Sword of the Stars II: Lords of Winter was released in October, 28 2011. After the first few minutes playing the game players started reporting, incredulous with what they were experiencing (or not experiencing), that the game was very unstable and incomplete. The (un)official word by release day was that (by mistake) the game had been released in beta state. That “bogus version” would eventually be replaced by the final product. However that build wasn’t final either (very far from it actually).

Two weeks after release I wrote a (somewhat lengthy) SotS2′ first impressions. I saw no point in publishing a review at that time because it was more than clear to everybody by then that the game was released unfinished. In public announcements, both the publisher and the developer have apologized for the game’s state at release time and committed to complete it.

Three months after release (more than the producers had announced they needed to put the game in a playable state), I’m writing Sword of the Stars II’s review. I read all the game’s latest documentation available (manual and beginners’ guide) and I played 3 games, for around 250 turns total. One game I played with the Sol Force faction, another with the Morrigi Confederation and finally one with the Liir-Zuul Alliance (the one I liked playing the most, by the way).

Exploring the Sword of the Stars 2′s Universe

I admit that I was never a big fan of the original SotS’ star map and its 3D navigation. Although it looks nice on the surface I find it quite hard to find a view that I like, so, I’m re-adjusting it constantly. Anyway, eventually you will get used to the starmap’s navigation mechanics. You can zoom in and out and rotate in every direction, but I miss the ability to intuitively grasp distances between star systems. And the UI doesn’t help you with this either since it doesn’t give you quick distance information, like parsecs, turns, whatever unit really, so that you know how far a star actually is.

On the other hand, SotS2 offers a very interesting way to move your ships around the stars. To send your ships to other star systems you must first create a fleet. To do that you must pick an admiral from the admiral pool (each one with its positive and negative traits). Then you need to select one or more ships to include in your fleet. Your fleet must always include at least one command ship, a special type of ship that is required to coordinate the other ships. After that you can start conducting missions.

Actually, almost everything you do in SotS2 is achieved through the missions concept. You assign a mission, the designated fleet moves to some place, does what it needs to do and then returns to base. Take into account that the mission ETA (the time it takes for the fleet to do what you order it to do) includes the time for the fleet to arrive at its destination, perform the required mission (survey, colonization, construction, patrol, strike, invade, etc) and then head back to base.

To explore star systems you assign a survey mission. Any type of fleet, with any type of ship is allowed to do this type of mission. To build structures you assign a construction mission. In this case you need to have at least one constructor-type ship to be able to conduct such a mission. Then you can issue colonization orders. For that you need to have at least one colonization transport in your fleet. These missions (survey, construction, colonization) are your basic non-military type of missions but then you have a series of military-act missions you can do, which include patrolling, striking or invading star systems. You can also perform an interdiction mission which will not directly attack a system but will attack anyone coming in or out of it.

I love SotS2′s mission mechanic. I like it because in my opinion it removes the barren feeling normally associated with the traditional way to create and move ships around in other games of this type. Moreover, and since you can’t have hosts of fleets, your ships and your decisions really do matter, and that, in my opinion, is a big plus for SotS2.

Expanding your empire across the galaxy

Another Sword of the Stars 2′s great feature is the stations concept. Stations are modular structures that you can evolve over time by purchasing additional modules that increase their efficiency. Some modules will lift empire limits, others will unlock new possibilities. Stations evolve through four stages, with the culminating stage being a very special, expensive and unique structure for each type. There are four basic types of stations: Civilian, Diplomatic, Naval and Science stations. Besides these four basic types of stations there are two additional specific ones, one for the Hivers faction (the Gate stations) and another for the Suul’ka Horde (Tribute stations). Then there is a lesser station type (to some degree) used for mining purposes.

You can use stations to expand your empire’s military and research levels but also to boost trade and diplomatic relations with other empires. Although it’s fun to build and develop your stations there’s still also some mystery about them since you don’t know, exactly, how much of an impact a particular station is having on your research, for instance. Research modules should increase the research bonus ok, but then you can’t see an accumulated bonus modifier. There’s some polishing work to do here, as I found the stations concept, more the information about them, a bit obscure.

Developing your empire… but… with so many doubts?…

The economical part of the game is probably the most confusing one of all the game’s weakest elements. I mean, what exactly is a planet’s “Economical rating” anyway (moreover it’s always the same value for all colonies)?! And the manual doesn’t help you either. What about the biosphere concept? How exactly does it work (again the manual fails you and there are no tool tips available to guide you). This is the sort of thing that makes you frustrated and wanting to stop playing the game because if we have so many doubts about the game how are we supposed to understand the full scope of our decisions?

For example, in the empire manager screen (above), where you make all your economical strategic decisions, there’s a slider called “Stimulus”. No tool tips are provided on how it works and again the manual (and the in-game encyclopedia) fail to help you again. So, it was only after I consulted the game’s forums that I could understand what the intention behind the stimulus slider was (I went to the game forums constantly to try to understand stuff I could not find anywhere else btw).

