Sword of the Stars II: Broke. Post in new thread.

TheGerbil

Sword of the Stars II just popped up on steam for preorder today (40$) and comes with cosmetic DLC as a preorder bonus.

The game apparently launches on October 28th?!? Woah that came out of nowhere.

There isn't a whole of info besides:

It is still a 4x game
All 6 races from the original game are in plus a new race
Several changes to diplomacy and other game mechanics
New engine
DX10+ ONLY
Starts in Fusion era and goes beyond Anti-matter era.

Also we can discuss the first game in here for those who still want to play it.

Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=up3OpdYvtKw

taliosfalcon

I can't wait to kill some space dolphins. Fuck space dolphins.

TheKoolEagle

new thread smell, i preordered even though i don't have dx 10 so i can't play

Stregone

I love using the hivers. Only complaint was at the end game, I had to split up and micromanage my fuckoffhuge wipe up fleets. I could crank huge fleets out in just a couple turns, but couldn't move them anywhere

Are the racial drive techs remaining exactly the same?

TheGerbil

So far the info seems to point to yes, the races use the same general drive tech systems.

Humans have the best one if the node lines work in your favour. So damn fast.

Also I cannot get the video to embed. What the heck vanilla.

taliosfalcon

TheGerbil wrote:

So far the info seems to point to yes, the races use the same general drive tech systems.

Humans have the best one if the node lines work in your favour. So damn fast.

Also I cannot get the video to embed. What the heck vanilla.

ithat is a big if

TheGerbil

Oh I know, but seriously their speed is obscene.

TheKoolEagle

I'm always a fan of tarka or zuul, although morrigi have been growing on me, drones are fun to play with

taliosfalcon

I was never able to get into zuul, destroying my own planets and having to mine to keep them going and whatnot was just more micro then i ever wanted to deal with. Tarka though,tarka were boss

TheKoolEagle

10 resources a turn isn't super devastating, and for the most part you can let some of your planets just slowly wither, as long as you keep supplying resources to your forge worlds, usually i tech up highly in mining and strip mine planets nearby that have shitty climate hazard for me

TheGerbil

I spent some time learning Zuul a while back. Its all about the early game with them. Rush hard and fast. Your ships are dirt cheap and loaded with guns but have paper thin armor. You will die a lot, but use slaver ships to wreck their planets/boost yours and continue to constantly harass other players. You have to start the combat steamroller early and hard, no turtling and teching up with them.

Zuul also requires combat to get most tech, they have insanely low chances of getting most mid/late game techs naturally, but an incredibly high chance of getting them from after battle special projects.

Astns

I wonder how the incorporation of Zuul elements will affect Liir gameplay?

TheGerbil

Wait what? I don't follow....

Astns

TheGerbil wrote:

Wait what? I don't follow....

The Liir are now a confederation of Liir and 'Prester Zuul' (who want to reform their evil ways).

Delta Assault

I hope they make more attractive looking ships in this one. Cause the ships in the first game all looked butt ugly. Like, seriously. Sins of a Solar Empire didn't have amazingly beautiful ships, but they were at least somewhat decent. Sword of the Stars just dropped the ball.

Vic

I loved SotS 1, so I'll be sure to get this. I do hope there is some improvement and streamlining of the administrative side of the game though, managing anything above 10 planets was a real chore. My favourite race was Hiver and I used to end and then immediately reload most turns just so I could move fleets to the three planets that had been attacked, because the strategic map was so difficult to read that keeping track of attacking fleets was close to impossible.

Kind of wish I had played more multiplayer but the game was never that suited for it, especially playing as the Hivers. Kind of frustrating to wait an hour for an exploratory fleet to reach a planet only to have it destroyed because an enemy player noticed it halfway and made sure to have a fleet there to meet it.

Casually Hardcore

FUUUUUUCCCKKKKKK!!!

WHY DO THEY HAVE TO RELEASE BF3 and THIS GAME ON THE SAME FUCKING DAY?!

WHY!?!! FUCK! I'm fucking POOOR!!!

Casually Hardcore

Though, seriously, I hope they make losing ships feel more like a lose. I mean, I go through ships like a mad man going through cheetos. I remember when I first played the game and made my first cruiser and gave it a badass name and felt all proud about it. Now it's like 'Make 900 cruisers now! NOW!', and it quickly becomes a game of attrition.

JJ

This came out of nowhere. Weird since there's been no ingame media shown so far.

