Star Drive 2 Complete Guide WIP

Star Drive 2 Complete Guide WIP

Racial Traits

In this section i'm telling you how good or bad all the traits are.

These are my opinions about them.

+++ Must Have Picks

++ Very good Picks

+ Good Picks

o Okay Picks

- bad Picks

-- Terrible Picks

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+++

- Rich Homeworld

It gives your homeworld +2 production for every worker for only 1 point cost.

Thats amazing since your Homeworld will always be one of your Hotspots.

- Subterran

Increases your max Population on planets by 2-10 depending on the size.

This doubles your max Population on most planet sizes.

It gives tiny and asteroid field a total of 3 pop instead of 1.

You need more food for the people but photosynthese works very well with this.

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++

-Production bonus per worker

More production per worker is very nice and works on all planets.

-Photosynthese

Reduces food consumption to 0,5 per guy.

it works on all planets and the higher the base yield of the farmer the better it gets compared to the flat bonus to food production.

1base food as good as +1 food per farmer

2base food as good as +2 food per farmer

3base food better than +2 food per farmer

The trait also gets better the more food production buildings you get e.g

an soil enrichment can sustain 2 instead of 1 guy per farmer.

Extra Bonus with pollops race tech.(+++ if you use pollops)

- Skilled spacefighters

Increases all ship damage by 20%.

a very nice skill that will help you destroy enemy fleets even faster.

that means less losses and less required to deafeat enemy fleets.

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+

-Skilled engineers

increases ship hitpoints by 25%.

Its a nice skill but since shields are stronger than Armor its not as relevant as the dmg skill.

-Research Bonus

More research per researcher is nice but not good.

you will mostly use researchers on your homeworld and poor planets.

-Pollutin reduction

reduces pollution by 25%

less pollution means more production early on, later on it means less cost because you dont need so many pollution reduction buildings.

- assimilators

you gain an addition tech if you conquer an enemy planet.

its nice to have but early on it does nothing.

- Growth Bonus (++)

increases growth rate.

Now this would actually be a very good skill if the clone center would not exist.

since the clone center does the job better without using your points.

But you can still take it since its atleast a very solid skill.

- Tax Bonus (++)

increases Tax by 50/100%.

a very good trait early on but later on it's not as important because you will have more than enough money anyway so it's the same as the growth bonus it scales between very good and good.

-sacrificer (++)

you can "trade" your guys for money and research points. 50BC and 50 RP double if you use other races population. Also double if you do the questline.

Same as the other 2 above its between very good and good because its helps ALOT in early game but it loses quite some meaning in the late game and it becomes very macrointensive.

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o

- Food Bonus(+)

Increases food per worker.

now i think that this skill is actually good or very good BUT since we have Photosynthese

the skill becomes somewhat redundant because it does the job better than both the +1 and +2.

-Holy land and spirtiuell

increases popularity.

both are okay to have but only if you have some spare points.

High popularity increases your production and research by 10% 20% 30% depending on how high it is.

-creative

gives you all 3 choies in the tech tree.

the basic skill is just amazing but it costs 14 POINTS which is a huge amount of points beeing invested into something else e.g subterran and Photosynthese + another nice 2 point skill.

This makes creative pretty bad or okay at best.

Also considering that most techs can be easily traded via Strategicressources makes it even worse.

- resourcefull

you get the resource bonus with 2 instead of 4.

its okay but since its luck based what Strategicressources you get, its well okay nice to have maybe.

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-

-Good spies

not realy a usefull skill since it doesent help early on and later on the advandage is okay at best.

your going to spamm spies anyway so it will not do much and spies are cheap.

- good military

Ground combat is easy and you dont want to make it any easier and waste points on something you really dont need.

-homeworld with high G

no malus on high G worlds and your ground troops get +10 health.

for 3 points its pretty bad the +10 health is mostly useless and there are not that many high g worlds anyway.

to make things even worse you can reserch this later on. Although you still get the +10 health bonus.

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--

- Bonus to diplomacy

i dont know why anyone would pick this skill right now.