So, it seems that there’s a private (or civil sector) of some sort in SotS2′s mechanics. The idea is that if you help, the best word is stimulate really (like government spending), areas like mining, colonization and trade then the civil sector will act autonomously from you and will create their own trade ships, trade routes and mining bases, and even help the empire on the colonization efforts free of charge (no maintenance costs associated) at the cost of lack of control over those enterprises that is.

This civil sector seems to be a great feature but as so little information about the stimulus slider is available on how (or when) this can be used to help your economy you can’t help not to feel quickly frustrated again. For instance, there are a series of techs that you need to discover first before the stimulus slider can actually work. But nothing is said anywhere about what needs to be done, and the sliders are just there open for you to play with them. However you don’t have a clue on what you’re doing (or obtaining). There’s no feedback from the game (no feedback at all) so you actually don’t know if your investment in stimulus is producing any effect. This is a very severe game shortcoming.

SotS2′ tech tree is probably one of its stronger points however. There are many tech trees (or branches) to invest in, with plenty of techs to research. In some cases, before researching a new tech you must first undertake a feasibility study. This tech pre-assessment will tell you how likely a tech is to breakthrough. This is very interesting because this uncertainty on how many turns a tech will actually take to research (if it will breakthrough at all) adds another layer of uncertainty on top of the random tech tree. In summary, there’s enough content and depth in the tech trees to keep you entertained by researching and experimenting new techs.

The worst, or better said, most incomplete aspect of SotS2 is the diplomacy system. And SotS2 would not be a 4X game without it would it? Well, in fact there’s barely any information on the manual or in-game about how diplomacy actually works, yet and in a way this is quite consistent with what the game currently offers in this respect (or at least is perceived to offer), which is, very little.

The diplomacy functional skeleton is already there, you can see what races you have already contact with. You can negotiate treaties and request things from them however there is so little feedback on your diplomatic actions, and the bugs are so many that it’s utmost evident that the diplomacy system still needs to be finished before we can even say anything further about it. In summary, the game’s diplomacy system is not yet finished and is barely functional at this stage.

Spaceship design and construction

And now we reach one of my favorite parts of the game (that actually feels very complete): the ship design and invoicing system. If you want to prototype your own cruiser, dreadnought or leviathan class ship (or any other ship for that matter) SotS2 offers you a straightforward and satisfying way to do that. Like in the original SotS, ships are modular. There are three modules that need to be customized separately. There is an engine section, a ship-type class section and another module for other vessel special characteristics.

At first not all that you’re required to do (or know) is evident, which is a SotS2 general problem. But after you experience around with the various options provided to you, you start to get the hang of it. There are many weapons, weapon types and mounts to choose from. You can even compare one weapon against another in a nice graph instead of having to memorize damage numbers, or having to cycle through the various weapon one by one. There are also extra modules, mostly that you unlock through research that you can include also. As already said ships are separated in three modules that increase the configurations variety, so, you can also play with that to further customize your ships. With respect to ship design SotS2 also includes a very nice ship testing feature. After choosing all your ships’ parameters you have the chance to see it in action before entering in real combat. The game puts you in a simulation controlled environment with some targets for you to test your armament.

The invoice system, i.e. the way you instruct your ships to be built, is also nicely done and gives you (in this case) all the information and features you need to build your ships. Before building ships of your newest designs you must invoice a single prototype. Only when your prototype gets built you can start producing that design in mass. The only negative aspect worth mentioning in the invoicing system is that I didn’t find a way to re-order invoices in the invoices queue after they are submitted. Although this may sound realistic I think the game should allow you to re-order your build queue anyway.

Space combat

Since SotS was always much more about space combat than strategy, we now reach one of the game’s critical areas: space combat. First of all SotS2′s space combat is very demanding in terms of performance, but if you actually have a good, or very recent 3D accelerator video card, you should be fine. But I leave the warning for people with moderate-to-good video cards from 3 years ago: you may struggle a bit to get a decent and smooth space combat rolling, if you do manage to tweak your card well enough in the end I mean.

Unlike the rest of the game that plays in turns combat unfolds in real-time, in a limited time span between 5 to 12 minute sessions(this limit is set by you at game setup). Overall graphics are very good. The planet models for instance are probably the best looking I’ve seen to date. The space stations and all spaceships are also very nice looking (some of them absolutely gorgeous), so, the graphical aspect of space combat is overall very good.

Now, in terms of gameplay, I found combat to be quite straightforward. You point, click, order attack with the left mouse button, select several ships and order movement with your right mouse button. Point, click, shoot, move, shoot again or standoff and retreat, all the basic combat options that this sort of game usually offers. I quite enjoyed the combat overall. The voices are nice, a bit repetitive but actually quite good, especially the Liir ones. I had only a few annoyances to report, but those are not strictly related with the combat itself but more with the preceding and the succeeding UI panel, that I found to be a bit rough and even wrong, as it contained some mistakes. For instance the battle report screen (at the end of battle) shows you a wrong number of destroyed ships.

Some further scattered thoughts

The game offers multiplayer options (LAN and Internet) but during the time I played for this review I only saw one open game there, which was protected, so I can’t tell you anything further than this regarding multiplayer.

