Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Ham Sandwiches
Jul 7, 2000

MisterVec posted:

You do have options.

That's great but right now there's basically one space 4x game with involved tactical combat - the swords of the stars franchise. Is it great that Kerberos is full of ideas and weak on execution? No, it sucks. It would be way better if there was a much more competent dev making these games. The point is, there isn't. Endless space is awful, Galciv is dead, and Sins is a mediocre game that frankly is overhyped. So in the space game right now it's SOTS.

The total war games capture a lot of this but they're about managing individual units set in historical time. That's, again, great, but when I get tired of fighting in shogunate Japan, there are very few alternatives left.

You present this like people are giving Kerberos a pass. We're not. But the first SOTS game followed the same trajectory - came out as kinda bland and unfinished and steadily became more fun. You're welcome to never give Kerberos another dollar in your righteous indignation at how things transpired, but that's your right. Other people don't feel that way for many reasons, and I think that's their right too.

What I'm saying is you can be offended as you want, but please don't act like people who don't share your opinion are being unreasonable. There's very little difference between if SOTS2 had been delayed a year vs what happened, other than you had an Alpha product in your steam library for a while. And you didn't pay any extra money other than tie up $40 at most for that period. Again, it's ok to be furious about all those things but many people are just glad there's a playable 4x tactical combat game at the end of this ordeal.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

DatonKallandor
Aug 21, 2009

"I can no longer sit back and allow nationalist shitposting, nationalist indoctrination, nationalist subversion, and the German nationalist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious game balance."
Not to mention that the idea that Total War games of all things are in an acceptable state at release is laughable. They're terrible messes at launch, consistently, but unlike SotS they expect you to pay for every bit of extra content - and be happy with your perfunctory two patches. And maybe a third half a year later if you're lucky.

And Gratuitous Space Battles is not 4X - they don't even claim to be. Having a galaxy map does not make a game a 4X.

Nobody is saying SotS 2 wasn't in a terrible state. But it's ridiculous to deny that Kerberos has gone beyond the industry standard in fixing it, much less the genre standard. The fact that they're the only devs making the game everyone is waiting for is just a sad (or happy depending on where you stand) bonus.

Hav
Dec 11, 2009

Fun Shoe

DatonKallandor posted:

As for Kerberos: They patched their mess all year round, gave out free content and have never stopped fixing bugs, all for no further money. If you've paid any attention to PC devs in the last few years you'll notice the fact they didn't abandon it after 2 patches is extremely rare, and does deserve respect.

They patched their mess to avoid becoming a complete pariah, and their recent crowdsourcing initiative fell massively short of it's target to produce a sci-fi rogue-like that was supposed to give them financial independance from their publishers in a move called 'biting the hand that had to process all the refund requests'. The 'free content' was giving out the immersion DLC that they intended for the pre-order only and this latest patch, which might keep them from the $5 sale bin for a little longer, but not considering that the 4x player pool is quite small and has a long memory of actual events.

To be honest, it might be approaching the time where they need to pack it up and find a job they're more suited to because they've completely blown away the good will farmed from the SotS prime debacle (where they didn't 'give away' the expansions, but everyone says how they patched things and they're good people).

You want to get Kerberos some proxy respect? Toddle over to their forums and ask why it was released when it was, and how it was. Don't leave until you have an answer or are banned. This re-writing of history is painful to watch because it enables these shysters to keep referring to community love when it's very limited and entirely promoted.

Incidentally, I got my refund early on and paid $7.50 for it on a twitter promotion; I still feel slightly aggrieved over the sheer loving arrogance that streams from Kerberos and would prefer an honest assessment of the reasons for why the code was so utterly hosed. Given that Indie Stone had just gone through the wringer over backing up code, I'm suspicious about the reference to 'blown apart code' and the difference between the playable E3 client and the bag of poo poo that we downloaded on the weekend of the 30th October 2011.

To remind you;

mecron posted:

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

At this point the timeline for 'completing the game' by notorious shill Agent Nihilist was 90 days. Mecron was more ambitious and penciled in a month.

mecron posted:

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.

The date of this? 31st October 2011, three days after release.

