Sword of the Stars II: Lords of Winter released

[Moat_Man]

There is an article up on IGN that says Kerberos announced a sequel to SotS. I just started a new game of the original two days ago. It is definately a "go to" game when I get the itch for 4x space fun.

My only concern is they mention that the empire mangement will be 2D. I love the 3D star maps and hope that bit is a mistake.

Here is a link to the article

[GreenGoo]

Heh, I was just thinking of starting a new thread to the effect of "what would you like to see added/changed/improved in SotS?" because I knew they were working/planning on a sequel and there are definitely some things that annoy me in the original, despite it being a truly excellent game.

Maybe we can use this thread for that purpose?

what would you like to see added/changed/improved from SotS in the sequel?

[cicobuff]

Get rid of that horrible tech management screen.

[Daehawk]

Hmm I prefer 2D maps myself. So that would be a + to me.

[Elmo]

2011! Wake me in a year please.

[Little Raven]

Single biggest thing: Implement zoom-to-cursor. That alone will make navigating the 3D maps about 10,000 times more intuitive. Of course, if we don't have 3D maps any more, then I guess we don't need to worry about it. (but I'd be very surprised if they dropped those. Most likely, they mean that 'management' screens like the tech screen will be 2D, not the main map)

Other things that niggle:

• Make stormers useful. Maybe armor gets less effective at bouncing back shots past a certain amount per second? Right now, a stormer just means lots and lots of stuff bouncing around but doing no damage.
• Make salvage useful at higher levels. I realize it's not supposed to be a way around random tech trees and it shouldn't be, but right now it's useless past the very beginning.
• Narrow the discrepancy between facing Major Unknowns manually vs. auto-combat. Right now it's ridiculous.

But seriously...don't change too much. Your formula is damn near perfect. Update the graphics, the art, the voice acting, and throw in a few new bits of music, but don't worry about essentially packaging an old game in a new wrapper. That's exactly what you should do.

[GreenGoo]

Get rid of that horrible tech management screen.

This is not an issue for me. In fact it's grown on me so much that I like it now. Not discounting that it sucks for you. You're not alone in that. Just offering a counter opinion.

Well, admittedly I usually keep a tech tree open on my 2nd monitor, so if I'm shooting for a specific tech, I know what the hierarchical relationships are. But I have no issues with the tube o' tech screen any longer.

One of the things that start to bring down my enjoyment is during the conquest phase, the tactical combats can get to be a bit much. Having 5+ combats per turn can take ages to resolve, especially if you want to minimize your losses. I often only squeeze in 1 or two turns before needing a break, either because I'm out of time, or because micro-managing the battles has worn me down a bit and I would prefer to do something else for awhile.

I would also like a little more added to the strategic development aspect. Not a huge amount more, since the game is focused on combat obviously. Just a smidge more.

I've gotten better at predicting how auto-resolving combat will turn out, so I've managed to mitigate some of my combat fatigue issues by using auto-resolve when I know I can take the other side with minimum or no losses. That has helped tremendously, although it hasn't solved the problem completely.

As interesting as the tech tree is, some of the races are so restricted that they play out nearly the same every time. And even if they got some rare tech rolls, it is not often you will risk wasting time going up some of the branches because 9 times out of 10, it terminates early. Sure that 10th time would make things different/interesting, but the slow down/hindrance to development is rarely worth it the other 9 times. So much so that you just never bother to take the risk.

[GreenGoo]

Hmm I prefer 2D maps myself. So that would be a + to me.

I almost always play disk maps. I thought I could handle true 3D, and I guess I can, but I prefer the disk. Gives some small amount of depth, but makes borders and battle lines much more clearly defined. Also creates a fair map. It is unlikely to screw any particular race by it's nature, like some of the globular ones do with hiver (forever crossing the depths of space) , Zuul or Human (nodes can be longer than the max range early on, preventing them from leaving their nest until more teched up). Things like that.

