There’s also a feedback issue with the UI (and the game in general). I’ve read the manual. I’ve read the wiki. I’ve watched Rorschach’s videos.
I know how to do things in SOTS2.
Yet, I play the game and it all feels “soft”. There’s very little feedback, early on, on whether you’re doing things “right”. Whether you’re accomplishing something. I research X. I research Y. I build a colony or two. I do things that my research into SOTS2 tells me I should be doing. But, it’s really hard to tell, within the game, whether those were good moves or bad moves. The game takes a long time for you to tell if you’re really f’ing up or kicking ass.
In a way, SOTS2 feels like a sandbox game, more than a 4X game, because the game is so feature-heavy, without a lot of feedback on the impact of those features: I’m doing shit because I can rather than doing it with any true sense of the impact it will have.
There’s stuff I don’t want to mess with like trade, because apparently it can screw your morale, etc. It was pretty bad in SOTS1, and if this is worse…
Scotten
2785
That is well put, SoG. I posted something similar on another forum but that is a much better way to express it. It takes a lot of hours in-game, or reading through the forums, to really know if you’re making the right moves.
And I am torn because I like to figure out games on my own, but SotS doesn’t make it very easy. Reading the forums gives you good ideas on how to play/win, but that is akin to “cheating”.
Stepsongrapes makes a pretty valid criticism as well. More feedback would go a looooong way in making sure the player feels like they were getting somewhere.
To be clear, you wouldn’t need to do that. The writer would just need to read the provided instructions, and that shouldn’t take hours. The forums are, indeed, filled with people who didn’t take that step. I think that setting is more useful for strategies than how-to’s, but if the information being sought isn’t in the provided instructions then forums can be used in a pinch. I don’t know why that would be your first avenue, but to each their own.
MikeJ
2787
I think this is more of a game design than a UI issue. It’s hard to tell how you compare to other empires in the game, financially and technologically. You can only see the enemy colonies within sensor range or their status last time you were there. It’s hard to find out through spying where other races are at technologically and militarily. You don’t know their income. I think approximate numbers for these sorts of things should be easy to know for races that you are in contact with (even indirect contact, to some extent).
In terms of telling good moves from bad moves, it seems to me that in any game, this comes from experience. How do you know when is a good time to build a settler in Civ? Or whether it’s a good idea to chop down the forest? It depends on context and what strategy you are trying to pursue.
Sigh, yeah, that’d be around the score I’d give it if I gave scores. I read the manual cover to cover and still never clicked with the game. Too obtuse, I felt like I was fighting against it to find the fun, rather than it being intuitive or anything. Such a shame, has a lot of potential.
You talk about it as if it’s some sort of binary factor. It’s absolutely a subjective, overall feel kind of thing. For me (and I hazard for a lot of other players) SOTS2 has way too much separation between action and reaction. By the time reactions occur, there are too many variables involved for the player to get a sense of connection between a specific act or set of acts and the result.
You mention experience. In good 4X games, experience lets you track back to the specific action that you did and comprehend it’s impact. “Ah, cutting that forest down let me make a plains that let me build a ranch.” In SOTS2, it feels like it leans too much into the realm of rote action: perform gestures 1-10 for a while and something good will happen. I’m not sure if all of 1-10 were necessary, but it worked last game so I’m doing it again. Perhaps its just a degree issue and you need 3X the “experience” to figure shit out in SOTS2 vs. other 4Xs. Either way, action and reaction are way to attenuated.
The combination of a design philosophy on keeping somethings obtuse with the huge amount of minute details in this game is a terrible mix. It’s as if Kereberos is the anti-Blizzard in every single way: their design process completely lacks retrospection and polishing steps. SOTS2 feels like a huge bundle of separate features still looking for a core game to pull them together.
MikeJ
2790
Yeah you are certainly not alone in that impression, but I’m having trouble figuring out what’s causing it. Certainly SotS diverges quite a bit from Civ-like conventions in terms of how things work. The mission system and logistics are very different. I can see how that would leave a new player feeling a bit adrift.
Would you mind giving some examples of places where you took a specific action and couldn’t tell the effects? I can think of a few situations where it’s hard to give a specific answer to some questions. Like how long it will take to develop a colony on a high-hazard world - there are lots of factors, though a larger colony fleet, good biotech and nearby developed system to base from are all helpful.
