Best Spiritual Successor to Sword of the Stars?

[Cikomyr]

So Sword of the Stars was, in my humble opinion, a pretty good 4X game bundled with fantastic ship designer/tactical combat simulator.

I love how ships actually shot each others, with firing arcs for batteries, spread, dodging, etc.. a missed shot could actually keep on going and hit accidentally something behind if it was in range. It would always be a pleasure to see two large fleets meet each others to start duking it out with a wide variety of weapons.

By the way: i totally recommend the ACM mod (take out the police ships, they are broken). It makes research waaay most costly, so its never worth waiting your next tech level before starting to field your fleet.

Anyway. I started this thread because.. is there any game remotely similar in term of shipdesign/tactical combat that is not merely abstract number generator, but an actual spesh combat simulation? Where designing my ships intelligently is required, and not just sticking a weapon damage bonus to an abstract attack variable?

Cheers!

[Aotrs Commander]

So Sword of the Stars was, in my humble opinion, a pretty good 4X game bundled with fantastic ship designer/tactical combat simulator.

I love how ships actually shot each others, with firing arcs for batteries, spread, dodging, etc.. a missed shot could actually keep on going and hit accidentally something behind if it was in range. It would always be a pleasure to see two large fleets meet each others to start duking it out with a wide variety of weapons.

By the way: i totally recommend the ACM mod (take out the police ships, they are broken). It makes research waaay most costly, so its never worth waiting your next tech level before starting to field your fleet.

Anyway. I started this thread because.. is there any game remotely similar in term of shipdesign/tactical combat that is not merely abstract number generator, but an actual spesh combat simulation? Where designing my ships intelligently is required, and not just sticking a weapon damage bonus to an abstract attack variable?

Cheers!

To my knowledge, SotS is still the gold standard, I'm afraid. (SotS 2 is better in a few respects, and if it had ever been properly fixed and de-bugged...)

If anyone cares to enlighten us with something better, I'm also all ears...

But I fear that we have, for the moment, reached the apex.




(I have bought, but not yet played Endless Space 2, I have Sins of a Solar Empire but it could ever hold my interest (the lack of ship design probably hurt it in that respect, and the lack of a campaign always made it feel rather... Flat.)




I mean, if we were talking table-top, then clearly Accelerate and Attack! Aeons of War is the single best set of rules ever written, as it was by a truely brilliant, razor sharp, nay, even genius mind that could never be equalled by any living mortal and a decade and a half of careful work, but...

[Cikomyr]

Ever tried the ACM mod?

[Martok]

Polaris Sector from Slitherine.

It boasts (what has been for me) the best combat system I've yet seen in a space 4x title. It's not without its flaws, but it's a fun game overall.

[Aotrs Commander]

Sword of the stars was nice, but had alot of kinks and quirks you had to get used to. Sins is actually a masterpiece. Everything in the game - the game mechanics, the interface, the camera focus, it's simply a superior game in every aspect. It's refined and streamlined, yet it is by no means mainstream or watered down TBS.

If liked sword of the stars, you will love Sins.

I found Sins to be extremely forgettable, myself. Good, but it just couldn't hold my interest for more than one, maybe two games. I can and have gone back to SotS. (Hell, before I started playing PDx grand strats SotS 2 was the game I logged most hours on Steam...)

For a kick off, not designing your own starships immediately puts it lower. That's a pretty crucial point for any game in this genera, personally1. There's not particularly much on the planet side (unless that last expansions massive revised that), so it is not as good as an empire builder and other 4Xs (at least not with the first couple of expansions; I might have Diplomacy, but I'd passed the point I was interested when Rebellion came out); the tech tree is relatively small and I was never keen on how the logistics techs worked.

Sins felt more like an RTS than a 4X (which is was supposed to be, after all), only without the "you can build stuff!" of a 4X or the framing of a story campaign, it had nothing to hold my interest; it just felt flat to me, like an extended skirmish mode game. (Notably, the only RTS game that I have EVER spent much time on skirmish as opposed to re-playing the campaigns is C&C Generals, and usually I even just play the campaign when I dig that out.) I never found the combat to be better than SotS, myself.