[Little Raven]

I almost always play disk maps.

I find I like the Stellar Nursery one for some reason. That or galactic arm. But with the exception of the flat map (which I've never played) I don't find any of them objectionable.

But my experience with globular maps is that they are a Hiver's wet dream. You basically can't lose as Hiver on one of those, because they provide a guaranteed base of operations during the early game, when Hiver are most vulnerable to being left behind. Once you have a productive cluster going, you can just sit back and tech to the end game, when you'll crush everyone easily. Sure, you'll spend 20 turns getting to that first world in a new cluster, but the cluster will be your 10 turns later.

[GreenGoo]

Single biggest thing: Implement zoom-to-cursor. That alone will make navigating the 3D maps about 10,000 times more intuitive. Of course, if we don't have 3D maps any more, then I guess we don't need to worry about it. (but I'd be very surprised if they dropped those. Most likely, they mean that 'management' screens like the tech screen will be 2D, not the main map)

Other things that niggle:

• Make stormers useful. Maybe armor gets less effective at bouncing back shots past a certain amount per second? Right now, a stormer just means lots and lots of stuff bouncing around but doing no damage.
• Make salvage useful at higher levels. I realize it's not supposed to be a way around random tech trees and it shouldn't be, but right now it's useless past the very beginning.
• Narrow the discrepancy between facing Major Unknowns manually vs. auto-combat. Right now it's ridiculous.

But seriously...don't change too much. Your formula is damn near perfect. Update the graphics, the art, the voice acting, and throw in a few new bits of music, but don't worry about essentially packaging an old game in a new wrapper. That's exactly what you should do.

I agree about the maps. Just because I rarely use them doesn't mean I want them gone so others can't. The more options the better, for everyone.

Yeah, I never research stormers. Like never, unless I want to try some sort of themed development or something. They just stink. Maybe combine them with some other weapon that lowers the effectiveness of armour or something. Like shield breakers but for armour. A temporary reduction in reflection value maybe?

God help you if you're Hiver or to a lesser extent Tarka and you miss your AP roll. Gotta keep your fingers crossed that the ai doesn't get their armour for a long time.

Salvage definitely needs a boost later in the game/higher tech levels. As for it not supposed to be a way around random rolls, why not? It's clear that the Zuul race is designed with salvage being a clear aspect of the strategy for the race. In MooII I would design an uncreative race with heavy spying bonuses for just this purpose. Trying to survive long enough to acquire decent tech was enjoyable. Not to mention it's FUN in SotS when a race gets that one in a million tech roll. Have you played Hivers and gotten any projection tech? I have. It was AWESOME. First, their ships look great with that section. A section you never see, so just that was cool. But it is such a change from MD->AP->HvMD->Neutronium/Impactors that is has a lot of appeal just from the rarity.

I honestly think Salvage SHOULD be a way around random rolls. If necessary, reduce the chances of salvage, but when you do finally get that project, make it shorter to acquire the tech and get it into production. Right now the game is over long before you can use anything fun at the higher levels, even if you have 10+ tech projects underway.

I rarely have games seriously impacted by the specials. except for Swarmers and all the relics, drone relics and asteroid monitors. I usually have random at 100%. Anything more and it gets stupid. Every planet has something on it. I don't have any opinion on the manual vs auto resolve for specials. Hopefully this gets addressed for those who are most affected by it.

I agree that they shouldn't monkey too much with the game. Personally, I think there are some pacing issues that I'd like to see addressed. But for the most part, don't eff it up. I rarely play games bigger than about 160 stars for 8 races, because anything larger and I just can't handle the sheer weight of all the combat weighing down on me. I often reflect how the very best feature of the game (tactical combat) is often my biggest issue as well.