From what we've seen, they've been quietly trimming the feature list and throwing in some red meat randomly (launching missiles on the test screen is fine, but what does it actually tell you about the ship you're testing?)

DatonKallandor posted:

Sure and if you ever find a dev that does it right the first time, much less in the same genre, give us a shout.

You're going to make me count the patches aren't you? There's a point where throwing out equivalencies just makes you look silly, and that's one. The closest example I can think of is Star Ruler, which was Goon written and consistently patched from it's original release. We can do a side-by-side comparison if you wish, and Firgof might even comment. Endless space managed a fairly trouble free release, IIRC. Distant Worlds appears to be dividing by non-zero values regularly.

Keisari
May 24, 2011

LordBaxter posted:

Jesus, I watched some of that stream the guy mentioned it took 2 hours to play 12 in-game turns, was Sots1 multiplayer that slow?

It depends how familiar everyone is with the mechanics and how much there is combat. In my duel game against Demiurge we probably did like 20+ turns in 2 hours and I think that's an underestimate.

So yeah it's a lot slower than before but once you get the first turn setups and designs in and generally familiar with the mechanics it starts to go a lot faster, although never as fast as SotS1 because there's a bunch of inane crap you need to fiddle with all the time that adds nothing of real substance to the game. (I'm looking at you, corruption slider, and you, station manager! :argh:)

Soup du Journey
Mar 20, 2006

by FactsAreUseless
So here's a weird request for anyone who's got this installed right now: can someone go check for me if it's possible to modify faction colors, and have those faction colors then appear properly both on the starmap and on ships in the battlemap or the shipbuilder weapons test thing?

This thread on the official forums supposedly explains how to do it. It's really simple, as the only thing you gotta do is edit one xml file.

Can't check myself, as I'm holding off on buying this till the EE goes on sale, because it's still SotS2 we're talking about.

Hav
Dec 11, 2009

Fun Shoe

Rakthar posted:

other than you had an Alpha product in your steam library for a while.

Can you point out where I was told that I was buying an alpha? No?

I can't give anyone a pass for outright lying to me, and it took them at least a day to 'fess up to their _publisher_ that the poo poo they put out was production. _Paradox_ was the first entity to actually state that the second uploaded client, which was more heavily bugged that the first, was _production_ and they hadn't accidentally uploaded their beta. Paradox then offered the first round of refunds because you can bet your bottom dollar that Steam wasn't happy. You know how many times Steam has released a game/patch over a weekend?

At that point we downgraded what we were seeing from a Beta to an Alpha, but at _no time_ has there been a clarification of the game state on the sales pages apart from comments. And that's the most damaging thing to them, is that they _consistently_ gently caress up. It's not just the one product, or products from the same genre, but _everything_ that Kerberos produced.

Of course, this is all ancient history, and they're standup guys for not simply walking away and falling back on their secondary skillset for employment, but understand that when you suggest that there are people 'just happy to have a game', there's a bunch more like me that really can't stand by and watch someone obviously in pain repeat the same old things time and time again.

DatonKallandor
Aug 21, 2009

"I can no longer sit back and allow nationalist shitposting, nationalist indoctrination, nationalist subversion, and the German nationalist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious game balance."

Hav posted:

You're going to make me count the patches aren't you? There's a point where throwing out equivalencies just makes you look silly, and that's one. The closest example I can think of is Star Ruler, which was Goon written and consistently patched from it's original release. We can do a side-by-side comparison if you wish, and Firgof might even comment. Endless space managed a fairly trouble free release, IIRC. Distant Worlds appears to be dividing by non-zero values regularly.

I give you Star Ruler, and Firgof is an awesome dude for being able to do what he did. On the other hand, it kind of fails the turn based test, which is a big appeal of SotS - keeping the real time micro in the battles, and the economy nice and unhurried. But Endless Space? You mean the game that is missing the game part? Where during Beta, everyone was waiting for them to implement the rest of the game (including any depth for the "combat system") - and then it just came out and they said 'done'?

So Kerberos was wrong on the time frame to fix it. By a lot. By a factor of 10 at least. More kudos to them for *still* sticking with it. Belittling the free expansion as "this latest patch" is insane. It's got more content (and that's hard content not the poo poo most DLC packs pull) than many other expansions - and it was free.

