Sword of the stars 2 - are you playing it?

Quoting Arinn Dembo,

STATE OF THE TEAM: Exhausted in every way. It has been extremely difficult to lose so many team members over the course of the last year. It would be hard enough to miss them as people, but as developers their absence is even more keenly felt. We’re still alive and working, but the programmers have had to put in 12+ hour days to try and compensate for people who aren’t there. We’ve pushed it as hard as we can, and no one has the resources to push any harder.

Source.

Ouch I say.

Quoting Paradox CEO,
reply 1

A word from the Paradox CEO

Fred Wester, our CEO posted this on the Paradox forum and I'm spreading it to all of you here.

"State of the Game

Hello all, there has been problems with the Sword of the Stars 2 release and for this we apologize. This should have been handled in a much more professional way from both us and the developer.

There has been version problems on Steam, and we are working on updating this version 24x7 from both the development and publishing team. Patching is in process for all known errors.

I can personally guarantee we will work on the game until it works as it should be, and in the meantime all I can say is that we should have done this better. Our sincere apologies.

Expect a response and status update from the developer as soon as they are ready with more information (which should be soon). Thanks for your patience.

---
Fred Wester
CEO Paradox Interactive "

We are sorry for the inconvenience but this will be fixed!

Source.

Yeah... this whole thing doesn't sound too good.

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I'd be willing to take Fred Wester more seriously if it was an isolated incident... but EVERY Paradox game is buggy as hell at launch. This one just happens to be even worse then usual, combined with some extremely unprofessional "customer service".

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Its more than SoTS with bloom.

Its SoTS, taken to a new level. Its more complex than the original. Looks to have alot more depth also.

SoTS vets, will have to relearn alot of the game just like a brand new player to the universe would.

Yeah, I was a bit flippant, although they do love their bloom filters. I meant that fans of the original would like the second, and people who didn't like the original, wouldn't. There are definitely changes, but the changes don't radically alter the feel of the game (as they arguably shouldn't).

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I'm apparently one of the few that has never played Sword of The Stars so I'm wondering if someone can explain how it works.

I understand it's turnbased with realtime battles. Is it realtime like Dawn of War & StarCraft or realtime with pause like Knights of the Old Republic?

Do you build buildings that generate money, research and production like Master of Magic and GalCiv II ?

Are there skill involved in the battles? Is it like StarCraft II (positioning and being fast), Dawn of War II (using cover'n'counters) or perhaps Age of Wonders ?

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Quoting Tridus,

reply 27

I'd be willing to take Fred Wester more seriously if it was an isolated incident... but EVERY Paradox game is buggy as hell at launch. This one just happens to be even worse then usual, combined with some extremely unprofessional "customer service".

Was Vicky 2 overly buggy? Sucky yes, but not buggy.

EU3 wasn't overly buggy.

Then again those are first-party Paradox titles, where they seem to have righted the ship. It's the second-party titles that have the issues (Magicka/SOTS II)

Hoping War of the Roses isn't like that, but not pre-ordering that now.

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Quoting Campaigner,

reply 29

I understand it's turnbased with realtime battles. Is it realtime like Dawn of War & StarCraft or realtime with pause like Knights of the Old Republic?

It's fully realtime, although you can choose to pause.

Quoting Campaigner,

reply 29

Do you build buildings that generate money, research and production like Master of Magic and GalCiv II ?

You generate money primarily by colonizing planets. You can build and upgrade starbases around planets, which serve a variety of functions similar to buildings in other strategy games, but the mechanic is slightly different. e.g. fleets that contain specialized ships build starbases.

Quoting Campaigner,

reply 29

Are there skill involved in the battles? Is it like StarCraft II (positioning and being fast), Dawn of War II (using cover'n'counters) or perhaps Age of Wonders ?

It's dissimilar to all of those games. The tactical game is separate from the strategic game, so many aspects of those games aren't present or are much less important in the tactical game since they're managed in the strategic game (e.g. awareness, reinforcement, territorial control, etc.). It would be more similar to the Total War series.

You can certainly maximize your efficiency by playing well, but units are difficult to control because of their movement. There's an interesting positional mechanic. Ships have six shield facings, and can be rotated to avoid taking damage.

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Quoting Campaigner,

reply 29

I'm apparently one of the few that has never played SotS... ...

In continuation to the reply from zigzag, the colonization, ship building, etc etc are turn based, and the battles are realtime (with a time limit of 4 minutes per battle which can be changed)

Lots of customization options, all controlled by sliders. Lots of ship customization options. Races have unique ships, different ways of travelling between systems. Branching tree research, speed controlled by how much cash you put in.