(I never finished Total Annhilation, despite a couple of tries, for example, because the story didn't hold my interest enough.)

I would, I think rate AI War higher, despite it's graphical primitiveness, since there was always something to plan for. My first (and currently only) playthrough of that was 64 hours, which is probably more time than I spent on the two or three games of Sins I played. Haven't even installed Sins for some computers ago, I'm afraid.





1It is, after all, literally the thing I do for an unliving.

[Drasius]

Sword of the stars was nice, but had alot of kinks and quirks you had to get used to. Sins is actually a masterpiece. Everything in the game - the game mechanics, the interface, the camera focus, it's simply a superior game in every aspect. It's refined and streamlined, yet it is by no means mainstream or watered down TBS.

If liked sword of the stars, you will love Sins.

As Aotrs Commander said, I found Sins a bit lacklustre to be honest, whereas SotS continually fights for a spot in my ever changing "top 5 games of all time" list.

[Cikomyr]

As Aotrs Commander said, I found Sins a bit lacklustre to be honest, whereas SotS continually fights for a spot in my ever changing "top 5 games of all time" list.

I have to third the proposal. Sins was a neat game, truly. But.. it.. peaked just so goddamn fast. The combat engine of SotS was just better, and the strategic aspect was way more open.

The real shame is that SotS has a few annoyances that could be resolved so easily with a bit of engine mobbing. Something like the trade system being more accessible and easy to follow, maybe with automated freighter building.

And a diplomacy system worth a damn.

[houlio]

There hasn't really been anything to come close to SotS, which is a damn shame imo. A couple that haven't been brought up that are somewhat related are Distant Worlds and potentially Starsector.

Distant Worlds really nails the ship design more than any other space game I have played. While it doesn't really have the somewhat simple and abstract nature of SotS' 3 ship sections with component hardpoints, Distant Worlds gives you a ton of weapon, engine and defensive options that actually make your ships feel very different. In some ways similar to SotS, you can't really say that every option is exactly a competitive choice, but they are all there. That said, Distant Worlds is a hugely different beast in play from SotS. It's entirely a real-time 2d game with an interface that often looks ripped from some kind of mid-90's digital encyclopedia. The pace of the game is incredibly slow despite being in real-time, and you as the player often have much less (or absolutely no) direct control over how your empire/ships behave.

Starsector is in a kind of early access right now (only available through the devs website and not on steam), and it is basically Mount and Blade in space. There is some limited ship "design" available, but it is much more like customization options. Different ship chassis have different sizes and varieties of hard points available along with a set ordnance limit so you often have to make some cuts or trade-offs for each of your ships loadouts. That said, the game's space combat is a ton of fun and utilizes the "real projectiles" aspect of SotS combat (although it's purely 2d instead of SotS 2.5D in a 3d engine). That said, the game is very much Mount and Blade in space. You operate a single fleet, and in battle only a single ship while giving a few different orders and whatnot to the rest of the fleet to carry out. While you eventually can form a small interstellar empire in the game, your ships and weapons and whatnot are almost all just looted or purchased from vendors. In a lot of ways, the game reminds me of a simpler SotS combat engine taped to a sandbox rpg instead of a 4x game.

Neither really delivers what SotS does (and I still go back for a game or two of SotS from time to time), but they both utilize some of the interesting aspects of SotS.

[Aotrs Commander]

So, I think I can strike Endless Space 2 off the list. I bought it a while back on a Steam sale, and I've ben playign it the last week or so.#

Don't think it's gonna get passed my first proper playthrough. Bit too much "and then this happens, for no apparent reason" and the notifications system is absolutely fracking awful. Who the bloody hell though it was a good idea to set it up to keep popping them up when you're trying to deal with another one I don't know.

The starship design is okay, but the combat system itself is kinda blargh.

