Lord of Rigel News

Greetings Lords of Rigel!

We’re entering into Early Access 2.

Over the coming weeks the last two playable species the Tulocks and Synth will be added to the game. The Tulocks can live in nearly any environment and do not have food production. The Tulocks are also repulsive, and don’t engage in diplomacy the same way as other species. The Synth are a mechanical species and consume industry instead of food. They also begin as exiles from their home galaxy with a larger starting fleet but needing to colonize a new homeworld. The Synth have major research bonuses and also the creative trait that means they receive all technological applications at once.
Gigantic galaxies (512 stars) will also be available.

We’ll also be adding in diplomatic victories with the galactic council. The council convenes when 2/3rds of habitable planets in a galaxy are settled and votes are determined by population. The faction with 2/3rds majority of votes becomes leader of the council and the Lord of Rigel. You can choose to defy the council and begin the Final War where a war of extermination begins against those that do not accept the ruling of the council.

Some EA2 features being unlocked later will include the Rigelans and Arcturans, the elder races, and the doomsday clock which is a measure of galactic tension which can boil over to the Final War. Certain actions will increase or decrease the doomsday clock and bring the galaxy back from the brink of a second great war.

The focus of EA2 will be on AI optimization and tactical combat. We’ll be adding in behaviors for the autocombat AI that you can select in tactical as well as a chase camera. Some new forms of space terrain other than the existing nebulas may also be added. Also in the works are some additional ground unit models for militia.

Since November we’ve done numerous bug fixes to reported issues along with under-the-hood reworking the end turn sequence, orbital bombardment, ground combat, ship designer, and the core economy. But what quality of life improvements happened over EA1 based on your feedback?

EA1 Quality of Life Features:
• Ship info tooltip
• Auto designed ship indicator
• Autofire toggle in tactical
• Tactical automode using player set formations instead of AI personality
• Tactical combat event log
• Load/Save Build Queues
• Post combat report
• Retreat option in fleet combat menu instead of AI personality based retreat or manual retreat in tactical
• Build queue access in empire menu without loading colony view
• Auto ship design generation in ship designer
• Visual clarity adjustments to fuel and sensor indicators
• Auto-exploring fleet indicator
• Cycling occupied systems or planets in system or colony view
• Build queue constructable building filters
• Planets menu filters
• Empire menu filters
• AI personality type and description tooltip in diplomacy and info screen.
• Weapon range indication in ship designer
• Sharpness graphics setting
• Gamma correction setting
• Hotkey default binding adjustments
• Simple mouse input
• Going to colony view automatically on new colonization
• Shift add for buildings/weapons for multiple items
• Volumetric cloud effects for planet view
• New starfield shader
• New bomb effects
• Offramps in tutorial and more open tutorial goals

As for our future roadmap the core of EA3 will include:
• Custom Species
• Research Victory
• Grand Menaces
• Legendary Galaxies (1024 stars)

Our deep dive this week is on the Tulocks, one of the two new species playable in EA2 and you may recognize them from the game banner! The Tulocks are a silicon based species able to handle hostile environments and do not require food production. Their form of communication is also quite different and so they have limited diplomacy options and tend to be isolationists. The Tulocks that you engage with and see in the game are a mobile polyp form, with their adults becoming sessile and entering a dream-like state. Design wise we wanted them to have a rock like appearance but also a bit like a tunnelling worm with a maw that could easily melt through stone.

With Tulock ship design we wanted it to reflect their large size, a vibe that felt connected to rocks, minerals and dirt as seen with their color scheme and almost rock like profiles, and their ships also being more vertically oriented than most sci-fi designs.



Image 1. Tulock Concept Art



Image 2. Tulock Destroyer



Image 3. A Tulock Soldier

Let us know what further changes you would like to see or if you have encountered any technical issues. Please post on the forums, reach out to us via Discord or send an email: [email protected] Saved games and clear steps to reproduce the bug are critical. It helps us more quickly track down the bug and get it fixed. Additional information on bug reporting tips can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/437440/discussions/.


As always, we appreciate the feedback, conversations, and support from all of you!

Greetings Lords of Rigel!

