Sword of the Stars - Expansion Released

Shoves EasyTarget aside, grabs the podium

Hello, my name is Rothda, and I have a SpaceStrategy4X problem.

Hello Rothda

What follows is my account of my dive back into SoTS after ~20 years or so.

First the game settings:

For this game I’m playing the Zuul, who are basically the Reaver’s from Firefly, mixed with a little Aliens, mixed with a little Catholic Church. In my opinion they’re one of the more difficult races, since A) they are really bad at doing science and B) their worlds don’t generate as much income as other races and will continually degrade due to short-sighted management practices. Their unique FTL method is not that great either, being a sort of compromise between Hiver & Human FTL mechanics. First the Zuul have to use a unique ship to bore a new starlane to the destination. This is ship is quite slow, at least at the lower tech levels. Once a starlane has been created, then the other Zuul ships can move down the starlane quickly, almost as fast as human ships do. So there is some benefit in that you can design and create your own starlane network, but this flexibility does not seem worth the downside of slow expansion. You also have to watch out for painting yourself into a corner, as at least initially each star can only connect to a max of 3 of your starlanes. So if you’ve already used up all 3 slots on a star, you can end up in a situation where you are stuck and “you can’t get there from here”. Generally I end up with a “tree” pattern, where I have branches of starlanes going out from the core world, with occasional side paths added to those branches. At least initially you don’t have much flexibility, since each world on the branch has one incoming lane, one outgoing lane, and then only 1 free slot to use to form a side-branch or a shortcut. Oh right, another downside of Zuul FTL, the ships you use to bore new starlanes are enormously expensive & will always be the first ones to arrive at a new world & trigger any dangers there. So for the Zuul, exploring is both slow & expensive.

The Zuul do have one thing going for them, which is that their combat ships are very cheap & quite fast on the tactical map. So their general strategy is to bore a lane to another species, and then use fast starlanes to pour swarms of your cheap & deadly ships onto them. Dollar for dollar the Zuul ships are quite effective, and so once you have your starlane network in place your ships have much of the strategic speed of the Humans combined with much of the raw combat power of the Hivers.

The map settings matter a lot in SoTS, and they are particularly important to the Zuul. If stars & enemy races are too far away, the combination of slow expansion & bad economy/science means that the Zuul will languish and become a 4th rate power. So for the map type I am being kind to the Zuul, and picking one that that has a large numbers of stars in relatively close proximity, with only the one giant gap between the halves of the galaxy. Hopefully this means my little space terrors will be able to find new worlds without spending too many turns just transiting through the void. I also bump up the time limit on combat, since for major fights (e.g. around developed worlds), I find it frustrating to have to keep replaying the engagement sequence of the battle, and prefer to just resolve the entire thing in one go.

Some other 1st turn house keeping:
A Zuul starlane maker. Priced at 10x what the humans would pay for one of their Extended Range Explorers. guh.

Good old reliable Waldos for research:

And a map full of stars. For at least the first few turns I will be pouring all of my money into new boreholers in order to jump start our expansion.

.

Turn 5 Update
Our new explorers have made starlanes to our first 2 extra-solar planets. One has a mediocre climate of 320, the other has a quite nice & balmy climate of 90. An early bit of luck. We will colonize the 90 planet, and then continue to play to our strengths and not do any research at all & instead keep pumping out ships.

.

Turn 10:
Not a great series of events. Our explorers find a succession of new planets, all of which are, in technical terms, poop. The worst of the planets has an infestation of Swarmers, which killed off the priceless borehole ship that found them. The infestation might be worth clearing out since the planet seems nice, except that looking on the tech tree we do not have immediate access to any of the high-accuracy low-damage weapons that we would need to deal with the Swarmers in an efficient fashion. The 320 climate planet starts to look more and more attractive. In desperation, we start research on the Waldos technology.

.

Turn 15:

Some good exploration news, we find a 200 planet and a 20 planet, so both are slated for colonization. We also go ahead and colonize the 320 planet from earlier, since I had forgotten how good the Zuul are at colonizing new worlds. They have an excellent growth rate & climate tolerance, and as an added bonus they have a constant 10-mineral overharvest. The overharvest is a negative for developed worlds, but for new colony worlds it gives them an enormous boost to initial productivity (by contrast, a basic Human colony could only overharvest by 1, giving it only a slight bump to productivity). Even better, the Zuul overharvest more efficiently than other races, giving them yet another advantage in colonizing marginal worlds. All together this means the Zuul can make use of worlds that would not be good investments for the Humans, Liir, etc.

