Sword of the Stars is a space strategy 4X game developed by Kerberous Studios, comprised of members of Barking Dog Studios. Barking Dog Studios were the developers of Homeworld: Cataclysm, an expansion to the famed space combat RTS. You should have an idea of what to expect in SotS’s battles as a result. Unfortunately, the campaign seems to be an excuse for battle context. Still, this is the closest we have to Total War in space (it’s not Armada 2526 but still a good game).
There is a limited story that I picked up from the intro. We, Humans (you are a human…right?) finally created a ship capable of FTL travel and set off into the stars. Assuming that there was no other intelligent life in the universe we set off without weapons, and were attacked by the Hivers. The Hivers followed us back to Earth and nearly killed us all, but we managed to fight back and push them away. Now armed, we set off to fight against the other races; the Liir, the Tarkas, the Zuul, the Morrigi, and of course the Hivers.
Sword of the Stars Complete Collection has a total of six races in all, all listed in the last paragraph. SotS does a brilliant job of making each race feel unique, and you can tell that a lot of work was put into them. For example each race has its own version of FTL travel. Humans travel along node lines like in Master of Orion 3. Node travel is extremely fast, the downside being nodes can be few and far in between. Many planets don’t even have a node connections, forcing you into STL travel.
Tarkas can travel anywhere, regardless of nodes, at a constant rate. The downside being that once they’re in motion, their orders can’t be changed. This is pretty much the typical 4X FTL (MoO1&2, Armada 2526). You can eventually research Hyperspace Communication, allowing you to change orders mid-flight (you can also do that in Armada 2526 with a later tech).
The Liir’s FTL is similar to the Tarkas’, but it starts out ridiculously fast. As they approach their destination; however, it slows down tremendously. This makes it impossible for the Liir to sneak up on anyone, but at least they can travel through deep space quickly.
Hivers have the most difficult and interesting form of travel. In order to travel quickly, the Hivers must build gateways using special gateships, at the point of departure to their destination. You have to travel STL until you actually establish these gates, and it’s easy for your enemies to destroy them if they’re sent in unguarded.
Zuul are similar to Humans in that they also use node-lines. The difference is that the Zuul must create their node-lines with special mining ships. After boring a “space tunnel” they can travel FTL between planets. This eliminates the Humans’ disadvantage of limited node-lines, the downside being these “tunnels” must be maintained, and deteriorate over time.
Finally the Morrigi use traditional FTL travel similar to the Tarkas or Liir; however, the Morrigi speed is dependant on the size of the fleet. The more ships, the faster they travel.
It’s obvious that a lot of work went into making each race unique in its artwork, design, voice-work, and general gameplay. Compared to other 4X games, SotS goes above and beyond the required effort in creating unique races, and it pays off with a more interesting experience.
After starting the game and choosing your options the first annoyance manifests; the 3D Map. While a 3D starmap is more realistic, Kerberos would’ve done well to have put some thought into why it hasn’t been done en masse. There’s no scrolling, rather the game uses a focal point that you set. Double-clicking on any planet sets it as the focal point and makes it easy to then rotate and cycle the view.
While this makes it easy to keep your bearings in the vertical maps, it creates a major problem. When you have to traverse massive maps you have to double-click, double-click, double-click, you get the picture…just to get across the map. This alone is enough to make me wonder why they didn’t just stick to a top down 2D view with scrolling. If they had to have 3D they could have at least added scrolling for an alternative. Eventually you will get used to it, but it has the tendency to annoy you every so often, which is bad.
Fortunately, you see the game’s potential fairly quickly, which helps you put up with the camera. Research in this game is very cool. In order to cut down on surefire strategies, and to add to the mystery Sword of the Stars uses a randomized tech tree. While all the techs are the same, the computer randomizes which ones you get and which ones you do without. There’s a slight “problem” with this though. It’s easy for the randomizer to take away something essential like shields, which can seriously cripple your military. To me though, this figures greatly into the overall strategy. If you have no shields then it’s much more important to research point defenses and armor more quickly.
Another cool feature is immediate funding and “accidents”. You have the option to directly pour money into a research project. This greatly enhances its progress, but the more money you pour into it directly rather than through government finding, the higher chance you have of a research accident. While accidents on a weapon system could result in the entire research team killing itself, wait until you have an accident while developing Artificial Intelligence…just nasty!
