1563

Let’s be fair, unlike Aeon SOTS2 is likely to stop sucking at some point.

…

Anyway, I’m interested, if only because I have a mod in mind once they fix it up.

1564

I remember buying Lost Empire : Immortals. Now that was a turd, it was interesting enough until you buy it and notice that the company closed after finishing it…or in this case half-finished it, and that the only patch out is some modder trying to sort it out.

The premise and ambition of SOTS 2 is admirable, if they can pull this off It can be a gem.

1565

Uh, cuz if a non-shit game pops out at some distant future point I’ll buy it? I’ve said that prior. Up until then, this is the internets and the forums, and I will continue to draw dicks and post as I please!

And also because I think rewarding people for doing a shitty job is a shitty thing to do. People who do shit work should be punished. Durr. Or at least not rewarded. If you excuse it, they’ll do it again, much like dogs shitting on the rug.

1566

I can tell you want vengeance, you know, they still persecute people for witchcraft in Saudi-Arabia, bring hay fork and torch and you can really get some justice done.

Otherwise I’d say that time constraints, budget issues and ambition got in the way, its regrettable , but unlike MOO 3 and the game I mentioned earlier, they are working on it, and that in itself is admirable.

If you still aren’t satisfied you can always pwn noobs in Stellar Impact.

1567

Why would I when I can just chat with you! That’s absurd!

And really, time and budget? Time and budget? They had several prior games, a publisher good at doing shit on a shoestring because they went from indie dev to publishing house on the strength of that shoestring and the amount of time was their call.

So experience didn’t teach them. The experience of their publisher wasn’t sought out. And they couldn’t manage their time or their budget efficiently. All of that stuff that other companies seem to pull off fairly regularly or there wouldn’t be a games industry to begin with.

I dunno Jim, the conclusion here seems to make itself. You shouldn’t reward people for crappy work or they’ll keep doing crappy work.

1568

Rorschach, you are the person I’m very interested in hearing from. I went down memory lane last night through the supcom2 thread and you were in that thread, posting updates periodically, just as you’re doing now with SotS II - so I’ve got to ask buddy, how’s it hanging?

A lot of games go through teething - this one is pretty bad by the sounds of it, but with you hanging in there, I can’t help but think this is a diamond in the rough - just like supcom 2 was before the AI got fixed. Over time, supcom2 just shines baby, it shines.

In your humble opinion, do you see SotS II being as good or better than supcom2?

1569

Aeon, there was a whole lotta fuckups obviously but I don’t think a lack of hard work prior to release was one of them.

1570

Things are going well. Personally I’ve got a new job which involves a lot of travel so I haven’t been as engaged with the Kerberos guys as much as SotS 1.

It was a crap launch, there’s no denying that. I don’t know why things turned out the way they did but it happened. Knowing how stubborn the team is, and how much they continued to support and update SotS 1 over many years, I think they’ll get there eventually. Maybe not to the expected timeframe of a lot of people, but I’m hopeful that the ones who stick with it will enjoy it.

I had some time today and spent a few hours playing through a game. Just seeing how far they’ve come in the past few weeks is pretty good. Seems to me like there’s a stable, playable game here that still got some features missing. But if you want to expand your empire, design some cool ships and smash them together I think that all works today. Still wouldn’t recommend it to people who don’t have a love of SotS 1 though. There’s plenty of other good space strategy games out there like Distant Worlds to spend your time with.

I love Supcom2 but I don’t see how SotS2 can even be compared to it. They’re completely different games. But just as GPG committed to improvements over time I’m hopeful that Kerberos can continue to put their resources towards SotS2.

A lot of games are falling into this continual update cycle with additional revenue through DLC, which used to be called expansions in strategy games. SotS 1 did that six years ago and I fully expect it to continue with SotS 2. It’s just a damn shame they started from such a deficit.

1571

Hey really appreciate the feedback. It sounds like they’ve made good progress and you expect it to eventually get to where it should be and beyond with DLC.