The fact that even on the low difficulty settings I play on had the AI out-expanding me because of the expansion caps was kind of annoying - actually, a fair amount of ES2 I can categorise as "annoying." It's... just average, really, pretty much par for the course fo 4X, maybe with slightly above-average presentation. (And, in fairness, maybe a little more character than some, because, like SotS, the different race dudes appear to play pretty differently, so there's that.)

But it ain't exactly wowing me, let's put it that way.



I did pick up Polaris Sector just, though, in the Luna Sale on Steam, so we'll see if Martok recommendation holds up presently. (I did consider Distant ?Worlds Uiverse to, but decided, nah.)

[Cikomyr]

So, I think I can strike Endless Space 2 off the list. I bought it a while back on a Steam sale, and I've ben playign it the last week or so.#

Don't think it's gonna get passed my first proper playthrough. Bit too much "and then this happens, for no apparent reason" and the notifications system is absolutely fracking awful. Who the bloody hell though it was a good idea to set it up to keep popping them up when you're trying to deal with another one I don't know.

The starship design is okay, but the combat system itself is kinda blargh.

The fact that even on the low difficulty settings I play on had the AI out-expanding me because of the expansion caps was kind of annoying - actually, a fair amount of ES2 I can categorise as "annoying." It's... just average, really, pretty much par for the course fo 4X, maybe with slightly above-average presentation. (And, in fairness, maybe a little more character than some, because, like SotS, the different race dudes appear to play pretty differently, so there's that.)

But it ain't exactly wowing me, let's put it that way.



I did pick up Polaris Sector just, though, in the Luna Sale on Steam, so we'll see if Martok recommendation holds up presently. (I did consider Distant ?Worlds Uiverse to, but decided, nah.)

Awwww

Too bad. I liked Endless Space's 1 space battles, but only because they felt cinematic. Beside that, they were mechanically abstract.

[Aotrs Commander]

Awwww

Too bad. I liked Endless Space's 1 space battles, but only because they felt cinematic. Beside that, they were mechanically abstract.

I mean, it's not bad, it's just... Pretty unremarkable, maybe slightly abive average?

And, for all the tactics cards system, I find myself pretty much just picking one tactics and sticking with it.

The battles are... Eh, I am just not not overly stuck with watching two sets of ships fly very slowly towards or around each other, shooting, generally. The cinematic camera is as variable as these things, sometimes alright, but sometimes not. From what little I can see from random youtube videos, the battles look not too dissimilar between the two, so...

(I mean, it's several steps above the sort of thing you got in GalCiv 2, but...)

Like, I said, above average presentation, genrally.

By all means, if you can snag it on sale (might be worth loking now, what with the Luna sale) get it and have a go; I've had about twenty-six hours out of it and will probably get a modest few more, so it won't owe me owt by the time it's done (it's broken the Grey Goo barrier). But it's not the golden bullet either of us are really looking for.



What we need, I guess, is sort of Total War:Starships. (Not 40k, though, I don't really like 40k.) If EA wasn't... EA, maybe we could have had a Total War: Star Wars or something, that'd have been cool.

(Or if PDX and Cerberos had not managed to screw SotS 2 up so much...)

[Hunter Noventa]

What we need, I guess, is sort of Total War:Starships. (Not 40k, though, I don't really like 40k.) If EA wasn't... EA, maybe we could have had a Total War: Star Wars or something, that'd have been cool.

(Or if PDX and Cerberos had not managed to screw SotS 2 up so much...)

Well that's a shame, Battlefleet Gothic was pretty good, though the design aspect was as limited as you might expect there.

Its been a while since I played SotS. I think the biggest problem I had with it was the endgame involved throwing fleets of hundreds of ships at one another two dozen at a time, unless you auto-resolved, but you never auto-resolve because that's foolish. But because the game had to load every single one of those ships for every battle, you'd spend more time on the loading screens than you would actually fighting battles.

[Aotrs Commander]

Now playing Polaris Sector.

Graphics are defnitiely not as good as Endless Space, but it hasn't crashed or locked up on me and I haven't spent my time reloading or screaming at the terrible UI to let me finish dealing with one message before throwing the next one in my face, so that's a massive plus.



