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Sword of the Stars Demo


Slaughter

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From the Lighthouse press release:

The demo weights about 230 MB and will allow players to experience and explore the compelling Sword of the Stars universe. Two out of four races are available in this demo -the Human SolForce and the dreaded Tarkas Imperium. The demo will feature unlimited turns within a spherical galaxy made up of 40 stars. Gameplay will be limited to Fission era and first generation technologies, but will include alliances, random encounters and a few surprises. Gamers will be able to play singleplayer or go head to head in 4 player multiplayer on LAN or online.

sots_emitter_attack.jpg sots_stratmap_interface_far.jpg sots_tark_liir_bigbattle.jpg sots_tark_liir_tarkplanet.jpg

Sword of the Stars is set to be released in the UK on September 1st, with other regions soon to follow. You can find mirrors to the demo in our files section.

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Hardly tried it, but this looks really nice! Has that Master of Orion II feeling, kinda what I was expecting from MOO3, looking forward to the full game!

 

Edit: tried it and quite honestly, it's my wet dream come true! :drink: the interface is beautiful and easy on the eyes, not overcrowded, very simple and nice looking; galaxy is cool, races are interesting, space travel is definitely nicely done. I found interesting how different races have different ways of travelling through space, i.e. Humans use space lanes, in which they can travel a FTL speeds, they can also fly at STL speeds outside these lanes, but obviously, as the tutorial says, it's for desperate situations, another race, I think was call the Hivers, use Gates to teleport between systems, there is a catch though, they depend on Gate Ships to teleport, so they need to FIRST send a Gate Ship into a system at STL speeds (slow), and THEN they can teleport all the ships in a single turn, making the Gate Ship a strategic target for enemies, that was certainly creative.

 

Combat is nicely done, music is perfect for the mood of the game, so far, sound effects are cool. I had real trouble using the camera and commands in the combat though, could probably be just me or the demo doesn't have all the combat options, nevertheless I had great fun at just watching a horde or space flies or whatever they were destroy my colony ship, and then seeing my fleet composed by 6 armors (caps) squash them like bugs, no pause though and combat seems to be only real time, that was a bit of a let down, I'd have loved a pause feature. The voice effects during combat is simply outstanding, IMO, they really add something to the atmosphere of the game. When ships get damaged, you can see the damage on the models themselves, not talking about just fire or sparks, I saw pieces of the ship torn apart and swinging around, what was one a rotating ring around the ship was later a torn out piece of metal (check screenshot), awesomeness!

 

Sword_.jpg

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There actually is a pause function in the game. Simply press the "pause" button on your keyboard. That worked for me anyway! :drink:

 

As far as the demo is concerned I was a little dissapointed as far as the tactical portion of the game is concerned. I order my ships to attack a specific target and despite everything I tell them I keep seeing them firing potshots at everything they might like. Moreover, sometimes, some ships blatantly ignore their move orders and seem to be drifting in space (and no, I checked their engine sections. They were intact) while others get right at it. It's making the whole fleet look like a disorganized mob. Overall feels like I don't have much control of the space battles and it bugs the hell out of me.

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@Locutus: I didn't try the demo yet Locutus, but I think that was their intention. Space battles (battles in general really) are very chaotic things, and the best you can hope for as a commander is to give directions to your troops. Some ships might not follow orders because they are fighting life and death battles already, some might have lost their communication devices, some have captains and crew that deserts or flee in panic and so on.

 

The game puts you in the position of the commander, and you can't micromanage every ship. You give general orders, and hope your tactics works, and that you have ships enough to see the tactics through.

 

@Azrael: Sounds good! I'll give it a try when I find the time :drink:

 

@All: You should really read our E3 interview. Even if we didn't get to publish it all, what is there is quite interesting IMO.

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As far as the demo is concerned I was a little dissapointed as far as the tactical portion of the game is concerned. I order my ships to attack a specific target and despite everything I tell them I keep seeing them firing potshots at everything they might like. Moreover, sometimes, some ships blatantly ignore their move orders and seem to be drifting in space (and no, I checked their engine sections. They were intact) while others get right at it. It's making the whole fleet look like a disorganized mob. Overall feels like I don't have much control of the space battles and it bugs the hell out of me.