Actually, I take that back. The tech tree and ship design are the best features of the game. The tactical combat, while having potential, often degrades into driving toward planet in tight formation, focus firing their ships down, starting with the command ship, then a combination of killing the planet as softly as possible while taking out the satellites (which can be a chore at times). Zuul at least add the interesting aspect of trying to maximize the amount of slaves taken.

Does anyone really find the combat *particularly* tactical? How often per game do you change tactics, especially after you achieve critical mass for your empire?

[Little Raven]

Does anyone really find the combat *particularly* tactical? How often per game do you change tactics, especially after you achieve critical mass for your empire?

I don't. I've read about people on the forums who do, I guess they've designed all those pursuit sections and stuff for someone, but in general, you get the best results by following a few simple rules. (like SHOOT THE COMMAND SHIP FIRST!)

However, I still find it highly satisfying, and least until the very end where I know I'm going to win, but at that point I usually just start auto-resolving anyway.

[GreenGoo]

I almost always play disk maps.

I find I like the Stellar Nursery one for some reason. That or galactic arm. But with the exception of the flat map (which I've never played) I don't find any of them objectionable.

But my experience with globular maps is that they are a Hiver's wet dream. You basically can't lose as Hiver on one of those, because they provide a guaranteed base of operations during the early game, when Hiver are most vulnerable to being left behind. Once you have a productive cluster going, you can just sit back and tech to the end game, when you'll crush everyone easily. Sure, you'll spend 20 turns getting to that first world in a new cluster, but the cluster will be your 10 turns later.

Wow, I look at the nursery and think "wtf?". Maybe I should give it a try to see how it goes.

The disk and the flat maps are slightly different, in case there is confusion. The disk has some depth and while stars are not right on top of each other, they are often close in the horizontal plane while being normal distance apart in the vertical. The flat is just that. There is no Z axis.

I don't disagree with your strategic view of globes for Hivers, but there are some issues. You are on defense for a very long time (ok this is true for any map + Hiver). But you are limited in your expansion to what you can find in your globe. Meanwhile other factions can start brawling earlier, consolidating territory. If I can claim 2 or 3 or 4 globes before Hivers can even leave their globe, Hivers have lost before the game even started.

It's not always a foregone conclusion, but it usually puts them in a weak position from my experiences.

[Little Raven]

I've played disk a couple of times. It's fine. Oddly enough, the map that seems to result in the most intense games combat wise is the Ring one. The one that's like a disk but with a big hole in the middle. I don't know why, but damn....it always seems like I'm at war with everyone in no time and they're all attacking all my planets at once on that map.

It's not always a foregone conclusion, but it usually puts them in a weak position from my experiences.

Yeah, I can see how that would play out, I just haven't run across that yet. But now that I think about it, I guess I've always set it up so that the number of globules matched the number of players...meaning, if you wanted to take more than one, you were going to have to kick someone out of it. If that weren't true, Hivers would have a much, much more difficult time of it.

[GreenGoo]

Does anyone really find the combat *particularly* tactical? How often per game do you change tactics, especially after you achieve critical mass for your empire?

I don't. I've read about people on the forums who do, I guess they've designed all those pursuit sections and stuff for someone, but in general, you get the best results by following a few simple rules. (like SHOOT THE COMMAND SHIP FIRST!)

However, I still find it highly satisfying, and least until the very end where I know I'm going to win, but at that point I usually just start auto-resolving anyway.

Yes, I find it pretty satisfying too, for the most part. But you know there is a balance problem when losing even a single ship pisses you off while killing 20+ of theirs. I definitely should try a harder setting, but truth be told, I enjoy winning and cutting open alien hulls.

I can imagine a more evenly balanced battle, with similar tech levels on each side, with longer than 4 minute durations turning into a somewhat tactical fight, but for the most part it tends to be the same thing again and again.

What I do these days is decide ahead of time that I'm going with a specific weapon layout/design/research and try to make it work with the tech rolls I get. This can be fun and changes the combat based on the weapons I'm focused on.

