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I see they added some kind of glowing all-white objects on the planets that I am assuming are supposed to be Santa hats.
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Dec 22, 2012 00:27
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Sinister_Beekeeper posted:I see they added some kind of glowing all-white objects on the planets that I am assuming are supposed to be Santa hats. You must be having issues with the texture. It's the proper red and white on my screen.
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Dec 22, 2012 00:32
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Arglebargle III posted:I killed the Ghost Ship finally. All it took was some torpedo platforms and a fusion cannon fleet. I'm still bitter about how the Tarka keep taking planets that I conquered. The decision of dreads is more on how critical are dreads to your race versus cruisers. Something like Hivers or Tarka? You can safely ignore Dreads until you're rolling in a few million a turn or facing entire dread fleets from your opponents. Humans or Liir? Screw your economy, you get Dreads ASAP and make it work.
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Dec 22, 2012 01:26
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Nuclearmonkee posted:You must be having issues with the texture. It's the proper red and white on my screen. And it's indeed a santa hat for every planet. See, Kerberos cares. Still running into a SotS error every time I play now. The invalid XML error went away after I completely destroyed the install, preferences and saved games, but is replaced with the 'can't replace the backup' messages. Edit; seems to be intermittent too. Small patch hit, no patch notes other than it fixes a Suulka CTD. Also Metacritic did fall for the rebranding (http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/sword-of-the-stars-ii-lords-of-winter-enhanced-edition) Hav fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Dec 22, 2012 |
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Dec 22, 2012 01:26
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Arglebargle III posted:I killed the Ghost Ship finally. All it took was some torpedo platforms and a fusion cannon fleet. I'm still bitter about how the Tarka keep taking planets that I conquered. Colony snatching can be considered an aggressive action. The AI will get mad at you for it. They're not trying to be your friend, they're trying to win the game. Fry the lizards and take what you won. Depends on your species, but a dread can cost something like 3mil to prototype, 1mil after. If you get them early - which can be a good idea, because a dreadnaught can steamroll poorly equipped early game cruisers - then you might need to save up for a turn or three and then treat it like a proper prized ship-of-the-line. It's really hard to actually kill a dreadnugget in one turn as long as you don't send it in alone against stuff with anti-huge-ship weaponry (heavy lasers), then you can repair it. Especially good dreadnaughts: Liir (crazy maneuverable) Zuul (all the guns, cheap) Morrigs (wonderful and extra strategic speed). Also? 'Variable Lasers' are about the best thing ever. Small slot. Against missiles, drones, and small things, it shoots like a souped up pew pew PD laser. Against bigger ships, it fires as an X-Ray Beamer. The closest thing to a drawback is that they're about twice as expensive as any other small slot turret, but they're entirely worth it.
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Dec 22, 2012 07:11
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I'm Morrigi so yes, Dreadnoughts are going to be a good thing to get. The prototype battle bridge-armor-void mastery I put together though (yes I got antimatter before dreads) is going to cost 6 million to prototype and I don't have CinC dreads yet so I'm putting it on the back burner while I stamp the Humans faces into the ground and use my old hiver-killing drone fleets to kick some Zuul out of a few planets they weren't even using anyway. (Seriously there are 3 systems inside ~150 of my CH that they never even colonized, just built stations in.) I'm closing in on dreads but my god everything in this game is soooo slooooow. Rapid prototyping and advanced dreads are going to take about 8 turns together. How do you get Variable Lasers? Phasers were cruelly denied to me by the RNG so phaser PD is sadly not an option. The Tarka are the largest empire in the galaxy, which is why I'm not kicking their asses just yet. I would be seriously worried about a clash with them if I hadn't seized two provinces from the Humans in the last 30 turns. The Humans have assplague which is about the most annoying thing ever. I wish I could just assault shuttle my own colonies to death so I could recolonize immediately but it takes one planet like 8 turns to switch.
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Dec 22, 2012 08:57
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Hav posted:And it's indeed a santa hat for every planet. See, Kerberos cares. Jesus user score 8.8? Hahahaha that's clearly Mecron's sycophants at work, giving the game 9/10 just to "clear it's name" because they love their game so much. Squamatus on Metacritic posted:I have logged approximately a thousand hours on this game since it's difficult birth a year ago. I have seen it mature into the best 4x game I have ever played. The devs are constantly tweaking and fixing and adjusting at an impressive pace. There are still the occasional bugs and the learning curve is nearly vertical at first, but the new global chat in game (even single-player) really helps you get over the first hurdles. Amazing depth, incredible lore (both the novel and the website) and very satisfying gameplay.
