History VideoGame / SpaceRangers

* LimitedLoadout: No ship (not even Dominator bosses) can have more than five weapon slots, more than four artifact slots, and more than one slot for each other equipment type (one per type). Most generic ships have even less than that (military ships tend to miss gripper; civilian transport is unlikely to have more than 1 weapon slot; and so on).
* LodgedBladeRecycling: Stabbing the Maloq prince in the eye with a fork during the "Banquet" quest will result in him pulling the fork right out, then taking an eye for an eye.

*** Once you get recruited into the cult, you're knocked with the Durdom-2 show (which translates to "Nuthouse-2"), which drives you crazy with how inane it is. It is an obvious reference to the Russian reality show Dom-2, which is infamous for having lots of drama and conflicts between the participants, with a huge hatedom perceiving it as being full of crazy people.

*** The name itself clearly refers to Jehovah's Witnesses, a denomination of Chistianity
*** Once you get recruited into the cult, you're knocked with the Durdom-2 show (which translates to "Nuthouse-2"), which drives you crazy with how inane it is. It is an obvious reference to the Russian reality show Dom-2, which is infamous for having lots of drama and conflicts between the participants, with a huge {{Hatedom}} perceiving it as being full of crazy people.

* VigilanteMan: Civilian ships (even liners) tend to be very eager to fight pirates, gladly joining [[TorchesAndPitchforks the lynching]] even if the pirate didn't yet do anything wrong. If you piss off civilians, they will also turn hostile to you and take potshots if you pass by them, though they generally don't tend to give chase.

** The planetary battles never account for what types of Dominators actually were in the system before you received the system (only that there were any), and even whether some of the Dominator factions are still active or not, resulting in you sometimes receiving missions where you have to fight supposedly defeated Dominator series or two.

* DisproportionateRetribution: Hitting the guard's booth with the crowbar in the "Ministry" quest will result in him grabbing a plasma shotgun and trying to kill you, instead of calling the police or trying to detain you, even though the booth didn't have any dent in it. Just to make it weirder, he won't be offended if you punch his booth

* BadassBystander: All traders, diplomats and passenger liners are armed and tend to help each other. It's not uncommon to see an unfortunate pirate fleeing from the ship he was trying to mug, constantly hailing his pursuer and offering money for leaving him alone.

* ZergRush: The pirate clan lacks access to the Coalition's flagships and rangers, or the larger ships and bertors of the Dominators. However, as every ship of theirs is a combat one, they often overwhelm the Coalition via sheer numbers.

** Joining the Pirate Clan for the first time provides you with a free unique ship, which is very likely to be vastly superior to what you start with.

* GuideDangIt: Many of the text adventure segments of the second game completely lack obvious hints, or even hints at all, about how to get through them, necessitating either brute-force trial and error or a guide.
** For instance, the "Megatest" quest demands you to pass a Ranger exam, and several of the questions in there demand you to go back to the first game and its quests. A few other questions also don't have clear answers stated in the game, meanwhile, such as the one that asks you to choose a correct line for a Maloq song, and another that asks how to greet a peleng (which, even with sufficient info, has you choose between a handshake or [[BadassArmfold folding your arms on your chest]] and nodding, the latter being correct). This is even [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in the quest itself, as Ranger trainees consistently fail to pass it.

** Trader rating is increased via honest trading activities - selling legal trade goods at a profit, funding business centres, taking out loans and paying for them, and turning in Dominator parts at science stations.

* {{Cap}}: The maximum amount of money you can have is one hundred millions credits.

* NonCombatEXP: In the sequel, besides combat, one can obtain experience via delivery and text quests, turning in nodes (although it's produced as the result of combat, you can scavenge it from battlefields), trading at a profit while avoiding bad deals, and funding the construction of ranger centres at the business centre.