Sorry for asking you to compare SotS with Supcom that wasn’t my intent - what I was trying to ask is if you looked at the the difference between Supcom 2 when it launched and when it was finally patched and the DLC came out, it ended up being very good. Knowing that SotS has a longer road ahead than Supcom2 did to get good, do you think the devs have it in them to get SotS II to the level that Supcom2 did respectively - from your writing, I’m inferring that it should but it will take a bit longer to get there.

1572

Well, I think they are getting there. I played about 5 hours today with no crashes.

1573

As long as the money don’t run out and the crik don’t rise I’m confident they’ll keep working on the game.

1574

The only thing wrong with this analysis is the assumption that all we’ve been getting is a trickle of farts.

1575

Final hotfix before the new year:

r18864b

Critical Fixes:

  • Fixed the crash that could occur in turn updates during AI fleet management.
  • Station sensor ranges are now enabled again.
  • Provinces are once again only visible once discovered.
  • Fixed known issues regarding rejoining games in the correct player slot.
  • Fixed the crash caused by fleets losing their supporting systems while in transit.
  • Enemy fleets no longer appear in the fleet manager.
  • Fixed an issue where ships could become stuck in a permanently spinning state.
  • Fixed issues relating to excessive force imparted by weapons.
  • Fixed the issue where clicking the menu button in the star map after entering the planet manager would lock out UI control.
  • Fixed the crash that could occur due to combat occurring at a star system with pending station construction.

Other Fixes:

  • Fixed a number of Tarka ship and module art issues.
  • Fixed a neutral combat issue for systems involving more than 2 players and one player is neither at war nor allied with any other.
  • Fixed issues where weapons were not auto-targeting planets.
  • Fixed known issues where combat sensor data was shared incorrectly between players. There were some diplomatic edge cases here.
  • Fixed an issue where too much damage was being applied in simulated combat.

Other Changes:

  • Drones now automatically launch from platforms.
  • Fleets now display sensor range bubbles once again.
  • Level four and five station structure values have been increased.
  • Added default names to AI fleets.
  • Added three new star maps: Duel, The Heavens and The SotsVerse.

Check out the SotSverse map. Taken from the real positioning of hundreds of stars near our own, then overlaid with the locations of all six factions.

1576

Martin posted this before shutting down for a week of holiday break:

Well everyone we made it to the holidays and I would like to give thanks everyone who has made it to this point.

I was going to draw this out but its late and I still have a tree to decorate and I imagine most of you would like the chase cut to so here goes.

We have done an amazing amount of work and fixed many things that would have definetly been release class bugs even had things gone perfectly, but the bottom line is that we are not at the point where the feature part of the all clear signal can be given without upsetting some of the folks who are going to be extremely literal about that. So for now I will refrain and instead just ask folks to come play over the holidays if they are interested. You can research stuff, explore stuff and most importantly kill a whole bunch of stuff, the AI fights hard and you have more diplomacy now than in sots prime…and its stable…I won’t say all crashes are gone but all week people have been playing hundreds of turns so barring surprises, it should satisfy till everyone returns for the holidays.
Its frustrating that the 2 weeks of polish time was eaten up by fixes but the game is definetly better for it and it sets us up well for final features to go in smoothly in January. Of course since I think while people appreciated the pacing of our work, the mayhem of 2 or 3 updates a week has probably exhausted most peoples nerves. So expect large updates every couple weeks in the new year…first to put in the last of the release features and then the free content that was always the plan…and please, despite rumors, you will NEVER have to pay for an expansion in order to get what was meant for release. Any expansion will be EXACTLY what was planned for before launch.

RIght now the list of the major missing is as follows,
Espionage,
Psi attacks,
Rebellions,
Indy Worlds,
Scenarios/tutorial
and of course the techs that relate to them.

Also in the offing is a rework of the economic system to help clean up a lot of confusion and gameplay congestion.

