Sword of the Stars II

Maximilian

Recently picked the first SOTS in a Steam sale and I can't believe I waited so long before getting it. It's about as close to Master of Orion 2 as I've played and great fun. More combat emphasis than civ-style colony building, which initially put me off but I now think it was a good design choice.

The sequel is due out very shortly and looks brilliant. Check out the videos below - the armour system looks really cool.

Oh and I believe some of the developers formerly worked on Homeworld.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2011-sword-of-the/716288

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2011-sword-of-the/716286

Gonzovision

I have Sword of the stars and Argos naval expansion. Is it really worth the hassle of me installing them? Really?

Maximilian

Yeah. I'm still discovering new things all the time.

It has tons of depth. Plus big splozhuns.

The Gnome

The original is one of my favourite 4X games, spent days sometimes weeks conquering the galaxy then boom AI rebellion! Love the galactic event like the peacekeeper or the planet killer

Looking forward to seeing what the sequel offers.

Sephiroth_dude

this is out 6th october

Sephiroth_dude

28th of october now

Tyrant^

Whats the big difference between this and Sins of a Solar Empire ?

Sephiroth_dude

Tyrant^ wrote: »

Whats the big difference between this and Sins of a Solar Empire ?

This is turn based I think

Maximilian

Tyrant^ wrote: »

Whats the big difference between this and Sins of a Solar Empire ?

Sins is completely real time whereas SOTS is part turn based and part real time - a bit like the Total War games in that respect. You move/build fleets, colonise planets, manage economy & research etc. on a star map, turn based and then fight any battles in a real time 3d batle. The real time bits aren't a million miles away from Sins, so if you like that game I suspect you'll also like SOTS.

It's basically a lot like the classic master of orion series, if you're an old timer like me.

Krusader

You can sign up for a closed beta

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/content.php?685-Closed-Beta-for-Sword-of-the-Stars-II

Sephiroth_dude

Its been pushed back again to the 18th of november now

Maximilian

Apparently that is for the boxed version only and digital will release as planned on Friday.

At least I hope so. I have it pre-ordered on Steam and have next week off work

Krusader

Anyone who got this want to give their thoughts?

Maximilian

Gonna properly try it out tomorrow but seems a little buggy at the moment. The devs admitted as much and said they intend to patch the hell out of it over the coming weeks.

Maximilian

It seems the version that got uploaded to Steam was a 2 week old beta version, which explains a lot. That seems to happen a lot lately. I think the same thing happened with Dead Island and Red Orchestra 2.

The proper version was supposed to be uploaded this evening but I've had no updates.

Will report back once I get to properly play with this.

Krusader

Maximilian wrote: »

It seems the version that got uploaded to Steam was a 2 week old beta version, which explains a lot. That seems to happen a lot lately. I think the same thing happened with Dead Island and Red Orchestra 2.

The proper version was supposed to be uploaded this evening but I've had no updates.

Will report back once I get to properly play with this.

Read that on the Paradox forums, a lot of unhappy campers over there with Kerebos

Maximilian

Yeah, I would honestly say hold off buying this unless you are a massive 4x strategy game/sots fan or very patient. The "correct" release version is now on steam but I don't see much difference or any actually.

It feels unoptimised and buggy. For example, the AI combat is now simulated better but that means waiting 15-20 seconds for that to take place. If 4 AI players have a combat event, that goes on for what seems ages. One AI kept repeating the same random encounter 7 turns in a row, presumably because the small fleet kept surviving the encounter by retreating or something. The same thing then repeats every turn. I dunno, because the simulation doesn't let you see what's going on.

edit: At the moment it's like a minute and a half between turns, with the same AI vs, random encounters playing out with no result it seems. Frustrating. No tooltips or they aren't working, so it's trial and error to figure out some icons.

I haven't had any combat yet, so I might change my mind when I see that but the strategy map is definitely less intuitive and it's just slower and more cumbersome to do things. There's a noticeable pause in moving between screens such as from research back to the starmap (and I'm running this off a SSD). The research screen is prettier but slower and harder to navigate - you can't just hold the right mouse button down and move your view around. Creating fleets is more difficult, the economy stuff is confusing. The manual is poor. No tutorial. A lot of the stuff you need to figure out yourself. you can't select options in-game. The cinematics option on the main menu is greyed out - surely this is not the release version?