As to the end game, I'm in a 160 star 8 player game as Liir. Despite there being 2 Morrigi and another Liir, I'm miles ahead in tech. I have full Xeno techs for all races, long before I was ready to completely conquer everyone. It's actually changed things a bit, and I have some planets full of aliens whereas normally the game would end long before they had time to grow. But right now I'm just filling a single fleet with a zillion cruisers of every sort, just so I can get planets to surrender intact, rather than brawl it out over each one.

Normally this happens anyway when my fleets of various tech levels all join up near the end, but in this case I have 2 planets just pumping out bio-domes, max tech combat ships and the occasional refinery/salvage ship, just to push the conquering fleet high enough that the ai will start capitulating on first contact.

I haven't even bothered to research DN's. Cruisers having been working for more than 60 turns.

I decided to try some shield ships, because normally they just aren't worth it but in this case, I have shield IV's with all the shield enhancing tech (Also about to build some protectorates) so they are pretty tough. 2 cruisers were regularly killing whole fleets of bad guys. But then the shield breakers came out. Now that was nice to see. The ai countered my super shields nicely and I had to get more serious with my fleet layout. A rare moment of counter design from the ai.

Sorry, I guess the above doesn't belong in a SotS II thread. Oh well.

[GreenGoo]

But now that I think about it, I guess I've always set it up so that the number of globules matched the number of players...meaning, if you wanted to take more than one, you were going to have to kick someone out of it. If that weren't true, Hivers would have a much, much more difficult time of it.

Me too. I definitely don't leave stars lying around for free. I'll try the ring again. The couple of times I played it, I wasn't a fan. But most probably because of its 3D nature, rather than the ring aspect. Crossing the doughnut hole is not difficult either, in my smaller'ish galaxies. That's both good and bad I suppose.

I play on normal difficulty, for the record. I really haven't found the urge to move up.

[Little Raven]

I normally don't go for shield either, but in my last human game, my weapon rolls SUCKED. I got no good missiles, no good plasma weapons, (not even fusion cannons!) not even AP weapons. I did have great luck on the lancers tree but those weapons aren't very good for humans because their ships turn so slowly. (I later found I pretty good luck on torpedoes too, but I hadn't investigated that route for some reason)

But I did get GREAT shield tech, and shield enhancers. And great armor rolls.

So, as I go conquering, I build cruisers with massive shields, great armor, and heavy fusion cannons. (best i could do against Tarka) It was hilarious. It took them a LOOOONG time to kill anything, but on the flip side, they were nearly immortal. The only thing that sucked was when I turned the fleets on the Zuul. They would inevitably capture one or two ships with those damn boarding pods. Because their damage output was so low, they wouldn't really hurt me that much, BUT I COULD NOT KILL THEM. *grumble*

[GreenGoo]

heh. I had one of those games. I don't remember all the circumstances, but I do remember having full DN CnC with all techs. I was going up against Hivers and they would field 1 or 2 DN's at a time (Guess they didn't have DN CnC or something). Not even sure what my race was.

But I could not kill the bloody things. I mean, full 4 minute all weapons pounding on a single ship, and I'd manage to kill maybe 1 of them before the time ran out. Maybe 2 if I got really lucky or it was an old one or something. And they had 9 others waiting to reinforce.

I gave up until I could tech some counters to the heavy armour (I assume the lower tech counter stuff was not rolled successfully). It took a long while too before I could return and start burning down the Hiver DN's.

[GreenGoo]

Because their damage output was so low, they wouldn't really hurt me that much, BUT I COULD NOT KILL THEM. *grumble*

When that happens to me, I confirm that the weapons on the captured ship(s) are not direct counters to my ship designs, then I just leave them alone. They are seriously hampered in performance due to being captured. Slower, turn slower, slower firing rate. Weaker all around. Plus they take up a ship slot in terms of CnC for the enemy, reducing the number of 100% functioning ships they can have in the fight.

