Разработчик: Kerberos Productions Inc.
Описание
It is the year 2405, and human scientists have discovered a new technology that allows travel from star to star at speeds faster than light. But tragedy strikes, as Earth is ravaged by an alien force. The dawning of a new era was stymied by a grim, new reality...
Sword of the Stars:
- 4 distinct races - Human, Hiver, Tarkas and Liir
- A powerful state of the art engine delivers breathtaking graphics and robust game play
- Each race has a unique mode of transport between star systems, creating very different styles of play
- Over 150 distinct technologies to research on a dynamic tech tree
- Over 40 weapons from six different weapon classes
- Players can design and build ships from three size classes - Destroyer, Cruiser, and Dreadnought
- Up to 8 players can play against the AI and one another over LAN or online
- Choose from a variety of scenario campaigns to play alone or with friends
- Play as the merciless Zuul Slavers with over 90 brand-new ship sections and their unique drive system – the Tunnel Drive
- Over 25 additional technologies
- 15 more weapons you can add to your ship designs
- New ship sections for the original four races, including: War, Projector, Boarding, and a new type of defense satellite – the Torpedo Defense Platform
- 4 additional galactic encounters, a new grand menace, plus 3 unique scenarios and 6 original maps
- New game features, including Slavery, Trade Routes, and Diplomatic Communications
- A New Sixth race – The Morrigi
- New Ship Sections - Over a dozen new ship sections
- Unique ‘Grav Flock’ Drive System for Morrigi
- 15 new weapons
- 27 new technologies and the new Xeno-Cultural and Drones tech tree
- Drone carrying ships in all three size classes
- Construction ships, a variety of orbital stations, spy ships, police cutters, and more
- A whole new set of GUI enhancements and additions
- 19 new technologies
- Over 75 new ship section to build
- 10 new weapons / 3 New Scenarios
- Single Player / Multi-player with co-op scenario maps
Поддерживаемые языки: english
Системные требования
Windows
- Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® 2000/XP/Vista
- Processor: 1.5 Ghz Intel® Pentium® or equivalent
- Memory: 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista)
- Hard Disk Space: 3 GB Available
- Video Card: DirectX® 9 compliant video card with 128MB RAM
- Sound Card: DirectX® 8.1 or better compatible
- DirectX® Version: DirectX® 9c
- Internet Connection: at least 56k modem
- Multiplayer Requirement: Gamespy key (provided by publisher)
Отзывы пользователей
Good on it own, but a good mod to play is BSTOS
Actually a great game but it doesnt work right. late game is so slow you cant load battles up before you can do anything else.
8.5/10
For many players, Sword of the Stars is one of the best sci-if 4X games ever made. It does a lot of things very, very right, and it has served as inspiration for parts of games that ultimately became more popular, such as Stellaris.
SotS is, at it’s heart, a combat 4X. The pausable real-time combat, the technology tree, and the ship design are at the focus, and the other mechanics and systems are more abstract and exist primarily to serve combat or fuel your war machine. This is not a complaint; the game focuses on what it does best, and simplifies the rest.
The ship design and combat and combat are deeply satisfying. You get a huge range of options to mix and match. Ships are made of of three sections (bridge, mission, and engine), and these allow for hundreds of different combinations, before you get into things like weapon placements and various hull upgrades. It’s a lot of fun to research new techs, find what options they open up for your designs, and fiddle around until you have what you think is the perfect design for the role.
Combat itself finds a good balance between hands-off and full control. You can set your fleet or individual ships to various stances (such as stat at max range, or close in), and confidently let them do their thing. You can autoresolve battles, and the resolution tends to be fairly accurate. Or you can manage the battle more directly, giving ships movement and facing orders, directing them to target specific ships, specific sections, or even specific turrets.
