Sword of the Stars

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-08-01 10:07pm

Has anyone else played the demo for this? It's a turn-based space strategy thing, but kept quite simple for ease of multi. Real-time battles, location-based damage, four totally different races to play as with totally different methods of strategic movement, hilarious techs like 'red laser' and 'green laser'.

It's a bit of a larf, not as heavy as something like GalCiv2 but still lots of fun, and much more 'pick up and play'.

site here

Arujei · Post by **Arujei** » 2006-08-01 11:58pm

Well, it looks really awesome, I have to say that. But I can't get to the download because Fileplanet wants me to pay them money! I may just wait until it's out before I get it.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2006-08-02 12:21am

yes, I have,

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-08-02 12:28am

Arujei wrote:Well, it looks really awesome, I have to say that. But I can't get to the download because Fileplanet wants me to pay them money! I may just wait until it's out before I get it.

Wat lol? I sure as hell wouldn't pay fileplanet: I pulled it down just fine. You've just got to sign up, not pay for a subscription.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-08-02 12:36am

The game, so far as I can tell, is pretty much a newer, swankier Spaceward Ho!, which is cool, but I does lack depth.

Arujei · Post by **Arujei** » 2006-08-02 12:37am

Oh, I see the problem. *smacks forehead* I didn't scroll down to see the "public server" section. Now I just need to wait half an hour.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-08-02 12:40am

InnocentBystander wrote:The game, so far as I can tell, is pretty much a newer, swankier Spaceward Ho!, which is cool, but I does lack depth.

We know you lack depth. lol!

It's not really my sort of thing, but it brings back memories of early 90s strategy games like Supremacy and stuff. The quick turns, different strategic move and randomly tweaked tech tree makes it a bit of fun. Games are way shorter than GC2 games, which for multi is a damn, damn good thing.

Graeme Dice · Post by **Graeme Dice** » 2006-08-02 10:19am

SotS is a game with some potential, but that's ruined by a horrible interface, and developers that go out of their way to insult their customers rather than fix their game.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-08-02 11:36am

I think the criticisms are way overblown. People built it up in their minds as the new king of all 4X games, and then they're disappointed when it's rough around the edges. It may be a little obtuse, but I didn't have any trouble with the interface after a few minutes (except figuring out how to change camera focus, that took longer). It's a good game, and I think people are overreacting.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-08-02 11:50am

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:I think the criticisms are way overblown. People built it up in their minds as the new king of all 4X games, and then they're disappointed when it's rough around the edges. It may be a little obtuse, but I didn't have any trouble with the interface after a few minutes (except figuring out how to change camera focus, that took longer). It's a good game, and I think people are overreacting.

Can you get a homeworld 2 style sliding camera, I'm not a big fan of having my camera fixed on a single ship.

Also, maybe it's just the demo's lack of advanced ships; but it seems really easy to build a REALLY big fleet, anyone else notice that?

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2006-08-02 01:07pm

Destroyers are practically the fighter-equivalents of the Sword of the Stars universe, and are designed to be numerous and go 'bang' like popcorn when glared at. Cruisers and Dreadnoughts...that'll be another story

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-08-02 01:32pm

Well against other destroyers they aren't too shabby. Now those litle swarm fighters, those are annoying. Weak, but numerous and heavily armed.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2006-08-02 01:41pm

tell me about it, the first game I played I was human and the swarm occupied all nodes I could reach....

you wouldn't believe how fast i reserached point defense systems.

Graeme Dice · Post by **Graeme Dice** » 2006-08-02 06:18pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:I think the criticisms are way overblown. People built it up in their minds as the new king of all 4X games, and then they're disappointed when it's rough around the edges. It may be a little obtuse, but I didn't have any trouble with the interface after a few minutes (except figuring out how to change camera focus, that took longer). It's a good game, and I think people are overreacting.

I definetly don't think that people are overracting, considering that the devs ip-banned me for posting this:

Graeme Dice wrote: The reason the complaints are repetitive, is that the problems are glaringly obvious, and because the devs defend their choices with appeals to authority.

For example, the news ticker is completely useless unless you are trying to force people to spend minutes just staring at their message log instead of playing the game. Why can't I make a message log simply pop up at the start of every turn with each message listed separately? I don't care that the devs want me to spend minutes on each turn. If I am expected to play a hundred turn game, then I want the first turn to take less than 30 seconds. The second turn should be over in even less time, maybe 5-10 seconds. Otherwise the exponential growth of turn length with increased empire size will make the game unbearably long.

