Sword of the Stars..... Anyone play it?

I played the demo and disliked what I saw.The game just seemed lightweight in all areas and the 3D starmap was dreadful.I actually think turnbased is much more suited to empire building games.I'm willing to bet a lot was sacrificed in Sins just so the devs could call it a trendy real time game.

Seen it, played it, hated it. Too cartoony for my taste. And I never thought a game could be too simplistic (combat) and too complicated (Empire management) at the same time, bad bad bad bad bad.

I'm willing to bet a lot was sacrificed in Sins just so the devs could call it a trendy real time game.

Yeah but the things sacrificed would've probably rendered the game unplayable if they were left in, there is a such thing as too much depth in an RTS, the last thing you want is to have to juggle a stockmarket crash, war and governmental elections in real time!

i actually found SOTS to addictive, but once i stopped playing i was done.

i actually found SOTS to addictive, but once i stopped playing i was done.

I did too at first, then the bad stuff came to the surface, the space battles took forever, and you couldn't end them early, and..... that 3d map as mentioned above was horrible. I also disliked having to upgrade my ships each time new guns were researched... Common sense... If I just researched new guns, I want all my ships to have the new better guns!

Yep did pay it too, but it just got boring. It didnt have this "i gotta play every day" kind of game.

But the absolutely best thing about it, is the roleplaying part in multiplayer

Played the demo and hated it.

And I don't see the similarity between it and Sins that you mentioned. They have nothing in common except that they are both set in space.

I think its a lesser version of Gal Civ 2 so i avoid it.

wohoo! hate threads!

I dont hate it. Buts if you have gal civ the two just dont compare, ones better than the other.

i dont hate it either, but you had to have a lot of patience.

The game was just an absolute damn shame, it had a lot of potential with the changing tech trees, random events, and the game's lore. Yet, tragically was greatly plagued by ill-conceived interfaces, battles and empire management that were both shallow and sloppy, and built-in limitations that utterly wrecked the game.

After a few weeks, I couldn't endure playing the game anymore, and has been collecting dust ever since.

I actually liked it and still play often. You cant compare it to galciv because they are so very different. The combat is not as shallow as it at first seems. It can actually get pretty deep the farther up the tech tree you get. If you have just played the demo then you are getting less than half the game. SOTS and GalCiv pefectly coexist on my hard drive. Although they will probably both be replaced by Sins  

Galacticus
As you are saying, your still playing. Then you might know if there has been any patch to correct the lag or "slowdown" in large battles?

I couldn't endure playing the game anymore, and has been collecting dust ever since.

you can ship it to me

I wouldn't want to endure further financial burdens due to that game, which would happen if I were to ship it to someone else. In any case, if they continue their pace of releasing patches for the game, it might be up to my standard by the end of this year.

Also, to this day it has baffled me how they managed to bring about such late-game performance issues in both the tactical combat and strategic empire level (mainly AI), when so very-little was going on. If they managed to properly fix most of those glaring performance problems, it might be a bit more tolerable.

I like the game. Especially since it works very well on my crappy computer. It lacks the strategy content but is a great game overall.

Soon my review should be published at Strategy Core (better late than never). We're also hoping to review Sins, of which I must remind the SC staff again...

The map implimentation is just horrible, I still can't get over who would have approved it... Also it would have been nice to see distances between planets without having to click between them...

The map implimentation is just horrible, I still can't get over who would have approved it... Also it would have been nice to see distances between planets without having to click between them...

Interesting. I find the map hugely cool. The best 3D map ever. And I reall wouldn't want to have a galaxy of numbers all over the screen. How do you envision a display of the distances between each star and each other star? The system SotS uses is the best possible compromise if you want to have a fully 3D map.

The usual mistake people make is creating a galaxy of 200 stars in a spherical shape, than complain how confusing it is and how long the game is... A prefered number is more like 30.

The usual mistake people make is creating a galaxy of 200 stars in a spherical shape, than complain how confusing it is and how long the game is... A prefered number is more like 30.

thats what happened in SOTS... it was one big ball shaped mess...

To be honest, the galactic map was just a horrible mess, it didn't provide the necessary-quality of tools to easily-manage and easily-discern between enemy, ally, and your territories and fleets (more noticeable in larger games). A player shouldn't be told he is making a mistake for picking a provided option of a large galactic scale, when it was the developer's mistakes for poorly executing and polishing it (like other areas of the game).

Note: I could have come up with better galaxy and empire management interfaces, but, not going to spend several weeks of my little spare time to write documentation, illustrations, and so on for free (especially for a discussion for an already released title).

I didn't hate it, but it's a damn shame they didn't make it a lot better.


== There's far to little you can do with your planets.
== The galactic map is a mess. Path's make no sense and it's near impossible to get your barings, 2d would have been much better.
== battle are to small, you can only command 3 battleships and a pair of, near useless, destroyers at the same time and only after quite a significant ammount of research AND a command ship.
== strategic map makeup is very unbalanced. It's not uncommon to have only few colonisable planets your you, while the enemy can have dozens.
== defences are far to strong. One medium defence station can take 3 cruisers, while being cheaper both in initial construction AND maintenance. *
== Realtime battles are to slow, and you barely have controll over your ships.
== Massive rush for the big ships, juggernaut issues
== can't overhaul your ships, you need to scrap them and build new ones
== no veterancy, who cares about preserving your ships, or transporting them. Scrapping them and building new ones is often faster.

* You can usually build three or four when a fleet is spotted. It's unlikely an enemy can blow them all with in a set time, so the battle is a draw. after the draw, build three more and the planets is untakeable. Without any battletimer, the inability to send in more then a handfull of ships makes overwhelming the defences impossible.



Good stuff

== Lots of random event
== great variety between species, even startravel is different
== designing ships is very good, i love making my own designs.
== Lan play is fun

I am finding SoTS an excellent game.

Of course there could have been improvements, but I am enjoying it.

I do like the 3D starmap actually. I do agree that it is challenging to use, but I enjoy it. I would like it more if stars were aranged into systems, and maybe even have multi-galaxy something like Hegemonia, but that's far too complex.

I do agree the RT space battle component could be better, and also there are some glaring interface control issues. The update offered improvement. At this point, each turn is a repeated process of going through the Events, and then looking at the Fleet tab sorted by ETA, and then by ship name (where I use different number of repeated A in the begining of name to sort by my priority.) Naming has helped a lot when I have to return to playing after a long time between play.

I think the addictive aspect of SoTS comes from the way you send out ships to explore, and hope you can find some good planets. Reaching your arms out slowly to connect the maps is very fun. The research tree is fun too. I love how it is like a little 3D VR room, though it could be seen as clunky. The voices, interface sounds, and the feel of the interface and graphics of the map all appeal to me.

I should have waited to buy the thing too, because the value droped so quicked. I don't think that will happen with SoaSE, however, as it didn't with GalCiv2.

I have yet to try multiplayer, but I don't have a lot of time to play in one sitting. From the sounds of it, it might be worth a test.

If that was the "this is why you should get sots" post then I'm really really glad that I didn't.

It wasn't.

The recent patch cut down on all loadtimes. Multiplayer is the best way to play the game. Honestly I lost interest about a week ago, but when the new patch or expansion comes out I will be all over it    In the mean time I have turned my attention back to GalCiv2. That game just keeps unfolding into more and more greatness. I cant wait for Dark Avatar.