Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: TrashMan on January 24, 2011, 02:16:23 am
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HBPDq8RudU&feature=player_embedded
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Neat.
If the game is, as I suspect, a prettier, smoother, more polished version of the first, then I will keep an eye out to buy it.
Is it coming summer or fall this year?
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September 2nd..unless I'm mistaken.
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Get hype!
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Shame that the video wasn't high-res enough to see the ship sections etc...still interesting nonetheless.
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What, you couldn't tell by design?
I recognized armor, impactor, drone and CNC mission sections.
I'm sure I messed a few, but I wasn't paying that much attention. I'd have to re-watch.
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http://pc.ign.com/articles/114/1145526p1.html
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I'm liking the streamlined GUI and how star systems appear to work (tactical being a hyper-zoomed in version of the main starchart).
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http://www.gametrailers.com/video/new-twist-sword-of-the/709771
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Did they give us the ability to set rally points yet?
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I know nothing about this game is it like homeworld or more like a master of orion type game
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I know nothing about this game is it like homeworld or more like a master of orion type game
It's got some of the aspects of MoO3's micromanaging annoyance in fleet movement/fueling/combining, some of GalCiv's ship design with a special functionalized mechanic where the base design indicates what sort of abilities and weapons a hull has/can mount, and a very simplified Homeworldesque combat interface that's really more like Sins of a Solar Empire in 3D than it is Homeworld.
The sum total is a game that is playable, and even actually enjoyable during the early phase where your main concern are fighting off the Von Neumann and Swarm. The Grand Menaces and random encounters are also an interesting mechanic and fun to fight. The VN Homeworld, while in theory an interesting challenge, is actually quite annoying in practice.
Combat against another AI player is inevitably a race to the largest hull with the most forward-firing armament available, usually based around a Battle Bridge/Blazer/drive combo. One may also simply spam out biological warfare ships and get them close enough to launch at enemy planets. It is strategically straight-up attritional (the game mechanics will not support another strategy as shipbuilding is dispersed and supply lines nonexistent for the most part) and usually involves slugging through massive numbers of dreadnaughts in small groups, as the game will not support more than four or so dreadnaughts per side on the field at a time and even that only rarely.
Diplomacy is almost nonexistent. Technological superiority unless determined by the randomized tech tree is almost impossible to get. There are no alternative means for victory aside from the military conquest of anyone who will not ally with you. The game does not model population except in the vaguest sense, and public approval and disapproval, done with a bland "morale" value, are not so much modeled as they are a fig leaf. Cultural conflict and true morale wars are absolutely not on the table.
teal deer: There's a good game here, somewhere, but it can get very hard to find at times.
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I know nothing about this game is it like homeworld or more like a master of Orion type game
Neither really.
Planet micromanagement is reduced to a bare minimum (just just give high-level decisions - like population managment, terraforming/infrastructure ratio, overharvesting, stations and platforms in orbit, trade, etc..- you don't order buildings built on planets). Strategical map is in 3D (there are 3D maps for those who have trouble with it).
The battle itself is somewhat like homeworld, but commands are limited to a 2D plane (altough ships will go above and below if necessary - when chasing or running from an enemy - you just can't give a direct "move up order").
There is full Newtonian physics at play, so ships mass, acceleration and kinetic impact of enemy weapons all have an effect. Specific ship sections and turrets (actually, specific polygons) can be targeted and hits are calculated in real time (a shot bouncing off a curved hull depending on the type of bullet, speed and angle)
Ships are created from mix-and-matching 3 sections (which have different fire arcs, number of guns and other options) and equipping them with weaponry and additional stuff, like reflective coating or extra armor.
There are 8 races (I'm counting the two expansions), and each race plays and feels compeltely different.
Both on a tactical and and especially strategic level, they are VERY different.
Also, NGTM-1R's observations are either false or obsolete (expansions rock).
Getting the biggest hull first is not the road to victory (altough DN hulls are powerful), there are plenty of tactics and techs to counter bigger hulls. Bio-Warfare only works if you can come in undetected (BioWar sections are fragile) and the enemy has practicly no point defense or you can tie it up somehow.
