1763

Well, they are trying to add the features in something like priority order. The SotS2 design had way too many features for V1 of a game from a small studio, and aren’t core to the gameplay (e.g. minor races, admirals that switch sides, ships with unpredictable design quirks). I don’t expect to see those for some time. As to things that I actually care about, I think they still have to do a lot of work on improving AI, improving the diplomacy interface, improving the UI in general, fixing things like combat sounds not carrying far enough and assorted UI bugs.

Pursuit stance has been working fairly well for the last few patches. I did notice a couple of cases where a few ships seemed to forget that they were pursuing once they destroyed half the target and I had to issue the order again.

You can use the max engine power to catch up to a fleeing enemy, but that turns off your weapons and they won’t start recharging until you go back to normal engine power. I think the engine power speed boost is rather high, but it’s definitely handy if you are starting in the wrong spot in the solar system.

1764

Psionics was one of the big missing features yet to be implemented, but it looks like that went in. Expect a hotfix or two to clean up after a patch this size then another content patch in about two weeks.

Kerberos has yet to sound the “all clear”, so unless you’re very curious and interested in beta testing, I’d wait.

1765

FWIW, it seems like some targeting issues were resolved in the above patch. Whether that takes care of the recently mentioned issues is up in the air, of course.

Anyway, the game is stable as far as I can tell. The interface is sluggish, and there’s a typical between-turn lag (à la Civ) even from turn one so I’d guess there’s some optimization to be done. There is one quirk when selecting your faction at setup where if you shift between DLC and non-DLC (think of these as skins for those who don’t have it), sometimes the change isn’t reflected on the screen.

While ships can now shoot straight up, turrets on the bottom still don’t seem able to shoot straight down - the angle is apparently just out of reach, as the guns will point as close to straight down as possible without actually achieving it. This results in test firing having an untouched target beneath unless you have missiles (which typically track from anywhere). In practice, I would imagine a ship would have to be extraordinarily small to fit within the “safe” cone beneath a ship, and it would somehow have to keep pace to stay within it. That said, it’s still an odd design choice.

Anyway, it’s fun to play with if a bit slow going. I can’t really speak to diplomacy options or fixes to combat quirks after this morning’s patch because my new game hasn’t yet reached the point where I’ve met anyone.

1766

I finally got my refund by posting in the refund thread on Paradox’s forums. Now I’ll just wait for a few months and then hopefully it will be in better shape for me to buy again.

1767

Hey, that’s great to hear. I mean obviously it took way too long and was way more troublesome than it should be, but at least Paradox made good on their word.

1768

Yeah I wanted folks to know that. Like I said, I’m really looking forward to when it’s more polished because I did want the game.

1769

Quick hotfixes to go with the Friday feature update:

r19345b

Critical Fixes:

  • Fixed a crash that could occur when clicking to launch a bio-missile
    frequently.
  • Fixed all known issues preventing combat with deployed Hiver gates.
  • Fixed a crash that would occur if duplicate province names were selected.
  • Fixed a crash caused by the trade stimulus phase of the turn update.
  • Fixed a crash related to erroneous reactionary movements versus
    undiscovered star systems.
  • Fixed a multiplayer desync in combat that could lead to players not
    being able to move ships and a potential crashes after combat ended.
  • Fixed a turn update crash related to checking certain victory conditions.
  • Fleets are no longer held up indefinitely at systems with enemies.
    This addresses issues where missions could not be cancelled.
  • Fixed reported divide by zero crashes.

Other Fixes:

  • Fixed an issue where players could select the same psionic power
    twice for a design.
  • Added missing Morrigi bio-missile collision shape.
  • Fixed accuracy/aiming issues with fixed mounts on drones and ships.
  • Tarka Hunters are now constrained to Tarka Hunter Carriers and said
    carriers can no longer take other battle rider types.
  • Dead ships no longer show up in sensors.
  • Fixed the issue where ships were auto-targeting uninhabited planets in combat.
  • Fixed an issue where assault shuttles were not returning from a
    planet if it was defeated.
  • Fixed an issue where techs that should add to the production cost of
    ships were reducing the production cost instead.
  • Fixed issues with duplicated psionic icons in the selector.
  • Fixed issue with modules not loading in the design screen.
  • Fixed the issue where AI players would issue missions to unknown star systems.
  • Fixed an issue where certain ship armor data could go missing.
  • Fixed an issue where the battle rider manager was not showing riders
    already assigned to ships.
  • Gate traffic cost is no longer applied for fleets already at their
    destinations.
  • Fixed an issue where the starmap display was not updated after
    committing an upgrade mission.
  • Fixed some known turret arc issues.
  • Fixed an issue where PD missiles were not taking out other missiles.
  • Added a fail-safe to certain effects that might not otherwise
    expire, creating a memory leak in combat.