We’re approaching the end of the road for EA1, and part of the final push is the implementation of our last main quality of life feature: loading and saving build queue presets. Along with this feature there will be some bug fixes for reported issues including Gaia transformation filters for megastructures and improving the space monsters usage of the optimized tactical AI system.

The preset build queue system lets you create and save build orders. These include buildings and support units. Certain items tied to specific star systems (Colony Bases, warp infrastructure, megastructures) aren’t in the build order system and require you to intentionally create them. Building a ringworld is a major effort and does require the attention of the emperor! Saved queues are held in a save file, and can be used between games if there is a certain build order that you like.

Overall, with auto-build, auto-design, colony focus instead of sliders, the planets menu for sending colony and outpost ships, auto-explore, and build queue presets Lord of Rigel has a number of automation tools that let you focus on high level decisions without letting the game outright play itself. These tools should help with end game micromanagement.

Image 1. Creating Preset Build Queues

Image 2. Loading Preset Queues

For this week’s deep dive: star shaders!

We wanted a slightly more naturalistic look for stars in LoR compared to some other 4x games. Like in real time star appearance is set by their temperature and mass. Cooler red stars also have larger solar flares and sunspots and hotter bluer stars have fewer flares and spots. The shader for stars also has a slight effect for “limb darkening” which is that the outer edges of a star or gas giant are darker because there is less gas or plasma that light is passing through. Some slight noise is also used for the convection cell effects but that’s more noticeable just on the edges or around sunspots.
More exotic star types have different materials. Brown dwarves use a modified version of the gas giant shader. White dwarves and neutron stars have an almost featureless core but have particle effects that are stylized and hint at the magnetic fields. Neutron stars also have Einstein rings, distortion caused by their mass. Neutron stars also have a pulse effect in the galaxy and system views to hint at the radiation beams from their poles, but at a much slower rate than most actual pulsars or magnetars for visual purposes.

As we go into EA2 we’ll start going into the two new species, the Tulocks and the Synth and how their gameplay differs.

Image 3. A red giant star in system view

Image 4. Star shader material

Image 5. Neutron Star and Einstein Ring

Let us know what further changes you would like to see or if you have encountered any technical issues. Please post on the forums, reach out to us via Discord or send an email: [email protected] Saved games and clear steps to reproduce the bug are critical. It helps us more quickly track down the bug and get it fixed. Additional information on bug reporting tips can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/437440/discussions/.


As always, we appreciate the feedback, conversations, and support from all of you!

Greetings Lords of Rigel!

We’re working on an update that will involve some cleanup to the order of operations at the end of turns, adjustments to autoturn and key inputs, and making the auto ship designer smarter about ship class use and space use. Some other adjustments include build queue filters considering items you have added to the queue. In the coming weeks we’ll be talking a bit more on what to expect during EA2.

For this week’s deep dive: the Xantus

We wanted the Xantus to fit with the mysterious shape shifting spymaster alien archetype.

Image 1: The Xantus are supreme spies

At the same time their reputation would also mean there would be some consequences for them like economic isolation so this goes into their traits as excellent at espionage but a poorer starting economy. In terms of backstory the Xantus we know of are an offshoot of a superorganism on their homeworld.

Image 2: The homeworld Xanthak

They reproduced how to make a brain and more conventional biology from a crashed ship during the last great war. From that they became self-aware, and also aware of the dangers in the galaxy. Design wise their default form we based a bit on cuttlefish in terms of skin and the eye shape.

Image 3: Xantus head concepts

Image 4: A Xantus researcher

Xantus ships we wanted to feel like stealth craft while keeping flowing forms with hints that the crew might be taking on any shape within it, much like how the Selach ships are fluid filled.

From what we’ve seen the Xantus have been an unexpected hit!

Image 5: Xantus Starship

Let us know what further changes you would like to see or if you have encountered any technical issues. Please post on the forums, reach out to us via Discord or send an email: [email protected] Saved games and clear steps to reproduce the bug are critical. It helps us more quickly track down the bug and get it fixed. Additional information on bug reporting tips can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/437440/discussions/.


As always, we appreciate the feedback, conversations, and support from all of you!