The Ai hates you most of the time anyway and will declare war on you most of the time unless its a good race.

Still in my opinion a terrible skill don't touch

-aquatic

+1food +10 popularity +3 max pop on ozean planets

Now some people might be a bit confused why i rate this skill soooo low there are some reasons.

First it only works on OZEAN planets how many ozean planets are in a 100 galaxy ? 5 or 6 i dont know atleast not many.

Secondly it costs 5 points only 1 less than subterran which is an awesome skill that works on EVERY planet.

Third when you terraform to gaia or terran you LOSE ALL Bonuses

These three things make this skill terrible

- homeworld with low g

terrible stay away it will give you -25 production on all other g types .you can research the low g and high g adaptation but early on prduction is king.

- poor homeworld

giving one of your important planets low production per worker is a terrible world early on this can make you expand to slow.

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Now i did not rate the kybernetic skill because im not 100% sure about this one.

building the charge station early on cost alot of production but midgame or later on it can be pretty powerfull.

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Last but not least i will give you my Favorite custom design for a race.

1. Subterran

2.Photosynthese

3. Skilled spacefighters

4. Rich homeworld

5.25% pollution reduction

6. repulsive

7. clumsy spies

8. timid warriors

Ship Designs


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In this section i will tell you how to design your ships and talk about race hulls.

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Corvette class.

now corvettes are underrated even by me :).

But they can be usefull early game since they dont cost any command points till you have as many as you have command points.

So if you have 10 command points you can have 10 corvettes for free.

most corvettes can only fit 1x1 weapons expect kulrathi and opteris which can fit larger ones.

so the only way to make them good is use the 1x1 rocket weapon give them full engines an some ordnance and you have a decent attack ship in the early game.

thats actually all about corvettets

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Frigat class

in my opinion the one class thats 100% useless and i never used them.

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Cruiser class

the Cruiser class is my MBS (Main Battle Ship)

so how do we design these well my favorite is an all around cruiser .

Artillery is very powerfull early game and even lategame its decent.

so my baseline of building cruisers is to put Artillery in the front with some frontal armor.

Then put 3-2 2x2 rocketpods with increased arc in both sides paired with a flak if you want. now one layer of armor on both sides. i Like to have a good supply of ordnance so you should have about 1000 to sustain a few battles or one larger one.

if you build your cruiser like this you have a powerfull ship with tech thats available form the start.

this cruiser can take on 3 red small crystalls at once and still come out on top.

other races have smaller cruiser but they should atleast all be able to defeat 2 at once.

if you build them similar.

What makes this cruiser so good?

well first the artillery is going to do a good amount of dmg from a long distance and if they come close the rocket pads will shreed the enemy.

the rocket pads also deal with incoming fighters.

the artillery has a low accuracy on long ranges but if you build a fleet academy they will hit quite often.

Another good point about this design is that it is very flexible. you can change the 2x2 rocketpods with flaks, disruptors, laser or any other 2x2 weapon . Which will make it an anti missile-long range Cruiser.

Here are some more cruiser desings for other races

Draylock

opteris

Kulrathi, Opteris, Draylock , Polups, and the wierd tentacle guys have the best cruiser designs.

all of them can fit a command center in it which reduces the comand point cost to 1 Per Cruiser which is amazing. As a bonus it increases the accuracy of your crew by 4 levels with this the low accuracy of long range weapons is mostly forgotten.

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Battleship class

Battleships are large ships that can fit alot of stuff.

For my Battleships i currently use Massdrivers, artillery, 2x2 rocketpads and flaks.

Its basicly a larger version of my cruiser. since the Gaus cannons are now fixed or getting fixed and dont pen shields anymore you can replace most of the armor with other stuff like more shields,weapons etc.

switch to battleships as soons as you research it.

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Titan class

Titan ships are massive ships with huge amount of space you can fit in everything in them what you need.

for my titan i use Gauss cannons some mass drivers 2x2 rockets some 2x2 disruptors as secondary armorment and alot of shields. the picture showes a late game titan.

Use the titan to destroy other larger ships like Cruisers or bigger.