We also start sending out Tankers to refuel our initial wave of borehole ships (in retrospect, I probably should have sent the tankers out along side the borehole ships, since like most Zuul ships their tankers are pretty cheap. This would make exploration more efficient, though slightly more costly since each exploration group would need a tanker with it). In research news, Waldos completed, and we move on to Genetic Manipulation to slightly improve our colonization efficiency.

.

Turn 20:

Several decent ~200 climate worlds turn up, and duly get their colonization ships queued. Genetic Engineering finishes early, and next up is Cybernetics for the production boost (which should let speed colonization up even further). It will be a long while though till we get Cybernetics, as upkeep on all our new colony worlds will be eating up nearly all of the budget. I think this will pay off in 10-15 turns as the Zuul become a ~8 world empire, but for the moment it means that we’re not making any real progress on ship building or research.

Two more of our explorer fleets meet their demise; one to the Swarm, another to an Asteroid Monitor. The borehole ships are tough enough that they can actually survive a brief encounter with an Asteroid Monitor & its giant missiles, however this unfortunate borehole ship had run out of fuel and so was stuck in system with the Monitor. It’s fate was sealed.

In other news, our first colony, the 90 climate one, is now turning a small profit.

.

Turn 25:

More worlds, more problems. We’ve found our first sign of intelligent life, in the form of 2 Morrigi ships headed to one of our colonies. We’ll be able to put up a few satellite defenses, probably enough to take the enemy scouting party in a straight up fight. Unfortunately, the colony is small enough that it will probably die to the first few laser bursts from the enemy. The enemy will arrive in 3 turns, while the first reinforcements could arrive in ~6 turns. We will immediately start building a task fore to retake the planet and refound the colony there.

Otherwise things progress; a lot of new worlds & a ton of upkeep, with basically no research. I’m still convinced this is a brilliant idea.

.

Turn 31:

A couple of brutal turns, as one exploration group after another meets with a grisly end. A few were lost to Swarmers, another few to encounters with 2 different alien races. Both of these new aliens were insanely aggressive and immediately attacked our peaceful explorers with swarms of their barbaric craft. These aliens were of course … the Zuul! Despite these setbacks, I am cautiously optimistic about being surrounded by hordes of biological killing machines? My understanding is that we Zuul all use the same starlanes, and so I will be able to use their lanes just like they will be able to use my lanes. So this half of the galaxy has already been completely laced with starlanes, meaning that much of our starlane-boring work is already done. My new general plan is to A) conquer the other Zuul races, taking advantage of our shared transport network and their already terraformed planets, and then B) finish off the one Morrigi. The only issue with this plan is that I haven’t invested at all in military tech or military fleets, and the majority of my income is going to colony work. My hope is that I will have enough breathing space to finish my colonies & research some basic military tech, and then will be able to leverage my (hopefully?) superior economy to take over the other Zuul. The good news in this regard is that we don’t have any significant colonies near the enemy Zuul, so it should take them a while to start to threaten us.

Oh right and as expected the Morrigi scout fleet wiped out my colony, before the scout fleet was itself wiped out by the colony satellites. We will recolonize the planet, and I vow that, 50-150 turns from now, the Morrigi will get what is coming to them.

.

Turn 35:

So far so good. No enemy attacks, and one of our remaining Borehole ships managed to stumble across a minor Morrigi colony world. Due to a confusion with the bombardment UI, I managed to not(?!) attack their planet, triggering an immediate and peaceful end to the battle. Am I a … diplomat? I am considering researching the Morrigi language next, so that I can try to make a peace treaty with them while I fight the other Zuul. More pressing than that though is getting Battle Computers, which lets you make your first CNC ship, which lets you bring 3x as many ships into a battle. That is absolutely essential to any real fighting, since it will at let us bring a lot of our space-junk craft into battle where they can all bring their default-tech weapons to bear. There’s going to need to be a lot more combat research before our fighters will really be effective, but this will at least give us something.

Colonizing is going well; the Zuul can really terraform a world quickly once they have settled in. Even with just the absolute basic colonization tech, they’re still way more effective at colonization than the slower races like the Liir or Humans.

Oh, and as a lagniappe we found one more nice world hidden away in our backfield:

.

Turn 40:

So far so good. We’re starting to see the first feelers from the other Zuul. On the “west”, there’s a fleet of 6 ships from the Inheritors that is approaching one of our worlds. The world is fully colonized though, and supplemented with a few defensive ships it should hold for a long time. One the “east” we’re seeing 2 fleets of 8 ships coming in from the Faithful. In a stroke of good luck, a Swarmer queen is expanding to that same system, and so they should both damage each other badly. In the best case the Swarmers will guard that flank for me for a while.

