Yeah I totally understand the frustration, Granath. It’s a shitty situation for all involved, by the sound of it. I hope you get your account unlocked and things set to right.
And like I just replied to rhamorim, I’m sorry I didn’t realize this had been going on for a couple weeks and you had already been linked the developer’s response, etc! I hadn’t been following the bargain thread.
[quote=“kerzain, post:537, topic:73116, full:true”]Your posts are like free DLC packs for those of us who enjoy schadenfreude. Makes me want to boot the game up to enjoy what you’re missing.
[/quote]
That’s a real dick thing to say. What were hoping to accomplish by gloating about the misfortune of someone who’s been screwed over by a misunderstanding between a developer and online retailer? Maybe next time resist the urge to hit that reply button.
-Tom
He’s hurling curses at a dev (at least one of whom actually posts here) of a game because he’s having problems with second-hand game keys from some online reseller. He set the tone. My only regret is following his lead and helping to shit up a good thread about my favorite space RTS/4X in years.
So it is because the developer occasionally posts here that you feel they should be above reproach? Or is it because you like this game that you feel that their actions should not be criticized? I imagine it is a bit of both because you have never even bothered addressing any facts. I know that if you suffered the above Best Buy example you would be ranting like a madman as per your style. So it must be that fanboy-prat reaction you get when someone criticizes something you like.
Oh woe be to anyone who says anything negative about the developers of kerzain’s favorite games! Even if they are thieves and have legit keys revoked. Even if they do cause a further mess to their customers. They must be totally absolved of their sins because kerzain can not bear to hear that they did anything wrong.
I hope they do come back and see what a mess they caused. Maybe they will realize that in the future this is not the way a reputable company acts.
I don’t think so, but I don’t think the invective and name-calling helps. You got caught up in an unfortunate situation between a developer and a distributor, but I don’t agree that this makes the dev a wanker or a thief, etc. It’s a 3-man team that’s seen a lot of hardship getting the game out the door and really worked hard to get the expansion and updates out, after announcing the would need to close their doors due to life issues. I think that makes people a little defensive when you start off with the firebombs and name-calling.
You’re in the middle of this and rightfully angry, but for the rest of us (well, only speaking for myself here), it doesn’t look like the dev is an ass or a thief. It just looks like an unfortunate situation without a good solution. And no, letting your product you toiled on for years go for 50 cents when that was never your intention might not be possible. He honored the keys that were redeemed and, to my eyes, at least made an effort to do right.
For all we know, Bundlestars royally screwed up and they’re terrible people for putting a small 3-man dev team in a horrible situation, right? :)
He shut off keys that had already been distributed. Keys he obviously provided to Bundlestars (even if they weren’t for that bundle). That pretty much makes him a wanker.
Oops, my keys are being used in the wrong bundle… I think I will launch a nuclear bomb.
I would like to point out that there are multiple developers who have worked on this game, myself being just one of them. The studio owner and my former boss, Andrew (ThyReaper), is the one who made the decision to shut off the unactivated keys (after three days of trying other, less destructive, avenues of action). So I’m not sure what calling me out in this thread is meant to do? Additionally, if your objective is to see if he feels bad about the situation and is aware of the consequences of what he’s done and all that, you ought to be already aware? As far as I understand, Granath has read the discussion on the Steamboards - and Andrew was the fourth to reply to it and kept replying for most of its 300+ posts. I’m no longer attached to Blind Mind Studios LLC anyway - the company is shut down at this point due to lack of sales and I’m presently working by contract for another games development company while looking for a new home.
Andrew has not replied on Qt3 ever to my recollection. He’s not watching this thread, so your replies won’t be read by him. If he were here, I do know that he’d continue to say what he’s been saying all along: It’s an unfortunate situation for everyone, you have his sympathy, he won’t make specific legal claims against BS, the game should’ve never been in that bundle, and that BundleStars is offering refunds that are in part being paid for by his refusal to take royalties from the sale. I’ve seen many people reporting that they have received keys from them after their statement that they’d give them and they publicly posted about it on their Facebook, on Reddit, through e-mail to the folks who bought the bundle, etc. so if they’re now refusing to honor that request you’ve got many avenues to hold their feet to the fire.
I hope you find a happy home, Firgof. For whatever it’s worth, people wouldn’t be as worked up over this if your efforts had been poor.
Sad you had to witness that, Firgof. I’m also sad to see the dev behind one of the best 4X games I’ve played in such a situation. This industry isn’t fair, but then again, such is life.
I hope you find a great job and a great home. And perhaps a chance at making a more successful game (on the business perspective) at some point.
Seconded!
Star Ruler 2 remains one of the most innovative and interesting strategy games I’ve played in a long, long time. Everything just has such a fresh approach to it. You play nearly any 4X game and you have Food that grows population, Hammers that let you build improvements in your city/planet, and Research. Paradox’s grand strategy games (which I love!) share a lot of DNA between themselves. While that’s not a bad thing, it does give a sense of familiarity between titles… But Star Ruler 2? It does it’s own thing, and those things it does are really interesting!
I love how Influence/Diplomacy is practically a game unto itself. 4X games often have a “diplomatic victory” option, but nothing like this. I can focus my attention and resources on Influence in this game and do effective things throughout, not just a victory condition! I can grow extra food on my planets, I can boost my research immensely by hosting the galactic research institute, I can make my Flagships more powerful. Hell, I can even annex entire star systems! But it’s not cheesy, because it’s limited. You only have so much Influence, and there are cards that can be played that can undercut what you’re trying to do. I might pour all my Influence into trying to annex a system and fail, leaving me vulnerable to all kinds of actions later.