I don't see how their crowd funding was a failure when they've stated publicly that it's their replacement for a donation page - they don't wanna just accept money (and people are willing to give it) for nothing, so they give stuff, even if it's just a little low-cost roguelike to those people. But this whole thing is really just a sideshow and has no impact on SotS 2.

Also I find your whole "I'm so superior because I am claiming on behalf of everyone that the game is poo poo and will always be poo poo" shtick grating and condescending. You don't speak for me, nor does claiming to do so make you in any way noble.

MisterVec
Nov 17, 2012

Rakthar posted:

That's great but right now there's basically one space 4x game with involved tactical combat - the swords of the stars franchise. Is it great that Kerberos is full of ideas and weak on execution? No, it sucks. It would be way better if there was a much more competent dev making these games. The point is, there isn't. Endless space is awful, Galciv is dead, and Sins is a mediocre game that frankly is overhyped. So in the space game right now it's SOTS.

I understand that their aren't any games that do exactly what SotS tries to. I am merely pointing out that other developers can manage doing something similar while also having a functioning options screen. You can talk about how unfun or terrible you find the alternatives to be, but that doesn't really detract from the fact that the games themselves actually worked out of the box. How unique SotS is is a separate issue from whether or not Kerberos deserves any respect for how they released it.

Rakthar posted:

You present this like people are giving Kerberos a pass. We're not. But the first SOTS game followed the same trajectory - came out as kinda bland and unfinished and steadily became more fun. You're welcome to never give Kerberos another dollar in your righteous indignation at how things transpired, but that's your right. Other people don't feel that way for many reasons, and I think that's their right too.

People are giving Kerberos a pass. They have chosen to let bad customer service and outright deception on their part go because the game is in a playable state finally. That's OK. That's their decision to make. I disagree and am reminding people why I do so. I never said it was wrong, only that I didn't understand it.

Rakthar posted:

What I'm saying is you can be offended as you want, but please don't act like people who don't share your opinion are being unreasonable. There's very little difference between if SOTS2 had been delayed a year vs what happened, other than you had an Alpha product in your steam library for a while. And you didn't pay any extra money other than tie up $40 at most for that period. Again, it's ok to be furious about all those things but many people are just glad there's a playable 4x tactical combat game at the end of this ordeal.

I don't recall saying that people who happy with Kerberos treating their pre-order customers like crap are being unreasonable. There is, however, a world of difference between the game being delayed a year and versus what happened and that difference is how Kerberos treated their customers. End of story. That's my only point.

Hagop
May 14, 2012

First one out of the Ranger gets a prize!

DatonKallandor posted:

I give you Star Ruler, and Firgof is an awesome dude for being able to do what he did. On the other hand, it kind of fails the turn based test, which is a big appeal of SotS - keeping the real time micro in the battles, and the economy nice and unhurried. But Endless Space? You mean the game that is missing the game part? Where during Beta, everyone was waiting for them to implement the rest of the game (including any depth for the "combat system") - and then it just came out and they said 'done'?

So Kerberos was wrong on the time frame to fix it. By a lot. By a factor of 10 at least. More kudos to them for *still* sticking with it. Belittling the free expansion as "this latest patch" is insane. It's got more content (and that's hard content not the poo poo most DLC packs pull) than many other expansions - and it was free.

I don't see how their crowd funding was a failure when they've stated publicly that it's their replacement for a donation page - they don't wanna just accept money (and people are willing to give it) for nothing, so they give stuff, even if it's just a little low-cost roguelike to those people. But this whole thing is really just a sideshow and has no impact on SotS 2.

Also I find your whole "I'm so superior because I am claiming on behalf of everyone that the game is poo poo and will always be poo poo" shtick grating and condescending. You don't speak for me, nor does claiming to do so make you in any way noble.

I am very glad they decided to stick it out and finish the game, but that doesn't give them a pass for selling me a game, at full price, that was non-functional. I don't see how this is not a valid point.


*edit added the quote because I am slow.

Hagop fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Dec 6, 2012

Ham Sandwiches
Jul 7, 2000

Hav posted:

Can you point out where I was told that I was buying an alpha? No?