The racial Titan hulls are mostly equally good and are just preference.

I like Draylock/Human/Kulrathi and opteris titans the most.

Note. if you play these tentacle guys be cautious currently there seems to be a bug where their titan is smaller than their battleship.

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General Shipdesign tipps

- Try putting in a Commandcenter or a Bridge

- CP reduction does not stack but the other bonuses do

- Currently shields are better than armor but having some armor is not the worst idea just not as your main defense.

- In Battleships and Titans an engeneeringbay is a must have.

- Use increased arc when possible

- Make sure you have a decent amount of ordnance Cruiser 1000 Battleship 1500 and Titans 2000

if you produce ordnance it can be lower.

- In early ship designs its okay to not have a huge amount of energy surplus

- If possible research fusion engines instead of fusion energy most AI goes for the energy and its a cheap technologie.

- You dont need alot of speed on long range ships if you want to reduce production cost use normal engines.

- Laser pd weapons are only good in masses, flak is solid on its own same goes for ecm 2 are usually a decent rocket defense.

- Early ship designs dont need many mods on their systems

-Kulrathi/Opteris/Draylock/Polops and the tentacle guys have the largest hulls vulfaren the smalles.

-corvettes are free up to your current CP limit

-Use Artillery,Massdriver, Gausscannon for Long Range, Cruise missiles and torpedos for medium range, Disrupters, Antimattercannons,2x2rocketpads and Nullfieldcannons for close range if available.

-Shields you put in the middle Section will shield ALL Quadrants

Walkthrough


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In this Section i will tell you how to get to the midgame.

i will be using the following setup:

Brutal

100 Systems Random

5 opponents

everything else on default

for traits i use:

Subterran

Photosynthese

Rich homeworld

holy land

50%tax increase

repulsive

clumsy spies

timid warriors

Okay so first we look at our home system.

We can see that we have 2 decent planets in it.

We will scout the outer regions with our scout and keep the colony ship in our system for now.

The first Research will be rover-bay since its better than xenomine early game.

queue 1 freighter and 1 colony ship on your home system. Now start scouting for an ultra rich Asteriod belt if you dont find one near you colonize a good planet(atleast abundant or tundra).

i found a good planet with a xeno mine on it perfect for the beginning.

by now you should have researched the Rover bay build this on ANY planet FIRST.

also build it on your homewolrd and put it on top of your queue

Research Aeroponic farm now. put some Researchers to production now so you can finish your Colony ship faster.

Scout the next system within your borders or colonize another system with your new Colony ship.

build the Farm on EVERY Planet as SECOND. queue one or more Colony ships up after these 2 buildings finished. Research the Research lab and build it on EVERY planet as third building.

Keep expanding and go for Cloning center as next technologie.

Now what i do is build the cloning center in my home system or any system with alot of planets and then transfer population to other planets to get my stuff runing faster. Dont forget do use your Bc to build the Rover bay faster.

i colonized quite some planets and found some threats like pirates and remnants.

Now its time to build some Cruisers

I will be using this one for now. i'm building 2-3 of them for now so i can take care of the remnants etc. the next researches i'm going to do are Imperialbank->Solararmor->Fusion Engines->Plasma Fuel Cells->Mass Driver->Shields class 1.

Now i discovered the Chukk.

Not really the best race to find first but anyway most of the time you should have enough strategic ressources by now to get a peace treaty sadly i do not but they did not declear war on me yet.

The next Research will be Plassteel->Orbitalshipyards-> Automated-Factory-> Main engeenering-> Disruptors->Planetary Supercomputer-> Antimatterreactor.

Pirates seem to be attacking me now but i have a starbase and one cruiser no real problem just DON'T do auto battle cause its flawed especially on pirateships.

Build shipyards on your high production worlds like your homeworld.Imperialbanks are really good cause they dont cost any maintenance and give a credit boost so build them everywhere.

A master fleet also attacks me i play a little cat and mouse to until they leave.

Try trading Fusion energy and Soil enrichtment from other races.