DeepT
2791
I tried to play this a while, maybe I put only 15 hours or so into it. It was hard to figure out. I never did figure out manual space battles. I just ended up doing them auto-resolve because that got infinity better results then I could manage myself.
Research seemed to take forever and the techs themselves didn’t seem impressive or interesting in the least. Do I research red lasers, blue lasers or perhaps the ability to talk to aliens? If it makes any real difference, I can’t tell. I do know, that even though I can’t understand aliens, they can still demand money from me.
However the reason I stopped playing was because I realized in 40 or 50 turns, not a lot happened. Sure I colonized several worlds, had a few battles and all that, but in general I was simply not having fun. I was just going through the motions. Nothing in this game really clicked for me.
The battles do seem weirdly drawn out. I know they were too quick in SOTS1, but even so!
And they still have essential bits hidden away in non-descriptive tech names, and techs with wildly varying usefulness…
Warren
2793
Bravo, sir! That is the capsule review, right there. You’ve captured my inarticulate and mildly nebulous feelings about SOTS 2 directly and succinctly.
Jenner
2794
Stepsongrapes, you’ve summed up my feelings rather well. I’ve dabbled in SotS2 for months now, and just recently started a new game in the Enhanced (or whatever) version. It’s mildly better, mainly because my new computer is fast enough to really run it now, but overall my enjoyment is still very much impeded by the design choices here. And I really do want to enjoy SotS2. As others have said, I’ve spent hours playing and I’ve read up in the manual and online, but the game just stays opaque to me.
Since this is currently on sale super cheap via the Paradox website, I’m tempted to buy it just so I can give the new tactical battle engine a spin.
This may be unfair, but after everything that’s been said about this game, I don’t have much hope that it will enter into my list of favorite 4Xs.
Anyway, my pre-purchase question is: Have they ‘fixed’ the slow UI and turn times in this game? I’m willing to muddle through an opaque design, and I might even be willing to study the mechanics and math on the wiki. However, when it comes to actually playing, I don’t like to waste precious seconds (that add up to minutes and hours) of my life staring at the screen while I wait for the game to chug along. I’m not expecting instantaneous AI turns or anything, although instantaneous UI responses would be nice.
Janster
2796
Its not that bad…i find it tolerable.
KevinC
2797
Turn times and UI transitions have improved a lot but they do tend to fluctuate a bit from patch to patch.
I’ve been feeling a lot like Tali’Zorah nar Rayya just before she committed suicide in Mass Effect 3. NAH, just kidding, I’ve actually been feeling a lot like playing some Sword of the Stars 2!
After monkeying around with this game for ummm, a really long time, I finally figured out what the hell I was doing. Here are some highlights from the first game I was actually able to win. I played on a small map as the Hivers vs Sol(humans).
The Hivers have a great method of travel. They can send a Gateship that looks like a bee into any solar system and open a teleportation gate for instant travel to and from any of my other Gateships.
Fuckin’ sweet!
Here I am firing some Mass Drivers at a Human ship off my starboard side:
With all the human ships destroyed it’s time to start sending some Hiver missles towards the Human planets:
For me this game was harder to learn than Victoria 2, but the hard work has finally paid off because now I can sit back and watch some pretty epic space battles, and plan which part of the galaxy I want to conquer next muaahhaha ;)
ShivaX
2799
I enjoy the crap out of the game, but man do I wish ships would try to stay in formation. I mean you pick a starting formation and then once you move or engage anything (or god forbid you had to go a different direction) they just turned into a mass of metal roaming around or some such. Then again, I haven’t played in a while, so maybe it wasn’t as annoying as I remember, but I remember it being extremely annoying a lot of the time, especially for a game where fields of fire and facing and all those things matter so much.
If you change the stances then the ships will move on their own, you have to stay on the default one for them to keep formation.
MikeJ
2801
Also keep in mind that the formations don’t rotate on their own, you have to use the shift key to rotate them. Overall, I think the game would have benefited from a more explicit, less-fragile formation concept.
I’ve heard talk that the strategic AI is much improved, but others saying that it is still committing economic suicide. I guess I’ll try another game to see for myself.
KevinC
2802
It looks like Paradox has no plans for future development on this title which, while understandable, is unfortunate as there’s still a lot there to like. I wonder where that leaves Kerberos, since the original agreement was for Kerberos to do three expansions or something of the like. I doubt they have the money to do it themselves, so I wonder if this series is now dead in the water (er, space?)?