Unfortunately 3D carries over into this interface as well. You have to rotate the view in order to see all of the techs, and zooming in allows you to actually read a particular technology’s description. While it definitely wins points for aesthetics, it suffers from the starmap’s problems. It gets annoying to rotate, rotate, rotate, and zoom, zoom, zoom, just to find the tech you want.
Now we talk about the most disappointing aspect of Sword of the Stars for me: Empire Management. Sword of the Stars borrows heavily from the orignal Master of Orion for its colony management system, most notably the sliders. SotS uses sliders for practically everything, which is both good and bad. In economics you’ll manage the Savings/Research slider, the Overharvesting slider, the Construction/Trade slider, and the Infrastructure/Terraforming/Shipbuilding slider.
The advantage of the slider system is that firstly, it forces you to make decisions. You can’t have it all so you have to choose what is more important to you and balance it. Secondly, it keeps colony management simple, which keeps the game flowing a helps out on larger maps. The problem with sliders is that for people like me (who want more control over their colonies), the system is too simple.
Overall though, colony management is quite solid. You’ll chose planets based on three things primarily; Size, Hazard Rating, and Resources. Size dictates how many people you can have on a planet, Hazard rating is how comfortable it will be on that planet, and Resources dictate how fast production goes. On planets the Overharvesting slider literally destroys your planets resources while greatly enhancing production. Terraforming lowers the Hazard Rating, while infrastructure determines how many people you can cram on a planet (High infrastructure is like skyscrapers). Like I said, not a bad system, just a tad too simple.
There’s one more thing I’d like to discuss before talking about the battles and ship design. The game is easy. Really easy. On the normal setting I’ve yet to be challenged in the game. Planetary morale is a snatch, with many of the “moral-boosting” technologies being superfluous. It’s seems nigh impossible to go bankrupt, with surpluses of money being common. You would have to try hard to lose this game. The only challenge comes from the random events. If you’re a 4X veteran crank those up and start on Hard.
Ship Design in Sword of the Stars is handled very simply and efficiently. Each ship is divided into three parts. Command Section, Mission Section, and Engine Sections. There are also three classes; Destroyers, Cruisers, and Dreadnoughts. After choosing the ship’s size and sections you add weapons. Each weapon slot has a firing-arc that it covers, and SotS’s combat engine makes it very important to plan your design (generally you want to put your best guns front and broadside).
Let’s talk about the ship sections. The Command section adds a secondary ability to your mission section, and generally carries the second chunk of weapons. For example if you choose the Deep Scan Command section you’ll be able to reveal cloaked vessels and see further, a good combination with the Extended Range Mission Section, which allows you to travel further.
The Mission section determines the overall purpose of the ship. A Tanker mission section means the vessel will be used for refueling, meanwhile an Armor section carries the most weapon slots. There are numerous sections that can be researched and added and it’s a good idea to use many of them in any given fleet.
Engine Section is pretty self-explanatory and dictates the ship’s range and speed, though it’s important to also balance the cost and other factors (such as turning speed) into your ship’s creation.
Designing ships is that simple. You can also add various components to sections such as armor, or engine boosters. While some GalCiv 2 fans may be disappointed by the lack of actual ship-modeling, there’s no denying that SotS’s system is easier and much closer to the Master of Orion games (besides, I never could design a good looking ship in GalCiv 2).
But you’re only designing ships for combat in SotS anyway. Before combat actually begins you have the option to try to peacefully resolve the encounter, auto resolve the encounter, or fight it out personally. There is a fourth option called fight manually if the opponent fights manually, which is intended for multiplayer. After the actual map loads, combat begins. Unlike Homeworld (where you could move ships vertically), combat in Sword of the Stars takes place on a 2D, horizontal plane. Ships will move vertically to avoid collisions if necessary, which looks cool and keeps things simple.
Battles take place in four minute rounds, where ships move shoot, and of course…blow up. If neither party wins at the end of a round, the battle is a draw and will continue next turn. You can decrease the round time to increase the importance of heavy weaponry (in order to kill targets faster), or increase time to make armor and shields more important (so they’ll last until the end of the round).