The ETA system for turns is still unfinished and frankly quite disappointing. Sometimes fleets take less time to arrive at their destination. Sometimes a fleet uses less time to build a station, for example. Other times these issues are far more evident. Sometimes you get negative ETAs (yes, “-2″ turns for example) or you get “5937593″ turns, or overlapped text. I found this ETA instability very disturbing.

Sometimes you can’t colonize a world and you don’t know why. Other times you can’t relocate a fleet somewhere and you also don’t have enough information either in-game or in the manual to understand why. Could it be that you can’t have many fleets stationed in one system? But we don’t actually know that there is a maximum number, so there’s that lack of information and feedback problem again.

Sounds are basic, and music is minimal (although there is one for each faction), but they are enough to set the tone well. Voices are ok in general, mediocre at places (with annoying accents or simply unremarkable) but excellent in others (like when playing with the Liir for example).

Game screen switching, i.e. entering and leaving screens can lag severely. In large maps you can get up to 8-10 seconds to return back to the starmap (from the research screen for example). In smaller maps this is largely mitigated, and you end up getting “only” 1-3 seconds lag.

The fleet manager is cool, you can assign formations to your fleets (even in different layers: up, middle, down) although I’m not sure if this is actually working in combat as it should since in my battles my ships were all set in a straight line.

You can actually see stations under construction.

I didn’t like the fact that you can’t play with less than 3 systems at game start (for any map size).

The colonization system is interesting. After you colonize a new world you may decide to keep giving support to that recently established colony, especially if it was built in a less favorable environment. When you’re giving support to those colonies you accelerate their development, the downside however is that your colonization fleet is unavailable to establish new colonies elsewhere.

Very interesting shield technologies. The are several types of shields offered for research (against beam or projectile weapons for example) and you actually need to mount them in ships using special modules in order to use them.

The different factions, lore and background information is very good.

Bottom line

It’s clear to me that the game’s problem is not one of design but one of implementation. Both the art and the overall game’s design looks, and feels great. But you can’t help not to end up feeling frustrated sooner or later because of all the lack of information, crashes (for some people), bugs, lack of feedback or just incomplete or missing features.

After playing the latest version of Sword of the Stars 2 (the version the game was at, at the time that this review got published) I have strengthen my believe that this game has really great potential, and I mean BIG. Many issues have been addressed since release and the most important one being stability. The game is actually very stable now. At least for me it is. At release, and a couple of weeks after, I couldn’t even play for more than 4 straight turns (actually trying to do something) without crashing the game, and now, 3 months after that, I didn’t have a single crash after playing for this review.

At the time I wrote my Sword of the Stars 2′ first impressions I don’t think the game was playable at all, judging from my experience “playing” and by what everyone else in the game forums was saying. Now, judging from the type of activity I witnessed in the game forums (a lot more: “What’s that?, “How do I do this?” and less “I get a CTD here.”) the game is finally quite playable now. It’s not yet finished and lacks a lot of polishing work though. There are still bugs also to iron out. Examples of these are: wrong or negative ETAs, overlapped text at places, sliders that should not be active at game start, extreme lack of information and unpolished and buggy UI.

Now, about the golden questions you may be asking at this time: “Is the game already playable?”, “Is it ready?”, “Do you recommend the game?”. I will reply with this.

For the ones of you with a tight budgets that need to select carefully where to spend your money to maximize your game experience I can’t recommend this game for you at this moment. It’s too incomplete to be satisfying enough for you, and to be able to offer a solid game experience. At least for the $40-$50 price.

For you 4X veterans out there, that are still undecided whether to jump into SotS2 or not, I would say it’s already worth it for you to go ahead and buy SotS2. I think you can squeeze as much of the current game’s state to be worth the $40 or $50 bucks it costs. However don’t come back to me saying you had an unsatisfying experience because that’s probably what you’ll get. There’s the risk of not getting more than what you get now, yes, but there’s also a good chance you will.

If you’re new to this genre (space strategy) I don’t think it’s a good idea to enter in the SotS2 universe just now. There are other titles available that are definitely far better products, that will be more worthy of your money, and that will give you a better impression about the genre than Sword of the Stars 2: Lords of Winter will.

Guess I’ll need to re-review this one in a 3 to 6 months period, which is becoming a strange need these days.

Sword of the Stars II: Lords of Winter Buy it at GamersGate. Also available on Steam and Impulse.	Space Sector score: 4.0 (about the score system)

Sword of the Stars II screenshots [21/10/2011]

Congratulations! You will be contacted as soon as possible to get your steam game codes. The contest winners were picked with random.org support.

Hope everybody had a bit of fun with this contest. Thanks to all that participated. Thanks also to Paradox Interactive for the support on supplying the goods.

The contest details and all the people that entered the contest can be found in this post.

I thought it was time we had another contest at Space Sector. So, I’m proud to announce that Space Sector has teamed up with Paradox Interactive and we’ll host a giveaway contest at Space Sector. Paradox will offer 10 copies of Sword of the Stars 2: Lords of Winter, this 28th of October. But that’s not all. Paradox was generous and in addition to the 10 SotS2 copies it will also offer 20 copies of Sword of the Stars Complete Collection (the entire SotS original series).

