Space Rangers HD next week on Steam!

I didn’t even know this was coming. http://www.bluesnews.com/s/145797/space-rangers-hd-next-week

I hope they’ve got a lot more of the complex story missions. Though I enjoyed the game in it’s entirety, the thing that stuck in my mind the most were accomplishing those difficult problems without the aid of cheats.

Sounds interesting.

I’m not really sure i want to be a pirate when there is this huge, cool war going on against the machine menace. A lot of my favorite moments in the game came from supporting the war effort, leading huge fleets in huge battles and liberating systems. Being some asshole who jumps in to destroy a few transport while the war is going on doesn’t sound as… epic.

I am super excited. SUPER. EXCITED.

It has SPACE in the title , how could you not be? :p

Surprisingly fun game. I am glad others will get to experience it. We’ll see if i take another go around… a lot of games are already on the list.

Maybe you can be a corsair? :P

I’m interested. Of course, since I’ve already played SR2 quite a bit…I’ll probably wait for the eventual sale.

It’s one of the greatest games of all time, but I have already played to hell and back, which leaves me wondering if there’s anything in this that’s really still worth it for me.

Well the link does say:

New story branch, upgrades, equipment, planetary battles and famous text adventures expand the boundaries of the already lush universe of the game in every direction, roughly doubling the game content.

Why the text adventures were so good. It’s the part I will never understood, but I’m happy they did it!

It’s fascinating to me what it seems a small part of the game totally random and well separated of the “main” gameplay (space trading, combat), it’s fully featured with several dozens of text adventures, with a lot of variety in them, ranging from puzzles, to choose-your-own-adventure quests, mathematical challenges, survival quests, economic quests, races etc; each one with humor, dynamic variables, different solutions and different endings.

Completed SR2 twice, such an amazing game. I never understood why the franchise didn’t continue. I’ve read that this had a ton of bugs in the Russian release so here’s hoping they’ve sorted them out.

OMGJUSTGOTMYSTEAMKEYYAY

Here was my experience with SR2 after being so hyped for it all those years ago:

Tutorial kicks my ass in the space combat.
RTS portion is boring.
Text adventure is interesting and novel, but ultimately pointless.
Space combat is uninteresting because I had no idea what I was doing or how to fight.

So I gave up on it after that. Hopefully this new version will have a better tutorial and actually explain how to fight in the space combat, how to destroy ships, or at least how to stay alive.

How could you get asses kicked in the tutorial? The bot doesn’t even shoot back…

I don’t remember. This was back in 2005 or 2006, and my memory is very hazy on it by now, 7/8 years later. I just remember not doing well in combat tutorial. Maybe I couldn’t figure out how to destroy the target? I can’t remember now.

It’s true the tutorial should really tell you to buy another weapon. You cannot compete even with that underpowered drone with just a mining laser. Sure, it’s got range, but it’s a popgun, and you don’t have a repair droid so you can’t just slug it out.

That said, there are aspects to space combat that aren’t easily teachable in a tutorial. The prime issue is: speed is life. You need to be faster than your opponents, always. The faster ship has control of the range. If you outrange them, you want to be plinking away outside his range. If he outranges you, you want to be able to close.

In broad terms, there are three approaches to weapons: short range and lots of firepower, which means your ship needs good armor and a good repair droid, long range which tends to be very weak but you’re taking no damage in return, and missiles. Missiles of course outrange all energy weapons, and do far more damage than the stats suggest since each shot is a volley of 3. A missile ship usually kites opponents, so your missiles are slamming into a pursuer while his missiles (if he has them) are struggling to catch you. You can’t buy missile launchers in the early game, but it’s a weapon you can choose as a starting option, and a couple of the starting archetypes (i.e. Faye Pirate) start with one, so you can have 2 early.

The drawbacks to missile launchers are you have to pay for ammunition, and missiles tend to blow up valuable cargo once the target blows. Also, the profiles that start with a launcher tend to be hard to play if you’re inexperienced, though they’re first pick if you’re playing Impossible since you need to actively defend your systems against Dominators. On Normal the NPC defense forces will hold their own.

The text adventures aren’t pointless. They’re a mission type, and missions are guaranteed profit and experience points. They’re a lot more work than the fedex missions, but they’re not something you want to bypass early in the game when you’re struggling and straight trading is rough.

I wouldn’t call the RTS portion boring. The biggest issue is that by the time you’re playing a third game, you’ve seen just about all the maps and know how to handle them. It’s not terribly deep, but some of the maps are tough and require some thought about robot design and strategy. My biggest gripe with the RTS is that only a few of the weapons are actually useful. Typically your robots will be a mix of rocket launchers and repair units. There’s some argument for plasma weapons since they have a big alpha strike, but the cannons, machine guns, and flame throwers are completely pointless. The biggest issue is trying to figure out how to deal with enemy suicide nukes, which can take down a big group of your robots in a hurry.

What? It definitely has a weapon. I know the first time I played, I died in the tutorial as well.

I think while the tutorial is happening, the “living universe” is working normally, so a pirate can try to attack you in the middle of it.

Thanks Gus. That’s a pretty good primer for another go at the game. So good timing! I’m still bitter at having spent over $50 to get an import copy way back when. So I might just wait until I get it really cheaply this time.

I want my Space Rangers 3, not a remaster. But if they’re adding extra stuff besides graphics, I suppose I will not be able to resist.

I, for one, never liked the text adventures. They, along with the RTS battles, telescoped down the sense of emergent freedom and somehow, weirdly, made the game feel more limited.