Sword of the Stars 2

Yeah I don't think SotS2 is ready yet :(

Definitely not ready yet. I have a buddy who bought it on release day and he has been keeping me updated on the progress it's making. If Kerberos sticks with it (they may not given their financial troubles) I would wait another six months to a year before trying to buy it. If Kerberos abandons the game or goes belly-up, then buy it immediately and make the best of it.
 
A pity, Sword of the Stars 2 was actually looking pretty interesting, and I was hoping to see if I could get it at some point.
 
Meh, I just gave up on it really. It sits uninstalled in my Steam library mocking me for pre-ordering something.
 
What's the status on this? Is it playable now or is wait more?
 
IDK, I'll have to start a new game and see. It's definitely had some patches since I bought it 2 months ago.
 
Good news everyone! The all clear has just been passed!

Mecron-

Hey folks!

Sorry for the long wait but I am extremely happy and proud to give the all clear signal and invite you all back to a bright and shiny SotS2. While “all clear” in no way means support for the game has ended or that we have no plans for additions, it does mean that the game is in the shape we would have wished it to be upon release. From here we will be going on to a regularly scheduled set of updates that continue to fill out and flesh out the SotS2 universe as well as adding new maps, scenarios and plenty of quality of life suggestions.

We would like to thank Paradox for continuing to distribute Sword of the Stars/ Sword of the stars 2 and look forward to working with them on any future expansions. We also want to issue a heartfelt thanks to the players who stood by us in those dark early months and who believed us when we said this game would be fixed. We owe a great deal to the players who stuck it out through all the dozens of updates and fixes and kept reporting the bugs and posting their saves. Their input has made for a bigger and better SotS2 than could have been achieved at release even under the best of conditions. Everyone who enjoys playing this game from this date on, owes those impromptu testers a great deal of thanks. And finally for those of you who are reading this now and booting up the game, we would like to thank you for your patience and welcome you back. There is a great game waiting for you now and a big universe waiting to be explored.

The Future:
As said, this announcement does not mean the end of SotS2 support. In fact, should any of you be curious, feel free to come by our boards and see our plans to support SotS2 indefinitely. For now, you can look forward to your next SotS2 update in approximately 3 weeks and it should include such tasty treats as:
--Selectable Teams at startup
--Revised Empire economics screen
--Even more AI tuning
--SotSpedia tuning and more entries
--And a pack of new maps.

While too far down the line for particulars, I can tell you that the following update after that should see the return of scenarios and a treat or two for the holidays!


So once again, I would like to thank you all for your patience and understanding during the road back and hope you all enjoy this game as it was meant to be!

Martin E. Cirulis
CEO/Creative Director
Kerberos Productions

Also

(disclaimer: (cause folks like to go crazy) This announcement in NO way affects Sots/SotS2 and any future expansions and their happy home at Paradox. SotS 4x games continues to be members of the Paradox family of games...capiche?)


Ok now on to the news!

We have a new indy game project announcing on Indiegogo. Its a sots based rogue-style game called The Pit. It's retro, it's cute, it's cool. We would like folks to help bring it into existence, but more importantly since so many of you have been with us through thick and thin, I wanted to give you the lowdown on the how's and why's of this new path.

Welcome to the Future:

Like everything we do at Kerberos, this new game is part of a plan that is about both the short and the long term. The short term is easy. The Pit is a fun game we want to make and we hope you folks will love it. But the long term is about something a bit more serious; we have to find a better way of making things work.

From inception, Kerberos was meant to be a hybrid development house, working with Publishers but building up and controlling our own ip’s and setting our own level of support. Unfortunately, the realities of the changing computer game business have been making that more and more difficult despite the level of support from the fan base. The bottom line is that long term commitment and dynamic development of games requires dedicated resources and in the standard work for hire model there is just no budget to do that sort of thing. So the choice up to this point is either to ask more and more of a small number of people AFTER their regular work day developing contracted games while at the same time getting involved in more contracted projects in order to pay for the work being done supporting the last one. Sadly this is just no longer viable in this economic climate. While we have always been deeply indebted to the people out there who have shown us endless support and bought copies, even multiple copies, of all our games, the hard truth is that not a penny of that support has EVER reached us directly. And so in order to keep doing what we love to do and still survive, that means we have to start doing things in new ways.

And that “new” way is for Kerberos to go full indy.

While we fully intend to continue our partnership with Paradox with SotS2 and any expansions, Kerberos plans to diversify, carefully, into the realm of crowd sourced indy projects that will allow fan purchase to DIRECTLY enable the kind of support and development people seem to want. Now the temptation here is to go immediately for the big projects that need doing but we are just not comfortable with that. Truth be told, crowdsourcing is a new world for us and we are looking for a sustained development system, not just a one shot grab all you can and pray it scores kind of thing. We need to establish a viable and reliable pipeline for the creation of games in this way and you all need to see the results of those things without going full in on some mega project.