This means that the lucky 10 will get Sword of the Stars II and Sword of the Stars Complete Collection. The next set of 10 lucky ones will receive a copy of Sword of the Stars Complete Collection, which is a great way to enter in the SotS Universe also. So, in total there will be a total of 20 prize winners in this contest.

How to enter in the contest

1. Follow on twitter: @spacesector, @swordofthestars, @PDXinteractive - OR – like Space Sector, Sword of the Stars and Paradox on facebook
2. Tweet for Sword of the Stars. Example: “I will eXplore, eXpand, eXploit & eXterminate the universe! @spacesector @swordofthestars @PDXinteractive to win a copy” – OR – share this blog post URL in facebook
3. For the social network non-users out there (that don’t want to join these networks) you can still enter the contest. You folks can forget about points 1 and 2, you just need to subscribe the Space Sector newsletter (in the sidebar to the right) and Paradox’s newsletter by registering in their forum. This is not a big deal to ask I guess, and you can unsubscribe both newsletters later at any time if you wish. Although I think you’d lose a great opportunity to stay in touch with Space Sector’s news ;)
4. Make a comment in this blog post below. Submit your name and email in the comment form (we’ll use that email to contact you if you’re one of the winners). Let us know also what you’ve done regarding point 1,  2 and 3. Don’t forget to include your twitter id or facebook id (for points 1 and 2) or the username you used to register the Paradox forum (for point 3).

I will give examples of how you guys should post your comments to become eligible:

@<your twitter name here> has followed @spacesector, @swordofthestars and @PDXinteractive and tweeted

Another example:

<your facebook name here> liked Space Sector, Sword of the Stars and Paradox and shared this post in facebook

One more:

Registered Space Sector newsletter and registered in Paradox’s forum with username [the username you used to register in paradox's forum here].

We’ll pick the winners on the 28th of October 2011 at 12:00 am EST. I’ll check those to see if they fulfilled all points, if they shared and what it was. Edit: I forgot to mention. Contest closes on 27th October 12:00am EST. After that point you can no longer enter the contest. I’ll signal that by changing the contest status to [CLOSED].

The contest winners will be generated randomly with the help of random.org

Games will be provided via Steam.

Games’ info:

• Sword of the Stars 2: Q&A with Chris Stewart
• Sword of the Stars 2: Opening Cinematic Sneak Peak
• Sword of the Stars 2: New Video Interview With Martin Cirulis at GDC
• Sword of the Stars Complete Collection – Review

Good luck!

Cheers

Adam Solo

Anyway everything leads to believe that Sword of the Stars 2 will come out this Fall of 2011.

SpaceSector did an interview with Chris Stewart (Producer and Designer of Sword of the Stars 2) in order to anticipate some of SotS2′s new features.

Here follows the interview we did with Chris. I think it came out great, revealing a lot on what to expect from SotS2. Hope you agree. Enjoy!

1.Firstly, what can we expect from the story in Sword of the Stars 2?

The main thing you can expect is that all the hints and foreshadowing from the first series comes to a point with the return of the Suul’ka. From the very first of SotS1, players have been bumping into alien derelicts, which ultimately proved to be abandoned and damaged chunks of Suul’ka armor.

The second thing players can expect is that we didn’t reboot the story – the game universe reflects the passage of time in a number of ways. All six alien races from the first series are in SotSII from the start. The tech tree starts at a later tech era – no reinventing all the basic techs yet again. We also know where we’re headed with the SotSverse, so SotS2 will set the stage for future expansions the same way the first series did. There are even linked scenarios that tell little pieces of SotS lore.

2. Could you describe a bit the new race – The Suul‘ka?

Simply put, they are ancient Liir. Biologically, Liir are incredibly long lived, limited only by their size. Most elder Liir are very zen when their time comes, but a few seek to cheat death and do so by using their psionic powers, which are very well developed by their age, to dominate the population, and use the population to build them the suits they need to leave planetside and live in space. The Liir rebelled against the Suul’ka, destroying many of them – a few escaped. Now they’re back and just as dark and un-Liir as they were before, maybe moreso.

3. Are there any changes to the existing races?

There are small changes, some have even allied up with one another, so they are a playable faction moreso than a playable race. The biggest change to all the races is that the psionic powers of the Suul’ka have started a psychic arms race, as all the races rush to develop members of their population to act as offensive weapons or defensive shields against the Suul’ka (and more often than not, the psionic officers from the other alien empires.) Psionics are a whole new branch of the tech tree in SotS2.

4. Diplomacy was rather limited in SotS1. Has it been overhauled/improved?

Diplomacy in the first SotS is exactly what one would expect in an era of gunboat diplomacy – SotSII is meant to reflect what comes next in a new era, where empires have already been established and now have to live with one another. So, to that end a lot of the systems in the game, from trade to research to politics now factor into diplomacy in new ways. Your ability to develop provinces, which are internal diplomatic matters, impact things like local trade. Stations can now be developed and modified to suit various needs, including a range of stations with diplomacy in mind. And most importantly, how you play the game will impact diplomacy, as how you act in the game dictates where your government falls on a political spectrum, and depending on where the other players fall on the political spectrum, your ability to deal with them diplomatically can be easier or harder or outright impossible.

