Star Ruler, the indie darling 4X space strategy game, continues its evolution today as developer Blind Mind Studios release another large update that fixes a bunch of bugs, changes some odder design decisions, and adds a slew of new features like ship hulls and technologies. Kudos on the update guys, it’s most welcome!

Fixed:

• Fixed an error in the stellar-pedia (Research World description)
• Docking now works in multiplayer
• Fixed research issues in multiplayer
• Re-ordering items in a planet queue now drags the last item of the group.
• Quantum Compressors had no effect on economic storage and ship bays.
• Stealth Hulls now execute their miss logic before their damage absorption.
• Fixed an issue with unicode localizations.
• Ringworlds were boosting both the size and level of structures, leading to epic strangeness.
• Small objects will no longer be cut off so drastically.
• Bussard Ramjets were ignoring the thrust multiplier in settings.txt
• The structure list was behaving weirdly (erratically reordering, removing the wrong level) when removing structures.
• The research queue was failing to save.
• Systems were being sync’d to a slightly different position on the client, which lead to some strangeness.

Changed:

• Object ownership changes are managed differently now, reducing overall bandwidth usage.
• AIs now make liberal use of fighters.
• The default fighter design now uses the Fighter Hull, and has a longer flight time.
• AIs now intelligently queue up designs, leading to less wasted production capacity in games with many systems.
• Redid a significant portion of Sub System base code. Modders will need to redo any modifiers they have created, see the game’s existing modifiers for examples.
• Updated German, Russian, French and Polish translations.
• AIs will be more intelligent about their research.

Added:

• Player names are now matched to their empire in the empire screen in multiplayer.
• A message is now displayed if you fail to connect to a server.
• Added the Fighter Hull, a hull for small ships (scale 1 or smaller) that has the ability to dodge attacks while moving. It is also light, slightly cheaper than normal, but very weak.
• Added an option to enable/disable Vertical Sync.
• Added console command zplane (default 140000) to control the near clipping plane.
• Large ships become rapidly more expensive to build as difficulties in construction lead to massive losses of resources.
• Added a new technology: Mega Construction. Advancing this technology will unlock the Ringworld (with two other techs researched), and reduce the cost of building massive ships.
• Fleet formations (wall, box, escort, wedge).
• Ship stances / engagement orders (“Engage at will”, “Hold position”, “Hold fire”).
• Added new system window with more information, more controls, and multi-system support.
• Added new AI ship designs.
• Owned planets and ships can now be renamed through a button on the info panel. (Not fully supported in multiplayer)

Quite impressive. For those that remember, I recently reviewed Star Ruler and, while I certainly saw the game had its flaws, I could also see the game’s true potential as it evolves through patches over time. Since my review, three significant patches have been released all of which make the game far better than my earlier review. If you haven’t already I strongly urge you to download the demo and give the game a try.

[Blind Mind Studios, Demo]