Sword of the Stars: Argos Naval Yard

[Rorschach]

My friends at Kerberos announced the third expansion for SotS yesterday. This one is a little more traditional in scope, basically a ship pack with new techs, weapons, ship sections, and scenarios. No new race or major gameplay changes (trade, morale) like the last two expansions, and will only work with AMoC or UC. Paradox is publishing and it'll be available June 17th for $9.

The devs have hinted that this is the last pack of content as a thank you to the fans as they turn their focus to SotS 2 and North Star.


• 19 new technologies, including advanced drones, over thrusters, two new satellite designs, defensive interceptor micro-missiles, and polarized plasmatics which will unlock a new weapon type
• Over 75 new ship sections to build
• 10 new weapons, including the new inertial cannons, kelvinic torpedoes, and the fearsome rail cannon
• 3 new scenarios

[MikeJ]

Ah good. Always looking for new ship parts.

[Janster]

Damn resilient series of games, I must admit, with this, and if you own all the expansions, you have a really really awesome space epic, that even works well in multiplayer.

Total war in space :)

[Grifman]

Fantastic, just another reason why this is my favorite galactic 4X game. I'm totally surprised by this, figured AMOC was the last, but this is great news. Thanks for the update!

[schurem]

Total war in space pretty much describes it. Complex.
Bought the complete edition off an impulse sale, 15E yay! lovin it so far, it has a definite indie vibe, while also being quite polished.

I had to turn the combat turn timer up quite a bit to be rid of a frustrating feel of inconsequentialness to the combat. The default leaves you enough time to approach a planet, but not enough to to bomb it to smithereens.

I love the game, but the camera drives me nuts. It has to be anchored to an object, and that makes navigating your empire quite challenging at times. Only when i found a way to tag certain objects with a big glowing ! did i relieve myself from having to shuffle through every fleet in the universe to find the one i needed.

And speakin of ships that are needed; i love how this game handles supply lines. While it is simplified in many aspects of the empire game, the supply lines towards your frontlines are vital, and can leave you stranded if not tended to. So while its a hassle, its a cool hassle.

I played only one game so far to conclusion, but if im not mistaken this should be THE thing for long weekends of deep geekery.

[MikeJ]

I had to turn the combat turn timer up quite a bit to be rid of a frustrating feel of inconsequentialness to the combat. The default leaves you enough time to approach a planet, but not enough to to bomb it to smithereens.


It is possible to completely reduce a planet in one turn, but you don't really have time to fight a significant ship-to-ship battle and still slag the planet. As ships get faster and weapons get more potent, slagging a planet get's easier and easier.

[Rorschach]

Two big things to be aware of when you start messing with the combat timer. 1) Hiver players are going to get screwed if they have to protect gates for longer than 8 minutes (two turns) before they become active. Conversely setting the combat time to less than 4 mins. helps Hivers a lot. 2) Destroying a well defended planet requires a multi-turn siege. This allows the defender and attacker to bring in reinforcements and allows both sides to repair ships in between turns. One turn kills for large or well defended planets is going to favor the attackers quite a bit considering the wide range of front lines you have especially in the more 3d maps.

Regarding the strategic camera: Remember that you can bring up system and fleet lists under the empire summary (click the budget pie or the "e" hotkey). The fleet lists can be sorted by double clicking on the headers. System lists can be sorted by right clicking. Double clicking on a fleet or system will take you back to the strat screen with that fleet/system selected and centered in the camera. Also don't forget the selection hotkeys:

"Home" to select your homeworld
"f" to focus on the object under your mouse (same as middle mouse button)
"Tab"/"shift-tab" to cycle through your colonies
"i"/"shift-i" to cycle through your idle fleets

[schurem]

thanks for the replies. i'll re-check the combat timer. you guys make strong arguments to sticking with the default. guess this isnt entirely total war in space ;-)

the timing and rythm of this game are quite unlike anything else out there. still getting to grips with it. are there sound mods out there? default voice clips grate. i'd love to replace the liir ones with whalesong.

[Rorschach]

Most of the mods out there change weapons, effects and ships. I'm not aware of any sound packs. There's a separate volume control for speech, but be aware some important events like "research complete" or "incoming fleet" are called out in a speech clip at the beginning of a turn so pay extra attention to the event history/news ticker if you turn down the speech sound.

[schurem]

i turned the speech volume down a tad, and have been playing all frakkin night lol.

My homeworld is on the outskirts of one of five globular star clusters. I have colonised most of mine. I teched, and built up my colonies. When I had done all there was to do in my little globule, i made two huge fleets named 'far flight one' and two and headed off into the neighbouring clusters. Far flight one encountered nothing on the three stars it landed on in the first cluster, but in the second one over, it found lizzards. Angry lizzards.

The second far flight found funny little monkeys that talk. They werent very friendly, and managed to whittle down the invasion fleet. I'm in a full fledged war now with the monkeys, but i rather talk and trade with them. but they (and the diplo UI) are uncooperative so far.

The monkeys managed to invade my space. They loose most of the battles, but because i did not expect plucky little apes to go run amok, not all of my planets are well defended. That cost over 8 million swimmers their lives. The monkeys shall pay. Oh yes.

[Grifman]

i turned the speech volume down a tad, and have been playing all frakkin night lol.

My homeworld is on the outskirts of one of five globular star clusters. I have colonised most of mine. I teched, and built up my colonies. When I had done all there was to do in my little globule, i made two huge fleets named 'far flight one' and two and headed off into the neighbouring clusters. Far flight one encountered nothing on the three stars it landed on in the first cluster, but in the second one over, it found lizzards. Angry lizzards.

The second far flight found funny little monkeys that talk. They werent very friendly, and managed to whittle down the invasion fleet. I'm in a full fledged war now with the monkeys, but i rather talk and trade with them. but they (and the diplo UI) are uncooperative so far.

The monkeys managed to invade my space. They loose most of the battles, but because i did not expect plucky little apes to go run amok, not all of my planets are well defended. That cost over 8 million swimmers their lives. The monkeys shall pay. Oh yes.

LOL! :)

[schurem]

This game is excellent in its sense of scale. Space is vast, and mostly empty.
Another strong point is its sense of humor. If you forget to assign a research project, you get a picture of scientists just playing.

[MikeJ]

Just a note that this went on sale yesterday. A lot of interesting techs, but not enough time to evaluate the effect on game balance. Other than that impactor section are pretty brutal and you really want PD that can take down a drone now...

[Sepiche]

Just a note that this went on sale yesterday. A lot of interesting techs, but not enough time to evaluate the effect on game balance. Other than that impactor section are pretty brutal and you really want PD that can take down a drone now...
Yeah I picked it up and am enjoying it a lot so far. They added a lot of new tech and ship sections to the early game that makes for a lot more options as far as ships go in the fission era.

Also the new option to allow teammates to start closer together in team games is great.

[Jorune]

Getting my DL now from Impulse, grabbed that and the Ultimate edition when it was on sale. Glad I did. You see I own the CE I bought from a B&M, and bought AMoC from Gamersgate. All works well. Than when I went to DL ANY from Impulse, it said it couldn't find the Ultimate Edition and basically wouldn't install with out it (even though CE and AMoC WERE installed). I just uninstalled what I had and DL'ed Ulimate so all would play nice.

But be careful.

Jorune

UPDATE: looks like they are aware of the issue and have a fix:

http://forums.impulsedriven.com/356725

[Dreamshadow]

Getting my DL now from Impulse, grabbed that and the Ultimate edition when it was on sale. Glad I did. You see I own the CE I bought from a B&M, and bought AMoC from Gamersgate. All works well. Than when I went to DL ANY from Impulse, it said it couldn't find the Ultimate Edition and basically wouldn't install with out it (even though CE and AMoC WERE installed). I just uninstalled what I had and DL'ed Ulimate so all would play nice.

But be careful.

Jorune

UPDATE: looks like they are aware of the issue and have a fix:

http://forums.impulsedriven.com/356725

Now if Impulse would just add AMOC for sale, so I can buy ANY.

[Chaplin]

Gah. I have Retail boxed SotS plus Gamers Gate expansions (BoB and AMoC). Due to the extremely underhanded moves made by Paynova and Gamersgate (billing credit cards as a "cash advance") I am loathe to offer them any money ever again.

So I got the Impulse version of ANY. And... it doesn't work.

I sent an email to [email protected] yesterday hoping to have a fix or a suggestion today, but no luck. Seems I am SOL for any new space opera action this weekend.

So to anyone who has purchased from Gamers Gate for their expansions you have a few choices.

1) Purchase there again and deal with the underhanded fees that will come with it. Most likely a $10 fee for the $8.99 game.

2) Use Paypal rather than a credit card.

3) Purchase the whole SotS line again from somewhere else then get ANY at that digital vendor.

4) Wait for whatever vendor you purchase from to come to the rescue before which, you can't access your purchase.

[Rorschach]

There's a couple of workarounds (http://sots.rorschach.net/Technical_Support) compiled on the wiki. Maybe something there can help?

[Grifman]

Gah. I have Retail boxed SotS plus Gamers Gate expansions (BoB and AMoC). Due to the extremely underhanded moves made by Paynova and Gamersgate (billing credit cards as a "cash advance") I am loathe to offer them any money ever again.

So I got the Impulse version of ANY. And... it doesn't work.

I sent an email to [email protected] yesterday hoping to have a fix or a suggestion today, but no luck. Seems I am SOL for any new space opera action this weekend.

So to anyone who has purchased from Gamers Gate for their expansions you have a few choices.

1) Purchase there again and deal with the underhanded fees that will come with it. Most likely a $10 fee for the $8.99 game.

2) Use Paypal rather than a credit card.

3) Purchase the whole SotS line again from somewhere else then get ANY at that digital vendor.

4) Wait for whatever vendor you purchase from to come to the rescue before which, you can't access your purchase.

Wow, I just discovered this "fee". I had bought previously from GG and never had a problem. However, the other day I bought the new expansion from Gamersgate using my credit card. I just got a notification from my credit card that I had a cash advance taken. When I checked, Paynova, GG's payment's processor, charged my card via a cash advance, instead of normal credit card. So my bank charged me a $20 fee.

Nowhere do I remember on GG website it saying I would be charged this way. And if you look on their payment FAQ, there's no mention of this either. I've never had a vendor charge this way before. It took two calls to my credit card company, but they finally removed the fee.

I just wanted to give everyone a head's up so they don't make the same mistake. Either use Paypal or don't use Gamersgate because Paynova will rip you off. I will never buy from Gamersgate again because of this deceptive practice.

I hope no one else get's ripped off. A $20 fee for a $9 dollar expansion is stealing.

Yes, I'm pissed and it usually takes a lot . . .

[Cubit]

this has been said before, but its worth it to say again. only use paypal with gamersgate. they are a great service, but the cash advance fees are a real bummer. paypal paypal paypal.

[Grifman]

The bad thing about it is there's no contact number of GG (I emailed them with my complaint but I dont' expect much), and Paynova is in Sweden, so there's not too much you can do about it. After I called my bank the first time, they said contact the vendor but when I looked for Paynova's number I saw it was in Sweden. No go for a phone call there. So I got on the phone again, politely but firmly told the bank that I did not authorize a cash advance and that I would not pay the fee. They took it off but said they couldn't do it again. I told them not to worry, I wasn't going to be buying from GG ever again so it wouldn't be a problem.

[Chaplin]

You were lucky, I had to fight for weeks and weeks to get the charge taken off. Gamers Gate and Pay Nova were pretty much mute in the whole deal. The whole thing is terrible.

Now after having spent all night re-downloading and installing SotS and expansions from scratch... I still seem to be stuck. My favorite part was when I went to make sure SotS v1.0 worked after the install from the original boxed retail copy. Notice the "original" part. Yeah, because when I went to run it I got a Securom message telling me not to try to run the game from a backup copy. In a maddening bloodlusted moment I wanted to pull the original from the drive and scream at the freaking monitor "oh THIS backup copy!!!" It is so awesome being a customer in the gaming industry sometimes.

Total freaking headache from beginning to end. I hope impulse has some good news sooner rather than later. Because it looks like I am hosed right now.