If I kill everything before combat ends, I kill the captured ships. If not, I let them vanish between combats.

Yeah, I hate losing ships to boarding, but if it happens, I *usually* don't worry about it. Sometimes though, the weapons are the direct counter to my armour/shields. Then I kill it because despite not being 100% functional, it is still probably more effective than an enemy ship.

[JonathanStrange]

Y'all are scaring off all the fencesitters! This isn't THAT complex a game although like any worthwhile game there are subtleties, lads, there are subtleties. I'm looking forward to a SOTS II though the first is still very very good.

[dbt1949]

I'm not a big fan of the rts battles. I play around with some of the smaller ones but I find it's usually best for me to just auto resolve them.
I do the same thing with the Total War series. Maybe you all think I'm missing a big part of the game but I still have a lot of enjoyment that way.

[Holman]

I'm partial to the Spiral Galaxy map. It's effectively 2-D (or at least shallow) until you get into the hub. Also:

(Map mechanics spoiler)

Spoiler:

Every race starts at the tip of its own spiral arm, so each has time to build up an independent empire and tech up a bit before total war breaks out.

[GreenGoo]

I'm partial to the Spiral Galaxy map. It's effectively 2-D (or at least shallow) until you get into the hub. Also:

(Map mechanics spoiler)

Spoiler:

Every race starts at the tip of its own spiral arm, so each has time to build up an independent empire and tech up a bit before total war breaks out.

My concern here after trying this map type repeatedly, is that some races are more susceptible to a badly rolled galaxy than others.

Hivers, for instance, are completely limited to leap frogging towards the middle. That means they are at best sending scouts to a couple of stars at a time. At sublight speed, they are SCREWED when I reach the middle first and own it all by the time they get there. Not to mention if the first couple of planets are not inhabitable, they will still have just their single HW when I show up with my DN's.

Humans, the fastest of the bunch, can have the same thing happen if there is no node path, which happens sometimes. Then they're stuck at sublight speeds until they reach the next star and nodepath.

Not so bad for Tarka, Liir, Morrigi. But even Zuul, who can make their node paths, are restricted by range to only drilling a couple of paths at a time.

In the other map types that allow for radial expansion, all these risks are mitigated. I WANTED to like the spirals, but in the end too many bad luck rolls caused too much frustration for me to enjoy them.

Personally, any map that isn't symmetrical with expansion paths in many directions doesn't give each race a fair shake. Some people like playing luck of the draw. Me too, most of the time. In this cause it took more patience than I had.

[Holman]

I'm partial to the Spiral Galaxy map. It's effectively 2-D (or at least shallow) until you get into the hub. Also:

(Map mechanics spoiler)

Spoiler:

Every race starts at the tip of its own spiral arm, so each has time to build up an independent empire and tech up a bit before total war breaks out.

My concern here after trying this map type repeatedly, is that some races are more susceptible to a badly rolled galaxy than others.

...

Points taken. I think I've been lucky, as I've never been screwed by impossible nodelines on a spiral map. I would have assumed that there were algorithms in place to keep such from happening.

And, well, I've never played Hiver for any length of time.

[Zurai]

There's an acknowledged flaw/"feature" in the node line generation; the flatter the map is, the more likely the node line generator is to hiccup and leave a star or stars not connected to the "main" node grid. The Flat map script is notorious for this, and it happens with relatively high frequency on most of the other flatter maps. It doesn't happen very often at all on the maps like Globular Clusters, Sphere, and so on.

EDIT: And yes, Hivers are incredibly sensitive to bad starts. If their closest planet or three isn't easily habitable, they're screwed. Same thing with Humans if the stars are set too far apart -- they have very limited node line travel lengths for their non-ER ships and it's easy to get into a spot where you need Fusion to go any further but there are no habitable worlds you can reach, at least on the wrong map scripts.