I have, in fact, spent most of my time futzing with the ship designer (I have yet to even fight a war, but from reading around this is because they take a lot of effort), which is a definite plus in my book. Combat is basically RTwP, in 2D with a sort of 2.5D aspect looking at the ships. (I.e., it isn't top-down, but more sort of looking a bit sort of isometrically).

General opinion so far is it's pretty good. Still not up to SotS, but... The closest I think I've seen thus far. for what it does.

(It also has, I think one of the most viciously incisive race write-up for humans I think I've ever read...)

[Sean Mirrsen]

Now playing Polaris Sector.

Graphics are defnitiely not as good as Endless Space, but it hasn't crashed or locked up on me and I haven't spent my time reloading or screaming at the terrible UI to let me finish dealing with one message before throwing the next one in my face, so that's a massive plus.



I have, in fact, spent most of my time futzing with the ship designer (I have yet to even fight a war, but from reading around this is because they take a lot of effort), which is a definite plus in my book. Combat is basically RTwP, in 2D with a sort of 2.5D aspect looking at the ships. (I.e., it isn't top-down, but more sort of looking a bit sort of isometrically).

General opinion so far is it's pretty good. Still not up to SotS, but... The closest I think I've seen thus far. for what it does.

(It also has, I think one of the most viciously incisive race write-up for humans I think I've ever read...)

I don't know if I was ever as gushy about the game here as I was over on Bay12, but Polaris Sector is basically a modernized remake of my favorite all-time (averaged) 4X space game, sharing the spot with SotS - Remember Tomorrow. It was made way back in 1997, in Russia, before such silly things as interface conventions or gameplay standards. So it's a slightly nonstandard experience nowadays.

RT was awash with bugs and scenario issues, but it was the closest you could get to Sword of the Stars in 1997, and the intricate puzzle-like ship designer is possibly the best of its kind, even if somewhat less meaningful than some because of lack of locational damage. But it was still quite fun.

(and the write-up for humans in RT was just the word "Us." :P)

[Aotrs Commander]

Okay. Finished first playthrough of Polaris Sector.

Hmm. Well, it was way less frusttating than Endless Space 2, and I didn't have spend age reloading or anything. 49 hours, so it don't owe me anything.

The best part of the game is by far the ship design system, where I probably spent most of my time. Each ship has a couple decks (to about four on the biggest) (small craft only one) which is basically a silouhette with a grid in it; weapon and engines slots are in specific positions, but everything else is a balacing factor of fitting in the system you want (as each takes up space) and squeezing the generators in and trying to use as little weight as possible (to keep the speed high). Requires a lot more juggling around than even, say SotS to make something work (as, of course, the shapes are somewhat irregular) but, as i say, I found that by far the most fun of the game.

You have full tactical control during the battles.



Downsides? The tactical combat is... Not all that great. It has potential, but... Problem is 1) attacking fleets, until late-game tech which requires a module get scattered around the map. You have to deploy your ship every time, and the spacing is very, very arbitary. Sometimes you get make ships sit next to each other neatly, and others you can't, like there's some sort of invisible detection block.

Range is proportionally low (especially to ship physical size) and flight speed is also rather slow, making trying any sort of tactics other than with fighters basically a massive pain. Because the ships are so ponderous and the pathfinder pretty poor, woe betide you if you miss-click or click to move without first hitting "keep formation", since you are completely buggered and it will take absolutely AGES to get them back into a semblance of formation. (Also, there is now way to wheel the formation, either, so it you have to go up, your formation moves 90º.) So it means that you can have a huge block of ships, and most of them will only see action later on after the front rank die or not at all. So it is heavily biased towards fighters. So, for all of it, you are still laregly at "large block of ships fly slowly towards you" and squandering a lot of the potential. (BUT, it must be noted, and worth saying again - for all the flaws, it IS still better than no tactical combat. With a few QoL improvements, it would be much better. A Polaris Sector 2, with 3D graphics (if not actual 3D movement) would probably be a lot better, since the pathfinding and ship placement might be easier than with sprites.)