I looked at the wiki, it does not seem to have any help that seems to relate to me. In the end it looks like my only choice was to either repurchase what I already own with one of the "ultimate" digital copies or to fork over more cash through paypal to Gamers Gate even though they totally screwed me over before. Ahhhhh... good times....

[Grifman]

Well, it turns out Gamersgate is also in Sweden - how convenient. I've emailed them both complaining about this practice, saying I want my $20 back. We'll see what they say. I'm also thinking about complaining to Mastercard that these two companies are engaging in unethical practices. If I can cause them to spend more than $20 dealing with my complaint then that's about all I can do to get justice.

[Aszurom]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/25920/

Expansion is $9, but complete game is $16... so you spend $7 more and never have to dance around combining products from 3 different locations again.

Seems like a no-brainer to me. What's your frustration and time worth?

[Therlun]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/25920/

Expansion is $9, but complete game is $16... so you spend $7 more and never have to dance around combining products from 3 different locations again.

Seems like a no-brainer to me. What's your frustration and time worth?

Some people value their principles pretty highly.
Paying again for a game you already bought is an issue no matter how much or how little the re-buy costs.

Also, Steam has regional pricing making the price 16€ and the difference 8.50€ ($12) for me.
Is $12 enough for you?

[Lorini]

The Steam version of the expansion (by itself) would not work for me, noting that my version of the main game was from D2D. I ended up going to Gamersgate (using paypal of course; curious as to why folks don't always use Paypal when given the choice?) and that one installed just fine.

[malkav11]

Well, it turns out Gamersgate is also in Sweden - how convenient. I've emailed them both complaining about this practice, saying I want my $20 back. We'll see what they say. I'm also thinking about complaining to Mastercard that these two companies are engaging in unethical practices. If I can cause them to spend more than $20 dealing with my complaint then that's about all I can do to get justice.

Er, yeah, GamersGate is in Sweden. That's where Paradox Interactive is based, and Paradox owns GamersGate. Imagine my shock that they would want to use a Swedish company to process their credit card transactions.

I think it's uncool that Paynova charges the cards as a cash advance, and I think it's possibly worth complaining about that (I don't know if GamersGate are aware that's how they do it, but maybe in Sweden cash advances don't get fees.) But I don't think it's some giant conspiracy, and I don't know why people are so resistant to just using PayPal. Are there fees or something for the consumer that I am just missing? (I don't think so.)

[jpinard]

I have the original SWOTS retail. Can I get expansions via Impulse to work with it?

[Quitch]

Yeah, I have to admit I would expect this to be answered in bold print on every digital distribution's page for the game since it's such an obvious question.

[Rorschach]

I have the original SWOTS retail. Can I get expansions via Impulse to work with it?

According to scuttlebutt around the community you'll have to be sure to point it to the right directory, and at worst you may have to edit a registry setting.

[Alan Friesen]

Seems like a no-brainer to me. What's your frustration and time worth?

From the comments in this thread, more than the value of this game.

[Quitch]

Just be warned, if you buy Ultimate and Argos from Steam you may need a restart before it works. Mine wouldn't recognise the CD key until then.

[Abilio Carvalho]

I'd love to see a replay, walkthrough, or AAR of this game. I get all the individual systems by themselves, but I haven't caught the rhythm yet. Yesterday doing a simple duel between me and an AI on a 16-star system, I was chugging along with about 10 or 20 ships when my homeworld got attacked by about 70. I can't figure out how to do things faster, do I simply have to keep building ships ad aeternum?

[Janster]

I can give you quick tips.

Don't go cruiser too early, they are just a money hog, focus on getting destroyers with UV lazors and a CnC ship. Pack em into a tight formation, and just let em rip.

Alternatively you can pack missiles in, but its just too weak imho early on. With this kind of setup, you can easily dominate the AI early on.

Secondly sometimes you just get a shitty start... I have a tendency to restart those attempts.

[Therlun]

I'd love to see a replay, walkthrough, or AAR of this game. I get all the individual systems by themselves, but I haven't caught the rhythm yet. Yesterday doing a simple duel between me and an AI on a 16-star system, I was chugging along with about 10 or 20 ships when my homeworld got attacked by about 70. I can't figure out how to do things faster, do I simply have to keep building ships ad aeternum?

SotS has a certain RTS mentality to it.
You have a land grab (normal in 4X), but then you have to constantly churn out ships and treat them like dispensable RTS units. Constant technological progress and not being able to upgrade ships "helps" here.
Rushes are effective and hard counters are a vital part of combat (heavy point defense vs missiles etc.).

If you play versus the AI there is no real diplomacy. You might convince on of the more peaceful races to a temporary NAP or Alliance, but in the end its you versus all AIs. They will show no mercy and throw everything they have at you.

There is also a certain runaway effect. If a race has a considerable economic advantage for some time it will soon be impossible to catch up in technology for everyone else.

[Lorini]

I can give you quick tips.

Don't go cruiser too early, they are just a money hog, focus on getting destroyers with UV lazors and a CnC ship. Pack em into a tight formation, and just let em rip.

Alternatively you can pack missiles in, but its just too weak imho early on. With this kind of setup, you can easily dominate the AI early on.

Secondly sometimes you just get a shitty start... I have a tendency to restart those attempts.

Um Janster, when you are explaining things to a beginner, it helps not to use acronyms. What is a CnC ship? What are UV lazors?

[wisefool]

Command and Control (http://sots.rorschach.net/Command_and_Control)


Including a CnC ship in your fleet gives you the following advantages:
Set an initial formation different from the line abreast default formation
Determine which ships are on the battlefield and the order that ships enter from reserves
Increase command points to bring more ships on the battlefield at one time

Lazors are like lasers, except they are bigger faster and better.

[MikeJ]

I can't figure out how to do things faster, do I simply have to keep building ships ad aeternum?

It's helpful to keep tabs on systems that are close to your colonies, especially your homeworld. This is harder for some races than others.

In general, you want to find what's where pretty quickly and maintain pickets (at least 1 destroyer, preferably 2) wherever you can. If you can get to a system before an AI and then destroy their scout, they won't know what's there.

I'll give you a quick run-through of how my first 20 rounds might go as humans. I usually play about 15 stars per player, with 6-8 players. Playing more confined than that, you will want to build more defenses earlier.

I start off by building ER (extended range) scouts and sending them off in all directions. As humans, with a limited number of node lines, I will definitely be sending follow-up scouts down each node line on a regular basis to handle the branching. Those are followed up by tankers and scouts to refuel the first wave. If the scouts encounter swarm, alien wreckage or alien craft, they are dead, but they can run away from asteroid monitors and alien derelicts ( you can strip alien derelicts of their turrets with a single scout, but that requires careful piloting and a bit of patience, especially if the scout doesn't have green lasers yet). If a scout encounters a good world, I'll park one there so I know if anyone else approaches. I keep the scouts around when the run out of fuel so I can get some sense of where enemies are. Between the parked scouts and the scouts/tankers following after them I have a pretty good chance of spotting activity. Generally I have maybe 16 scouts and 4 tankers.

Tech has to trade off versus ship construction costs. When I'm starting a tech, I lean pretty close to 100% research, though at the beginning I can't really afford it as it is important to get scouts out quickly as well. As the tech passes 50% completion, I gradually start to hold back and build up funds until by the time I reach about 100% (or more), I'm only putting in 5-10% completion a turn. This increases chances of getting the tech without paying the maximum 150% cost.

Tech order is often Waldo Units (industry boost and better command section), then gene mod and suspended animation (good colonizers), then green lasers. Once I get green lasers, I'm starting to think about some defenses (everything gets green lasers, but green laser armor DEs are a pretty standard defense). Next techs (order dependent on circumstances) are cybernetic interface (more industry), battle computers (reasonable fleets), perhaps start towards point defense, light emitters (if I have them) or UV lasers then atmospheric adaptation. With that, you have a pretty good package of destroyer-era techs, though you might only get one of them (or none) done in the first 20 turns. Pulse fission is also pretty attractive for humans, or recombinant fissionables. Next you might go for FTL economics (trade revenue), a good medium weapon (in prep for combat cruisers) or directly to cruisers (to open up the nice cruiser goodies data synergy, biome colonizers, repair and salvage, asteroid mining).

You want to colonize pretty soon after finding each decent world, so it doesn't hurt to have colonizers building before you find the worlds you want. I usually colonize with a batch of 5 colonizers (though I might do 3 or 4 for a very low-hazard world) and they might need a tanker to have the range to get to the colony site. Usually the first batch of colonizers (and maybe some of the second batch) is done before suspended animation, so hopefully I can send them to a world not much about 100 hazard. With suspended animation on the colonizers I will go up to about 200 hazard or perhaps a bit more, but the higher I go I might slide towards 10 colonizers, but you don't have to wait to have them all ready. Generally by turn 20 I've established between 3 and 5 extra colonies, depending on luck in finding good planets. I don't mind spending half or more of my income on colony maintenance as long as they are colonies that will develop quickly and not 50k maintenance lead boots that will grow at a snails pace.

The amount of defense you need depends on general threat level. I try to get at least 3 armors to each colony to defend against the odd scout. If the colony is far away it might be more efficient to send ERs (so you don't have to bring so many expensive and useless tankers). The more distant from the homeworld and the more enemy activity nearby, the more I will try to send. If, for instance, I see Zuul node-tunneling fleets at a nearby star, I have to have at least 5 or 6 armors to take out the tunneling fleet if it goes for my colony (I might try to take out tunneling fleets in an uninhabited system if I can- it can pay to be aggressive). If the tunneling fleet connects to one of your colonies, the Zuul will send an invasion force, so you either need a significant force there, or take out their end of the line.

I find it difficult, but it's best to be aggressive and put a lot of effort into finding and crushing enemy colonies before they get on their feet. Even a single scout can kill a starting colony if you fly around or past the AI's defenders (and sometimes there are no defenders).

Anyway, that's a lot more than I intended to write. The main thing is to scout and aggressively claim your space with small forces, find the good planets and get them growing.

[Janster]

I always go for Ultra-violet lasers and command ship, never fight without it, its in the electronic tech cathegory.

As for planets, as he said, never colonize anything with more than 40k upkeep, or you will be paying forever on that, in the beginning atleast.

Btw, I tend to just use tankers in the beginning to scout, less hassle, better range, depends on size of map.
Again, all this depends on race, if your Hiver, colonize anything that moves, build ships, kill all your enemies, laugh in their faces.

I suggest Hiver as the best beginner class, humans can be quite tricky, and their ships are not so good, Tarkas are 2nd best, good all round ships.

[Rorschach]

Hiver are masters of turtling but difficult on offense. Building an invasion fleet right now that can withstand technology developed 20+ turns later can be a challenge. :)

I recommend Tarkas as a starting race. The only thing you have to deal with is short range which means a bigger reliance on tankers.

For myself, I play Liir more often than not. I like to tech up in my games and with the Liir it's pretty much required.

[Jonathan Crane]

Thanks for the above - I'm trying to get back into the game (after buying it 3 times now). Two things are a bit mysterious to me:

1) How do you speed up colonial development? I've sent extra colony ships, which help, but it seems that it does little for the industrial infrastructure. I've had some colonies that develop rather quickly, despite a high initial development cost, and others which just sort of languish, sucking resources for 30+ turns.

2) How do you fight enemies which are seiging your planet? I'm thinking of the random Swarm enemies, which seem to have blockaded one of my planets, but do not attack the defending fleet every turn. Is there a way to attack them directly, without waiting for them to attack?

[Rorschach]

1) The resources of a planet will have an impact on the rate of growth. High hazard rating, low resource planets will take for-ev-ar. If you're ready to colonize a high HR planet make sure it has a lot of resources.

Colony growth is also limited by population not just resources. If the Industrial Output number of the colony is red then you have more infrastructure than the population can use. In this case you want to be doing as much terraforming as possible to reduce HR and increase population growth.

Biotechs have a big impact on terraforming efficency and population growth so they are much more important to colony growth than ever before.

2) The swarm blockade will be randomly activated by moving fleets to and from the colony. Send some scouts back and forth and eventually you'll trigger the encounter.

[Lorini]

Noob question, how do you do terraforming?