The different weapon techs you can research are varied, including everything you would expect from this kind of game, as well as more interesting options. For every laser or missile or auto cannon, there are also a few variants, to say nothing of things like the grappling hook, area denial weapons, lightning emitters, giant plasma “shotguns”, or oversized ballistic cannons that sends enemy ships spinning out of control and out of range.
the tech tree itself is interesting. You start with limited options and unlock more as you go down the various branches, but the techs you have access to partially determined by your race, and by a little bit of RNG. There are core techs that everyone will have, but there are alternatives, variants, or higher level techs that you might or might not have access based on some rolls made at the start of the game. (Although reverse engineering these from the broken remains of enemy ships is often an option). So there are games where you just won’t have access to shields, but you might have superior cloaking technology or very accurate point defense.
But where the game really, really shines is in how unique each of the 6 races feel. Not only does your choice of race influence what techs you can access, but it determines your FTL drive, which can fundamentally change how, and how quickly, they move about the strategic map. Humans, for instance, use pre-existing warp lanes to move about the map incredibly quickly, allowing them to expand fast and making them almost impossible to intercept between systems. But they are limited to traveling where these lanes lead, making them the most susceptible to choke points, and if you figure out where their warp lanes are, you know which directs they will come from. Humans are not a Jack-of-all-trades or vanilla race in SotS. They’re a rush race who need to create an early game lead in order to stay competitive long term.
The insectoid Hivers are by far the slowest, with ships that essentially lack any sort of FTL drive at all, which greatly limits there expansion. But they can build warp gates that allow instantaneous teleportation between controlled systems, making them a defensive powerhouse, and later on can research a technology that allows these gates to essentially slingshot fleets across the map and behind enemy lines. This is a race that starts slow, benefits from turtling from cooperating with other races to expand their gate network, before getting to the point where true offensive strategies become viable.
The Crows, meanwhile, have an FLT drive that gets faster the more ships they have in the fleet, encouraging you to use fewer, but larger, fleets.
Each race’s individual ships also exude flavor. They look and perform very differently, even when using the same sections. A lot of the character and design philosophy of the races is communicated through their ships. The reptilian Tarka are a no-nonsense race that likes to face the enemy and fire devastating barrages, while the psychic dolphin-like Liir build advanced but fragile ships that prefer 360 degree weapon coverage. Their ships often have protruding sections that extend turrets out from the hull, allowing better firing arcs.
For example the Tarka’s hammerhead section has a large profile, is loaded with additional armour and larger weapon mounts, allowing for a ton of forward facing firepower. But the Liir’s hammerhead section focuses more on adding additional smaller weapon mounts with wide firing arcs and overall ship agility, allowing their general technological superiority to shine through the use of high end, specialized lasers and point defense turrets, and having a better ability to control which side of their ship faces the enemy.
These differences extend to every ship section, and really help present who each race is. The Liir favor lots of smaller weapons, great for protecting against missiles and drones with point defense, and their agility gives them allows them swarm around and attack enemies from their vulnerable sides, trying to disable ships to make up for their paper-thin armour. Hivers lack ship-based FTL drives traverse the strategic map slowly, but use that extra space for more armour and weapons, making them incredibly tough, further leaning into to their turtle strategy. Add to that their rounded hills (and high odds of specialized armour techs) and they are the best in the game at shrugging off ballistic shots, which are more likely to simply bounce and ricochet off their hulls. Their greater density also means they don’t get pushed around as much by hits from kinetic weapons.
The Reaver-like parasitic Zuul ships look like the cast-offs and wreckage of other races’ ships—because they are. They bristle with lots of large weapons, allowing them to punch above their weight class, but they are held together with duct tape and hatred, emphasizing just how little they value life. Peace, for Zuul, means stagnation and death. This is a race that is constantly consuming it’s own worlds and populations, and therefore needs to conquer enemy planets and abduct their citizens to keep their empires going. The Human’s exceptionally fast FTL speed comes at the cost of very large, and very fragile, engines, that often get hit by shots that miss some other part of the ship. It’s not uncommon for them to come out of a battle with multiple ships dead in space and in need of repair.