5. How does the starmap work in SotS2? Are there any new features, or it’s practically the same?

Starmaps in SotS2 will be familiar to people who played the first game, with a variety of 3D maps of different shapes and sizes. Some changes have been made – for example, certain areas of space are labeled, for new players that need more geographic reference. And the change from the abstracted one star – one planet system of SotS1 to whole solar systems has meant that the overall size of the galaxy maps have decreased.

300 stars in SotS1 meant 300 planets, which was fine for people playing epic games. But 300 stars in SotSII would be a thousand planets at a minimum – that’s way too large. So, overall the scale in terms of planets has been maintained, meaning a smaller number of stars per starmap. Plus we have cool space features, like nebula that players have to travel through or around.

6. About colony management. Do we still colonize abstract systems or individual planets? Are sliders still the primary form of control?

I got into that a bit above – SotSII now models each star as a solar system, with each star having zero to a handful of planets and asteroids. Setting up on them is the same easy-access sliders as in SotS1, and as your worlds develop, you now have more options. Planets can be developed into capitol worlds for a province of planets and stars. You can develop planets more towards specialized gem worlds focused on research and trade, or forge worlds focused on production. And around these worlds you can set up and develop stations, starting with small trade or naval stations that over time you can grow into massive trade hubs, or diplomatic stations or massive military installations.

7. Is ship design overhauled? Will we have more sections to swap out, or are we still limited to three?

Ship design is one of the core features from SotS1 that carries over mostly the same – through research players develop and unlock new ship sections; command, mission, and engine. Player can then mix-and-match the sections depending on the functions they need their ship design to serve. As before, they also get to set which weapons go into which turret banks on the ship. However, in SotSII things go even further  – ships can now be outfitted with modules, which have their own functions. Depending on what players want, they can add even more of a ship’s ability by adding a module, or they can use modules to cover their bases.

SotS2: Ship Design (footage source angryjoeshow.com)

So for example, they can leave out a Deep Scan section, preferring to put a more martial section in there – but they can add a sensor module, which while not as good as a Deep Scan section, does give the ship more than just the basic sensor range. As well, new carrier classes allow players to build, design, and equip a new range of battlerider ships that can be carried into battle. We also added a weapons test sub-screen on the design screen, so players can test out and admire their newly unlocked weapons and sections without having to worry about a raging battle going on around them.

In battle, players will notice ships now have armor, rather than the abstracted hitpoint system of the first game, and a whole interior life involving power-systems, crew, and supplies, which have to be taken into account when managing a fleet of ships, and can be negatively impacted in battles. All things players will want to keep in mind when designing their ships and composing their fleets.

8. Could you detail a bit more the new Leviathan and Battlerider ship classes?

The Leviathan class is the new massive ship class – these ships are as rare as they are mighty. Acquiring one will take a lot of research, time, and money, and as such, losing one will be devastating. Just as in SotS1, players have to remember that the game isn’t binary obsolescence – armor 3 makes lasers 2 useless – a weapon may become less effective, but it will still have an effect. If you can multiply that effect – more of that weapon, either on a single ship, or by having more ships together – you have multiplied the effect. So, a Leviathan is definitely a monster in battle, but a careless player can still lose one to a fleet of smaller ships if they’re not smart or careful.

SFS Leviathan (footage source angryjoeshow.com)

Battleriders, and their cousins the System Defense Boats, are the refinement of the destroyer class ships in the first game. Players can design then and outfit them with weapons as they wish, then assign those ships to a carrier, for battleriders, and solar system for SDB. SDBs have small drive systems for moving around a solar system fast, whereas Battleriders only have basic thrust engines – they cannot move between the stars themselves and have to be carried into and out of battle.

9. In lieu of these larger ships, will combat be fought on a larger scale?

SotSII is definitely more of a capital ship class tactical wargame when it comes to the real-time combat side of the game. Bigger, more durable, more complex ships fighting over an entire solar system means a very different type of combat from the first game – there’s a reason we let you name your ships in SotSII!

10. Besides any new technologies, can we expect other improvements to the technology system?

A cool new addition to the research system is the feasibility study. As in the first series, the randomized tech tree is a key feature for keeping the game highly replayable and avoiding the stagnation you get with static tech trees. So as before, players aren’t aware of what they do and don’t have as technologies (not counting the core technologies that everyone has every game) until they research the technologies that come before.

However, players now have the option to spend a couple of turns on a feasibility study, in which their scientists are able to tell them how hard researching a particular technology will be. This is extremely useful if your plans are betting on a certain technology within a certain period of time – if it’s not going to happen, you don’t want to find out the hard way, mid-plan execution. You want to know in advance and cook up another plan.

11. If you had to choose the one improvement you’re most proud of, what would it be?

I think the MARS2 engine cannot be overlooked. As much as we were able to immerse people in the real-time battles in SotS1, using physics and polygon accurate targeting and weapons fire with an actual presence in the game world, I look at pictures for SotS1 and SotSII side by side and I’m blown away by the new look of the game.

Thank you for your time Chris.