But you got a refund? I don't want to turn this into an argument, you obviously feel differently than I do. From my perspective, the game was delayed a year and I didn't waste my time following it or being outraged during that period. Apparently you had a different experience and I guess that's why you're still unhappy with them.

quote:

I can't give anyone a pass for outright lying to me, and it took them at least a day to 'fess up to their _publisher_ that the poo poo they put out was production. _Paradox_ was the first entity to actually state that the second uploaded client, which was more heavily bugged that the first, was _production_ and they hadn't accidentally uploaded their beta. Paradox then offered the first round of refunds because you can bet your bottom dollar that Steam wasn't happy. You know how many times Steam has released a game/patch over a weekend?

Yes, Kerberos is a crappy developer that is often late and underdelivers. They also make a game that I happen to want to play and it happens to be coming into playable state.

quote:

Of course, this is all ancient history, and they're standup guys for not simply walking away and falling back on their secondary skillset for employment, but understand that when you suggest that there are people 'just happy to have a game', there's a bunch more like me that really can't stand by and watch someone obviously in pain repeat the same old things time and time again.

That's fine but at some point either you can accept that the game and dev are what they are or you can't. I still want to play the game they are making which is why I don't really care that the path to get to that point has a lot of bumps and bruises. I totally get others don't feel the same way.

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters
Holy crap do we really need to rehash the last year of this thread when we finally, actually have a playable game to discuss?

MisterVec
Nov 17, 2012

Captain Oblivious posted:

Holy crap do we really need to rehash the last year of this thread when we finally, actually have a playable game to discuss?

The man is right. Further debate can easily take place in the #sots2 channel! I'll be there and will happily and cheerfully go on about how upset I am. You can also learn various fun facts, like how I pre-ordered 5 copies or muse over how the name Mecron sounds suspiciously like one of the many Warhammer 40K embodiments of evil, the nefarious Orks.

DatonKallandor
Aug 21, 2009

"I can no longer sit back and allow nationalist shitposting, nationalist indoctrination, nationalist subversion, and the German nationalist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious game balance."
Speaking of the actual game, something that's probably not obvious is that you can have phaser PD in the fusion age. By putting phasers on your ships and switching the target selection to PD. They'll start swatting down missiles, boarding pods and drones like phaser-PD.

MisterVec
Nov 17, 2012

DatonKallandor posted:

Speaking of the actual game, something that's probably not obvious is that you can have phaser PD in the fusion age. By putting phasers on your ships and switching the target selection to PD. They'll start swatting down missiles, boarding pods and drones like phaser-PD.

Indeed. As far as I can tell, almost all of your turretted weapons can be put in PD mode, regardless of turret size. Most aren't very effective, mind, though beam weapons (and especially phasers) do a decent job.

DatonKallandor
Aug 21, 2009

"I can no longer sit back and allow nationalist shitposting, nationalist indoctrination, nationalist subversion, and the German nationalist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious game balance."
What finally prompted me to figure out that one is the fact that the Ghost Ship has Phaser PD. Leviathans don't have small mounts though.

Also, VN Berserkers are huge dicks. There's an new VN form that takes the role of the old Berserkers (you gently caress with us, you get messed with), while new Berserkers don't kid around. They're not quite VN Construct bad, but they will kill your Homeworld if you don't have good defenses and micro.

Nuclearmonkee
Jun 10, 2009


DatonKallandor posted:

What finally prompted me to figure out that one is the fact that the Ghost Ship has Phaser PD. Leviathans don't have small mounts though.

Also, VN Berserkers are huge dicks. There's an new VN form that takes the role of the old Berserkers (you gently caress with us, you get messed with), while new Berserkers don't kid around. They're not quite VN Construct bad, but they will kill your Homeworld if you don't have good defenses and micro.

I just wish there was a way to tell your planet to stop spamming missiles at the first itty bitty VN construct so you don't start traveling down the path that ends with trying to fight off a berserker force. I used to always just let them wander off after killing the babby probes in Sots1 but this is harder to do in 2.

I use light emitters as general purpose PD if I get them. They can kill pretty much everything that PD kills with ease. Coupled with some laser pd in the center pd spots to keep planet missile spam away you will be pretty much untouchable. Attempting to swamp the pd just mean your emitters have more things to bounce off of.

