Sell (or Unsell) Me on Sword of the Stars

[CarpeGuitarrem]

So, Sword of the Stars: Complete Edition is on sale (http://store.steampowered.com/app/42890/) on Steam. And I've heard some of it, the gameplay looks interesting, and there's some promising things from the reviews.

So what does the Playground think? Must-buy at this price? Something I can afford to miss?

For some reference, I loved Total War and Majesty, not so much a fan of the Starcraft/Warcraft RTS micro. I'm coming around to Civilization, now that I understand the flow of the economic engine, and I'm coming to appreciate its micro a lot better.

[Smight]

i think best way to decide is to watch a LP of the game or at least some of it here is one I would recomend
http://www.youtube.com/user/GetDaved#p/c/FA923EBF89341255/0/4gGZQ0lI6k4

also sequal comes out next week

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Thanks for the link, looks like something I'll be watching through for a bit. Might also pick up the demo.

[Alaris]

I have a small group of friends (IRL) that play it on a semi-consistent basis. I play Liir, one of them players human, and the other players Hiver. They each have their own kind of... playstyle, and it's all very interesting.

The only problem I'd say the game has is that.. well, it's game you have to set a day aside for. You're going to want plenty of time to play, plan, build, etc. You probably won't even finish your game in one day. It's a time sink if I ever saw one.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Is the game something that you can't play in small chunks? I've played Civ II, Civ III, Civ IV, and Medieval: Total War I and II, and those all take a good chunk of time to play and finish. I never play any of them in one sitting, but spread out over days or weeks.

[Alaris]

You can play it in chunks if you wish. It has a save/load function, not very difficult to do so. Just stating my preference with my friends. We usually set a day aside and barrel through tons of turns in it.

[warty goblin]

I've tried the demo multiple times, and every time come away convinced not to spend money on the full product. On the other hand people tell me that SoTS has a very bad demo compared to the full game post expansions, so its value as a data point is perhaps limited at this point. Still, there is a demo and you could try that.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Well, seems there's a Complete Edition demo, so I got that, and so far I'm really enjoying the setup. I think it's a game just up my alley. I like how it streamlines things, and kills the micro that's in similar titles, while not getting rid of the strategy.

Though on the bad side, the art's not terribly great. (Mainly in the 2D art department, the 3D isn't actually that bad. And the GUI is so-so.)

[Airk]

I love it and don't think you should even CONSIDER NOT spending $5 for it. I mean, seriously. The amount of content in the game is enormous.

I find it odd that people would say that it has a bad demo - maybe one of the early demos was no good, but the one I played after Born of Blood came out sold me on the game really fast. It wasn't a great demo, I suppose, from the "teach you all the complexities of the game" standpoint, but it was more than enough to show me all the cool bits, and if I sortof didn't understand how to pick the best planets and how to grow them, well, learning that is part of what makes the game interesting to keep playing.

Carpe: If you like the demo, BUY THE GAME. (Also, what 2D art? The loading screens?) I thought the UI was pretty good, myself, though a couple of features were lacking.

Warty goblin: What about the demo is leaving you saying anything other than "This is an awesome space 4X game that I should buy right away?" o.O

[warty goblin]

Warty goblin: What about the demo is leaving you saying anything other than "This is an awesome space 4X game that I should buy right away?" o.O

The voicework, the interface, the battles, my traditional dislike of TBS/RTS hybrids, the 3D galaxy, pretty much the whole deal really.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I love it and don't think you should even CONSIDER NOT spending $5 for it. I mean, seriously. The amount of content in the game is enormous.

Carpe: If you like the demo, BUY THE GAME. (Also, what 2D art? The loading screens?) I thought the UI was pretty good, myself, though a couple of features were lacking.

Sounds cool. :smallcool:

The 2D art I rather disliked was the loading screens and the "leader head" art...it just doesn't strike me as terribly polished, and more befitting, say, the comic-book feel of Freedom Force. I also felt that the way the GUI looked was rather bland in some ways, mostly when it came to the display panes.

But those were minor, minor complaints compared to the rest.

[Airk]

The voicework, the interface, the battles, my traditional dislike of TBS/RTS hybrids, the 3D galaxy, pretty much the whole deal really.

I guess I could see the voicework (Though it varies a ton by race), but c'mon, really? The interface? It's entirely functional, and really pretty elegant in its effectiveness.

You sound, truthfully, like someone who tried the game, had a hard time with the 3d space and the battle controls, and gave up. Which is your perrogative, I suppose (Though technically you're not required to ever manually run a battle.), but I'd consider it your loss. But at the same time, if this is the impression you have from the demo, you might as well save your money, because the game isn't for you - NONE of the stuff you cite is what I would have called an "issue", and clearly, the developers agree with me, since all this stuff has persisted across four revisions of the game. (Though they did introduce a flat galaxy map for people who just can't cope with the 3D for some reason.)

I never had any problems with the art, such as it is. I'm not sure what you mean by "polished" unless you mean "realistic", which is a style decision, not a point of quality. There's nothing wrong with, say, the proportions and whatnot. Maybe you'd do better to think of the loading screens as "concept art"?

[Impnemo]

Sounds cool. :smallcool:

The 2D art I rather disliked was the loading screens and the "leader head" art...it just doesn't strike me as terribly polished, and more befitting, say, the comic-book feel of Freedom Force. I also felt that the way the GUI looked was rather bland in some ways, mostly when it came to the display panes.

But those were minor, minor complaints compared to the rest.

To be fair, you're not entirely wrong. It isn't AAA polished. It was done by a small team, what was it 5 people? You can get new art, or make your own if youre into that sort of thing.

Its vast, its heady, its unpredictable, with replay value like you rarely see these days. I never buy games on release day. I'm making an exception for SotS 2.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

A team of 5?? Whoa......

[Grif]

Okay, I'm sold.

Going to get this later.

[Rhydeble]

Wait, I don't understand something, how can you NOT like the voices? MY QUEEEEEEEEEEEN!

[Drasius]

Buy it right now! Not only does it cure cancer and bring world peace, it is also a time machine as many, many hours can pass by in what seems like minutes at most. What more could you ask for?

It's kinda like Civ, but with RTS battles involving massive spaceships with a wide and customiseable array of weapons. You can set the computer to bettle things out for you, byut why would you want to when you can command dreadnoughts bristling with atomic missiles, anti-matter cannons, Graviton beams, rail guns, shields, deflectors, anti missile defense, photon torpedos, cloaking, many flavors of laser (ranging from anti missile through to anti capital ship), drones, mines, bio weapons, siege weapons that fire asteroids, the list goes on.

The first couple of times you play it, the 3D sphere map will make your brain hurt, but if you play some of the others, then come back to it, it's not really a problem. Some of the voices irk me, some don't, but you have 5 very, very distinct playstyles so you will find something that appeals to you and the tech tree is random to an extent, such that no 2 games play out to same, not to mention the large and small random events that crop up throughout the game. Please note that you can turn off the random tech tree and/or the random events if you so wish.

You can play for 10 minutes or you can play 12+ hours a day (the latter is surprisingly easy to do by accident when you only realise it's morning cause the sun comes up). There is no ultimate solution, everything has a counter (though sometimes you can get pretty boned by the randomness).

There are alliances, tradeing systems, diplomacy, research, growth and infrastructure to manage, though most bar growth and research can be ignored for the most part if you so chose as they will eventually get up to speed.

In short, it's awesome buy it now.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Sounds nice. It'll take a bit for me to get a handle on everything (I've been autoresolving, because I'm still learning the battles via baby steps), but this does promise to have a lot of depth, minus annoying factors of micro.

And actually...the 3D is really easy for me to wrap my head around. I LOVED it the first time I saw it. I must've spent a decent amount of time just flipping the map around. I think that might be due to the fact that I've worked some in a 3D modeling program, so I was very used to the "there is no ground" mindset. That, and I probably have a mind geared towards spatial intelligence.

[Airk]

The first trick to learning the battles is to understand what the icons do.

The icons in the upper LEFT are the "fleet" icons. They dictate behavior for all ships not given other orders.

The icons in the upper RIGHT are the "currently selected ships" icons. They dictate behavior for the currently selected ships only.

Also, when ships are in any behavior mode OTHER than normal, manual move commands do NOTHING. Don't make the mistake of say, setting a ship to "Close and attack" and then getting frustrated because it's not listening to where you tell it to move to. You told it to close and attack, so it's going to do that. You CAN, however, give ships in all behavior modes TARGETS, so you can tell that ship which enemy you want it to close with.

The "S" key is the keyboard hotkey for "stop". Pressing this will set the selected ship(s) to 'normal' movement, and remove any movement orders, causing them to come to a stop as rapidly as possible... and once they are stopped, they will orient themselves on their target according to their orientation orders (There are three "Face target", "Broadside to target" and "Face destination".). It's also important to note that it's much, much easier for ships to hit things with heavier weapons (ESPECIALLY non-turret mounted weapons like Heavy Combat Lasers) if they are stationary, so if you're having problems hitting the opposition, try moving your ships into position, giving them a target, and hitting "S".

[warty goblin]

The first trick to learning the battles is to understand what the icons do.

The icons in the upper LEFT are the "fleet" icons. They dictate behavior for all ships not given other orders.

The icons in the upper RIGHT are the "currently selected ships" icons. They dictate behavior for the currently selected ships only.

Also, when ships are in any behavior mode OTHER than normal, manual move commands do NOTHING. Don't make the mistake of say, setting a ship to "Close and attack" and then getting frustrated because it's not listening to where you tell it to move to. You told it to close and attack, so it's going to do that. You CAN, however, give ships in all behavior modes TARGETS, so you can tell that ship which enemy you want it to close with.

The "S" key is the keyboard hotkey for "stop". Pressing this will set the selected ship(s) to 'normal' movement, and remove any movement orders, causing them to come to a stop as rapidly as possible... and once they are stopped, they will orient themselves on their target according to their orientation orders (There are three "Face target", "Broadside to target" and "Face destination".). It's also important to note that it's much, much easier for ships to hit things with heavier weapons (ESPECIALLY non-turret mounted weapons like Heavy Combat Lasers) if they are stationary, so if you're having problems hitting the opposition, try moving your ships into position, giving them a target, and hitting "S".
Now you see that - that's just the sort of info a demo should have.

[Trinoya]

I highly recommend the game if you like anything that is going to be engaging and rewarding when you (finally) win.

On the other hand, the game does not understand the concept of fair for the most part. It will have no problem throwing you into the fire, and loading the **** on top.

The big thing to remember: It's gonna take you a bit of time to learn everything. Every weapon in the game has a purpose for why it exists, and no one weapon is bad. Deadly accurate guns can be used to shoot off the weapons of an enemy ship, while higher tier weapons may prevent ships from even moving while shaking it so violently that their weapons fall off.

Also: Random. Boss. Encounters. It's pretty awesome.

[Gaius Marius]

I bought this game twice, and just pre-ordered the next version.

Enormous replayability. It's fun (but tedious, but fun!) to send a single destroyer trying to pick the active weapons of a derelict to salvage it, dodging it's MASSIVE firepower...

The pleasure in finally crushing the Silicoid is also orgasmic is they caused you trouble in the past. And you really feel like the desperate Narn sometimes when a uberwarship that is centuries ahead of you, technologically, jumps near your homeworld or main military worlds.

You throw everything you have at it... And you pray.

I once accidentally wiped a Liir world. Until the end of the game, I played a recreation of the Earth/Minbari war. Except they didnt stopped a the end...


Seriously, no mod for B5 for this game? There is nothing that reflects better the disparity of technologies...

[Grif]

Almost finished downloading the thing.

Damn, you guys are getting me hyped for this.

(I been looking for a 4X space game to get into for so long.)

[Rockphed]

My biggest problem with SotS is the small scale of space battles. I never played any of the expansions, but 6 dreadnaughts is not a space battle worth watching. 20 dreadnaughts would be worth watching. Or 50 destroyers. Or 200 frigates. The fleets and the poorly explained controls mean I have only played a few games.

My other problem was the lack of depth. The tech tree is about 6 technologies deep. Compared to Space Empires or Gal Civ, which both have between 20 and 50 technologies between "just starting out" and "we have leet hax that will pwnz all your dogs", the technology seemed really barren. Also, you cannot steal foreign drive techs.

End game I found that the best tactic as humans was to build a bunch of node missiles and just nuke enemy planets from orbit. Such removed the annoying planetary missiles and often allowed me to also nuke some of the planetary defenses before the enemy ships closed.

Finally, I didn't like how hivers had the same pop caps as humans who had the same pop caps as sentient psychic dolphins. Hivers were billed as winning through sheer weight of ships. Unfortunately, unless they had half the galaxy to themselves, they tended to be too easily dispatched.

I found it fun, but the maps I played too way, way too long.

[Martok]

My views on SotS are similar to Rockphed's. The game is lacking in depth (in addition to the underwhelming tech tree, I miss my colony development options), and the battles are far too small to be satisfying.

Ultimately, I suspect that I'm simply not the type of player Sword is geared towards. The game is a good concept and has a solid design, but it doesn't quite hit my personal "sweet spot" when it comes to 4x titles. I prefer more robust fare, such as Armada 2526 or Distant Worlds.

[Grif]

Any tips for a player just getting into the game?

The sheer amount of statistics and what-not is really par for the course for these kind of games, but I really want to know what all those numbers mean. And all those concepts.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Any tips for a player just getting into the game?

The sheer amount of statistics and what-not is really par for the course for these kind of games, but I really want to know what all those numbers mean. And all those concepts.
Well, there's a tutorial that's helping some. Here's what I've found to be the basic flow of play...


Build up some ships to protect your homeworld (Armor).
Hit "R" to choose an initial research target.
Build an Extended Range ship to start scouting worlds.
When you find a world with a low Climate Hazard (say, 200 or less), send a colonizer.
Colonize the world, and then use Terraforming to reduce the Climate Hazard to 0 and Infrastructure to build up the planet's Infrastructure to 100.


That was pretty much my early game. Then enemies started appearing, and I started building fleets of ships. The other important thing to know is the fuel/range ratings on ships. These are paired up with a slash, such as 9/9. The first is how much distance the ship can go without a tanker alongside it. The second is how long of a jump the ship can make in a move. Some jumps are too long for some ships. That's why the Extended Range is so valuable: it has a range that's three times that of many of your other ships.

(P.S. this is all info gleaned from my Human play. No word on other races.)

[Impnemo]

Humans can be one of the more difficult races because of the randomness of nodelines. That said, they have speed in abundance early, make use of it. Explode out of the gate exploring and colonizing. Depending on how you set up the game you may want to focus on the early industrial/computer techs, like waldo units, for your first researches. Absolutely do research ftl economics. Prioritize colonizing lower hazard worlds over larger worlds over resource rich worlds. Don't colonize with just one ship, send 10+ at a time. Depending on the hazard rating of the new world you may adjust the slider more towards terraforming (high hazard) or infrastructure (low).