On the tech front, we have Battle Computers now, and after surveying my options, I think the best course is to beeline for Cruisers, get the Cruiser level CNC tech, and then use that as our foundation for our initial fleets. The tech will let us field even larger command point fleets, basically at a level that will not be surpassed till the late game. We’ll then populate those fleets with the galaxy’s worst cruisers, and go on a Morbin’ spree.

Oh! And minor news; after leaving the Morrigi colony in peace, our borehole ship headed to the next Morrigi world, which turns out to be their capital. I’m really tempted to attack them, but I also think I’ll have my hands full with my fellow Zuul for a while.

.

Turn 46:

More of the same! We’re research Cruisers now, and there’s been no major movement on the borders. The Swarmer Hive Queen only destroyed ~5 of the incoming ships from the East, but the remainder of them have decided to stay put. We’ve built up a few destroyers along that border as a precautionary measure, so that if they do move we can finish putting a sufficient fleet together. Our colonization spending spree is mostly finished, and the rest of our resources are being poured into tech in preparation for the big push.

.

Turn 50
Disaster! Our dearest friends, our closest allies, the Morrigi, turned on us and launched a fleet of ~35 ships back to Mentarr, the colony of ours that they had destroyed earlier. We initiated a 2 prong defense: Prong 1 is building up a quick defensive fleet of several destroyers, a command ship, and our very first cruiser, the missile boat Rubio:

The idea being that we would avoid the enemy fleet, and snipe at their flanks with our poorly constructed but heavily armed missile boats.

Prong 2 was a charm offensive, where we would actually learn to speak the Morrigi language, or at least well enough to ask for a cease fire.

The moment of decision came on turn 50. In response to our pleas for mercy, the Morrigi cawed bemusedly at us. According to them we are monsters that need to be extirpated from the universe. Well, with that attitude, who is the real monster, hmmm?

With diplomacy exhausted, the 2nd battle for Mintarr begins. It is pretty bad. I was counting on the planet to tank the enemy fleet while my defending fleet sniped at the edges of the enemy. Instead, the Morrigi brought numerous nuclear assault craft, which made short work of the previously quite robust colony. My missile boats also fell quickly to Morrigi drone craft which A) did a ton of damage at long range and B) could easily dodge our primitive ballistic weaponry. As the long range duel was being lost, I had our ships close on the enemy and do what they could in ballistic range. We killed a few of the Morrigi, but overall did poorly against the attacking fleet. By the end of a few minutes of combat both the planet and its defenders were utterly destroyed. The one bright spot is that the enemy only had frigates and I have not yet seen evidence of cruiser tech.

In the wake of this disaster at Mintarr, our fleet strategists carry out a full review of our doctrine and come to the conclusion that: we need to go dumber. We christen an entirely new class of cruiser, the Brooks class:

This is basically the cheapest cruiser you can build, and it replaces all the expensive long range missile weaponry with enormous numbers of simple ballistic guns. It’s about 40% of the cost of a Rubio cruiser, or just a little bit more than a Human combat frigate. I think that once combined with a cruiser level CNC, we should be able to field large fleets of these guys which should overwhelm the enemy with simple numbers, rate of fire, and cheapness. The Cruiser CNC is still 7 turns out, so until then we build up and defend.

.

Turn 56

Some good news, some bad news. Good news is that the Cruiser CNC tech finished early, so theoretically our Golden Age of Conquest begins now. Behold! The center piece of our new fleets, that legendary hero, the OG Throat-GOAT, the Nancy Reagan command cruiser class:

Due to the high cost (~5x a combat cruiser), she going to be hiding out in the back of our formations. To that end she does not have main guns, and is instead outfitted purely with anti-missile lasers to help keep her safe.

The (mostly) bad news for us is that the initial starlanes we created are starting to go stale, and several of them are in the red or are winking out of existence. This is a thing that happens with the Zuul starlanes, they have an expiration date and a mileage limit and have to be regularly renewed. This complicates planning our offensive since a few of the crucial links are unreliable or need to wait to have new starlanes put in. The silver lining in this is that it gives us a chance to refactor our starlane network, so that in time we will have more direct connections between our worlds and enemy targets. In any case we can at least put some of our worlds into making fleets for the attack, with more connecting to the offensive push later on.

For research, we start developing large and faster ballistic guns. Hopefully we will also find some point defense weaponry in there that we can use against the Swarmers.

.

Turn 62

Target: Mintarr!

Everything is more or less, kind of, in place for our first real attack. We have 2 fleets lined up, one making the trek from our homeworlds of Majipoor & Poha, and another fleet from an isolated but very industrial colony that was cut off when Mintarr was taken. These fleet should meet up at Mintarr in a few turns. The Morrigi have sent a fleet of 8 ships to reinforce Mintarr, but hopefully they are just more frigates and not some new class of cruiser. Things are moving slowly due to the need to reinforce our aging starlanes, but I’m still confident in the attack.