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Dec 22, 2012 09:06
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Make sure you research rapid prototyping before you start building Dreadnaughts; it's linked right off Dreadnaughts and it reduces the cost of prototyping by a huge amount (like, halves the cost) making them much more viable in the earlier stages.
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Dec 22, 2012 09:29
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Arglebargle III posted:I'm Morrigi so yes, Dreadnoughts are going to be a good thing to get. The prototype battle bridge-armor-void mastery I put together though (yes I got antimatter before dreads) is going to cost 6 million to prototype and I don't have CinC dreads yet so I'm putting it on the back burner while I stamp the Humans faces into the ground and use my old hiver-killing drone fleets to kick some Zuul out of a few planets they weren't even using anyway. (Seriously there are 3 systems inside ~150 of my CH that they never even colonized, just built stations in.) There's an "Abandon Colony" button, but I don't recall if that's instant. It might be faster than waiting for the Assimilation and then Shuttling it to death.
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Dec 22, 2012 13:06
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GRAAH! Tarka stole a system I cleared with a single construction fleet AGAIN! The truly infuriating thing is that the fleet system is the problem. I can't launch a construction fleet to the place until the last enemy thingy is cleared, and if the Tarka are closer they slip in easily. I would go to war with them immediately but the humans are refusing to declare peace. Is this one of those games with an incredibly simplistic good/bad AI relations system where the computer will never end a war with you no matter what?
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Dec 22, 2012 15:32
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Arglebargle III posted:GRAAH! Tarka stole a system I cleared with a single construction fleet AGAIN! Leave a couple of fleets there on patrol immediately after invasion. If you've got superiority, you should be able to kill any construction/colony type fleets that attempt to sneak the world away. Can't comment on the AI diplomacy thing because the AI is still hilariously bad, but we've been *assured* it will function properly, probably in 2014.
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Dec 22, 2012 15:55
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Does this work even if I'm not at war with the Tarka?
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Dec 22, 2012 16:15
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Hav posted:Also Metacritic did fall for the rebranding (http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/sword-of-the-stars-ii-lords-of-winter-enhanced-edition) I guess if you just change the name of your failed product, you get a do-over on the reviews. I still think they should have went with Sword of the Stars II: Christmas Cashgrab™ though.
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Dec 22, 2012 16:32
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Sinister_Beekeeper posted:I guess if you just change the name of your failed product, you get a do-over on the reviews. So far it doesn't appear that actual publications have bitten, but the user reviews are hella funny once you start looking at the review history of each one. some of those 10 scores are their only review, one guy dropped it by a point for the expansion (from a 9 to an 8) and one chap gave it 10s for both editions, but Diablo III got a '3'. Seems they can rustle up ten guys to give it a really positive bump. I have to say, in between the crashes and the numerous bugs I can give it a solid 5, but I'm still waiting on arcs, meaningful AI, intel and diplomacy to make it to SotS I standard.
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Dec 22, 2012 17:32
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Hav posted:So far it doesn't appear that actual publications have bitten, but the user reviews are hella funny once you start looking at the review history of each one. some of those 10 scores are their only review, one guy dropped it by a point for the expansion (from a 9 to an 8) and one chap gave it 10s for both editions, but Diablo III got a '3'. I have yet to actually complete a game before everything crashes. Between that, the lack of a useful wiki since the devs think how to play the game is "lore", the terrible community, and the strange in-game chat that I can not turn off that alternates between the typical Kerberos forums circlejerk and...interesting political discussions (It's Stormfront....IN SPACE!!!), I am about to just give up for another year. And that is coming from someone that played MOO3 because well, I did spend money on it and am apparently a masochist. But yeah, I would not be surprised if there was a post on the Kerberos forums telling everyone to inflate the Metacritic score. Or an employee email.