Battles also get rather large later on with the addition of CnC (Command and Control) ships. With the addition of the Command and Control ships, you can increase the ship cap for the battle allowing you to bring more guns to bear at once. CnC ships also allow you to set out fleet formations, which you’ll want to do in order to protect more vulnerable ships. Protecting your CnC ship is also important, as losing it mean you can’t bring as many ships in at once, which allows your forces to be picked apart piecemeal.
There are a few gripes I have with the system. For one it uses the same controls as the 3D starmap, which just like the starmap, can be a pain. As the battles primarily occur on a 2D plane, and the planetary orbits are much smaller the problem is not as magnified. The other minor quibble I have is that you can’t give orders in sensor mode. In combat you have the default view and sensor view. Sensor view is little more than a wireframe, but is a necessity for finding smaller ships. The fact that you can’t give orders in this mode makes it a pain to target those smaller ships after you do find them.
The last gripe I have is that the view distance in battles is pretty low. I do have all the graphics settings turned up, but regardless it can be impossible to see where enemy ships are until they’re nearly on top of you. It would be nice to have had better view distance, though at least you can follow the missile trails and guess where they are.
The game graphics are pretty nice. 4X games aren’t exactly known for graphical prowess, but SotS does have very nice visuals for a 4X game. Models are detailed and battles look great with all the effects flying around. Some texture work is lacking, but even Sins of a Solar Empire, had some blurry texture work. There is some great art direction and each race’s ships look magnificent. The actual loading screen artwork is pretty bad though (imho), ranging from cartoonish to ridiculous. Space Empires V had some magnificent artwork and I would’ve preferred SotS to have shot for an equally serious look.
Sound is pretty lackluster. Compared to other 4X games, races have a lot of charm, with plenty of voice work and audio cues. That being said they’re not particularly great, though I get the feeling that they were intentionally shooting for a cheesy “feel”. Still, after a while it get’s really annoying, despite the fact that the information they deliver is a must. The main menu theme was great and the good variety of instruments and themes gave off a Battlestar Galactica feel. Unfortunately, only one track exists for the actual star map and it’s not that powerful or atmospheric. It is easy; however, to add in your own music assuming it’s in the .ogg format.
Lastly I should mention that besides the sandbox game there is multiplayer and scenarios. The scenarios aren’t really that great, but I’ve never been a scenario guy finding them far too restrictive. They’re basically smaller sandbox games with special rules and objectives. There’s no real story besides the starting text and no cut scenes of note, so there’s definitely better options out there for Scenario fans. Multiplayer is smooth and easy due to Drop-In, Drop-Out capability, and definitely makes battles much more enjoyable. All the normal options are included, and you can put time limits on Strategic Map turns to keep the game moving.
Sword of the Stars is a solid 4X game that I would recommend to fans of simpler games, or perhaps newcomers. For people who want more control over their empire management, there are better options. It reminds me of the MoO1vs.2 debate. SotS is like MoO1, so if you preferred the second you may want to pass this one by.
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Space Sector score:
7.3/10
good
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| The Good: – Unique races that actually play differently – Great space battles – Good for new players |
| The Bad: – Colony management is too simple – Annoying controls – Poor sound |
Zachary Cryer has been a SpaceSector contributor since May 2011. Besides having written this review he also did a Q&A of Sword of the Stars 2 with Chris Stewart (SotS2 Producer and Designer). Zachary has done many other reviews on his Gamespot page.
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Thanks for the review. I have played the game a few times already and overall I tend to agree with your review in particular regarding the controls. I am an old fan of MOO1 and MOO2.
What I don’t agree is that sometimes games like GalCiv 2 tend to over complicate empire economics management with too many unnecessary options (Starbases management ?) that lead to micromanagement of minute details. I find that extremely boring. SOTS does reach an adequate balance for me. As you said sliders force options in SOTS and that is a good thing. To be able to concentrate in the game itself.
I do not enjoy to need to develop each sector in each planet of each system like other games force you to as generally the AI does a very poor job for you, so you have to micromanage.
The point I really find poor in SOTS is the diplomacy section, and really the only path to victory is to wipe all your enemies by yourself.
GalCiv2 ship building section is overly complex with too many options just for aesthetics, and as you said SOTS is much more streamlined and to the point.
Thanks again for your review.