If you do then stop building the first Cruiser Designs and build those.

i got extremly lucky and found a swamp ultra rich large planet it was guarded by some pirates, now thats what i call a treasure.

with 2 cruiser you can kill most of the planet guardians for more insurance use atleast 4.

i also discovered the humans currently they are very small but they dont pose a threat yet, only the chuck decleared war on me but by giving them one artifact ressource i got a peace treaty, soil enrichment and fusion energy a perfect deal. For Me :D.

now you should be at mid or late-early game my galaxy map looks like this now.

Thats it for this walkthrough.

Keep trading your strategic ressources for peace and tech until you can kill someone.

And then conquer the Galaxy with your superior Ships and Ground Troops Good Luck.

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General Tipps

-Food Surplus is a good way to get a high income but you can only get as many BC+ as you have population on that planet.

So if you have 10 population and you have +15 food you will only get +10 BC.

-Expanding is important in the early-midgame

-You can go over you CP-Limit but each point will cost 5BC per turn

-You can increase your Tax to get a BC Boost

-Pollution can cause your farmable worlds to produce 0,5 less food per Worker. try having 10-15 pollution at MAX on your Farm Worlds it depends on the size of the planet.

-Strategic Ressources are a great for trading since you get them back after 50 turns. Some are worth more than others it ranges from 100-2000

-Try ignoring Master fleets play Cat and mouse if possible to keep them away from destroing freighters and starbases

-NEVER use Auto Battle for Shipcombat(i lost 6cruiser+starbase against 1pirat frigate and 2 corvettes)

-Peace Treaty are most of the time easy to get and give you 25Turns to prepare

- Vulfen,Chukk, Opteris and tentacle guys will be very hostile dont try to be their friends it doesent work. Humans, Draylock,Kulrathi will be rather neutral compared to the other 4. Pollops will rarly declear war on you.

-Use 1% Tax as standard don't be afraid to set it to 50% though you can rush buildings easy with that much money and grow faster even later in the game.

-Terraformer is the BEST lategame Tech in the game. Every planet will be a moneyprinter.

- Try to get Fusionpower, Soil enrichment, Xenomines by trading rather than researching it yourself.

-Strateguc ressources are excellent for trading since you get them back after 50 turns and they can be worth up tp 2000 which is enough for any early Tech.

-You can garrison your fleets by sending them near planets.This will reduce CP cost.

-Pollution reduces production

-Specialize planets after you build up your infrastructur for example poor planets should have the imperial university and all the guys should do research.

-

Racial Techs

In this Section i will give you an overview of all the racial specific tech.

Racial Techs order is random so the techs you get could appear in another order.

*work in progress*

Note. if you know some of the blank techs you can contact me and tell me so i can complete it.

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Draylock

1. Unsavor Cantina

+15% Approval

5BC per Turn

2. Defensive Mine System

Spawns mines as defense

1BC per Turn

3. Tempel of brutality

Infantry Build on planets with this building get twice the Meele dmg

0 Bc per turn

uniqe only one per empire

4. Blueshift Lasers

Laser are blue and ?stronger?

5.Galacta Net

1 Researchpoint produces an additional point for every other Galacta Net

1 Bc per turn

6. Efficant propellant

all Missiles gain 50% additional Range

7.Doctrin of speed

Dralock ships are 25% faster

8. Hall of heroes

Heroes will come twice as often and can be hired for free with no BC cost per turn

9. Doctrin of distance

Missiles get a 50hp boost

10. House of lies

+1 sping for spies build on planets with this building

7BC per turn

11.House of Whispers

+10 Approval from other races

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Humans

1.Defensive Mine System

Spawns mines as defense

1BC per Turn

2. Spy hunters

+1 sping for Defense spies

3. Profit motive

Doubles tolerance

4.Hall of Heroes

Heroes will come twice as often and can be hired for free with no BC cost per turn

5. Wallstreet

gain a 1% interest on your BC treasure amount is reduced if you use taxes, at 25% taxes you get nothing.

6.Efficant propellant

all Missiles gain 50% additional Range

7.Unsavor Cantina

+15% Approval

5BC per Turn

8.Blueshift Lasers

Laser are blue and ?stronger?

