill.

JHGT

From Finland

Thought about posting some tips:
1) Pick missile launcher as a starting bonus. It gives you a clear advantage in many combat situations in early game. Bonus engine is also fairly good choice.
2) Buy probe or two from science station ASAP. You usually find trade goods and other stuff worth selling when scanning planets. Sometimes you can get super lucky and find powerful artifacts or MMs early in the game. My best find has to be a strongster MM (+12 to armor) on second year, playing as Peleng. Needless to say, that turned my starting ship to a small tank.
3) When trading goods with small ship, try to concentrate on luxuries, equipment and drugs (if you are playing as Pelengs who don't care that much about drugs) to get maximum profit. Using search 'planet' to keep track of the prices for goods is a good habit.
4) You dont necessarily need scanner (or shield generator) in early game. Especially if you dont fight that much. Saves you some room and maintenance.
5) Speed is life in SR2. You usually can't go wrong with better engines and upgrades to them. Just make sure you have big enough fuel tank too.
6) Regarding 5), afterburner can sometimes save your live. Just don't use it too much.
7) When buying your first new ship, try to buy ship that's at least 450 large. More room, more loot, more trade goods, more money.
8) RTS missions pay quite well, so doing them is advisable. Manual controlling quad missile launcher hover bot gets you far in many missions.
9) Multi-resonators FTW! If you are fighting against doms, multi-resonators are your best friend. They have insanely good power/cost ratio, and they are great in hyper too. Also, many MMs and artifacts give bonuses to fragment weapons making multi-resonators even more powerful. My favourite weapon of the game for sure. Atomic visions, 'disis' and vertixs (though they are super rare in Reboot) being other favourites.
10) Get medical insurance and use some stims (if you haven't got nothing against them). They can give you good boosts to stats on other nice benefits.
11) Try to avoid using artifacts early in the game. They take room on your ship and cost good amount of money to repair. When you get bigger ship and more steady income many artifacts become very useful though.
12) Never store stuff on stations. Invading Doms love to blow those apart.
14) Military stations give you a discount on repairs based on your rank. Pirate bases give a discount on their services based on you pirate rating.
15) If you dont know this yet, remember to sell loot from doms at science stations. They pay douple price when you are selling dom parts to corresponding research branch. For example: If you have keller coordinator worth of 5000 cr, you get 10K cr if you sell it to keller reserch department.
Hope these help.
Feel free to ask anything if you are feeling to it. I'm quite sure I can answer pretty much any question regarding the SR2.

Post edited July 29, 2011 by JHGT

Hawk52

From United States

JHGT: Thought about posting some tips:
1) Pick missile launcher as a starting bonus. It gives you a clear advantage in many combat situations in early game. Bonus engine is also fairly good choice.
2) Buy probe or two from science station ASAP. You usually find trade goods and other stuff worth selling when scanning planets. Sometimes you can get super lucky and find powerful artifacts or MMs early in the game. My best find has to be a strongster MM (+12 to armor) on second year, playing as Peleng. Needless to say, that turned my starting ship to a small tank.
3) When trading goods with small ship, try to concentrate on luxuries, equipment and drugs (if you are playing as Pelengs who don't care that much about drugs) to get maximum profit. Using search 'planet' to keep track of the prices for goods is a good habit.
4) You dont necessarily need scanner (or shield generator) in early game. Especially if you dont fight that much. Saves you some room and maintenance.
5) Speed is life in SR2. You usually can't go wrong with better engines and upgrades to them. Just make sure you have big enough fuel tank too.
6) Regarding 5), afterburner can sometimes save your live. Just don't use it too much.
7) When buying your first new ship, try to buy ship that's at least 450 large. More room, more loot, more trade goods, more money.
8) RTS missions pay quite well, so doing them is advisable. Manual controlling quad missile launcher hover bot gets you far in many missions.
9) Multi-resonators FTW! If you are fighting against doms, multi-resonators are your best friend. They have insanely good power/cost ratio, and they are great in hyper too. Also, many MMs and artifacts give bonuses to fragment weapons making multi-resonators even more powerful. My favourite weapon of the game for sure. Atomic visions, 'disis' and vertixs (though they are super rare in Reboot) being other favourites.
10) Get medical insurance and use some stims (if you haven't got nothing against them). They can give you good boosts to stats on other nice benefits.
11) Try to avoid using artifacts early in the game. They take room on your ship and cost good amount of money to repair. When you get bigger ship and more steady income many artifacts become very useful though.
12) Never store stuff on stations. Invading Doms love to blow those apart.
14) Military stations give you a discount on repairs based on your rank. Pirate bases give a discount on their services based on you pirate rating.
15) If you dont know this yet, remember to sell loot from doms at science stations. They pay douple price when you are selling dom parts to corresponding research branch. For example: If you have keller coordinator worth of 5000 cr, you get 10K cr if you sell it to keller reserch department.
Hope these help.
Feel free to ask anything if you are feeling to it. I'm quite sure I can answer pretty much any question regarding the SR2.