In tech news we researched a medium-size version of the gauss gun, and have upgraded our Brooks class design to make use of the new weapon. This makes the Brooks class moderately more expensive, but should also make them more effective. Next we research faster-firing ballistics.

.

Turn 67

The Third Battle of Mintarr is a complete success. As hoped, we had about as many cruisers in the battle as they had frigates, and their ~25 ships there were quickly smashed under a hail of Gauss rounds. Due to some unfortunate starlane layout (who planned these things?), we’re not able to immediately advance on the Morrigi worlds, and instead need to wait while starlanes are created & reinforced.

For tech, we have all the immediately helpful weapons, so we’re taking a step back in and investing in the colony techs again. If we can get cruiser biome ships, then it could be worthwhile to launch a second wave of colonization, this time spending the resources to take the 400 and 500 climate planets. Our main fleet seems fine for attacking the Morrigi, but if it runs into problems we will switch back to investing in ships & weapons.

.

Turn 72

The Morrigi strike back! This time it’s an incoming fleet of 72 frigates sent to Bronson, an isolated but large and industrious colony world near Mintarr. We have 2 turns of warning, which when combined with some massive overharvesting and a few pre-stationed ships, is enough to assemble a decent force of 1 frigate CNC, 6 Brooks class cruisers, and a smattering of light satellites. When it comes the battle is brutal. Our cruisers manage to smash several waves of Morrigi frigates in close combat, losing a cruiser or two each time. After several clashes we take out all the enemy command ships, and then our 1.5 surviving cruisers take up position behind the enemy jump point and start sniping off enemy ships as they warp into the system. One of these cruisers is lost, and another loses its nose section, but together they jusssst manage to take out the remainder of the invaders.

Our own invasion fleet advances forward, to the Morrigi colony at Nakbe which we foolishly forbear from bombarding at the start of this whole mess. In retrospect I suppose it was a mistake to try diplomacy.

.

Turn 76
And just like that, it’s over, the war is won. Our invasion fleet advanced on Nakbe, smashed its defenders & bombarded the planet, and then continued on to Kankuen, their homeworld, and repeated the process. As usual I failed to adequately handle the logistics, and so the invasion fleet ran out of fuel & colony ships & borehole ships by the time it reached the enemy homeworld. Our giant fleet will be stuck here for a minute while the supply lines catch up. The resupply process isn’t helped by our starlanes collapsing behind us; which reminds me that yes, the Zuul starlanes will disintegrate from overuse as well as from age. Still we’ll set up our own little splinter colonies here & in a few turns take over the remaining Morrigi worlds.

In other news we have a visitor from across the galaxy, a single orange ship from … another Morrigi. Hopefully they stay on their side of the fence for the time being.

Our empire is spending about 25% of its money on fleet upkeep, so we’re going into another expansion phase and laying off the military investments for a while. We have colonization fleets heading to two new worlds (one a decent late find, the other a cruddy planet that we’ll just have to pour some resources into). We’re also making our first fleet to start clearing swarm worlds, with the core of the fleet being our new Bretbug class PDC ships:

These guys are fragile & a bit expensive for a Zuul frigate, but they are lined with high accuracy PD weapons that should be effective against the Swarm. We’ll mix them in with some heavier duty frigates which will tank damage, and then start clearing and colonizing some of the Swarm worlds. We’ve tried researching some laser tech in order to get better PD weapons, but so far this has turned up very little of use & so after getting UV lasers we will shut that path down & turn to other research. Oh and we’ve also modified the Brooks class so that it has a few ballistic PD turrets for defense against missiles. This will cut its raw combat power slightly, but should make it significantly more survivable.

.

Turn 84

Some modest progress on several different fronts, but also a lot of frustration. Our Bretbug fleet cleared out its first bug planet, and it is a beauty:

Unfortunately, A) we outnumbered the bugs greatly, which meant we got extra reinforcement for the battle, which meant that our colony ship was brought into the battle and B) the PD weapons will only target small enemies, which meant that the large bugs rained heck on our formation until our cruisers could finally take them out. The larger bugs did not manage to kill the colony ship, they only killed all of the colonists on the ship, leaving it a useless hulk. So now we’re waiting 4 more turns to build & send a fresh colony ship to the world.

On the main front, we managed to use the first Morrigi colony that we took and did rush job to produce a single colony ship, so that we could then send it our main fleet at the Morrigi homeworld in order to colonize there and refuel them. That rushed colony ship was then lost to a starlane collapse, leaving us to wait N turns while a borehole ship could make a new borehole, so that we could send a colony ship, so that we could colonize, so that we could finally get the main fleet moving again to mop up the remaining Morrigi worlds. It occurs to me that the Zuul might not be a difficult race to play, it might just be that I am really bad at playing them.