Casually Hardcore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGd8bozLJDM

and there's a few others. It doesn't look amazing, but I'm liking what I'm seeing.

Fuck BF3....no...no I cant....I might just going to have to sell blood or something.

Lord_Mordja

Oh man, new SOTS, I can't wait to-

TheGerbil wrote:

DX10+ ONLY

As you were.

Xenogears of Bore

Still not as good as MoO.

taliosfalcon

Lord_Mordja wrote:

Oh man, new SOTS, I can't wait to-

TheGerbil wrote:

DX10+ ONLY

As you were.

We've pretty much hit the graphics point where there are very, very few DX9 cards that could play games at a reasonable framerate even if DX9 was allowed. I mean dx10 hit what? 5 years ago now?

TheGerbil

For many its the OS

TheGerbil

Xenogears of Bore wrote:

Still not as good as MoO.

For multiplayer its much better

Corpekata

How newbie friendly is the first game? Was thinking of snagging while it is on Steam sale but not sure.

kaorti

SOTS 1 devoured my weekends for years. There is no way that I'm not buying this. The only question is where I want to preorder it from. Steam is easy to use, but I want the Lirr & Morrigi racial DLC more.

Edit: Death to hivers.

TheGerbil

Corpekata wrote:

How newbie friendly is the first game? Was thinking of snagging while it is on Steam sale but not sure.

They include tutorial videos/mission stuff to help you learn. You will probably lose a game or two like I did but then you pick it up and it all clicks. I only started playing about a year ago and it was manageable.

Casually Hardcore

Jedi Space Dolphins

Cantido

I will buy this just for the Space Dolphins.

Delta Assault

taliosfalcon wrote:

Lord_Mordja wrote:

Oh man, new SOTS, I can't wait to-

TheGerbil wrote:

DX10+ ONLY

As you were.

We've pretty much hit the graphics point where there are very, very few DX9 cards that could play games at a reasonable framerate even if DX9 was allowed. I mean dx10 hit what? 5 years ago now?

Crysis was a DX9 game...

I find it very hard to believe that Sword of the Stars 2 is going to be more demanding then Crysis.

DoctorArch

Looks like the original collection is on sale for 5 bucks on Steam.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/42890/

taliosfalcon

Delta Assault wrote:

taliosfalcon wrote:

Lord_Mordja wrote:

Oh man, new SOTS, I can't wait to-

TheGerbil wrote:

DX10+ ONLY

As you were.

We've pretty much hit the graphics point where there are very, very few DX9 cards that could play games at a reasonable framerate even if DX9 was allowed. I mean dx10 hit what? 5 years ago now?

Crysis was a DX9 game...

I find it very hard to believe that Sword of the Stars 2 is going to be more demanding then Crysis.

So you don't find it at all reasonable that devs no longer support 5+ year old hardware? I mean really?Even if there were dx9 cards that could theoretically run it it would involve extra coding, testing and compiling for what at this point must be a very small miniority of the pc gaming community. I mean even integrated graphics have been doing dx10 for 3 years now. The OS thing I can kinda understand, it makes me feel bad for anyone still running XP though.

Mackenzier

Talk about out of left field... guess it's time to get my Tarka on again.

TheGerbil

Yeah its not so much that its more demanding, but that devs more and more nowdays are using DX10 or 11 features which DX9 can't support more fully, or for whatever reason they feel it is not worth the effort, like Just Cause 2 did.

Dark_Side

Delta Assault wrote:

I hope they make more attractive looking ships in this one. Cause the ships in the first game all looked butt ugly. Like, seriously. Sins of a Solar Empire didn't have amazingly beautiful ships, but they were at least somewhat decent. Sword of the Stars just dropped the ball.

They're prettier to be sure, as to the overall design aesthetics, well, I haven't seen enough to really make a decision either way.

TheGerbil

It mostly comes down to Devs wanting to use DX10 features as a baseline which leaves out XP users.

Basil

Aw, shucks. I've gotta update from eckspee now, huh.

Man. The things I put up with for my space ships.

Alright, what's the latest variety of windoze that isn't a pile of goose droppings?

Elvenshae

7 Pro.

EDIT:

And, despite what many say, Vista isn't actually bad at all; I'm running Vista x64 at home, and it runs shit just fine. You just can't buy it anymore, I don't think.

TheGerbil

Windows 7 is actually really quite good. You can't go wrong with it.

TheKoolEagle

i'm still pretty upset that i won't be able to play this when its released, but this winter, oh yes... i will be rocking the shit out of some space aliens