I agree with most of your points as well. I do believe starbases in Galactic Civilization 2 are a bit too much, and overall their usefulness is limited. The price to max out a starbase in GalCiv 2 is just not worth it. That being said I like most of GalCiv2’s economics, and I don’t mind setting up each planets development (though I usually play on smaller maps). I didn’t blatantly say I wanted a ton of micromanagement in the review, I only mentioned that it could do well with a bit more control. Though, I understand that opionons vary over the “acceptable” level of micromanagement in a game.
I didn’t touch on Diplomacy in the review, but I agree. You’re either always at war or always at peace.
I also agree that GalCiv2’s ship building is a bit over complex. I think that Sword of the Stars has a much better system, though I do really like Star Ruler’s style as well. I only mentioned that GalCiv2 fans might be disappointed with SotS’s ship design options as they are limited, not that GalCiv 2 was necessarily superior.
As a final note, I only brought up the MoO1 vs MoO2 debate to help give an idea of the game. MoO1 was alot simpler and streamlined than MoO2. You can like both (and I do too). But I prefer a more advanced micro game. Of course too much micromanagement is a bad thing (MoO3). It’s not a space game, but Hearts of Iron 3 suffers from the same problem MoO3 does. I like to be in control of everything, and having to rely on AI Automation is aggravating.
Thanks for your comment.
My main gripe in GalCiv 2 was the use of defenses was often moot and you were usually better off pumping a hull with just weapons. I tried Sword, but I just can’t get into it. For me I much prefer a star map where I can see stars, and the various planets that orbit it. I want to be able to establish starbases or colonies on several planets in a system, not just one planet like Sword does. I like the different FTL concepts for each race, also love the idea of a random tech tree, but I still come back to GalCiv2 for my 4x fix, the star map and lack of planets kills the atmosphere for me.
Same here. Also prefer 2D map or some form of fixed map (3D rotating, zoom it’s too much). I also like to colonize planets, not systems. I also love the idea of random techs. GalCiv2 is still my favorite 4x game after MOO2. Although Armada 2526 (with the Supernova expansion) is coming very close.
“The other minor quibble I have is that you can’t give orders in sensor mode.”
http://sots.rorschach.net/Advanced_CnC
You’re welcome.
Ah… I see. Thanks for the heads-up, but I don’t think it’s a big enough issue to edit the review over (It was only a minor complaint in the first place, compared to other issues).
Both the economy and the ship building are almost direct rip-offs from the great light-weight 4x game Spaceward Ho!, BTW.
One thing they got from Ho is that colonies are expensive to maintain for a long period of time before they contribute anything back to the economy. The result is that you really have to think through whether you ought to colonize that planet just yet.
Hi Boronx, first comment in the blog right? Welcome!
GalCiv2’s colonies are also very expensive to maintain in the beginning before they turnover. I think that is a most sensible design decision to make, and a very intuitive and realistic one also. So, I wouldn’t call that “rip-off” really. In that pattern of thought almost any new game to a genre would be a rip-off from the last.
In your opinion, in which way has SotS ripped-off Spaceward Ho!’s ship building?
As a SotS player I’d like to point out that this review has quite a few mistakes showing reviewers lack of deeper understanding of the game. SotS is deeper than it looks because of how those simple systems in the game work together. The game fails to explain more advanced (and some not so advanced) features so if you really want to get into it you’ll have to do some (ok, a lot) reading of wiki. The controls are not bad just quite different. One has to learn to use those effectively. And I don’t get why so many people complain about sound. I find it very fitting to the whole theme and atmosphere. I would really recommend SotS CC as it is really easy to get started, there is a lot to be discovered and learned along the way and it is one of the best 4x games to be played online. Beware though that since gamespy services are discontinued for the game you will need to create LAN games that can be joined providing host’s IP address if you want to go multiplayer.
i’ll second that… SOTS CC has little to complain about.. the same can’t be said of the previous versions though
100% agree with neoTask. SotS CC is still easily my favorite 4X game.
Pluses:
+ Very well balanced, you can win (or lose) just as easily with any of the 6 races
+ High replay value, due to the randomised tech tree and the huge differences between races
+ Nice ship graphics which scale well (zoomed in or zoomed out, both are good)
+ Strategic thinking – thinking ahead a few turns – really pays off
Best of all, there is not too much micro-management mid-game and end-game. By then, you have all your colonies well set up, your trade fleets in place, and your good ships already designed, so you can simply use hotkeys to tab to your production colonies and crank out those war fleets.