So what this boils down to is we are starting with The Pit; something fun, low risk, and most importantly, deep. (I know, he who puns may have other nasty habits) A game that will allow you to cast your vote for this plan and our commitment to support and still play before the sun goes cold. Assuming there is an audience for this, then you can safely expect 2 or 3 crowdsourced titles (not counting expansions) of increasing size and budget over the course of next year and this will hopefully establish a stable of self-published titles that will keep dedicated support programmers, artists and designers in the office. These games will appeal to both fans of our IP’s and fans of the game types themselves. While we want you folks to see new and different corners of our worlds, we also want to bring new people into the fold by putting some new twists on classic forms and by supporting these projects, you folks will also be able to help vote for what titles get developed next. Assuming all goes well with our ramping up approach, from there we will go on to bigger projects like Fort Zombie 2 and Northstar.

And there you have it. We are looking for your vote of confidence not only in the production of a great lil game, but also in our way of making living, breathing games where support doesn’t end after a bug fix or two. We love creating, maintaining and expanding our games but it can’t be done any longer within the traditional publisher/developer model. If these things are important or attractive to you then we humbly ask for you to come with us. Help show that this model for long term support means something to gamers. Help support the creation of new and enjoyable games for the right price. And help vote on which games will see the light of day.
This will be a great adventure, hope to see you there with us.


http://www.indiegogo.com/sots-thepit

And thank you for all your support in the past,
--Martin Cirulis
CEO/Creative Director
Kerberos Productions
 
So I take it the game is playable now?

I was really interested in it (loved SotS I) but I heard about the horrible launch. Are all the major kinks worked out finally?

Also: How does the game play relative to the first one? The first one started off as being all about simplicity and straight-forwardness. With all of the expansions, the complexity really started to creep in and become less of what it started out as and more of a different game entirely.

While I managed to cope with this and liked most of the additions, I am worried that they went too far in this direction in SotSII. I mean, from the first videos of it I saw, it seemed to be 10x more complex than the first one and I don't like that. I loved the straight-forward approach of SotS I and only tolerated the later complications because they were fun.

But I'm worried SotSII is a different beast altogether and far more complicated.

Thoughts?
 
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?570329-NEW!-Updated-Beginners-Guide-Version-1.3

http://sots2.rorschach.net/SotS2_Codex

Note this is a older manual below but if you boot up Sots 2 it links you to a newer version.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=41901&d=1320071925

Fleets are handled in a mission system and you have admirals now. This will feel weird at first but I like it. Assemble the fleet. Say I want to colonize a near by system, select it right click, colonize and it will bring up fleet menu if you have a colony fleet you select it and if the right planet is all ready picked you launch the fleet and its not done colonizing until the fleet returns but after it returns it will ask if you want to continue support. I love that you don't have to rebuild colony ships! You and transfer fleets and reserve ships too between systems.

There are feasibility studies with techs ie lets say you have heavy combat beams. You look to see Lancers but it says feasibility study. You study it for 1-4 turns (depends on your empire size) if the percent chance is good enough you can research it and get the tech.

We have hotkeys now and the trade manager is better. Game runs fast and smooth. AI will adapt to your strategies. Updates will continue to come out. Scenarios will be coming down the pipe later (you will get these for FREE) They lost the programmer to a band so they need to hire a new one and teach them their coding ways.

Managing big empires aint bad there are lots of toggles for types of view, surveyed systems, sensor range, trade view, etc... Those 3d maps won't hurt your brain as much.

Diplomacy is different. You build up diplo points with your provinces and you can create more just need 3 systems close to each other and later with another tech have a 4 system Provence (then the systems can be farther away from each other which makes life a little easier for making provences),and finally diplo stations build you points. You can specialize these stations to build points towards certain races. You spend your pts(money helps too) for treaties and what not. Also there are 9 government types if I remember right and how you end up into them depends on your action of running your empire. There is also an espionage system in the game too. You can spent these points to figure whats going on in other empires.

Stations are Naval (give your system more logistic pts for fleets and defense assets also build efficiency and sensors), Diplo for diplomacy pts, trade to set up trade networks and help a little with terraforming, science stations- small boost all around to research and you can specialize (sensors too), mining to boost industrial output, and for hivers gate stations. There are 5 levels for most stations (not mining).

There are a few minors civs around that you can kill off or incorporate into your empire. Most are subFTL races. They give your empire a bonus if you add them.

Stimulus- if you want to give your people money, people can build up trade for you, colonize new worlds (they become independent but you can incorporate them or kill them for free terraformed world because your evil), and start up mining operations. (for trade and mining make sure you have the required techs). NOTE you can do these all on your own too and be in direct control but remember these things will effect what government type you will end up at. Also open and closed systems.

There is more but read some stuff and turn the game on and throw yourself under the bus and enjoy. One last helpful hit in most screens there is a ? mark button click it to give you info on the screen your on and check out the in game sotspedia. Enjoy. :goodjob:
 
Thanks for all of the info Hawawaa.

Unfortunately, it does seem to have gotten complicated to the point where I'm not interested. Almost all those things you described here weren't in the first one, and that's not a good thing from my perspective.

I'm still on the fence about it. Maybe I'll get it when it drops to $10 or so.
 