There is a feature (intensely annoying to me) that once the population reaches the max for a system some kind of happiness quotient keeps going down and then the system will suddenly start losing population till it goes down to about 15-20% of max and your income from that system will crash. Edit Update: As per Itharus this is easily countered by using propaganda and keeping the population slider at the balance level. (shows that I havent played it that much )

The random events - they are somewhat bizarre and you cant deal with them easily. Example - if you attack too much, some weird galactic cop looking like a round mechanical Cyclops shows up and warns you that too much conflict wont be tolerated. I read a forum post where specific steps to deal with the random events was detailed, I never would have guessed or found out from combat.

Most fun I had was from watching the playthru tutorial videos by Rosharch.

Got the SotS II on Steam but my quota of 10GB wireless is up so I'll dl it after 1st of Nov, but after reading the replies on this thread maybe should wait till 14th nov.

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I'll be honest, even with the screwed up launch, SOTS 2 looks to be a great game. Kerberos has a pretty solid history with good and frequent updates. I believe the game will be cleared up within a week or two and then made successively more B.A. all the way up to their expansion point.

Furthermore, when you compare SOTS to SOASE, I hate to say it - SOASE comes up short (even just compared to SOTS1, let alone 2). SOTS is a far more complex and in-depth game, and they actually have functional lore (as opposed to three pages of background). Sadly, SOTS 1's graphics are also better than SOASE when you slide them up all the way - and the game is two years older. I was only recently exposed to the SOTS series, and it's blown me away time and time again - and from what I can tell, the sequel will be no exception.

In all likelihood, I am jumping ship to SOTS. When Rebellion launches, if it proves to be something more than essentially a GOTY edition of SOASE Trinity with a couple of extra ships (which is all it appears to be at this point) - maybe then I'll pick up a copy and try it out. At this point though, with how SOASE has been handled since Diplomacy (which, let's be honest, was terrible)... I feel let down - repeatedly. So until that time when the game redeems itself (SOASE 2, maybe?), I'm going with the SOTS franchise - but until then, I'll keep a watchful eye hoping for a SOASE return to glory in some future time.

-Itharus

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Well, one of them is an RTS and the other is not. So that's going to change stuff.

Pretty sure it'll be way more then a week for SotS 2 though, there's a lot of problems and Kerberos is by their own admission shortstaffed and short on cash. It got released like this because people left during development, and reading between the lines those were some important people.

Given the currently toxic word of mouth? I don't like their chances a whole lot. It's a shame.

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Hey folks! Helluva weekend eh?

Welcome to the perfect storm of cockup made up of 40% Murphy's Law, 30% Chaos, 20% Overambition and 10% wishful thinking. And you have our deepest regrets for what it is worth as none of this was part of the plan.

I am tempted to go into full blown explanations but a) that starts to smack of making excuses and

in reality I think the biggest things on people's minds right now judging from your posts is "Who's responsible?!!" and "What's going to be done?!!" And even when its time for explanations I am sure you would all rather hear about it in the context of "How this won't happen again".

That latter question is an easy one and best gotten out of the way quickly. "Who is responsible?"...I am. Half my job at Kerberos is to be the one that makes the hard call. What gets prioritized. What gets pulled. What gets released. What get accepted. And in many ways, what gets said. When push comes to shove, I am the one who makes the deal with the devil. When something is supposed to be watched, its me who has to know the answer. When the switch got thrown on the wrong build, costing many of you an extra big download and letting loose an extra buggy code base, I was in traffic instead of giving the yay or nay myself. That should not have been...hell I should have insisted nothing moved until the right code had been there and confirmed multiple times. Instead I blew it and bad things happened.

So lets set this straight here. When you are dealing with SotS2 this weekend and wondering quite rightly "Who is to blame for this?!!" The answer is me. NOT Paradox...NOT Steam and certainly NOT my team. All of those forces have been exemplary in helping deal with a bad situation. When it comes to who should be at the end of anyone's fingerpoint, it's just plain ol' me.

Ok...so now onto the real important thing...The Future of SotS2 and what you can count on.

