SotS 2 Info

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the tips, Zed-F!

Well Tarka are not the fastest around, but their speed in the Fission era is fairly average actually. They just don't have any tricks to make things go faster like some other races do.

Did a little digging in the Wiki...way more stuff there than I have been able to assimilate so far, very nice resource. Tarka fission sections...hmmmm. Tied with Morrigi for slowest FTL (Hivers and Zuul have STL issues, obviously) and dead last on range, seriously short compared to some. And the Tarka ER section has the weakest range bonus as well, although as a multiple of the pathetic Tarka default range it is comparatively quite strong.

At least I am not imagining things about the slowness and limited range.

Lack of range is indeed an early game weakness of the Tarka, but they do have some of the better tankers in the game as far as firepower and fuel storage goes. You can offset this to a degree with Pulsed Fission and Recombinant Fissionables, both of which will extend your range (and tactical speed, in the case of Pulsed Fission.)

The Tarka tankers are pretty decent, if a bit expensive. More tech will take time, as I started with only homeworlds (no additional colonies). I had not realized just how much difference that would make, compared to starting with additional developed worlds to help fund growth. Having to fund and build everything out of the homeworld for a while really slows the curve. My first couple colonies are starting to gain strength, so the pace should improve soon (I think).

If the other side runs and you can't catch them, you have a few options:
- Autoresolve (or autoresolve peacefully.) This prevents either side from running away or using any sort of tactics.

If things auto-resolve peacefully, what does this mean for system control and exploration? I was at this system first, and each turn since the enemy showed up we have "fought" to a draw. Do they get to see the system/planet details in this case, or have I successfully kept them ignorant by "fighting"?

Not that I intend to claim the world myself (600+ hazard rating). But I am not sure if it would be useful to my opponent -- the comparison bar shows them about 450 points to my "left". How do I know if a specific world is "left" or "right" in terms of hazard? In this case it makes a huge difference between semi-decent for them (about 150) or horrific (over 1000).

- Get a faster ship -- armour is faster than ER, hammerhead is faster than standard. Overthrusters tech off pulsed fission if you really want speed, but it's a bit more expensive.
- If the other side is running, they probably don't want a fight; check in the bottom left corner of the tac screen for a little green dove icon. If you see one for your enemy and agree to peace, then click your own similar icon over to dove.
- For making combat go faster in general, you can use time compression; check the wiki for the keys (I think it's ctrl-pgup.)
- You won't be able to break off from combat without a CnC and it doesn't really end combat; it's more for switching which ships in your fleet are currently on the field of battle. You break off to get damaged ships out so they can be repaired later, or to switch (say) from direct combat ships to planetary bombardment ships. Checking the wiki would be helpful here as well, and IIRC the manual should also point the buttons out on the tac screen.

Ah, no wonder I could not find anything for breaking off -- no CnC. Much is explained.

Thanks for the speed suggestions, also. I have been building some hammerhead/armor ships for new colony defense. Useful to know they will have a bit of a tactical speed edge compared to my ERs.

Thanks again for the useful info.

[Zed-F]

Tarka fission sections...hmmmm. Tied with Morrigi for slowest FTL (Hivers and Zuul have STL issues, obviously)

Just looking at the raw numbers is a bit deceptive if you don't know how their drive systems work.

Hivers only have STL speed, but can gate from any place they've been to any other place they've been in a single turn, so long as there is an active gate and they have the gate capacity to move the number of ships they'd like to. The limiting factors of Hiver expansion tend to be how many gate fleets they can afford to send in every direction at once, and how central their starting position on the map is. Tactically, they have average top speeds but the worst acceleration profile in the game.

Zuul can go quite reasonably quick within their bore network, but their bore ships are the slowest FTL things in the game, and they can only bore a very limited number of routes per star at the start, both of which seriously hampers their exploration speed. Tactically they have the best top speeds, and fairly average acceleration.

Liir appear to have faster strategic speed than Tarka or Morrigi but in fact are heavily penalized near gravity wells; in practice they are only rougly comparable with Tarka. The grav well limitation also means their top end drives are effectively slower than any other race's FTL drive, barring Zuul bore ships. Tactically, on the other hand, Liir drives are probably the most unique of any race, with the lowest top speed but extreme acceleration, and bonuses when fighting in deep space away from grav wells.

Tarka are in the middle of the pack. Their drive doesn't have any special strengths, nor does it have any special weaknesses. It just does what it says on the tin. Their overall tactical maneuverability is also just on the high side of average; the only thing they get by way of a bonus is their top-end warp drive gives better tactical maneuverability than most.

