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Sword of the Stars II: Broke. Post in new thread.
Posts
Man, I downloaded the update in under 10 minutes? Origin and Steam have pretty even download rates for me personally. I'm always amazed when somehow a 20G download has stopped being an overnight thing, and has started being a "while I cook dinner" thing.
Now, the .NET framework setup steam runs EVERY NEW GAME takes 45 minutes.
Now the options menu is no longer an issue, because it's simply greyed out. Woo!
Well, we shall see if the menus are just a wreck still, I guess.
edit: music still randomly cuts out.
I can hit 4-5 megabytes/second on origin, steam tends to cap me at 1.5
Planning on pirating the library of congress, or what?
Switch your steam location? I tend to get about 3.5 off them.
Game wise, more comments: menus, still laggy. Prototype system punishes you for not using the default ship designs. Which at least for hivers are ASS. "I'd rather start with a different gate ship, one designed to go long range" "That'll be 380,000 credits!"
1.) Game still crashes if you look at it wrong.
2.) Numerous screens appear to be missing information. When building ships I'd like to know what components are selected for that ship type.
3.) As mentioned above the in-game options menu is just greyed out entirely. The UI as a whole is slow to react and doesn't give you proper feedback as to what is occurring or will occur when you click on something.
4.) I couldn't get the research screen to scroll sideways. Maybe I'm just missing something. Found that I could click on a barely visible tech to either side to get it to recenter but I miss the free form looking around the tree like in the first game.
I think I'm going to shelve this a few weeks/months. Somewhat frustrated.
The patch is "better", in that a lot of little things seem to work better. But overall? This game is about 4-6 months away from being a release candidate. The UI is atrocious, and lacks even the most basic guidance as to what to do (if you click to change your ship stance from the default, it immediately goes into retreat, then cycles through the other 10 or so stances. Shouldn't this be a drop down or something if there are that many options? Wasn't it a series of buttons in SotS1? Your weapons have two cycles next to them, which are completely unexplained. One's a circle, pinpoint icon, multiple circles.. I don't even know. The other is a series of two letter acronyms for.. something. Buh?
Ships start far enough away from each other in tactical mode that you need to up the 5 minute timer. I hit a swarm base. By the time my cruisers got to the asteroid going full steam, I had 45 seconds left on the clock.
Encyclopedia is completely empty. Not a single entry for anything. I thought that's where I was supposed to find out what the shit the difference between aux fusion and aux fission is, what a Prof X module really does, and other such terribly documented things.
Drone carriers confuse me now. You used to attach drones to a drone carrier as equipment. Now you build them seperately? I guess? No idea here, I presume when the new manual is out it might explain it, but not entirely sure why I'm not just giving a carrier drones in the design screen. Make me rebuild them or something, fine. Just don't make it highly likely that your empire is going to drop out of warp with a fleet of carriers and .. find that they forgot to bring any drones.
A lot of tiny bugs. Sound cuts out constantly. Options menu now simply being inaccessible is NOT a fix to your options menu being broken. Why on earth do you need to TYPE your resolution into the launcher? I've just been using max sized windows to play it, but still.. what?
I want to love this game, I just don't think it's even slightly near ready for prime time. If this is just how Kerberos rolls.. they need to hire some management.
edit: oh yeah, for more "what QA?", the scroll window to pick a face or symbol if you use the immersion DLC is.. hilarious. It just kinda runs off to the edge of the screen with no border around it. It looks like the sort of thing you do in a tech demo before you have the final UI done.
Sad but true, because three years from now this could easily be a great game...
although UI's seem particularly elusive to them.
I don't really see how its better at all. As far as I can tell everything is exactly the same except for the DLC being in and a new map. All the placeholder stuff is still there. No entries in the ingame wiki so you can figure out whats going on. And lots of people are still crashing alot. It doesn't seem like its actually fixed anything.
EDIT: Like I said in chat Sok I don't think I can justify buying their games at full price anymore if they are just going to release piles of shit everytime and slowly fix it up over a a few years.
Contards can't appreciate technical superiority of this magnitude.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
I did find another amusing bug. The ship displayed in the build menu was NOT the ship displayed in the design menu for that vessel (build showed what appeared to be an armor cruiser, actual ship was a construction vessel)
Not defending them at all. It's still absolutely atrocious to release this, and especially after dicking around all day declaring how that was totally the wrong build and just wait guys. Just cop to it, Kerberos: you released early for some reason, and this is an alpha build at best. Hell, some of us will pay for alphas to help smaller shops finish their games! I own Starfarer because I think it will be awesome some day! Just.. admit it.