Missiles are really only any use of fighters and massively on-emass and micro'd especially on the end-game crisis and their range isn't longer than the energy weapons.

(And once you win, you get a game-over screen (admittedly, you do get an event log and statistics, which is better than just Sword of the Stars "you win"), with no chance to carry on playing, which is annoying, since I hadn't even got to the top of the tech tree... But as the end-game crisis supernovas stars, it's kind of something you don't want to be putting off, especially as they build their forces up.)

That said, conquering enemies via ground invasion or orbital bombardment is painful, since you can frequently find that enemy planets (on the boarders, anyway) are up to 86%(the most I saw) resistance to landing (so 86% of all your troops trying to land). And the only way to destroy those is via spy-ship which says it has a 75% chance, but it's an X-Com 75% which I suspect be be more like 25% (and if you fail, you have to send your spy-ship away to recloak). Very, very tedious. So an not great as the end-game crisis is, having turned off the science victory (which is 95% of all techs - if it was a 100% I'd have left it on), I was kind of glad of it.

The other major problem is that starships require production (from factories, about 8 each or something) and orbital yard manufacuturing capacity, which is capped out at eight starbases (which gives you 8) and that was on the one Earthlike world I set aside for entirely production, on the basis of understanding a bit too late how it works. Otherwise, the best I' managed elsewhere was 4. So my best production world, maxed out, was eight starbases and ten factories, giving me about 80/8 respectively... Which means it was taking nearly thrity years to build the end-game battleships, and I constantly found I'd finish one round of upgrading everything to just start on the next one.

(I played on easy and the AI was VERY passive and basically ignored me unless I constantly flew through it's space or declared war on it and it didn't even seem to fight much amongst itself.)



So, it is one I might play again, though maybe on a smaller galaxy (less people to conquer) and the end-game crisis turned off. I enjoyed it more than Endless Space - even not hugely good tactical combat is still way above NO tactical combat.

Recommendation, then, with caviats, if you get it on sale like I did, it's worth at least one go.

[Drasius]

Okay. Finished first playthrough of Polaris Sector.

Hmm. Well, it was way less frusttating than Endless Space 2, and I didn't have spend age reloading or anything. 49 hours, so it don't owe me anything.

The best part of the game is by far the ship design system, where I probably spent most of my time. Each ship has a couple decks (to about four on the biggest) (small craft only one) which is basically a silouhette with a grid in it; weapon and engines slots are in specific positions, but everything else is a balacing factor of fitting in the system you want (as each takes up space) and squeezing the generators in and trying to use as little weight as possible (to keep the speed high). Requires a lot more juggling around than even, say SotS to make something work (as, of course, the shapes are somewhat irregular) but, as i say, I found that by far the most fun of the game.

You have full tactical control during the battles.



Downsides? The tactical combat is... Not all that great. It has potential, but... Problem is 1) attacking fleets, until late-game tech which requires a module get scattered around the map. You have to deploy your ship every time, and the spacing is very, very arbitary. Sometimes you get make ships sit next to each other neatly, and others you can't, like there's some sort of invisible detection block.

Range is proportionally low (especially to ship physical size) and flight speed is also rather slow, making trying any sort of tactics other than with fighters basically a massive pain. Because the ships are so ponderous and the pathfinder pretty poor, woe betide you if you miss-click or click to move without first hitting "keep formation", since you are completely buggered and it will take absolutely AGES to get them back into a semblance of formation. (Also, there is now way to wheel the formation, either, so it you have to go up, your formation moves 90º.) So it means that you can have a huge block of ships, and most of them will only see action later on after the front rank die or not at all. So it is heavily biased towards fighters. So, for all of it, you are still laregly at "large block of ships fly slowly towards you" and squandering a lot of the potential. (BUT, it must be noted, and worth saying again - for all the flaws, it IS still better than no tactical combat. With a few QoL improvements, it would be much better. A Polaris Sector 2, with 3D graphics (if not actual 3D movement) would probably be a lot better, since the pathfinding and ship placement might be easier than with sprites.)

