Steam often unlocks games earlier then the stated time.
Hmm ... looks like D2D for me. I don't have a GameTap or GamersGate account and really want to keep my number of digital storefronts as small as possible, and Gamestop & Steam are more expensive (plus I prefer the Morrigi and Liir pack).
Besides, half the games I've got on D2D I managed to get for almost free (pricing errors), so I sort of owe them one. Now I just wonder how quick they are with the codes.
Actually, I had no problems with the original SOTS - I hardly ever crashed.Originally Posted by aganazer
Great that gives me enough time to finish up my current (and probably last) game of SOTS. I have not played the Liir a lot, and they have some pretty interesting tech (shield protectorate) at the high levels.
How true the statements in this interview hold up won't be apparent until the game ships and we all get our hands on it, but according to Producer Chris Stewart SotS II isn't intended to replace the original Sword of the Stars. Their idea is that players will continue to play them both.
I can see how this might turn out the way they'd like it to, to a certain degree, since I find myself bouncing back and forth between Civ IV and Civ V because of the unique experiences and gameplay each offers. So although I pretty much plan to leave SotS behind behind when I get the sequel, I might end up finding myself returning to it on occasion depending on how the latter games actually plays. So, I'm not exactly ready to write this whole thing off just yet.
It's sort of exciting to hear that they kept certain core parts but are aiming to change the rest of it up so it doesn't just feel like a 'shinier version' of the exact same game.
Last edited by kerzain; 10-27-2011 at 07:09 PM. Reason: hole != whole
And you guys know I'll be here to talk about the game and answer any questions. I've been on NDA lockdown since I'm participating in the beta but that all changes tomorrow when we all can play.
Oh man why did i check this forum today! Gah. I'm going to buy so many games over a couple of months.
I chose the Steam package since i preferred the Hivers and Tarkas to the Liir anyway.
I personally can't wait to see a complete and detailed map of the entire tech tree.
What exactly is in those DLC packs anyway?
The lore/ storyline...
No offense to Rorscharch, as I know he has the super SotS codex page, but for me it has never clicked.
I am looking more for the narrated cliff's notes rather than the super encyclopedia. Is there an easier place to read up on all the lore for SotS1 through all the expansions (what the random events really meant, why the newer races showed up, etc)? I got a gist of the "story" arc, but some of the interviews for SotS2 make me want to be up on what all I "should" know.
Textures for your ships. Extra avatar pics and badges. Different combat theme music. Additional encyclopedia lore entries. Nothing gameplay related.
As the first human FTL colony ship gets ready to leave the solar system the insectoid Hivers show up and start bombarding the planet. 48 hours later humanity drives them off with ICBMs and starts building warships. That's where SotS starts.
Turns out the Hivers had just gone through an interregnum and it was a splinter faction on the run that stumbled onto Earth. SolForce's war against the Hivers never had to happen but the humans quickly carved out a place in the galaxy.
The lizard-ape Tarkas have an old empire that was on the decline. Shadows of glory and all that.
The cetacean Liir have just rebelled against their masters the Suul'ka who forced the telepathic/telekinetic dolphins through an industrial age. They drove off and killed most of the Suul'ka using a "bioweapon".
One of the Suul'ka had bio-engineered their own weapon, the rapacious marsupials the Zuul, who turned out to be more cunning then even the Suul'ka thought as they created their own society from the trash of others. They're looking for their creator in a holy crusade. The rise of the Zuul was the first expansion Born of Blood.
The Zuul were created to kill the Morrigi, dragon-bird creatures that have the longest history of space travel. They've visited many worlds in the past including Earth. Nearly wiped out by the Zuul and another Suul'ka who coerced fleets of ships to turn on themselves. The return of the Morrigi is the second expansion A Murder of Crows.
The big reveal is that the Suul'ka are actually the eldest of the Liir. The Liir never stop growing and increasing their psychic powers. Eventually their empathy causes them to die, crushed under their own weight but every thousand years or so a psychotic elder coerces the Liir to forge a spacesuit/armor for itself and it teleports itself into space becoming a Suul'ka.
Before the start of SotS the Liir rebel against the Suul'ka and their "bioweapon" is a non-psychotic Liir elder called "The Black". They poison and attack the Suul'ka and only the seven strongest survive and flee known space.
The Zuul find out that the Liir are responsble for their existance and half of the race joins the Liir while the other half continues their search for their "real" masters.
