Sword of the Stars II (Or another 4X space game I will probably buy)

MrCoffee · 2012-12-12T10:43:23.000Z

I see no picture, but the fleet could be on its way back to its homebase.

GreasyPig · 2012-12-12T11:37:03.000Z

Or transferring reserves?

DeepT · 2012-12-12T16:40:46.000Z

What happens when pirates attack a planet that has no fleet and just a civilian base? Because I am stuck, it keeps happening and it loads to a battle screen and just sits there. I do not know how to get out of it. I did task kill it and then got through a few more turns and then it happened again and I am once again stuck.

MikeJ · 2012-12-12T17:18:00.000Z

Looks like they just put up a patch that fixes a pirate-related crash, so maybe that will help.

DeepT · 2012-12-12T17:48:26.000Z

Yay! Now I can play again.

Ponicus · 2012-12-12T18:36:58.000Z

Agreed, focal blur is terrible and should be turned off at all times. It blurs out detail and lowers framerate on top of that. I’ve had no issues with the game with regard to crashing or any fps lag with ambient occlusion on.

DeepT · 2012-12-12T18:41:36.000Z

Ok, I got into a battle with pirates and they were far off. Then I zoomed out, and tried to send my ships out to chase them. However part of my ships moved far away and I could not find a way to zoom into them. It seemed that my zoom spot was fixed and I could not change the focus of the zoom.

I just another raid by pirates. This planet had 5 Police ships in the defense fleet and when the pirates attacked, they did not deploy. Only the freighter died and the bases shot missiles.

MikeJ · 2012-12-12T20:12:21.000Z

DeepT:

It seemed that my zoom spot was fixed and I could not change the focus of the zoom.

The camera should start focused on one of your ships, so you zoom in and out on that. If you hover over an object (ship, missile, planet, etc) and middle-click of press f, then the camera tracks them (until they die). You can also drag-select ships, put them in a control group with <ctrl>-number, and then focus on a ship in the group by hitting the number. As a last resort, you can tab through your ships to focus on each in turn.

I just another raid by pirates. This planet had 5 Police ships in the defense fleet and when the pirates attacked, they did not deploy. Only the freighter died and the bases shot missiles.

If you go into the battle manager for a system (it’s in the right-click system menu), you can drag defenses like police cutters or platforms onto the system map, to specify where they start. There is also auto-deploy check box in the options to have the game do this (though I’m not how good a job they do). There is a limit to how much defenses you can deploy set by the system naval station (with just a few if you have no station).

Rorschach · 2012-12-12T21:52:39.000Z

Reserves means the ships are mothballed and uncrewed. Police Cutters should be in the Defense fleet. Same place for defensive platforms and system defense boats.

DeepT · 2012-12-13T05:27:56.000Z

They were in the defense fleet.

Rorschach · 2012-12-13T06:47:51.000Z

How about mike j’s advice on placement then?

Klaatu · 2012-12-14T17:44:31.000Z

Rorschach:

It took me almost 40 mins to cover empire management. But I did get through sconomics, trade, mining, colony development, morale, and governments.

Really excellent vids Paul. I’ve watched them all and am eager to see any others you have planned. They help a great deal. Thanks.

ShivaX · 2012-12-15T02:12:24.000Z

Is there anyway to get ships to return to something like a formation once a battle starts?

Kind of annoying to get em all set up and then they have to fly at any angle and the formation gets all silly.

YourConscience · 2012-12-15T05:36:07.000Z

Ok, so I started a nice new game, expanded a bit, and then my colonies started to get stuck in endless rebellions. Why?

Well, because of overpopulation and economic rating below 15.

Okay, how do I fix it? I put the population slider from 50% to 30%.

…

Nothing changes.

Then I wait 10 more turn. Nothing changes, just the population reduced, but still endless rebellions. anyone any idea what I am supposed to do about the economic rating being below 15?

YourConscience · 2012-12-15T05:39:15.000Z

Well, in the end I just abandoned those colonies and re-colonized them. Where those 500.000.000 humans went? No idea…

Dan_Theman · 2012-12-15T06:35:15.000Z

Soylent green is quite nutritious, or so I hear

MikeJ · 2012-12-15T07:01:25.000Z

ShivaX:

Is there anyway to get ships to return to something like a formation once a battle starts?

Form a control group when the battle starts. Always issue movement commands to the entire control group. If you put them in a stance, like close-to-attack, they will break formation, but once enemy ships are gone or you go back to normal stance, they should go back to formation. Don’t give them a stop command (s key) because that basically resets the formation to whatever relative position they are in now.

Basically, when issued movement orders as a group, ships will try to keep their original relative positions. But if you change the group, like lasoo another ship, and issue new movement orders then they try to keep their new relative positions.

MikeJ · 2012-12-15T07:19:08.000Z

YourConscience:

Ok, so I started a nice new game, expanded a bit, and then my colonies started to get stuck in endless rebellions. Why?

Well, because of overpopulation and economic rating below 15.

Okay, how do I fix it? I put the population slider from 50% to 30%.

The overpopulation is something you start getting when you hit the population limit you’ve specified, because now people aren’t allowed to have as many kids. If you lower the population limit, it makes it worse, because now they have to implement ‘population reduction measures’.

From the manual, page 68:

The economic rating of each planet is a marker of the general fiscal health of that world.
It is affect by current events, moral and government type, and, in turn can affect planetary morale
or have repercussion or trigger values based on the type of government the empire has at any
given moment. Each Planet starts with an economic rating of 50 which goes up or down with the
following modifiers

-1/ Freighter killed from system
-1/ Goods “Rotted”
-1/ 2 Infra points destroyed in combat
-5/ Enemy in system
-2/ Enemy in Province
-1/ Empire in debt 1 million
-3/ Empire in debt 3 million
-1/ T Morale -20
-1/ T Pop. Reduced

+1/ 500 million in savings
+1/ 200 million in stim budget
+1/ Turn ships built + trade maxed
+1/ Turn w/ morale 80+
+1/ Turn Pop. Growth

Goods rotted is producing trade goods, but not enough freighters or markets. I think you can knock three zeros off the 500 and 200. I think there might be a few other positive modifiers, but it’s hard to say. Generally a colony will hit hit 100 economic rating just through pop growth, and then gets into a high-morale, high-economic rating equilibrium. But if enough bad stuff happens, it can be a bit of a death-spiral, especially if you have high taxes so you can’t pull morale back up.

Try building ships in the system to stimulate the economy, lowering taxes, raising the population limit, keeping a million or more in savings.

Rorschach · 2012-12-15T07:30:39.000Z

MikeJ:

Basically, when issued movement orders as a group, ships will try to keep their original relative positions. But if you change the group, like lasoo another ship, and issue new movement orders then they try to keep their new relative positions.

Moving ships at 1.5x speed will break formation as each ship will move at top speed.

MikeJ · 2012-12-15T07:46:01.000Z

Rorschach:

Moving ships at 1.5x speed will break formation as each ship will move at top speed.

True, but they will go back if you drop back to normal speed, normal movement. The formation stuff is fairly fragile though.