There was one small invasion by the Western Zuul, which we destroyed, and then we followed the starlane they had built back to a modest colony that we took over. So that’s one more world, for a total of… 17


We have a good income now and seem to be in a fine position for the mid game.

For tech, we rounded out our research tree with a few useful items (Atmosphere Adaptation, Salvage Ships). We will pick up a few more of these modest improvements, and then, finally, maybe make the leap to Fusion tech and tier 2.

.

Turn 90

Ooof. I think I lost the plot somewhere along the way. On the good side, I have different battle groups slowly nibbling colonies away from the Morrigi and both of the other Zuul. The brilliant plan of “make a cruiser level CNC and then attack” seems to have been more powerful than I thought, and so far it hasn’t really met anything that can slow it down. The next real test of this strategy is coming up in the East, where I’m attacking an Eastern Zuul planet with ~30 defending ships. The fellow Zuul players are at least fielding some cruisers, so I expect that it is just a matter of time before I starting facing even odds & losing battles again. That is the good side?

On the bad side, I keep getting tripped up by a lack of: fuel, colony ships, repairs, and borehole ships. So basically all of my offensive could have gone twice as fast as they are actually going, if I had spent a bit more time/resources to kit them each out with a full support fleet.

Also on the bad side, the techs are getting more expensive, and haven’t really added that much to our capabilities recently. I’m getting asteroid mining, which will help a bit, and I think after that I will make the push to Fusion. It should open up some new tech options, and if I remember correctly it also gives you an improved/faster boring machine, so that your starlanes aren’t quite as ephemeral. Also, looking at the global stats, somehow I am ranked 3 in total Income, despite owning most of one side of the galaxy. Apparently the other half of the galaxy is way more successful, and my empire is just on the wrong side of the tracks?

Ok, take more worlds, try and finish off the also-rans on my side of the galaxy.

.

Turn 103

Oof x2. A lot of battles, and they’re becoming increasingly more vicious. The Morrigi nation has finally bowed out, falling to a combination of my attacks and the attacks by the other Zuul. Perhaps I was a bit overconfident though in trying to prosecute a war against all 3 of them though. Fleets continue to move against the Western and Eastern Zuul, but now battles are at least a little bit fair since the enemy is fielding their own Cruiser level CNCs. Fortunately, I still have my ultimate weapon, the ultra cheap Brooks class cruiser. They die like flies, but they kill like heroes, and they are so cheap. Pictured here is a recent battle site in the West,


Where my fleet just barely managed to eke out a win. Now we enjoy the fruits of the victory, which is a whole bunch of enemy reinforcement fleets coming in piecemeal down the starlane. The Western Zuul seems like the weaker Zuul, and only has ~4 colonies left. I think they will collapse soon.

I would point to a similar victory in the East, but our largest fleet was attacked, from stealth, by a hyper advanced Berzerker trapezoid? We managed to kill the thing, but almost the entire fleet and its supporting elements and its colony base were destroyed in the process. After careful consideration I have decided that I am against this, and I am voting “no” to any more stealth attacks by hyper-advanced AIs. We’re now rebuilding that fleet in the East, and seeing what happens when we attack with our other major fleet element over there. Hopefully these continued hammer blows and colony losses will put the other 2 Zuul out of the game before too much longer. We continue to pour an enormous amount of our budget into ship construction, with the goal of overwhelming them both & ending the conflict.

In a bit of good news, Fusion power is only 10 turns away. Maybe 20 at the outset.

.

Turn 110
Ok, I was overly worried, everything is turning up Zuul again. In the East, I was looking at and worrying about the large numbers of enemy ships, but it turns out that most of these ships were Frigates rather than Cruisers. We now have 1, and soon to be 2, fleet groups steadily chomping away at the Eastern Zuul. In the West, the Zuul have good tech and good ship sizes, but they do not have the macro heft needed to stay in the fight. Over there we have 1, and soon to be 2, fleet groups taking a world off of them every 5 turns or so.

For the Swarmers, our Bretbug fleet finally has the knack for destroying the Swarm fleets, and they cleared 2 more worlds of infestation. There’s still a few worlds on this side of the galaxy with Swarmers, but we no longer have the massive numbers of them that we started the game with. We also took over and asteroid monitor, found a nice world hidden away that no one had picked up yet, and just generally have been continuing unimpeded. The next ~20 turns should just be us cleaning up the remainder of our side of the galaxy.