9.Tempel of brutality

Infantry Build on planets with this building get twice the Meele dmg

0 Bc per turn

uniqe only one per empire

10.Galacta Net

1 Researchpoint produces an additional point for every other Galacta Net

1 Bc per turn

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Opteris

1.Defensive Mine System

Spawns mines as defense

1BC per Turn

2.Hall of Heroes

Heroes will come twice as often and can be hired for free with no BC cost per turn

3.Smar-Link

+6 damage for ranged weapon if equipped

4. Unsavor Cantina

+15% Approval

5BC per Turn

5.Blueshift Lasers

Laser are blue and ?stronger?

6.Tempel of brutality

Infantry Build on planets with this building get twice the Meele dmg

0 Bc per turn

uniqe only one per empire

7.Swarm-tactic

Increases fighter and heavy fighter per bay by 1

8.Galacta Net

1 Researchpoint produces an additional point for every other Galacta Net

1 Bc per turn

9.Hall of Heroes

Heroes will come twice as often and can be hired for free with no BC cost per turn

10. prefabricated colonists

+1Pop on colonization

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Kulrathi

1.Defensive Mine System

Spawns mines as defense

1BC per Turn

2.Hall of Heroes

Heroes will come twice as often and can be hired for free with no BC cost per turn

3.Master Armorer

Meele Units get +3 Shields on planets with this building

0BC per turn

4. Unsavor Cantina

+15% Approval

5BC per Turn

5.Blueshift Lasers

Laser are blue and ?stronger?

6.Tempel of brutality

Infantry Build on planets with this building get twice the Meele dmg

0 Bc per turn

uniqe only one per empire

7.Feral instinct

Ground troops can trade hp for actionpoints

8.Galacta Net

1 Researchpoint produces an additional point for every other Galacta Net

1 Bc per turn

9.BearZenDojo

Ground troops that are stationed on a planet with this building for one turn get the ability to take 50% meele dmg.

10.Efficant propellant

all Missiles gain 50% additional Range

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Pollops

1.Defensive Mine System

Spawns mines as defense

1BC per Turn

2. Pollop Armor

Hp/cost same as Steel but weights a bit less.

Also regenerates 2hp/sec per tile so 1 tile=2hp/s 2x2tile=8hp/s 3x3=18/hps

3.Sonarium

+15 Aproval

2BC per Turn

4. Unsavor Cantina

+15% Approval

5BC per Turn

5.Blueshift Lasers

Laser are blue and ?stronger?

6.Tempel of brutality

Infantry Build on planets with this building get twice the Meele dmg

0 Bc per turn

uniqe only one per empire

7.Solarium

+0,5 Food per Population wih the Photosynthese perk

3BC per Turn

8.Galacta Net

1 Researchpoint produces an additional point for every other Galacta Net

1 Bc per turn

9.Hall of Heroes

Heroes will come twice as often and can be hired for free with no BC cost per turn

10.Efficant propellant

all Missiles gain 50% additional Range

11.Battle-Skrodes

gives your pollop ground troop +1speed +10HP

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Chukk

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vulfar

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Ralyeh theocracy

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cordrazine Collective

1.Defensive Mine System

Spawns mines as defense

1BC per Turn

2.Hall of Heroes

Heroes will come twice as often and can be hired for free with no BC cost per turn

3. Unsavor Cantina

+15% Approval

5BC per Turn

4.Blueshift Lasers

Laser are blue and ?stronger?

5.Tempel of brutality

Infantry Build on planets with this building get twice the Meele dmg

0 Bc per turn

uniqe only one per empire

6.Galacta Net

1 Researchpoint produces an additional point for every other Galacta Net

1 Bc per turn

7.Hall of Heroes

Heroes will come twice as often and can be hired for free with no BC cost per turn

8.Armor-Armor

increases all ship module hp by 10%

9. Owlok-Treehouse

+10% approval

2 BC per turn

10.customized pheromones

+10 approval by all other races

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Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=437194478					

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