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Dec 22, 2012 17:39
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Honestly the game has been quite stable for me. My biggest problem is the incredible slow pace of the game even with research set to 150% and with 10 starting techs. It's turn 250 and I have yet to build my first dreadnought. Probably the single biggest factor in the pace of the game is the crippling station upkeep. Stations pretty much take the place of buildable structures in other 4x games in that you need to have them on every developed colony. At turn 200 station upkeep was fully a third of my income, slowing down every other aspect of the game. Now I've got it down to one fourth, but it's still hurting research pretty badly. My second-biggest problem is the totally useless diplomacy screen. I have yet to conclude a trade treaty with anyone because I can't find it. Whoever designed the diplomacy screen should be fired. I'm serious. The basic model of what a 4x diplomacy screen should look like and do has been set for literally a decade or more. The piece of garbage in SotS 2 is a few steps backward in functionality from Civ3. There's no way to see the relationships between other factions, get a feel for the AI's posture towards you other than that stupid line graph, or access a variety of functions that should be standard. I've had an independent world in a system I control for literally 200 turns and I can't figure out how to find them on the screen much less talk to them. (No, they're not in the independents list.) This coming out in an environment where Creative Assembly style gently caress-stupid strategic AI is no longer acceptable. There are several games out there in which the AI will approach diplomacy in a way that at least vaguely approximates optimal decisions. I would settle for an AI that can at least understand that it's losing a war.
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Dec 22, 2012 18:02
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You are doing something wrong if you've not managed to get a dread out at turn 250, as Morrigi with research efficency upped to a reasonable level. You are either building way too many stations or loving up your economy somehow if you you've got 1/3rd station upkeep at turn 200. Are you researching the econ boosting techs (Expert systems, arcologies, deep space mining, telekinesis, empathy, micro-telekinesis, gravity control, etc.) and running your non-forge-systems at max population? By turn 200 you should also probably have Super-Worlds researched and turned your Homeworld into a Gem-World.
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Dec 22, 2012 18:50
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Arglebargle III posted:Honestly the game has been quite stable for me. My biggest problem is the incredible slow pace of the game even with research set to 150% and with 10 starting techs. It's turn 250 and I have yet to build my first dreadnought. Probably the single biggest factor in the pace of the game is the crippling station upkeep. Stations pretty much take the place of buildable structures in other 4x games in that you need to have them on every developed colony. At turn 200 station upkeep was fully a third of my income, slowing down every other aspect of the game. Now I've got it down to one fourth, but it's still hurting research pretty badly. Do you have trade running with 100% civ population on every colony that isn't a production center? Ideally, I also try to switch my production center from my capital to a different new system if possible. The ideal situation is having your core systems full trade by like turn 50 since they are the only colonies with the pop to support it, though this is of course dependent upon finding a good system with 10k+ I/O. Let the core trade (with imperial built freighters, stimulus isn't worth it until you get mega freighters), let your periphery colonies build poo poo and simply relocate everything they make to your main production system. Oh, and I also scrap my starting naval base on turn 1. It costs 150k a turn which is like a third of your starting economy. Give everyone missions, scrap the naval yard, and then immediately give your starting construction ship orders to rebuild it. Then afterwards plop down cheap level 1 naval yards on all of your starting planets and spread your fleets out so you don't have to worry about hitting support caps. This is basically a free 100k a turn extra income and is a huge boon early on. That independent is probably a primitive race. Drop a science station in orbit and it unlocks a special project to research them. Once done they pop up like normal independents. Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Dec 22, 2012 |
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Dec 22, 2012 18:53
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Arglebargle III posted:Does this work even if I'm not at war with the Tarka?
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Dec 22, 2012 22:15
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Figured i would ask here, has anyone tinkered with getting custom badges working recently? I saw on the kerberos fourms where there is a MLP badge pack  up and working, so it has to be possible. Just wondering what steps were taken to get the .tga files uncompressed and working in game.
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Dec 23, 2012 02:17
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Aethernet posted:No, but if they're annoying you by stealing colonies you believe should rightfully be yours, declare war on them, just like, well, real life. 'AI does sneaky thing' is endemic to 4x games - beating the AI to the best city placement in Civ was a game in itself. Mind you, in the original SOTS you could warn the AI off particular systems, which would solve your problem. It hasn't made it into SOTS 2 because Mecron. Here's the problem, and you can't see my galaxy map so I'll state it again: the Tarka are really big. Jesus Christ they just colonized a system that I had a naval station in. I thought that wasn't even possible. Researching Advanced Dreadnoughts seems to have unlocked absolutely nothing. There go 8 turns down the drain. This game is such a slog I may simply give up. I want to like it but goddamn it is so incredibly loving slow. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Dec 23, 2012 |
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Dec 23, 2012 04:17
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You can colonise planets in systems outright owned by other races with the right tech. If the Tarka aren't at war with you they can basically colonise freely outside your owned systems and if they've researched the tech they can colonise inside your systems too. if you want the Tarka to not be able to steal the poo poo out of your stuff you need to declare war on them.