[GreenGoo]

I do my best to play every race with relatively similar frequency. I find myself least interested in the Morrigi for some reason. And while I love the Hivers, their inability to go on the offensive for so long kinda keeps me from playing them too much. Their limited tech tree means nearly every game has the exact same tech path as well, which can get to be a little dry after awhile.

I've actually played the Humans the least I think. I think because everyone goes to them first, and often sticks with them, so I like to try something different. But mostly, I can't stand their ship models. I find them so aesthetically unpleasing that I just don't want to play them. Their engine sections sure do blow up pretty when I encounter them though.

Edit: Er, my point was that I try to get experience with each race, partly because it's fun playing different races that require different strategies, but also to know what their weaknesses are when going up against them.

[Little Raven]

I do my best to play every race with relatively similar frequency.

Hivers and Humans are probably my favorite races. Probably because they're the most extreme: Hivers are hopeless until they suddenly become unstoppable monsters, and Humans have the opportunity to colonize half the galaxy before anyone else looks up but they absolutely have to succeed at doing so because they suck in every other way. Morrigi, Tarka, and Liir are all ok...I don't mind them at all but they don't have any special zing to them either. And Zuul...well, one of these days I'll win as Zuul. Really. I promise. Somehow.

[Grifman]

I normally don't go for shield either, but in my last human game, my weapon rolls SUCKED. I got no good missiles, no good plasma weapons, (not even fusion cannons!) not even AP weapons. I did have great luck on the lancers tree but those weapons aren't very good for humans because their ships turn so slowly. (I later found I pretty good luck on torpedoes too, but I hadn't investigated that route for some reason)

But I did get GREAT shield tech, and shield enhancers. And great armor rolls.

So, as I go conquering, I build cruisers with massive shields, great armor, and heavy fusion cannons. (best i could do against Tarka) It was hilarious. It took them a LOOOONG time to kill anything, but on the flip side, they were nearly immortal. The only thing that sucked was when I turned the fleets on the Zuul. They would inevitably capture one or two ships with those damn boarding pods. Because their damage output was so low, they wouldn't really hurt me that much, BUT I COULD NOT KILL THEM. *grumble*

Hah, I had a game with NO good heavy beams - nothing above basic HCL's, plasma cannon, and neutron beams. AP mass drivers will only take you so far.

But what I did have were the best shields and pulse phasers. So what I did was use swarmer tactics. I created swarms of pulse phaser armed destroyers with MkIV shields. Shields do not increase in strength with the size of a ship so 3 enemy DN's were faced with 50+ heavily shielded DE's lead by a CNC DN which I pretty much kept away from battle because it was so underarmed. It was funny watching my little ships attack and take out the DN's.

[GreenGoo]

There are comments in the wiki that suggest there is an unknown mystery factor associated with ship class, with regard to shields. So a Mk IV on a destroyer is not quite as strong as a Mk IV on a cruiser. Just an fyi. Certainly doesn't change the effectiveness of your design approach Grif. Which I think is very cool.

[GreenGoo]

It doesn't happen very often at all on the maps like Globular Clusters, Sphere, and so on.

...

EDIT: Same thing with Humans if the stars are set too far apart -- they have very limited node line travel lengths for their non-ER ships and it's easy to get into a spot where you need Fusion to go any further but there are no habitable worlds you can reach, at least on the wrong map scripts.

Yes, ran into this a few times when playing globular as Human. Couldn't leave my globe until fusion despite having node lines out. Certainly changes your opening game strategies.

[silvaril]

Heya

Does anyone really find the combat *particularly* tactical? How often per game do you change tactics, especially after you achieve critical mass for your empire?

Heh...

Once you've gotten to that point, then no, you don't tend to change much.

The changes in tactics up until then though...

Especially when you step the difficulty level up to Hard in Single-Player.
( with the AI getting those nasty little bonuses )

The tactics used when out-teched and out-numbered tend to vary more.


Generally though, tactics is something that tends to vary more in Multi-Player than Single...