Why does the build queue charge you for items you add to it right away, then charge you interest on the accumulated debt, instead of only charging you for them once they start building? Am I expected to visit every single build queue every single turn just so that I spend more time playing each turn? It's fine, though annoying, if I only have 1 colony, but if I have 20 then I'll be spending more than 20 times longer per turn. That's going to make the average strategic turn take almost 10 minutes just to spend 30 seconds at each planet setting up the next turn's build queue. How is this an advantage to setting up a 15 turn build queue, then changing it if I want to? On the same note, why can't I add 15 of a single kind of ship to the queue at once? Don't tell me that I can't support dozens of ships, because I clearly can from just a single colony.

Why isn't there an option to make planet names always appear regardless of the zoom level? Why do the devs throw out ten years of 3D graphical interface design and force us to get repetitive strain injuries from mousewheel scrolling? Why does the interface outright lie to the player and tell them that they will be plotting a sublight course, when they are actually plotting a normal course that will only be sublight if you don't get fuel to the ships on time. Why isn't there an option to force ships to never travel sublight unless I specifically okay it?

Why does the research screen use a 3D interface when a 2D interface is easier to read? Why does that same 3D research interface use the opposite scrolling convention to every other 3D screen in the game? Why doesn't the research interface provide us with hard numbers on what effect the technologies will have? Sure, researching pulsed fission will make your ships faster. How much faster is the question.

Why is there no useful feedback in the combat interface? You are given absolutely no indication that your ship has a destroyed engine for example. Nor are you given any indication that your shots are hitting the enemy. Why does targeting individual components require me to click on the component on a rapidly moving object in a supposedly strategic combat model? Why isn't there a drop down menu that lets me tell the crew of the ship where they should be firing. I want to be sitting in the captain's chair, not at the individual gunnery consoles. Why are the devs so wedded to their combat graphics that they want to force us to get even more RSI's zooming around the screen? Why is the combat screen 3D when you can't give 3D orders? Why do they use Newtonian mechanics but not allow you to control ship facing independent of velocity? How do you plan to deal with people who cripple all the ships that are currently in the battle, then wait out the combat timer without destroying a single one, so that no reinforcements ever show up?

Why are there virtually no global options that you can set to reduce the micromanagement? Why can't I have ships from an arbitrary set of colonies route all of their production to a single central location. Why can't I set the auto-refuel status on all new tankers to on or off as I see fit? It's claimed that you won't have hundreds of ships flying around, but unless a dreadnaught can take on more than 20 destroyers singlehandedly then the cost differential will give the win to the person who swarms all of your colonies at once. If you can only support 4 dreadnaughts at once, then I can still hit 16 of your undefended colonies.

The devs claim that they are trying to get away from "spreadsheet games" which is what they use to describe other space based 4X games. The problem with this claim is that it's nothing but a smokescreen. Hiding the information that's necessary to plan a strategy from the player doesn't make the information go away. The game is still just a collection of numbers and rules governing the interaction between those numbers.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-08-02 07:03pm

They IP banned you for that?

Sound criticisms all, particularly having to pay for builds at order time and the useless combat view that doesn't allow you to give orders.

Actually, I didn't even know you could target individual components of ships: the idea of clicking on a part of a ship to target it never even occurred to me.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-08-02 07:29pm

Wait a second, you can target subsystems? I thought you could only designate a target for your fleet (Rather than them firing at whatever ship is closest to them, I guess?)

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2006-08-02 07:38pm

according to the tutorial you can. Dunno if it works though. My weapons aren't accurate enough for that in the demo. Haven't tried lasers yet though.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-08-02 07:40pm

Graeme Dice wrote:
Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:I think the criticisms are way overblown. People built it up in their minds as the new king of all 4X games, and then they're disappointed when it's rough around the edges. It may be a little obtuse, but I didn't have any trouble with the interface after a few minutes (except figuring out how to change camera focus, that took longer). It's a good game, and I think people are overreacting.
I definetly don't think that people are overracting, considering that the devs ip-banned me for posting this:

I didn't address the dev overreaction to criticism in my response. I felt that people were overreacting about the game's problems. Yes, there are some definite rough spots, but they don't ruin the game, and there are other good games that are just as rough. The problem is that unrealistic expectations and trollish dev behavior have turned the gaming community against SotS so that people blow the game's problems way out of proportion. Now I don't disagree with anything you posted on the game's forum, and if you say it ruins the game for you, then I believe you. But I don't think the problems by themselves would have caused so many people to dislike the game if it weren't for all the drama.