Attrition works as a tactic, but so does blitzkrieg and morale wars (yes, you can make the enemy empire crumble by sabotaging their morale).
Diplomacy is light, but it's there. The AI players play to win and act upon what they know (which is limited, they don't cheat in that regard), and different races will act differently.
If you are stronger and want a enemy to surrender, a good idea would be to research their language Xenotech tree and send them information on your empire (colonies). Once they see you are bigger, they might surrender.
If they refuse, you can go from planet to planet and demand planetary surrender. The AI isn't stupid, so it will usually surrender once it sees it has no chance. All in all, one of the best AI's out there.
You can't directly trade tech, but if you can start special research projects that will give your ally a specific tech they missed. They still have to research it after it appears on their tech tree.
All in all, it's focused on glorious battles and high-level decisions, instead of micromanagment hell. It also plays fast enough that it's fun in multiplayer too.
Personally, the best 4X game I played.
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Also, NGTM-1R's observations are either false or obsolete (expansions rock).
It might help you to read what you're talking about, since if I'm mentioning the VN Homeworld I have to own AMoC, if I'm talking about "fighting off" Swarm like they're actually attacking me instead of being totally unable to move I have to own Born of Blood. I actually have the Collector's Edition off Steam, so I have Argos too. (I do believe I've told you this before.) I am making my observations based on complete facts.
Bio-Warfare only works if you can come in undetected (BioWar sections are fragile) and the enemy has practicly no point defense or you can tie it up somehow.
Since the enemy can only ever bring four dreadnaught hulls in defense, and it's much more likely to be three, and you can bring a commander dreadnaught and at least two bio-war dreadnaught hulls in return, simple math dictates at least one of your ships, and probably two, will approach close enough to launch their payloads at the planet and a good number of them will dodge the defense satellites and make impact. The math gets even less favorable for the defender if you do this with cruisers because the time he has to spend retargeting will count against him. Point Deflectors and shields also help.
As your purpose is not to fight but to deliver ordnance to the surface, you send the commander in first to draw fire and ignore the enemy ships to close to orbit, launching either when you reach orbit or when your other ships are badly damaged. It works very well.
There's also the Improved Cloak/Improved Assault Shuttle gambit, but since Deep Scan is a core tech for everyone that can be iffy.
If they refuse, you can go from planet to planet and demand planetary surrender. The AI isn't stupid, so it will usually surrender once it sees it has no chance. All in all, one of the best AI's out there.
This is a misstatement, so let me clarify it. The AI will not surrender once it has no chance. Having destroyed all orbital defense and defending ships pretty much qualifies as "no chance" once PD is in play (barring the fact that some races neglect to design their ships with proper PD coverage; Liir tend to have ventral weak spots, Tarkas dorsal), but this will not get a surrender most of the time. The AI will surrender once you've bombarded it enough. By the time assaulting hostile worlds is on the table it's usually easier to just blow them up from orbit. (Like Sins, there's no invasion mechanic.) It can actually be difficult to prevent your ships from bombarding the planet into oblivion without meaning to once you're tossing around dreadnaught hulls and antimatter weaponry or impactors.
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I am making my observations based on complete facts.
Why are your observations wrong then?
Since the enemy can only ever bring four dreadnaught hulls in defense, and it's much more likely to be three, and you can bring a commander dreadnaught and at least two bio-war dreadnaught hulls in return, simple math dictates at least one of your ships, and probably two, will approach close enough to launch their payloads at the planet and a good number of them will dodge the defense satellites and make impact. The math gets even less favorable for the defender if you do this with cruisers because the time he has to spend retargeting will count against him. Point Deflectors and shields also help.
As your purpose is not to fight but to deliver ordnance to the surface, you send the commander in first to draw fire and ignore the enemy ships to close to orbit, launching either when you reach orbit or when your other ships are badly damaged. It works very well.
There's also the Improved Cloak/Improved Assault Shuttle gambit, but since Deep Scan is a core tech for everyone that can be iffy.