First of all the bad news...Thanks to various factors we are now sitting on top of a pile of blown apart code and unstable features. The first thing you can expect though is stability. There will be an update tomorrow which will set right much of the chaos created friday in terms of crashing and keeping you from playing that game. What it WON'T do is magically add back in every piece of functionality. Gods know I wish that I had that magic wand but the reality is that path leads to more chaos and more broken gameplay sessions. Remember that part where I mentioned making the hard calls? This is another one of those. As much as the team wants to throw themselves at this like crazy people, I am not going to ok that. Instead we will go about this in a relatively sane and orderly fashion with regular updates that make sure everything that goes back in is as stable as possible before you see it. Oh I am sure some stuff will leak through, but at least that will be dealt with quickly and cleanly. Sorry to just put the hard facts to you straight without flowers but I think we are somewhat past the flowers make it all better stage of this relationship <img onerror=

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What this means to you...

This plan means that you folks can expect at least 2 or 3 updates a week over the next month or so that will gradually make this game into what it should have been when the switch was pulled on friday. Soon after that you can expect personel in black suits to arrive at your house to flash a red light in your eyes. After that you will find yourself happy and enjoying the best release day ever and none of this will ever have happened.
Ok fine...I am a lil shakey on the last half of the plan but what I can tell you is that by the end of this period you WILL have more additional content than you would have under more ideal circumstances. Every update will go out with some thank you for your patience...some badges, extra maps, new nose art, more background entries. Basically whatever can be done alongside the priority path will be put in as well. The people out there who know Kerberos know that we support our games not just for weeks or months but for years. For all of you people new to us, please let me assure you that despite how your purchase may look at the moment, you can look forward to years of support. I would ask that you consider not giving up on us because it will literally take the end of the world for Kerberos and Paradox to give up on SotS2.

What I would like to ask of you...

Oh I know that is hardly what you expected to hear right now, but before your temperature rises, please hear me out becuase this portion is in reaction to ALL the posts I have read which seem to subdivide into certain clear groups.

If you are a Kerberos and/or a SotS fan then please just enjoy the game as you can over the next few weeks. I know you want to help as much as possible but to be honest you should NOT be rewarded for your support with more work. Your feedback is appreciated but in no means are you expected to act as testers or hunt bugs. Literally your patience and continued support is more than enough.

If you truely feel like you have been dumped into an unannounced beta test on this game, then please, I ask you to put the game away and not look at it till someone fires off the "all done" flag. I am not going to tell you that you should not feel this way. What I am going to say is that if you feel this way then you should not feel victimized any more than if you had made a pre-order and then been informed of a delay. I know this does not make it all right but at least it should make it clear that no one wants to use you as a beta tester nor was that ever the intent.

And finally, if you are in the camp that still feels robbed by the time you have reached this point of my post I can only offer what I can. We are fixing it and we need folks to either cheer, step aside or get out of the way cause vitriol is not going to help right now. If you demand a refund then I completely understand and you can be assured, the cost of that will make it directly to us. We will feel your "voting with your dollars", you can be sure about that and we accept that as fair play. On the other hand, if a free copy of the orginal SotS will help tide you over while we get this game shined from turnip to jewel, then please write to "[email protected]" and we will set you up. If nothing else, if you are not familiar with how we support our products, you can play it and then ask the old-timers how much it changed over the years and that may reassure you.

So if you are still with me after this long post...let me summarize.

a) cockup

my fault
c) will be Completely fixed
d) fun stuff in many updates
e) Understanding of your position
f) Apology again and underserved request for faith and patience from people who don't know us.

That's about it folks. I hope this helps in some way or another. If enough people care, I will try and post a "Ways I can think of to prevent this from happening ever again". But otherwise its sunday and I got a whole lot of work to get done for tomorrow's update.

Once again, Regrets and our deepest thanks for whatever patience each one of you can offer.
--Martin Cirulis
CEO/Creative Director
Kerberos Productions

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Quoting Itharus,

reply 33

I'll be honest, even with the screwed up launch, SOTS 2 looks to be a great game. Kerberos has a pretty solid history with good and frequent updates. I believe the game will be cleared up within a week or two and then made successively more B.A. all the way up to their expansion point.

Furthermore, when you compare SOTS to SOASE, I hate to say it - SOASE comes up short (even just compared to SOTS1, let alone 2). SOTS is a far more complex and in-depth game, and they actually have functional lore (as opposed to three pages of background). Sadly, SOTS 1's graphics are also better than SOASE when you slide them up all the way - and the game is two years older. I was only recently exposed to the SOTS series, and it's blown me away time and time again - and from what I can tell, the sequel will be no exception.

In all likelihood, I am jumping ship to SOTS. When Rebellion launches, if it proves to be something more than essentially a GOTY edition of SOASE Trinity with a couple of extra ships (which is all it appears to be at this point) - maybe then I'll pick up a copy and try it out. At this point though, with how SOASE has been handled since Diplomacy (which, let's be honest, was terrible)... I feel let down - repeatedly. So until that time when the game redeems itself (SOASE 2, maybe?), I'm going with the SOTS franchise - but until then, I'll keep a watchful eye hoping for a SOASE return to glory in some future time.