* PoliceAreUseless: Each Coalition planet has its own armed peacekeeping fleet, but it is rarely deployed for day-to-day peacekeeping -- which is why you often get missions to patrol a system against pirates for a few months. The fleet will sometimes scramble to take down wanted pirates, but most of the time they stay down on the planet and there is no way to call for their assistance.
** If a planet doesn't like you personally, they're more likely to send their ships to hunt you down just for being nearby, instead of the raiding pirates in question.

* CriticalEncumbranceFailure: [[AvertedTrope Averted]], as extra weight (including that of the hull itself) does slow down your ship. That said, just one unit of excess cargo and [[SpaceFriction your ship isn't going anywhere]].

* DeflectorShields: Defensive field generators reduce the damage a ship receives by a percentage, and also block the use of scanners.
* DevelopersForesight: One Pirate Clan's story quest involves you being sent after pirate named Makarov. If he lands on the planet, he would be arrested and sentenced to 100 years in prison, requiring plan "B" to take him out right on the planet. If you instead try to actually wait it out, he would die in prison after 75 years; it ''would'' count as success due to LoopholeAbuse, but the pirates would get angry at you (not only did you waste a lot of time, but Makarov snitched on everyone whom he knew), and refuse to give any extra rewards.

* DiscOneNuke: Missile launchers do a respectable amount of damage, have a very large range, and damage-increasing micromodules tend to effectively double their collective damage. The only drawback is their limited ammo, but expect to rely on missiles to both AlphaStrike targets and kite slower enemies while chipping them until more ships make use of DamageReduction.

** Many micromodules provide both benefits and negatives. For example, Klein (a level 3 micromodule) amplifies the firepower of select weapon... at the cost of reducing its range.

* VideoGameCrueltyPunishment: Indulging too much in violent crime will eventually result in an [[WhatTheHellPlayer angered message]] that causes you to lose experience, along with the possibility of receiving [[MedalOfDishonor bad medals]] for doing so. If you're part of the Coalition, you'll also lose points towards progressing to the next rank.

** Couple cheats (both pirates-themed) have [[DoubleEdgedBuff negative side effects]], subtly punishing the player for cheating (these specific ones boost firepower), by severely dropping everyone's opinion on the player (by 50-60%); one of them (called "Sell the soul" in-game) also turns you into pirate, even if you had other personality before.
** In the first game, and early versions of second one, there was limit on how many cheats you can use; all of them have a cost in certain "cheat points", which you slowly accumulate at the rate of 1 point per day spent without cheating; using the cheat resets the counter. The price ranges from 10 from couple of dozens for weaker ones, to few hundreds for "major" ones (like equipment size reduction). The second game eventually scrapped that system. Additionally, HD version removed cheat codes for planetary battles, as the game has no means to track you cheating there, and thus disqualify unfair playthroughs from going to the leaderboard.

* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: You can spend money to repair your reputation at planets. Even if a planet's military is hostile towards you, you can contact one of their ships and offer money to end their hostility. This can be even used to get rid of ''murder charges''.
** In particular, it's possible to use business centres to donate to the victims of the war. This improves relations with all planets, [[RefugeInAudacity even if you're part of the Pirate Clan and thus responsible for creating the war's victims]].

** Maloqsoft is a software company that produces really crappy software.
** Linux is the name of a planet, as well as the name for superior software.

** There are couple of references to virus called "Windows," with anti-virus software being called "Linux".
** There's an IT company called "[[ShoutOut Maloqsoft]]", which frequently gets referenced across the game; it's the main supplier for various Maloq structures, military included, and, in [[DumbMuscle true Maloq fashion]], produces software that's cumbersome, primitive, vulnerable and badly-optimised, but still popular amongst Maloqs due to the fact that even they can understand it (that, and patriotism).

* WhatTheHellPlayer: Killing too many civilian and military ships will eventually result in you being sent a message that calls you out for not acting like a proper Ranger, along with either a loss of experience or being [[MedalOfDishonor "awarded" a medal]].