There's vaccine techs and Biomissiles can be intercepted and targeted, even while still in their launch tubes. They are especially easy to destroy with AoE weapons.
Corrosive missiles and mines are ESPECIALLY effective. If you were to try a 3 DN biomissle run against me, you'd loose all of your missiles long before you came into range.
Creative tactics... SOTS is not rock-paper-scissors.
If they refuse, you can go from planet to planet and demand planetary surrender. The AI isn't stupid, so it will usually surrender once it sees it has no chance. All in all, one of the best AI's out there.
This is a misstatement, so let me clarify it. The AI will not surrender once it has no chance. Having destroyed all orbital defense and defending ships pretty much qualifies as "no chance" once PD is in play, but this will not get a surrender most of the time. The AI will surrender once you've bombarded it enough. By the time assaulting hostile worlds is on the table it's usually easier to just blow them up from orbit. (Like Sins, there's no invasion mechanic.) It can actually be difficult to prevent your ships from bombarding the planet into oblivion without meaning to once you're tossing around dreadnaught hulls and antimatter weaponry or impactors.
Surrender is never a given 100% chance. It depends on the race, your relations, size of their empire, your empire, size of your fleet, xenotech, etc..
I've had planets surrender without fireing a shot and I had them stubbornly resisting till the end.
ERm...you do have that bombardment icon that tells your whole fleet to ignore/not ignore the planet...
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Why are your observations wrong then?
Point to one that's wrong then? I said diplomacy was nearly non-existant; you argued this wasn't so and then essentially agreed. Compared to another 4x like Civ or GalCiv it's incredibly lackluster.
Combat is tactically and strategically attritional. The only tactical-scale strategy of much use is to kill your opponent's command ships so he has to come at you in smaller groups, but you'll never get a whole fleet on the field anyways so you have to kill them one group at a time regardless and it's down to who runs out of reinforcements first. That's attritional combat in its purest form.
Strategically, it has to be. Unless your opponent is playing Human you'd be a fool not to garrison everything and even the AI knows it. You can't go for a killing blow against your opponent's sources of production or supply because they don't exist as discrete targets. You can attack your opponent's rear areas all you want, if you have the right racial drive techs and he doesn't intercept, but it only matters in the rare event he's playing Human and you happened to land on a key node line. Otherwise it's no more or less effective than attacking his front lines. The core of blitzkrieg, to punch through and outflank, is effective against one race out of eight, and would usually be accomplished by accident.
There's vaccine techs and Biomissiles can be intercepted and targeted, even while still in their launch tubes. They are especially easy to destroy with AoE weapons.
Vaccines are randomly generated for pretty much everyone. Humans have to be as lucky to get as far as Beast Bomb plague. If you play Liir though it's a pretty good bet nobody else is going to get Assimilation Plague, much less the vaccine for it. I've assimilated the galaxy more than once since it's generally a lot more interesting than slugging through the 50-odd dreadnaughts the AI will stack to defend a planet.
As for AoE weapons, that's all well and good but the PD intercepts them before impact and they don't get to the missiles in the tubes. And by the time you make launch position it's much too late. I've seen the AI and other humans try that solution and I've watched it fail.
ERm...you do have that bombardment icon that tells your whole fleet to ignore/not ignore the planet...
Like I said, you have to do some bombardment to get them to surrender anyways, and when your broadside mounts are Antimatter Projectors or your forward mounts are cutting beams and you're shooting the defense sats, it can be quite easy to nuke a planet back to the Cambrian by accident.
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Point to one that's wrong then? I said diplomacy was nearly non-existant; you argued this wasn't so and then essentially agreed. Compared to another 4x like Civ or GalCiv it's incredibly lackluster.
Diplomacy exists, and while there could be more of it, there enough. You can actually tell the AI more stuff than in some other games.
You can't directly trade ships or tech, but I don't see that as a big negative.
Sure, sometimes you wish there are more things (or more specific things) you can say to the AI, but that hardly constitues as non-existant.
Combat is tactically and strategically attritional. The only tactical-scale strategy of much use is to kill your opponent's command ships so he has to come at you in smaller groups, but you'll never get a whole fleet on the field anyways so you have to kill them one group at a time regardless and it's down to who runs out of reinforcements first. That's attritional combat in its purest form.