[Grif]

Humans can be one of the more difficult races because of the randomness of nodelines. That said, they have speed in abundance early, make use of it. Explode out of the gate exploring and colonizing. Depending on how you set up the game you may want to focus on the early industrial/computer techs, like waldo units, for your first researches. Absolutely do research ftl economics. Prioritize colonizing lower hazard worlds over larger worlds over resource rich worlds. Don't colonize with just one ship, send 10+ at a time. Depending on the hazard rating of the new world you may adjust the slider more towards terraforming (high hazard) or infrastructure (low).

Heh heh. I think I'm getting the hang of this game.

Being humans is fun, if a little unpredictable. I setup my game to Easy AI and 50% random encounters. So far so good. Allied with a fellow human on an Arm map. Since we both are starting in the middle, we're just expanding towards each end, one for each side.

None of those Grand Menaces yet, for which I should be thankful.

Also, is it me, or PD is excessively powerful? It dead stops any missiles and makes planetary invasion sooooooo much easier. Now I'm trying to figure all these different weapons. So. Many. To. Choose. From. (Currently using Mass Drivers/Missiles combo.)

[Impnemo]

Don't know if I'd call it excessive. Consider, without it, get your fastest ships loaded with missiles and you can kite any other weapon loadout easily. There are some things missiles can do to overcome PD, multiwarhead missiles etc, and don't underestimate the loss of damage from those turrets, or even whole ships if you bring dedicated PD.

Mass drivers and missiles have the benefit that future research can make existing ships more powerful, energy weapons rarely get such a boon. That said, go for armor piercing, sniper cannons and hope for neutronium and accelerator amplification later. If the AI gets heavier armor plating, your shots are going to go bouncing off harmlessly. Keep an eye out for that and consider polarized plasmatics as a fall back.

Missiles, like you've noticed, are subject to harsh PD. Either go all in and Macross missile massacre:

http://www.kerberos-productions.com/img/sots2/screenshot-20110831174106-seq-0000006.png
sots 2 stress test


or just use the turrets for something else.

[Spartacus]

I just want to say my Hiver strategy involves spamming colony ships to send out with tankers and gates and just colonize every world possible. While waiting for the ships to get to their destination, I get as much stuff to make terraforming easier as I can, and focus on that for a while. It means I have no army and a huge income penalty for a while as I fix up all my planets, but it helps offset the incredibly slow start Hivers have.

[Grif]

Don't know if I'd call it excessive. Consider, without it, get your fastest ships loaded with missiles and you can kite any other weapon loadout easily. There are some things missiles can do to overcome PD, multiwarhead missiles etc, and don't underestimate the loss of damage from those turrets, or even whole ships if you bring dedicated PD.

Mass drivers and missiles have the benefit that future research can make existing ships more powerful, energy weapons rarely get such a boon. That said, go for armor piercing, sniper cannons and hope for neutronium and accelerator amplification later. If the AI gets heavier armor plating, your shots are going to go bouncing off harmlessly. Keep an eye out for that and consider polarized plasmatics as a fall back.

Missiles, like you've noticed, are subject to harsh PD. Either go all in and Macross missile massacre:

http://www.kerberos-productions.com/img/sots2/screenshot-20110831174106-seq-0000006.png
sots 2 stress test


or just use the turrets for something else.

I have ship designs for a missile boat. I also have ship designs for a full out Mass Drivers/Plasma Cannon loadout for short range. Then I made an Emitter/Burster combo because those damned bugs kept using their DE to close in and kill my CnC ships. Then there's the PD ship. The CnC ship (loaded with PD), the DE that just runs around sniping stuff, my weird Armor ship loaded with all the various type of weapons I can squeeze in. As you can imagine, I sorta went crazy with the ship designs.

Glorious. Now I'm grinding down an alien empire. Taking his planets one at a time, singeing all the way. It's like a dance, wearing down his fleets and trying to launch my Assault Shuttles before they die.

Torpedoes are pretty much useless for me though. I have no idea how to use them. Very narrow firing arc, no tracking ability to speak of.

Also, I still cannot find the means to target individual turrets. Or the fact that I STLL cannot pan the window in Tactical.

[Spartacus]

I actually actively dislike the tactical battles in SotS (especially in multiplayer) and thus autoresolve exclusively nowadays.

Also, autoresolve knows something I don't, at least with regards to the Scilioids. Somehow managed to always take them out with no losses or damage, and yet I lost half my fleet trying to do the same.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Missiles, like you've noticed, are subject to harsh PD. Either go all in and Macross missile massacre:

http://www.kerberos-productions.com/img/sots2/screenshot-20110831174106-seq-0000006.png
sots 2 stress test


or just use the turrets for something else.
That is glorious.

[Misery Esquire]

Torpedoes are pretty much useless for me though. I have no idea how to use them. Very narrow firing arc, no tracking ability to speak of.


Fire from long range en masse, as a formation breaker.



Also, I still cannot find the means to target individual turrets. Or the fact that I STLL cannot pan the window in Tactical.

Select your ships and double-left-click on a target ; or select one of your weapon sets (1-3) and use the icon that isn't Cease Fire to assign a target to that set.

[Emmerask]

That is glorious.

Though that picture was just an internal stress test for the engine, even on their high end machines that was around 10fps ^^


Sots 1 has many many flaws especially for new players one can´t deny that,the user interface is everything but intuitive, the 3d galaxies are hard to navigate, the autoresolve creates very very strange results* from time to time, the technology tree is especially hard to get for new players with its 3d view, the ig voices are also very hard to getting used to and frankly not that good... though by know I quite like them actually ^^

But despite its flaws it is one of the most fun 4x games I played (and I played a lot civ1, moo, col, alpha centauri, me tw etc),
The different races really feel different because of their method of space travel.
The randomized tech tree adds a lot of replayability and makes you not use a standard template after a few games like in other 4x titles.

Same goes for planetary development, instead of building every single building yourself it is abstracted into numbers which I found quite a lot better then having my star empire and having to tell the colonists to build a biodome first 10000 times on different planets and then proceed with the 1-3 standard templates. Though a bit more options would have been nice for specialization, in the very late game you can atleast build specialized stations to make the planets more unique...

Ship designing and the battles are very fun too and you can design some really effective things and counter... counter... counter designs ^^

And then of course there are the grand manaces which makes the game really really exciting and may turn it around completely (damn you puppet master ^^).

Overall if you can get through the learning process which is needlessly complicated due to the interface and other things and you like 4x games then sword of the stars is simply awesome!
A few days left for sots 2 to come out which hopefully will eradicate all or most of those smaller and bigger flaws in the game :smallbiggrin:


* had a battle with 100 cruisers against 50 Hiver cruisers, first match I autoresolved and disabled 3 enemy ship and destroyed 1... while losing 30 of my ships
Next fight I played the fight myself and pretty much completely destroyed them with very minor losses. Similarly fights against the Swarm are better autoresolved then fought by myself ^^

[houlio]

I actually actively dislike the tactical battles in SotS (especially in multiplayer) and thus autoresolve exclusively nowadays.

Also, autoresolve knows something I don't, at least with regards to the Scilioids. Somehow managed to always take them out with no losses or damage, and yet I lost half my fleet trying to do the same.

SoTS autoresolve does some weird things that pretty much never happens in tactical battles. For example, it assumes that weapons like torpedoes, which take skill on the player's part to use at 100% efficiency, will be handled perfectly and so the autoresolve calculator overestimates them. It also overestimates missiles, for some reason. I've had autoresolve results where a single extended range or a fleet of colonizers will defeat a random encounter like slavers or raiders without casualties.

[Grif]

SoTS autoresolve does some weird things that pretty much never happens in tactical battles. For example, it assumes that weapons like torpedoes, which take skill on the player's part to use at 100% efficiency, will be handled perfectly and so the autoresolve calculator overestimates them. It also overestimates missiles, for some reason. I've had autoresolve results where a single extended range or a fleet of colonizers will defeat a random encounter like slavers or raiders without casualties.

I had a scout take out an Alien Derelict. :smallbiggrin: Daggum it only suffered minor damage too.

[Impnemo]

Torpedoes eh? What kind. Humans, likely photon line? Photons are meant for stand off against larger slower/non moving targets or as a supplement for your heavy combat lasers, which again, against larger targets. Cruiser and up. The photon line of torps yields two very very useful weapons later in the game, fusion/anti-matter eras.

The tracking torpedos (plasma, fusion etc) are dedicated long range weapons, they actually build up over time and do more damage farther out. I prefer using them as a first strike tool against enemy CnCs.

If you were lucky enough to roll electro magnetic pulsar torps, well, you win. Extremely potent, not in damage, but their ability to knock enemy ships and systems offline. Grand menaces have been brought down by these things.


Select your ships and double-left-click on a target ; or select one of your weapon sets (1-3) and use the icon that isn't Cease Fire to assign a target to that set.

On the design page you can assign turret banks to weapons groups. Do so if you haven't already.

[Impnemo]

Oh right, and when he says click on the target he means it. Your ships will try to hit the exact spot you select. This allows you to target ship sections and individual turrets. Be mindful though, mass drivers have a deflection chance based partly on the impact angle.

[Grif]

Torpedoes eh? What kind. Humans, likely photon line? Photons are meant for stand off against larger slower/non moving targets or as a supplement for your heavy combat lasers, which again, against larger targets. Cruiser and up. The photon line of torps yields two very very useful weapons later in the game, fusion/anti-matter eras.

The tracking torpedos (plasma, fusion etc) are dedicated long range weapons, they actually build up over time and do more damage farther out. I prefer using them as a first strike tool against enemy CnCs.

If you were lucky enough to roll electro magnetic pulsar torps, well, you win. Extremely potent, not in damage, but their ability to knock enemy ships and systems offline. Grand menaces have been brought down by these things.



On the design page you can assign turret banks to weapons groups. Do so if you haven't already.

Perhaps later. I'm now burrowing my way through the Mass Driver tech tree. They're so awesome once you bring Neutronium Rounds in, pretty much one-shotting any DE if they're unlucky. (Using only Mass Drivers, not even Heavy Drivers or what.)

Bursters are funny. They slap ships about like nothing. But hardly doing any damage. :smallbiggrin:

One thing I hate about this game now though. They don't let you do incremental upgrades to your current ship design. Nor do they let you retrofit your current ships to the latest top-of-line tech. It's annoying really, having to search for all the older ships to be decommissioned. (GalCiv II had this feature. It was pricey, but it definitely made things a hell lot easier, micro wise.)

How does Salvage work btw? I want to try salvage stuff, but it seems to be yielding nothing so far. Perhaps I'm too far ahead in tech? (Leaving my Laser tech unresearched to see if I can snag them off those Pesky Hivers or not.)

[Gaius Marius]

How does Salvage work btw? I want to try salvage stuff, but it seems to be yielding nothing so far. Perhaps I'm too far ahead in tech? (Leaving my Laser tech unresearched to see if I can snag them off those Pesky Hivers or not.)

It works something like this: each Salvage & Repair ship have an X% of technology steal after a victorious battle. The more you have, the more you have chance to trigger the event.

This is why I always have 15 S&R ships with my battle fleets. They always come up with nice intel.

[Impnemo]

Its also modified, quietly, by xeno research. The more familiar you are with foreign powers the easier it is to take their toys.



The "no refitting" thing was a design choice, and its not entirely accurate. Some refits are allowed. You use new missile warheads automatically, your guns benefit from accelerator amp or quantum capacitors instantly. You dont have to take every ship to a yard and do that, its assumed small components are changed in maintenance or new ammunition delivered with supplies. Major overhauls are out, though you can scrap ships at a yard and get a boost to your production for the next turn.

Think of it this way, we didn't refit nuclear reactors onto existing diesel subs, but we will give subs new missiles/torps, provided they use the existing launchers.




And if you like bursters, wait till you roll kinetic kill missiles.

[Drasius]

None of those Grand Menaces yet, for which I should be thankful.

Also, is it me, or PD is excessively powerful? It dead stops any missiles and makes planetary invasion sooooooo much easier. Now I'm trying to figure all these different weapons. So. Many. To. Choose. From. (Currently using Mass Drivers/Missiles combo.)

Grand menaces won't turn up until at least turn 100, and even then, only if you have 80 or more worlds in your game IIRC.

Yes, PD is horribly overpowered to a point. Liir have it best with the most PD mounts and the best coverage while Tarka have it worst, with the least mounts and mediocre coverage. PD is almost mandatory for invasion and if facing off against the Morrigi, highly beneficial as even a small amount totally neuters drones.

AP mass drivers are possibly the best value for money weapons in the game since they are easily researched, do good damage, are accurate, have good armour penetration so they won't bounce and are cheap. They last well until the end game where antimatter cannons/cutting beams/meson beams start coming out in serious numbers.

Morrigi and Liir have the best odds for shields and energy weapons while Tarka and Hiver have the best odds for armour and ballistic weapons. Humans are about in between with a slight ballistics bias and Zuul have crap research all around and rely on masses of cheap ships with way too many weapons and salvaged tech. Given that the tech tree is random however, it's not unheard of to end up with Shielded Graviton Beam Tarka against Adamantine Impactor Liir, but you should usually play to your strengths early on.

http://sots.rorschach.net/File:SOTS_ANY_1.7.1_techtree_v1.4.png is a link to the tech tree showing % chances for each race to get whatever tech. That site (sots.rorschach.net) is a goldmine of all the info you need, and along with the forums over at http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=1&start=25 you should be able to solve most of your problems. The Devs are frequent posters over there, and some (one in particular) are not particularly PR oriented (Don't let him scare you off, he's actually quite helpful, mostly), but the community is extremely mature and helpful. I'd wager any question you have has already been asked more than once, so use search before posting, but by all means, post away if you still need some assistance.

If all else fails, mines are the answer against the AI, but they can become a crutch if you are not careful, to the point where the majority of the players don't use them.

[Cogwheel]

So I just started two days ago, and this game is excellent so far. One thing, though: In manual battles, I can't seem to have more than one dread, two cruisers or five destroyers fielded at any one time, while the AI is under no such restrictions. What's the reason for this?

[Misery Esquire]

So I just started two days ago, and this game is excellent so far. One thing, though: In manual battles, I can't seem to have more than one dread, two cruisers or five destroyers fielded at any one time, while the AI is under no such restrictions. What's the reason for this?

You need to deploy Command ships (CnC) with your fleet, and to ensure the proper mix of ships are deployed, you go to the Manage Fleet screen. (Deploying more than one or two Dreads isn't really worth it, and you need the higher Command Researchs to do it, aside from the pure hilarity.)

[Gaius Marius]

Nice. I played Hiver for the 1st time. Lets just say this gameplay is... Unique, in a very interesting way. Distance matter a great lot, until it doesn't anymore...