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Dec 23, 2012 06:10
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Christ what tech is that? I'm pretty sure I have better terraforming technology than them and there are some systems that they're just sitting on with a naval station with 4+ worlds that I could have up and running in 10 turns.
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Dec 23, 2012 06:51
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Argle, it sounds like you're completely outpaced in your game. Turn 250 and you only just got dreads? You should have dreads around turn 70 as Morrigi. You're going to have to declare war on the Tarka and glass as many planets as possible before they completely overrun you. I suggest biological weapons.
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Dec 23, 2012 06:56
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Arglebargle III posted:Christ what tech is that? I'm pretty sure I have better terraforming technology than them and there are some systems that they're just sitting on with a naval station with 4+ worlds that I could have up and running in 10 turns. It's under Political Science; Trade Enclaves. The tech says that it only allows you to colonise planets in opposing empire systems for Trade purposes but experimentation has shown that you can actually do anything you like with the planet not just trade.
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Dec 23, 2012 07:07
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Demiurge4 posted:Argle, it sounds like you're completely outpaced in your game. Turn 250 and you only just got dreads? You should have dreads around turn 70 as Morrigi. You're going to have to declare war on the Tarka and glass as many planets as possible before they completely overrun you. I suggest biological weapons. This is my first SotS II game so it's sort of expected. Surprisingly (in a horrifying way) I've outteched everyone I've fought so far. No one else has antimatter or dreads as far as I can tell. At turn 250. Hence my conclusion that the game is agonizingly slow. And I've decided on cloaked assault shuttles... worked in the first game.
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Dec 23, 2012 07:34
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Advanced Dreadnaught Construction is supposed to open up a few options depending upon what other techs you have researched. It's also what's needed for the heavy beam turret tech which allows for the War sections and planetary defense beams. The Trade Enclave is a regular colony in a friendly system, allowing for you to build your own stations there (I think) and trade with the other race at the 'foreign power' rate.
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Dec 23, 2012 07:57
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Arglebargle III posted:This is my first SotS II game so it's sort of expected. Surprisingly (in a horrifying way) I've outteched everyone I've fought so far. No one else has antimatter or dreads as far as I can tell. At turn 250. Hence my conclusion that the game is agonizingly slow. Do let us know how that works out. I've been enjoying your posts about your game - kind of a mini-LP filled with frustration, requests for gameplay advice, colony-stealing Tarka, and swearing at Mecron.
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Dec 23, 2012 08:18
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There's a post on the official SotSII forums where a guy goes through a cost benefit analysis of armor, finds that armor is horrifically overpriced, finds a glitch in how armor is priced, and the entire time Mecron is saying things like:Mecron posted:ahh the clash between math and reality. Mecron posted:The comment about heavy beams is a CLASSIC example of the problem in this topic. The calculations are base on the premise that you are dealing with a target that does not move at all...as soon as you have a target in motion, a beam stiops burning through and instead smears across the armor in that section. Dealing with weapons as simple DPS devices and armor as simple HP repositories is a mistake. But honestly, the same kind of mistake you see in real life all the time so its a pretty realistic convo When the person doing the analysis goes to the extreme of providing a scenario where armor is stripped entirely off of a ship (i.e. all armor on all sides of the ship is stripped) before doing any other damage. Eventually Mecron admits to and fixes a glitch in how armor is priced, but it seems like he's almost actively hostile to anyone doing any analysis on the game. Oddly, the community also seems actively hostile to anyone doing analysis on the game. You'd think that developers would welcome the players going through and stress testing values, especially cases where people were paying 2.5x the cost of a ship for a maximum of 30% extra effectiveness and a practical amount of around 5-10% more effectiveness. Of course, there were people in the thread who assumed that Kerberos could do no wrong and that of course it's worth it to pay 2.5x more for a ship that's maybe 30% more effective because if you just use tactics you can dodge enemy fire. It's a very strange culture, really. It just boggles the mind - if I were a developer and some player went through analyzing and doing a cost benefit analysis on a piece of equipment, I'd be overjoyed and look through their math. I might not ever directly comment on it, but it seems like it'd be something to encourage, not stamp out.
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Dec 23, 2012 11:47
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Dirk the Average posted:There's a post on the official SotSII forums where a guy goes through a cost benefit analysis of armor, finds that armor is horrifically overpriced, finds a glitch in how armor is priced, and the entire time Mecron is saying things like:
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Dec 23, 2012 12:34
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I see Mecron's still using realism as an excuse for anything awful about his game.