Diplomacy, economy, empire management… it’s all such a breath of fresh air. I love that @cicobuff is doing that playthrough thread, because more people need to become aware how great this game is.
Alright, done raving for a while. :)
@Mr_PeaCH asked some questions about the economics in the AAR/Tutorial thread which I thought I’ll answer here quickly.
“I appreciate that you started with the race which does not require food and water but can you quickly summarize how it works more or less. A starter planet has both food and water and is at insta level 1. One nearby planet might have a food, another nearby planet might have a water. First I deduced that I should have one of these planets send its comestible resource to the other but soon I had two planets at level 1 and both were in need of a second, different food source. So I scrubbed that and sent the food from the nearby planet to the starter planet. Correct? That is, a better choice to start or not?”
For races that require Food and Water, Food and Water resource planets can be leveled up.
The requirements for a (Non-Mono) planet to reach level 1 all it needs it 1 Food + 1 Water. For example. You can send 1 Food to a water planet and it becomes a level 1 Planet (or vice versa) PROVIDED you have not also exported the water to another planet.
Each resource exported means that the planet the resource is on is not available for use at the home planet.
So you can do this: Colonize 1 water planet, Colonize 1 food planet. Then just send the Food to the water planet. The Water planet will now become a level 1 planet. The food planet will remain a level 0 planet.
Later, you can build Food and Water generation buildings so that they dont have to import anything to become (or remain) a level 1 planet, but these buildings cost and require a maintenance.
Hope this quick explanation helps.
Edit: @Mr_PeaCH, note that it is FAR better for you to ship the food to your starter planet and 1 additional Tier 1 resource to it so that you can get a Level 2 planet quickly.
Having 1 x lvl2 planet is much better than having 2 x lvl1 planets
I’ve been trying out The First with 100 planets and 3 Normal opponents.
It was very fun until I hit a performance issue… The game slows to a crawl and I find myself unable to continue due to my PC being unable to handle the calculations.
The CPU says that all my cores are at 100% which is a bummer as the PC I’m playing this on is an Intel i5 3470 3.6Ghz.
Big bummer for playing on larger maps!
EDIT: According to the Steam forums under bug report. The DLC seemed to have introduced some unknown bug at this stage that causes low performance. Hope they get it fixed.
That’s strange, I’ve played a lot of games of 80 systems and six players without issue. This was on a i7 2600. Is there a specific situation that triggers the bug?
Same here, 6 opponents 120-200 systems,no problem…
Hmmm, strange indeed. To avoid my performance problem, I’m playing the Invasion mode without any AI. The game just keeps sending wave after wave of increasing more powerful fleets at you.
Very fun!
Edit: I am now thinking whether it’s because I vassalized a race without any planets left. I think my performance problems happened about then.
Start Ruler for little under 5 bucks. Sale ends in 9hrs.
I fired this up for the first time in a year or so. I hadn’t played with the expansion at all. I replayed the tutorial and got super excited as I reabsorbed how the game works. I started a game with the default settings except I turned off pirates and turned off the reveal entire universe since I like exploring. Started the game and …
… crap I got overwhelmed. I mean, I basically know how to play but when I just get all those solar systems and planets out in front of me with time ticking away (yes I do make use of pause), the diplomacy cards moving along their conveyor belt, the tech web filled with things that I really don’t know what they do - all logic goes to crap and I flail around colonizing planets. I got my home world to level 4, only needing 1 more thing to level 5.
I got psyched when I diplo-stole a planet away from my weakest rival, and barely noticed when he declared war on my soon after. It was then that I noticed my fleet was much much weaker than his and it was essentially game over.
I wish there wasn’t any ship design and the combat was more clear. I want to like this game. It seems like a gem could be hidden within. I have read the excellent stuff cicobuff wrote, so it’s not that I have no idea how to play. Actually I think I won my game I played a year ago. There’s just something about the game so it doesn’t fully click with me.
Sad to hear that. It’s true that sometimes we’re just not in a state to process the complexity and subtleties of a thing with many variables going on. Be it Start Ruler 2 or some other stuff.
Frustrating when that happens. It’s like our minds want to fully understand all the possible variables before we can appreciate it. Some of us are like that.
@robc04, I’ve been thinking about your comment about the tactical battle aspect. I’m in the same situation, as in I cannot fully understand what each component does in terms of battle effectiveness.
Compared to MOO or MOO2’s tactical battles, there’s just so much going on and the effects are unclear.
It does kind of detract from the full enjoyment somewhat. E.g. I end up not exploring the ship design aspect as much as I would have because I have no idea whether it’s just that I have more firepower or that my setup was more efficient that gave me that advantage.
So I ended up with doing the tactical battles the brute force way. Although I occasionally do the warp drive thingie with some fleets so that they can hit the enemy from behind. But that was very easy to understand compared to say the effectiveness of missiles, vs lasers vs cannons etc etc.
Not sure how this can be remedied.
I don’t know if some battle report would be enough or not. Maybe if there was some kind of panel ala Europa Universalis that had some combat feedback. In any case, I just can’t get into it with it so much a mystery to me.