It’s just a lot of fun. The game benefitted from having a fantastic lead writer, who did a wonderful job giving each race their own identity through some incredibly in-depth lore, and helping the rest of the team ensure that everything from the technologies to the art assets for each race for their identity.
Buy this, play this.
This isn’t your average turn-based strategy game—it’s Sword of the Stars, where you meticulously plan your empire’s moves in turn-based fashion, then jump right into the thick of real-time space combat, personally commanding every ship in your fleet like a wannabe Admiral Ackbar. The thrill of maneuvering your custom-built fleet to flank an enemy destroyer is only topped by watching your perfect strategy unravel when that same destroyer rams one of your cruisers into a fiery death spiral.
The game’s got one of the most unpredictable research systems out there. Want to develop AI to help boost your economy? Tough luck—this time the tech gods say no. And honestly, good for you, because nobody wants an AI buddy anyway. They always end up turning on you at the worst possible moment. But when you don’t get access to some key research, it’ll feel like you’ve been thrown into a boxing match with one arm tied behind your back. And, well… that’s just life, isn’t it? Sometimes you just don’t get the tech you want because your scientists aren’t smart enough to figure it out.
But then—oh joy!—you start a new game, and suddenly your Hiver empire has unlocked a tech that eluded you last time. Now you’ve got missile shields, or a fusion cannon, or—wait, what’s that? Cloaking technology?! Time to watch your enemies flail in confusion as your invisible fleet shows up where they least expect it. It’s that variation that keeps every game feeling fresh, even when you’re going up against the same pesky alien empires.
Speaking of empires, each race has its own flair and quirks, so expect to constantly tweak your strategies. You’ll go from the lumbering tanks of the Tarka to the sneaky cloaked fleets of the Liir, and every race’s playstyle feels genuinely unique. The randomness of research only adds to the replayability—what worked brilliantly in one game could completely fail in another because this time the Zuul have somehow figured out how to fry your ships with tech they should not have.
And the combat… oh, the combat. It’s the real star here. The thrill of positioning your destroyers just right, sending out torpedo volleys, and watching lasers carve through your opponent’s hulls is downright addictive. Each skirmish is a real-time ballet of death, explosions lighting up the void as ships spin out of control or tear each other apart. The stakes are always high, and every mistake feels huge—but every victory is so satisfying. And best of all, it’s even more fun with a friend.
If you’re looking for a 4X game with deep strategy, randomized tech trees to keep you guessing, and real-time combat that’ll have you holding your breath as you try to outmaneuver your enemies, then Sword of the Stars is a classic that still holds up. Just remember: if you see AI research pop up… just don’t. Trust me. (Now I know your gonna do it).
I have been playing this game since it came around in 2005. It was great then and still holds up. The only snag was multiplayer was tied to an old multiplayer system(Game Spy) which went belly up. You can still play LAN mode though. This game with all the expansions is worth the price even after all this time. Simple and fun with real time tactical combat, turn based light planet management. Its all about the war baby!!!
If you see SOTS2 that was a mess and a half and while playable has some flaws that were never addressed. Its not bad but a different gameplay than the first and a little buggy so buyer beware.
I used to own this game, and WIN this game but however they "tweeked" it has made it anything but fun. First, perhaps they should get a dictionary out and look up the definition of the word, "EASY." I have played it over 100 hours and most of the time, LOST. The planets start to rebel and I can invade a planet with a 10 to 1 ratio of forces and it will take me over a dozen turns to grind them into dust. Sorry, I do NOT recommend this game.
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Дополнительная информация
Разработчик | Kerberos Productions Inc. |
Платформы | Windows |
Ограничение возраста | Нет |
Дата релиза | 29.10.2024 |
Metacritic | 75 |
Отзывы пользователей | 89% положительных (477) |