Sword Of The Stars on Impulse

vmxa

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I have not tried this game, but for 7.99 and it is the complete version I am giving it a try.
 
Here's hoping you enjoy it. :goodjob: I know I did, and I also know the steady trickle of newcomers to the game that post on the official forums are generally impressed by the game. Often they wonder how they missed it. :)
 
I suspect there is a good game in there. The question is if I can figure out how to play before I give up. I also watched a youtube battle and got worried as I have not done an RTS type combat in some time.

Anyway I hope to get started this week some time. I have installed it, that a good start for me. I know you liked it and that carried some weight with me.
 
Well if you need some tips I can certainly give you some pointers and direct you toward a few helpful learning resources. :)
 
Can't hurt, I alwasy have a hard time getting started in any new game for some reason. Only one that was a snap was Kings Bounty. It was easy to just jump in and play. TBS games seem to always have a learning curve.
 
Here's a couple starting links for you...

http://sots.rorschach.net/
http://sots.rorschach.net/Beginner's_Guide
http://sots.rorschach.net/Strategy_And_Tactics_Forum_Archive

That will point you to the wiki and and to a forum archive that has links to lots of helpful examples and game reports on the official forums. The Kerberos forums are a good place to ask questions as well.

http://sots.rorschach.net/Category:Video
Here are some tutorial videos that were added for AMoC. I think you can find these in your SotS install directory somewhere as well.

Also, there should be a manual in your install directory as well. It was spruced up with the collector's edition and is pretty comprehensive. If you're willing to take the time to read it, it will answer a lot of questions you didn't even know you had. :)

One more word of advice -- a lot of newcomers are not sufficiently aggressive about scouting and early expansion. Your biggest early objective should generally be to focus on growing your economy as quickly as possible. This sounds pretty self-evident to any experienced 4X gamer, but sometimes folks forget and get lost in chasing tech they don't need right away rather than credits they do need. ;)
 
It took long enough, but I am actually starting now to check out the links.
 
Well so far my planets are similar to Stars!, most not habitiable. Starting to get the hang of the UI. Over buget in research still sort of a mystery. It seems I can do nothing to prevent them or to salavge anything from them.

I figured I could turn down the research, once in an overrun. That does not seem to even effect things. Did you run any SG's over there? I did not see anything in their forums. I did see a solo DAR, but no details in it.

I watched a YouTube on research, but it never even mentioned overuns. As best I can tell, you could try to reduce the research prior to 100% and hope for a breakthrough ala Moo. If you get an overrun, it could run to 150%, regardless of my actions.

It is not clear to me that making adjustments is an option that is going to payoff enough to bother. You could actually slow the breakthrough or still get a max overrun. If it turns out to be a coin flip, I guess you would save money. Not sure that is the way to go, breakthroughs are better than money to me.

Anyway at least Ihave already got more for it than some of my games.
 
Research summary:

Every turn you are between 50% and 150% you have a chance to complete, depending on several factors, most notably how much percent complete you are (close to 100 is good), but also modified by considerations such as tech boosting. You can't go over 150% and if you do you'll be refunded amount over 150% in cash. So this should tell you that the faster you research a tech, the fewer die rolls you'll have to complete the tech and more likely you will be to go over-budget.

As a result, there are a couple common research strategies:
1) Set the budget slider to what you can afford (i.e. what you don't need for planetary development and savings for ship construction/morale) and leave it there. Not necessarily the most efficient approach, but the simplest.

2) Balls-to-the-wall. Appropriate for cheap techs you can research in a turn or two. Paying 150% dollar cost on something cheap is still cheap, and not wasting extra turns in over-budget can be a valuable thing in its own right.

3) Sprint-and-drift. This is kinda the opposite of 2 in that you're trying to save money at the expense of time. Push research to the max for the first bit of the tech until you get to 50% (make sure you have enough savings to be able to afford a few turns of full research.) Once you're at 50-60% or so, dial research spending way back (25% or less of your budget) and take it easy, waiting for the tech to complete -- at an increased chance of being under-budget, since you're taking extra turns and getting extra die rolls, and building up a nice nest egg for your next sprint phase while you're at it. Works best on more expensive techs that take at least a few turns to finish.

Note that nothing is guaranteed no matter which way you do it, except that it will never take more than 150%. In every other case, you are playing the odds and have to expect that things will not go your way sometimes. I find I tend to start games using sprint-and-drift a lot, but as the game proceeds, my freighter networks come online, and my economy matures, I start using sprint-and-drift much less and the first two options more.

Re: TARs:
Check out the link I provided to the Forum Archive:
http://sots.rorschach.net/Strategy_And_Tactics_Forum_Archive
There are lots of good links to TARs in there, including several of mine. These are solo efforts but many of them provide a lot of great details on gameplay. One note -- the Kerberos forums moved a few months ago so for some of the older TARs, many of their image links may be broken. You can also find the reports of the few SGs that have been tried there in the Collected TAR Summary link supplied on the forum archive page, also copied here:
http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=248096#p248096
 
I started yesterday on one of the TAR/DAR/AAR, but they are long and will take time. Just doing a little now and then otherwise will eat the whole day up. Thanks for your feedback.

I am putting off the manual combat, till I feel I have a decent understandig of the game. I am presuming that manual combat is the best way to go, but in some games like Moo3 it was not really practical with massive fleets.
 