Back to SotS-II, the Dev's had already stated that bigger ships and faction based diplomacy / Empires were on the plate, along with the return of the Suul'ka and larger starting Empires.

New things for me from the IGN article are the confirmation of the expanded System maps ( part of the "what would you like to see in SotS2" threads the Dev's were running ), and the confirmation of the more exotic tech trees...

Though now that the Empires are odd mixtures of multiple species, I'm not quite sure how that will work...
( "Yessirreee, with our patented 6-in-1 drive system it won't matter what size of ship, what you fill'er with or where you wanna go... you'll get there!" )

[silvaril]

Heya

But seriously...don't change too much. Your formula is damn near perfect. Update the graphics, the art, the voice acting, and throw in a few new bits of music, but don't worry about essentially packaging an old game in a new wrapper. That's exactly what you should do.

There have been some similar responses over on the Dev's board.

Best reply to that yet:

Actually, we're not really interested in retiring SotS Prime in favor of a non-evolutionary game which has nothing but two cents more worth of "bling". We have been extremely, extremely happy with how the SotS Prime series turned out, and we would like that game to continue to be there for fans who enjoy playing in what amounts to the Early Colonial Period of the Universe. The past three years have shown that the game has tremendous legs all on its own, and people who enjoy its approach should be able to continue to enjoy it in multiplayer for years to come as well.

We wouldn't make SotS 2 if it wasn't going to be something different. We like making new games. And when we say "evolutionary", we're not just talking about upgrading graphics.

Backed up somewhat by:

What would be cool is to NEVER have a reason to pull SotS1 off your hard drive. That you would return to it from time to time EXACTLY because you want to enjoy what it does best.

[Little Raven]

Well, fair enough, I suppose. I can't blame anyone for wanting to avoid Bungie's fate of essentially making the same damn game over and over and over again.

Erinys and company have earned themselves a measure I've trust. Let's see what they can do.

[Sepiche]

Erinys and company have earned themselves a measure I've trust. Let's see what they can do.

Unfortunately Fort Zombie has made me start to think SotS may have been fluke, but I'm still optimistic. And they still have Northstar to convince me with I suppose.

[Freyland]

Going back up the thread about stormers, they are more potent than you may think.

1) They don't start deflecting much until Magnoceramic armor

2) A destroyed section does not have an armor deflecting bonus. So, once a section goes down you can easily pour tons of damage quickly to destroy the ship by targeting that section with stormers.

3) Because of their high dps, they make excellent shield droppers.

4) (minor) They get the ship hitpoint bonus of other mass driver weapon turrets.

Jonathan

[Little Raven]

Going back up the thread about stormers, they are more potent than you may think.

Hmm....the tips about destroyed sections is the most useful. I honestly don't see AI ships with shields very often, but I suppose they might be useful there too.

I still suspect they will underperform compared with other weapons, but I'm willing to give them another shot now. Thanks!

[GreenGoo]

Once you've gotten to that point, then no, you don't tend to change much.

The changes in tactics up until then though...

Especially when you step the difficulty level up to Hard in Single-Player.
( with the AI getting those nasty little bonuses )

The tactics used when out-teched and out-numbered tend to vary more.

Generally though, tactics is something that tends to vary more in Multi-Player than Single...

I can definitely see all that. I don't want to derail the thread any more so that's all I'll say on that.

[GreenGoo]

Going back up the thread about stormers, they are more potent than you may think.

Hmm....the tips about destroyed sections is the most useful. I honestly don't see AI ships with shields very often, but I suppose they might be useful there too.

I still suspect they will underperform compared with other weapons, but I'm willing to give them another shot now. Thanks!

Oh crap, more derailment. It's true that a destroyed section has no armour deflection value, so if you use weapons that can be deflected and your enemy is highly armoured, focus firing the destroyed section is the way to go. However, that damage is split between the 2 remaining sections, meaning you have to do enough damage to destroy all 3 sections before the ship will explode. Sometimes this is the fastest way to kill a ship.