As a final bit of good news, Fusion research finished. This unlocks copious new research opportunities, the best of which is the improved borehole drive. Once we have that we can make sturdier starlanes, and at a faster pace too. An immediate benefit of Fusion is that we can use new drive sections. The new drives are twice as fast on the strategic map (speed 6), and moderately faster and tougher in the tactical map. They do bump the cost of our ships up, but that is going to be unavoidable as we move into the mid-to-late game. After a certain point the light, cheap ships can’t hold up in combat, and you actually do need to spend money in order to get quality. With that being said, I present the next generation of our Brooks class cruiser:


The Rand Paul class has much faster movement, more HP, and a more considered mix of offensive and defensive weaponry. It is moderately more expensive, but it is still very cheap when compared to what other nations will be fielding. We will gradually phase out the older Brooks’ model for these faster versions.

.

Turn 130
Rumors of my victory have been greatly exaggerated. We keep finding more, and more, and more enemy Zuul colony worlds out there, and despite how many of them we have conquered they refuse to give up. After numerous major cruiser battles, we’re now up to 40+ worlds:


Our older Brooks class ships are being phased out of our fleets via being put on the front lines & suffering large amounts of casualties, and gradually our fleets our converting over to full fusion power. This is a big deal since it doubles their strategic speed, greatly increasing the tempo of operations. Another 20 turns, surely, and our half of the galaxy will finally be at peace.

Our neighbors from across the way continue to pester us, and we’ve had skirmishes with two different Liir as well as another variety of Morrigi. So far the Liir ships seem extremely fragile and easy to break; hopefully things stay that way.

In terms of tech we have been farting around, picking up some sensor tech and industrial tech and minor missile techs. We have a persistent problem of cloaked Von Neumann vessels raiding our worlds, and I’m hopeful that we will find something in the Sensor Tech tree to help with that and give us some warning about when the raiders are coming in. We also developed some Mining tech, with the idea of building some mining ships to harvest dead worlds and bring their resources back to help replenish the minerals on our developed worlds. I’m not sure how effective this is, and so am only making a small mining fleet at first to test this out. We start building the first copies of our Gaetz class Miner.

.

Turn 135

Some progress. The Eastern Zuul have finally given up, and surrendered their 3 remaining planets to us. One of the planets had a captured Asteroid Monitor, and so the fleet that was on its way to try and break that asteroid gets a reprieve. In the West, a few more worlds are taken, and a total of 4 fleets of varying sizes are setting about the business of finally finishing the Western Zuul. For once the Zuul FTL method works in my favor, as I’m able to bore a new starlane in order to bypass an enemy Asteroid Monitor

We’re getting increasing amounts of guff from the other side of the galaxy, and we have now been visited/fought with 2 Liir and 1 Morrigi from over there. The only one I have not seen is the final Human player. I suspect they are all trading and helping each other over there, which is why they have such high income and why none of them have been eliminated. The filthy perverts. We have allowed them to start a few colonies over here, on worlds with 500-600 climates. My thought is that I will allow them to terraform the worlds, and then take back once they are nice and hospitable.

For Tech, we finally go back to ballistics, with the idea of exploring AP rounds and other such things. I don’t have a clear goal, just the thought of opening up some new ballistic weapons and upgrades. We will see what we find.

.

Turn 147:
And the last world of the Western Zuul has fallen. To reach that point we had to chew through 3 more Asteroid Monitors, but those turned out to be not too dangerous so long as you bring a large fleet and bombard them at max range. There are a few small Liir colonies on our half of the galaxy, but we’re only letting them hold those for the next ~10 turns.

We’re also decisively back in #1 position for colonies, income, and we’re catching up in total tech:

Time to conquer the other half of the galaxy? Maybe not. I’m starting to remember some of the problems with the game. If the game settings have 200 stars, you will be fighting N*200 battles. It’s a lot of battles! So while the game is addictive, it is also pretty tiring, and I don’t think I have enough juice to take over another 100 stars. I have decided to lead the Zuul in a new direction, and learn from our neighbors on the other half of the galaxy. Unlike our half of the galaxy with its history written in blood, they have managed to peacefully coexist and trade, creating a post-scarcity, multi-racial utopia. Or they probably I have, I can’t really speak any of their languages so I’m really just guessing. We Zuul will copy their ways. We will live in peace from now on, creating a new Zuul society dedicated to farming, wine-making, and writing truly execrable slash-fic.

Other notes:
I miss the tech system from Remnants of the Precursors. I kept thinking "oh, let me research a new ballistic tech, because even if I don’t actually use the new tech it will give a slight efficiency buff to all my other ballistic gear. " That’s not the case though! The SotS tech tree has all sorts of cruft where it is not clear why you would use it over your existing options. E.g. my Rand Paul class at turn 150 is still using the same basic main guns that my Brooks’ class was using at turn 40, and these basic ballistic rounds were still wrecking the high-tech fleets fielded by my opponents. So the tactical contests are not nearly as dynamic as they could be, as so many of the new techs seem like expensive side-grades rather than genuine improvements on what you already have. E.g. I was fighting the Western Zuul at the end there, and they were fielding ships with plasma cannons and disruptors and such, and even in the battles with equal numbers, their more expensive ships were being wrecked by my basic, entry-level ships.