Last time I attempted to fight off a berserker I got destroyed and only managed to kill a few pieces. What works well on them?

Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Dec 7, 2012

DatonKallandor
Aug 21, 2009

"I can no longer sit back and allow nationalist shitposting, nationalist indoctrination, nationalist subversion, and the German nationalist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious game balance."
It seemed like massed fire with any mid-tier weapon (fusion cannons/phasers/ap drivers) will save your planet if you focus on each pyramid in succession. It's easier if you can manage to keep the discs occupied with police, riders or sacrificial cruisers. Trying to take down the Main Command Section of the Berserker is probably a waste of time and population. You can always kill that thing last.

Killer-of-Lawyers
Apr 22, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020

Captain Oblivious posted:

Holy crap do we really need to rehash the last year of this thread when we finally, actually have a playable game to discuss?

No kidding guys. You don't want to give Ortgay a reason to show up in this thread.

Deadmeat5150
Nov 21, 2005

OLD MAN YELLS AT CLAN
Holy poo poo, there's Pirate Bases now as an encounter? Not only is that awesome, but they don't joke around either, they wrecked my armored survey fleet. It's been 10 turns since I pounded them into oblivion and I haven't had a pirate attack since.

MisterVec
Nov 17, 2012

DatonKallandor posted:

It seemed like massed fire with any mid-tier weapon (fusion cannons/phasers/ap drivers) will save your planet if you focus on each pyramid in succession. It's easier if you can manage to keep the discs occupied with police, riders or sacrificial cruisers. Trying to take down the Main Command Section of the Berserker is probably a waste of time and population. You can always kill that thing last.

I actually use the exact opposite strategy. It's the discs that make fighting the VN berzerker a pain, so I send a ship or some battleriders out to keep them occupied while my fleet pounds the primary VN unit. Given my preference for fixed-mount heavy weapons cruisers, this means a fleet of 5 or 6 can usually blow the thing up in short order without worrying about the smaller pyramids at all, even if I'm just using basic photonic torps and HCL's. Once it's dead, the little ones self destruct anyway. Unfortunately, the little discs then come in and make a mess of my fleet unless I have Hardened Electronics researched. Even if I lose the whole fleet, though, it's not a big deal. 2 mil and a turn later I have a defensive fleet back in business and ready to go.

Post-berzerker, though, it's a great idea to improve the firepower and number of ships the defense fleet uses. That Construct can eat a planet in under two minutes and you need a lot of bullets to blow it up that quickly.

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters
I'm about to break back into this game with a friend next week.

How are Hivers for balance? I believe the gate network issues were worked out a while ago right?

And do they still have the goofy original voice acting please tell me they do.

MadJackMcJack
Jun 10, 2009

Captain Oblivious posted:

Holy crap do we really need to rehash the last year of this thread when we finally, actually have a playable game to discuss?

It's playable now? Huzzah! :woop:

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters

MadJackMcJack posted:

It's playable now? Huzzah! :woop:

It's why we have a new thread :toot:

Hav
Dec 11, 2009

Fun Shoe

DatonKallandor posted:

Also I find your whole "I'm so superior because I am claiming on behalf of everyone that the game is poo poo and will always be poo poo" shtick grating and condescending. You don't speak for me, nor does claiming to do so make you in any way noble.

Nice strawman. Have you had it long?

Edit: yikes;

W (2012/12/06 20:15:53) [game] System.Xml.XmlException: Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1.
at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exception e)
at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(String res, String arg)
at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseRootLevelWhitespace()
at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseDocumentContent()
at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Read()
at System.Xml.XPath.XPathDocument.LoadFromReader(XmlReader reader, XmlSpace space)
at System.Xml.XPath.XPathDocument..ctor(Stream stream)
at Kerberos.Sots.Profile.LoadProfile(String profileName, Boolean absolutepath)
at Kerberos.Sots.Profile.GetAvailableProfiles()
at Kerberos.Sots.App.GetAllSaveGames()
at Kerberos.Sots.Data.GameDatabase.CheckForPre_EOFSaves(App App)
at Kerberos.Sots.GameStates.MainMenuState.OnEnter()
at Kerberos.Sots.GameState.Enter()
at Kerberos.Sots.GameStateMachine.Update()
at Kerberos.Sots.App.Update()

Hav fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Dec 7, 2012

Taerkar
Dec 7, 2002

kind of into it, really

Sometimes Karma works.

