Sword of the Stars

[Navaros]

Before the game came out I remember a guy making a thread on the devs' boards that during 2vs1 encounters it is inherently unfair because the guy with only himself in the battle can only field 10 ships even if his fleet is way larger than that, whereas the enemies can field 20 ships which of course would always obliterate his 10 ships.

Has this flaw been changed in the full game? And obviously increasing the numbers evenly for each side would not count as a "change" if the lone guy still gets outnumbered 2:1 in terms of ships he's allowed to field.

[Kraxis]

That would depend on multiple CC ships and if the second or more ships would add a further bonus to control.

One could argue that in all the TW games we have had potential situations where we could get outnumbered like that, but then again, if we have superior troops and the right terrain we can win. Terrain isn't a feature here...

[Navaros]

Tom Chick gives Sword of the Stars 40% and "Broken" descriptor after having played the patched version extensively.

http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3153546&did=1

Ouch again!

[ChaosLord]

Wow, I don't know why this game has been getting hit so hard at the reviews. I got it today after hearing good things about it from a friend. I did patch it first, so I can imagine the interface being more annoying without the ease of tabbing/middle mouse button. This is the best space strategy game since MoO2 in my opinion. After ultimately being dissapointed by MoO3, GalCiv 1 and GalCiv 2 I finally have a space strategy game that looks like it'll keep me occupied as much as the Total War and Civilization series.

The game feels like a MoO/Stars! mix with an excellant real-time combat system added on. Planet development is abstracted to just a slider, but ones that don't need micromanaging. From what i've found its best to just max out construction and get the colony developed as quickly as possible. Any excess cash is just sent towards your income anyway.

So on the strategic side of things you manage your colonies, research, and of course ship construction/design/placement. Combat can either be auto-resolved or fought in real time. If you have command vessels in the fleet you can set your starting formation before battle and the order you want your reinforcements in. Multiple command ships in a fleet don't allow you to have more ships in a fight at once then with just one command ship, but they do provide backup incase your command vessel goes down.

There are only four races in the game, but since the tech tree for each race isn't the same each game and not all races share all the techs, it keeps things pretty varied. I've played two games now and its interesting to see how it pans out tech wise. Sort of like how it would in MoO2 without the Creative trait or whatever it was. Theres also random events to spice things up, like during my current games expansion my undefended homeworld got raided by slavers.

I've been playing on Normal AI and its still beating me so far, I don't know if it'll still be that way in a week but I can hope. Right now i've started up an 80-star spiral galaxy with 5 Hiver empires, 1 Takran, 1 Liiran, and 1 Human(myself) and after a long while of peaceful expansion i've colonized what I could of my arm of the spiral and now things are getting interesting in the central cluster. One of the bug empires has already wiped out two of my colony worlds and the three(45 ships total) fleets sent to save them, so now i'm trying to get some sort of tech advantage to go and reclaim these worlds.

To keep them pinned down while I do this i've been using node missles which are basically huge nukes that can travel in subspace. Orbital/fleet bombardment from afar, its really quite entertaining even if its costly. I'm also trying to build up a network of orbital weapons platforms around all my threatened planets. The only thing saving me from the bugs just running my empire over is their slow speed of travel.

So thats an overview of the game and my experiences thus far. I did find the interface annoying until I learned the hotkeys. I'm also still learning all the tricks of combat but enjoying the excellant show(watching ships get pushed off course by missles and ballistic weapons is great, especially since the game is using newtonian physics). Another nice thing is the game runs good on my system aside from some graphical options I had to tweak down.

If anyone wants I can post some screenshots or answer any questions people have about the game. Games like this are why I don't put any stock in reviews unless i'm looking for a purely technical overview. Anyway, the gist of this long rambling post is give the game a chance if you like space strategy/space combat, its way better then anything else out now in that area.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I've been wondering about the reviews, too. The demo displayed little to none of the problems described. Sounds like SotS is just one of those misunderstood games.

[Martok]

I've been wondering about the reviews, too. The demo displayed little to none of the problems described. Sounds like SotS is just one of those misunderstood games.

Well the reviews on both Gamespot and Gamespy give me the impression that there *is* a fun game somewhere in there--but only if you have the patience to deal with the numerous frustrating aspects of the game (poor interface, combat that drags out, no stats to truly see how much damage your ships are taking, annoying refincorcement system, etc.).

To me, it sounds like SotS might be enjoyable if it were heavily patched, or perhaps with a mini-expansion that fixed the games various deficiencies.

[ChaosLord]

Well, most of those were resolved with the patch. The buttons to quickly cycle through ships or change focus make the interface fine and combat can either be auto-resolved or sped up to 8x speed so it dragging out isn't an issue. As for telling if a ship is damaged its easy by a visual look at it and its weapons systems.

If if that isn't enough they did also include an option in the patch to have ships names display in color (green, yellow, red) to indicate overall condition level. The reinforcement system is fine, i'm not sure what people think is wrong with that. The only thing is you need command vessels to set pre-battle formations and the order of your reinforcements. I'm probably sounding a bit fanatical, but the game is really quite good to me.