-Itharus

This is a terrible comparison. SOASE is a free form RTS. SOTS I and II are turn based strategy. Of course the SOTS franchise is more complex. It belongs to a more complex genre of games. In reality the only thing that makes the comparison come to mind is that they are both space conquering games.

I'm with Tridus. I'd like to see the SOTS II situation improve, because the game has potential and its been a long time since we had a good new space based TBS. But I don't see it happening. It's E:WOM without the transparent acknowledgement of a screw up and seemingly without the ability to dedicate large resources to an attempt to resolve the problem (due to the rumored cash and employee shortages).

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I went by Evrett on the sots forums and I've been following the Sots franchise for 5+ years. Sots I is an excellent, polished tactical combat game that completely downplays economic management. If you like to fight space empire vs space empire in beautiful real time (with turn based empire management) than this is the game for you. Its absolutely worth the 5-10$ you can find for sale now and if you follow the Kerberos twitter they have been giving out game copies for free.

That said on back in MAY I wrote the following or something similar on any board or preview that accepted comments regarding Sots II release date

By Evrett (SI Newbie) on May 13, 2011
Just remember Kerb has yet to release a product or patch without frustrating or game breaking bugs. I lol'd in the interview when the developer said "we walk the talk" since their past products show a lot of ambition but rocky follow through. Take whatever date your expecting it and add 6 months.

Kerberos has a lot of loyal fans who didnt experience or dont speak about the first few years of the original sots I release. And everyone there would like to forget Fort Zombie, which was Kerberos' most recent game release prior to Sots 2. I would not recommend touching Sots 2 now or in the future unless you hear of a management change up at that company. Anything short of a leadership change there will only lead to more of the same problems that have plagued quality control at that company for 5+ years.

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Quoting Campaigner,

reply 29

I understand it's turnbased with realtime battles. Is it realtime like Dawn of War & StarCraft or realtime with pause like Knights of the Old Republic?
Do you build buildings that generate money, research and production like Master of Magic and GalCiv II ?
Are there skill involved in the battles? Is it like StarCraft II (positioning and being fast), Dawn of War II (using cover'n'counters) or perhaps Age of Wonders ?

when paused, i don't think you can do anything (but think/plan).

there's no cover, you are limited to a set number of ships in battle but can reinforce. skills? no idea, i was crap. as for positioning, you do have to find the enemy, which was the most annoying thing for me

the thing about happiness dropping at "max" pop is down to overpopulation. as in 200% pop or whatever it is rather than 100%. i think.

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Ugg, wrote a rather lengthy response to have the server lose it... Blargle.

Well, so sum things up, I'll say this: While both E:WoM and SotS2 had disastrous launches, they did so for fairly different reasons. Elemental failed in a large part due to poor underlying mechanics. The game, if we ignore the bugs, was bad. Something which we can see in the way so much of the game's mechanics, since launch, has been gutted, added too, or otherwise rewritten, and while Brad said that FE will be a very different game.

Sots][, on the other hand, had such a poor launch simply because it's unfinished. The documentation is less than minimal, and the game is unlike the first one enough that a veteran and beta tester of SotS prime such as myself, has had a hard time playing it. That said, I've racked up 15 hours on SotS][ so far, and have largely enjoyed it. There's a good game under the bugs and incomplete game. The mechanics, here, are solid.

Those of us who were there for the launch of the first game know that it was hardly the deep, intriguing and highly polished game it is today. That's because KP put out countless patches, fixed, tweaks, and free content updates post release. Hell, there's even a map in there that I suggested. Because KP listens to their fans.

I expect them to do the same with this game. Not that it's going to happen quickly--the game is still unfinished as far as I'm concerned. But I've found a solid core of good game-play underneath the rough, and I'm confident all they really need to get it to the point it should have been at on release is time. Not sweeping changes are rewrites, but bug fixes, content additions, and the like. So, ultimately, I don't see it going the way of Elemental.

If you haven't bought it yet, wait. Come back in a few months and ask people what they think then. I'm confident it will be the game it should be, or at least well on its way. The devs have a track-record for great post-release support and refinement, and I think they're more inclined than ever to continue that.

Edit: I disagree with Eno. I don't see a problem with the way KP has been run before now. Sure, there were new bugs with major patches, but they were always addressed, as far as I can recall, and on the whole, the game saw vast improvements in stability, polish, content, and straight out fun with each update. SotS now is a much greater game, by a few orders of magnitude, than it was on release, and not due solely to the expansions.