Other Changes:

  • Tweaks to drones.
  • Hooked up Psionic recharge bar.
1770

played a little last night. It looked pretty fun to me. nice graphics too. Too bad it still crashed on about turn 10

1771

I’ve been crash free in my couple runs of 50+ turns (right around the time I start saying to myself “This is pretty good, but it will be better when they’re done with it”), so don’t assume it will always do that. Significantly older releases were certainly crashtastic. That said, I haven’t tried the newest update.

1772

This games $19.47 at Gamersgate right now. Can’t be a good sign.

http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-SOTS2LW/sword-of-the-stars-ii-lords-of-winter

1773

50% off sale on a game that’s been out since October doesn’t seem too unusual.

1774

Steam had it that price back at the end of December as part of the holiday sale, so its not like its just now dropping for the first time. The reality is that between the refunds and bad press its gotten I can’t imagine the actual net sales of the game are anywhere near what Kerberos and Paradox wanted. Makes me wonder what the future of the game and Kerberos are once they get it up to something approaching what it should have been at release.

And that ignores the whole issue of how it still isn’t to that point all these months later.

1775

Yea. It really kinda sucks because I’m such a huge fan of SOTS1. With this kind of disaster of a launch, I worry about the future of the franchise. I see a ton of stuff in SOTS2 that makes me thing there’s a terrific game there, if it ever fucking gets finished.

1776

There was a very very short article, where the CEO of Paradox said that the game had proved to be a big mistake and that they were making changes to their contracts and QA process.

1777

More importantly, in my opinion, would be “Why were these mistakes made?”.

1778

I know why. Feature creep and the complete inability by Kerebros project management to keep it in hand.

I’m actually certain there was a deliberate drive from management to keep adding new features leading to the current mess. There was too much concern with adding more and more ‘cool stuff’ rather then consolidating and fixing what they already had. If you have only a small team this is what you end up with. A ton of features that are frequently incomplete and/or bugged in some ways and have no real reason for them to be in the v1.0 release in the first place.

I can tell from the patches that they are focusing on trying to patch certain disabled features back in rather then fixing what they have. Meaning that they just added more code that can contain bugs. This again indicates a feature crazy management imho.

And regarding the game state itself; at the moment I no longer suffer a crash within a handful of turns, but there are still heaps of bugs of the non crashing sort and incorrect or outright missing information at various locations.

1779

This. SotS2 ‘as designed’ has all the features of SotS1 at release, plus 2.5 expansions, plus about 2 expansions worth of additional gee-whiz stuff, plus the new engine and graphics and all that.

One of the devs posted how they have fewer people in their whole company than worked on creating unit sound effects for Starcraft2. Well, when you have that small a team, some discipline in regards to features is in order.

1780

According to that article by the Paradox CEO, they also shouldered much of the blame (he tried to take all of it, but there’s almost always some complicity in these types of messes). As I remember it, he said the way things were structured by Paradox led to Kerberos’ hand being forced to release before they were ready. Of course, the fact they weren’t ready by that time was most likely Kerberos’ own fault (presumably due to feature creep & piss-poor management as mentioned above).

For those who haven’t tried it, I’d say the game is now pretty fun to play but it’s still not feature-complete. Also, be prepared for a learning curve due to several changes from SotS1.

1781

Personally I’m waiting for the completion of the battle manager (scheduled for the next update) and the revamped economy before I really dig into the game.

1782

I’m waiting for two patches past the “all clear” signal.

What is the battle manager? Is that separate from the fleet manager?