In contrast, in the expansion phase of the game, when resources are stretched very thin, you can micro-manage plenty to try to optimise colony growth and trade growth. The colony growth model is actually quite subtle in terms of getting the balance right between population, infrastructure and terraforming: a skillful player can get ahead by several turns by getting the sliders ‘just right’. I think it’s great that resource gathering and economy in general have been abstracted to sliders, it lets you get on with actually playing the game. It’s like modern art: it appears simple, but in reality it is complex.
The main aspect of Zachary’s review that I disagree with is his criticism of the UI. Once you have learned it, SoTS has one of the clearest and most responsive UIs of any game ever. Note the word “responsive”. That is, to my mind, by far the most important quality of a UI if you are going to be spending 50 hours or more playing the game. On SotS, everything, and I mean everything, reacts instantly when you click it or use its hotkey. More generally, the UI is clear and consistent once you adjust to its philosophy. It’s a different philosophy from Windows, but fairly in line with more modern UIs like you see on Android devices. And sure, the galaxy map is in 3D. Exactly as it is supposed to be.
Obviously I think it’s a shame that Kerberos went on to spend so much effort on SotS2. A couple more expansion packs for SotS instead would have been awesome.
I’ll also back that opinion.
SotS1 is a great game. One of the best in my opinion.
First of all, the 3D UI is awesome. It just is.
Once you get used to the initial point-click-focus-camera-there approach, it is easy and intuitive to use. I find that clicking and generous use of zoom in/out + and mouse gives me a lot of freedom with the camera, much more than the usual scroll method. It also helps with immersion quite a bit.
Of course, I also liked the 3D controls in the Nexus game, which people complained about. Maybe some of the reviewers are just too used to the old school 4X 2D maps?
There are some downsides, true, its not all fully thought out in some places. If you have nothing to click on you can’t move the camera there, which can be annoying in tactical mode when trying to see enemy ships far away. You have to zoom out all the way and atempt to rotate the camera around your own faraway ship and then try to catch the enemy ship in your field of view somehow. What a pain in the ass…
The star map can also be a mess if all 200 systems are all clustered together in one big pile, but I tend to play as Hivers and have the galaxy in the shape of separate globular clusters. In that case you normally have separate, non-cluttered spheres of ~30-40 stars each, one of them your ‘home’ cluster which you fully control and which houses the colonies, and the other 1-2 clusters of interest are the ones you are currently invading. And you can ignore the rest of them for a while. In that case it gets very easy to keep track of everything and defend your systems.
Incidentally, I just love the Hivers. The strategic effect of their FTL system can not be overstated. Truly the most unique race out of all 6, and I disagree that it is most difficult one. It is in fact the opposite. You are the only one who can instantly move your entire fast response dreadnought task force between any two systems across the map in a singe turn. A SINGLE turn. That is awesome. You dont even have to have defense fleets in every system or have a lot of fleets at all, just by keeping track of enemies approaching your systems you can send the response fleets right away. No sneak attacks are possible that way. And because you dont have FTL drive installed, your ships have space for the most HP and a lot of weapons on them instead. Not always the case, but still nice.
I like them so much that I cant really play as other races, its not working out for me.
Starting as Hivers is also very different from the others, You basically have to accept that it would take 10-20 turns to even get to many of the nearby systems to deploy a gate…so you build a LOT of them. I often have as much as ~30-50 gate/tanker fleets going places at once. And once you build your gate network, you are all set, defense is easy. Offense…I usually wait before I get the tech that allows to make a jump without a receiving gate. Then the fleet takes only 3-5 turns to arrive to the destination, which is similar to the other races.
Anyway, enough about that…
I happen to think that they got the colony micromanagement level just right.
While I also tend to enjoy to play other games which allow you to min/max every little aspect of the colonies (sometimes I enjoy it too much) it is only fun in the starting phase. Mid-late game its either too tedious – having to do a checkup through ALL of your colonies once every 2-3 turns to correct any mistakes and provide direction – or, if you rely on AI (which are regularly dumb) then it completely defeats the purpose of the micro in the first place.
In SotS, the mid-late game in easy in that aspect. You still focus on the new/developing colonies, and old can ones take care of themselves by then.