A combination of the empires mucking around with Suul'ka armor and the orthodox Zuul attracts the attention of the Suul'ka and their return is where SotS II begins.
Any questions? :)
Thanks that helps. And I really didn't mean to offend. Other questions...
The "Slavers" in the original SotS were Zuul right? Which part of the Zuul were they when the came en mass for Born of Blood?
Why where the Morrigi laying colony traps on planets or protecting derelicts (if I remember correctly)?
So the Liir broke off from an even greater Space Dolphin that made the Zuul and some of the Zuul are part of the Liir? How these races interact I am fuzzy on.
Who or what was Von Neuman?
Are the swarm tied to the Hivers?
Do we know what the alien derelicts or Asteroid Monitors are from?
Was much or any story ever revealed about the super encounters (Locusts, Puppet Master, etc.)?
If I recall there was a Sotspedia in SotS1 (which didn't get installed on my new rig-- that I built for Sots2). Will there be an initially populated Sotspedia in SotS2 so that I can brush up? I know the lore, while technically unnecessary, was well fleshed out in different places and added to the immersion and fun.
Yep, they we're hiding in the shadows, stealing junk and mindraping the citizens of the other races until they had enough strength to become a major faction.
It was automated protection for abandoned colonies and stations left behind from the Suuligi War.
The Suul'ka and the Liir are the same race. One of the more powerful Suul'ka that created the Zuul survived the Liir rebellion. The Zuul love him so much they built a shanty-city on the back of his armor. The Zuul that stayed loyal to the Suul'ka are the Horde and if they're able to build an "Altar" station they can summon one of the seven to fight alongside them.
A faction of the Zuul (Called Prester Zuul) now work directly with the Liir. They command fleets, run the gunships and boarding parties and are part of Liirian society. In SotS II you don't play the Liir you play the Liir-Zuul Alliance.
Over the course of SotS I they went from a minor nuisance to just shy of being their own faction. Basically they're self-replicating probes that assimilate resources and technology. Not as squishy as the Borg, but kind of the same idea IMO.
Nope, the swarm seem to be some sort of automated mining system left behind by some ancient race.
The Alien Derilicts are pieces of Suul'ka armor. The Asteriod Monitors are old Morrigi strongholds. Morrigi get bonuses to hack them in the original game.
There's some story in the forums about the Locusts basically being engrams of sentients. Not much on the other Grand Menaces.
No 'pedia in SotS 1 but there will be the basics populated in 2 and more will unlock as you encounter it.
Alien Derelicts were dead Sull'ka husks, hence why the Morrigi were protecting them/keeping people away from them.
Swarm are in no way tied to Hivers, from what I remember they are a silicone based insect race who are not intelligent (think ants/bees).
Von Numen, think Replicators/Borg or at least along those lines.
Sull'ka are Liir, that's their great secret. The Sull'ka created Zuul through bio-engineering, they are a completely separate race to the Liir but have come together in an alliance (or at least some of the Zuul have) when the Liir secret was made widely known because they were both slaves to the Sull'ka. The enemy of my enemy is my friend so to speak.
-edit- Ninja'd, should have left it to Rorschach in the first place :)
Sorry, one more then its bedtime.
What was the "Suuligi War"?
No problem. Suuligi is Morrigi for "Screamers". When the Suul'ka coerced the fleets to attack their own kind it's said they were continuously screaming as they killed their families and friends.
Kinda happy to play this again, after the old version just would not work on my old quad AMD I have some hopes that multi-core issues will be a bygone now :)
Sigh, I bit the bullet tonight and pre-ordered. Though kinda irked they didn't do a midnight release. So I'm installing SOTS Ultimate and Argos Naval Yard while I'm waiting.
I think midnight is just too subjective nowadays..
Yep. Looks like I'll have to wait until after work - D2D still lists the game as a "preorder" on my list.
Ditto. I was hoping to wake up to a product code today, no such luck. I guess I'll play part 1 in the mean time.
By the way, I love the synopsis of the lore posted up above. I've tried reading all the text in the race descriptions in pt 1, but usually stopped around the propulsion system info. The text always seemed squished into such a small window, and there was so much of it, I never made it through it all.