I also discovered that it should build massive, massive numbers of colony ships to quickly build up the infrastructure of my colony worlds. It's a bit easier to do when I don't have to worry about colonist transportation cost or distance.

Damn, colonizing with 60 colony ships. I feel like the Bugs in Starship Troopers.

Oh, and I can't believe how tough my ships are. Been creating large fleets of Stinger Destroyers, with many blindfire missile pods. These things are fun to operate!!!

[Cogwheel]

You need to deploy Command ships (CnC) with your fleet, and to ensure the proper mix of ships are deployed, you go to the Manage Fleet screen. (Deploying more than one or two Dreads isn't really worth it, and you need the higher Command Researchs to do it, aside from the pure hilarity.)

I tried that. Could've sworn it didn't make any difference, though... very odd. Oh well!

Gaius: I played Liir, initially. Quit that run fairly early on, then switched to Hivers. Slow or not, after the gates (especially with farcasters), I really don't think I can go back to anything else. It's pretty excellent.

Edit: I do wish they were less slow in combat, but that's the price you pay for having absurdly tough, weapon-encrusted death machines.

[Misery Esquire]

I tried that. Could've sworn it didn't make any difference, though... very odd. Oh well!

Gaius: I played Liir, initially. Quit that run fairly early on, then switched to Hivers. Slow or not, after the gates (especially with farcasters), I really don't think I can go back to anything else. It's pretty excellent.

Edit: I do wish they were less slow in combat, but that's the price you pay for having absurdly tough, weapon-encrusted death machines.

The earliest techs for CnC (The Destroyer mounted version) doesn't help too much in getting more ships out, but allows you to organize. The final version (unlocking the (Limit 1) Flagship-type Dreadnought) allows you to have a fair sized fleet, as long as you don't include too many Dreadnoughts in your initial deployment. (You can manage to have 3 Dreads and 4 cruisers)

[Cogwheel]

The earliest techs for CnC (The Destroyer mounted version) doesn't help too much in getting more ships out, but allows you to organize. The final version (unlocking the (Limit 1) Flagship-type Dreadnought) allows you to have a fair sized fleet, as long as you don't include too many Dreadnoughts in your initial deployment. (You can manage to have 3 Dreads and 4 cruisers)

Do they stack? CnCs, I mean. Will having more of those let me use a bigger fleet?


Also, I just got a flagship. Battle Bridge/Flagship CnC/Antimatter, Adamantite Alloys/Improved Reflective Coating on all parts, 2 X-Ray lasers, 4 point defense, 3 lancers, 6 missiles (antimatter), and 8 pulsed grav beams.

Pretty okay with this, all told.

[Gaius Marius]

Gaius: I played Liir, initially. Quit that run fairly early on, then switched to Hivers. Slow or not, after the gates (especially with farcasters), I really don't think I can go back to anything else. It's pretty excellent.

Edit: I do wish they were less slow in combat, but that's the price you pay for having absurdly tough, weapon-encrusted death machines.

I do believe they fill the "Mighty Glacier" Faction calculus.

I played the Liirs too once. There is some interesting characteristics about them. So far, I did Human, Liir and Hiver. I had a quick game of Morrigi, but I felt overpowered too quickly and quit before meeting anyone.

I'll check out the Zuul (MOTHER****ER!! ZUUL!!) in my next game if I start it before SotS2 launch, because damn I'd be if I don't try this game as soon as possible.

Btw, how do I get farcasters?

[Misery Esquire]

Do they stack? CnCs, I mean. Will having more of those let me use a bigger fleet?

Unfortunately, not. :smallfrown:



Also, I just got a flagship. Battle Bridge/Flagship CnC/Antimatter, Adamantite Alloys/Improved Reflective Coating on all parts, 2 X-Ray lasers, 4 point defense, 3 lancers, 6 missiles (antimatter), and 8 pulsed grav beams.

Pretty okay with this, all told.

:smallbiggrin:

[houlio]

I had a quick game of Morrigi, but I felt overpowered too quickly and quit before meeting anyone.


Really, overpowered at the beginning? Did you get to the part where their civilians only produce money at 50% the normal rate?

Anyways, I play mostly Tarkas, since I like how they can get little bits of everything on the tech tree.

[Gaius Marius]

Really, overpowered at the beginning? Did you get to the part where their civilians only produce money at 50% the normal rate?

Anyways, I play mostly Tarkas, since I like how they can get little bits of everything on the tech tree.

I heard they were weak until you hit trade and Fusion power...

So silly me, I rushed trade and fusion power. I had colonists the entire cluster so much I was overflowing with money...

Regarding the ubership described up-there: I just dont understand this perverse pleasure we have out of fielding these powerhouses. Maybe it's something to do with a phallic representation, like many have with their guns?

Sometime, a dreadnaught is just a dreadnaught. Can't wait to put my hands on a Leviathan. I'll see how many heavy beams I can outfit it with... Mwahahaha!!!!

[Emmerask]

So I just started two days ago, and this game is excellent so far. One thing, though: In manual battles, I can't seem to have more than one dread, two cruisers or five destroyers fielded at any one time, while the AI is under no such restrictions. What's the reason for this?


Having (a lot) more ships then the enemy in that location gives you bonus command points and fighting at a planet also gives a bonus to the party that holds the planet (ie some bonus ships from the reinforcement roster are in battle from the start).

That might be why your enemies always have a ton of ships in battle ^^

/edit oh and then of course there are other technologies that increase the number of command points you get.



Really, overpowered at the beginning? Did you get to the part where their civilians only produce money at 50% the normal rate?


Though if you research ftl economics fast enough the increased trade income easily remedies that and if you create mega freighters and trade stations the morrigi are easily the race with the best income.

In the beginning they are pretty decent because of their drive systems and extreme range with which they can pretty much cherry pick all the good systems, but you have to transition to trade pretty fast not to fall behind in early mid game.

[Airk]

My biggest problem with SotS is the small scale of space battles. I never played any of the expansions, but 6 dreadnaughts is not a space battle worth watching. 20 dreadnaughts would be worth watching. Or 50 destroyers. Or 200 frigates. The fleets and the poorly explained controls mean I have only played a few games.

Uh, those are nowhere near the fleet cap. :) 3 Dreadnaughts per side (Plus extra stuff) is just what you get if you're lazy working on your command and control techs. Also, that's only simultaneous, of course.



My other problem was the lack of depth. The tech tree is about 6 technologies deep. Compared to Space Empires or Gal Civ, which both have between 20 and 50 technologies between "just starting out" and "we have leet hax that will pwnz all your dogs", the technology seemed really barren.

Uh. Technically any GIVEN line may "only" be 6-8 techs deep, but then, maxing out one tech line is not what I would call "completing the tech tree" or even "being high tech", so I don't really see the logic here. I mean, is THIS (http://www.nickersonm.com/sots/SOTS%20ANY%201.7.1%20techtree%20v1.4.png) a "barren tech tree"


I found it fun, but the maps I played too way, way too long.

Wait... battle size too small, but game takes too long? Methinks you have conflicting goals here.

And yeah... do all you people who have no idea how to play the game NOT try the scenario labelled "Tutorial"? It's even in the DEMO. It taught me everything I needed to get going.

In terms of important tips for new players though, one thing that's not obvious and is very valuable is... this isn't one of those silly games where you can only send one colony ship. Build a colony FLEET. Send at LEAST 5 basic colonizers to get your colony going quicker, probably even more, especially if you don't have suspended animation yet. Each destroyer colony ship only has a few hundred colonists on it. You'll want more than that. Another secret tip is that if the infrastructure number for a planet is red, that means either that you just lost infrastructure or that you don't have enough colonists to work all the infrastructure you have. If your infrastructure number on a new colony is red, spend more time terraforming until you have enough colonists to work the infrastructure you've got.

Re: CNC ships - they don't stack, but we strongly recommend you bring spares, because having your only CNC ship blown up is a recipe for losing. Also, the larger the CNC ship, the more CNC power it provides - even a "generic" dreadnaught class CNC with no additional anything will get you three dreads on the field.

[Grif]

I tried that. Could've sworn it didn't make any difference, though... very odd. Oh well!

Gaius: I played Liir, initially. Quit that run fairly early on, then switched to Hivers. Slow or not, after the gates (especially with farcasters), I really don't think I can go back to anything else. It's pretty excellent.

Edit: I do wish they were less slow in combat, but that's the price you pay for having absurdly tough, weapon-encrusted death machines.

You might want to bring more than one CnC anyway. I found out the hard way when the Hivers force targeted my CR CnC and made me unable to summon reinforcements. That ended my siege of their homeworld for 3-4 turns at least. (The time needed to ship another CnC ship and escorts.)

For some reason as well, the Hivers ship were outrunning my own DEs. Damn. At least I'm outgunning the weapon experts.


Having (a lot) more ships then the enemy in that location gives you bonus command points and fighting at a planet also gives a bonus to the party that holds the planet (ie some bonus ships from the reinforcement roster are in battle from the start).

That might be why your enemies always have a ton of ships in battle ^^

/edit oh and then of course there are other technologies that increase the number of command points you get.

Though if you research ftl economics fast enough the increased trade income easily remedies that and if you create mega freighters and trade stations the morrigi are easily the race with the best income.

In the beginning they are pretty decent because of their drive systems and extreme range with which they can pretty much cherry pick all the good systems, but you have to transition to trade pretty fast not to fall behind in early mid game.

I don't know. I'm liking to human gameplay and the random node pathways. It's like playing AI War, but with everyone else able to approach my systems sneakily.

In other news, I just got my first Dreads. It's awesome.

[Gaius Marius]

Indeed. It is my usual feeling when I play Humans: the filthy xenos always cowardly approach my systems in a sneaky fashion, from a vector I never considered beforehand.

Why can't they be gentlexenos and come through the front door?!?


Seriously, playing as human do flaw you with a psychological weak spot. Beware it.

[Grif]

Indeed. It is my usual feeling when I play Humans: the filthy xenos always cowardly approach my systems in a sneaky fashion, from a vector I never considered beforehand.

Why can't they be gentlexenos and come through the front door?!?


Seriously, playing as human do flaw you with a psychological weak spot. Beware it.

And then they wonder why I station at least 3 CR at least colony with the full complement of Defense Sats. :smallbiggrin:

Nah, I thinking I'm getting used to it though. Just need to watch those colonies which front the alien empires but are at the end of 10 hops for me.

[Cogwheel]

Ah, but my CnC ships are dreads, or very, very armour-oriented cruisers. In the latter case, I pack three.

So yes, I think I'm set. The tough part is coming up with fancy names for all these ships.

[Impnemo]

For some reason as well, the Hivers ship were outrunning my own DEs. Damn. At least I'm outgunning the weapon experts.


In tactical Hiver are actually one of the fastest races. Slowest acceleration and, consequently, abysmal turning, but straight line speed? Can't be topped.



And then they wonder why I station at least 3 CR at least colony with the full complement of Defense Sats. :smallbiggrin:

Nah, I thinking I'm getting used to it though. Just need to watch those colonies which front the alien empires but are at the end of 10 hops for me.

Depending on how far along you are, have you gotten deep scan? Scan cruisers and stations help a great deal.

[Emmerask]

I don't know. I'm liking to human gameplay and the random node pathways. It's like playing AI War, but with everyone else able to approach my systems sneakily.

In other news, I just got my first Dreads. It's awesome.

Don´t get me wrong, I´m not saying morrigi are overpowered nor underpowered, overall all races seem roughly on even ground though I haven´t played the ZUUUUUUUL!!! I just can´t stand my planets overharvesting all the time ^^

Overall any race can feel overpowered or underpowered given a good or bad enough start.

[Grif]

In tactical Hiver are actually one of the fastest races. Slowest acceleration and, consequently, abysmal turning, but straight line speed? Can't be topped.

That'll explain why they run headlong into my line and blindly stumble about afterwards.



Depending on how far along you are, have you gotten deep scan? Scan cruisers and stations help a great deal.

Not yet. I think I have this game locked up tight. Being the only race with DN just makes the rest an exercise in slapping down their defenses and glassing their planets.

Now starting a Normal game with 8 AI, 100 stars and spiral map.


Don´t get me wrong, I´m not saying morrigi are overpowered nor underpowered, overall all races seem roughly on even ground though I haven´t played the ZUUUUUUUL!!! I just can´t stand my planets overharvesting all the time ^^

Overall any race can feel overpowered or underpowered given a good or bad enough start.

I heard Morrigi are boss for earning maximum cash for the least amount of time though.

One thing about Humans, like in AI War, it's very easy to get blockaded in a node. Especially if there's an Alien Wreckage or something you need to clear. (Asteroid Monitors I don't mind so much. Hacking = free DNs)

[Airk]

That'll explain why they run headlong into my line and blindly stumble about afterwards.

Yup. It makes it awkward to defend planets against them though, because they can just smoosh through your line and hammer the crap out of the planet.




Not yet. I think I have this game locked up tight. Being the only race with DN just makes the rest an exercise in slapping down their defenses and glassing their planets.

Dreadnaught level games become brutal scorched earth (literally. x.x) contests where fleets don't "fight" so much as blow up planets and dance around.



I heard Morrigi are boss for earning maximum cash for the least amount of time though.

Erm...not....really. At least not "least amount of time from start"; Morrigi are actually kindof slow starting. Their colonization speed is sortof average, and their population growth and income, pre-trade, are below average. Their destroyers are also pretty bad.

What the Morrigi are is the biggest economic powerhouse come early-mid game, and equipped with some really mean dreadnaughts for late game.



One thing about Humans, like in AI War, it's very easy to get blockaded in a node. Especially if there's an Alien Wreckage or something you need to clear. (Asteroid Monitors I don't mind so much. Hacking = free DNs)

This is indeed one of the dangers of humans, though you CAN try to "slow boat" past some things, but the boat is really slow. Often, it's worth just DODGING whatever it is, by going into combat and then running out the clock.

[Emmerask]

As a morrigi you really have to take the good planets (<20k) and leave all those 40k+ planets for later. What morrigi have going for them at the early game is their speed and fuel range.
In one game with 350 stars (rough terrain custom map) I managed to get at the hivers doorstep and created colonies there before the hiver had more then 2 colonies established, from there he pretty much had lost because I just intercepted any gate fleet he tried to launch... :smallbiggrin:


Btw the Eve online map is pretty amazing for long games (460 stars the small one and the big one is I think 690 or so stars)

[Impnemo]

Stop crushing your enemies and reveling in the lamentations of their women long enough to play with some tech. You'll thank yourself for it later on. Electronic warfare is powerful. Integrated sensors and advanced CnC allow you to make better use of the sensor map, which is vital for longer ranged weapons like the torps, KKM, or rail cannons. Advanced sensors lets you see enemies much much farther out, human cruiser deep scan range is 8 light years and DN and station range is farther than that. Jammer is the counter to deep scan, and only shows the enemy the jamming ship, hiding the rest of the fleet. You must have deep scan, jammer, and chaff along with advanced DNs to build an EW bridge for your dreads.

