Space 4x is actually becoming a crowded genre, which would have seemed like a ridiculous prediction a few short years ago. Of the latest batch of mostly indie star-conquering offerings, StarDrive is among those few that sucked me in for a considerable length of time. However, technical and design issues held it back in a lot of areas. The sequel, I was happy to discover, is shaping up to be an almost across-the-board improvement.

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If I had to describe the original StarDrive in terms of well-known space vessels, I’d compare it to the Serenity from Joss Whedon’s Firefly. The passion project of a sole developer, Daniel Dicicco, it felt like it was mostly held together by bag clips and gum. It had a lot of the right ideas about what made classics like Master of Orion 2 fun, but ultimately, the primary buffer panel would go flying off somewhere between the mid-game and your inevitable victory. Like a leaf on the wind, it was swept from center stage without leaving much of a lasting impact. StarDrive 2 , for which DiCicco is still the sole developer, reminds me more of The Citadel from Mass Effect. It’s sleeker and more stable, running on Unity as opposed to the old Microsoft XNA of the original. It has a lot of moving parts, many of which I don’t fully understand the inner workings of yet. And there are still systems that don’t quite mesh together as well as I’d like. But especially for what is (from a design standpoint) still a one-man show, I’m pretty impressed.The biggest moment-to-moment change in how you manage your interstellar empire is that the game has switched from real-time with pause to turn-based. Holding the spacebar can spam multiple turns in a row, creating a sort of facsimile of the smooth passage of time in the original. Movement ranges are in turns rather than time. Income and events tick on turn ends, instead of being constantly in flux. DiCicco says this has allowed him to build a “deeper strategic experience.” At least so far, it seems to do its job well. I feel more like I’m playing Civilization V in space than a really over-complicated version of Sins of a Solar Empire.Space battles now take place in an instanced, real-time environment, not unlike in the Total War series. Two fleets meet on the galaxy map, and are placed into a (so far featureless) pocket of space to duke it out. The typical skirmish involves using point defense ships to stop enemy long-range missiles in their tracks, while trying to get your own warheads to land and flanking with fighters and more agile frigates on targets of opportunity. Vessels are still fully-customizable with a shipload of different modules, and new to this iteration, all ships have multiple zones (weapons, propulsion, command) that can be damaged and destroyed independently.Like in the original, StarDrive 2 lets you pick from a roster of pre-made races, or create your own by selecting from traits like Dumb, Lazy Workers, and Corrupt. Okay, some of them are actually positive. But I mention the negatives first as I ran into an issue regarding them. In an effort to build a race of wolf people who just like to fight and not much else, I discovered that it’s fully possible to design an essentially non-viable race. The right combination of negative traits can leave your economy, and thus your empire, non-solvent on turn one, which is a nearly impossible hole to crawl out of. Especially if all of the planets in your colonization range are full of nothing but asteroids. Damn asteroids.The diplomacy system has also been overhauled since the original StarDrive, and I have to say, the new negotiating mechanics are pretty brilliant. DiCicco has made an effort to be as transparent as possible about what the evil space squid cultists think of you, and why. He’s also gone a long way toward solving a nagging issue in a lot of 4x and grand strategy titles by introducing a diplomatic Tolerance mechanic. Tolerance effectively acts as a cap on how many treaties you can make with a given race at a given time. It’s based on your relations with that race, and once depleted, will slowly recover as turns pass. This prevents the classic tactic of building instant alliances by first offering trade rights, then open borders, then a non-aggression pact, then a defensive pact, and so on until the other race likes you enough to sell you their firstborn children. It’s almost an inversion of the Aggressive Expansion mechanic in Paradox games such as Victoria II and Europa Universalis IV, and I like it a lot.As if all that didn’t sound ambitious enough, StarDrive 2 is also introducing XCOM-style, turn-based ground combat for things like planetary invasions and covert missions. Your race’s infantry units can be refitted with different weapons, armor, and activated abilities to suit different missions, though said customization is nowhere near as deep as that for your fleet. I wasn’t able to spend much time with the ground combat, and I hope it doesn’t end up feeling like an afterthought. At best, it could add an interesting third layer to the galactic bean dip. Because what’s a spacefaring dictatorship without the guac?

T.J. Hafer is an IGN contributor. His knowledge of 4X games is as vast as the galaxy itself. Follow him on Twitter at @AsaTJ