I'm a bit disappointed but I'm going to persevere with it. At least the devs are gonna work hard to address the problems. They say they are going into work Sunday to try and get a patch out Monday. Bit of a trainwreck.

Combat better be amazing...

edit: finally got into combat after guessing which icon to select. no tooltips to tell you what icons do what in battle. Couldn't make my ship fire on the enemy (who were just sitting there). I pressed all the angry looking icons whilst hoping none was a self-destruct. I think my ships forgot to put the batteries in. I give up. I'll wait to see what happens on Monday. What a pity.

Jumpy

Jesus ... the BUUUUUUGS.

This was me with this today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac9Z6CN14Gs

Im waiting for patches.

Krusader

Better off waiting till it drops in price then

Krusader

Looks like this is buggy as fúck, people screaming for refunds

cherryghost

Jesus. Will be holding off for a long time so it seems.

Maximilian

I'll report back as the patches come in - let you guys know when it's actually playable.

There really is a great game lurking in there.

Stev_o

Some first impressions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kull1TIW6Jw

Spunge

Awww man i was looking at this, hoped it would be good.

Sephiroth_dude

Well this is disapointing

Blowfish

Interesting.

I love the stuff Paradox release, but they really really need to revamp the way they and the studios they publish for do QA. I'm hoping that at least Magna Mundi and Crusader Kings II will be more polished than their usual releases.

Still, SOTS2 is another one to grab a year or so down the line in a Steam sale for €10/15 and sink a ridiculous amount of hours into.

Krusader

Well CKII is finished they have 3 months to polish it and fix the kinks, so here's hoping, it's the 1 strategy game i'd pre-order

The word is Kerebos were running out of money so they released it in the state it was in, to keep funding it

Krusader

Seem to be giving away free DLCs with this now
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?568294-Free-DLCs-until-Nov-30th

Sephiroth_dude

Have they patched this yet?

Completionist

They've been releasing patches every 2 or 3 days for the past few weeks afaik. Latest went live today.

Changelog below.

Changelog for update r17948b

*** This update might break some old save games. ***

Critical fixes:
- Fixed a bug that prevented income from being generated when doing a feasibility study.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when trying to automatically distribute sliders from a hidden slider.
- Fixed a crash with support missions trying to open a dialog twice in a turn.
- Fixed a crash that would occur if closing the game while it was booting up.
- Fixed a von neumann crash caused by the faction running out of resources for a new collector fleet.
- Fixed an issue with crashing gem/forge world events from trying to apply moral bonus.
- Drones can now be designed and assigned to ships.
- Battle Riders may now be launched and recovered via their weapon icons in combat.
- Combat turn flow was rewritten. All combat queries are now answered at once, and then all combat simulations play out.
- Fixed a bug that stopped biome colonizers from improving terraforming values.

Other fixes:
- Fixed a recent issue where only the default player profile would be used.
- Fixed tech requirements on a few freighter ship sections.
- Removed "freighter" designation from ship sections to which it was incorrectly applied.
- Tarka freighter savings cost has been reduced from 1.5-million to 150,000.
- Leviathan stats have been improved.
- Tweaked turret arcs on a number of ship and station sections.
- Stations whose crew die off stop rotating in combat.
- Patrol battle riders now follow their tenders better.
- Fixed an issue where battle riders were not swarming around stations effectively.
- Fixed feasibility speech cues from using wrong speech library.
- Fixed admiral driven speech to use proper case.
- Fixed researching sound.
- Fixed research completed early sound cue.
- Fixed the battle draw and winning battle speech cues.
- Fixed under-the-hood sliders to automatically reset themselves to zero.
- Fixed an issue with swarmers trying to assign themselves to systems with no planets.
- Fixed an issue with the flock bonus not being used as a percentage.
- Moved the overharvest warning event to the correct location to stop it spamming every time the IO was queried.
- Fixed an issue that caused the gem and forge world events to spam.
- Fixed battle manager bug when entering system with no Naval base.
- Made visual culling much more subtle on star map to avoid labels popping in and out.
- Cleaned up view filter modes, populated list through code instead of through xml.
- Fixed issue in battle manager where station slots where being displayed even if no CP was available.
- Properly hooked up Mission/Engine section name display to riders in rider manager.
- Combat ready animations no longer loop incorrectly on ships.
- Save games should stay significantly smaller now due to the disabling of a debug feature that was storing a detailed history of all previous changes.
- Fixed a visual issue where tracking torpedoes would draw erroneous lines across the screen.
- The trade view filter on the star map now shows different icons for star systems.
- Fixed a bug that caused the admirals to return an incorrect admiral prefix to sound cues.
- Fixed a bug where Liir Naval Stations were displaying Hiver station assets.
- Fixed visual jitter for battle riders returning to tender.
- Fixed an issue where turn events were not displaying for some.
- Fixed various sizing bugs in GUI lists.
- Protean pods will return attacks.
- Fixed incorrect terrain names in Clouds and Ring star maps.