Zachary Cryer has been a SpaceSector contributor since May 2011. Besides having assembled the questions for this interview he also did a review of Sword of the Stars Complete collection. Zachary has done many other reviews on his Gamespot page.

The video gives a first look at Lords of Winter themselves. It presents also some engine combat scenes that demonstrate Kerberos’s new MARS2 engine.

Sword of the Stars II: The Lords of Winter will be available Sep 20th, 2011.

Come and discuss SOTS2 in the forums: http://www.spacesector.com/blog/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=14

There is a limited story that I picked up from the intro. We, Humans (you are a human…right?) finally created a ship capable of FTL travel and set off into the stars. Assuming that there was no other intelligent life in the universe we set off without weapons, and were attacked by the Hivers. The Hivers followed us back to Earth and nearly killed us all, but we managed to fight back and push them away. Now armed, we set off to fight against the other races; the Liir, the Tarkas, the Zuul, the Morrigi, and of course the Hivers.

Sword of the Stars Complete Collection has a total of six races in all, all listed in the last paragraph. SotS does a brilliant job of making each race feel unique, and you can tell that a lot of work was put into them. For example each race has its own version of FTL travel. Humans travel along node lines like in Master of Orion 3. Node travel is extremely fast, the downside being nodes can be few and far in between. Many planets don’t even have a node connections, forcing you into STL travel.

Tarkas can travel anywhere, regardless of nodes, at a constant rate. The downside being that once they’re in motion, their orders can’t be changed. This is pretty much the typical 4X FTL (MoO1&2, Armada 2526). You can eventually research Hyperspace Communication, allowing you to change orders mid-flight (you can also do that in Armada 2526 with a later tech).

The Liir’s FTL is similar to the Tarkas’, but it starts out ridiculously fast. As they approach their destination; however, it slows down tremendously. This makes it impossible for the Liir to sneak up on anyone, but at least they can travel through deep space quickly.

Hivers have the most difficult and interesting form of travel. In order to travel quickly, the Hivers must build gateways using special gateships, at the point of departure to their destination. You have to travel STL until you actually establish these gates, and it’s easy for your enemies to destroy them if they’re sent in unguarded.

Zuul are similar to Humans in that they also use node-lines. The difference is that the Zuul must create their node-lines with special mining ships. After boring a “space tunnel” they can travel FTL between planets. This eliminates the Humans’ disadvantage of limited node-lines, the downside being these “tunnels” must be maintained, and deteriorate over time.

Finally the Morrigi use traditional FTL travel similar to the Tarkas or Liir; however, the Morrigi speed is dependant on the size of the fleet. The more ships, the faster they travel.

It’s obvious that a lot of work went into making each race unique in its artwork, design, voice-work, and general gameplay. Compared to other 4X games, SotS goes above and beyond the required effort in creating unique races, and it pays off with a more interesting experience.

After starting the game and choosing your options the first annoyance manifests; the 3D Map. While a 3D starmap is more realistic, Kerberos would’ve done well to have put some thought into why it hasn’t been done en masse. There’s no scrolling, rather the game uses a focal point that you set. Double-clicking on any planet sets it as the focal point and makes it easy to then rotate and cycle the view.

While this makes it easy to keep your bearings in the vertical maps, it creates a major problem. When you have to traverse massive maps you have to double-click, double-click, double-click, you get the picture…just to get across the map. This alone is enough to make me wonder why they didn’t just stick to a top down 2D view with scrolling. If they had to have 3D they could have at least added scrolling for an alternative. Eventually you will get used to it, but it has the tendency to annoy you every so often, which is bad.

Fortunately, you see the game’s potential fairly quickly, which helps you put up with the camera. Research in this game is very cool. In order to cut down on surefire strategies, and to add to the mystery Sword of the Stars uses a randomized tech tree. While all the techs are the same, the computer randomizes which ones you get and which ones you do without. There’s a slight “problem” with this though. It’s easy for the randomizer to take away something essential like shields, which can seriously cripple your military. To me though, this figures greatly into the overall strategy. If you have no shields then it’s much more important to research point defenses and armor more quickly.

Another cool feature is immediate funding and “accidents”. You have the option to directly pour money into a research project. This greatly enhances its progress, but the more money you pour into it directly rather than through government finding, the higher chance you have of a research accident. While accidents on a weapon system could result in the entire research team killing itself, wait until you have an accident while developing Artificial Intelligence…just nasty!

Unfortunately 3D carries over into this interface as well. You have to rotate the view in order to see all of the techs, and zooming in allows you to actually read a particular technology’s description. While it definitely wins points for aesthetics, it suffers from the starmap’s problems. It gets annoying to rotate, rotate, rotate, and zoom, zoom, zoom, just to find the tech you want.

Now we talk about the most disappointing aspect of Sword of the Stars for me: Empire Management. Sword of the Stars borrows heavily from the orignal Master of Orion for its colony management system, most notably the sliders. SotS uses sliders for practically everything, which is both good and bad. In economics you’ll manage the Savings/Research slider, the Overharvesting slider, the Construction/Trade slider, and the Infrastructure/Terraforming/Shipbuilding slider.

