[TrashMan]

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.

[General Battuta]

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

[PsychoLandlord]

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.)

[TrashMan]

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.

[PsychoLandlord]

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?

[TrashMan]

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.

[PsychoLandlord]

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.

[TrashMan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhjCEFmlo5M

[PsychoLandlord]

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.

[TrashMan]

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

[Fury]

I like colors on the ships much better. I think one could take these seriously now.

[Starman01]

Indeed, definitly an improvement now. I can't wait for that game, always liked the old one

[TrashMan]

I'm rather all giggidy about the prospect of the new armor and damage system.

[PsychoLandlord]

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.

[Ravenholme]

O lawd, those interviews ratcheted up my WANT levels for this game massively.

[Mikes]

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.