Other changes:
- New entries have been added to the encyclopedia's Galactic Atlas.
- Added new weapons: Blast Storm Missile, Polaris Blast Beam Missile
- Added new Rift star map.
- Added the ability to skip camera transitions with the escape key.
- Added a tutorial help screen for trade.
- Added Zuul freighters.
- Added missing Von Neumann PD weapons.
- Adjusted station visibility distances for combat.
- Added default ship names for command ships, bore ships, and gate ships.
- Implementation of initial, new post combat dialog.
- Added trade Modifier for trade distances.
- Added a table to keep track of trade results to stop clients from not being able to see trade.
- Stopped the ability to trade with someone you are at war with.
- Increased the max planet range for provinces by 1 ly.
- Added a configuration ability for disabling the main menu combat scene. There is no user interface for this diagnostic option, but it can be modified at your own risk in '%localappdata%\Sword of the Stars II\settings\settings.xml' by adding or modifying the LoadMenuCombat element with a True or False value.
- Added launch effects for planet-to-orbit weapons.
- Added "Reserve Slot" label to reserve rider slots.
- Added events for post combat.
- Added realtime feedback to trade slider adjustment in trade view.
- Added filter to battle rider manager to display only carriers in widget.
- Added color coding to riders in rider manager.
- Added max flock bonus to strat mods and hooked it up to morrigi drive tech.
- Added a function for adding orbits with orbit numbers.

Key known issues:
- There is no post-combat popup.
- Screen transition time still slow for some.
- Game not running in 64-bit for some (running 32-bit works).
- Looking for people unable to connect to GameSpy for MP.

Source.

Maximilian

Still loads of stuff not working properly/at all though.

Sephiroth_dude

Maximilian wrote: »

Still loads of stuff not working properly/at all though.

oh dear waiting another while then -_-

Sephiroth_dude

any improvements since? I'm dyeing to give it a go

Maximilian

It's improved (wait between turns isn't 4 minutes now) but there's still a range of things not working, still loads of bugs, crashes to desktop. Diplomacy only got added back in this week and the first time I tried to use it I crashed to dektop. AI can't/won't attack you.

Playable but only just. It's still a beta test and it helps if you know what stuff causes crashes and can avoid them.

It will be great but holy crap, worst release of a game ever I think. I really can't think of one worse. The new You Tube interface maybe.

Krusader

Maximilian wrote: »

It's improved (wait between turns isn't 4 minutes now) but there's still a range of things not working, still loads of bugs, crashes to desktop. Diplomacy only got added back in this week and the first time I tried to use it I crashed to dektop. AI can't/won't attack you.

Playable but only just. It's still a beta test and it helps if you know what stuff causes crashes and can avoid them.

It will be great but holy crap, worst release of a game ever I think. I really can't think of one worse. The new You Tube interface maybe.

Has any one got a refund yet, do you know

Maximilian

Haven't a clue. I know they were being offered by Paradox Interactive.

nesf

Still buggy as hell? Been wanting a good 4X kind of game for a while but after what you guys reported I stayed away from it.

Maximilian

They are releasing substantial patches weekly, with another due tonight, Irish time.