Other times, if you are using weapons unaffected by deflection values, and/or your opponent is not heavily armoured, focus firing another section besides the destroyed section is a faster way to kill a ship, since you only have to do enough damage to destroy 2 sections, rather than 3.

It takes some experience to decide which way is faster for any particular fight/opponent. An obvious opportunity is late game Tarka/Hiver ships which are prime candidates for the "destroy section then focus fire the destroyed section" strategy due to their ludicrous amounts of armour.

I have once or twice, utilized that above information to design ships that had a couple of "section destroyer" weapons that ignored armour (like all the plasma/fusion/anti-matter weaponry) in tandem with a whole crap pile of stormers.

In a fleet action, the 1 or 2 armour ignoring weapons per ship would focus fire an enemy section, kill it, then all the ships would pour infinite amounts of stormer rounds into the breach, killing even the toughest ships in seconds.

There is no question that Stormers pump out the damage. Unfortunately even the most basic armour can reduce that damage by half or more. While it's time consuming trying to take down poly equipped ships, It's farcical watching stormers try to take down magno or greater ships.

Since they are fairly expensive to research, only useful in very specific circumstances and/or during a small window of opportunity as tech develops, and barely more effective than the basic mass driver without armour piercing, I just don't bother to research them any more. Like, ever. I think giving them an AP upgrade of about 1/2 the strength/benefits that regular mass drivers get from AP would start to tip them back into useful without being dominating territory.

Trivia: The original auto-resolve algorithms were broken with regard to stormers, giving stormer equipped ships an order of magnitude (or more) increase in power/strength above what was intended, in auto-resolve. This is no longer the case.

[silvaril]

Heya

Just to get the thread a little closer to topic...

There will be a skirmish mode in sots2, since battlefields will be complex enough to support various pure combat scenarios. But tech available for it will have to be unlocked by researching it in the main game. SotS is always about the exploration.

[ColdSteel]

I watched Martin's presentation on SoTS2 and it had some interesting information.

1) He said where SoTS prime could be compared to WW1, Lords of Winter would be WW2. Carriers will be introduced (which is a huge addition, tactically)

2) If i understood him correctly, destroyers as independant star traversing ship units will go away. Instead they will now be carried between systems and become 'battleriders' on carriers. So think of destroyers as 'fighters' now, I guess.

3) You'll no longer start the game with just one planet and need to expand from that. Instead your starting position will be more developed with multiple planets from the start.

4) He said they don't want SoTS2 to be just more of the same game with bettter graphics. They want to do something new and different. The game will occur in the future of SoTS1.

5) The new Leviathon class ships are just enormous. They're as much larger than a dread as a dread is larger than a cruiser.

6) He said that ships in SoTS 2 will be more substantial in combat. Big ships like dreads and leviathons will hang in there longer while taking damage in battles while chunks are being blown off and their systems slowly blink out and degrade. Sounds epic.

7) System will now have planets and a variety of different features and environments (asteroid belts, etc). I'm wondering if this may mean that the over all number of stars in the game may decrease. If so, That might be a good thing.

I also saw in the forums some hints that combat may also occur outside of systems (in a nebula for example).

[Zurai]

5) The new Leviathon class ships are just enormous. They're as much larger than a dread as a dread is larger than a cruiser.

That's still smaller than most Star Wars/Star Trek ships, especially the battle ships. For the record, Cruisers are 3x the size of Destroyers, and Dreads are 3x the size of Cruisers (3x on each dimension, of course). Since Destroyers are really small -- I believe 20m long was mentioned at one point -- Dreadnoughts aren't really very big. Assuming that 20m is correct, a Cruiser would be 60m and a Dreadnought would be 180m. A Leviathan would then be 520m, which is still less than 1/3 the length of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer.