Lord of Rigel News

Greetings Lords of Rigel,

In our next update along with more bug fixes and AI tweaks, we’ll have an “Auto” button in ship designer that auto generates a design using the hull size you selected based on your species’ ship archetypes. You can build these designs, or use them as a base for your own designs. Another upcoming tweak is a new set of filters for the Planets menu to help make outpost and colony planning easier.

A loading/saving system for the build queue is still our next major quality of life feature on the docket for EA1.

This week’s deep dive is one where we want to get more feedback and comments on one of the more challenging parts of LoR to develop: the Tutorial. While an old adage is that all tutorials by nature suck, the issue is what audience is it being developed for and what does it serve.

While working on the tutorial the earliest version was the first time UI menu descriptions (like Master of Orion 1) with some very high-level goals that a player could achieve in rough order (Explore a system, Research a Technology, Colonize a planet) with the high-level goal of first contact with the Katraxi. Tester feedback, especially from those not familiar with 4x games wanted something more tailored with controls being unlocked as the tutorial progressed.

On release, we were surprised that the first thing many 4x game veterans did was beeline to the tutorial and were understandably frustrated by the restricted UI during the tutorial and emphasis on camera controls.

So out of all of this our questions are:
1) What are new players looking for in a tutorial?
Does the heavily guided tutorial work for a first time player new to these games?

2) What are more experienced players looking for in the tutorial?
Do we have other systems (first time UI help) that answer the questions that veteran players have?

Image 1. The Rigelan Probe
Image 2. Human space, Katraxi space, and Rigelan probe pulsar coordinates.
Image 3. Approaching for First Contact

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,

While the patch release itself has been slow we’ve been incorporating more reported issues and quality of life requests. This includes what was announced in the last roundup plus a setting to skip cutscenes and some adjustments that return you straight to the Empire or Planets menu when entering a planet from them, and returning straight to galaxy view when making a new colony.

We’re making more progress on the auto ship design generator and the save/load build queue feature.
EA2 will be focusing more on the AI and tactical. It will also be when we unlock the Tulocks, Synth, and features including the Galactic Council and diplomacy victory.

As for this week’s deep dive:

The Tharrn are a reptilian species meant for aggressive, expansionistic gameplay since they have high population growth and the sapiophage trait. This means they gain population growth and morale by consuming the population of planets they capture. The Tharrn are a religious and ritualized society that views sacrificing these captured people as an honor. These rituals came out of adapting societal solutions for overpopulation before they reached space. Female Tharrn are larger and are the priestesses and warriors, while male Tharrn are smaller and have lower status (for the Tharrn) roles like research and spying. Having a Feudal government gives them bonuses to ship building and a Rich homeworld also gives them a strong starting industrial base, so they can quickly move to take territory. While the Tharrn are aggressive, they can be reasoned with.

Tharrn ships are large and bulky with weapons focused on the front. This reflects their more crude and brute force approach to technology and ship building.

Image 1. Tharrn Diplomat

Image 2. Tharrn Spy

Image 3. Editor view of a Tharrn Destroyer

Image 4. A Tharrn Fleet in Formation

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,

This week we’ve incorporated more bug fixes and QOL adjustments based on feedback.

This upcoming patch:
• Rebellion behavior adjustments- initial rebel message and fixes for rebelling fleets
• Diplomacy demand behavior fixes
• QOL- Duplicate key bindings check

We’re making more progress on the auto ship design generator and build queues, again fixing reported bugs has been our priority.

Another upcoming QOL improvement suggested is adding a skip cutscenes option to game settings. Currently any keypress will skip cutscenes in the game but this would auto-skip scenes when enabled.
Additionally, we’ve been doing some slow but steady AI improvements. Again AI and tactical will be the main focus of EA2 as we unlock the Tulocks, Synth, and features including the Galactic Council and diplomacy victory.

As for this week’s deep dive:

Ground Combat!

Early on we wanted ground combat to keep the same core as Master of Orion 2 where it’d be determined by species traits (combat bonuses, gravity tolerance), technologies, and troop composition. Some species such as the Ornithon have major disadvantages to ground combat while the Katraxi have major advantages. Invasions occur when planetary defenses are down and you have either Troop Transport ships or ships with Troop Pods. Troop Pods let you have combat ships that can do ground invasions.

Species with the telepathic trait can instead opt to use mind control to take over a planet, which is determined by the number of ships they have and the telepathic abilities of the other faction and their population size.

Ground combat is automated but you can see the units move on the landscape and units taking damage. Under the hood combat is split into rounds with different units using their combat rolls for firing and taking damage, with it resolved once a side has been destroyed. The amount of “hits” each unit can take depends on species traits, technologies, and the types of ground units deployed. By default marines generally take one hit while defending heavy armor can take two. Ground units have particle effects for kicking up dust and their thruster glows, and the weapon effects use the same materials based approach as the weapons in tactical.

Once combat is over, if the player the one who’s successfully invaded a planet you’ll see your military advisor give some options for capturing a planet. This will depend in your government type and species traits. Democracies can’t exterminate a population and place one settler of their species there. The Tharrn will consume captured population. Generally though “enculturate” means you capture a planet and the population gets slowly accustomed to the new government that has taken over.

In coming weeks we’ll do more deep dives on species models, other weapon types, and some of the various gameplay mechanics in Lord of Rigel!

Image 1. Invading a planet.
Image 2. Closeup of Ground Combat
Image 3. Closeup of a Human heavy hovertank.
Image 4. Fusion cannon material
Image 5. Capturing a Planet
Image 6. Earth Falls to the Yalkai

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!