Missiles are really only any use of fighters and massively on-emass and micro'd especially on the end-game crisis and their range isn't longer than the energy weapons.

(And once you win, you get a game-over screen (admittedly, you do get an event log and statistics, which is better than just Sword of the Stars "you win"), with no chance to carry on playing, which is annoying, since I hadn't even got to the top of the tech tree... But as the end-game crisis supernovas stars, it's kind of something you don't want to be putting off, especially as they build their forces up.)

That said, conquering enemies via ground invasion or orbital bombardment is painful, since you can frequently find that enemy planets (on the boarders, anyway) are up to 86%(the most I saw) resistance to landing (so 86% of all your troops trying to land). And the only way to destroy those is via spy-ship which says it has a 75% chance, but it's an X-Com 75% which I suspect be be more like 25% (and if you fail, you have to send your spy-ship away to recloak). Very, very tedious. So an not great as the end-game crisis is, having turned off the science victory (which is 95% of all techs - if it was a 100% I'd have left it on), I was kind of glad of it.

The other major problem is that starships require production (from factories, about 8 each or something) and orbital yard manufacuturing capacity, which is capped out at eight starbases (which gives you 8) and that was on the one Earthlike world I set aside for entirely production, on the basis of understanding a bit too late how it works. Otherwise, the best I' managed elsewhere was 4. So my best production world, maxed out, was eight starbases and ten factories, giving me about 80/8 respectively... Which means it was taking nearly thrity years to build the end-game battleships, and I constantly found I'd finish one round of upgrading everything to just start on the next one.

(I played on easy and the AI was VERY passive and basically ignored me unless I constantly flew through it's space or declared war on it and it didn't even seem to fight much amongst itself.)



So, it is one I might play again, though maybe on a smaller galaxy (less people to conquer) and the end-game crisis turned off. I enjoyed it more than Endless Space - even not hugely good tactical combat is still way above NO tactical combat.

Recommendation, then, with caviats, if you get it on sale like I did, it's worth at least one go.

That is easily the worst recommendation to play a game I have ever read. "It's actually pretty terrible in almost all aspects" is how I'd summarise your review (the game, not your review). That's not evenbeing damned by faint praise, it's just pointing out that almost every aspect of what makes a space 4x/RTS combo good, doesn't work in this game.

Thank you for taking one for the team, but I'll just go fire up SotS for my fix. Again.

[Aotrs Commander]

That is easily the worst recommendation to play a game I have ever read. "It's actually pretty terrible in almost all aspects" is how I'd summarise your review (the game, not your review). That's not evenbeing damned by faint praise, it's just pointing out that almost every aspect of what makes a space 4x/RTS combo good, doesn't work in this game.

Thank you for taking one for the team, but I'll just go fire up SotS for my fix. Again.

Endless Space 2 was worse, that didn't even inspire any kind of effort to analyse in depth, it was just... kinda forgettable. (Also my feelings on the latest Master of Orion (actually, and MoO2) and Star Ruler 2.)

Please note also I said "not that great" which is a looooong way from "pretty terrible."

Polaris Sector needs a lot of polish, but it least starts from a better place. (See also Space Empires V. And, horror or horrors, MoO3.)

Fifty hours says is very definitely wasn't bad; it certainly has problems (and a problem is always much easier to highlight than something that isn't). I certainly don't regret my time playing it, and aside from the little bit of faff at the end against the crisis, it was not a frustrating, reload-heavy-because-it-pays-gotcha like a lot of games can be Civ.

...

Actually, the fact that it ran and loaded smoothly throughout is something I didn't mention, because it, y'know, worked RIGHT so I didn't find it noticable (because, y'know, all games SHOULD work like that).

It is not, however, I fear, still a contender for SotS on the one hand, nor Stellaris on the other.

Had it been given the Paradox treatment, though, one feels, it could have been very good by the sort of point Stellaris is at now.