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

Mark_Asher · 2011-12-29T16:43:45.000Z

Sarkus:

From what I gather on the official boards Kerberos is making it sound like they have no control over anything and are passing everything off on Paradox. The release date, etc. There have also been people who’ve claimed that Steam has full control over price (and what the publisher/developer gets), but I’m not convinced of that.

Maybe that’s the case with Kerebos, but why would Valve put this up as a sale item? There are plenty of savvy gamers who work at Valve and of course it’s not unknown for Valve to reject games that try to get on Steam. Valve should know better. It’s surprising, really.

kerzain · 2011-12-29T16:51:08.000Z

Seriously. I’d love for a game like Din’s Curse to have been featured in its place. (Especially since they rejected Din’s Curse, and it’s better than much of what I’ve purchased there)

Sarkus · 2011-12-29T16:56:02.000Z

Dan_Theman:

Good point, Nikolaj. In a hindsight being 20/20 kind of thing, if they’d simply said a month out that it wasn’t ready but they would honor refunds to those who wanted them and then an open beta (okay, open alpha) to those who wanted to stick around in exchange for both funding and actually helping in some small way with further development, I’d imagine the response would have been drastically different. What went down, however, was most certainly not fair to the consumer.

Sure, but the legal consequences of the publishing contract probably would not have allowed that course of action. Presumably Paradox had already sunk money into the game, so they weren’t going to just drop the publication rights to let Kerberos go “indie” to finish the title. So the real options were either ship or have Kerberos go out of business while Paradox walked away with the rights to whatever was created but expecting it all to be a lost cause.

None of this justifies price cuts on Steam and making it a daily deal. But its worth noting that the game has dropped other places as well - Amazon digital has if for $20 at this point as well.

Aeon221 · 2011-12-29T17:15:31.000Z

This game at 20 bucks is a terrible deal. You’re loaning money interest free to a suspect entity that has already admitted to cashflow issues for delivery of product (and end state product specs) not guaranteed at an unspecified future date.

That’s fucking retarded, no offense. Wait til it hits nil and has a feature set not based on dreams and bullshit.

kerzain · 2011-12-29T17:16:21.000Z

Well someone has to pay for all those refunds.

Sarkus · 2011-12-29T17:40:33.000Z

kerzain:

Well someone has to pay for all those refunds.

Exactly. Thats why Aeon should buy more copies. That way he can pretty much endlessly complain about the game forever more and nobody can say anything.*

*Not that he won’t do that either way.

Aeon221 · 2011-12-29T17:44:03.000Z

Oh of course I will do so, right up until they put out a product that isn’t a missile that explodes and also fires lasers that explode and fire shit.

Sarkus · 2011-12-29T17:45:59.000Z

Aeon221:

Oh of course I will do so, right up until they put out a product that isn’t a missile that explodes and also fires lasers that explode and fire shit.

So for $20 I get a missile that explodes and also fires lasers that explode and fire shit?! As a download?!

SOLD!!!

Aeon221 · 2011-12-29T17:56:00.000Z

Sarkus:

So for $20 I get a missile that explodes and also fires lasers that explode and fire shit?! As a download?!

SOLD!!!

Sarkus · 2011-12-29T17:57:30.000Z

Aeon221:

You spent a lot of time drawing that in Paint, didn’t you. Thats message board dedication there.

Aeon221 · 2011-12-29T18:00:03.000Z

It’s surprisingly easy and speedy to draw terrible looking stuff in paint if you are familiar with the different brushes and stuff. I think total time was between five and ten minutes.

Which I am. For I am GENERAL PAINT and I’d be updating my Rome thread with more horrifying images if I wasn’t so distracted by old HBO shows.

kerzain · 2011-12-29T18:01:36.000Z

Why is your penis expelling poopy blood?

Aeon221 · 2011-12-29T18:03:15.000Z

kerzain:

Why is your penis expelling poopy blood?

Because SOTS2 sucks, duh.

Murbella · 2011-12-29T19:23:40.000Z

So the takeaway is that SOTS2 is still not worth $20?

KevinC · 2011-12-29T19:46:18.000Z

It’s worth a poopy-blood expelling penis!

Seriously though, it depends. Is $20 worth access to a game that is pretty much in Beta state now? As in a true beta state, not a marketing beta. It typically is for me, but YMMV. You can play the game but there are still a lot of bugs, there are still unfinished features, and expect to be escorted to your desktop during play. This is all second-hand information from the forums, I’m still waiting to really dig into the game much myself.

Evrett · 2011-12-29T20:34:08.000Z

If Kerberos choose to give away rights to other parties regarding the distribution of their product they are still 100% responsible for what those parties do with said product. No one put a gun to their heads and forced them to accept the contract terms.

$20 buck is likely “worth it” but do you want to send the message that this behavior is acceptable?

James_Johnson · 2011-12-29T22:31:01.000Z

Aeon221:

a missile that explodes and also fires lasers that explode and fire shit.

I will buy SOTS2 when this weapon exists in the game.

Aeon221 · 2011-12-30T06:25:07.000Z

I’m proud of my artwork, but I agree that that’s quite possibly one of the few things that would require a purchase.

Mark_Asher · 2011-12-30T08:45:10.000Z

I wouldn’t pay for a game that isn’t finished. How do we know Kerebos will even be around in a month or two?

Rorschach · 2012-01-09T20:15:49.000Z

First patch of the new year. Mostly bug fixes. Next update scheduled for two weeks and will activate missing features.

r18950b

Critical Fixes:

Fixed the known issues where ships would not respond to controls.

Fixed a design screen boarding pod-related crash.

Fixed an AI crash that could occur when issuing orders to fleets.

Fixed a crash related to Hiver AI trying to set Gate missions.

Fixed a crash that could occur when entering combat with police cutters.

Fixed the rare crash that could occur when previewing maps when creating a game.

Fixed the crash that could occur when combat salvage generated a special project.

Fixed a game lockup that could occur when entering combat at a system with no orbiting bodies.

Other Fixes:

Fixed known issues where planet missiles and boarding pods were missing certain ship sections.

Fixed the issue where only one module of the same type would show up in the design screen.

Fixed some known Battleship rider issues with Leviathan class carriers.

Fixed Hiver, Human, and Liir boarding pod speeds.

Fixed Drone configuration issues with the Horde Drone Satellite.

Fixed incorrect display of armor in the design screen.

Fixed a couple issues causing different combat results at different time scales.

Fixed the launch pattern of planet missiles, which should lead to planet defenses being more effective.

Fixed the issue where feasibility could be displayed as 0%.

Fixed Meson Beam Length and the issue where its impact effects were not positioned correctly.

Fixed some issues where ships could fly over planets in combat.

Fixed the missing sound cue for relocate missions.

Fixed duplicate speech events for research breakthroughs.

Fixed an issue where the empire summary was counting fleets incorrectly.

Other Changes:

Various weapon and section tweaks.

Sensor information is now shared by players in teams (allied for example) in combat.

Known Issues:

Overlapping start points can occur at star systems with no orbiting bodies.