Captain Oblivious posted:

I'm about to break back into this game with a friend next week.

How are Hivers for balance? I believe the gate network issues were worked out a while ago right?

And do they still have the goofy original voice acting please tell me they do.

Hivers do get some definite boosts this game. They can farcast all the time instead of just when the target is in range. They get an extra station type that gives numerous bonuses to casting, their gate networks, research, and even functions as a fairly good defensive platform. I think their trade benefits from the gates too.

DatonKallandor
Aug 21, 2009

"I can no longer sit back and allow nationalist shitposting, nationalist indoctrination, nationalist subversion, and the German nationalist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious game balance."

MisterVec posted:

I actually use the exact opposite strategy. It's the discs that make fighting the VN berzerker a pain, so I send a ship or some battleriders out to keep them occupied while my fleet pounds the primary VN unit. Given my preference for fixed-mount heavy weapons cruisers, this means a fleet of 5 or 6 can usually blow the thing up in short order without worrying about the smaller pyramids at all, even if I'm just using basic photonic torps and HCL's. Once it's dead, the little ones self destruct anyway. Unfortunately, the little discs then come in and make a mess of my fleet unless I have Hardened Electronics researched. Even if I lose the whole fleet, though, it's not a big deal. 2 mil and a turn later I have a defensive fleet back in business and ready to go.

Post-berzerker, though, it's a great idea to improve the firepower and number of ships the defense fleet uses. That Construct can eat a planet in under two minutes and you need a lot of bullets to blow it up that quickly.

I just fought a Berzerker on the latest patch and I can 100% confirm that the Sterilization Pyramids don't self destruct when you take out the primary unit. They will happily continue to burn down your planet.

ugh its Troika
May 2, 2009

by FactsAreUseless
That ten second lag between turns is maddening. What happened to instant turns like in SoTS?

MisterVec
Nov 17, 2012

DatonKallandor posted:

I just fought a Berzerker on the latest patch and I can 100% confirm that the Sterilization Pyramids don't self destruct when you take out the primary unit. They will happily continue to burn down your planet.

I've either had a completely different experience or managed to kill the pyramids incidentally, either via planetary missiles or secondary turret fire. I've never had those things continue to attack the planet after the main node is gone. I will have to double-check things again.

Horsebanger
Jun 25, 2009

Steering wheel! Hey! Steering wheel! Someone tell him to give it to me!

Deadmeat5150 posted:

Holy poo poo, there's Pirate Bases now as an encounter? Not only is that awesome, but they don't joke around either, they wrecked my armored survey fleet. It's been 10 turns since I pounded them into oblivion and I haven't had a pirate attack since.

I think from memory Pirates had almost all Armor-piercing ballistics, hence they'd wreck any armored opponent, and massacre freighters that weren't freighter-Q's.

I've played around 90 hours of the game and had fun with it. Corruption is still an annoying concept.

MLKQUOTEMACHINE
Oct 22, 2012

Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill
Now all you people saying you're having fun with SotS2, are you having fun single-player? Because I'm a hopeless, stinky shut-in who hates to play games with other people multi-player doesn't appeal to me (also because multi-player just is too cutthroat for me, as well as lets me know how drat bad I am at video games).

I know it is a dumb question/an even dumber hope, but is the AI even worth it at this point?

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters
Actually here's another question:

Are humans less poo poo this time?

j5mello
Jul 23, 2008

nutranurse posted:

Now all you people saying you're having fun with SotS2, are you having fun single-player? Because I'm a hopeless, stinky shut-in who hates to play games with other people multi-player doesn't appeal to me (also because multi-player just is too cutthroat for me, as well as lets me know how drat bad I am at video games).

I know it is a dumb question/an even dumber hope, but is the AI even worth it at this point?

AI is still pretty basic. Pulls the same poo poo like in SOTS but with SOTS2-ish tweaks. For instance constant one ship scouting has become constant survey fleets. And it seems to really like war. I have only met fleets of AIs and had them declare war on me. They also seem to have a serious economy issue. I'm repeatedly being asked by the AI for cash.

