Space Rangers 2: Reboot Features

I haven't had much time to play around with it myself, but I can start this conversation off at least.

It adds, as you mentioned new ground combat maps, and new text adventures. Theres also a few special event type things that result in a reward for your Ranger as I understand it (its related to your Ship), but I haven't personally experienced that yet.

There are new options at the starbases that allow you to help in their development. For example, you pay a fee, and now have access to the equipment screen of that specific starbase, which allows you to upgrade its weapons, shields, etc. as you would do for your own ship. You just put an item in storage their, and then, when looking at the base's equipment screen, you can use the items in storage to equip the base.

Theres supposed to be a couple more unique artifacts(?) I think, but I haven't really seen anything as of yet. Theres alot of other little tweaks in there, but like I said before, I haven't experienced them all, and since I haven't played SR2 in a while, some of the smaller changes are things I don't even notice are new with the expansion.

All in all though, its totally worth it, I've been enjoying things so far.

i think the most important improvement is the new Search feature. Now you can put filters into your search request for things like hulls that have so many slots or made by a particular race or less than a certain cost. You can search for specific trade goods etc. Makes it much easier to find what you are looking for instead of the old search (which is still there in case you want it). Also, I don't think this was in the original, but now you can have 3 different configs for your ship. So you might have some weapons setup for one situation and different weapons setup for a different situation. On the Ship inventory screen at the top you can click 1,2,3 to quickly switch between your configurations.

Oh, and speaking of the ship screen, you can click a button to expand the cargo hold display so instead of only seeing like 5 items and having to scroll you get this real big window with something like 6x20 squares and some auto-sort buttons to make it easier to dig through your cargo for what you are looking for.

Those options were enough for me

I think you can now sell your micromodules for nodes which I think is a new feature.

Just make sure you download Netriak's modified exe he posted in one of these threads. It fixes a couple of bugs with the new search window and some crashes related to the new high-end unique ships that are available.

You can see a list of some changes that were made by the community leading up to the 2.0 reboot by going here: ..[link="http://elementalgames.com/forum/msg.php?lang=eng&forum=rangers&theme=484&&page=2"]WWW Link[/link]

I'm not certain how specific all of those listed changes are to Reboot, but the 1.4 to 1.7 stuff seems to be the major ones. Again, thats a big list, and as far as its accuracy, down to every individual item, I can't say

It's really better described as a (substantial!) patch than an expansion. There's very little new content overall, but the changes do make it (even) more enjoyable to play.

If you still really enjoy and play the original a lot, then you'll probably get a great deal out of the expansion. If you're fed up with the original and hoping reboot will give the game a new lease of life, then you'd probably be better off saving your money.

I love SR2. One question, though: I was getting ready to buy Reboot and I noticed some references to SR2 CD keys. I don't remember ever having to put one in--I have all three (3 b/c SR1 was included) cool molded jewel cases, the original CD's, the manual, foldout poster, and reference card--and I still can't find a CD key.
I got a new computer and haven't installed SR2 on it yet (it's got 1 GB of video memory and 4 gigs of RAM, so I'm enjoying a little bit of HL2, CoH, and SoaSE right now), will I be asked to input a CDkey? Would be strange, as there is no multiplayer component to the game..

no cd key needed for reboot. But you need to have SR2 installed before installing reboot b/c reboot installs to the same folder.

So if you can install SR2 you should be ok.

Possibly my favourite new "feature" is one I haven't seen mentioned on the official lists - the dom's are much tougher! I'd say roughly 1 level's difference, perhaps even a little more (so, for example, on normal you can now expect the coalition to consistently hold 35-40% without your help rather than 50% in the old version.) On the hardboiled game I started, the coalition were down to 10% within 3 months! I really appreciate this since, having played the game to death, I was getting a bit too good at it. Apparently there's some even tougher levels you can activate in game too (like a cheat code...I suspect the idea is you can use these to ramp up the difficulty later in the game to keep it challenging even when you have great equipment) I haven't dared to try these yet.

Another top new feature is the Tranclucator, the not always so little robot you can get from blackholes and exploring planets. These were in the original version as well, but now are *much* more useful. It can now be ordered to collect items within a system (which I *think* is new) which is *fantastic* for saving you time and a tedious clearing up job after a dominator fight. Just set it going hoovering up all the nodes and items and go about your business. Come back later when it's done for your loot. In addition, you can now control its inventory, which means you can actually make it into quite a potent attacking force as well. It's like wingmen you don't have to wait around for, who won't steal your stuff and whose equipment can be changed without the cumbersome "drop item in space, order specific wingman to pick it up whilst ordering all others to go somewhere else, order him to drop old item for resale" etc, etc.

Tranclucator's are now great (I always used to bin them immediately after I got them before!)

Oh, and grippers are much better now as well. They now include "range", and the more powerful a gripper is the faster it will pull items in. An upgraded microtone gripper has twice the range or more compared to the original game and pulls in items almost comically fast.

There's lots more, but all the new features are along similar lines. They make playing the game much smoother, but they're not really adding substantially *new* things to the game. (A comment, not a complaint...the search function alone has easily saved me $20 worth of my time already!)

yeah I started a game and thought it was broken b/c my gripper wasn't pulling stuff in unless I was basically on top of it. I finally realized that it *was* pulling stuff but it was very very slow--took several days to get a chunk of minerals and was quicker to just fly on top of it while pulling. But small items came at a reasonable speed. Made me immediately start looking for a more powerful gripper. I didn't realize gripper range was a new thing.

I see. Would you call Reboot a true expansion, or merely an add-on or "patch" that adds a few new features without really expanding the game?

I'd have to say somewhere in between. It has more new features than you typically see in a patch and has new content (new adventures etc) that you rarely see in a patch. But it has less new content than you typically see in a true expansion.

But then I think the price is also less than your typical expansion so it is a good buy if you still like the original game.

In the end I just hope it sells well enough for them to make more, or least translate the other games.

As if I'm not mistaken, I do believe a Spance Rangers 3 hit Russia around Fall time of '07, or maybe that was their version of Reboot, called Reloaded, so not sure.. However, if it indeed was a Space Rangers 3, then hopefully we'll see it some day as well

MP

It was Reboot. The team responsible for SR2 disbanded. Reboot itself is actually a community patch.

That's what I thought, it's like a community expansion pack a la PRC or CEP. The "Reloaded" project hit Russia late last year, under, obviously, a Russian name. At that time it was translated as "Reloaded" although the English-language release is now called "Reboot."

yeah the Russian release came with goodies like little Ranger pins and stuff.

ahh doh! , well maybe one day some developer will buy the rights to it or something ..

MP