 

I thought it was just me having a problem with the demo's tactical game. There does seem to be a problem with it, even if you have a squadon command ship. If I try and get them to attack one ship, they won't and spread their fire across all ships rather than concentrating it on the one selected. In a typical battle when I control the ships, I might kill 4 of their ships while they kill a dozen of mine. :drink: In a computer controllled battle, I'll kill 12 of theirs while only losing 6. To win the game, I know I'll have to let the AI fight my battles, which defeats the whole intent of the game. :drink: I'm now playing my second game (I learned how important it was not to over-expand in the first!), and I'm sure I don't have it down yet. I've got a large number of profitable systems and am number one in all the empire measurements (tech, output, ships, etc), but I get my head handed to me in the battles. I haven't mastered camera control either, but I'm sure I'll get better. Also, in Scanner mode (rather than Battle mode), you can't give movement orders to your units, which frustrates me. Maybe in me 4th or 5th game I'll figure this out.

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There actually is a pause function in the game. Simply press the "pause" button on your keyboard. That worked for me anyway! :drink:

Silly me, thanks :drink:

 

As far as the demo is concerned I was a little dissapointed as far as the tactical portion of the game is concerned. I order my ships to attack a specific target and despite everything I tell them I keep seeing them firing potshots at everything they might like. Moreover, sometimes, some ships blatantly ignore their move orders and seem to be drifting in space (and no, I checked their engine sections. They were intact) while others get right at it. It's making the whole fleet look like a disorganized mob. Overall feels like I don't have much control of the space battles and it bugs the hell out of me.

Yeah, same here, and I cannot help but get the feeling that is not intentional, sometimes they ignore orders even when they are not fighting, they just sit there and I have to click somewhere twenty times before some of the units decide to move, it's extremely annoying, hope that if this is a bug it gets fixed.

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There actually is a pause function in the game. Simply press the "pause" button on your keyboard. That worked for me anyway! ;)

Silly me, thanks :kiss:

 

As far as the demo is concerned I was a little dissapointed as far as the tactical portion of the game is concerned. I order my ships to attack a specific target and despite everything I tell them I keep seeing them firing potshots at everything they might like. Moreover, sometimes, some ships blatantly ignore their move orders and seem to be drifting in space (and no, I checked their engine sections. They were intact) while others get right at it. It's making the whole fleet look like a disorganized mob. Overall feels like I don't have much control of the space battles and it bugs the hell out of me.

Yeah, same here, and I cannot help but get the feeling that is not intentional, sometimes they ignore orders even when they are not fighting, they just sit there and I have to click somewhere twenty times before some of the units decide to move, it's extremely annoying, hope that if this is a bug it gets fixed.

*slaps forehead*

Right click is movement :drink::drink: I assumed it was left :drink:

 

One thing that I really feel is missing is colony management, I mean, there are no buildings of any sort :D This game looks fun, but doesn't seem to be as likely to take MOO2's crown as it used to from screenshots and commentaries, hope full version with complete features is better than this. Still looks like very much fun!

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  • 2 weeks later...
I thought it was just me having a problem with the demo's tactical game. There does seem to be a problem with it, even if you have a squadon command ship. If I try and get them to attack one ship, they won't and spread their fire across all ships rather than concentrating it on the one selected. In a typical battle when I control the ships, I might kill 4 of their ships while they kill a dozen of mine. :drink: In a computer controllled battle, I'll kill 12 of theirs while only losing 6. To win the game, I know I'll have to let the AI fight my battles, which defeats the whole intent of the game. :drink: I'm now playing my second game (I learned how important it was not to over-expand in the first!), and I'm sure I don't have it down yet. I've got a large number of profitable systems and am number one in all the empire measurements (tech, output, ships, etc), but I get my head handed to me in the battles. I haven't mastered camera control either, but I'm sure I'll get better. Also, in Scanner mode (rather than Battle mode), you can't give movement orders to your units, which frustrates me. Maybe in me 4th or 5th game I'll figure this out.

 

With your ships in normal mode, they won't move unless you tell them to. So if you give them a target they'll only fire at it if they're in range. You can use the close to attack or stand off commands the AI will move yours ships for you. I usually find it easire to move them myself with a right click.

 

The reason why ships seem to fire at random things even when you give them a target is because not all the turrets on each ship can fire at the target you've assigned. One of the cool things I like about this game is that the directions each turret can fire is limited by the shape of the ship. So when you assign a target, all the turrets that have a clear line of sight to the target will shoot at it, and any other turrets will shoot at targets of opportunity. This also means you can try to place your ships with a bit of micromanagement to allow as many turrets to fire on your target as possible (when you're only controlling one or two ships, it stops being feasible after that).

 

Part of the design philosophy was to improve the sensor screen by researching tech. So there is a tech you can research (in the full game, not the demo) that lets you give commands to your ships from the sensor screen.

 

The tutorial for the demo is pretty awful unfortunately.

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