The advantage of the slider system is that firstly, it forces you to make decisions. You can’t have it all so you have to choose what is more important to you and balance it. Secondly, it keeps colony management simple, which keeps the game flowing a helps out on larger maps. The problem with sliders is that for people like me (who want more control over their colonies), the system is too simple.

Overall though, colony management is quite solid. You’ll chose planets based on three things primarily; Size, Hazard Rating, and Resources. Size dictates how many people you can have on a planet, Hazard rating is how comfortable it will be on that planet, and Resources dictate how fast production goes. On planets the Overharvesting slider literally destroys your planets resources while greatly enhancing production. Terraforming lowers the Hazard Rating, while infrastructure determines how many people you can cram on a planet (High infrastructure is like skyscrapers). Like I said, not a bad system, just a tad too simple.

There’s one more thing I’d like to discuss before talking about the battles and ship design. The game is easy. Really easy. On the normal setting I’ve yet to be challenged in the game. Planetary morale is a snatch, with many of the “moral-boosting” technologies being superfluous. It’s seems nigh impossible to go bankrupt, with surpluses of money being common. You would have to try hard to lose this game. The only challenge comes from the random events. If you’re a 4X veteran crank those up and start on Hard.

Ship Design in Sword of the Stars is handled very simply and efficiently. Each ship is divided into three parts. Command Section, Mission Section, and Engine Sections. There are also three classes; Destroyers, Cruisers, and Dreadnoughts. After choosing the ship’s size and sections you add weapons. Each weapon slot has a firing-arc that it covers, and SotS’s combat engine makes it very important to plan your design (generally you want to put your best guns front and broadside).

Let’s talk about the ship sections. The Command section adds a secondary ability to your mission section, and generally carries the second chunk of weapons. For example if you choose the Deep Scan Command section you’ll be able to reveal cloaked vessels and see further, a good combination with the Extended Range Mission Section, which allows you to travel further.

The Mission section determines the overall purpose of the ship. A Tanker mission section means the vessel will be used for refueling, meanwhile an Armor section carries the most weapon slots. There are numerous sections that can be researched and added and it’s a good idea to use many of them in any given fleet.

Engine Section is pretty self-explanatory and dictates the ship’s range and speed, though it’s important to also balance the cost and other factors (such as turning speed) into your ship’s creation.

Designing ships is that simple. You can also add various components to sections such as armor, or engine boosters. While some GalCiv 2 fans may be disappointed by the lack of actual ship-modeling, there’s no denying that SotS’s system is easier and much closer to the Master of Orion games (besides, I never could design a good looking ship in GalCiv 2).

But you’re only designing ships for combat in SotS anyway. Before combat actually begins you have the option to try to peacefully resolve the encounter, auto resolve the encounter, or fight it out personally. There is a fourth option called fight manually if the opponent fights manually, which is intended for multiplayer. After the actual map loads, combat begins. Unlike Homeworld (where you could move ships vertically), combat in Sword of the Stars takes place on a 2D, horizontal plane. Ships will move vertically to avoid collisions if necessary, which looks cool and keeps things simple.

Battles take place in four minute rounds, where ships move shoot, and of course…blow up. If neither party wins at the end of a round, the battle is a draw and will continue next turn. You can decrease the round time to increase the importance of heavy weaponry (in order to kill targets faster), or increase time to make armor and shields more important (so they’ll last until the end of the round).

Battles also get rather large later on with the addition of CnC (Command and Control) ships. With the addition of the Command and Control ships, you can increase the ship cap for the battle allowing you to bring more guns to bear at once. CnC ships also allow you to set out fleet formations, which you’ll want to do in order to protect more vulnerable ships. Protecting your CnC ship is also important, as losing it mean you can’t bring as many ships in at once, which allows your forces to be picked apart piecemeal.

There are a few gripes I have with the system. For one it uses the same controls as the 3D starmap, which just like the starmap, can be a pain. As the battles primarily occur on a 2D plane, and the planetary orbits are much smaller the problem is not as magnified. The other minor quibble I have is that you can’t give orders in sensor mode. In combat you have the default view and sensor view. Sensor view is little more than a wireframe, but is a necessity for finding smaller ships. The fact that you can’t give orders in this mode makes it a pain to target those smaller ships after you do find them.

The last gripe I have is that the view distance in battles is pretty low. I do have all the graphics settings turned up, but regardless it can be impossible to see where enemy ships are until they’re nearly on top of you. It would be nice to have had better view distance, though at least you can follow the missile trails and guess where they are.

The game graphics are pretty nice. 4X games aren’t exactly known for graphical prowess, but SotS does have very nice visuals for a 4X game. Models are detailed and battles look great with all the effects flying around. Some texture work is lacking, but even Sins of a Solar Empire, had some blurry texture work. There is some great art direction and each race’s ships look magnificent. The actual loading screen artwork is pretty bad though (imho), ranging from cartoonish to ridiculous. Space Empires V had some magnificent artwork and I would’ve preferred SotS to have shot for an equally serious look.

