Well I was up until 4am this morning with a new game Called Sword of the Stars. It's like a master of orion class game but with more emphasis on ship design and combat with small world system. It's pretty good and has a multi player component. The combats can be manually fought and have a low end home wordesk kind of look. They are phased RTS meaning the engine is turn based but the flow feels real time, kind of like a MMO. The tactile map is big and Bright, in the game I am playing there is lots of tech to research with dynamic tree's and linking and a ton of worlds to explore out to and colonize.
Anyway, if you have it and want to multi player lets give it a try.
If you want to check it out there is a demo
http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions/sots/
The tutorial in game is awful, just flip through the pdf manual in the directory and everything is pretty clear.
- Login to post comments
SoTS Ultimate Collection
Impulse has SoTS Ultimate Collection on sale for $20 this weekend. Personally, I found this game to be far more playable than Sins of a Solar Empire, and got my money's worth. If you never played it and are looking for a fun single and multi-player strategic game with a bit less complexity than GalCiv2, I highly recommend giving this one a try.
http://www.impulsedriven.com/sotsult
Ariande Bard 20 • Nightfall Ranger 19
The Avatars, Argonessen Server
RE: Somthing different or at least well blended, SOTS
Bunch of awesome new changes in the patch
http://sots.rorschach.net/Versions#Update_2
RE: Somthing different or at least well blended, SOTS
Even a small system games take a llooooonnnnggg time. We could start a saturday game maybe this weekend.
RE: Somthing different or at least well blended, SOTS
Mel and I both really like SoTS. GalCiv2 is a better single player game, IMO, but not by much and SoTS has multi-player. SoTS has a tactical element at its heart which GalCiv2 lacks completely.
Ironically, this leads to my biggest concern about SoTS... is the multi-player game really practical. Tactical combats take from 2-10 min., depending on how we set up a game. Shorter takes away some of the cooler aspects of maneuvering and makes planetary assaults very tough. Longer makes the other players wait while fights are happening. GalCiv2's autoresolve model may actually be better for mutli-player.
Once Mel gets the game down a bit, we should try a 4 player in a small galaxy with no AI players. I'll stick with this one for awhile, unless Star Trek Legacy just blows it away. More on that when it comes out next month.
When are your usual play times these days, Zac? Seems like it's been forever since we gamed together.
RE: Somthing different or at least well blended, SOTS
Still struggling with learning the tactical ins and outs. Right now, auto resolution still does a better job than I do. I like the Humans, but the Liir appeal to me as well.
RE: Somthing different or at least well blended, SOTS
I picked up SotS myself. I really enjoy it; the battle system is cool with lots of different options for ship armament. My one big gripe is the lack of the Z-plane in the ship combat. 2-D battlefields just limit strategy imho. They claimed to have some reasons behind it, but whatever ;)
Still really fun, I love playing the Liir and their bizarre aquatic looking spaceships. Their theme song is really soothing too, so it?s become my moment of Zen for the day...
RE: Somthing different or at least well blended, SOTS
I picked up Galactic Civ II. It's excellent on first blush, but it may go too far the otherway from SotS, which has been reviled for an oversimplified strategic development system. GC2 doesn't allow you to control combats at all. Instead you set them up and they play out automatically. Great for multi-player, but I'll have to see what I think about it single player. The strategic part is deep and fun, at least at first. Only a few turns in.
AI is reportedly excellent.
I'm still interested in SotS and would love to see an in-depth review. I agree with Doug in that the professional reviews seem to have been off pretty pretty shallow dips into the game.
RE: Somthing different or at least well blended, SOTS
Well, after talking to some friends at work and reading the reviews, I decided to go with Galactic Civ II over Sword of the Stars. Please update us on how you guys are liking it, once you've got a better feel for the game, guys.
RE: Somthing different or at least well blended, SOTS
I plan to by this game, despite the fact that it's by the Homeworld folks, a franchise I didn't care for. The AI is supposed to be first rate.