Strategically, it has to be. Unless your opponent is playing Human you'd be a fool not to garrison everything and even the AI knows it. You can't go for a killing blow against your opponent's sources of production or supply because they don't exist as discrete targets. You can attack your opponent's rear areas all you want, if you have the right racial drive techs and he doesn't intercept, but it only matters in the rare event he's playing Human and you happened to land on a key node line. Otherwise it's no more or less effective than attacking his front lines. The core of blitzkrieg, to punch through and outflank, is effective against one race out of eight, and would usually be accomplished by accident.
I disagree with you on every account there.
Hitting the enemy infrastructure is very much possible. Hitting the enemy supply is very much possible (unless the enemy is smart enough to bring a lot of supply ships with him, you can destroy his supply base and strand his fleet once it runs out of fuel)
Blitzkrieg is effective against every race - I should know, I used it in the End of Flesh scenario.
Vaccines are randomly generated for pretty much everyone. Humans have to be as lucky to get as far as Beast Bomb plague. If you play Liir though it's a pretty good bet nobody else is going to get Assimilation Plague, much less the vaccine for it. I've assimilated the galaxy more than once since it's generally a lot more interesting than slugging through the 50-odd dreadnaughts the AI will stack to defend a planet.
As for AoE weapons, that's all well and good but the PD intercepts them before impact and they don't get to the missiles in the tubes. And by the time you make launch position it's much too late. I've seen the AI and other humans try that solution and I've watched it fail.
Tech can be salvaged. You can get that vaccine tech from the enemy.
AoE weapons work if used inteligently. If you fire a single torpedo..yeah, sufficient PD will intercept it. So you fire off a salvo. Corrossive missiles create a massive cloud, so intercepting them actually hurts your enemy, as his ships plow right into it and it eats at them.
Not to mention that gives you have polygon targeting, with accurate weaponry you can snipe the missiles..no AoE weapons needed. Just good planing and positioning.
Like I said, you have to do some bombardment to get them to surrender anyways, and when your broadside mounts are Antimatter Projectors or your forward mounts are cutting beams and you're shooting the defense sats, it can be quite easy to nuke a planet back to the Cambrian by accident.
No, bombardment is not necessary to get surrender.
And see, that's why weapon groups and specific fire orders exist. You divide your weapons into weapon groups and use "fire only at my target" icon for the appropriate group. Use the appropriate weapon for the task.
No one uses projectors and cutting beams on defense sats if one wants the planet in tact. Lasers and assault shuttles or bio weapons are used for that purpose.
You want the game to reward you for not paying attention? That's not good gameplay.
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http://www.moddb.com/games/sword-of-the-stars-2/videos/sword-of-the-stars-ii-trailer
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Diplomacy exists, and while there could be more of it, there enough. You can actually tell the AI more stuff than in some other games.
You can't directly trade ships or tech, but I don't see that as a big negative.
Sure, sometimes you wish there are more things (or more specific things) you can say to the AI, but that hardly constitutes as non-existant.
He didn't say that diplomacy doesn't exist, he never once said it, he merely that there's very little of it.
Just because there's more of it than in some other games doesn't mean what is there is of quantity or quality.
You want the game to reward you for not paying attention? That's not good gameplay.
Strawman, try again.
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At about the point you said "use assault shuttles" to capture a world with intact population it was pretty clear you don't actually play the game, Trash, but then you suggested sending ships with lasers that aren't using them as PD into combat and I realized you've found a difficulty level lower than easy or are attempting to use your modded version to make statements about the standard one.
You didn't even try to pretend I'm not right about tactically attritional combat, and your arguments about using blitzkrieg are utterly without merit, since blitzkrieg supposes a rear area and only those fighting Humans have a definable rear. You may have moved quickly, but it was not blitzkrieg since defense in depth right up to the end is a given.
Similarly I reiterate that all worlds can build ships, so there is no ability to cut some off and bypass them safely to go for the throat as true blitzkrieg would because there is no throat.
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I play the game. A lot.
Anyone can simply go the Kerberos forums and read the Tactical Action Reports to see you're wrong.
Tactics and counter-tactics galore, and they all work.
And no, I haven't said to use assault shuttles to capture the planet with population. I said to capture the planet intact.
All planets can build ships - well duh! They are planets! But not all are equally good at that.
You can move fast, keep the enemy off-balance and do masssive damage to enemy morale and infrastructure...if you play smart.
If you don't want to call that blitzkrieg, I don't care. But I know it works and works wonderfully.
Everything I sad can easily be backed-up by a visit to the forums.
But I don't think you can boast with the same.
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This is from the SomethingAwful fan thread for the game:
Secondly, Kerberos kind of sucks with a lot of stuff. Their 2D art and voice acting is mostly horrible. The 3D engine is poorly optimized and frankly often ugly. The user interface is terrible and almost wants to hide information from the player at times. Trade networks are vital but a total ***** to deal with (except for Zuul). There are a lot of shortcuts, tricks, and other stuff you only discover after weeks of playing. Some say all of this is part of the charm however, but your mileage may vary. The developers themselves also never admit to making a mistake and seem to think their game is absolutely perfect in every way.
huh that sounds familiar
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Everything That particular SA thread has posted so far is pretty much on the money. SoTS should be, as games go, terrible. And it doesn't help that the games creators, despite being fairly nice people on their forums, are pretty much convinced their game is utterly without fault. That said, I, at least, find this game incredibly awesome despite how horrid it kinda is. There isn't too much strategic depth, and the UI is utterly stupid, along with the shoddy manual (I found out I could order my ships into a roll by accident last week. I have owned the game for a year and a half now,) but for some people, myself, and apparently Trashman, included, this game strikes all the right chords and is actually quite a bit of fun, especially with friends. Not to mention nothing else really scratches that Orion itch the same way as SoTS.
As for the new trailer, cool, despite the music, but I'm also worried. Given Kerberos' track record with optimizations, I worry that the second one will be utterly unplayable on most machines, with graphics like that. But, whatever, I'm still gonna get it.
(Also Trash, If I'm right, and you're the same Trashman that did the Phoenix mod, were there ever any plans for balancing that race? I suck with humans but I can annihilate everyone militarily with ease, and it kinda ruins the fun of the higher difficulties. Which is a shame, as I love the designs.)
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SA as forums go, take a dump on EVERYTHING. I never take those people serious, cause I've seen them complain about pretty much everything..even mundanade stuff.
Speaking of SOTS performance...one shouldn't forget that SOTS ships are detailed - having up to 10000 polygons per section - and have nice details like see-trough windows and animated stuff.
Also, ALL turrets are multi-part and tracking, and a DN can have over 100 of them. And each shot is calculated in real time for damage done and deflection/reflection angle, and impacting kinetic force. Given newtonian physics, a ship doing the shooting and the ship getting hit will feel it.
As for the Phoenix mod, do you have the latest version of it?
I did increase the CP cost of some sections, but you can easily make your own tweaks. All .shipcestion files are just text files..you can change the cost, HP and other attributes of each section easily.
The AI can play well with it, but the human player is a lot better at avoiding attrition, which is the biggest weakness of the faction.
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Speaking of SOTS performance...one shouldn't forget that SOTS ships are detailed - having up to 10000 polygons per section - and have nice details like see-trough windows and animated stuff.
Also, ALL turrets are multi-part and tracking, and a DN can have over 100 of them. And each shot is calculated in real time for damage done and deflection/reflection angle, and impacting kinetic force. Given newtonian physics, a ship doing the shooting and the ship getting hit will feel it.
Yes, I'm aware of all that. My point was that the 3D models themselves are poorly optimized. The actual processing power required due to the nature of the combat engine wasn't in the scope of that post, and that part actually runs reasonably well considering the amount of crap a late game dread fleet will fling around. Besides, not to be a graphics whore, as it really doesn't bother me that much, but I'm sure that even you can agree that those models don't actually LOOK that high poly. It's obvious they're there, they have to be, due to the nature of the combat engine, but I'm willing to bet an experienced modeler would be able to go in and makes those models look twice as good with no loss of functionality.
