Sword of the Stars 2: Lords of Winter

[King Crispy]

This is a new turn-based 4X game by Kerberos Productions that's due for release this September, I think.

I admit I don't recall ever playing the original, and I didn't bother looking up any of its reviews, but does anyone have an opinion on it? Was it shit, decent, heavanly?

Some facts on the new game:

■ Evolves beyond Sword of the Stars I into 6 playable factions, using the races familiar to gamers from the first series of the game, and introducing The Suul ‘ka as a new player for Galactic dominance!
■ Detailed star-systems with planetary orbits, moons, asteroid belts, and other space terrain!
■ All new MARS 2 graphics engine!
■ Leviathan class of giant ships, new Battlerider-class ships that carry Destroyer sized ships, new levels of ship details including ship sub-systems, allowing for new fleet strategy and tactics!
■ Exciting continuation of the technology tree, with the game starting in the Fusion era and moving beyond the Anti-matter era.

Here's a preview video of the new rendering engine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXuFYV-Iddk

So what's hivemind's concensus on this? Cup-of-coffee-on-a-Saturday-night worthy? I don't know about you, but I'm definitely hankering for almost anything new that's TB, especially something that'll remind me of the classic MOO days.

 

[Raghar]

Get the original and all addons and you'd know.

 

[dragonfk]

I don't entirely know why, but crediting creation of a game to it's publisher infuriates me.

So Crispy SOTS2 is not being made by Paradox but by Kerberos!

Change it before I explode

PS. Original was a fun game but it was a space Total War game without detailed strategy phase - economy was seriously simplified.

 

[CrimsonAngel]

FUCKING COME OUT ALREADY

 

[King Crispy]

Change it before I explode

My bad, that was an ignorant oversight on my part and it's been corrected.

Any other opinions on the original?

 

[MetalCraze]

Is it a game about night bars in space?

 

[JarlFrank]

I hope the economy and planet management is improved because it was rather boring in the original.

Also what the fuck was up with the countdown after clicking end turn.

 

[YourConscience]

Is it a game about night bars in space?

No, it's a game about who's got the biggest one.

 

[Marobug]

The first was a huge disapointment for me so I'm rather wary of this one.
Sots1 was way too simplistic and gets boring very quickly, I don't think it's fair to call it a true 4x game, It's more like "find your enemies and exterminate them" instead of "explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate". The only use planets have is to make ships and nothing else, there's no management except for a useless budget adjustment bar and you can't even build stuff on them, except ships. Empire management is equally nonexistent so the game boils down to moving as many ships as you can and colonize as many planets as you can. There's not much if any strategy involved in the strategy phase, but I did like the combat though.

 

[Oarfish]

The later addons did add a little more detail to the strategic game. If you grab them all you have trade (along with the ability to raid trade routes), stations (trade,science,command etc) and a tech tree for each race that allows you to assimilate their populations. You can use propaganda ships / stations to cause rebellion on other worlds.

I am definitely enthusiastic for the next one, as I didn't mind the fact that the strategic game was little more than a way of getting into giant laser battles. The tactical game was good enough to carry it. I believe it will be a little less streamlined this time. Some of the enhancements to the tactical same sound good - moving from a simple hitpoint per section model to armor and penetration modeling with the ability to hit internal components. You can do micro to take out turrets in the first but it is not particularly useful except to get early game bonuses from certain random encounters.

 

[Destroid]

SOTS was good and had a few cool things (such as each alien race having a unique method of star travel and partially random tech trees), but fundamentally I'd still rather be playing MoO2. Please note I have only played the stock game and not the expansions.

What they needed was new artists not a new graphics engine, the visual design in this game is pretty atrocious.

 

[Oarfish]

The expansions add quite a bit of depth, mostly by expanding the tech tree. It's definitely going to be worth looking at the full game if you want to see what the sequel be like as I think they are using it as a starting point.

I disliked the vanilla game but the expansions improved it no end.

 

[desocupado]

I only played the game with all the expansions, and I had a lot of fun with it.

The economy is rather simplified, yes, but you're at war most of the time, the economy is not the focus.

Try it.

 

[mr.doo]

My first impression on the original was awful but it grew on me.
Not a masterpiece by any means but it's was a ok game. I hope they hired new artists though, some of the artwork in the game looked very amateurish in contrast with the awesome landscapes and effects in the battles.

