As part of the redesign / anniversary of Gamer's Gate, Sword of the Stars Ultimate Collection will be 50% off all day Friday. So in order to encourage more of you buggers to buy it, I figured I'd finally post the play by play I've been threatening to do for the past year or so 
To keep things reasonably quick and simple, I'm playing a 54 star Cluster galaxy as everyone's favourite lizard/ape hybrids the Tarka. To keep things interesting and complicated I'm sharing the galaxy with one AI of every other race - Humans, Hiver, Liir, Zuul and Morrigi. Random events et al are all left at the defaults.
So, in typical fashion things look a bit dodgy from the off -
As you can see in the wonderful 3D space map, I'm stuck at the arse end of the galaxy in a small cluster of four stars, one of which is our homeworld from which we will seek to restore the glory of the Tarka empire. On the one hand, being stuck out on the edge makes conquest a simple matter of rolling up the galaxy. On the other, there's a fair bit of distance between our little cluster and the rest of the galaxy, bridged by a single star. If I'm lucky, that star will be habitable or at least within a range likely to become habitable for the apelizards, otherwise things could become very tricky indeed. The Tarka take a leaf out of Star Trek's book when it comes to navigating the universe and make use of warp fields to achieve FTL travel. While this gives us completely free range of movement and usually means we get a bit of a head start against everyone else, when it comes to crossing large gaps only the Hivers are slower.
With little else to do, I commission three Extended Range destroyers (scouts basically). Given the unlikelihood of meeting anyone for a good while yet, I crank up research to 75% of my budget and set our scientists to focus on our biology research. Once complete this will unlock the Suspended Animation upgrade for coloniser sections, which will assist greatly in colonising whatever local planets happen to be worth grabbing.
For those who haven't seen the game before, digression on research under the spoiler:
So, skip forward a couple of turns and things go from bad to worse. My three ER destroyers are built and sent to discover what lies on the other stars in our little cluster. One of the things I love about this game is it's never a simple matter of sending ships off exploring a star and waiting for the results. Throughout the galaxy are strewn random encounters, from derelict alien vessels to ancient asteroid fortresses, and you never know what you'll find when you get out there. Luckily, my closest neighbours are clean, however only two planets prove to be colonisable, one tiny level 3 planet and a mediocre level 5. The rest are barren red orbs whose local conditions put them just outside my habitability range. Our scientists have already completed research into genetics and suspended animation, so I redesign my colony ship to take advantage of the suspended animation trait (again, digression on ship design under the spoiler) and send out two fleets consisting of five Mk II colonisers and a tanker to the two planets. In the meantime, I pull my scouts to the level five planet which is the furthest out for a refuel before pushing to the furthest star of the system.
Colonising both planets takes a chunk of money; until terraformed to the ideal for my race each planet will cost income to support relative to just how far from my sweet spot it is. Worse luck strikes as we finally reach the outer planet of the cluster only to find it's a ridiculous 1150 rating - planets have a climate hazard rating which represents how far from your race's preferred conditions it is. Each race has a different tolerance for how high this can be and still be colonisable, and research can increase this to a degree, but this ball of rock is so far out of my league it's not even the same sport. Interestingly, although 0 is the sweet spot for each race, what that 0 is differs. What may be perfect for the Hivers would still be around 200 above zero for me, but the bright side is if another race can be persuaded to colonise it, they might terraform it down to something I can use. Oh, and if it's not apparent yet, the initial costs and colony maintenance depend entirely on the climate hazard rating. A 0 planet costs nothing to colonise or maintain, while a 300 planet would cost a small chunk to colonise and a fair whack of upkeep to boot.
On the bright side, still no sign of my fellow empires, or for that matter any hostile random encounters yet. I dispatch my exploration fleet off to the next cluster (it's that, or a very short game of me only having three planets). It takes thirteen turns for them to reach the nearest star in the neighbouring cluster, and on the way I direct my scientists to look into pulsed engines and recombinant fissionables, one increases engine speed slightly while the other increases range. I don't know if the AI has itself established in this cluster or not, but if I'm fast I might be able to grab a foothold before it becomes totally locked down.