LordAvatar

From United Kingdom

I already have SR2, but I'm willing to buy it a second time should it be served with the 'Reboot' expansion. Come on GOG, You know the drill... ;)

HereForTheBeer

From United States

Had to buy Reboot to play at all since I'm one of those schmucks who can't get SR2 - Dominators to run. Another whopping $6 and it's a ton of fun. So it cost me double - big whoop.
The devs did a nice job with the equipment. Feels a bit like DungeonSiege, with that constant search for the new piece of equipment that saves some room, has a better range, or does more damage. Took me forever this time around to find an engine upgrade. I was stuck on 450 speed and 20 jump distance for the longest time - made some missions very tough with having to take the long way around and waste precious days at fuel stops. And I'm still wrapping my head around all of the types of upgrades available, where to get them, and on what to use them.
Just figuring out the upgrades makes it seem like there will be a ton of replayability to this game. Then I need to get a grip on the different races. And I somehow lost the opportunity to take that training mission for the RTS section and I haven't even seen those missions pop up yet.
Really, it feels like there is so much to learn, yet the game is actually quite easy to figure out how to play. The screens are quite intuitive, you aren't inundated with a kajillion hot keys, it's super easy to find most information, and it looks great doing it. Haven't found any in-game bugs, and the disk version I ended up buying is blessedly DRM-free and plays without the media in the drive.
Would I change a few things? Well, I dunno. It took me a while to figure out the efficient way to pick up floating cargo (select it so the hand shows, and then fly past it - don't double-click right on it) but now that's no longer an issue. One thing that irritates is when fighting in-system, your quickly-dying opponent has a tendency to land or jump to another system just when you got him on the ropes. And I'll ditto the bit about clearing a Dominator-held system only to have your Ranger 'comrades' come in and swipe all the goodies. Not that I haven't done that myself... <ahem>
For the one pointer that I can offer:
- Always stop at medical stations and pirate bases to look at the equipment for sale. It's almost always damaged so you can get some great prices on nice stuff, and then simply have it fixed once installed. I've saved a ton of money this way, though I've also wasted a ton trying to get some really marginal upgrades.
- Oh, another pointer for the true noobs like me. Some of the Dominator stuff can be used on your ship as soon as you pick it up. Always check the loot you pick up to see if it can be installed somewhere. For instance, I found a nice Dom radar that covers almost half the screen and takes almost no room.
On the 'planet' search for prices, do you simply type in the word 'planet' and it shows a bunch of info for multiple planets, or are you putting in a specific planet name? I'd look myself but if I fire up the game I'm afraid I'll find myself in another marathon playing session. : )

Hawk52

From United States

HereForTheBeer: On the 'planet' search for prices, do you simply type in the word 'planet' and it shows a bunch of info for multiple planets, or are you putting in a specific planet name? I'd look myself but if I fire up the game I'm afraid I'll find myself in another marathon playing session. : )

JHGT

From Finland

HereForTheBeer: ...Then I need to get a grip on the different races...
...And I'll ditto the bit about clearing a Dominator-held system only to have your Ranger 'comrades' come in and swipe all the goodies. Not that I haven't done that myself... <ahem>

LordAvatar

From United Kingdom

The game is superb, really. Since I like to take my time probing and poking around game mechanics I have a few useful tips of my own. For those who enjoy a spacious read: http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/920464-space-rangers-2-rise-of-the-dominators/faqs/44831
This is the best guide I've managed to find so far.

Post edited August 02, 2011 by LordAvatar

Waltorious

From United States

JHGT: The races don't differ that much from gameplay perspective. It just affects the game start at some degree and some dialogue with other races (which I personally like). Matter of taste really.

JHGT

From Finland

@Waltorious
Yup, it's pretty much like that in SR2 too.
Easiest start in SR2 is probably with Feayan trader; Big ship, extra money and good relations with all. Hardest is probably Feayan pirate as everybody hates you.
One good combo is to pick Peleng mercenary(?) and then pick missile launcher as bonus. Hey presto, dual missile launchers right from the start. Just have to be careful with money as they can be quite costly to use.
If memory serves, there were couple other race/profession comboes that allowed this.
Funny, that I haven't yet played SR1 through even once, but have played SR2 a. friggin'. lot. Have to correct that some time.

Waltorious

From United States

JHGT: Funny, that I haven't yet played SR1 through even once, but have played SR2 a. friggin'. lot. Have to correct that some time.

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