Morrigi have easily the best tactical drives overall; though they don't match the Zuul's top speed they have much better acceleration and overal maneuverability. Their strategic drive is another odd duck; they start out apparently tied with the Tarka, but they benefit from a flock effect which allows them to speed up with increasing numbers of ships in the same fleet. This is both a blessing and a liability, in that large numbers of Morrigi ships in one fleet can eventually go very fast indeed, but they can never go quickly except when travelling in large groups, which can make assembling a new fleet a chore and reacting to surprises deadly. I would say that in the early game they have the second best strategic speed because at base they are no worse than average for fission ships and can use the flock effect to further improve that.

Humans I would give top honors to as far as fission-era speed goes, but node travel does have its drawbacks; you can't always choose your route to any given star, which can cut the efficiency of the drive short in some cases. Also sometimes you don't have a good route -- or any route at all -- to a particular destination, or you may only have one very predictable route to a chokepoint that can easily be fortified. On the plus side, though, you don't have to bore any routes at the start of the game, which is a substantial advantage over the Zuul as far as exploration goes. Tactically, human drives are nothing to write home about, and they have perhaps the worst overall package of top speed and acceleration, though they are outdone by other races in each of those categories.

If things auto-resolve peacefully, what does this mean for system control and exploration? I was at this system first, and each turn since the enemy showed up we have "fought" to a draw. Do they get to see the system/planet details in this case, or have I successfully kept them ignorant by "fighting"?

You only get to keep your rivals ignorant of a system's details if their scout is destroyed on the turn it arrives. If it survives the initial turn, it will have reported back.

Not that I intend to claim the world myself (600+ hazard rating). But I am not sure if it would be useful to my opponent -- the comparison bar shows them about 450 points to my "left". How do I know if a specific world is "left" or "right" in terms of hazard? In this case it makes a huge difference between semi-decent for them (about 150) or horrific (over 1000).

There is a long bar under the hazard rating (or above the size number) of every planet, and a circle on that bar indicates the directionality and magnitude of the hazard.

Thanks again for the useful info.

No problem.

[haphazard1]

Just looking at the raw numbers is a bit deceptive if you don't know how their drive systems work.

Lots of great info there, thanks! I had not considered the Liir's issues with high end drives still being slowed near planets, or the Morrigi with accumulating fleets or emergency responses. Some of the others I had considered, but I will obviously have to play as each race to really get a good feel for the unique systems. This is a very interesting aspect of SotS, and I like the impact it has on play.

You only get to keep your rivals ignorant of a system's details if their scout is destroyed on the turn it arrives. If it survives the initial turn, it will have reported back.

OK, so I have failed to keep him ignorant. Even worse, this world is to my left so it will be rather desirable to him. I need some tougher ships out there soon-ish.

There is a long bar under the hazard rating (or above the size number) of every planet, and a circle on that bar indicates the directionality and magnitude of the hazard.

And it is right there staring me in the face. I thought those were just nice decorative separators between the planet graphic and the data below. For your homeworld the dot is dead center, like a lot of fancy divider bars sometimes are, so I completely missed that there was real information available.

[Cyneheard]

(Note: I haven't played all that much either, am in my first real Tarka game as well. This 50k cash/1 homeworld/0 tech start is a LOT slower. It's T50, and I'm just now getting my 3rd and 4th colonies into no-more-terraforming-or-infra-mode, nothing like the SG's speed. Good enough for #3 power at the moment, and am likely to start bashing the Morrigi because they're near.)

Yeah, I'm really liking how they made the 6 races so different, despite the fact that 80% of the tech tree is the same between them.

Really, there are only three types of warp engines:
Human Node-Based
Hiver Gate-Based (Zuul are really a hybrid of Hivers and Humans, but IMO the Zuul are more like the Hivers: slow ships have to "build the network", so to speak, but it's faster to build the network, harder/slower to move, and somewhat harder to maintain)

Tarka/Liir/Morrigi Any Point To Any Point With Minor Tweaks: They've all got very similar levels of flexibility, but different disadvantages (Tarkan range and slow speed, Liir near-world issues, and the need for Morrigi numbers).

Hiver/Zuul seem to be the hardest to get right for new(er) players; Humans are just constrained, which is different from a micro perspective.