[Riztro]

It starts automatically whenever one of your colonies has less than optimal hazard rating and/or infrastructure. Normally this occurs with every new colony or after any attack that lands damage on a planet.

There are two sliders only present when the planet is terraforming, one named terraforming that reduces hazard rating and one named infrastructure that increases infrastructure. Both these sliders rely on the industrial output of the world.

Reducing hazard rating increases population growth, population then fills infrastructure to create industrial output wich can be used to improve both. This will happen automatically on any world but by fiddling fith the sliders you can make it happen a lot faster.

[MikeJ]

Btw, I tend to just use tankers in the beginning to scout, less hassle, better range, depends on size of map.


I think an ER/Tanker combination is superior in every sense except for the hassle factor. ERs are about half the cost and almost 3x more efficient with the tanker's fuel than a tanker itself. 3x ER + 1 Tanker has excellent range and will cover ground faster than the equivalent cost in tankers. ERs can go down node lines that a tanker can't, but the main thing is that they can fight other scouts and win, or even kill a starting colony. Tanker lets you see the territory, an ER is a down payment on owning the territory.

[Abilio Carvalho]

Rorschach, are you the same one that did the videos that come with the game's tutorial?

In any case, wonderful information in this thread. thanks all

[Janster]

I still belive Hiver is the best starter faction, its not just that they defend well, its that hey have a very wide range of optimal planets, and they terraform very quick.

Liir on the other hand are very picky, few worlds and slow if they don't have tech. A rush race if anything, in combat they aren't very good at close combat, and their ships are difficult to manage.
Hivers are just close formation and gun down anything that comes near :) Once you have UV lasers, no tech can really hurt you, only consistently larger ship sizes.

About ER tankers, yes, I'm aware of their longer node line, but that doesn't help your colony ships so whats the point imho. That said, they are cheap if you wanna hurt someone early on.

Note when you get a new planet, the two sliders, they changed how this works, so now I'm like 80% infrastrucutre 20% terraforming on the slider, usually I was 100% as terraforming was usually pointless unless you had 100% infra, due to time problems.
Hivers solution to colonizing use 15-20 colo ship PER planet, voila.

Humies and Liir, I use 10, but it does'nt have the effect I want at times. I speculate sometimes its cheaper to bombard a planet with colonyships than to wait it out.

2nd favorite race, Tarkas btw, a reason for that, their ships have guns on the underside, such a blessing in combat.
I consider Humans and Morrigi pretty difficult to start out with, particularly humans who have the saddest gun layout of them all.

[Rorschach]

Rorschach, are you the same one that did the videos that come with the game's tutorial?

In any case, wonderful information in this thread. thanks all

Yes. That's me. I also administer the wiki.

[Lorini]

I tried to go after an alien wreck and could not see if I was damaging it or not. Does this mean that I wasn't damaging it? I used 10 second level Armor guys (it was early in the game). The lack of feedback (or at least of the sort I'm used to) is difficult.

Also I don't understand tankers. Sometimes they run dry and sometimes they don't, it seems arbitrary.

[MikeJ]

I tried to go after an alien wreck and could not see if I was damaging it or not. Does this mean that I wasn't damaging it? I used 10 second level Armor guys (it was early in the game). The lack of feedback (or at least of the sort I'm used to) is difficult.

Alien derelicts were upgraded at some point with armour and reflective coatings (except on the turrets) so if you are using something like green lasers or gauss cannons, you are going to see a lot of your shots bounce off. When they get damaged, derelicts show the standard fires and whatnot. But the flares don't start until it's taken some significant damage (a third of hitpoints?). You see the same effect on anything that has a lot of hitpoints (like DNs).

If you aren't aiming for the turrets, I can see an alien derelict just shrug off the damage of 10 low-tech DEs. On the other hand, if you are willing to aim for the turrets (with reasonably accurate weapons like green lasers), you can strip the derelict with one DE. Taking out a derelict by stripping it rather than brute force nets you a 25% research bonus for 4 turns.



Also I don't understand tankers. Sometimes they run dry and sometimes they don't, it seems arbitrary.

Each DE tanker contains enough fuel to refill 10 DEs from empty (or 15 DEs if you are Tarka). The tanker also uses it's fuel reserves to refill it's own engine. Auto-refuel is on by default so a tanker will try to keep everything in the same spot as it topped up. So a tanker that you thought had lots of range might come up short if it passes through an uninhabited system with lots of thirsty ships. If there are multiple tankers at a location/fleet, it drains one of them at a time. Also, tankers get refilled every time they visit one of your colonies.

[wisefool]

Morale is giving me problems.

* I find an indy planet next to my homeworld. How do I start trade with them? Someone on wiki suggests a trade station is needed.
* Restricting growth. If I move to left it seems population max is dropped but my morale does not seem to improve.

[MikeJ]

* I find an indy planet next to my homeworld. How do I start trade with them? Someone on wiki suggests a trade station is needed.


Trade stations give you extra trade income and also add extra foreign trade routes. I guess they can go to an independent, but I'm not sure. Just because they are independent doesn't mean they like you.



* Restricting growth. If I move to left it seems population max is dropped but my morale does not seem to improve.

Lowering the max pop makes your morale problems worse. Morale goes down by 1 every turn that civilian pop is bumping up against the population limit and down by 2 every turn that civilian pop is actually above the limit (and therefore being forcibly decreased). You also can lose morale for losing colonies and such. If you increase the population limit, they will start unsustainably eating resources but at least they won't lose moral until they bump up against the new cap.

The better way is to get some positive morale modifiers to offset the population problem. If you have a million in the bank, you get a morale boost of +1 per turn. If you have more than five million (I think), you get +2 per turn. If you have the maximum number of active trade routes at a planet, you get +1 per turn. Or if you have fusion power, you can build a police cutter that will counteract morale loss.

I usually just save a million. You can spend to below a million as long as your savings will put you back above a million the beginning of next turn.

[MarinusWA]

For trading you need the required tech called FTL Economics, which becomes available after FTL Broadband. After that you get a new mission section that will allow you to build freighters. These freighters are then stationed in sectors where they do there stuff so no flying them back and forth. You also get a new view overlay (The trade sector view) where you can see these sectors. You can only station ships in a trade sector that is secured, which means no hostile planets in it.

On your planet info card there is a long bar that moves between construction and finance, this is the bar you use to set how much trade routes you want to fill up with freighters. Small white stripes will appear on this bar each indicating another trade route. If you set the value to the one most on the right you will have opened the maximum amount of trade routes. Each trade route takes five common freighters to fill up.

This seems complex but it is really easy. After you set it up you don't really have to look at it again apart from the occasional raider blowing some freighters up. You also get a VERY handy Trade information screen along with the rest of your information (tab most on the right) which allows you to set trade routes and build freighters on all you colonies in one screen.

Don't know if you can trade with indy planets because I think they always count as hostile (and as such you can't secure the sector).

Morale is increased by founding new colonies and winning battles. The best way to increase morale however is to have money in you treasury. +1 every turn for 1.000.000. +2 per turn for 5.000.000 and +3 per turn for 20.000.000 I think. A police cutter (another mission section) will decrease any negative morale event with one. So that basically takes care of the -1 from population growth max so you don't have to eat up your planets resources.

As an aside, I'm mystified why this game doesn't support some sort of fleet template and/or upgrade system. I always get bored at the end of games because of the ship bookkeeping I have to do every time.

[Lorini]

Noob alert-How do you aim and how do you know what to aim at? I'm just choosing my ships and right clicking on stuff.

[Enidigm]

Finally picked up the combo pack from Steam. I wasn't terribly enthused by the demo of the original game, but hopefully with all the additional expansion it will be a fun game to take on a spin.

[MikeJ]

Noob alert-How do you aim and how do you know what to aim at? I'm just choosing my ships and right clicking on stuff.

If you have some of your ships selected and left-click on an enemy ship, you will target that ship. I'm not sure if the first click always selects a location on the ship, but for sure if you left click on the ship again, your ships will be aiming for that specific spot on the ship. This shows up as some sort of red target at that location on the ship.

This is useful to blow a particular section of a ship that's causing you a problem (like a shield-generator section on a cruiser). Or to destroy a particular large turret that is killing you. Sometimes you just want to focus on a part of a ship that's already damaged, or even just 'aim for the big part' so you have less chance of missing.

Stripping a derelict with a single destroyer is about the most delicate thing you'd want to do and most people I think don't bother. It's hard because you have to get all the turrets and the torpedo mount, even the small ones, and constantly move your ship so it can't be attacked by the derelicts weapons.

[wisefool]

Thanks for the thoughts on morale. I found out accidentally "X" gives a nice overview!
http://files.getdropbox.com/u/714993/Hivemind%20morale.JPG

[Lum]

On your planet info card there is a long bar that moves between construction and finance, this is the bar you use to set how much trade routes you want to fill up with freighters. Small white stripes will appear on this bar each indicating another trade route. If you set the value to the one most on the right you will have opened the maximum amount of trade routes. Each trade route takes five common freighters to fill up.

Is there a screenshot for this anywhere? I researched the techs and were able to build freighters, but I could never figure out how to actually assign them to trade routes. I didn't see that bar at all. Do you need to have an active trade agreement with another AI/player first?

And yes the expansions add a ton... I wasn't impressed when the game first shipped but starting with about the 2nd expansion it grew on me quite a bit.

[Riztro]

If you click the top left pie-chart to get into the econ/lists screen there should be a trade tab that gives you an overview of your trade sectors and has a button to queue up freighters on the planets in the sectors. Wichever freighter design you saved last will be the one built from that screen.

Most trade is between your own planets rather than with other empires, you can do that but it was ages since I tried it so I´m fuzzy on the details.

[MikeJ]

Is there a screenshot for this anywhere? I researched the techs and were able to build freighters, but I could never figure out how to actually assign them to trade routes. I didn't see that bar at all. Do you need to have an active trade agreement with another AI/player first?


Take a look at the screenshot above. The construction/trade slider is on the line marked 'Planetary Budget'. There is also a handy trade tab if you click on the budget pie chart (along with lots of other useful information and controls).

If build in a secured sector, freighters get assigned automatically to that sector, or you can move them manually. Use the trade view to see what sectors you have secured (i.e. no hostile colonies), or to move freighters and escorts between sectors. If you built freighters and they just hung out at your planets, then that wasn't a secure sector.

The benefit of trade is mostly an internal thing. It's like you are investing in 'trade infrastructure' (expensive freighters) in order to make more money later.

[Rorschach]

I tried to go after an alien wreck and could not see if I was damaging it or not. If the shot hits a ship polygon and doesn't bounce it does damage. You can see the blue flash and hear the bounce sound if you zoom in on your target. If that's happening a lot it's time to target a flatter polygon or change weapons.

You can see progressive damage effects from plasma fires, venting clouds of gas and the like. With your own ships you can bring up the sensors screen (hotkey: space) and select the "i" info button on the bottom bar to get a health cross (green=good, yellow=trouble, red=lost section or near death) next to each ship icon.

[MarinusWA]

You can trade with other empires if you have atleast a NAP agreement. I don't think a Cease Fire is enough for trade (I usually play Morrogi and they get trade on the first xenotech so I'm fuzzy on how this works for other races). Also, trade costs a lot to get going but if you have a lot of secured sectors it easily doubles your income and beyond at the cost of industrial production that is.

[wisefool]

You can also do this:

Look at bottom bar with the dot (third button to the right of END TURN)
Click on it, and turn trade route view on
Then u can just click on the little green padlocks.

[Lorini]

Lil' Dez (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7Gf_fxbcG8) would like to know:

Why are my ships so damned slow? These other ships come in and literally run circles around my ships and I'm only at turn 65 or so. I'm Tarkas if it matters.

What weapons upgrade missiles? It just looks like a plain missile sucks.

How the hell do you move the camera around properly in combat? I can originally see my ships but then they move out of sight when I have them chase enemies and I can no longer see them.

I still can't figure out how to target any individual part of a ship, probably related to the above question.

Thanks in advance.

[MikeJ]

Why are my ships so damned slow? These other ships come in and literally run circles around my ships and I'm only at turn 65 or so. I'm Tarkas if it matters.