Sound is pretty lackluster. Compared to other 4X games, races have a lot of charm, with plenty of voice work and audio cues. That being said they’re not particularly great, though I get the feeling that they were intentionally shooting for a cheesy “feel”. Still, after a while it get’s really annoying, despite the fact that the information they deliver is a must. The main menu theme was great and the good variety of instruments and themes gave off a Battlestar Galactica feel. Unfortunately, only one track exists for the actual star map and it’s not that powerful or atmospheric. It is easy; however, to add in your own music assuming it’s in the .ogg format.

Lastly I should mention that besides the sandbox game there is multiplayer and scenarios. The scenarios aren’t really that great, but I’ve never been a scenario guy finding them far too restrictive. They’re basically smaller sandbox games with special rules and objectives. There’s no real story besides the starting text and no cut scenes of note, so there’s definitely better options out there for Scenario fans. Multiplayer is smooth and easy due to Drop-In, Drop-Out capability, and definitely makes battles much more enjoyable. All the normal options are included, and you can put time limits on Strategic Map turns to keep the game moving.

Sword of the Stars is a solid 4X game that I would recommend to fans of simpler games, or perhaps newcomers. For people who want more control over their empire management, there are better options. It reminds me of the MoO1vs.2 debate. SotS is like MoO1, so if you preferred the second you may want to pass this one by.

Sword of the Stars: Complete Collection (Buy at GamersGate)	Space Sector score: 7.3 (about the score system)

Zachary Cryer has been a SpaceSector contributor since May 2011. Besides having written this review he also did a Q&A of Sword of the Stars 2 with Chris Stewart (SotS2 Producer and Designer). Zachary has done many other reviews on his Gamespot page.

Trevor Fountain, the Distant Star developer, puts it in these words: “Distant Star is an old-school (Turn-Based) 4x (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) space game, similar to Master of Orion or Sword of the Stars. Build up your fleet and conquer the galaxy — will your empire be an economic powerhouse, a technological wonder, or a military superpower? Or all three?”

If the game is like Master of Orion (and I presume it is the original one) and Sword of the Stars, that already says a lot about the game. This means that Distant Star is more about grand strategy and not so much about micromanagement.

Distant Star Map

Trevor has just released the 1.3 update for Distant Star.

Up until now the game was available for the iPad only, but with this new update the game is also now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The update also adds new races, new technologies, and UI improvements.

Trevor explains that he decided to develop Distant Star because there were no 4x games available for the iPad (at that time). He got his inspiration from titles like Galactica:AD, Stars!, Sword of the Stars and Master of Orion. The main point behind Distant Star, in Trevor’s words, is that “if you’ve played any of these (titles) then Distant Star should be extremely intuitive. At least that’s the idea.”.

Distant Star is still evolving. The developer promises to keep the game growing as long as there are active players.

Trevor runs a development blog, where he writes about progress and future plans for Distant Star. You can participate in improving the game by contacting Trevor directly.

Distant Star costs $1.99. You can buy it from the iTunes Apple Store.

It’s becoming clear that I definitely need to get an iPad :smile:

Some Screenshots (click to enlarge)

The collection pack contains the original Sword of the Stars game and the three expansions: Born of Blood, A Murder of Crows and Argos Naval Yard. The pack also contains exclusive material, more details below.

Currently under development Sword of the Stars 2 will be the sequel 4x Sci-Fi game to the Kerberos Productions acclaimed title Sword of the Stars.

SOTS2 will be released in September 2011. By buying the original Sword of the Stars collection, at this great price, you get the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the SOTS universe in an affordable way.

Buy Sword the Stars Complete Collection at Impulse. This offer is probably limited in time so hurry up! Remember that when you buy games from SpaceSector.com you’re supporting the site. So please buy games from here to help me keeping the site updated!

Sword of the Stars – Complete Collection $28.16 $9.85

If you download the Impulse client from this link you will be helping SpaceSector.com every time you buy a game using the Stardock’s Impulse System.

Get all the details about Sword of the Stars Complete Collection here.

SOTS2 is the sequel to the acclaimed 4x space strategy game Sword of the Stars and it’s target for release at Q3 2011. To know more about SOTS2 I invite you to read my post “Sword of the Stars 2 Announced”. You can also check out the official Paradox Interactive SOTS2 website.

Checkout the video with SOTS2 Lead Designer Martin Cirulis.

Youtube link.

For more details check the Sword of the Stars 2 official site.

Without revealing much about the sequel they said that the game will bring back the original six races and introduce a new race: the Suul’ka which is an ancient race in the SotS universe that will be central to the title main story plot.

The developer and the publisher were already teamed up on the first SotS game, but not since the beginning where the former publisher was Lightouse Interactice.

They explain that SotS 2 is still in the early conception phase and promise that it will not be only an evolution of the original SotS gameplay and story with better graphics and that instead players should look forward “to a whole new game that is based on the central SotS experience, but willing and able to grow beyond it to offer even more in terms of strategy, tactics and gameplay.” Martin Cirulis, CEO Kerberos Productions.

Sword of the Stars 2 is in early production and is scheduled to be released in Q1 2011.

To find out more about Sword of the Stars II, check the Paradox Interactive Sword of the Stars II official site.

For information and discussion about the original Sword of the Stars title check the Kerberos Productions SotS forums. You can get the original SotS and two of it’s followup expansions from Stardock/Impulse.