Unfortunately, I'm not lucky. My first random of the game, and one unique to AMoC, the closest star is already inhabited by a splinter Hiver colony
Splinter colonies are new to AMoC. If I research up on the Hiver language tree I can start communicating and may eventually persuade the breakaway group to join my Empire. Or I could of course wipe the filthy insects from the planet and claim it for myself. However, with nothing but missiles to really damage the planet I risk sending it's relatively low climate hazard speeding up beyond my grasp.
They already have a ring of ten defence satellites, and a couple of ER destroyers and tankers are not likely to succeed attacking the planet. Thankfully we're able to avoid conflict even though we cannot understand the strange clicks coming over the comms. I'm forced to scuttle some of my fleet and split the remaining fuel between the tankers, I can then send five ships off to explore the rest of the cluster. With luck, I'll find a planet I can colonise and be able to establish myself here, however judging by how this game is going thus far I'm more likely to find myself neighbours with the Zuul.
To keep things reasonably quick and simple, I'm playing a 54 star Cluster galaxy as everyone's favourite lizard/ape hybrids the Tarka. To keep things interesting and complicated I'm sharing the galaxy with one AI of every other race - Humans, Hiver, Liir, Zuul and Morrigi. Random events et al are all left at the defaults.
So, in typical fashion things look a bit dodgy from the off -
As you can see in the wonderful 3D space map, I'm stuck at the arse end of the galaxy in a small cluster of four stars, one of which is our homeworld from which we will seek to restore the glory of the Tarka empire. On the one hand, being stuck out on the edge makes conquest a simple matter of rolling up the galaxy. On the other, there's a fair bit of distance between our little cluster and the rest of the galaxy, bridged by a single star. If I'm lucky, that star will be habitable or at least within a range likely to become habitable for the apelizards, otherwise things could become very tricky indeed. The Tarka take a leaf out of Star Trek's book when it comes to navigating the universe and make use of warp fields to achieve FTL travel. While this gives us completely free range of movement and usually means we get a bit of a head start against everyone else, when it comes to crossing large gaps only the Hivers are slower.
With little else to do, I commission three Extended Range destroyers (scouts basically). Given the unlikelihood of meeting anyone for a good while yet, I crank up research to 75% of my budget and set our scientists to focus on our biology research. Once complete this will unlock the Suspended Animation upgrade for coloniser sections, which will assist greatly in colonising whatever local planets happen to be worth grabbing.
For those who haven't seen the game before, digression on research under the spoiler:
SotS uses a rather interesting mechanic of having some techs guaranteed, some race specific and others randomly available depending on the race you're playing and the other techs on the tree. It's all presented in a swish 3D holochamber style interface:
Each of those boxes is a technology available for research. You can zoom in and click to see what the tech actually does:
See the blue lines? They're the links between technologies. They're a little more than the normal "you must research lasers to get bigger lasers" though. Several technologies may link to the same tech, and the same tech may link to many other technologies. Sometimes it is simple, with red lasers linking to the next advancement in the laser field, green lasers. However, red lasers may also 'skip' the green lasers and link directly to UV lasers, two steps higher up the same tree. This means I could skip directly to the UV laser, however researching the green lasers under it will speed up my research into the UV laser, and in AMoC green lasers usually link to the beamer version of the weapons (which sacrifice range for accuracy) which may make it worth researching. Oh, and this is what plays into the whole pseudo random tech tree thing. Each race has a % chance of having a given non-guaranteed link which is worked out at the beginning of the game, weighted additionally by certain racial tendencies. So in this game, Tarkasian living metal may or may not link me to Polysillicate Alloys (both hull upgrades), however I won't know until I research up to that point.