Tarka aren't too bad for straight-line speed. If they are literally running circles around you, they are probably Liir. They are very maneuverable, but not high on top-line speed. Pulse fission engines improve speed. If it were a hard AI I'd say they have fusion engines, but turn 65 is probably slightly too soon for normal AI, but maybe not for the research-happy Liir. Hard to say. If you look at the diplomatic interface, it tells you if they have fusion or fission.


What weapons upgrade missiles? It just looks like a plain missile sucks.

Shaped nuclear is something like a 50% boost I think. It's probably worth getting that at least as you have a good chance at heavy planet missiles, which are really effective against laser PD. Beyond that you can get gamma warheads for another boost, or just skip to fusion warheads after you get fusion power. At any stage in the game, missiles aren't the best damage-per-second weapon, but they do have the potential to hurt your enemies from way outside their weapon range.


How the hell do you move the camera around properly in combat? I can originally see my ships but then they move out of sight when I have them chase enemies and I can no longer see them.

The camera is anchored to a ship. You can hit tab to cycle through your ships (moving the camera with it), or middle-mouse click on something (even an enemy ship or a missile) to anchor the camera there. You can also hit ctrl-c to go to a free-camera mode, but it's kind of slow so I mostly use it for screenshots.



I still can't figure out how to target any individual part of a ship, probably related to the above question.

Left click on the part of the enemy ship you want to hit, that's pretty much it. It might make it easier if you pause (pause key), or focus the camera on the enemy. They will try to hit the enemy you selected, and if they can, aim for the location on the enemy you selected.

[wisefool]

Double middle click to zoom in to ship, hold right click to aim camera.

Targetting is like Jameson said, you have your ships selected and just left click (i had been right clicking hehe)

Researching missile tree is what upgrades nukes. Bear in mind every game has different techs! They vary by race. The dolphins for example tend to get all the swim-fast techs and lazor techs. Tarkas are probably ballistic, and big heavy ship based.

Another easier way to manage fleet trades just found by mistake: If you click on the big pie chart on the upper left, you access empire stats. There you can see overview of all your trade routes and directly click on the entries!

[Rorschach]

Why are my ships so damned slow? These other ships come in and literally run circles around my ships and I'm only at turn 65 or so. I'm Tarkas if it matters.As a rule Tarkas are the third fastest in tactical combat behind Hiver and Zuul (but better turning rate than Hiver). Particular mission and command sections will affect speed. Don't expect Assault/Barrage ships to outrun Hammerhead/Armor ships.


What weapons upgrade missiles? It just looks like a plain missile sucks.Warhead tree increases damage. Micro-fusion drives boost speed.


How the hell do you move the camera around properly in combat? I can originally see my ships but then they move out of sight when I have them chase enemies and I can no longer see them.Hotkey Tab to cycle between your ships. The usual RTS grouping commands work (CTRL-# to add, # to select). Hotkey F to center the camera on your mouse cursor. Hotkey home to focus on your CnC / reinforcements.


I still can't figure out how to target any individual part of a ship, probably related to the above question.First left click on a target selects it in general. On a targeted ship you'll see a 3d red cursor moving in line with your mouse. Click again and the selected ships will target that exact location.

[Janster]

btw something that's not always obvious, I think its noted in the manual tho, but still.
If you got riots galore, note that you get +1 morale for 1 mill you got in reserve, and +2 for 5 mill, possibly a +3 somewhere there too.

This will negate a heck of a lot of troubles, you also get morale boost for traderoutes and various stuff, but its not reliable enough.

As the guy above showed, the little morale screen is great for seeing whats going on if the planet is in the red.

[thinkingork]

The game crashes out to the desktop every time I try to change the resolution :<.

[Rorschach]

The game crashes out to the desktop every time I try to change the resolution :<.
Run the game windowed and you can stretch it to any size resolution.

[Squee]

Finally picked this up on the $16 Steam sale, and initial impressions are pretty good. Seems like a much much better version of Sins of a Solar Empire. The turn-based strategic part is more to my liking, and the real time battles are much more exciting and energetic than SoaSE. It'll take me a while to get a better feeling of it, but right now it's looking like the first 4X space game that will hold my attention since MoO2.

Though one odd quirk, there's an ANY shortcut in the Steam games menu list under "Not installed", but double clicking it doesn't install, it just launches the game. And double clicking the SotS Ultimate shortcut launches the ANY version of the game anyway. Bit weird but at least it looks like everything's installed and working.

[Jonathan Crane]

Is there any way to slow down the game while in a battle? I'd love to be able to slow the action down to appreciate the majesty with which my pitiful human ships are destroyed.

[MikeJ]

Is there any way to slow down the game while in a battle?

Get a slower computer and use lots of minelayers? Seriously though, there is no hotkey for slowing it down. If you are finding it too fast to keep track of, you can hit the pause key and issue orders.

[Rorschach]

Is there any way to slow down the game while in a battle? I'd love to be able to slow the action down to appreciate the majesty with which my pitiful human ships are destroyed.If you want to get cinematic you can pause with "pause" and advance the game once frame at a time with "shift-space". You can unhook the camera with "ctrl-c" to get dramatic angles. Not recommended for regular play.

[Janster]

I find that if I can maintain formation on my guys, I move them in unison, using broadsides and angles that I want them to attack in, but if they start to break up, or you need them to dodge and move, use the close to attack button, and just give general fire target orders.

This helps you in those times when you simply can't micro it all.

[Warren]

Thanks for the thoughts on morale. I found out accidentally "X" gives a nice overview!

Alternatively, clicking on the little peg/person looking icon below the planet name on the left panel will also open that view you've pictured.

I am amazed at the improvement that Kerberos has made in the game with the expansions. Was an okay game at release. But with all the expansions, it's excellent. Bravo.


If the shot hits a ship polygon and doesn't bounce it does damage. You can see the blue flash and hear the bounce sound if you zoom in on your target. If that's happening a lot it's time to target a flatter polygon or change weapons.

You can see progressive damage effects from plasma fires, venting clouds of gas and the like. With your own ships you can bring up the sensors screen (hotkey: space) and select the "i" info button on the bottom bar to get a health cross (green=good, yellow=trouble, red=lost section or near death) next to each ship icon.

Ah! I did not know that! As usual excellent info, Rorschach!


Yes. That's me. I also administer the wiki.

And are pretty much a one man PR campaign to boot!


Run the game windowed and you can stretch it to any size resolution.

Another nice tidbit! Thanks

[Squee]

Damn, this is fun. Shame I didn't know about it until recently, but I guess it works out well for me since I can pick up everything at once on the cheap. Still, this is the most fun I've had with a space 4X in years. Playing on a small, 20 star map with 2 AI opponents on easy to get the hang of things. Lost a colony fairly early on to the aliens, so I finally got my revenge when I sent a swarm of 35 largely outdated ships to attack one of their colonies. Though I knew they had a 30+ ship fleet floating around from previous experience, I caught them with their space-pants down and the colony was undefended except for a single satellite. Nuked them out of existence easy peasy.
Then feeling buff from my first major successful battle, I sent the fleet out into unexplored space. Next star, I get a combat popup against an unknown. The loading screen says I'm against "The swarm", which turns out to be space-bees in a hive in an asteroid field. Lost 9 ships before I managed to blow up the hive. Pretty cool encounter.

By the way, since there isn't a way to slow combat down I assume there isn't a way to speed it up, but is there a "Quit and automate from here" button? I had a combat encounter at one of my planets against unknowns, and then at the loading screen it said meteorites. So I got to watch 3 minutes of satellites nuking rocks floating towards my planet. Apart from that slight annoyance, having a great time. Glad I eventually did hear about it, since I haven't found a space strategy game I've enjoyed in ages.

Edit: Hahahaha! Just found the 30+ fleet, it hit my new fleet of 18 cruisers, attempting to meet up with my destroyer fleet. Killed all but 2 enemies with 0 losses. Awesome.

[Malaak]

By the way, since there isn't a way to slow combat down I assume there isn't a way to speed it up, but is there a "Quit and automate from here" button?

Ctrl + PageUp to increase combat speed 2x/4x/8x
Ctrl + PageDown to decrease combat speed again.

[Squee]

Oh, thanks! That'll make chasing down the last ship or two much easier.

[Sepiche]

By the way, since there isn't a way to slow combat down I assume there isn't a way to speed it up, but is there a "Quit and automate from here" button? I had a combat encounter at one of my planets against unknowns, and then at the loading screen it said meteorites. So I got to watch 3 minutes of satellites nuking rocks floating towards my planet. Apart from that slight annoyance, having a great time. Glad I eventually did hear about it, since I haven't found a space strategy game I've enjoyed in ages.

There are also some truce buttons in the lower left. You can click on the image next to your name there and it will turn into a dove. If your opponent also does that it will end combat early.

You can actually use it to pretty good effect on some of the early random encounters too. If you can get out of range of them they will usually offer a truce.

[Squee]

That'll be handy early on. The other AI in my game is also human, so when I first met them I had my ship hold fire and float around in space for 3 minutes instead of attacking on sight. Being able to "Peace out" of combat will be nice.

[Jonathan Crane]

Some mild spoilers for random events follow.

I think I may be done with this for a while. I'm playing as humans in a 51 star disk galaxy, with two normal AI opponents (both Hivers). I was struggling with the economy up until turn 120, when I researched FTL Communications and suddenly trading technology appeared. This has made a huge impact on my cash flow, and I've been able to wipe out one of the AI empires. However, the stars started going out, one by one. The cause of that was soon visable, but with Fusion, purple lazors and missiles, there was simply no way I was able to stop that particular menace. After eating 10 or so stars, it appears to have gone away. Does that particular menace go away on its own?

The real frustration is that after that, somewhere around turn 180, and many turns of painful terraforming, a VN Berserker popped out of nowhere and just creamed the few fusion torpedo platforms and pickets I had around my colony closest to the remaining Hivers. No warning, just SPLAT. I'm still comfortably ahead, but this was screamingly frustrating. I should mention that one of my frieghter captains asked "Do you smell something sweet?" but thankfully nothing seems to have come from that so far. I guess what I'm concerned about is even with 10 small satellites and 10 torpedo platforms, I don't think I could do a thing to stop this entity from eating my lunch. Should I be putting a garrison on all of my colonies? I can't imagine how I could do that and have a war effort.

What am I doing wrong? I think it might be playing with random events, but is there anything else I should have been doing? One horrible colony eating random thing seems enough for any one game.

END SPOILERS

[Therlun]

Random menaces are very annoying. Even more so in MP where they can completely fuck you over.

The Berserkers are an enhanced version of the normal Neumanns they appear if you destroy normal Neumann motherships.
Berserkers are nasty because they come with in large numbers and other than other menaces in many varied forms. Without a real fleet Berserkers are difficult to defeat.
A full ring of medium sattelites and a few advanced ships works well vs them, the satellites kill the planet attacking tetraedons, and sufficiently advanced ships at least can keep the various kinds of other Berserkers at bay long enough to save the colony.

[Rorschach]

Spoliers continue in this post.

There's two classes of random encounters in SotS. The "minor" encounters are things like Spectres, Slavers, Derelicts, the Swarm, etc.

The Planet Killer you ran into is a Grand Menace and you will get at most one GM per game. The Planet Killer moves through your map going a little bit out of the way to eat planets but in general will move across the map.

In AMoC and ANY the Von Neumanns were upgraded to something inbetween a random menace and an empire. VNs don't count as a Grand Menace although they have the potential to be that powerful. Kind of like an AI rebellion.

The VN harvesters will gather resources all across the map. If the harvester mothership is destroyed and the VN has enough resources it will build a Berserker to attack the place it was destroyed. There's a third level of escalation for the VN if Berserkers are ineffectual.

VNs can be mitigated in numerous ways. If you foil their resource gathering they won't have the capacity to build Berserkers (and worse) but space is big and the other empires may not be as good at it as you. You can stay out of their way by killing the small harvesters but not the big mothership. If you build a science station it will give you a 1 turn warning on VNs and any other random menaces on that colony. Or you can go for broke and find the VN homeworld and destroy it, removing the threat of VNs from the game.