Manual combat will get more accurate results for fleet matchups than autoresolve will and will allow you to use tactics. Autoresolve is faster but assumes everyone closes to point blank range and slugs it out (though some weapons get bonus damage to simulate first strike and kiting capability.) When you get the chance, do try out tactical as you're missing out on half the game otherwise. :)

Giant fleets are not that big a problem to fight from a technical point of view assuming you have a reasonable computer, as the command point mechanic ensures there are limits to how many ships there are on the field at once -- always make sure to bring adequate CnC! Some weapons are harder on framerate than others though, such as missiles or high fire rate weapons (stormers, projectors) in large quantities. Of course, from a gameplay point of view, large fleets can be fun or not fun depending on whose side they are on. ;)
 
I have a reasnable system, at least more than Civ5 required. I actually bought this PC about a year ago to see if a better machine would impact some of those Moo3 battles with max armadas. Trouble is I never did get back to find out. lol

I figure after today reading and playing I would take a look at tactical. Right now it is small encounters. I did 2 battles yesterday in tactical, but were solo ships. Sometimes the autoresolve shows the battle and sometimes not.

Going to find the link I save on your research path now to see how my selections look. I think I went Waldo, SA, Cyber Inter, Green Lazer and now Expert Systems. Lasers were a 4 turner as I was going to make a few Armors to sit on new colonies and wanted them to have some longevity.
 
Here is a real lame question for you. Actually two lame questions. 1) any way to see what the configuration of one of the ships in a fleet. IOW does this MK3 have green laser? I could make a complex name to reflect the design like I use to in Space Empires and Ascendancy.

2) tried a tactical battle where I had an Armor MK and MK3 and a tanker vs a lone ship of some type. I suspect the MK had red lasers and the MK3 had green. They never fired on the incoming ship at all.

I tried Close, I tried Normal, I tried Pursue. They move about and finally said they need to rearm or some such thing.

The intruder came past my ships a few imes and never fired either. I am very lame with 3d ship battles and that has caused my to not get a number of games in the past or abandon them, if I did.

At times some weapons were green, meaning they should have beenable to fire I thought.
 
1) There are two ways. On the main screen, if you double click on a ship in your fleet list on the left side of the screen, it will show a pop-up indicating what weapons are mounted. For more information, you can select the magnifying glass at the top of the main strategic interface, and it will show you an intel analysis for all ships you know about (up to a certain max number of designs per race.) It will only show the intel for alien races if you have Data Correlation tech, but it will always show your own. Of course, you can always look at the ship design screen; it will have your curent designs available to look at.

2) Check for a big red button on the top of your tactical display, this is the fleet hold fire button. If you have never fired a shot at a given alien race before, you will start off in a first contact type of scenario, where you don't automatically shoot. This gives you a chance to try to develop peaceful relations with said race if you want by researching xenotech (languages) and engaging in diplomacy. In order to start shooting, the simplest thing is to toggle that fleet hold fire button from red to green, which should allow all weapons to open fire. (Note that shooting first gives a diplomatic penalty...)

A lot of these sort of things -- at least the fleet hold fire button -- should be covered in the manual, so if you haven't read it, you might want to take a look (or perhaps a refresher.)
 
The design screen only has my current one as I remove the old ones. In Moo3 you could toggle obsolete designs, if you wanted to see what they had. I check out the DB click.

That was the deal I think, first contact hold button.
 
For sure at about 8 bucks, I already got my monies worth. I am on Win7 and no issues with play.
I did get a shock late yesterday, when I started the game backup and none of my saves were current.

Seems I ran the first session as admin and the second without admin, so it could not see the latest game. The real pain was trying to load each of the three saves, because I found out I have to exit the game to try each one.

Not so bad, until I realized none were correct, doh. I figured out that I just needed to start the game up without admin. I thought I had set the properties to always run admin.

Like a dummy I ignored the fact that at start up, it never asked, that was a clue.
 
There are lots of good links to TARs in there, including several of mine. These are solo efforts but many of them provide a lot of great details on gameplay. One note -- the Kerberos forums moved a few months ago so for some of the older TARs, many of their image links may be broken. You can also find the reports of the few SGs that have been tried there in the Collected TAR Summary link supplied on the forum archive page, also copied here:
http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=248096#p248096

I was not sure, if I should make a response about the Tars. I decided that you took the time to mention it and provide a link, I should let you know I have read many.

The bad news is that not a single one up to where I am (Chris Spiral Under Siege) now are not even past a few dozen turns. The most disappointed to me was the one on their page called an Empire for Noobies.

It was well done, but was abandoned very early and the author did not even bother to say they gave up. I have no problem with the author, but why does Kerberos want to promote an unfinished report?

I am still up in the air on what to say about the game. It seems like they all play about the same. You just make ships endlessly at all planets and fan out killing everyone you find.

I am not apposed to that so much, but a little variety would not be awful. I have the same basic complaint about this game and in spades that there are too many techs. You end up hardly even caring what you are researching as there is 5 more just like it waiting.

This trend goes way back to Pax Imperium II for me and just got worse with Moo3 and Civ is quilty of it as well in Civ4 and V. I always heard that Sid said every choice should matter, but it apears the the research pick is often a case of A is as goods as B, other than a few early ones.

Anyway I am still playing to see, if it will slot into Moo3 frquency or something better. IOW games that I would fire up once a year.
 
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