It probably all sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is. In general, you can't go far wrong by lumping technologies into economic upgrades, ship upgrades and killing other ships upgrades. What it does do is make replays a little more interesting; see knowing the tech tree I now have to weigh up the benefits of leaping straight to say UV lasers for the tech edge, or gambling on getting that link from green lasers to beamers and pursuing that tree up to the beamer UV lasers.
Each of those boxes is a technology available for research. You can zoom in and click to see what the tech actually does:
See the blue lines? They're the links between technologies. They're a little more than the normal "you must research lasers to get bigger lasers" though. Several technologies may link to the same tech, and the same tech may link to many other technologies. Sometimes it is simple, with red lasers linking to the next advancement in the laser field, green lasers. However, red lasers may also 'skip' the green lasers and link directly to UV lasers, two steps higher up the same tree. This means I could skip directly to the UV laser, however researching the green lasers under it will speed up my research into the UV laser, and in AMoC green lasers usually link to the beamer version of the weapons (which sacrifice range for accuracy) which may make it worth researching. Oh, and this is what plays into the whole pseudo random tech tree thing. Each race has a % chance of having a given non-guaranteed link which is worked out at the beginning of the game, weighted additionally by certain racial tendencies. So in this game, Tarkasian living metal may or may not link me to Polysillicate Alloys (both hull upgrades), however I won't know until I research up to that point.
It probably all sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is. In general, you can't go far wrong by lumping technologies into economic upgrades, ship upgrades and killing other ships upgrades. What it does do is make replays a little more interesting; see knowing the tech tree I now have to weigh up the benefits of leaping straight to say UV lasers for the tech edge, or gambling on getting that link from green lasers to beamers and pursuing that tree up to the beamer UV lasers.
Ship design is at once beautifully simple, and beautifully complex. Each ship (starbases, defence satellites and drones excluded) is split into three sections; command, mission and engine:
Each section has a number of choices depending on the ship and your tech level. If I had completed Waldo unit research for example, I would have the choice between a standard command section, or the slightly more expensive Hammerhead design which boosts turning speed and for most races provides an additional weapon slot. You choose the section type simply by a drop down menu as shown. Optional modifications to a section such as suspended animation or improved armour appear as checkboxes once the relevant section is chosen, should you have the pre-requisite research.
In the bottom left corner you can see the weapon layout. In this box, I can click a given weapon slot and the relevant guns on the larger model highlight, along with their firing arcs. On a small ship such as the destroyer, each weapon box generally corresponds to one weapon, however on a larger Cruiser or dreadnought a single box might be paired turrets covering either flank, or the top and bottom of the craft. Clicking a weapon slot brings up a choice of weapons to put in there, however since I've yet to research any new weapons I'm stuck with the basic red laser, mass driver or missile.
Note that the weapon box in the mid section is slightly larger. Weapon points have three sizes; small, medium and large. In this case, the centre is a medium slot. Weapons also have a corresponding size, here we can see a missile in the medium slot; it's too large to fit into a smaller slot. However, again it's not as simple as the bigger weapon is more powerful; if you put a smaller weapon into a larger slot you actually get multiple turrets of the smaller weapon. On this destroyer that missile launcher will fire a single missile; on a cruiser with a large weapon slot that same missile launcher will usually fire three or four missiles at the same time. Some weapons are so large, such as the siege driver or plasma projector, that they are a mission section in and of themselves.
Also of interest is that weapon slot configurations differ over the same sections depending on race. The Tarka tend to favour front facing weapon arcs, have a preference for medium slots and are roughly as keen as humans when it comes to number. The Hivers tend to pack more weapons onto their ships, the pacifistic Liir tend to have fewer slots while the bloodthirsty Zuul tend to sacrifice number in favour of size. Ship manoeuvrability, speed and resilience all differ according to race too; Hiver ships look and act like flying bricks, but can take one hell of a beating. Zuul ships tend to be paper thin, but are insanely fast and thanks to their mantra of "bigger is better" act a lot like flying cannons. Since the game models ballistics the graceful curves of the Liir ships are good at deflecting shots, particularly lasers. Tarka are eminently sensible, and match their largely forward pointing guns to some of the most heavily armoured command sections in the game, with average speed and manoeuvrability.