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Dec 23, 2012 13:08
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Talkie Toaster posted:You see this with tabletop RPGs as well. People object to treating the game as a 'game' and addressing the mechanics in terms of what they actually achieve. Then it seems to be because people prefer to think they're simulating another world rather than just playing a game, I wonder if that's the case with the hardcore SotS fans, the ones who buy all the novels and write fanfiction and whatnot? They'd probably see a criticism of the game mechanics as an attack on the validity of the simulation and thus on their career achievements as King Magical Space Dolphin, and have to come up with justifications as to why it's totally not the case. Bafflingly, although what you say is the case sufficient analysis does seem to get Kerberos to make changes. They never actually admit that they're wrong, but there's frequently a tiny line in the next patch addressing the issue. Witness the recent bitching about humans being underpowered, which Kerberos swore wasn't the case. They got a speed boost in the next patch.
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Dec 23, 2012 13:08
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I've stopped reading the official forums specifically because Mecron's massive smugness and inability to honestly acknowledge any fault annoys me far too much.
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Dec 23, 2012 13:30
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Joe_Richter posted:I've stopped reading the official forums specifically because Mecron's massive smugness and inability to honestly acknowledge any fault annoys me far too much. I read the official forums specifically because Mecron's massive smuggness and inability to honestly acknowledge any fault entertains me so much.
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Dec 23, 2012 13:32
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Dirk the Average posted:There's a post on the official SotSII forums where a guy goes through a cost benefit analysis of armor, finds that armor is horrifically overpriced, finds a glitch in how armor is priced, and the entire time Mecron is saying things like: On the other hand, with the combat system placing strict limits on the amount of ships, regardless of their cost, even small increases of survivability are worthwhile, because even if your ships are cheaper you can't bring more of them to make up for it. Obviously there's a limit to how much more armor should cost compared to it's effectiveness, but it's not a simple "30% more armor should only cost 30% more".
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Dec 23, 2012 13:36
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DatonKallandor posted:On the other hand, with the combat system placing strict limits on the amount of ships, regardless of their cost, even small increases of survivability are worthwhile, because even if your ships are cheaper you can't bring more of them to make up for it. Obviously there's a limit to how much more armor should cost compared to it's effectiveness, but it's not a simple "30% more armor should only cost 30% more". Oh, absolutely true. The problem was the sheer scale of how 30% was a huge overstatement and that the cost was 2.5x because of a glitch/bug in the calculation. It multiplied the weapon cost too instead of just the section cost. Also consider that armor does cost research too - it should be something that you want to take in most cases because of that additional cost. Something like 25% more effective for 50% more cost would be more in line.
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Dec 23, 2012 13:43
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I read the forums because otherwise I'd miss hilarious e-drama like someone posting a link to a new review of the Enhanced Edition at Space Sector, Mecron having a pop at the reviewer, the reviewer stopping by to defend himself and then Erinys going absolutely mental at him, locking the thread and then deleting it. Just happened now.
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Dec 23, 2012 13:45
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Aethernet posted:I read the forums because otherwise I'd miss hilarious e-drama like someone posting a link to a new review of the Enhanced Edition at Space Sector, Mecron having a pop at the reviewer, the reviewer stopping by to defend himself and then Erinys going absolutely mental at him, locking the thread and then deleting it. Just happened now. I hope someone saved a transcript and/or screenshots 
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Dec 23, 2012 13:53
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I hope so. There's something hilariously wrong with Erinys. She can write some interesting (If wierd, twisted, and preachy) lore, but she's gotta be bi polar or something.
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Dec 23, 2012 14:05
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Demiurge4 posted:I hope someone saved a transcript and/or screenshots Posting on my phone so wasn't able to capture it, but from memory: *Innocent poster says, 'Hey, here's a new review!* Mecron comes up with a bizarre line about how the 6/10 score represents just about what he'd expect from that reviewer because he was mean about SOTS 1. Erinys complains that the reviewer came to the official forums to promote his website when it had launched without reviewing SOTS 1 first. Reviewer says this is incorrect; there was a review on the site at the time, but it wasn't written by him. Erinys then rails against how he was a terrible person for disagreeing with people in the comments section of his review of SOTS 2, says The Management won't tolerate this sort of thing, and declares the discussion over. The review is up on Space Sector here: http://www.spacesector.com/blog/2012/12/sword-of-the-stars-2-enhanced-edition-review/
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Dec 23, 2012 14:10
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