I don't think you did anything "wrong". If you like I could load up your save file and look at the details but from what you described it sounds like you're doing fine. The thing about SotS is the randomness of the game will occasionaly hose you over and bring a world of hurt on you. Then some games it seems like the universe is made for you and you're welcomed with open arms. It can be frustrating, but the variety keeps you from playing the game the same way every time.

[MikeJ]

What am I doing wrong? I think it might be playing with random events, but is there anything else I should have been doing? One horrible colony eating random thing seems enough for any one game.


Turning down the random events slider will certainly take those factors out of the game if you want them gone. I tend to play with them, as it makes things a bit more interesting. Are you playing humans? The System Killer can be a real pain for humans as it can sever the nodeline network (though the existence of trade nodes can be used as a workaround for this).

Overall, the grand menaces are rather imposing and can be frustrating. However, when you take one out, it feels like a great accomplishment. It would be nice if their appearance were keyed more to the general level of tech the players have achieved.

[Jonathan Crane]

Thanks to all for the advice about the random menaces. It was somewhat comforting to know that the particular one I'm dealing with isn't actually random, and that I can control it to some extent. I actually rather like the idea that there are Bad Things Between the Stars, but having them roll over you is still pretty tough.

Is there a significant benefit to building the Science station (or any of the stations?) They seem like they cost A LOT, and I'm hoping for a commensurate benefit. Or are they just a marginal money sink?

Also, is there any way to refit an earlier version of a ship type to a NEW IMPROVED version? I'm close to getting phasers and I'd love to refit my aging fleet.

[MikeJ]

Is there a significant benefit to building the Science station (or any of the stations?) They seem like they cost A LOT, and I'm hoping for a commensurate benefit. Or are they just a marginal money sink?

I think they give you a research boost, but I'm not sure. Also, there's some station that gives you warning of cloaked fleets, and I think that's the science station.


Also, is there any way to refit an earlier version of a ship type to a NEW IMPROVED version? I'm close to getting phasers and I'd love to refit my aging fleet.

You can't refit ships. You do, however, get some portion of the construction points back when you scuttle a ship at a colony, so it can help you build new ships faster and at somewhat less expense. There's a tech off of heavy platforms called zero-G deconstruction that triples the amount of construction points you get back when you scuttle.

Phasers aren't amazing damage-per-second, but they are amazingly accurate.

[Rorschach]

I think they give you a research boost, but I'm not sure. Also, there's some station that gives you warning of cloaked fleets, and I think that's the science station.

A science station improves your $ to research point conversion by 5%. i.e. increases research by 5%. That stacks with multiple science stations. And it warns you of random menaces for that colony including Von Neumann attacks.

A sensor station provides detection of cloaked fleets on the strategic map and nearby on the tactical map.

Sensor satellites provides detection of cloaked ships in the tactical battles like deep-scan command sections but no strategic capabilities.

Cloak detection requires the Tunneling Sensors tech.

[Grifman]

Well, it turns out Gamersgate is also in Sweden - how convenient. I've emailed them both complaining about this practice, saying I want my $20 back. We'll see what they say. I'm also thinking about complaining to Mastercard that these two companies are engaging in unethical practices. If I can cause them to spend more than $20 dealing with my complaint then that's about all I can do to get justice.

I just wanted in fairness to let everyone know that I emailed both Gamersgate and Paynova about the problem and they both graciously responded. Both apologized and said that this should not have happened. Paynova even offered to pay the $20 fee my bank charged me. Luckily I had gotten my bank to waive the fee so I told them this was not necessary, but I thanked them for their prompt response.

However, I did email both and told them that I knew of others that had had the same problem and suggested that they needed to investigate this further, but that's up to them. I offered to supply them with my transaction number from Paynova/Gamersgate if that would help them track it down - that's their call though. But I did want everyone here to know that they did promptly response and offer to make me whole.

[Huzurdaddi]

Phasers aren't amazing damage-per-second, but they are amazingly accurate.

I find that that red lasers->green lasers->UV lasers->X ray lasers->phasers is just about all of the weapons you need in most games (oh and point defense). They all seem pretty efficient in terms of DPS (when you factor in accuracy) for their tech level and the tree you have to research is very compact. It is a shame that I don't need to branch out my research, I mean I want to try out Heavy Fusion Cannons (for instance) but they don't seem to add my to the overall firepower of my ships and they cost me research time.

What am I doing wrong?!!

[Grifman]

I find that that red lasers->green lasers->UV lasers->X ray lasers->phasers is just about all of the weapons you need in most games (oh and point defense). They all seem pretty efficient in terms of DPS (when you factor in accuracy) for their tech level and the tree you have to research is very compact. It is a shame that I don't need to branch out my research, I mean I want to try out Heavy Fusion Cannons (for instance) but they don't seem to add my to the overall firepower of my ships and they cost me research time.

What am I doing wrong?!!

Something bad. HFC outpunch and outrange phasers and aren't bad accuracy wise. And heavy AM cannons, meson beams, or even AP heavy drivers will kill your laser/phaser armed fleets.

What size galaxies are you playing in? If they are too small, hi tech games may not occur as you're winning too early. Play an 8 race, 160 star galaxy and I'll guarantee you that lasers/phasers won't win it for you most of the time.

[Huzurdaddi]

And heavy AM cannons, meson beams, ... will kill your laser/phaser armed fleets.

Well sure, items that are considerably higher up the tech tree will beat up on the laser/phaser fleets, the problem is with items that are of comparable technology (actually slightly higher, given the compactness of the research tree you need for laser->phaser).



HFC outpunch and outrange phasers and aren't bad accuracy wise.

HFC's aren't bad accuracy wise, true enough, but when you take the product of DPS times accuracy phasers seem competitive. HFC's are what, about 90 DPS, and phasers are about 40 DPS. I specifically picked HFC's since they have some of the best stats out there (at that tech level, clearly later stuff has better numbers), but even here when you factor in accuracy you are not losing that much and you need a lot of techs to get those HFCs (maybe, maybe 50% more firepower for your heavy slots, probably less, so maybe a 10-ish percent improvement for you fleet, maybe. I guess this would be easy enough to test, next game I play when I get around this level make half of my cruisers have HFC's in their heavy slots and half phasers and see what I get ... Hmmm I would need to put something other than phasers in my medium slots to get good stats... but ... but ... I'll lose!!).



or even AP heavy drivers

I don't know about that. Do have AP drivers out damage phasers when you factor in accuracy? It sure doesn't seem like it to me, but I have not been rigorous in my tests!

BTW: this is the best 4x space game in a long time. Very, very impressive work!

[Squee]

Just struck me, do any non-missile weapons hit planets? I haven't noticed any attacking planets, but I haven't attacked many planets yet either. Figure I should ask now before I get caught with my pants down and no way to bombard a planet.

[Huzurdaddi]

Just struck me, do any non-missile weapons hit planets? I haven't noticed any attacking planets, but I haven't attacked many planets yet either. Figure I should ask now before I get caught with my pants down and no way to bombard a planet.

They sure do. Check out the awesome wiki (http://sots.rorschach.net/), for example you will see that the HFC we were talking about does 150,000 (http://sots.rorschach.net/Heavy_Fusion_Cannon) population damage per shot.

Although for busting up planets I like the assault shuttle (http://sots.rorschach.net/Assault_Shuttle) old fashioned but it gets the job done, and available right from the start!

[MikeJ]

Sticking to just the laser tree will lead you very vulnerable to any race that likes to use improved reflective coating. Phasors don't suffer from the reflection problem, and they have perfect accuracy, but their DPS is really lacking.

Phasors come out to 18.2 DPS. Your basic armor-piercing mass driver has only 22.9, but jumps to 34.4 with neutronium and they get another bump with impactor tech. Against cruisers, AP mass drivers will miss sometimes, but they also have significantly higher range.

A Chakkar cannon clocks in at 32 DPS (better or worse depending on range), they have pretty decent accuracy and they get an effective bump in damage against heavily-armored targets.

A fusion cannon is at 41.7 dps at it's optimal range, which covers almost all brawling ranges. The accuracy is not good, but they are going to be hitting cruisers much better than half the time at brawling ranges, and you can improve the accuracy. AM cannons have a wider brawling range bracket where they have 58.3 DPS. Dual pulse phasors are pretty accurate and have 40 DPS.

When stacked against true large mounts, the picture is worse. Dual phasors have 36.4 DPS against heavy fusion cannons with a very wide range bracket of 93.8 DPS, heavy AM cannons with an even wider bracket of 131.3 DPS or Meson beams with all the accuracy of dual phasors but better range and 110 DPS.

[Squee]

They sure do. Check out the awesome wiki (http://sots.rorschach.net/), for example you will see that the HFC we were talking about does 150,000 (http://sots.rorschach.net/Heavy_Fusion_Cannon) population damage per shot.

Although for busting up planets I like the assault shuttle (http://sots.rorschach.net/Assault_Shuttle) old fashioned but it gets the job done, and available right from the start!
Oh, excellent. I had been wondering about those assault shuttles too. Might have to make a few carriers next time I'm planning on attacking a planet.

[Rorschach]

DPS is an okay stat but don't forget range, traversal speeds, and all the other things that can change effectiveness when you sim the combat. Phasors are on medium turrets which traverse faster than the large turrets of a heavy energy cannon or weapons in the particle beam line even they all have "great" accuracy.

Also ballistic weapons will knock around your targets reducing their weapons' effective DPS. Then there's the hard defensive counters for energy weapons like reflec armor, disrupter shields, energy absorbers and meson shields.

[MikeJ]

Phasors are on medium turrets which traverse faster than the large turrets of a heavy energy cannon or weapons in the particle beam line even they all have "great" accuracy.

Phasors still traverse at only 60% normal for the turret, which pretty much removes the medium turret tracking advantage over large, and means that Phasors are actually at a tracking disadvantage if you dual mount them in a large turret. However, I've never noticed this to be an issue, to be honest.

There are certainly a lot of factors to consider when thinking about what weapons to research and use (and HOW to use them in tactical). I focus on DPS because I consider that Phasor's weak point to balance their accuracy.

[Quitch]

I just like to rush to cruisers, get mass drivers and fight. It's not a great tactic, but watching my cruisers punch through a destroyer line, sending them spinning off into space... it's too beautiful for words :)

[Grifman]

Well sure, items that are considerably higher up the tech tree will beat up on the laser/phaser fleets, the problem is with items that are of comparable technology (actually slightly higher, given the compactness of the research tree you need for laser->phaser).

Ah, you didn't specify equivalent techs, my bad.



HFC's aren't bad accuracy wise, true enough, but when you take the product of DPS times accuracy phasers seem competitive. HFC's are what, about 90 DPS, and phasers are about 40 DPS. I specifically picked HFC's since they have some of the best stats out there (at that tech level, clearly later stuff has better numbers), but even here when you factor in accuracy you are not losing that much and you need a lot of techs to get those HFCs (maybe, maybe 50% more firepower for your heavy slots, probably less, so maybe a 10-ish percent improvement for you fleet, maybe. I guess this would be easy enough to test, next game I play when I get around this level make half of my cruisers have HFC's in their heavy slots and half phasers and see what I get ... Hmmm I would need to put something other than phasers in my medium slots to get good stats... but ... but ... I'll lose!!).

I don't know about that. Do have AP drivers out damage phasers when you factor in accuracy? It sure doesn't seem like it to me, but I have not been rigorous in my tests!

You need to check out the SOTS wiki which has all the weapon stats:

http://sots.rorschach.net/Main_Page

The phasor does 200 damage per sec/shot, recharges in 11 seconds, and has a range of 750 yards.

However, the HFC fire 3 bolts, with each bolt hitting with 250 points of damage for a total of 750 points (at effective range) compared with only 200 points for a phasor with a maximum range of 1600 yards. Even if you average in the lower points for minimum and maximum ranges, the HFC is going to come out ahead. In addition the HFC recharges in 8 seconds compared with the phasor at 11. I don't see how the phasor even comes close given it does less damage, takes longer to recharge, and has a shorter range.

AP heavy driver do 250 damage at all ranges, again out damaging phasors. And they recharge in 6 seconds, so they fire twice as fast. And they have a range of 1500 yards. Overall, clearly superior to phasors.