And try the complex ordinance launchers while you're at it.

[Grif]

Okay, now getting set back a little in my Normal Human game. This game seemed to be dominated by Humans, with the two of the three AI Humans no. 1 and 2 respectively (we even allied for a bit, before they decided to break off. Still NAP-ed though.), while I sit at fourth. Only the Morringi seemed to be keeping up at third.

I got an entire fleet annihilated by the space dolphins when they switched to emitters and plasma lasers things. (with at least some sort of armour. I know my shots kept ricocheting.) Man those things hurt. Thankfully it was mostly my older ship models but they certainly ground my scorched earth campaign to a halt. Bad news is I didn't roll reflective coating so I might have to tough it out instead.

On the bright side, them Tarkas got themselves annihilated to a man when they invaded two of my colonies. Man, it was awesome, using only 4 CR and a couple of DE (and some DE sats and colony missiles too) to hold off 14 CRs.

Also, the pain of playing a spiral galaxy. Goddamn my own galactic arm kept being invaded left and right (and centre), while I try to navigate the nodes. Normal AI seems to have more sense of tactics as well, aiming for my CnC and engine sections of my ships. Or maybe space dolphins are just plain smarter.

[Drasius]

Normal AI seems to have more sense of tactics as well, aiming for my CnC and engine sections of my ships. Or maybe space dolphins are just plain smarter.

Reflective can be a bit of a waste (unless you are going drone heavy, then it's fan-freakin'-tastic), so be careful there, armour tech are much more valuable.

The Liir will try and torch your engines 1st to limit your impact on the fight and leave you stranded and unable to manuver. They are notorious for it and have some special programming to ensure they try this. You can use this to your advantage by making them chase your tail by altering your fleet directions, or even putting short range powerful weapons in your rear arc if you know you are going to face Liir a lot.

Liir ships also have high mass and fast acceleration (more like thousands of mini teleports than acceleration really), so mass drivers and KKM won't have as much physics effect on them as most other races, but they do tend to have tinfoil for armour, so the big damage of mass drivers will be easier to apply since they won't bounce as much. After the Zuul, Liir are my Tarkas most hated enemy.

[Grif]

Liir ships also have high mass and fast acceleration (more like thousands of mini teleports than acceleration really), so mass drivers and KKM won't have as much physics effect on them as most other races, but they do tend to have tinfoil for armour, so the big damage of mass drivers will be easier to apply since they won't bounce as much. After the Zuul, Liir are my Tarkas most hated enemy.

I'm definitely on my merry way to hate the space dolphins. Gonna torch every world they have now, no matter the cause. Also going Plasma/Fusion/AM cannon route to supplement my damage now.

(Homeworld has 40 CRs. This... might take a lot of work. Or just a protracted siege.)

Now to keep those pesky Tarkas off my back...

[Gaius Marius]

Hmmm.. In my current Hive game, (clusters) my 3 exploratory fleets finally reached the adjacent clusters, after 60 turns of travel. I timed it pretty well, they all arrived within 10 rounds of each other.

The first two went pretty well. I was nicely surprised with low-hazard worlds (10k and 20k of development cost each). But in the third, farthest cluster, y fleet was attacked by 10 cruisers, wipe. I didn't tried to fight back, for I wanted to avoid provoking the Liir...

Oh well. I'll send 4 exploratory fleet next time. I just spent 12 turns spending 80% of my income on research, and finally reached fusion power!!! So the next fleets will be more powerful, and faster.

Obviously, with my fleet outfitted with DF missile packs, I jumped on Fusion Warhead. 4 turns of research. A swift pebble...

"Ding! Research Complete. New research path available: Antimatter Warhead"

<..<
>..>

Damn and thank you, random tech tree... Now I simply CAN'T not research top-tier weaponry... 500% of the base missile's damage. Damn...

[Rockphed]

Uh, those are nowhere near the fleet cap. :) 3 Dreadnaughts per side (Plus extra stuff) is just what you get if you're lazy working on your command and control techs. Also, that's only simultaneous, of course.

I haven't played in about a year and I only had the base game. However, I am fairly certain I maxed the Human tech tree, and I was fielding 3 or 4 dreadnaughts(one was the command ship) plus 2 or 3 cruisers and a couple destroyers. Plus however many bonus ships showed up because I had 2 bajillion ships in reserve.



Uh. Technically any GIVEN line may "only" be 6-8 techs deep, but then, maxing out one tech line is not what I would call "completing the tech tree" or even "being high tech", so I don't really see the logic here. I mean, is THIS (http://www.nickersonm.com/sots/SOTS%20ANY%201.7.1%20techtree%20v1.4.png) a "barren tech tree"

Point taken. Maybe my problem was more that the techs tended to go up by large rather than small leaps. Also, I was playing the base game, no expansions. And there are no doubt lots of extra techs in the expansions, yes?




Wait... battle size too small, but game takes too long? Methinks you have conflicting goals here.

Yes, conflicting goals noted. I think the issue is that commanding the battles felt unfulfilling and fruitless. And I spend about half the game conquering the universe after I maxed out on tech.

Also, the battle size being too small was more a factor of "hey, look! The only possible way for a star to be interesting is for it to have a single noteworthy planet that is possibly habitable after some terraforming." Where are the battles about a gas giant with three habitable moons? Where are the node junctions with NOTHING inside them? In short, the system topography was boring.


Re: CNC ships - they don't stack, but we strongly recommend you bring spares, because having your only CNC ship blown up is a recipe for losing. Also, the larger the CNC ship, the more CNC power it provides - even a "generic" dreadnaught class CNC with no additional anything will get you three dreads on the field.

Actually, bring lots of spares of everything. You are gonna need em.

[Kane]

I haven't played in about a year and I only had the base game. However, I am fairly certain I maxed the Human tech tree, and I was fielding 3 or 4 dreadnaughts(one was the command ship) plus 2 or 3 cruisers and a couple destroyers. Plus however many bonus ships showed up because I had 2 bajillion ships in reserve.


I can sympathize with that. Fun fact; Lords of Winter is going to have no reserve, with all ships in a fleet in combat. This will, though, mean that you have to protect your repair/tanker/supply ships... We'll see how well it works. Dozens of ships sounds good to me.




Point taken. Maybe my problem was more that the techs tended to go up by large rather than small leaps. Also, I was playing the base game, no expansions. And there are no doubt lots of extra techs in the expansions, yes?


Quite true. I'm not sure on the exact numbers- Argos Naval Yards was the first version I played- but it's a huge amount.





Yes, conflicting goals noted. I think the issue is that commanding the battles felt unfulfilling and fruitless. And I spend about half the game conquering the universe after I maxed out on tech.

Also, the battle size being too small was more a factor of "hey, look! The only possible way for a star to be interesting is for it to have a single noteworthy planet that is possibly habitable after some terraforming." Where are the battles about a gas giant with three habitable moons? Where are the node junctions with NOTHING inside them? In short, the system topography was boring.



Actually, bring lots of spares of everything. You are gonna need em.
Again, mostly truth. Again, though, the sequel is dealing with this- Full solar systems, multiple planets per system, etc.

I can hardly wait.


I'd also like to point out that they have a tame sci-fi author on staff who wrote their setting for them, and there is surprisingly little gameplay and and story segregation- There are literally pages of lore, and the game's mechanics to seem to follow it very closely. I suppose this is the furthest thing from some people's mind when considering a game, but I adore the immersion such a well-developed galaxy allows.



Oh, and anyone accusing he Morrigi of being too wealthy; have you looked at how much their ships cost? As Humans, my teched-out flagship DN usually costs two million plus change. Morrigi? Five million plus change.


Edit Addon:
My **** list:

Silicoids
Von Neumann Motherships
Von Neumann Berserkers
Von Neumann homeworld
System Killer (A.K.A. "Sparky")
Peacekeeper (A.K.A. "Ortgay")
Colony Traps (When not playing as Morrigi)

Everything here can go **** itself. Seriously. Jerks.

[Gaius Marius]

Maybe, but if I gathered information well, the Morrigi's dreadnaught is nothing save a full-scale world ship. Massive and immensely powerful, isn't not?

But yhea, all races are broken in their own ways.

[Kane]

Maybe, but if I gathered information well, the Morrigi's dreadnaught is nothing save a full-scale world ship. Massive and immensely powerful, isn't not?

But yhea, all races are broken in their own ways.

Eh... I suppose. I concede I haven't seen the Liir, Tarkas, or Zuul flagships very often or at all, but all the ones I remember seeing have been pretty fantastic. I'll concede that Morrigi dreadnoughts are totally stylin', but they may also still have that bug where too much Z-axis skewing makes them spin like a top until they rip themselves apart. Never seen anyone else's dreads doing that.


And has anyone ever conquered a VN homeworld before? I did once as humans, and got a size 10, ~24,000 resource Climate Hazard ~320 world... That was listed as 'prohibitive' to colonize, despite the fact that I could colonize worlds with 700 CH. Pissed me off that I had to end up using it as a mining target.


(Another) EDIT:

What I've been meaning to say to the people considering this: The voice acting, the art, and so on are all very bad and/or cheesy and obviously made on a shoe-string budget by a small studio. Not to say terrible- The art has grown on me, and I quite like a few races' voicing (Morrigi and Hiver), but others... I play without sound. (Humans and Liir, primarily.)

[Airk]

Maybe, but if I gathered information well, the Morrigi's dreadnaught is nothing save a full-scale world ship. Massive and immensely powerful, isn't not?

But yhea, all races are broken in their own ways.

Nah, the Morrigi Dreadnaught doesn't really have much up on the human one except a much tighter turn radius and probably some more heavy beam mounts. SotS doesn't have racial "super weapons" (Except for the Zuul Devourer, which is less a "super weapon" and more a "super ship building mobile platform thingy". And as far as I can tell, no one plays Zuul anyway. :P).

Another thing to keep in mind about the tech tree is that it "looks" shallower than it is in play because you DON'T GET all the techs all the time.

Edit: And yeah, the VN homeworld is always uncolonizable - because fundamentally, I guess, it's not really a planet. It is, however, a massive ball of resources that you can use to boost up other worlds.

Also, aww. I LIKE the human voice acting. The only one that bothers me at all is Morrigi.

[Gaius Marius]

About the Von Neumann homeworld: I don't know if you can colonize it, but if you don't there is a good reason. After all, it's merely one uberlarge ship. You can't populate and feed a population on top of a purely artificial world... No?

[Kane]

About the Von Neumann homeworld: I don't know if you can colonize it, but if you don't there is a good reason. After all, it's merely one uberlarge ship. You can't populate and feed a population on top of a purely artificial world... No?

I can't argue with that, but have you ever tried invading it?

A dozen dreadnoughts. In casualties. I had a fleet of fifty, and five minute combat turns. And it still took three or four turns to finally take. Half a dozen neo-berserkers. The freakin' MOON was shooting missiles at me. I was hoping I might get more from it. :smallfrown:

[Mistral]

About the Von Neumann homeworld: I don't know if you can colonize it, but if you don't there is a good reason. After all, it's merely one uberlarge ship. You can't populate and feed a population on top of a purely artificial world... No?

Why not? Idle thought, but that's what orbital habitat stations are, no? Plus, if you can colonize a rockball and terraform it, there doesn't seem like there'd be a difference between "natural" rock and "artificial" metal.

[Impnemo]

As I recall, it was more a balance issue. Its always size ten and massive, massive resource base.



As Humans, my teched-out flagship DN usually costs two million plus change. Morrigi? Five million plus change.


Human DNs cost much less than mori ones sure, but look at their weapon placement and firing arcs. If you go beam for beam, cannon for cannon, DN for DN, humans are going to lose. The economics are a way to balance that.


And as far as I can tell, no one plays Zuul anyway. :P)

Ya. I've tried it a few times, and it seems like it would work really really well... except you have to create and maintain nodelines and you have an entirely different resource system and you absolutely must play aggressive from the start, and have someone nearby you can actually be aggressive towards. If you explore 'wrong' and just miss finding victims playthings enemy population centers you wind up in a real bind. Its a great deal more management and time pressure that no other race has to concern itself with.

[Gaius Marius]

I can't argue with that, but have you ever tried invading it?

A dozen dreadnoughts. In casualties. I had a fleet of fifty, and five minute combat turns. And it still took three or four turns to finally take. Half a dozen neo-berserkers. The freakin' MOON was shooting missiles at me. I was hoping I might get more from it. :smallfrown:

2 words for you:
Strip mining

[Kane]

2 words for you:
Strip mining

You better believe it. After taking all those Zuul worlds, I needed something to pad them out. (All <2,000 resources. Freakin' Zuul.:smallannoyed:)

Still, I was hoping to get a super-massive-ultra forge-world that could produce dreadnought fleets in a single turn. Because that would be awesome.

[Gaius Marius]

I believe you have this backward. Why sending the resources to the Zuul worlds rather than taking the Forge World and the Zuul resources all back to your capital?

Just make sure you fortify that world like hell.

[Rockphed]

I can sympathize with that. Fun fact; Lords of Winter is going to have no reserve, with all ships in a fleet in combat. This will, though, mean that you have to protect your repair/tanker/supply ships... We'll see how well it works. Dozens of ships sounds good to me.

Ooooh! Now I want this game. Like I would be willing to sell something dear to my heart to get it. (My wife won't let me sell our first born child. She might let me sell the fish. Hmmm, I must consider). I have wanted a good space combat 4X for a while, and SotS didn't quite scratch the itch. Although I don't know if I will have a powerful enough computer to run very large fleets. Either way, I'll probably buy it for my brother and then "borrow" it. The full star systems sounds awesome as well.

To above: that reminds me of another thing that dissapointed me: You cannot, in so far as I can tell, steal enemy star travel techniques. I always wanted to steal hiver gates as humans(or liir) and use them to pump reinforcements to the front really fast. Or steal liir drives as a hiver and get my gates around faster.

[Gaius Marius]

If you preorder the game, you will get a special Liir and Morrigi skin/voice pack, for better immersion.

Me, I just preordered for the principle. Not for that. No sir. None at all.

[Kane]

I believe you have this backward. Why sending the resources to the Zuul worlds rather than taking the Forge World and the Zuul resources all back to your capital?

Just make sure you fortify that world like hell.

Something I'm not fond of; apparently there are significantly diminishing returns. How much you 'harvest' is based on how much a being-strip-mined world has to begin with, but how much you deposit on a planet has to do with how much is already there. The more there is, the more inefficient adding to it is.

So making said forge-world is quite inefficient.

Oh, and those Zuul worlds were now the front against my most significant remaining enemy, the Tarkas. They weren't winning, but they were a legitimate threat if I got careless. Seemed the best overall.