I actually shuddered when I saw my formation of cruisers roll and vaporize a couple space bees using all facings.
*gigglesquees*
'Course it crashed right after the fight concluded but still.
-I have sort of figured out how to relocate fleets. I think. And I can build stations! And research things! I even managed to add ships to a fleet! Although I don't know if it helped because colony ships don't appear to get used up. But I see there were two so maybe four is better? Probably? These are things I do not know.
Only Liir appear to be able to build freighters, they have the option even before researching trade.
Hivers will not automaticly gate to the nearest star when you send them to survey or gate a star. They'll go from where they are, even if the path takes them directly through a gated star.
Modules are still super vague, you have to enter the ingame wiki to find out what the hell the camel module does.
Combat seems completely bugged for me, I got attacked by spectres but nothing happend, my stations just sat there doing nothing for 5 minutes until combat ended.
The AI is constantly fighting the same enemy every turn.
In this build I have a total of 3 different loading screens.
I have a feeling the game is supposed to go at this speed now though. There seem to be much fewer stars, further apart, and the limitations of the admiral system seem to be pushing for a more controlled expansion and border definition than the original. It means everything is more deliberate. The Prototype system also means a drastic slow down of new ship production, and again I think its because they really wanted to slow the game down and force you to progress through the technology trees instead of skipping ahead. Probably some stupid concession to 'realism' or some nonsense. This is supposedly counterbalanced by the fact turns seem designed to go faster, fewer announcements every turn and the automation of build orders and missions goes a long way to diminishing the micromanagement. Of course its complicated by the fact the UI is terrible and the game opens windows with massive lag. Oh and it simulates the battles instead of running a weird algorithm which means more accuracy at the cost of your sanity as the AI tries to pick a goddman fight it can't win and you have to sit through 3 minute simulations every turn.
Also, things take less than half the turns they say they will. Research consistently finishes faster than in the original and Hiver gate fleets seem to get to their destination really quickly.
I've gotten over 100 MB/s on Steam.
I also have a battle that I try to play manually, but when the game tries to load up the tactical map I just see an empty grid and some background nebulas and then it returns to the strategic screen and tells me I lost the battle with no ships destroyed.
I'm with Vic, I'm really disappointed by the state this game is in. It looks like it might have some potential but its going to take several considerable patches for the game to be really playable.
I'm not sorry I preordered - There is a good game in here, it just needs a couple of patches to come out. It seems to have lost some of the breakneck pace of SotS 1, but I don't think that it's a bad thing. There's more time to explore the tech tree, and more time to get your empire in order. It's not just a top speed race for colonies.
The things that I miss the most from SotS 1 are using right click to move the tech tree side-to-side, tabs for colonies and fleets in the empire management screen, and hitting escape to exit back to the main star map.
I'll be keeping close tabs on this game, and probably mucking around getting used to the interface while Kerberos gets it patched up. It's going to be a hell of a game when it's done.
That said, I only picked up SotS the other day when it was cheap with all the expansions. So, I'll hang on for SotSII for at least a year.
I have a terrible feeling this is true of Zuul as well so I'm going to test it and see if they use the node lines for borefleets or not.
The really annoying bit is that you can not build bases or relocate to systems without colonies. In the current version it seems impossible to build forward bases in systems without habitable planets, which really cripples the hivers.
Sounds like MOO3 all over again... I wonder what it is about this genre that attracts such colossal fuck ups?
I've been able to build naval bases in uninhabited systems, but I didn't try to relocate something there.
And my Zuul theory is proven. Zuul will not move to the closests star when making a new borehole, you'll have to build bases and relocate to create a network. Fuck.
Ah, guess I did just not have a construction fleet in range.
The original was apparently pretty rough at launch too, but shaped up over the years.
I've heard they usually don't unless its some sort of special circumstance. I bet the developers would give you one though, if you wanted it.
I usually don't go for it unless I feel like i've been intentionally deceived or the game is far, far from being in any sort of release state. The only way they'll really listen is if people speak with their wallets.
I love indy games, btw. Not hating on them at all.