Summarizing, both have more damage per shot, fire more often, and have a significantly longer range. There's no way phasers are competitive, even with doubling by putting two phasor in a large weapons slot.


BTW: this is the best 4x space game in a long time. Very, very impressive work!

On that we definitely agree!

[Hoplite]

Anyone know if this will run on a netbook with at 1024x600 display? Yeah, I know why would you want to, but hey sometimes it is all I have with me.

[Rorschach]

Good call Mike. I forgot that phasors have the traversal penalty.

Hoplite, if you run in windowed mode you can stretch the resolution to any size. I doubt it will work well on a netbook though since combat is in 3d and calculation intensive.

EDIT: Actually I think the minimum resolution for the game is 1024x768, windowed or fullscreen.

[Therlun]

Anyone know if this will run on a netbook with at 1024x600 display? Yeah, I know why would you want to, but hey sometimes it is all I have with me.

Window mode allows you to play at any resolution.

[Jonathan Crane]

Although for busting up planets I like the assault shuttle (http://sots.rorschach.net/Assault_Shuttle) old fashioned but it gets the job done, and available right from the start!

With a CnC vessel, it seems that your replacements arrive where your CnC is, rather than at the spawn point for a battle. Does this work with assault shuttles? ie could I have my chaff charge the planet and once they run the gauntlet have the assault shuttles pop in and launch?

[Jonathan Crane]

What size galaxies are you playing in? If they are too small, hi tech games may not occur as you're winning too early. Play an 8 race, 160 star galaxy and I'll guarantee you that lasers/phasers won't win it for you most of the time.

How long does it take you to play through that? I'm playing on 51 star discs with 2 AI opponents and it seems like this game is lasting forever (in a good way). Admittedly, I'm stumbling along learning the game, but an epic like you describe sounds like a month's commitment at least.

[Therlun]

With a CnC vessel, it seems that your replacements arrive where your CnC is, rather than at the spawn point for a battle. Does this work with assault shuttles? ie could I have my chaff charge the planet and once they run the gauntlet have the assault shuttles pop in and launch?

Yes.

While the CnC system really limits the "big battles" feeling it adds some tactical choices.
While defending for instance you can send a first wave of warships at the enemy for a single flyby, then retreat at the edge of the map and have the second wave spawn at the CnC you left at the planet.
It can be useful if the ships of your race are slow to manoeuvre, you have a superior fleet and want to protect a newly founded colony from being wiped out.
Sounds very conditional but its actually a pretty common scenario in the early game colony-wars in MP games.

[MikeJ]

With a CnC vessel, it seems that your replacements arrive where your CnC is, rather than at the spawn point for a battle. Does this work with assault shuttles? ie could I have my chaff charge the planet and once they run the gauntlet have the assault shuttles pop in and launch?

The limiting factor is that ships have to be a certain distance from enemy presence before they can retreat to reserves. So to get your assault shuttle ships in, you either have to move your 'chaff' back a bit once they reach the planet, swap them out partway to the planet, or wait until they die.


How long does it take you to play through that? I'm playing on 51 star discs with 2 AI opponents and it seems like this game is lasting forever (in a good way). Admittedly, I'm stumbling along learning the game, but an epic like you describe sounds like a month's commitment at least.

I'm on turn 260 of a 160 star, 8-player map (about to start wrapping it up), set up to be pretty challenging and I wouldn't be surprised if I've spent 20 hours on it. It slows it down a bit because I'm taking notes and screenshots and I have to pay attention or I will get run over by the huge AI fleets.

However, if you play on a big map and play most battles in tactical, it's going to take some time. It's actually a bit of a problem in SotS. It would go much faster if I auto'd more battles, but I always know that I can do better in tactical, so it's hard to resist. So then I end up setting challenges so I pretty much *need* to play in tactical a lot to win.

I think next time I'm going to play in smaller maps with faster research to somewhat compensate for the smaller economies. This business where the AI can throw a dozen dreadnaughts at you every turn is too stressful.

[Therlun]

I think next time I'm going to play in smaller maps with faster research to somewhat compensate for the smaller economies. This business where the AI can throw a dozen dreadnaughts at you every turn is too stressful.

Research scales with map size.

[MikeJ]

Research scales with map size.

Well, that's good to know. I guess I usually play between 120 and 160, so I never noticed.

[Grifman]

Ha! Sometimes you just have to go with what the game gives you . . .

I'm playing a globular cluster map as the humans. My cluster has lots of habitable planets but most are on the small side, other than my homeworld I have only 1 as large as 7, and probably half are 3 or less. I do have links to two different clusters in which I managed to colonize a system each and fortify as bridgeheads for further advances in those clusters.

However, the tech tree royally screwed me - almost. Ballistics gave me AP - but no neutronium rounds, no railguns. So my usual reliance on ballistics for mid game passed away. But wait, it gets worse.

Beams and cannons screwed me just as bad. I have no cannons other than vanilla plasma cannon. That's it - no fusion, no heavy cannons, no projectors, no AM. No link from fusion or AM to cannons. Heavy turrets I have nothing other than the basic particle beam - no neutron, positron, meson. Fixed beams gave me lancers but you can't live by fixed beams. Too inflexible.

But there was a little sign of hope. I did get phasors, PD phasors and pulse phasors. But my problem is that I have no good heavy weapons. My dreads will get killed because the Liir are nearby, aggressive, and they have heavy AM cannon, meson beams, and at least fusion projectors - and we both have magnoceramic armor. What's a guy to do?

Well, here's where the tech tree smiled a little more at me. First off, I did get both command techs that allow you to field more ships. And I did get shield 4 with shield enhancers, doubling their strength. But you can't put these on dreads.

So I went against my desire/inclination for big ship battle line tactics. I created a fleet of "Defiant" class DE's. Think of the Defiant in ST, small powerful, overgunned. These have Mk 4 shields, and every slot is filled with pulse phasers. My fleets consist of just one CNC dread, and a swarm of 40 to 50 Defiants. Because of the additional CNC techs and the fact that I always significantly outnumber the Lirr and get the outnumbering bonus, I can put on the battlefield 1 dread and 30 DE's. The dread hangs back, lobs some torpedos in (I did get AM) and moves in with Lancers when the time looks right. The DE's just swarm whatever dread I point them at and attack it until it's dead :) When I look at the battle results, my pulse phasors are doing 100k to 200k damage.

It works wonders. The Liir dreads are loaded to kill my dreads, heavy AM cannon, meson beans, lancers - but instead they get swarmed by small, swift shielded powerful gnats :) So far in the Great Liir War, I have retaken 3 worlds that the fish took from me early on and 3 others I never owned, and the losses are like this:

Humans
1 DN
55 DE

Liir
12 DN
8 CR

I've stolen a ton of tech also, but since research for upper level salvaged tech takes so long, I'll probably never see any of it :( I'll just have to keep up with the swarmer tactics. It's been an interesting game, and I have to pat myself on the back for figuring out a way to pull this one out! :)

[MikeJ]

I like fielding max-shielded destroyers with pulse phasors whenever I can. Too bad the Meson beams cut through the shields though. I guess you can't have everything. Did you use the strafe section for added firepower?

[Grifman]

I like fielding max-shielded destroyers with pulse phasors whenever I can. Too bad the Meson beams cut through the shields though. I guess you can't have everything. Did you use the strafe section for added firepower?

Yep, didn't care about PD (the Liir weren't using missiles anyway). I think I had 4 in the strafe section, two other small turrets and two mediums that I put PP in also, so that's about 10 PP worth, and these have the hitting power of a medium turret of anything else, I think. That's a lot of firepower for a destroyer. The strafe section makes a huge difference.

Yeah, mesons do cut through shields but it's a bit overkill for a destroyer. He just didn't have enough guns for everything I was throwing at him, epecially since they were shielded.

I'm usually a DN guy, so it was interesting coming up with something a bit more out of left field - but I think giving you that ability is the mark of a good game.

FYI, the wiki is a bit misleading about shields. From reading the wiki you'd think the shield hp were the same no matter the size of the ship. I thought that was odd and posted a question about it and one of the developers came on and said that there is multiplier based upon ship size, which makes more sense.

[Jonathan Crane]

Research scales with map size.

Is that independent of the Research efficiency slider you have at game set up?

[Therlun]

Is that independent of the Research efficiency slider you have at game set up?

Uhh, apparently I was wrong and research does not scale with map size.
So just ignore that post. ^^

[Rorschach]

Well research == money in SotS so the more planets you have the bigger your budget and the more you can put into research per turn.

[Enidigm]

How do i defeat an Asteroid Monitor?

I have over 15 Cruiser class ships, all with massive loadouts of fully upgraded missiles and heavy armor piercing mass drivers. I have at least two command ships and over 64 command points.

However, when battle begins, i end up with the dregs of my fleet - like 2 refinery ships and a couple of melee ships - and end up doing a missile dual for 3:30. I can't seem to inflict any damage upon it permanently, i guess it's repairing whatever damage i do to it between battles.

So am i supposed to just charge ahead and lose 3/4 of my cruisers to defeat it or something? I feel like i could beat it if i could bring 10-15 cruisers at once, but bringing only 6 at a time feels like a losing proposition.

[Rorschach]

Well I'll assume that this is later in the game and the AM is controlled by another empire so you can't hack into your own control.

The thing to recognize is all the weapons on an asteroid monitor are ballistics or missiles. So a ship with a deflector is 100% immune to its weapons as long as you stay head on.

Of course this isn't true for "modern built" AMs that can have a varied weapon load out.

[schurem]

you might wanna tell your shooters to target specific parts of it, for example the guns ;-)

[Lorini]

I have a couple of Asteroid Monitors but I don't understand them. What's the big deal about them?

[Enidigm]

I guess i don't get fleets then. I have several CnC ships but no "circular button" to select a fleet formation. Where do i find this button?

[Enidigm]

you might wanna tell your shooters to target specific parts of it, for example the guns ;-)

How do i tell ships to target a specific part without running forward and getting killed? The asteroid monitor is constantly spinning, and there are no shields available in my game (due to random tech). I would like to target specific parts with my missiles but i'm not sure that's possible.

[Enidigm]

I have a couple of Asteroid Monitors but I don't understand them. What's the big deal about them?

The big deal is that they're very hard to kill, apparently.

[MarinusWA]

The original ones are very though. The Neo monitors you can build after research not so much.

[Rorschach]

How do i tell ships to target a specific part without running forward and getting killed? The asteroid monitor is constantly spinning, and there are no shields available in my game (due to random tech). I would like to target specific parts with my missiles but i'm not sure that's possible.

Make sure they're in standard mode (Backspace to cancel any other mode). Close to Attack or Pursuit modes will have them move on their own.

Go after the planet missile launchers first.

[Enidigm]

Finally broke through by increasing the tactical game length :). Then the lizard show up with deflectors. I've moved up to 6th place. So far, it's been more amusing then i had expected it to be!

[Huzurdaddi]

Do deflectors work well in planetary assaults? I would have figured with the planetary missiles coming from above and below the plane that deflectors would be almost useless.

Seems like they would be nice, but micro intensive, when engaging fleets though (disclaimer:I have never really tried them, other than as toys). Honestly, I just put a some PD on all of my armor ships (2-4 PD per DD) and I find that works pretty well.

[Enidigm]

Deflectors seem to work very, very well at closing distance. They sort of suck a bit when dealing with satellite aggro, but they still block close to 50% (not quite) of all incoming projectile fire.

Anti-sat fire works 95% of the time, but even with fully dedicated PD ships, missiles occasionally get through when the banks are reloading. Good enough to waste a planet though.

My human fleet is made up of ships with armor-piercing Mass Drivers, upgraded missiles (the increased effectiveness of which through upgrades i can't seem to discern), and anti-missile lasers. Now that Deflectors are showing up i'm afraid that i'm going to have to go down the laser line which i have thus far neglected. But even then, AP Drivers seem to just rake enemy ships. My favorite useless ship is a "Wolf" class Pursuit mission DE with nothing but AP Drivers. These deal quite a bit of damage and are fast enough for a bit of flanking, but tend to die at their task.