Ooooh! Now I want this game. Like I would be willing to sell something dear to my heart to get it. (My wife won't let me sell our first born child. She might let me sell the fish. Hmmm, I must consider). I have wanted a good space combat 4X for a while, and SotS didn't quite scratch the itch. Although I don't know if I will have a powerful enough computer to run very large fleets. Either way, I'll probably buy it for my brother and then "borrow" it. The full star systems sounds awesome as well.

To above: that reminds me of another thing that dissapointed me: You cannot, in so far as I can tell, steal enemy star travel techniques. I always wanted to steal hiver gates as humans(or liir) and use them to pump reinforcements to the front really fast. Or steal liir drives as a hiver and get my gates around faster.

I agree; between that and the advancement of the 'storyline', as it is, I'm already sold on the game and just hope they deliver as promised.

And... while I initially desired such 'salvage' as you suggest, it really would murder game balance and faction diversity. Gates for each planet, hyperdrives for straight-line, noderings for anything where node drives work, and flock-drives for anything involving fleets... I do like having distinct factions, as annoying as that particular element can sometimes be.

[Emmerask]

Edit Addon:
My **** list:

Silicoids
Von Neumann Motherships
Von Neumann Berserkers
Von Neumann homeworld
System Killer (A.K.A. "Sparky")
Peacekeeper (A.K.A. "Ortgay")
Colony Traps (When not playing as Morrigi)

Everything here can go **** itself. Seriously. Jerks.



Well except if the System killer has a really bad path these are among the more tame stuff you can encounter ^^

The puppet master and Ai revolt faction are my greatest concerns
and the Locust swarm if I´m still in fusion ^^

[Airk]

I believe you have this backward. Why sending the resources to the Zuul worlds rather than taking the Forge World and the Zuul resources all back to your capital?

Just make sure you fortify that world like hell.

Well, because you'll lose about 50% or more of the resources from all those Zuul planets? Basically, the rule of thumb is that anytime you move resources, you lose a big chunk of them.

Also, Morrigi Dreadnaughts actually don't have a particularly large advantage on human ones, overall, except that they are significantly more maneuverable. They always come out short in the armor dept (and while 1k health might not sound like much on a section with 12k, that's before you factor in armor.) and their gun advantage is....situational. Yeah, the Morrigi Barrage Dreadnaught section has more large mounts (or rather, the same number, but it can put things other than missiles in them) but their Dreadnaught blazer section has significantly fewer beams, etc.

Though of course, if you are getting into a head-knocking competition, it's mostly economy anyway. We suggest that you not do this.

[Gaius Marius]

I'd be ready to pay good money if someone makes a Babylon 5 mod for the 2d version f the game.

I hope we can make Planet Buster weapons. What is so wrong about a Death Star? Why can't I make my own World Devastator to harvest resources and population on my own? :)

[Airk]

And... while I initially desired such 'salvage' as you suggest, it really would murder game balance and faction diversity. Gates for each planet, hyperdrives for straight-line, noderings for anything where node drives work, and flock-drives for anything involving fleets... I do like having distinct factions, as annoying as that particular element can sometimes be.

Yeah, this is a terrible idea from a game perspective, and it's the job of game developers to not give in to fans who ask for this sort of thing.

I bet you're a creative type, Rock; I figure you can justify this stuff if you think hard.

[Kane]

Well except if the System killer has a really bad path these are among the more tame stuff you can encounter ^^

The puppet master and Ai revolt faction are my greatest concerns
and the Locust swarm if I´m still in fusion ^^


I was mostly going for things that are annoying as sin. I'm generally pretty lucky with AIs, (and almost always get AI virus and slaves) and the one time I've encountered the puppet master he got pwned by an isolated asteroid monitor I found.

Further, puppetmaster can't kill node-lines.


Unrelated fun fact: if you right-click when choosing a weapon for a particular mount, it fills all mounts of that size with that weapon. I've been playing for a year and I only discovered that recently.

[Emmerask]

Yes a complete conversion mod would be awesome. There where some tries for sots 1 but none of them (to my knowledge) was finished.
I think partly due to the extreme amount of 3d models that have to be done (base model + different sections + turrets) and of course because sots never had such a large community as total war for example where some truly awesome total conversion mods exist.

Hopefully sots2 will have a bigger community so that we might see some conversions, it would be awesome, though I think it will take some time until then ie at least 1 year more likely longer :smallwink:

[Emmerask]

I was mostly going for things that are annoying as sin. I'm generally pretty lucky with AIs, (and almost always get AI virus and slaves) and the one time I've encountered the puppet master he got pwned by an isolated asteroid monitor I found.

Further, puppetmaster can't kill node-lines.


When I encountered him he had already assimilated 200 cruisers from other species ^^

[Kane]

When I encountered him he had already assimilated 200 cruisers from other species ^^

Oh.

Oh.

I suppose that might slant your views, then.

[Emmerask]

Yep, I pretty much fear the puppet master above all else :smallbiggrin:

[ninja_penguin]

Everybody in this thread has VIOLATED PACT ORTHONIUM TRIACTOR and needs to PREPARE TO BE ADJUDICATED!

Man, that guy was rage inducing for me; bonus points for when I didn't even know about grand menaces in the game and I was winning with megafleets, megafleets everywhere.

I do think that the tech tree fails in execution, but is a good idea in theory; I tended to just bunker down for the things I knew I'd be less likely to be hosed over on. I really liked playing the Liir for super researching, but I'm too much of a fan of ship-to-ship slugfests to play them and their tinfoil ships very properly.

I tend to play Hivers the most for GUNS, GUNS EVERYWHERE. Their point defense module has like, 9 guns on it, so I'd slap a few point defense destroyers/cruisers in there with point defense phasers, and I could easilly screen missile barrages.

[Kane]

I love the Hiveworld, though.

It appeared and basically crippled the Liir empire I was fighting in a... Morrigi endgame, I think. I didn't realize what the gradual decrease in Liir attacks meant, until I detected a Hiveworld heading towards one of my worlds... Then another.... and another... and another.

Ended up fighting a glorious war against the Locusts, and when I explored, found dozens of worlds with zero resources left. Cutting Beams do a real number on them, and Phaser PD (and interceptor missiles!) dominate.

Edit: Has anyone encountered a VN construct yet? I never have, usually because when a Berserker shows up, it succeeds in sterilizing whatever colony it targets. I have never seen one.

[Impnemo]

Oh yes. The first time I saw one I was playing Tarka and had just entered DN production. I tried to intercept it in deep space with my closest fleet but I was too slow, went past them and onto my first planet. So I got ahead of it at the next world with everything I could muster, including my first production line of DNs, plus scores of cruisers and destroyers.

It ate one of my dreads right off the bat, literally. Then it opened up with cutting beams mounted on turrets on my next dread, and dead. My mouth dropped when I saw what the missile volleys did to my CnC DN. Tarka point defense being what it is, my cruisers couldn't repel firepower of that magnitude. :smalleek:


It drew a line across my territory and I wound up losing like 9 colonies.


Then the bastard showed up again. Next time I had a dedicated missile boat dread with wild weasel DEs and what PD I could muster. And this new thing I put together for such a special occasion, my first rail cannon dread. Dread the rail cannon dread.

[Grif]

For lulz, I started an End of Flesh game. Should be easy right? Fusion tech era researched, decent armour etc.

Nope.

My fleet of 20 CRs was annihilated for the loss of 4 CRs on the AI side.

Damn, I need to learn how to position my ships better.

[Kane]

For lulz, I started an End of Flesh game. Should be easy right? Fusion tech era researched, decent armour etc.

Nope.

My fleet of 20 CRs was annihilated for the loss of 4 CRs on the AI side.

Damn, I need to learn how to position my ships better.

The AI cheats.

Sort of.

Being an AI, it requires no terraforming, and has excellent research. All worlds are colonizable to it, I think. (And it may even get free infrastructure? Not sure about that, though.) And because it's really more like six different AIs representing each of the six different races... Well. You can run into it's fleets where it will literally have six ships for every one of yoru own.

Not to say it's impossible. Just... difficult.

[Gaius Marius]

I colonized a few planets in all adjacent sectors to my starting cluster. One of them is populated with fiendly Liir factions (2 of them, NAP signed). Another seems badly infested with Swarm. The third one is filled to the brim with Zuul.. Oh my are they tenacious.

Is there a restriction on salvaging tech from the Zuul?

They keep sending 50+ fleets on my worlds. The most recent invasion was about 80 ships (40 CR and 40 DE). They were met with a force of 15 CR.

15 CR outfitted with as many Antimatter-loaded DF missile packs as possible. Oh boy was that battle pretty. My cruisers firing left and right, crippling enemy vessels at every breath. Enemy reinforcement stepping in seemingly faster than I could destroy them.

And yet, at the end of the day, despite 20 Salv&Repair ships, I had no tech pickup. CURSES!!!

I lost 9 cruiser ships to the onslaught. My planet's ressources were impressively increased.

[Airk]

I colonized a few planets in all adjacent sectors to my starting cluster. One of them is populated with fiendly Liir factions (2 of them, NAP signed). Another seems badly infested with Swarm. The third one is filled to the brim with Zuul.. Oh my are they tenacious.

Is there a restriction on salvaging tech from the Zuul?

They keep sending 50+ fleets on my worlds. The most recent invasion was about 80 ships (40 CR and 40 DE). They were met with a force of 15 CR.

15 CR outfitted with as many Antimatter-loaded DF missile packs as possible. Oh boy was that battle pretty. My cruisers firing left and right, crippling enemy vessels at every breath. Enemy reinforcement stepping in seemingly faster than I could destroy them.

And yet, at the end of the day, despite 20 Salv&Repair ships, I had no tech pickup. CURSES!!!

I lost 9 cruiser ships to the onslaught. My planet's ressources were impressively increased.

Well, the thing about salvaging tech is that

A) The opponent has to HAVE something you don't.
B) You need meet the criteria for having it available for research. (Otherwise, you may salvage a pre-req.)

And, well, the Zuul _SUCK_ at tech, so odds are, they don't HAVE anything you don't. Usually it's the Zull salvaging from their opponents, not the other way around.

[Impnemo]

I lost 9 cruiser ships to the onslaught. My planet's ressources were impressively increased.

Something that helps with attrition loses against weaker, more numerous foes getting kills like that is shields. Even low level ones can add a great deal of survival.

[houlio]

Something that helps with attrition loses against weaker, more numerous foes getting kills like that is shields. Even low level ones can add a great deal of survival.

This. When fighting the Zuul in a previous game, I got steamrolled the first time by a massive missile barrage. I got deflectors, and every fight after that I saw maybe 1 CR as a casualty, if they got lucky.

[Grif]

Grrrr.

I'm frustated. I got to this Tarkan homeworld, but now he's managing to hold me back by sheer dogged persistence.

4 minutes isn't just enough to manoeuvre your ships into position and start glassing his planets. Especially with double D-Sats and suicide cruisers trying to take your own out.

I need Siege Drivers.

[Airk]

Grrrr.

I'm frustated. I got to this Tarkan homeworld, but now he's managing to hold me back by sheer dogged persistence.

4 minutes isn't just enough to manoeuvre your ships into position and start glassing his planets. Especially with double D-Sats and suicide cruisers trying to take your own out.

I need Siege Drivers.

A planet that is "under seige" (i.e. has enemy ships in orbit) has its production cut by a ton, so unless he's bringing in reinforcements from elsewhere, you should just be able to grind him down by killing his ships/sats. If he IS bringing in reinforcements from elsewhere, just go blow up some of the elsewheres for a while.

Alternatively, you can always do a bioweapon blitzkrieg. :P

[Grif]

A planet that is "under seige" (i.e. has enemy ships in orbit) has its production cut by a ton, so unless he's bringing in reinforcements from elsewhere, you should just be able to grind him down by killing his ships/sats. If he IS bringing in reinforcements from elsewhere, just go blow up some of the elsewheres for a while.

Alternatively, you can always do a bioweapon blitzkrieg. :P

Yeah, he's been ferrying them from a nearby system.

Said system is now glass after being fried by lazer beams of Doom!111!. (I just discovered HC Lasers. I instantly fell in love. Sorry Mass Drivers, you just cannot compare.)

In other news, I seemed to have glassed the Zuul's homeworld with a (poorly-armed) secondary fleet. Huh. Poor guy must be in dire straits.

[Gaius Marius]

A Zuul homeworld isn't so much of a "home" than merely a starting place. They won't care very long for it..

So, should I study Deflectors for my DF missiles or go to Shield mk2?

Edit: and here I just wasted 2 turns researching fire control modules for my warships. Damn it, I should have went for defensive tech..

Oh: my greatest fear is Node Cannon. These thing wiped 5 cruisers in a single shot, how do I counter them?

[Grif]

A Zuul homeworld isn't so much of a "home" than merely a starting place. They won't care very long for it..

So, should I study Deflectors for my DF missiles or go to Shield mk2?

Edit: and here I just wasted 2 turns researching fire control modules for my warships. Damn it, I should have went for defensive tech..

Oh: my greatest fear is Node Cannon. These thing wiped 5 cruisers in a single shot, how do I counter them?

Never seen this in action yet. Really that bad? (Have you researched armour for your warships? They're a must if you want to survive fusion-era tech and beyond.)

Minor update, I turned the Tarkan world into a volcanic world now it seems, with a CH of 1.2k. I feel kinda bad about it. (Also, I actually wanted to colonise the world. Size 10 is pretty juicy no matter how you slice it.)

[Gaius Marius]

Next time you want to conquer a world rather than glass it, go for Assault Shuttles and beam weaponry. Or plague.

[Kane]

Yeah, he's been ferrying them from a nearby system.

Said system is now glass after being fried by lazer beams of Doom!111!. (I just discovered HC Lasers. I instantly fell in love. Sorry Mass Drivers, you just cannot compare.)

In other news, I seemed to have glassed the Zuul's homeworld with a (poorly-armed) secondary fleet. Huh. Poor guy must be in dire straits.
You are too quick to abandon mass drivers, my friend. Just wait until you get both Neutronium Rounds and Accelerator Amplification. You will come crawling back to your true love, begging for acceptance! (Especially if AI Command sections are a possibility.)


A Zuul homeworld isn't so much of a "home" than merely a starting place. They won't care very long for it..

So, should I study Deflectors for my DF missiles or go to Shield mk2?

Edit: and here I just wasted 2 turns researching fire control modules for my warships. Damn it, I should have went for defensive tech..

Oh: my greatest fear is Node Cannon. These thing wiped 5 cruisers in a single shot, how do I counter them?

Truth. I don't actually know a counter to it, but Humans are mostly immune. By 'mostly', I mean a targeted ship gets tossed into Nodespace and comes out one jump away. (It does no damage, just forcibly relocates them.)