I miss the AI from Caster of Magic. There a number of extremely deadly tech combinations (e.g. my large-cheap-ballistics fleets, Liir cruisers with Shield Tech 3, etc. etc.) that can just slice through unprepared enemies. The AI in this game can’t deal with them though, and it’s basically happenstance whether the AI puts up a fight or not. If the AI had been able to research Polysillicate Alloys (they give a reflection chance against ballistics), battles would have gone completely differently, and I would have needed to find a new tactic. As is though the AI can’t adapt if it does not find the needed tech, and the AI can’t put together really threatening fleets of its own. Instead its usual ships are loaded down with expensive LR missiles, which they then run full speed into the enemy guns.

I miss the auto-resolve system from Thea 2. It is wonderful being able to use an auto-resolve system without worry that you’ve inadvertently suffered 10x more losses than you needed to, or that you’ve inadvertently lost a fledgling colony. As is I find myself playing way more combats than I probably need to, since I have this nagging fear that the autoresolve system will misfire.

I strongly dislike the “colony trap” and “mining trap” events. (For people not familiar with them, they’re like if in Civ one of your settlers would randomly blow up while trying to found a new city, forcing you to build and send another settler. It’s the most “terrible 80’s DM” thing you can imagine) I also strongly dislike the Research Boost system. Also the trade system. I feel like Kerberos sort of stumbled into making a great game by random chance, and then every intentional design decision they made after that made things worse. (it kind of reminds me of me trying to improve a website template). The base game of SotS was brilliant, and some of the first expansions were good, and then after that it was just a 5 year long slide into badness that terminated at SotS2.

Bravo picking up the AAR mantle I’ve carelessly left hanging. I still plan to return to mine but quite nice you jumped in here as my new distraction is nice weather in PNW.

And man did you bang out a lot of content here! Entirely agree there’s a point where finishing off a campaign can become fatiguing and 200 stars is a pretty damn big galaxy to conquer in this game.

This is spot on.

🤨


Sorry, I’ve corrected that. Freudian slip.

Awesome AAR. turn 150 is pretty much the limit of when I give up on the game too. Often turn 100 if I’m losing. Hard AI is significantly more challenging.

Zuul is the only race, I really haven’t play a “full” game as. The whole slave things was a turn-off not only ethical, but practically. Doesn’t it require extra research and slave ships or something? Did you ever use them?

I still think that SOTS is one of the best space games, but completely agree with your analysis of its failures.
After playing ISG for a while I appreciate the benefits of miniaturization in the MOO series. I mostly play the races with good tech Liir or Moorigi, but it is entirely possible to spend many turns researching tech, which is only marginally better, than early tech. I spent many hours studying the SOTS weapons section to avoid making those mistakes.

P.S. I did get a kick out of your ship names, if I didn’t know better I’d swear you voted for Trump.

Excellent AAR! Made me reinstall the game for a poke around.

Quick question: are there any Mods you would recommend for an improved but still Vanilla experience?

(ie I’m intending to stay away from invasive mods like Bastard Sword of the Stars)

Thanks!

Yeah, I decided not to engage with the Zuul slave ships for the AAR. My memory of it from previous play-throughs was that, in addition to the grossness, it wasn’t a very helpful ability. To use it you have build an entirely new contingent of anti-planetary cruisers to go along with your main invasion fleets, and you also have to research a whole line of xeno-tech to make them useful. And then once that’s all done there is a ton of interface busy work to pickup, sendback, and drop-off the slaves. It’s just not worth all the expense and hassle when you could spend those resources on your bread-and-butter invasion fleets. The one small use I found for it was in taking other Zuul as slaves, since if you drop them off at a colony they instantly become new Imperial citizens. So you can start a standard colony with 100 pop, and then drop 50 million Zuul “slaves” there to jumpstart the colony into nearly full effectiveness.

I’ve never tried the mods, so sadly I’m no help here.

https://wiki.swordofthestars.com/sots1/Community_Mods

It has awesome mods:)

Yes, but that Wiki list is at least ten years old - and does not really indicate what would be the currently established “standard mod” list.

I also checked the Mod article on steam ( Steam Community :: Sword of the Stars Complete Collection ) which is only 5 years old ;-)

Did you have any suggestions @Janster?

yeah, I do actually…
http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=58122

This is pretty new, and updated mod, its pretty big an meaty too…have it it.