A sale you say- http://www.impulsedriven.com/products/ESD-IMP-W3299 13$ for all sots games ever made, you could give the extra sots 1 complete to a friend.
Or this http://www.gamestop.com/pc/games/sword-of-the-stars-ii-lords-of-winter/97844
Sots 2 for 10.49$

One more thing that I should say. Prototypes with exception to the first turn you can make as many ship designs as you want. After that turn then prototypes comes into the picture. Basically if you want a new ship to be built you have to build an expensive prototype. After the prototype you pay normal prices for building the ship. Ships also can get a small perk or penalty after you field them (none game breaking or too harsh). You do have a chance to research rapid prototyping (it has 2 link chances from other techs) or salvage it to make prototypes a lot cheaper. I think I most the nasty stuff... ;)
 
A sale you say- http://www.impulsedriven.com/products/ESD-IMP-W3299 13$ for all sots games ever made, you could give the extra sots 1 complete to a friend.
Or this http://www.gamestop.com/pc/games/sword-of-the-stars-ii-lords-of-winter/97844
Sots 2 for 10.49$

One more thing that I should say. Prototypes with exception to the first turn you can make as many ship designs as you want. After that turn then prototypes comes into the picture. Basically if you want a new ship to be built you have to build an expensive prototype. After the prototype you pay normal prices for building the ship. Ships also can get a small perk or penalty after you field them (none game breaking or too harsh). You do have a chance to research rapid prototyping (it has 2 link chances from other techs) or salvage it to make prototypes a lot cheaper. I think I most the nasty stuff... ;)

Thank you so much. You've been very helpful.

I might just try SotS II now, because it's so cheap.
 
So I watched and read some more reviews (ignoring the bugs they reported - there doesn't seem to be any current reviews, they're all from when the game was broken) and I'm dissapointed.

It is way to complex for me to wish to get into, even at that price point.

I'm really at a loss how they went from the guiding philosophy of the first game (simplicity) and kept adding and adding and adding to it until you got the hot mess of SotS II.

I understand there was features they wanted to add, changes that needed to be made and a general wish to further flesh out the systems created in SotS I. But really they've gone too far and it just looks like it has a huge learning curve and it is too far from the original experience for me to be interested, even at that incredible price point.
 
Reviews from release are kind of useless now since so many features have been fixed if not added since then. I think it sounds a lot more interesting, especially since i was starting to get bored of mostly just fighting battles in SotS1 (kind of happens to me in most SP games like this, I need events and side stories or something to keep me entertained, like in King Arthur the Role Playing Wargame).
 
Looks like I was right on my 6 months to a year prediction as to when it would be playable. I just purchased it and I'm waiting for it to download now (damn you, slow Afghan internet!).

From what Hawawaa has posted it looks like they fixed most of the major issues and brought the game to the point it should have been at when it was released. I don't blame Kerberos for essentially releasing a beta though, given the issues the company was going through at the time. Releasing the game "as is" to get some revenue coming in and fixing it later was the best choice to save their collective butts.

It looks like the gamble paid off too, because Kerberos is still afloat for now, and Sword of the Stars 2 finally looks like it is the amazing game it always should have been.
 
Ok just update ya, Multiplayer is being transferred soon from Gamespy to Steam, this weekend was kinda wonky since you can only do direct connect (I believe Gamespy is dieing). We gave up and used Hamachi. :crazyeye:

If you got a translator Eurogamer rereviewed sots 2 from 5/10 launch to 9/10 today

(2 reviews) http://www.eurogamer.dk/articles/2012-10-19-sword-of-the-stars-2-faerdigt
http://www.eurogamer.dk/articles/2011-11-11-sword-of-the-stars-2-anmeldelse-review

Be on the watch for 2012 reviews of Sots 2 and I also know Angryjoe will do one too. :)
 
hobbsyoyo- If you believe the games a bit much that is understandable. Remember as the weeks and months go by Kerb will keep updating the game and make the game easier to play and manage.

Remember those expansions for Sots 1, they definitely made our lives easier and more enjoyable. Sots 2 has 2 big expansions (around 30$) and one big mini expansion around (around 10$).

One of Sots best players has a channel playing the game- http://www.twitch.tv/terrakus
I think in the next few weeks youtube will start showing some LPs and sots 2 videos you could watch.

Oh one more channel on youtube that might help people get their heads around the game.
http://www.youtube.com/user/theHaloEnforcer/videos?flow=grid&view=0
Most of his recent videos are Sots 2.

Also Tactics and After Action Reports for Sots 2- http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=53
 
Also one moar thing. :p

Starting next week we get another big update. With the new update schedule goes like so, every 3 weeks big update (quality of life stuff, ai improvements, and more maps). Scenarios are down the pipes from what I heard. Every week we get hotfixes if anything is causing problems. Early on in every big update week you can jump into a beta to test the patch out if you feel up to it (not required but just saying if you have a need to test new stuff).

Steam multiplayer I believe is setup for somewhere in the last few weeks of November or early December.

Also tonight on http://www.twitch.tv/terrakus we will be doing some multiplayer games live tonight and you can watch the fire works. I'm guessing between 8-10pm eastern is when we will kick things off. You can watch Resok go on the war path and learn the game on the way.
 
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