I think shields might help? Also keep in mind that the rip/rend/tear/whatever ships that the zuul use to make their drives are fantastically expensive. Even if they're getting your cruiser with their destroyers, they probably aren't getting a fair trade, provided you can turn said destroyer into an expanding cloud of gas and debris.

[Gaius Marius]

So.. Shields, deflectors or fire control?

[Impnemo]

For what? Deflectors are hemispherical and only stop physical, while shields are omnidirectional. Generically speaking, I prefer shields unless there is a specific reason to want to stop only physical attacks, like an impactornought. As for shields/fire control, you are neglecting battle and assault bridges. It really depends what you are going for. Fewer tougher ships, more ships with more dakka? Try'em all. Just be mindful of how the bridges affect turn speed if you use heavy beams.

[Mistral]

A Zuul homeworld isn't so much of a "home" than merely a starting place. They won't care very long for it..

So, should I study Deflectors for my DF missiles or go to Shield mk2?

Edit: and here I just wasted 2 turns researching fire control modules for my warships. Damn it, I should have went for defensive tech..

Oh: my greatest fear is Node Cannon. These thing wiped 5 cruisers in a single shot, how do I counter them?

I usually take them on just by hammering them until they explode, which is inelegant but effective. You can't defend against them once they fire as far as I know, but they're slow to recharge and have a limited firing arc straight astern, so hit them first and hit them hard, preferably from the front or sides. Don't stay behind them unless you know they're recharging. Alternately, in late game campaigns, Dreadnoughts don't get bounced into nodespace according to the wiki. That might be a trifle bit overkill, though.

[Misery Esquire]

like an impactornought.

Speaking of which, I've finally bothered to try out Tarkas' Dreadnought stuffed with Heavy Beams... and Heavy Stormers. It's hilarious to watch it wade through Destroyer Fleets.

[Kane]

Speaking of which, I've finally bothered to try out Tarkas' Dreadnought stuffed with Heavy Beams... and Heavy Stormers. It's hilarious to watch it wade through Destroyer Fleets.

I prefer their carrier 'noughts with battleriders full of Antimatter, heavy antimatter, and UV lasers.

A wall of purple death. Is beautiful.

[Grif]

A 'Hail Mary' Tarkan fleet showed up and wiped a backwater world of mine.

The next turn a VN Berserker shows up and wiped another backwater world.

This game is awesome.

Now, how do you counter these floating discs of doom?

[Impnemo]

Speaking of which, I've finally bothered to try out Tarkas' Dreadnought stuffed with Heavy Beams... and Heavy Stormers. It's hilarious to watch it wade through Destroyer Fleets.

No no no I mean, well, this...

http://sots.rorschach.net/images/3/3a/Liir_Impactor_Dreadnought.jpg

22.5k a volley from that thing, iirc, out to an absurd range. Nice ride, if you can get it.




Berserkers? Erm, you can cheat. /shifty Sots AI agro is... lacking sometimes. You can bait the discs with a fast destroyer and run it off into the aether, just make it faster than them and keep them in visual range. Then laugh and knock over the toothless mothership.


Or you can stab your hurty bits with a fork, its more pleasant. Seriously though, their big threats are awesome PD, armor piercing drivers, shields, cloak, and boarding pods. Sweep the pods, don't rely on missiles, each disc has a different power and it shares that power with the others. Use deepscan to negate the cloak, figure out which disc generates the shield and nuke it and the AP driver disc. Hard. Harder than they nuke you.




Or just don't provoke them in the first place.

[Kane]

A 'Hail Mary' Tarkan fleet showed up and wiped a backwater world of mine.

The next turn a VN Berserker shows up and wiped another backwater world.

This game is awesome.

Now, how do you counter these floating discs of doom?

Lots of tough ships with lots of guns.

That's all I know. I suppose bursters might work, as might emitters, but I usually end up taking them on with cutting beams (for the 'serker core,) and then just trying to survive until the end of the combat. I usually do not plan on actually killing all those discs, though it certainly is possible.

Edit: I am certain the Disc-'O-Doom swarm includes these weapons:

Meson Beams
AP heavy drivers
Heavy Emitters
Phaser PD

That's all I can do for you.

[Misery Esquire]

No no no I mean, well, this...

No, no. I knew what you meant. It just happened to be (somewhat) relevant to my bothering to attempt Stormers on... Anything. I usually ignore them.

[Airk]

A 'Hail Mary' Tarkan fleet showed up and wiped a backwater world of mine.

The next turn a VN Berserker shows up and wiped another backwater world.

This game is awesome.

Now, how do you counter these floating discs of doom?

The best way to deal with VN Berserkers is to not have to fight them.

To win, VN Berserkers attack a planet if:

A) That planet has recently destroyed a VN Collector (The usual wimpy VN vessels that show up and steal 500 resources.)
B) The VNs have collected enough resources to build a berserker. (I have no idea how much this is.)

So, if you want to dodge VN berserkers wholesale, you just have to blockcade your planets with enough destroyers/sats that you destroy all the little VN Drones, without actually attacking the Collector itself. This behavior will never result in the VNs being annoyed enough at you to send a Berserker after you. This is an easy enough tactic early game - heck, if all you have at a planet is 10 light sats, if you autoresolve the battle, the VN will eat some of them and go home happy without harming the planet. I believe this DOES contribute to their total resource collection though.

The other alternative is to mercilessly slaughter all collectors you can find, and hope the VNs don't build up enough resources to build a berserker, though they probably will eventually... which leads to:

If you destroy a VN collector, reinforce that system heavily. Berserkers aren't actually THAT bad - a dozen or so cruisers with solid fusion level weaponry should be able to grind one down, or at least, beat it off. Make sure to bring point defense or accurate small weapons to destroy boarding pods, and otherwise, just focus fire on a couple discs at a time (you don't need to aim all six of your cruisers at one of them if you're packing heavy beams, most likely.). Do NOT use missiles. (Missiles are semi useless against a LOT of the "menace" type hazards in the game, really.)

[Kane]

I believe that if you destroy a VN Mothership, that world gets a 'flag'. If you acquire two flags at a single world, a Berserker comes knocking.

I can't cite it, though, and don't know how accurate it is. Try poking around on the wiki.Tech-tree linked to Wiki (http://chariot.nickersonm.com/ANY_TechTree).

[Grif]

No, no. I knew what you meant. It just happened to be (somewhat) relevant to my bothering to attempt Stormers on... Anything. I usually ignore them.

My Stormers eat missile armed Tarka CRs for breakfast. Or at least bring them down in a 3:1 ratio in an even fight.

'Course, I was lucky enough to roll Predictive Gunnery so... :smallbiggrin: Them Mass Drivers are godly with increased accuracy... in brawler range anyway.

[Gaius Marius]

Except DumbFire Missiles, obviously.

Antimatter DF packs can deal with anything point defense can't.

[Emmerask]

My Stormers eat missile armed Tarka CRs for breakfast. Or at least bring them down in a 3:1 ratio in an even fight.

'Course, I was lucky enough to roll Predictive Gunnery so... :smallbiggrin: Them Mass Drivers are godly with increased accuracy... in brawler range anyway.

Wild weasel class destroyers pretty much make any torpedo or missile based attack pointless, put 2 pd ships near it and watch the fun ^^

btw only 18 hours to go :smallbiggrin:

[Grif]

So, I finally grinded the Tarkan AI in my game to dust. :smallbiggrin:

Who knew giant lasers would be excellent in toasting planets? The thing is, the AI could have dragged things out very long had he wished to. His last planet was entirely unconnected by any other node line and is smack dab next to my homeworld. :smallannoyed: Luckily, he surrendered and there was no need for me to pay him a visit.

Now... to forge an alliance with the space dolphins and take down the Hivers. (who were pretty much no.1 the whole game, though I am starting to top the charts in term of income and colony.) Oh, and free colonies from the independent colonies I left behind. :smallbiggrin:

[Gaius Marius]

Well, I Am sorry to tell you people I will now put a bullet through my current Hive game's head.

I quit SoTS permanently.

'Cause Sword of the Stars 2 is going out today!!! YAAAY!!!

I promise to send you a report on the difference. Will try to be quicker than Angry Joe.. :-D

[Impnemo]

On to bigger and buggier things eh? And is that you volunteering to setup a lets play?:smallamused:

[Kane]

For some reason, Steam has bumped the release time back by four hours. It now releases at two PM.

There are no words to express my outrage.

[Gaius Marius]

Just so I'd show to the world how much I suck? Nah... I'd rather keep this on a gossip-base..

But I may try new stuff.. And show.. I dunnow, I always wanted to do a LP..

We'll see!!

[Gaius Marius]

For some reason, Steam has bumped the release time back by four hours. It now releases at two PM.

There are no words to express my outrage.

I bought mine through Gamersgate. I'll see tonight if it's available!!

Moding through Steam is hell, I think, and I wanna keep my modtions opens

[Emmerask]

Downloading it right now from steam, release time was correct before they changed it :smallbiggrin:

Oh and sots2 will need steam to install regardless of where you bought it, but it uses none of the other drm or game checking stuff from steam, so that modding is no problem.
Ie you need steam to install/update but not to run.

[DaedalusMkV]

Well, I Am sorry to tell you people I will now put a bullet through my current Hive game's head.

I quit SoTS permanently.

'Cause Sword of the Stars 2 is going out today!!! YAAAY!!!

I promise to send you a report on the difference. Will try to be quicker than Angry Joe.. :-D
I've been looking forwards to this. Download is starting now, and I can't wait till it's done.

On to bigger and buggier things eh? And is that you volunteering to setup a lets play?:smallamused:
You know what? I've been wanting to do a Lets Play of SotS for a long, long time. I may very well take you up on this, what with the new game on the way.

Downloading it right now from steam, release time was correct before they changed it :smallbiggrin:

Oh and sots2 will need steam to install regardless of where you bought it, but it uses none of the other drm or game checking stuff from steam, so that modding is no problem.
Ie you need steam to install/update but not to run.
Yup, download went up abut 40 minutes ago. Looks like about a 3 hour download for me. Heh, one good thing about moving to the city is getting 600 kbps download speeds. Back home it'd probably take me all day to download this thing.

[Kane]

Great. I give up waiting and head to class, and they release it within the hour. :smalleek:

I might be a little bitter.


Also, I've been hearing rumors that the game is behaving like a buggy PoS. Can anyone confirm or deny?

[Grif]

I haven't bought the new game. Will probably pick it up once I'm actually done with this prime version. :smalltongue:

That said, Impactornaughts are superb! I dueled two of those nasty Hiver DNs and won without a loss. I even managed to snipe his gate. Take that Hiver scum!

[Emmerask]

Also, I've been hearing rumors that the game is behaving like a buggy PoS. Can anyone confirm or deny?


Hmm, yes there are some bugs for me at least, the game always stars in windowed mode (no matter if turned on or off in the options),
some texts are not shown graphic options menu
the audio changes are pretty much ignored

Thats about what I have gathered atm but it seems to have quite a few bugs ^^

[Mistral]

Great. I give up waiting and head to class, and they release it within the hour. :smalleek:

I might be a little bitter.


Also, I've been hearing rumors that the game is behaving like a buggy PoS. Can anyone confirm or deny?

Word is that it's true, because of a certain mix-up. Steam uploaded a rather outdated build, apparently, which has caused quite a bit of hilarity to ensue. They're replacing it with the proper release version now. Of course, all of this is second-hand info with the Kerberos forums thoroughly deaded; we'll know if the version number changes from 17174b to an actual release value in a few hours.

[Emmerask]

Word is that it's true, because of a certain mix-up. Steam uploaded a rather outdated build, apparently, which has caused quite a bit of hilarity to ensue. They're replacing it with the proper release version now. Of course, all of this is second-hand info with the Kerberos forums thoroughly deaded; we'll know if the version number changes from 17174b to an actual release value in a few hours.

That would explain quite a lot, I was already on my marry way to curse the beta testers to hell and back :smallbiggrin:

* note to self chill out ^^*

[Gaius Marius]

I am looking forward so many of this new game's gimmicks. Apparently, your government form will be decided based on the kind of approach you adopt and technology you research. You can't switch from a dictatorship to a democracy just by filling a markbox.

Looking forward the ship's detailed logistics and damage system. Will go a long way toward seeing how much damage you are causing...

[Kane]

Word is that it's true, because of a certain mix-up. Steam uploaded a rather outdated build, apparently, which has caused quite a bit of hilarity to ensue. They're replacing it with the proper release version now. Of course, all of this is second-hand info with the Kerberos forums thoroughly deaded; we'll know if the version number changes from 17174b to an actual release value in a few hours.
Ah, thanks.

Yeah, according to their twitter, that seems to be the case.


#SwordoftheStars
@ilyagrave the devs have confirmed a new build is being uploaded to Steam right now

[Spartacus]

First Dead Island and now SotS. What is with these Dev builds going to Steam?

[Impnemo]

Well, I just got the steam version, didn't check which build it is, and toyed around with it a bit. Learned something! Prototyping is... expensive...

[Cogwheel]

My computer very definitely cannot run SotS 2. Sadface.

[Kane]

My computer very definitely cannot run SotS 2. Sadface.

If you say so due to trying it, be aware that the current version is a massive, clunky, incomplete dev testing version that was put on Steam by mistake. They're allegedly getting it fixed. It's possible that the real version will be a lighter load on your system.

Or you just looked at the specs and made the judgement. No luck there. I'm busy banking on the first.

[Gaius Marius]

I refuse to play a second more of this game until they can think of a better way to place the interface.

By the Suul'Ka, this is horrible! How do I deselect a system's interface? How do I easily get out of system view? The system's interface in right in the freaking middle of the screen, making it IMPOSSIBLE to select something else or to actually CLOSE that view. You can only select something else.

The technology screen is just.. woah, how could they have messed it so badly? More tech is good. More random tech that you can research the feasability first rather than simply being allowed/disallowed is a good idea too.

I absolutely love the fact that they put a detailed explanation of the effect of weaponry and other techs, when you want to research the stuff. But again: DO YOU HAVE TO PUT IT RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE, MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE TO JUMP FROM ONE TECH TO THE OTHER?

Also, who thought it was a good idea that you can only jump from one tech tree to the other through pressing a button with your mouse?! You cannot even use arrow keys to jump between tech trees, and you cannot more horizontally with your mouse.


This game might be the single AAA game of the year. But I won't know about it until there is some sense thrown into these designers. Seriously, it feels like a 90's game in term of User Interface. Following a somewhat complex but highly utilitarian and sounded interface in SotS 1, this simply staggers me. I can't navigate easily between planets or system through the main screen.

But I'll give this game a chance. Maybe I missed something, but I will give it a break for now. I am sure this has a thousand things for offer, but the UI letdown kinda broke my enthousiasm for now. Will get back to it in a while... need to decompress.

