Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Ace on June 06, 2007, 03:23:23 am
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Well the expansion is out, and adds in a diplomacy/trade/espionage system as well as a new race. Plus fun stuff like ship boarding pods.
So more conquer-the-galaxy fun! Whee!
http://bornofblood.swordofthestars.com/
(http://bornofblood.swordofthestars.com/bigbob_2.png)
(http://sots.rorschach.net/images/0/0a/Hvyamcannon.png)
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*sigh* SotS was such a disappointment to me that the game have been gathering dust in my shelf shortly after I bought it. I'll be skipping this expansion. Shame really, the game has a lot of potential but came out as a mediocre at best.
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I'd be more excited about this if I was ever actually able to buy it. *Sigh* I must have gone to a dozen stores over the course of a month, and nobody had even heard of the damn thing.
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SotS was disappointment for me too. But somehow I occasionally played it anyway. Just for the battles, because that's all the game had.
I am interested on this expansion because it does much to correct the things I was disappointed in. I've been lurking the Kerberos boards and I seems to me this expansion is going to yank this game in to a better direction...
Or it will be another disappointmet. Time will tell...
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The thing is, it sounds like a lot of people expected the game to be GalCiv 2.
It's unapologetically "Rome: Total War in Space." There's some clunkiness with the tactical GUI, and I think having to research techs to unlock interface features is stupid, but the overall tactical depth and variety of ship designs and how they interact is the game.
The new diplomacy system is interesting, pretty much a way to tell players or the AI "I want this planet" or "send a fleet here to help."
Trade similarly is about securing sectors, and then when planets are set to trade freighters move around which can be raided.
Overall, the game's focus is on combat and it stays that way. So if you're expecting things like tech or economic victories this still isn't your game. If you're wanting huge B5 style battles with planet-killer dreadnaughts and cloaked slaver raiding fleets kidnapping people... this is your game.
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I don't expect it to chance radically. The original SotS lacked depth. There was literally nothing else to do but build ships and fight. While the total war series is also all about conquering the known world with force of arms, there still was other stuff to do. Trade, espionage and diplomacy. SotS had none of those and thus felt like a fleet battle simulator. I got boring quickly. I'm hoping the expansion makes the player think a bit more than the next place to attack. Sure, the goal will still be to glass the enemy planets, but if you had the means to effect their economy by raiding, and the capacity to interact with them even a bit, the game would be more interesting.
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I really couldn't get into this game for some reason, which is odd, I normally love games like this, but it was, as has been stated earlier, too based around building enormous fleets and blowing each other up, whereas I'm more a trading and building type of person.
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I'd be more excited about this if I was ever actually able to buy it. *Sigh* I must have gone to a dozen stores over the course of a month, and nobody had even heard of the damn thing.
i've seen it at 2 best best buy stores.
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I don't expect it to chance radically. The original SotS lacked depth. There was literally nothing else to do but build ships and fight. While the total war series is also all about conquering the known world with force of arms, there still was other stuff to do. Trade, espionage and diplomacy. SotS had none of those and thus felt like a fleet battle simulator. I got boring quickly. I'm hoping the expansion makes the player think a bit more than the next place to attack. Sure, the goal will still be to glass the enemy planets, but if you had the means to effect their economy by raiding, and the capacity to interact with them even a bit, the game would be more interesting.
Actually the trade/piracy system is exactly that.
Planets in secure sectors (no "space monsters" or enemy fleets of large sizes) can build freighters which move between planets and produce income. (which of course is used to build big-blowy-up ships) You can assign vessels to piracy which then impact the economy. (not as much as glassing a planet though)
The added diplomacy is interesting, but mostly focused around a "help defend this" "rally here" "give me money" sort of thing. But there's good "flavor text" for it depending on the race.
There is some information warfare added, since the intel lists enemy technologies you've encountered and also mentions what techs of yours the enemy knows about. So you can play games with denying the enemy info on certain techs you're using by building fleets in remote planets. (and the whole deal of cloaked scouts, stealth ship detectors, etc.) There's not espionage in the "let's do random sabotauge" like in MOO though.
However, the focus of the game is definately on combat. Mostly because the devs wanted to have something like Babylon 5 space-battle wise.