Each section has a number of choices depending on the ship and your tech level. If I had completed Waldo unit research for example, I would have the choice between a standard command section, or the slightly more expensive Hammerhead design which boosts turning speed and for most races provides an additional weapon slot. You choose the section type simply by a drop down menu as shown. Optional modifications to a section such as suspended animation or improved armour appear as checkboxes once the relevant section is chosen, should you have the pre-requisite research.
In the bottom left corner you can see the weapon layout. In this box, I can click a given weapon slot and the relevant guns on the larger model highlight, along with their firing arcs. On a small ship such as the destroyer, each weapon box generally corresponds to one weapon, however on a larger Cruiser or dreadnought a single box might be paired turrets covering either flank, or the top and bottom of the craft. Clicking a weapon slot brings up a choice of weapons to put in there, however since I've yet to research any new weapons I'm stuck with the basic red laser, mass driver or missile.
Note that the weapon box in the mid section is slightly larger. Weapon points have three sizes; small, medium and large. In this case, the centre is a medium slot. Weapons also have a corresponding size, here we can see a missile in the medium slot; it's too large to fit into a smaller slot. However, again it's not as simple as the bigger weapon is more powerful; if you put a smaller weapon into a larger slot you actually get multiple turrets of the smaller weapon. On this destroyer that missile launcher will fire a single missile; on a cruiser with a large weapon slot that same missile launcher will usually fire three or four missiles at the same time. Some weapons are so large, such as the siege driver or plasma projector, that they are a mission section in and of themselves.
Also of interest is that weapon slot configurations differ over the same sections depending on race. The Tarka tend to favour front facing weapon arcs, have a preference for medium slots and are roughly as keen as humans when it comes to number. The Hivers tend to pack more weapons onto their ships, the pacifistic Liir tend to have fewer slots while the bloodthirsty Zuul tend to sacrifice number in favour of size. Ship manoeuvrability, speed and resilience all differ according to race too; Hiver ships look and act like flying bricks, but can take one hell of a beating. Zuul ships tend to be paper thin, but are insanely fast and thanks to their mantra of "bigger is better" act a lot like flying cannons. Since the game models ballistics the graceful curves of the Liir ships are good at deflecting shots, particularly lasers. Tarka are eminently sensible, and match their largely forward pointing guns to some of the most heavily armoured command sections in the game, with average speed and manoeuvrability.
On the bright side, still no sign of my fellow empires, or for that matter any hostile random encounters yet. I dispatch my exploration fleet off to the next cluster (it's that, or a very short game of me only having three planets). It takes thirteen turns for them to reach the nearest star in the neighbouring cluster, and on the way I direct my scientists to look into pulsed engines and recombinant fissionables, one increases engine speed slightly while the other increases range. I don't know if the AI has itself established in this cluster or not, but if I'm fast I might be able to grab a foothold before it becomes totally locked down.
Unfortunately, I'm not lucky. My first random of the game, and one unique to AMoC, the closest star is already inhabited by a splinter Hiver colony
Splinter colonies are new to AMoC. If I research up on the Hiver language tree I can start communicating and may eventually persuade the breakaway group to join my Empire. Or I could of course wipe the filthy insects from the planet and claim it for myself. However, with nothing but missiles to really damage the planet I risk sending it's relatively low climate hazard speeding up beyond my grasp.
They already have a ring of ten defence satellites, and a couple of ER destroyers and tankers are not likely to succeed attacking the planet. Thankfully we're able to avoid conflict even though we cannot understand the strange clicks coming over the comms. I'm forced to scuttle some of my fleet and split the remaining fuel between the tankers, I can then send five ships off to explore the rest of the cluster. With luck, I'll find a planet I can colonise and be able to establish myself here, however judging by how this game is going thus far I'm more likely to find myself neighbours with the Zuul.