Edit: Just saw the comments saying that it's a clunky developper version. Phew!!

I really, really, really, really hope somebody will pay for this horrible mistake. This could really damage the game reputation.

[Cogwheel]

If you say so due to trying it, be aware that the current version is a massive, clunky, incomplete dev testing version that was put on Steam by mistake. They're allegedly getting it fixed. It's possible that the real version will be a lighter load on your system.

Or you just looked at the specs and made the judgement. No luck there. I'm busy banking on the first.

Specs, I'm afraid. Vastly ahead of mine, which is why I won't be buying it. Wish I wasn't on a laptop.

[Emmerask]

Edit: Just saw the comments saying that it's a clunky developper version. Phew!!

Yeah I´m not really buying that anymore tbh...

Firstly it is pretty much the promise of the miracle patch (which never ever ever has happened) albeit its with a nice twist now ^^.

Then of course if you deploy a piece of software you check the buildversion like 1000000 billion times...
And afterwards you actually check what you have deployed there...^^

Then this build version seems to be only 2 weeks old (rumors but pretty solid ones), 2 weeks before going gold not much can be done, due to growing complexity of a program ie you change one thing and it impacts a million other things.

The fact that 2 more patches (one saturday one monday) have already been announced...

then we have really dubious wording in their twitter announcements like:
SolForce Kerberos Productions @
@chasesan And this wasn't the representative build we'd planned, so tonight's update will give you a better look at the game


To me all of this pretty much smells like they just didn´t finish in time and could have used a month more in testing/fixing stuff...

I really hope that I´m very much wrong about it but in general miracle patches just don´t happen ^^

[Kane]

Yeah I´m not really buying that anymore tbh...

Firstly it is pretty much the promise of the miracle patch (which never ever ever has happened) albeit its with a nice twist now ^^.

Then of course if you deploy a piece of software you check the buildversion like 1000000 billion times...
And afterwards you actually check what you have deployed there...^^

Then this build version seems to be only 2 weeks old (rumors but pretty solid ones), 2 weeks weeks before going gold not much can be done, due to growing complexity of a program ie you change one thing and it impacts a million other things.

The fact that 2 more patches (one saturday one monday) have already been announced...

then we have really dubious wording in their twitter announcements like:
SolForce Kerberos Productions @
@chasesan And this wasn't the representative build we'd planned, so tonight's update will give you a better look at the game


To me all of this pretty much smells like they just didn´t finish in time and could have used a month more in testing/fixing stuff...

I really hope that I´m very much wrong about it but in general miracle patches just don´t happen ^^

I'd counter that with the point that the 'load file was five gigs. I've seen the devs say in multiple places on the kerberos forums that the end-product is just over 2GB. (compressed.)

I don't know. I could just be being foolishly optimistic.

[Impnemo]

All of which is why, as I said first page, I never ever buy day 1. I went in expecting this to happen. IIRC there were similar issues with SotS when it was released. Was hoping for a bit more polish but whatever.


I'll second the notion that the tech screen needs better control. Though you can click on adjacent trees to bring them up, it is clunky. Current version is 0.0.17174c. Well see what the week brings. What little I have been through so far, the only thing that disappointed me was the map creation. Seems like they're prebuilt maps. In prime I would get a sphere and adjust star number to match the game I wanted, couldn't see a way to get that kind of setup.

[Emmerask]

Maybe the mapeditor will have a function to auto generate a map with a certain shape and specific number of stars or somesuch

/edit god its getting really late here my grammer and choice of words is seriously lacking (6 in the morning here :smallwink:)

[Gaius Marius]

I'll second the notion that the tech screen needs better control. Though you can click on adjacent trees to bring them up, it is clunky. Current version is 0.0.17174c. Well see what the week brings. What little I have been through so far, the only thing that disappointed me was the map creation. Seems like they're prebuilt maps. In prime I would get a sphere and adjust star number to match the game I wanted, couldn't see a way to get that kind of setup.

It does show some very nice promises, however. I am not dismissing this game yet. :smallbiggrin:

edit: Oh, by the way. Anybody knows if the nebulas will have an effective effect, or they are just there to be pretty?

Can't say I hate them, gives some orientation help, I'd admit. Make it hell to see properly at certain angles, however.

[Impnemo]

Messed around with a different start and different settings. They moved some research around, apparently you can get las PD without VRF. Makes sense. You can also get a PD module. When I tried putting two on one armor cruiser I CTD. And now I goto sleep and wait for things to clear up.

[Grif]

All of which is why, as I said first page, I never ever buy day 1. I went in expecting this to happen. IIRC there were similar issues with SotS when it was released. Was hoping for a bit more polish but whatever.


I'll second the notion that the tech screen needs better control. Though you can click on adjacent trees to bring them up, it is clunky. Current version is 0.0.17174c. Well see what the week brings. What little I have been through so far, the only thing that disappointed me was the map creation. Seems like they're prebuilt maps. In prime I would get a sphere and adjust star number to match the game I wanted, couldn't see a way to get that kind of setup.

In that case, then I'll wait for the gold version again. Like I did when I picked up this game. At least I don't have to sit through months and years of agonising patches. By all accounts, this botched release seemed to have tarred SotS II reputation prematurely.

Anyhow! I finally finished my human game. 'Twas somewhat an anticlimax towards the end. Impactornaughts just steamrolled whatever Dreads the AI put out. (Mostly HC Lasers, Heavy Stormers and Missiles Dreads) Interestingly, they did try to field Anti-matter Torps and Corrosive Missiles towards the bitter end, which sort of countered my Impactors nicely. (Those things hurt,) But it was too little too late.

[Drasius]

Well, now the "Fixed" version is out and it's still a steamer in terms of UI, and still full of bugs. Still starts windowed, won't go full screen, can't deselect ships from the build que, still no tutorial, sound is still farkled, visuals are all blurry and jagged even on all high settings, A bunch of text display errors, spelling errors, no naming of the sections for ships in the selection window, etc. I could go on, but the list is long, I'm annoyed and you get the point.

You think they'd have learned something from the 1st game, but apparently not. So much potential here, so very much, just to screw themselves over by releasing when another couple of weeks of polish could have sorted much of this out (though the ****ty UI requires a serious rethink/rebuild, and that's not a matter of weeks). Either the beta testers are brain-dead or the devs just didn't listen at all. I suspect it's the later. Once the forums are back up, enquiries will be made.

[Grif]

Well, now the "Fixed" version is out and it's still a steamer in terms of UI, and still full of bugs. Still starts windowed, won't go full screen, can't deselect ships from the build que, still no tutorial, sound is still farkled, visuals are all blurry and jagged even on all high settings, A bunch of text display errors, spelling errors, no naming of the sections for ships in the selection window, etc. I could go on, but the list is long, I'm annoyed and you get the point.

You think they'd have learned something from the 1st game, but apparently not. So much potential here, so very much, just to screw themselves over by releasing when another couple of weeks of polish could have sorted much of this out (though the ****ty UI requires a serious rethink/rebuild, and that's not a matter of weeks). Either the beta testers are brain-dead or the devs just didn't listen at all. I suspect it's the later. Once the forums are back up, enquiries will be made.

That's... bad. :smallannoyed:

[Emmerask]

It is pretty much an alpha version they sold us with all the missing and completely not working features the ui bugs etc :smallmad:

I guess in 3 or so months the game will be playable -.-

[Kane]

Sadly, that's about the conclusion that I've reached on it.

Don't disregard the game- It looks to be Grade A material. Eventually. At the moment, it's a buggy mess.

So, unless you are supremely dedicated, wait a few weeks before either buying or playing it. If you pre-ordered it, just pretend the release date got pushed back by two to eight weeks. That's what I'm going to try to do. :smallfrown:

[Gaius Marius]

BUT..

I can see a lot of promise. Seriously. I can see why the devs were really enthusiasts about it.

I waited a few months for this, I can wait a bit more. Back to my Hiver Game.. or maybe I can try to win A New Hope once and for all!!!

[Impnemo]

I haven't gotten very far into it, setup a few colonies and what not, but no combat so far. Turns out the colonize mission continues after just dumping them, you don't crash the ships onto the surface like in prime. The fleet makes runs to and from home bringing more colonists. Thing is, if you stop that mission, say you want to add more colonizers to the group to speed things along, I can't find a way to get them back into that 'support new colony' mode. So once you start the colonize mission you are best to let it finish. With the way the new fleet system works you cant just make a 30+ colonizer fleet and crash land onto a suddenly fully developed world. At least not in the foreseeable future.

Feasibility studies show you a chance to yield the research, and that chance varies from game to game. I once had a 99% chance of vrf, last game I had only 71% chance. Biome colonizer was a 1% chance at 19 turns. Im curious exactly how this plays out. Like, would that have been 5% at 95 turns? If you are late game and have wads of cash can you throw enough money at any research and eventually get it through stubbornness? Or is there a point where the game says "mercy, no, stop!"


Aside from options being greyed out, I'm not finding the game anyway unplayable, yet. Though, I did notice the sound cutoff when my human armor mass driver cruiser alpha striked a target in the weapons test. That may just be my on board sound not making the grade, well see.


The UI itself isn't intuitive. Ofc, neither was prime's. You have to use the fleet management screen to create a new fleet, but I had to use the standard over view to move reserve ships into that fleet. Want to right click on a CnC and just make a fleet...

[Impnemo]

And here's a head scratcher. The colony window, the pane that shows your colonized worlds, surveyed worlds, enemy worlds etc. It doesn't show moons of planets. Like, half my small empire is on moons of gas giants, and they don't show up on the administration page.

[Rockphed]

And here's a head scratcher. The colony window, the pane that shows your colonized worlds, surveyed worlds, enemy worlds etc. It doesn't show moons of planets. Like, half my small empire is on moons of gas giants, and they don't show up on the administration page.

But you can put colonies on the moons of gas giants? I hope they get it actually working. I want this thing!

[Impnemo]

I did run into a few error tossing crashes, and its throwing a fairly detailed log up to boot. One crash was due to a steam "get achievement" api error of some kind, it happened once while I was logged out of steam and hasn't happened since I started steam back up. I am using the steam version, dunno if other versions have that problem.

The remaining crashes have all been null reference errors, something in the random encounter script at turn processing is pointing to an object that, well, doesn't exist. I'm wondering if setting randoms to zero for the time being might address that.

When making a ship with duplicate modules, say two PD modules, they overlap on the build screen though both are correctly placed. You have to set and equip the guns on one module, take it off, set the other, then place both on the ship. Still have not gotten into combat yet so I can't say the modules work in combat, but they're displayed properly in the weapon test and not in the build screen.

Can find info in the encyclopedia on the starter modules, camel caravan professor X etc. Can not find any reference to the *auxiliary fusion reactor. The asterix is there in the build screen and makes me question its functionality.



Don't take anything I say to downplay gameplay issues for granted, I'm a sucker for this kind of game. Don't get me started on star wars galaxies.

[Emmerask]

Furnices and auxiliary reactors affect your ships maneuvering and general energy supply of the ship, both moving and firing energy weapons (lasers) need energy :smallwink:

If it actually works I can´t really tell though ^^

Has anyone figured out how to actually create new provinces?
I used the create new province button and selected the first planet, but the next button never highlights ^^ maybe bugged?

[Impnemo]

In theory that makes sense, in practice the only effects shown in the build screen are that it increases crew use by 2, supply use by 1, and production cost by 2,250.

[GloatingSwine]

It is pretty much an alpha version they sold us with all the missing and completely not working features the ui bugs etc :smallmad:

I guess in 3 or so months the game will be playable -.-

I don't see how anyone's surprised about this, given that it's being published by Paradox, and "It might work in 3-6 months" is accurate for all Paradox games on release.

[houlio]

Just found this, which was reposted from the kerberos forums onto the steam forums. I thought you all might find it interesting. It's spoilered for length.

Hey folks! Helluva weekend eh?

Welcome to the perfect storm of ♥♥♥♥ up made up of 40% Murphy's Law, 30% Chaos, 20% Overambition and 10% wishful thinking. And you have our deepest regrets for what it is worth as none of this was part of the plan.

I am tempted to go into full blown explanations but a) that starts to smack of making excuses and b) in reality I think the biggest things on people's minds right now judging from your posts is "Who's responsible?!!" and "What's going to be done?!!" And even when its time for explanations I am sure you would all rather hear about it in the context of "How this won't happen again".

That latter question is an easy one and best gotten out of the way quickly. "Who is responsible?"...I am. Half my job at Kerberos is to be the one that makes the hard call. What gets prioritized. What gets pulled. What gets released. What get accepted. And in many ways, what gets said. When push comes to shove, I am the one who makes the deal with the devil. When something is supposed to be watched, its me who has to know the answer. When the switch got thrown on the wrong build, costing many of you an extra big download and letting loose an extra buggy code base, I was in traffic instead of giving the yay or nay myself. That should not have been...hell I should have insisted nothing moved until the right code had been there and confirmed multiple times. Instead I blew it and bad things happened.

So lets set this straight here. When you are dealing with SotS2 this weekend and wondering quite rightly "Who is to blame for this?!!" The answer is me. NOT Paradox...NOT Steam and certainly NOT my team. All of those forces have been exemplary in helping deal with a bad situation. When it comes to who should be at the end of anyone's fingerpoint, it's just plain ol' me.


Ok...so now onto the real important thing...The Future of SotS2 and what you can count on.


First of all the bad news...Thanks to various factors we are now sitting on top of a pile of blown apart code and unstable features. The first thing you can expect though is stability. There will be an update tomorrow which will set right much of the chaos created friday in terms of crashing and keeping you from playing that game. What it WON'T do is magically add back in every piece of functionality. Gods know I wish that I had that magic wand but the reality is that path leads to more chaos and more broken gameplay sessions. Remember that part where I mentioned making the hard calls? This is another one of those. As much as the team wants to throw themselves at this like crazy people, I am not going to ok that. Instead we will go about this in a relatively sane and orderly fashion with regular updates that make sure everything that goes back in is as stable as possible before you see it. Oh I am sure some stuff will leak through, but at least that will be dealt with quickly and cleanly. Sorry to just put the hard facts to you straight without flowers but I think we are somewhat past the flowers make it all better stage of this relationship

What this means to you...

This plan means that you folks can expect at least 2 or 3 updates a week over the next month or so that will gradually make this game into what it should have been when the switch was pulled on friday. Soon after that you can expect personel in black suits to arrive at your house to flash a red light in your eyes. After that you will find yourself happy and enjoying the best release day ever and none of this will ever have happened.
Ok fine...I am a lil shakey on the last half of the plan but what I can tell you is that by the end of this period you WILL have more additional content than you would have under more ideal circumstances. Every update will go out with some thank you for your patience...some badges, extra maps, new nose art, more background entries. Basically whatever can be done alongside the priority path will be put in as well. The people out there who know Kerberos know that we support our games not just for weeks or months but for years. For all of you people new to us, please let me assure you that despite how your purchase may look at the moment, you can look forward to years of support. I would ask that you consider not giving up on us because it will literally take the end of the world for Kerberos and Paradox to give up on SotS2.