If your doing SP put the AI on hard. Seems to prop them along better.

Captain Oblivious posted:

Actually here's another question:

Are humans less poo poo this time?

Personally I don't like the weapon setup on the human ships. They kinda went with a WWII style command tower with the guns on either side of it style for the mission sections. And much like SOTS1 I question why certain turrets where bound together in banks.

Nodelines are still nodelines so eh...

j5mello fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Dec 7, 2012

Nuclearmonkee
Jun 10, 2009


Captain Oblivious posted:

Actually here's another question:

Are humans less poo poo this time?

Human CRs are meh but they only get better from there.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

-Troika- posted:

That ten second lag between turns is maddening. What happened to instant turns like in SoTS?

The end turn lag seems to feel about the same in terms of duration as the save game lag, I wonder if it's the autosave eating up all the CPU or something.

Deadmeat5150
Nov 21, 2005

OLD MAN YELLS AT CLAN

Nuclearmonkee posted:

Human CRs are meh but they only get better from there.

Human dreads set to broadside are goddamn amazing. Especially against slow moving hivers. They circle like Mongols firing weapons into the middle.

Keisari
May 24, 2011

Captain Oblivious posted:

I'm about to break back into this game with a friend next week.

How are Hivers for balance? I believe the gate network issues were worked out a while ago right?

And do they still have the goofy original voice acting please tell me they do.

Yes! They indeed do. It's objectively a lot better but the "Yeesssss my queeeeen" never gets old. Ever.

nutranurse posted:

Now all you people saying you're having fun with SotS2, are you having fun single-player? Because I'm a hopeless, stinky shut-in who hates to play games with other people multi-player doesn't appeal to me (also because multi-player just is too cutthroat for me, as well as lets me know how drat bad I am at video games).

I know it is a dumb question/an even dumber hope, but is the AI even worth it at this point?

No. I'm sorry the AI is still really bad and will make you want to throw your computer out when you get yet another 3-cruiser survey fleet. I myself only play multi and only without any AIs whatsoever.

Arglebargle III
Feb 21, 2006

I've been getting a weird "white screen" event quite frequently where the game screen turns completely white and I get a message that "Intel Display Driver something something has failed." The game still works (I can still click the interface) but I can't see it. This has only happened with SotS 2. Restarting the game fixes it but I can't save the game if I can't see the screen so I lose that turn and it's annoying.

Anyone else encountered this? Or at least know a quicksave keyboard shortcut?

Hav
Dec 11, 2009

Fun Shoe

Comte de Saint-Germain posted:

The end turn lag seems to feel about the same in terms of duration as the save game lag, I wonder if it's the autosave eating up all the CPU or something.

It shouldn't be, because the save game is a duplicate of the current database state and while they're 1996 large, they're not 2012 large. Some of the lag appears to be incorrectly ordering things, which you'll notice when you come back from the battle manager after setting up defenses in the prelude to combat.

My crash on starting is because my settings file was referencing an old saved game that apparently the EOF convertor couldn't understand. Killed the settings file and everything works. I did spend an entertaining half hour reading through the three pages of bug reports for the Enhanced Edition; seems that the spawns at the origin point of a system haven't entirely gone away.

I'd also recommend blowing away old installs and reinstalling the game. It's now a relatively lightweight 2Gb downloaded rather than 3.something.

Arglebargle III posted:

I've been getting a weird "white screen" event quite frequently where the game screen turns completely white

%localappdata%/sword of the stars II/log should contain the last run log. Apart from the comical messages about missing assets, there should be some more information in there that might help. Usual caveats regarding up to date graphics drivers apply.

Neruz
Jul 23, 2012

A paragon of manliness
Is the Battlerider Sattelite that system defense boats upgrade?

Also I would just like to say that after some time I have decided that the Loa have the best Drive system in the game. No-one else is crazy enough to shoot their fleets at other stars using massive electromagnetic cannons.

Neruz fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Dec 7, 2012

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Keisari
May 24, 2011

Two gigs you say?

Hold on...



Wait what the gently caress?. That's... I don't know what to say.

  • Locked thread