Yeah, I looked at that Mod but… (“ie I’m intending to stay away from invasive mods like Bastard Sword of the Stars”)
;-)

Anyway, appreciate the suggestion but for now I’ll just stick to this graphics mod and give vanilla a go:

Hi-res Skybox/Planets/Solar Systems[www.kerberos-productions.com]
A must have, improves the game visuals a lot.”

PS - I would love for a SOTS1 Remaster or SOTS3, but it seems Kerberos Productions is focused on their roguelike spinoff SOTS- The pit and its half a dozen DLC’s.

Put a few hours into this over the weekend. It was interesting to give it a try, given its reputation, but for me two issues hold it back:

  • The UI conventions are showing their age - while there are decent hotkeys etc, there are many other parts of the UI that are frustrating - e.g. navigating the research screen.
  • The game is too heavy on combat, too light on economy. I typically prefer a 4x game where my decisions focus mostly exploring and economic development, with warfare an important (but not only) part of the later game. This feels like the opposite.

Admittedly, this is based just on my impression after a few hours. I can see some unique aspects of the gameplay, even the economy, that make it so appealing for some. Maybe if it had a prettier facade I would be more willing to experiment longer with the mechanics.

But, it is on deep discount for anyone interested in giving it a try, who prefers the opposite of my 4x tastes.

I think SotS is really Total War in space as opposed to a 4x in space. As you’d probably expect, the combat gets more interesting and involved as you get further into the game. More weapon types, stronger ships, the ability to command them from the tactical screen, etc. The game does combat really well.

The economy gets slightly more involved once you’re getting trade up and running, and there are things you can do like ship resources to works to improve their productivity. The economy is definitely there to support the war machine, though.

Personally, I don’t mind it: I’ve gotten bored with games like MOO2 and the various Gal Civs with their planetary buildings. If I’m going to put a factory on every single planet, then I shouldn’t HAVE to put a factory on every single planet. Just make it happen automatically instead of making me do it. Take that to its logical extreme and you get the SotS economy slider.

This makes a ton of sense, and also explains why I bounced off this - I’ve always been interested in the Total War games from the outside, but bounced off every one I tried. My preferences are much more for development and strategy, over inventory/design and tactics.

I completely agree and it’s one of the main reasons why I think MoO1 is one of the best designed 4X games and indeed very much superior to MoO2.

A huge reason that I love Sots, is because of the uniqueness of the races, and the competence of the AI.

I don’t know how exactly the AI does it, probably in part because the economy is simplified , but I’m always terrified that AI is going to send a fleet of ships and start raising my planets and will often join forces with another empire or two.

The only games that have created similar tension are Civ IV and Old World.

I am trying this game for the first time having picked up the game for 3 bucks or so during the Steam Summer sale.

I am having a problem keeping track of where my scouts landed? If I do not notice that a scout landed is there a quick way to tell a ship is at a certain planet. Also do the map planet colors mean anything?

Most google searches I do bring me to defunct web pages or forums that no longer exist. I havent had time to watch a youtube series but maybe that is the only way to learn more about the game as I try to play through it.

Edit: Found some guides on Steam so I will read through those.

Sadly the otherwise excellent SOTS wiki, dissappeared sometime in the last year. I used the wayback machine to find some specific stuff I was looking for, but probably much too hard for a beginner to use the wiki anymore.

The old brain cells are struggling, but this is what I remember :

  1. No, planet colours don’t mean anything.

  2. If you don’t see the initial notification, you can open the log (bottom right) and you’ll see all the “Scout has arrived in system ######” messages and can click on them.

There’s still a few guides on Steam Community Hub and a good few youtube videos if you have the time.

My main tips would be :

  1. Explore rapidly with scouts and tankers. Leave tankers at intersections to refuel your scouts.

  2. Use the flag/notes mechanism to highlight planets, I normally add a priority note 1,2,3 so I can see which planets I want to colonise first. Also use notes to highlight Swarms, Asteroid Monitors and other anomalies as their notifications disappear after a while.

  3. Leave scouts at planets you want if you can, as in the early game some enemies will not engage and cannot therefore survey the system.

  4. Don’t colonise anything over 100 until you’ve researched the expanded colonisers and early colonisation technologies.

  5. If your tech tree (which is random for each game) gives you Emitters, get them and put them on your early ships. The swarm and enemies are significantly easier with Emitters. This only works for the early game though and they become redundant.

One of the viewing settings in the “normal view” of the map will allow you to see your sensor ranges. I always play with this active as it gives me not only a visual idea of where any holes in my grid are, but it also points out ships and fleets I may have otherwise forgotten such as scouts (which routinely get named “Canary” class ships, lol).

  • Hiver 4 lyfe