What I would like to ask of you...


Oh I know that is hardly what you expected to hear right now, but before your temperature rises, please hear me out becuase this portion is in reaction to ALL the posts I have read which seem to subdivide into certain clear groups.


If you are a Kerberos and/or a SotS fan then please just enjoy the game as you can over the next few weeks. I know you want to help as much as possible but to be honest you should NOT be rewarded for your support with more work. Your feedback is appreciated but in no means are you expected to act as testers or hunt bugs. Literally your patience and continued support is more than enough.

If you truely feel like you have been dumped into an unannounced beta test on this game, then please, I ask you to put the game away and not look at it till someone fires off the "all done" flag. I am not going to tell you that you should not feel this way. What I am going to say is that if you feel this way then you should not feel victimized any more than if you had made a pre-order and then been informed of a delay. I know this does not make it all right but at least it should make it clear that no one wants to use you as a beta tester nor was that ever the intent.

And finally, if you are in the camp that still feels robbed by the time you have reached this point of my post I can only offer what I can. We are fixing it and we need folks to either cheer, step aside or get out of the way cause vitriol is not going to help right now. If you demand a refund then I completely understand and you can be assured, the cost of that will make it directly to us. We will feel your "voting with your dollars", you can be sure about that and we accept that as fair play. On the other hand, if a free copy of the orginal SotS will help tide you over while we get this game shined from turnip to jewel, then please write to "[email protected]" and we will set you up. If nothing else, if you are not familiar with how we support our products, you can play it and then ask the old-timers how much it changed over the years and that may reassure you.



So if you are still with me after this long post...let me summarize.

a) ♥♥♥♥ up
b) my fault
c) will be Completely fixed
d) fun stuff in many updates
e) Understanding of your position
f) Apology again and underserved request for faith and patience from people who don't know us.


That's about it folks. I hope this helps in some way or another. If enough people care, I will try and post a "Ways I can think of to prevent this from happening ever again". But otherwise its sunday and I got a whole lot of work to get done for tomorrow's update.

Once again, Regrets and our deepest thanks for whatever patience each one of you can offer.
--Martin Cirulis
CEO/Creative Director
Kerberos Productions

[Gaius Marius]

Oh well. I guess that's as good as an explanation as any. I will put this game aside, and just be back to it when the proverbial "all set to go" flag will show up.

Again, try to win this frakking A New Hope..

[Emmerask]

I don't see how anyone's surprised about this, given that it's being published by Paradox, and "It might work in 3-6 months" is accurate for all Paradox games on release.

Well paradox is only the publisher not the development studio, but they seem to put a bit too much pressure on their studios with the schedule and financially otherwise the streak of half finished games can only be explained by coincidence which is unlikely since it I think is near 8 in a row or so games ^^

I only played Sword of the stars since the Born of Blood expansion and then the game was pretty much rock solid (except for a rather bad net code which penalizes people with good pcs ie their game during fights stutters to let the slower pcs catch up ^^)

Since the sots2 release I read a lot about sots1 being nearly equally buggy at launch so yes I could have known from that :smallbiggrin:

I sincerely hope that we have a good feature complete mostly bug free game in very few months because what there is looks pretty nice.

[Grif]

Well paradox is only the publisher not the development studio, but they seem to put a bit too much pressure on their studios with the schedule and financially otherwise the streak of half finished games can only be explained by coincidence which is unlikely since it I think is near 8 in a row or so games ^^

I only played Sword of the stars since the Born of Blood expansion and then the game was pretty much rock solid (except for a rather bad net code which penalizes people with good pcs ie their game during fights stutters to let the slower pcs catch up ^^)

Since the sots2 release I read a lot about sots1 being nearly equally buggy at launch so yes I could have known from that :smallbiggrin:

I sincerely hope that we have a good feature complete mostly bug free game in very few months because what there is looks pretty nice.

I think at this point, I'll much rather wait for the gold edition to come out before even thinking of purchasing.

I mean, I did so with EUIII and SotS Prime, both which I have not regretted thus far. I'm going to give the same treatment to SotS II.

[Airk]

Pretty sure in one of the pre-release videos I watched, whoever was presenting said something about the Nebulas having an effect on combat, but I don't remember any specifics.

I too am...dissappointed by SotS2 thus far. I have yet to deliberately exit it - it has crashed on me literally every time I have played, generally in 30 minutes or less, and I've seen all kinds of weird behaviors. The "end of turn 3..2...1..." counter work like half the time. Sometimes, though I'm playing humans, I hear the Liir voicover saying "System Update"...and THEN the human voice says it.

The game also seems pretty sluggish.

And even setting aside the stability issues and the like, the interface seems mighty cumbersome. I am sad.

Edit: I CAN run it fullscreen though - just hit Alt-Enter and it quite cheerfully goes to full screen.

[Mistral]

Well paradox is only the publisher not the development studio, but they seem to put a bit too much pressure on their studios with the schedule and financially otherwise the streak of half finished games can only be explained by coincidence which is unlikely since it I think is near 8 in a row or so games ^^

I only played Sword of the stars since the Born of Blood expansion and then the game was pretty much rock solid (except for a rather bad net code which penalizes people with good pcs ie their game during fights stutters to let the slower pcs catch up ^^)

Since the sots2 release I read a lot about sots1 being nearly equally buggy at launch so yes I could have known from that :smallbiggrin:

I sincerely hope that we have a good feature complete mostly bug free game in very few months because what there is looks pretty nice.

Eight in a row? Let's see, you must be talking about published games since you're including this game in the Paradox umbrella rather than Kerberos. There was SotS2, Cities in Motion, Darkest Hour, Dreamlords, HoI3 TCG, Mount&Blade: With Fire and Sword, Sengoku, Supreme Ruler: Cold War, and HoI3: FtM if you count expansion packs. I think the only thing I've heard horrible things about it SotS2. Besides, Kerberos' official word is that they agreed with Paradox on releasing now. I don't know; heavens know that Paradox's internal development team isn't exactly known for its functional and stable release candidates, but I think that I would blame the people who actually made the game for the game's shoddy state.

Honestly, regarding this game, I'm rather disappointed, and a little concerned. Playing it, I cannot help but feel like its feel is very similar to Master of Orion 3. I think it's largely the clunky and unintuitive UI (moving fleets really requires its own separate screen? How can I find morale breakdown information? How do I see the difference between weapons mount sizes, or even all mounts at a glance? What do these modules actually do?) that makes it such a pain. It's a pity, really, because horrible UI is not really something that can just be patched out easily. Still, I have some hope, but...I don't know. It's against my usual instincts, but I'm actually rather tempted to just take advantage of the refund offer.

[Kane]

I've gotten it (sporadically) working too. (Patches+forum help.) Quite perplexing in many ways, but there is a functional game lurking under all the rubble.

One thing; every time I do a feasibility study on the tech tree, or discover a tech, it tells me that no research was assigned that turn. I.E, "No research project assigned -- tech discovered" in the events listing. That keeps annoying me.

As usual with 4x games, I have no idea whether I'm playing it right, and fully expect to get brutally curb-stomped the moment I encounter the anyone else.This is compounded by wondering whether the game itself is functional too.

[GungHo]

the autoresolve creates very very strange results* from time to time
The Total War games do this crap, too.

I honestly think it's a way for game designers to punish you for only wanting to experience 1/2 of the game they labored on. "Auto-resolve? Screw you, guy! I missed Little Tommy's baseball game to model spaceships and laser beams, and then my ex-wife went home with the coach! All your guys die horribly."

[Impnemo]

One thing; every time I do a feasibility study on the tech tree, or discover a tech, it tells me that no research was assigned that turn. I.E, "No research project assigned -- tech discovered" in the events listing. That keeps annoying me.

If its the message I'm thinking of, its an alert to let you know your researchers are idling. A good thing, but I suppose I can see how that can get annoying.


The Total War games do this crap, too.

I honestly think it's a way for game designers to punish you for only wanting to experience 1/2 of the game they labored on. "Auto-resolve? Screw you, guy! I missed Little Tommy's baseball game to model spaceships and laser beams, and then my ex-wife went home with the coach! All your guys die horribly."

Eh... Think of it this way. If auto resolve does better than you do, why bother going into combat? If auto resolve does even at least as well as you, why bother going into combat? Why bother having combat fleshed out at all in either scenario? Auto resolve is best used when the outcome is already a forgone conclusion and you want to dispense with the formalities. So in a way, yes, its good for it to do less well than you. Whether its absurdly worse and useless I dunno, haven't used it yet.

[Impnemo]

In other news:


Fixed a divide by zero crash that could occur when the game tried to trigger a rebellion on a planet with 0 civilian population.



Aieeeeeeeeeee!
http://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=42990

Also, oh sssssnap! Sorry I missed this one:

- Fixed an issue where Suul'ka could become available to non-Horde Zuul players via Diplomatic Stations.

[Kane]

If its the message I'm thinking of, its an alert to let you know your researchers are idling. A good thing, but I suppose I can see how that can get annoying.

I think you're right. Mostly it's getting the 'researchers idling' note before I get the 'research complete' note. Not researching everything I can is my antithesis. Idling scientist is abhorrent.

[Gaius Marius]

Did you ever came across a fully developed an populated world in a new game, who is of the same specie and immediately joins your empire?

Note: (SotS 1 Complete)

[Grif]

Did you ever came across a fully developed an populated world in a new game, who is of the same specie and immediately joins your empire?

Note: (SotS 1 Complete)

Yes. You encountered an independent colony (the game seem to pregenerate these.) Since you already have Translate Language III for your species, your ships will automatically trigger for them to join your empire. (They don't have ships, so any ship, even a scout, is an overwhelming force for some reason.)

[Gaius Marius]

Yes. You encountered an independent colony (the game seem to pregenerate these.) Since you already have Translate Language III for your species, your ships will automatically trigger for them to join your empire. (They don't have ships, so any ship, even a scout, is an overwhelming force for some reason.)

So... they lost their entire Imperial citizenry... who had to evacuate... somewhere?

Talk about an overnight change in power. All of this because of my out-of-gas, damaged Long Range exploration vessel, armed with a mighty 3 Mass Driver?

Whoa... I hope Earth doesn't qualify for this IRL.

[houlio]

So... they lost their entire Imperial citizenry... who had to evacuate... somewhere?

Talk about an overnight change in power. All of this because of my out-of-gas, damaged Long Range exploration vessel, armed with a mighty 3 Mass Driver?

Whoa... I hope Earth doesn't qualify for this IRL.

Did you watch the opening cinematic for SoTS1, just the base game?

[Grif]

Did you watch the opening cinematic for SoTS1, just the base game?

To be fair, the Hivers did bring a Dreadnought along. (Or so the fluff said.) :smalltongue:

Somehow we managed to kill it with our entire stock of nuke stockpiles.

[houlio]

To be fair, the Hivers did bring a Dreadnought along. (Or so the fluff said.) :smalltongue:

Somehow we managed to kill it with our entire stock of nuke stockpiles.

They must not have rolled PD
/terrible joke

[Spartacus]

Anyone who is not pleased with the state of SotSII, come back in a month or so, or so says Kerberos CEO. An unfinished game went out the door when it shouldn't have, and they say they'll be releasing 2-3 updates per week for as long as it takes to finish. Apparently his estimate is you'll have a proper game in a month.

[Grif]

Anyone who is not pleased with the state of SotSII, come back in a month of so, or so says Kerberos CEO. An unfinished game went out the door when it shouldn't have, and they say they'll be releasing 2-3 updates per week for as long as it takes to finish. Apparently his estimate is you'll have a proper game in a month.

I'll give it 6 months before I can actually run this game without game-breaking bugs.

[Airk]

I'll give it 6 months before I can actually run this game without game-breaking bugs.

I have some faith in Kereberos here. I'll take that bet. (Note: I don't say "No bugs" but I do say "no game-breaking bugs".)

Will it have a gorgeous, wonderful, intuitive UI by then? Probably not, but I think the game-breakers are going to be gone in a month.

[Emmerask]

I say it will be playable and mostly feature complete for late Christmas business
ie 15. to 20. december

[Science Officer]

So, I've just been starting on Sword of the Stars, playing the "A New Hope" campaign with a friend. It's been pretty fun. I think I have a pretty good handle on the strategic game-play, but not the tactical gameplay.

A few questions then.
-Is it possible to watch an auto-resolve battle?
-How many ships need to be in a fleet before you start needing those fancy CnC ship segments somewhere?
-How do you diplomacy? I made a non-agression pact with one race, but then I think they broke it. Or that might have been the other ones.

[Grif]

So, I've just been starting on Sword of the Stars, playing the "A New Hope" campaign with a friend. It's been pretty fun. I think I have a pretty good handle on the strategic game-play, but not the tactical gameplay.

A few questions then.
-Is it possible to watch an auto-resolve battle?
-How many ships need to be in a fleet before you start needing those fancy CnC ship segments somewhere?
-How do you diplomacy? I made a non-agression pack with one race, but then I think they broke it. Or that might have been the other ones.

1. No, you cannot watch the auto-resolve battles (due to the quirks of the way the system resolves the battle. Apparently it throws ships at each other and churns the number.) You can, however, see a report of the battle. If one side auto-resolves and the other (human) player decides to duke it out manually, the AI takes over for your ships.

2. Without CnC ships, you can field a max of 6 DEs, or 2 CRs. The ships are chosen at random from your fleet list, so it is entirely possible to see your precious colony ships doing the fighting, instead of your escorts. For this reason alone, I recommend getting CnC tech early, because it then allows you to choose which ship enter the battle.

3. That would be a ceasefire methinks. Ceasefire only applies to unoccupied planets. If either party approaches a colony, all bets are off. A Non-Aggression Pact covers both colonies and ships.

[Science Officer]

Thanks for the answers.
I suppose I should have been more specific with my last question. That other race offered a ceasefire, and I accepted. How do you make diplomatic communications to another race?

[GungHo]

Anyone who is not pleased with the state of SotSII, come back in a month or so, or so says Kerberos CEO. An unfinished game went out the door when it shouldn't have, and they say they'll be releasing 2-3 updates per week for as long as it takes to finish. Apparently his estimate is you'll have a proper game in a month.
I guess "Kerberos" isn't Vancouverian for "Shinola".

[Gaius Marius]

You need to research xenosciences. The first of these is the basic translation for the language, it'll allow you to do ceasefire.

The next language tech allow you to have N-Agression Pact, which are handy. Don't piss off the Liirs if you can avoid it, they are not backstabbers, and they will hunt you to the end of the world if you take ONE of their world.