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What louist said.

SotS Prime had a rocky launch and is now (in my mind) the gold standard for space 4x. Kerberos will finish SotS][ and it will be the next game I play for 5 years straight (along with FE, sucking and cancer aside ). Unless of course the rumors of Kerberos going under because they're almost broke and Paradox forced them to release so they could get cash to keep developing are true, which would be pretty sad. I haven't played SotS][ yet, my boxed copy doesn't get here for another two weeks. Maybe by then it will be slightly less buggy. Of course, I had fun with Elemental on release day so I'll probably endure the bugs of SotS][ just fine.

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I don't think Paradox "forced" them actively, but it really doesn't look like Paradox stepped up to help out when things went off the rails. They just let it happen. It's pretty clear that the problems aren't sudden. I mean hell, they don't even have the options menu working yet. There is no way it should have launched, and I pin that pretty squarely on Paradox. (Not like they care though, "bad release" is a synonym for Paradox.)

People's faith in the developers is pretty nice to see. I just hope it works out.

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I'm playing it right now. Ya its rough... but I can count on Kerberos to come through and support their game to the point its fully working and beyond. (Just like Stardock or others that have come across hard times.)

Been posting bugs and screenshots as I see them. Just give it sometime. They will support the game. (Yes I am upset but I also want this game to succeed). Hopefully this year the game will be up and running at 100%.

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I really like it even know the state that the game is in also I have 6hrs of gameplay. I like it more then SotS 1 and i really like that game. This is all my opinion

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Funny, I thought SOASE was supposed to be an RTS4X hybrid? When did it become just another RTS? IMO my comparison is perfectly valid. Especially since combat in SOTS is also real-time.

As for Paradox in general.. yeah.. they have a crap history with launches. However, to be fair? Paradox brings a lot of what would otherwise be indie-games into the mainstream market that despite a lower budget and other-than-top-of-the-line graphics are amazing games. Let's be honest, too, if you cared about top of the line graphics, you wouldn't be on the SOASE and Elemental forums .

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Quoting Itharus,

reply 44

Funny, I thought SOASE was supposed to be an RTS4X hybrid? When did it become just another RTS? IMO my comparison is perfectly valid. Especially since combat in SOTS is also real-time.

Of course you can compare the games' complexity, but it isn't an interesting comparison. The crucial design difference between SOASE and SOTS is that SOASE players handle combat simultaneously with other elements of empire management, all of which are handled in real time. SOASE can't and wasn't intended to deliver the sort of complexity that SOTS and other games with separate real-time and turn-based components can and do.

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First patch is out. Expect patches 2-3 a week. Hopefully the road to recovery is quick.

link

Also for the DLC fix

Quoting BMonkey,

reply 19

You may need to reset your application data (see instructions below) but it should now have an option when you right-click SotS 2 to "Show First Run Info"

This will pop-up a window with the pre-order DLC bonus code.

Reset Data instructions:

-Click the blue menu button in the upper left
-Choose 'Impulse Settings...'
-Click the 'Reset Data' button
-Close impulse and relaunch it. You may notice a long update time, which is normal as it is rebuilding the deleted info.

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Yeah, the comparison isn't really fair between SotS and Sins. I'd say Sins gameplay is much closer to Starcraft than SotS... trying to build up masses of regular and hero units to throw at the enemy in the fastest way possible. Its pacing is slower for sure, but you're doing the same thing.

In SotS, battles are much more reliant on tactics and loadout than numbers (although numbers do help) and reflex/micromanaging hero abilities.

I never really got the branding of "4XRTS" of Sins, I guess they were just trying to get gamers from both camps. If Sins is a "4XRTS", then so is Starcraft, Star Trek Armada, Allegiance, Hegemonia, Star Ruler and every other space based RTS.

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Quoting jackswift85,

reply 47

In SotS, battles are much more reliant on tactics and loadout than numbers (although numbers do help) and reflex/micromanaging hero abilities.

Clearly you have never played a competitive Sins battle.

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lol srs

Sins battles are nuts.

SotS is mostly "spam ["

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Along with today's patch, KP put out a much more robust manual. It's full of typos, but the information in it is infinity better than the first edition, especially for players new to the series. It will also give people who haven't bought the game a better idea of what it's like.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=41901&d=1320071925

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The Forums Are Now Closed!

The content will remain as a historical reference, thank you.

Sword of the stars 2 - are you playing it?

pacov