And you get to micro your funds in the early game. Especially as Hivers, where you must pump out couple dozen ships as quickly as possible to offset the slot colonization start while also keeping up with research. You then have to pick and chose the tech you study, your research investment, keep enough savings for new ship orders, track industrial capacity, drain effect of founding new colonies on the economy, all the while continuously building new ships and somehow making time to build the first defense fleet. And you have to colonize strategically, thinking in terms of explored systems = catapult points for new gate ships, because it it much cheaper to send the limited range gate without a tanker ship than with it.
And you have to plan all of that a couple dozen turns in advance because you are Hivers. By now, when playing clusters map, I can make a complete gate network on mine and two-three entire neighboring clusters in time for the first potential conflict, collecting all artifacts and neutral planets in the process.
Really, its the only example of the game I can name where the micro blends in so fluently with the later game stages, when you switch focus fully on the combat portion.
I think my main complaint about the game is the tactical ship control.
It is heavily advertized, but its just not there. Often it is meaningless.
That is because the ships dont actually act the way I tell them – making any kind of really complex maneuvers or keeping fleet formations other than a single line is not working. I tell a ship to keep standoff range or circle the enemy at certain speed, and it tells me to fuck off as it closes in…heavy beams are useless on manual because the damn ship can keep itself pointed in the right direction…torpedo ships cant keep the proper distance for maximum effect…and so on and so forth…its like you are giving orders through a bad phone line or the ships have idiots of commanders…Yes, I can still use some tactics and for example at times use my CnC cruiser fleet to kill off 2x or 3x number of opponents by taking out the right targets first, but it could have been so much more than that…disappointing. Late game its mostly autoresolve for me for that reason.
I still find the early – mid portions the most fun, because the late game becomes a autoresolve grind for me. But other than that its a fun game.
Only I’m too addicted to Hivers. I dont think I have even actually finished a game for any other race…I like to keep the number of fleets/ships small for more direct control, and thats not working out too well there.
SotS 2 on the other hand…bleh. Too many stupid design level decisions have been made for that game to make it fun for me. The whole fleet/admiral system required to give orders to ships, the supply and mandatory stations….It is horrible……and with such good combat portion and so much potential too, truly disappointing.
I’m still on the fence about things like stimulus, feasibility research and prototyping, those features have both good and bad points to them…But that game it simply not fun. And that is the bottom line unfortunately. Would have been great as SotS1 remake.
SOTS 1 is still one of the best strategy games out there. True, graphics are dated, micromanagement is sometimes weird and Kerberos is not expanding it anymore but…
a) The differences among the races are real and influential to the game. Liir want peace (and you better go along), Tarkas ships are heavily armoured, Humans easily loose the tails of their cruisers, Hivers have the gates, Morringi will move faster if their fleets are massive and Zuul will never know peace. They are not factions. They are distinct races.
2) For those who marvel the Total War turn base management/real time battles concept, SOTS 1 is the best application of the concept in space.
3) You do not command hundrends of dots on a stellar map, loosing the good times in order to command the fleet. You do command your ships but you only have to deal with up to 10 of them, so you can actually aim any part of an allien ship, develop tactics and really customize your ships against your opponents. Don’t try to fend off the Zuul fanatics with early lasers. Develop and use mines.
4) After you have built your empire of say 50 worlds you don’t have to visit each and every one of them to micromanage everything, loosing coutless hours to nothing. Economy is there just to provide you with tech and ships.
5) The tech… ah the tech. For once you don’t have access to everything. You are denied a lot of the possible techs, so that you don’t end up with all the races having more or less the same weaponry. Still, you can reverse engineer captured technology from the other races. And don’t go for AI if you don;t have the nano or AI virus first.
6) Random events are a major plus. Start a map of say 210 systems and you will realise that the galaxy is populated by more than those six waring factions. You think you’re strong? Well, the puppetmaster, the locusts or the peacemaker will make you feel humble again.
I have played Masters of Orion, both Homeworlds, Sins of Solar Empire, Armada 2526, CallCiv2… you name it. Masters of Orin was out of the scale when it hit the stores but SOTS made almost as a big impression to me. It’s just one of these games you got to put time in it.
Last, don’t loose your time, money and peace of mind on SOTS2. It’s just a sad story.