 

[laclongquan]

Is it a game about night bars in space?

You are thinking about Startopia. It also feature cyber sex and robberies in space.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Honestly, I prefer GCII to this by a long shot. There's just no depth to it. Some good ideas, but poor execution in general.

 

[Malakal]

Never liked the first part, mainly because it is obviously geared towards the MP games and I dont play MP strategy games.

Basic economy made it not very enjoyable for me in SP.

 

[desocupado]

My first impression on the original was awful but it grew on me.
Not a masterpiece by any means but it's was a ok game. I hope they hired new artists though, some of the artwork in the game looked very amateurish in contrast with the awesome landscapes and effects in the battles.

Oh yeah, the artwork made a VERY bad impression, but it was worth ignoring it to get to the game. Like I said, it's a bit superficial, but I had loads of fun.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Looks nice and I really want to play it.

Ship design sucks though - why is there a bridge on a spaceship? With glass windows to add insult to injury...

 

[Malakal]

Ship design sucks though - why is there a bridge on a spaceship? With glass windows to add insult to injury...

Blame Star Trek and Star Wars.

 

[felicity]

I like the original very much. It is not a traditional 4x games which emphasis the empire building aspects. It's the extreme opposite of GalCiv. The game focuses on conquest and the tactical combat. Ships and weapons have their own physics. Every weapon tech actually has real tactical implications, not just number tweaks like in most 4x games. The ship design aspect really hits my soft spot. It's quite detailed and is an integrated part of tactical battle - you have to adjust your tactics according to ship design. It's really fun and addicting once you get into it.

Also it has awesome random events.

 

[DwarvenFood]

I played the 1st one, but you cannot really consider it on the same level as MOO or AC.

Part 2 may be worth the try, maybe it changed for the better.

 

[felicity]

In terms of combat, SotS far surpasses AC and MoO.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

The original is an excellent game when you are playing it multiplayer, wherein you get to really see the detail of the tactical layer shine. This is entirely ruined when you play against the AI, which essentially forces you to tech toward close combat weaponry on account of the tactical AI adding up to nothing more than setting the global attack stance to 'close range' and leaving it at that.

The economic layer is certainly streamlined, but in regard to those that are calling it 'far too simple,' I have to wonder if they actually played long enough to understand the nuances. There isn't a lot to fiddle with, but it is set up in a way which encourages you to plan ahead in regard to economic development, trade lanes open slowly and gain steam as they go on, closing them down to rush production for even one turn can cause a tremendous impact to your economy when your lane with 10 freighters on it gets knocked down to just 1, which would be bad enough if that meant you only got 1/10th of your resources, but you actually get more credits per freighter in addition to the first per lane. Commerce raiding is also featured, and almost entirely overlooked by anybody I've talked to about the game, which is silly because it's rather well implemented if you take the time to tailor your strategic gameplan to it.

The strategic element, as it ties into the tactical combat, works quite well too imo. You can research technologies which allow you to observe other player's fights, jam sensors(which essentially makes you invisible outside of combat unless they have sensors to match), improve the tactical UI, steal research, cripple other player's economies, cause their populations to emigrate to your own, get them addicted to drugs, so on and so forth, there are A LOT of things you can do apart from building fleets and kicking ass. I see a lot of people dismiss the other features I mentioned as 'not worth it when you can just blow them up,' but again, I have to wonder if they've actually taken the time to learn how to use these features effectively.

 

[felicity]

The original is an excellent game when you are playing it multiplayer, wherein you get to really see the detail of the tactical layer shine. This is entirely ruined when you play against the AI, which essentially forces you to tech toward close combat weaponry on account of the tactical AI adding up to nothing more than setting the global attack stance to 'close range' and leaving it at that.

Never tried multiplayer. It has been a while since I last played it but I don't remember being forced to use close range weapon. I did remember Emitter was godly in early skirmishes against Destroyers but it became useless beyond the Destroyer Era. I actually remember using more long-mid range weapons like torps and plasma cannons, which require you to pay close attention to movement and positioning. Surgical strike with Phaser never gets old though. If there is a weapon type that's imbalance it would be the Carrier Modules. Laser tech hard counters them and every ship has at least lasers if not PDS.