[Grifman]

My human fleet is made up of ships with armor-piercing Mass Drivers, upgraded missiles (the increased effectiveness of which through upgrades i can't seem to discern),

Check battle/damage stats after a battle and you'll they're doing more.


and anti-missile lasers. Now that Deflectors are showing up i'm afraid that i'm going to have to go down the laser line which i have thus far neglected. But even then, AP Drivers seem to just rake enemy ships.

AP is great until deflectors show up, but you're not totally helpless. Just make sure you have a battlebridge with a heavy combat laser on your ballistic ships. The deflector is in the bow of the ship. Focus fire all your ships' HCL on the bow of one ship and you'll pop the deflector. Destroy that ship, then move to the next and do the same. Or mix in a couple of blazers with your AP ships, use the blazers to pop the deflectors, then take them out with driver fire.

[Soapyfrog]

I am still confounded that they have stuck with the terrible research interface; it's like that useless 3D gimmick was someone's baby that they just won't let go. So cumbersome. So uninformative.

Having a lot of fun with the game otherwise though.

[Squee]

Hahaha!

Don't know if it was by design for the AI or just bad luck for me, but I just lost some cruisers to a bunch of destroyers.
Attacked a heavily defended enemy colony, I had cruisers and the AI didn't, figured I was going to mop up. My formation of 4 cruisers and 3 destroyers move toward the enemy planet, a large swarm of enemy destroyers moves forward with nukes fired from the planet, the cruisers mostly shrug them off and start crushing destroyers. The enemy destroyer swarm takes massive casualties but manages to get behind my cruisers. Everything seems fine until they destroy the engines on all my cruisers almost at once.
The cruisers drift forward.
The cruisers fire their weapons wildly at the enemy destroyers.
The cruisers smack into the planet and die, except for one, which just barely misses it.

Still mostly won the battle, taking 6 casualties and blowing up 31 enemies and 400,000-odd people on the planet, but that cracked me up. Even if it was just dumb luck for the AI, it was memorable as hell.

[Jonathan Crane]

I'm curious - where do you leave the research slider in your game? I've been setting it at around 3/4 as humans, though sometimes adjusting it up or down if I feel that I NEED a tech. Sometimes I feel that I'm not building enough ships, so I wonder where everyone else sets it.

[Enidigm]

I'm curious - where do you leave the research slider in your game? I've been setting it at around 3/4 as humans, though sometimes adjusting it up or down if I feel that I NEED a tech. Sometimes I feel that I'm not building enough ships, so I wonder where everyone else sets it.

I had to stop research until i accumulated 5m in the bank because too many of my planets were edging to rebellion. Edging the pop slider up only gave a minor and temporary morale boost.

[Squee]

I generally leave it around 3/4 as humans as well, though I was playing a small map easy AI game. Against more enemies I'd probably have to cut back so I could spend more on ships.

[deccan]

Just started getting into this due to all the recommendations on QT3. I've been wondering what happens if you play human and all of the node lines from your initial home system are more than 9 light years away? Your ER scouts can make the jump, but your colonizers can't, so what to do?

[Lorini]

Unlike most sci fi games where playing humans is the default, playing humans is harder in this game. Try Tarkas instead.

[Rorschach]

@Johnathan, One thing to keep in mind is that the chances for breakthrough on tech starts at 50% of budget. So if I'm "microing" the research slider I'll push it at hard as I can up to 50%, back off a bit after that, and cut funding heavily if it starts going over budget. But most of the time I'll keep it at around 3/4 unless I need cash or a critical tech.

@TheSelfishGene, You can also counter morale problems with a trade network, police cutters, and propaganda ships. Oh, and if you max out the civilian population slider you'll never get the -1/turn just the loss of permanent resources every turn.

@deccan, Pulsed Fission, Recombinant Fissionables, and Node Focusing are all early game techs that will increase your range. Keep scouting with the ER ships while you get the tech.

[Quitch]

Unlike most sci fi games where playing humans is the default, playing humans is harder in this game. Try Tarkas instead.

I find humans much easier to play on non-2D maps because the node lines provide a good visualisation of the 3D that the glowing dots don't.

[Huzurdaddi]

The End of Flesh scenario, it is the one where the AI's rebel, is great. Big Galaxy, everyone has enough tech right off the bat to make things interesting and everyone wants to fight.

I just started it up and I am loving it.

[deccan]

Man, I can't tell what's going on the battles. How do I know how effective my weapons are against them or how effective theirs' are against me? How do I can tell which parts of enemy ships do what?

[MikeJ]

Man, I can't tell what's going on the battles. How do I know how effective my weapons are against them or how effective theirs' are against me? How do I can tell which parts of enemy ships do what?

You can get some idea by looking at the summary information after the battle. (Click on the (i) in the news item on the turn after the battle, you can also look this up in history). It shows damage dished out and received by ship class, friendly and enemy, as well as a breakdown of damage by weapon type. You can also browse through the SotS wiki to get a sense of the strengths and weaknesses of the different types.

Generally though, you just watch the battles. If your cruiser fires a salvo which blows an enemy cruiser in half, that's good. If 75% of your shots are deflecting off, that's bad. Keep a particular eye on whether you're actually hitting the enemy. With fairly rare exceptions, if a weapon actually hits the enemy and doesn't bounce off, it's doing full damage. Some weapons vary damage by range and you can sometimes see this as well. So a plasma/fusion/AM torpedo will change in size according to how much damage it has.

As for which sections do what, you get a pretty good idea by looking. Does it have big green missiles sticking out? Biowar. One or more assault shuttles slung underneath? Assault. If there is some kind of energy shield on the ship, then look for the part that has glowy shield emanators sticking out.

[McCrank]

So I've got a total noob question I think.

Starting the game each time, once I try to inhabit my first planet, I run into these "planet traps" that totally whipe out my fleet. How do I beat these things?

-Chris

[Rorschach]

Colonizer traps only trigger once, so the next time you attempt colonization you'll be safe. Against drones point defense is your best bet and since the colony trap drones have reflective armor gauss PD is more effective.

[deccan]

Another quick question here. Is there a way to alter a fleet's formation in combat? Or a way to make a whole formation of ships face a different direction, like the Total War games?

[grinningman]

Shift + right click and drag rotates your fleet formation.

Edit: I just fielded a CR fleet of impactors for the first time - loads of fun!

[marxeil]

I got this during the recent sales over at GamersGate and started to poke around. This game is intimidating. I feel like my dad when he tries some new software. The manual is terrible and the tutorials are painfully slow. Any other resource to get to grips with this game?

[MikeJ]

I got this during the recent sales over at GamersGate and started to poke around. This game is intimidating. I feel like my dad when he tries some new software. The manual is terrible and the tutorials are painfully slow. Any other resource to get to grips with this game?

Check out Rorschach's wiki: http://sots.rorschach.net/

That's probably the best resource. Kerberos also has a forum and there's a fair number of people there who are willing to provide pretty extensive anwers to questions.

[marxeil]

Check out Rorschach's wiki: http://sots.rorschach.net/

That's probably the best resource. Kerberos also has a forum and there's a fair number of people there who are willing to provide pretty extensive anwers to questions.
Wow. Is it only me, or is this 10 times more complicated then say Civ4 or GalCiv2?

[Grifman]

Wow. Is it only me, or is this 10 times more complicated then say Civ4 or GalCiv2?

To be honest, I'd have to say it's you.

The game has far less economic management than either - you don't build structures at all.

The diplomacy options are also less, IMO, but maybe because it's rather opaque and hard to grok.

Research is no less/no more harder.

The only thing more complicated is ship design, which is where the game shines, and the RT combat resulting from your ship designs. But that's the fun part.

I found this game far easier to learn than a Civ type game.

[MikeJ]

Wow. Is it only me, or is this 10 times more complicated then say Civ4 or GalCiv2?

I'd say it's about the same level of complexity as GalCiv2. The thing is, you probably already know everything about GalCiv2, while SotS is new.

The economy in SotS is very simple. You only have to sorta pay attention to colonies in their growing stage, there are no planetary buildings or anything. Just make sure to colonize decent planets to start and use 5 or so colonizers (more for more hazardous planets). Put the slider to concentrate on building mostly infrastructure (with increasing emphasis on terraforming for more hazardous planets). That's basically it.

Most of the complexity is in the variety of weapons, but you can just try stuff and see how it goes.

[marxeil]

To be honest, I'd have to say it's you.
Well, that's mildly insulting :)
I'll just stop being lazy.

[Rorschach]

For your first game I recommend playing Tarkas on a Disc (if you're 3D averse) or Clouds (gives you some growing room before bumping into neighbors) map with no more than 3 other opponents and no more than 15 stars per player. Leave everything else at default except maybe easy difficulty (boosts you 150% econ and research).

As mentioned upthread the best tip for the early game is expand quickly. Colonize everything under 250 Hazard Rating with at least 5 colonizers. During peacetime research industrial and biotechs to grow your empire but keep enough forces to handle the unknown menaces. Once war breaks out build up your fleets, you can win with numbers over technology. Make sure you research Battle Computers and include Command and Control ships in each warfleet to manage initial formation and order of reserves.

Fusion and Anti-matter are the "tech tiers" for SotS. It's a big decision when to "tier up" to fusion. Lesser tiers are the jump from destroyers to cruisers to dreadnoughts.

If you get stuck reload the game as one of the other players and see what the AI is doing different from you, especially if there's an AI the same race as you.

You may get hosed by the randomness of planets, techs, unknown menaces, etc. etc. Don't get frustrated, learn as much as you can so if it becomes hopeless you'll be able to handle it better next time. Also because of the randomness there's no one "right" tech order or ship design so keep an open mind and a willingness to try new techs, ships, and tactics.

Good luck. Hope you enjoy it.

[Grifman]

Well, that's mildly insulting :)
I'll just stop being lazy.

Never ask a question for which you aren't prepared for the answer :)

Seriously, it's a great game, and if you have a specific question, ask and I'll try to help.

Is that better? :)

[marxeil]

Never ask a question for which you aren't prepared for the answer :)

Seriously, it's a great game, and if you have a specific question, ask and I'll try to help.

Is that better? :)
The smiley was meant to convey that no insult was taken. All in good humor, cheers and all that :)
(another smiley - yes?)

I'll get my teeth in it tonight.

[schurem]

the utter 3d-ness of the galaxy map can be hard to grok too. distances play a big role, and are not always clear. i suggest you twist the map around a lot, and use mouse-hovering to get an indication of distances.
SotS is all about the ships. Economy and diplomacy are just ways to get ships to smash eachother. once you get the proper way of starting an economy down, its all gravy. and thats easy, just like rohrschacht said, five (or more) colonizers to anything with a hazard rating between -200 and +200 until you meet something that bites back repeatedly.

[Quitch]

You can drag lines between planets to get distance measurements. I think it's right-click and drag from planet to planet... or left, I forget.

I found that dimming the uninhabited planets really helps both distance and clarity.

[deccan]

Just make sure to colonize decent planets to start and use 5 or so colonizers (more for more hazardous planets). Put the slider to concentrate on building mostly infrastructure (with increasing emphasis on terraforming for more hazardous planets). That's basically it.


I thought the rule of thumb was the opposite? On low hazard worlds, work on terraforming first to get it done quickly and then use the population boom that results to finish off infrastructure. On high hazard worlds, maximize infrastructure first because it's going to take a long, long while to terraform it.

After a couple of weeks at this game, I'm still finding that I suck at the initial expansion and I don't get what I'm doing wrong. I've tried tons of stuff like building lots of colonizers for each planet. I've even tried following it up with a steady stream of colonizer ships to bring in new colonists and a small infrastructure boost to new planets. But I can't seem to strike the right balance as the AI out-builds and out-expands me nearly every time. On the other hand, I find that I can easily be number 1 in ships while being number 4 or 5 in everything else, which suggests to me that I may be building too many ships and not spending enough to develop new colonies.

Generally speaking, at what percentage of your budget do you keep your Planetary Development spending?