So the long and the short of it is that we are not where I wanted us to be in a few ways but in others we have more than I hoped, so while I apologise to those of you dissapointed by it I offer up all that HAS been done as proof that it all WILL be done. And in less time than it took to get here.

Once again, thanks to those who have shown their support and kept the faith, it has made a lot of this possible. And to those who HAVE lost faith, I hope you come back in the New Year anyway and enjoy everything this game will be.

Take care all and happy holidays!

1577

Really? Can you think of any other game that came out in such a pathetic state from an experienced studio with multiple priors?

Paradox has shitloads of other devs, and somehow they all manage to put out games that A) run, B) are feature complete on release and C) are at least mildly entertaining.

And how the hell can Kerberos, with a straight face, complain about the difficulties of developing games when they are under the same pub as indie studios like Taleworlds. You remember them, the Turkish mom and pop (literally) that built a 3d engine and a blockbuster of a game in their garage? While pioneering the paid beta development? And as the two mod teams that got permission to develop kitchen sink versions of EU2 and HoI2.

I mean srsly. Kerberos doesn’t have a leg to stand on when mod teams turned developer working under the Paradox flag manage to produce feature complete games. Freakishly complex games, by the way.

The easy answer is hilarious incompetence, but honestly you gotta wonder about the work ethic. And no I’m not talking about their ability to put in absurd crunch time. That shit is equal parts idiotic planning and employee abuse.

1578

Very initial early impressions of the final patch of the year are very positive. They’ve addressed a lot of the little things i had problems with, the interface is a lot faster and tweaked, the game seems to run a lot faster, etc, etc, etc. It’s night and day compared to what it was on day 1.

1579

This sums it up entirely.

What makes me the most mad about the Kerberos situation is that there are incredibly talented teams making amazing things that may never see the light of day because of having such an insignificant visibility for their product. Yet, for god knows what reason, this team of absolute clowns is able to get not only published, but have large ad buys promoting their insultingly broken product sold as a complete game.

These guys make Derek Smart look like Blizzard.

1580

Well, I agree that given the outcome and a time-machine I’d love for someone to go back and kick some righteous ass. Currently though, I’d wager Paradox is less than enthusiastic to throw the same amount of funding at a studio that so clearly failed to deliver so your anger seems a bit redundant. Basically, Kerberos is likely to be sitting in expansionland for a good long while, trying to recoup money and goodwill, even if they don’t fold as a result of this and for a studio I’d say that qualifies as punishment. They’ve accepted responsibility so there’s not much to rage about on that end, Paradox even offered refunds.
The only thing that remains to do for me is to wait and see what happens. Hopefully there will be some amusing, non bitter, non fanwanking, posts to entertain me but I really don’t see how you can get so upset over something that seems pretty well settled.

1581

I wonder how much they sold…
It would hurt to see such a dedicated company fold and go on to make basket games for xbox instead…like certain others…

1582

Fuck no, man, I can’t think of any other game like this. This is the worst release I can remember in my 25+ years gaming, and that says a lot.

It’s so bad, and coming from two industry veterans, that I feel like we’re missing something. Paradox had complete control over the release date, yet pulled the trigger. Kerberos had control of the project, yet it was in the shape it was in October. Why? Obviously there’s gross incompetence with both parties, but I can’t help but think we’re missing some background info. I don’t think Paradox or Kerberos are halfwits so I’d like to know the story of what happened. At this point I’d appreciate an explanation more than apologies or refunds. Reading between the lines of some of Arrin Dembo’s posts make it sound like outside financing dried up and they weren’t able to secure a new source, but I wish I knew the story.

My point about laziness is just that,though. They’ve been on a ridiculous crunch cycle for half a year now at least, so you can chalk it up to project mismanagement of epic proportions and shockingly poor oversight and/or decisions on the part of Paradox, but I don’t think they were just being lazy.