As an aside regarding the Von Neumann question above: this was actually paying a little sci-fi homage to the person it is named after, John von Neumann (a mathematician who passed away in the 50's). He came up with the horrific concept of self replicating machines that would assimilate all the raw materials they could find and that this could quickly end the world. The term he used was "grey goo."
Since that time, this concept has been used in various ways throughout the genre of sci-fi, including the Borg in Star Trek, although the term "von Neumann machines" has been more in vogue than the original "grey goo" monicker for fairly obvious aesthetic reasons.
If you play the original Sword of the Stars long enough, you'll actually find several little easter eggs honoring sci-fi of the past (like Khan Noonien Singh being one of the random leader names for the humans).
Announcement from the developer.
http://www.kerberos-productions.com/...p?f=37&t=21829
Hmmmmm.
Their forums are gridlocked atm (have been slow all morning), understandably.
What is the announcement?
Forums down. What did it say?
I got it up, I'll paste the whole thing in case the forums go down again:
Hey folks,
As I write this is just before 2 AM and technically its release day! For those of you awaiting patiently (others crazily impatiently) it will probably be another few hours before you get the stream of electrons that will arrange itself into your copy of SotS2, a game that has taken the better part of 2 years to make. And as I have mentioned elsewhere, these have not been the easiest 2 years for this team on a number of levels not related to the project. A sign, I suspect, that many of us are getting older despite our youthful art.
Now releases are always glorious, terrible, exhilerating and stressful things. And this one is destined to be much the same. I was planning to just head home and face plant for a few hours but then I heard that some people around the boards were shocked that I was honest in another topic about a feature that didn't workout and another that I was not comfortable with leaving in the game given its instability at this point. Many of you were very supportive of this while a couple people here and there have questioned "what no feature lockdown?". To be honest folks I will tell you something you can apply to any Kerberos project...there is NO feature SO locked down that it gets to bring down the rest of the game. It can be in there from day 2 and if something is making it a clear detriment I have no problem yanking it. My apologies if that makes some folks nervous or others feel like "beta testers" but to be honest, the urge comes from trying NOT to make you paying beta testers. To me, including something I KNOW will break your game experience so we can track down whats wrong with it easier IS using you. Taking something out till its ready for you to play may not be the perfect answer for everyone but at least its an honest one I can live with.
The SotS2 you are about to get is a HUGE, fun game with a ton of new features. Do I consider it perfect? Gods knows I wish but we all know that the reality of big games is that there is always something. (And for the record, by my own slightly manic personal standards, I only felt that sots prime was "done" about a year ago and I am still going to go back and tinker at least one more time) The bottom line here is that we are planning to take full advantage of the Steam systems we have integrated to update the crap out of this baby till every feature you have heard us talking about over the past year is the way we want it. So be prepared for new updates and goodies all the way through November.
While I am sorry if this frankness upsets any of you fans who pre-ordered but I would rather be up front than just put on my "Garsh!" face and act incredulous when you post that you can't find an indy planet or call up every summary screen. Hopefully any of you that have spent time on these boards know that is not our style. And certainly if any of you reading this who haven't pre-ordered and are thinking "Hmmm I don't know how I feel about this, maybe I should wait" despite everything thing I have said, then please do feel free to wait. Again, while this may sound like a daring thing to say, really its one of the safest bets I have every made
So all in all, I would like to thank everyone for their support and enthusiasm and I hope that continues with a dollop of patience. Over the past few months especially I have watched this team work harder with more inspiration despite the long hours than ANY other team I have seen in the industry over the past 15 years and its been my honor to work with them. I would also like to thank the relatively small core of beta testers who have spent the last 2 weeks doing the incredibly unfun work of tracking down every possible crash bug so we could stamp them out. If any make it through to you then it is not through lack of dedication from the testers. They have been amazing and NIghthaunt gets a lot of special credit for stepping forward to organize things and keeping testing on track.
So thats the state of things as we head toward launch everyone. I wish my message was all glam and no perspective but c'est la vie, I try and treat you folks the way I like to be treated myself. Thanks again for all your support and belief over the years and always remember...it just keeps getting cooler!
---Martin E. Cirulis
CEO/Creative Director
Kerberos Productions
Edit: Reading it now.
No idea what features he's referring to btw, and I probably won't go snooping around their forums to find out till it's running faster.
Last edited by kerzain; 10-28-2011 at 07:11 AM. Reason: -o
Sorry I am on my IPad which makes things difficult. Thanks kerzain.
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