[Grifman]

Unless a planet is strategic for some reason, my colonization strategy is simple:

1) Send out ships everywhere, constantly finding new worlds
2) Colonize first all planets under 150
3) As the last of those comes on line and becomes profitable start with those between 150 and 250 (back filling gaps)
4) Then as your economy grows you can take on those between 250 and 350

I keep savings at 25%, research and colonization/development expenses at 75%, varying the split between them depending upon what my more immediate need are. I'll focus on industrial and bio techs early on, better to get the systems up and running, then some armor/weapon techs once I run into enemy scouts.

[MikeJ]

I thought the rule of thumb was the opposite? On low hazard worlds, work on terraforming first to get it done quickly and then use the population boom that results to finish off infrastructure. On high hazard worlds, maximize infrastructure first because it's going to take a long, long while to terraform it.

On a low-hazard world, you are going to get quick population growth whether you do terraforming or not. Hence you will have lots of people to work whatever infrastructure you manage to build. On a high-hazard world, your pop is going to grow slowly until you knock down the hazard. Building lots of infra with no pop to run it is pointless. If your industry number is red, it means you don't have the pop to run all of your infra.

Edit: Planet development has changed since the initial version. It used to be you only needed 10k pop to run all your infra, but now you need 100 million pop for full infra (though the pop requirement is not linear).


Generally speaking, at what percentage of your budget do you keep your Planetary Development spending?

I try to go for about half my budget in planet maintenance in the early going, if I can find the planets. With some races, it's not hard to have 4 or 5 growing colonies by turn 20.

[deccan]

Okay, I need a little help with something. How do I kill Swarm ships without access to Point Defense? In my latest game as the Tarkas, that's exactly what I discovered: no access to PD. I can go toe to toe with the other empires, but a single Silicoid Queen attack can turn a full cruiser strikeforce of mine into scrap metal because I just can't hit the little buggers without PD. I even tried designing a class of cruiser armed only with the dinky little starter lasers hoping that those would be able to hit them, but no dice.

Strangely, I seem to recall being able to kill the Swarm just fine with laser weapons and no PD as the Liir, but I don't seem to be able to do that with the Tarkas. The laser weapons don't even seem to be tracking the little things as they zip about. Currently researching bursters in the hopes that it will do some good against the damned things.

[Huzurdaddi]

Okay, I need a little help with something. How do I kill Swarm ships without access to Point Defense?

Light_Emitters (http://sots.rorschach.net/Light_Emitter) and the whole emitter line destroy them, they are the best weapon against organics. Liir have an excellent chance at getting them and they are great weapons overall so maybe you had them on your Liir ships.

[Huzurdaddi]

Edit: Planet development has changed since the initial version. It used to be you only needed 10k pop to run all your infra, but now you need 100 million pop for full infra (though the pop requirement is not linear).

IIRC, you can use (population/100)^0.33 infrastructure.

[Lum]

I usually just restart if I don't have Point Defense tech. It's uh... kind of key. :)

[deccan]

Okay, so according to the wiki, Light Emitters is enabled by the starter Red Lasers tech. Which means that either you have it available right at the beginning of the game or you don't. And this time around as the Tarkas, I don't.

Will nothing else work against them? Bursters? Drones of your own? And it was shaping up to be such a good game as well...

[Huzurdaddi]

Maybe mines, but I have never tried them. You won't have a long time to set them up.

And like you said maybe drones. Actually I would give drones a whirl before mines since mines just aren't going to work!

Oh... wait... how about tankers/refiners?

Also you can get Emitters (not light emitters, the medium mount version) from Electro Magnetic Pulsars (only 35% chance though).

[Squee]

Oh... wait... how about tankers/refiners?
That's even mentioned somewhere in the game, I think. Since tankers explode when their tanks are destroyed they should be effective at taking out space bugs.

[MarinusWA]

Take around 20 destroyers, fill every slot with UV lasers(except the medium slot) and have at them. Not as efficient as PD but you will beat a Swarm queen with it.

[David Erikson]

Take around 20 destroyers, fill every slot with UV lasers(except the medium slot) and have at them. Not as efficient as PD but you will beat a Swarm queen with it.

I second that advice. PD is nice to have but not really nessesery against swarm. In fact 13-15 regular destroyers with UVs will wipe out the swarm with no losses, or loss of 1-2 ship top if you are unlucky and if you don't pay any attention to the ships status once it is time to engage the queen. I''ve destroyed half a dozen Swarms in my last game using such setup.

One bit of advice - if you are going after the swarm's silicon queen - make damned sure you are going to kill her in one go. In my first attmept against swarm I've wiped queen's minions, then cracked open her asteroid and have chased her away from my planet, but did not finish her before 4 minutes turn limit. I was *not* able to engage her again later, although the "swarm infestation" picture were hanging over my planet for dozen more turns. No victory rewards (money/research/morale) either.

It's a small game glitch I think.



On unrelated news:
WARNING: Spoiler on Grand Menace below...



A bit of shameless bragging here: I've just destroyed my first grand menace, woohoo! Pacifier *will not* enforce their brand of freedom and democracy in *my* Empire. <evil grin>


Although that son-of-bitch ship is fucking tough! >;( It took resources of my entire empire for more then 10 turns (around 30 fully developed planets) and top level of ships technology to build huge fleet capable of "pacifying" the Pacifier. :) And I lost around 150 ships in these huge battles, including 8 cutting-edge dreadnoughts. (Naturally I didn't know that the bastard fully repairs itself between battles, or the nasty way he deals with capital ships. ) Now I am looking forward to other big meanies. :)

[deccan]

One bit of advice - if you are going after the swarm's silicon queen - make damned sure you are going to kill her in one go. In my first attmept against swarm I've wiped queen's minions, then cracked open her asteroid and have chased her away from my planet, but did not finish her before 4 minutes turn limit. I was *not* able to engage her again later, although the "swarm infestation" picture were hanging over my planet for dozen more turns. No victory rewards (money/research/morale) either.

It's a small game glitch I think.


I don't think that's a glitch. I've had that happen a couple of times. After a while of having the "Swarm Infestation" picture hanging over my planet, I had a swarm attack on the same world. After I'd finally killed it, the picture went away. I like to think that what happened was that the queen went into a gestating chrysalis stage or something during which time she's invulnerable and emerges once she has a fresh brood of baby swarmlings.

I'll give that destroyer advice a try. But any particular reason why I should go with UV lasers on destroyers rather than cruisers?

[David Erikson]

I don't think that's a glitch. I've had that happen a couple of times. After a while of having the "Swarm Infestation" picture hanging over my planet, I had a swarm attack on the same world. After I'd finally killed it, the picture went away. I like to think that what happened was that the queen went into a gestating chrysalis stage or something during which time she's invulnerable and emerges once she has a fresh brood of baby swarmlings.

I'll give that destroyer advice a try. But any particular reason why I should go with UV lasers on destroyers rather than cruisers?

Interesting theory. I agree, such explanation makes sense in your case. But in mine the later attack never came.

As for cruisers vs destoyers - I think 3 destroyers with appropriate design can pack quite a bit more firepower in small turrets than a single crusier (in the same small turrets). Cruiser's medium and large turrets will not be efficient against fast flying swarm minions, even if you will put UV lasers into them. Also UV-only cruisers are going to be very weak in regular fleet battles, after you are done with swarms, while UV destroyers make perfect sense even for fleet vs fleet battles.

Just my two cents.

[Malaak]

When there's a swarm infestation in one of your systems, there's a chance for an attack whenever you move a fleet into or out of that system.

[MarinusWA]

I'll give that destroyer advice a try. But any particular reason why I should go with UV lasers on destroyers rather than cruisers?
The way I play I usually have taken care of any nearby Swarm infestations before I even get cruisers so that's why I said destroyers.

Even so, you can field three destroyers for one cruiser. Three destroyers combined have far more fast tracking light slots then one cruiser which is what you need against the swarm. So cost efficiency is the reason really.

Re: Swarm infestation
If you fail to destroy the queen during an attack she will take up residence in one of the asteroids (this is the reason she is always hovering near a big one on an attack) and indeed stay there until she is ready to spawn another queen I think.

[Rorschach]

I've noticed that ships are more effective at tracking small, fast objects when the ship isn't moving. I'd recommend keeping your UV armed ships still (maybe rotate for better facing) when fighting the swarm, then move in for the kill on the hive once the drones are depleted.

Same thing for shooting down planetary defense missiles. PD and other weapons are more effective when not moving.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure the interceptor missiles will wipe out swarms quickly. They do a great job against drones and torpedoes.

[marxeil]

Dumb newb questions - Playing as Tarkas, I sent a colonization fleet and found out cost was prohibitive. Do I need to send more colonizers?

Anyway, I sent the fleet back knowing it will be stranded just before returning to the home planet, so I sent a tanker to meet them. They met 1 light years away from the planet, with the rescue tanker at 58%, but can't make it refuel the stranded fleet. I thought I needed to combine them but couldn't find how to do it.

[Rorschach]

Dumb newb questions - Playing as Tarkas, I sent a colonization fleet and found out cost was prohibitive. Do I need to send more colonizers?

Nope, more colonizers will not make a planet non-prohibitive. Any hazard rating over 550 at the beginning is out of your range. Bio-techs can increase that up to 700. I'd highly recommend avoiding high hazard rating worlds in the beginning though.


Anyway, I sent the fleet back knowing it will be stranded just before returning to the home planet, so I sent a tanker to meet them. They met 1 light years away from the planet, with the rescue tanker at 58%, but can't make it refuel the stranded fleet. I thought I needed to combine them but couldn't find how to do it.

You can't combine fleets in space, only around a world. If you set the tanker to intercept the stranded fleet it will be able to refuel all fleets at that location. Make sure the tanker has a destination of the stranded fleet and not itself or the nearby planet.

[deccan]

In my latest game as the Hivers I found another Hiver civilization and decided to research "Assimilate Hiver" to see what it does. So far nothing is happening. The other Hiver was a lot weaker than me at first contact but seems to have boomed since then, such that it is now only slightly weaker than me. I also tried to see if completing the tech opens up new ship sections or components, but haven't seen anything new. So how does it work exactly?

[Rorschach]

Here's a quick breakdown of the Xenotech tree. Not comprehensive or race specific, but you'll get the general idea. There's some more detail in the manual.


Language I: Chat and Cease fire
Language II: NAP, Alliance, and Trade
Language III: Planetary surrender, Tech trading
Incorporate: Avoid civilian bombardment, Inclusion of civilians on captured worlds
Addict: Huge bonus for you in trade, Increasing decline in production for them
Temperance: Negates Addiction but reduces morale
Subjugate: Empire surrender
Accommodate: No hazard rating impact for civilians
Proliferate: Spontaneous civilian immigration to your worlds


Now you might think that that's a lot of technology to get some additional civilians on your worlds, but you can only go to 50% total civilian capacity on a world with one race without incurring an overharvest penalty. The other race's civilians can take that other 50% of habitable space without overharvest giving you a huge increase in income and no morale hit for population limits.

[deccan]

Oops, the tech I was talking about was "Subjugate". I was wondering how the surrendering works since I have the tech for a while and they're not surrendering, so I was wondering if I need to build a special ship with that tech or something.

[MarinusWA]

After you reserached Subjugate you get an additional button in the Diplomacy screen for that race saying "Demand Surrender".

If they are much weaker then you they will comply and you absorb their empire.

[marxeil]

Nope, more colonizers will not make a planet non-prohibitive. Any hazard rating over 550 at the beginning is out of your range. Bio-techs can increase that up to 700. I'd highly recommend avoiding high hazard rating worlds in the beginning though.



You can't combine fleets in space, only around a world. If you set the tanker to intercept the stranded fleet it will be able to refuel all fleets at that location. Make sure the tanker has a destination of the stranded fleet and not itself or the nearby planet.

Thanks, I don't know what I did wrong the first time, but I went back and it worked.

I am playing on a small sphere (about 40 planets) against 2 other factions. Most planets are not suited for colonizations (hazard rate of 500 and above). I think I should concentrate on better engines.

[KevinC]

I usually just restart if I don't have Point Defense tech. It's uh... kind of key. :)

Shields or even Projectors can make up for lacking PD. If in a pinch, simple lasers can work okay to help mitigate it. In any case, lacking Point Defense tech does not prevent you from getting Phaser PD, which is far superior anyway. :)