As for SoTS 2, it's entirely possible I'm wrong and the game will be beautiful and run incredibly smoothly, given that all we have to go on is some cryptic comments from the lead developer about predicted recommended specs which, while a little RAM heavy, weren't terribly impressive. Here's hoping they've taken a page out of Crytek's book.
On the mod, I downloaded the lastest release from the front page of the thread, and then an update a ways into the thread that had been posted November of last year, IIRC. Is that the latest set of releases?
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Yes, I'm aware of all that. My point was that the 3D models themselves are poorly optimized. The actual processing power required due to the nature of the combat engine wasn't in the scope of that post, and that part actually runs reasonably well considering the amount of crap a late game dread fleet will fling around. Besides, not to be a graphics whore, as it really doesn't bother me that much, but I'm sure that even you can agree that those models don't actually LOOK that high poly. It's obvious they're there, they have to be, due to the nature of the combat engine, but I'm willing to bet an experienced modeler would be able to go in and makes those models look twice as good with no loss of functionality.
The textures are to blame for that. A few are good, but on closer inspection, some are way too blurry IMHO.They tend to hide some of the detail.
Interestingly enough, SOTS looks better weith some texture mods.
I'm glad to see SOTS 2 has improved in that aspect.
On the mod, I downloaded the lastest release from the front page of the thread, and then an update a ways into the thread that had been posted November of last year, IIRC. Is that the latest set of releases?
I always update the front page with the link to the latest version. So it's there you should look.
If the ships are still too powerful, you can always increase CP cost to to sections you feel are OP, or reduce their HP.
ATM the main weakness of the faction is high cost of ships, long production times and slow acceleration.
The best sections (battleship, blazer, barrage, torpedo) already have a 1.5 command point modifier, so you can't field as many. IIRC, I also reduced the CP total for the faction.
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Ah. So I probably overwrote something important with that last update. In any case, Once I defeated the Planet Killer with eight fusion-era cruisers without loss, I figured it might be time to tweak some values. I'll probably go in and mess with some of those files later. I did notice the higher CP cost on the specialist sections though, that was a nice touch, but IIRC I never had lower CP point alloted.
All that aside, I like the models, even though I was kind of a fan of the Node ring. So nice job there.
And completely unrelated, I'm digging the aesthetic (if not the coloring) of the new Human ships in SoTS 2. Same with the Morrigi, though I will admit I miss the hidden weapons ports, despite how impractical they could be.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhjCEFmlo5M
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I'm actually more hopeful about this game now due to the fact that Cirulis didn't come across as a raging douche in that interview. Heres hoping they actually learned from some of the mistakes they made in the first game.
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http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/03/29/sword-of-the-stars-ii-developer-diary-3-maturing-the-style/
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/swordofthestarsii/news.html?sid=6306686&mode=previews
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I like colors on the ships much better. I think one could take these seriously now.
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Indeed, definitly an improvement now. I can't wait for that game, always liked the old one :)
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I'm rather all giggidy about the prospect of the new armor and damage system.
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The combat overhaul is taking a backseat to the new star system set up for me. Invasions are going to be so much more awesome now.
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O lawd, those interviews ratcheted up my WANT levels for this game massively.
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All in all, it's focused on glorious battles and high-level decisions, instead of micromanagment hell. It also plays fast enough that it's fun in multiplayer too.
Personally, the best 4X game I played.
Mhhh for Multiplayer i might be inclined to agree.
There are - to my knowledge - only 2 recent 4X games really that are set up for engaging multiplayer matches, which are: Sins and Sots - and in that direct comparison Sots wins easily out through complexity. It remains interesting even after several matches while Sins is not really a satisfying 4X game in the longterm, with all the sacrifices that had to be made to make it realtime.
Plus: The drop in / drop out multiplayer even allows for short yet satisfying gaming sessions. Being able to jump into anyones open multiplayer game while it is in progress and taking any AI player over as a player is just awesome.