It's certainly not as broken as it was on release but not quite there yet. I'd say it may well be early January before it is where it should have been on release.

The early game is fairly slow moving with little combat, so frequent ctd's have put an end to games. Patches have broken saves - which all means I've actually got to play very little combat. The AI being borked doesn't help. It's hard to recommend it at this point therefore.

Kerberos have said that they will announce when the game is "ready", so it might well be a good idea to wait for that. Else, be prepared for frustration.

Kazuma

I put in a request for a refund on the fourth of this month, apparently that "offer" ended on the 30th of November. I love Paradox (was an intern in TaleWorlds), but I'll be damned if I'm going to ever give kerberos money ever again.

Maximilian

New patch causes more CTD's, so giving up on this build.

nesf

Maximilian wrote: »

New patch causes more CTD's, so giving up on this build.

Christ, and I thought Skyrim had issues.

Maximilian

Skyrim has never not been playable for me.

SOTS2 however is the worst release I've ever seen in my 30 years of gaming. The game was pre-alpha at launch and it has never been explained why that was so. It boggles the mind how they could have thought the game could be released as it was. Even now a month later, the game is still hopelessly broken.

I can't be that annoyed though because I know it will get fixed and I'm just happy that games like this are getting made at all. Still, though. WTF.

nesf

Maximilian wrote: »

Skyrim has never not been playable for me.

SOTS2 however is the worst release I've ever seen in my 30 years of gaming. The game was pre-alpha at launch and it has never been explained why that was so. It boggles the mind how they could have thought the game could be released as it was. Even now a month later, the game is still hopelessly broken.

I can't be that annoyed though because I know it will get fixed and I'm just happy that games like this are getting made at all. Still, though. WTF.

The 4GB launcher mod fixes most of the CTDs in Skyrim: http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1013#content

There's a fair bit of evidence for a memory leak and the restriction to 2GB of RAM seems to be the cause of the vast majority of CTDs. This assumes you've enough RAM to spare to use the mod of course.


From what I gather, SOTSII was forced to be released for financial reasons and they would never have released it in the state it was in otherwise. They've eternally ruined their brand now, and screwed Paradox over a fair bit too.

Krusader

Maximilian wrote: »

Skyrim has never not been playable for me.

SOTS2 however is the worst release I've ever seen in my 30 years of gaming. The game was pre-alpha at launch and it has never been explained why that was so. It boggles the mind how they could have thought the game could be released as it was. Even now a month later, the game is still hopelessly broken.

I can't be that annoyed though because I know it will get fixed and I'm just happy that games like this are getting made at all. Still, though. WTF.

they ran out of money and hoodwinked their fans, they'll never get another pre-order again. They should of done a minecraft, sell it in beta for a knock down price and people would've known where they stood

Maximilian

Yeah, I won't be buying one of their games at launch again. The Minecraft model would have saved them a lot of grief.

Krusader

Picked it up today for €9.99 in Game, 75% off, won't play it until it's fixed though

Maximilian

Latest patch seems to have sorted all the critical issues, so the game is playable now. I'm at turn 212 now and no crashes - the furthest I've got.

There's still a lot of stuff not working yet - like psionics and stuff and turn times are a little slow but it's actually fun now.

Sephiroth_dude

Maximilian wrote: »

Latest patch seems to have sorted all the critical issues, so the game is playable now. I'm at turn 212 now and no crashes - the furthest I've got.

There's still a lot of stuff not working yet - like psionics and stuff and turn times are a little slow but it's actually fun now.

Hows the A.I? Any idea when the next patch is due?

Maximilian

Probably early Jan. just to add in a few things that they had hoped to have in the Dec patch. Then they will be doing less frequent but bigger patches in the new year.

AI is quite aggressive on the strategic side. Tactically, it's fine but there's not too much complexity to it. It runs supply & command ships away, and engages with combat ships. Maneuvering needs some work.

Sephiroth_dude

Crosáidí wrote: »

Picked it up today for €9.99 in Game, 75% off, won't play it until it's fixed though

Got it in game today too

Krusader

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Got it in game today too

€10 cheaper than Steam today, i've a gansey load of games to get through before it though