Questions that I've got from my playing:
1) Asteroid Monitors: It seems that the Special Projects to get them up never complete for me, even if it's like 20t, before the AI shows up and just nabs them. Is that the Morrigi getting an instagib on the AMs? How expensive are those special projects supposed to be? (I'd been shelling out about 10k a turn on them)
2) Alien Derelicts: How large of a fleet do I need to tackle one? And do I need to get rid of it before I colonize a world? (There's one where it's a Hazard 23 Size 8...I want it yesterday, but don't really want to gut my fleet defenses to do so.
3) Overharvesting and # of colony ships: I've mostly been doing 1-3 colony ships (partially out of Avoid The Traps), and burning ~500 resources a world to get them going faster. Since my current game is as the Tarka, I've been trying to settle (and explore) far and wide, I haven't really had the colony ships to send a LOT of them at an individual world. I've also lucked out that most of the worlds are either 600 hazard or 100 hazard, so they've been cheap or ignored.
4) Random question: Is the relative hazard rating between different species different from game to game? In my current one, the hazard for humans and Liir is about 1 unit apart.
5) Any reason why in many battles (unaligned Asteroid Monitors and Derelicts, many AI battles) I can always successfully dove the battle if I go manual without firing a shot, but if I auto-dove, we end up fighting? It's really time-consuming to have to do that if I don't want to fight the AI yet EVERY BLOODY TURN.

[haphazard1]

(Note: I haven't played all that much either, am in my first real Tarka game as well. This 50k cash/1 homeworld/0 tech start is a LOT slower. It's T50, and I'm just now getting my 3rd and 4th colonies into no-more-terraforming-or-infra-mode, nothing like the SG's speed. Good enough for #3 power at the moment, and am likely to start bashing the Morrigi because they're near.)

Absolutely. I managed a rapid burst of early settling and grabbed 7 additional colonies by T25. But with only the homeworld producing net funds, my research was crawling for quite a while until some of the new worlds started to mature. I should not have grabbed quite so many that quickly...but at least I learned something from it.

Zuul are really a hybrid of Hivers and Humans, but IMO the Zuul are more like the Hivers: slow ships have to "build the network", so to speak, but it's faster to build the network, harder/slower to move, and somewhat harder to maintain)

I have not played Zuul yet, but I think they have a tougher task than the Hivers. Not only do they have the slow ships to build the network, but early on they can only bore a couple node lines per world. Their early network is going to be very sparse, with limited cross-links for ease of reinforcements and movement. The Hivers at least get instant movement anywhere from anywhere once the gates are up, although limited in total transfers per turn.

On the other hand, gate ships can be targetted. On the gripping hand, bored node lines decay.

The different racial movement mechanics definitely make things interesting.

2) Alien Derelicts: How large of a fleet do I need to tackle one? And do I need to get rid of it before I colonize a world? (There's one where it's a Hazard 23 Size 8...I want it yesterday, but don't really want to gut my fleet defenses to do so.

I don't have anything that nice waiting, but I also would like some thoughts on what kind of force is needed to clear a derelicts system.

4) Random question: Is the relative hazard rating between different species different from game to game? In my current one, the hazard for humans and Liir is about 1 unit apart.

I am 99% certain this is yes.

5) Any reason why in many battles (unaligned Asteroid Monitors and Derelicts, many AI battles) I can always successfully dove the battle if I go manual without firing a shot, but if I auto-dove, we end up fighting? It's really time-consuming to have to do that if I don't want to fight the AI yet EVERY BLOODY TURN.

Would also be interested in an answer to this one.

Arrrrrgh! Zuul bore fleet just glassed my most promising colony as it finally started really ramping up. Just two or three more defending armors and I could have held them off.... Must. Build. More. Military.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Alien derelicts are one of the easier encounters to deal with, as you have the initiative. You can clear them out with nothing but DEs packing missiles, just sit out of range and blow it up with dinky little fission warheads. Another solution is to shoot off the turrets using longer-range weapons like green/UV lasers or sniper cannons, this gives you a research bonus for 5 turns, but it may not be worth it compared to just blowing it up and colonising the planet beneath it.

[Zed-F]

1) Asteroid Monitors: It seems that the Special Projects to get them up never complete for me, even if it's like 20t, before the AI shows up and just nabs them. Is that the Morrigi getting an instagib on the AMs? How expensive are those special projects supposed to be? (I'd been shelling out about 10k a turn on them)

Morrigi and Zuul do get bonuses for hacking monitors, but not instantly so. If you're playing on hard difficulty, though where the AI gets a research bonus, you're unlikely to get any monitors at all unless they are well behind your lines. Note that they do have to run a socut into a monitor to be able to hack it, same as you.

2) Alien Derelicts: How large of a fleet do I need to tackle one? And do I need to get rid of it before I colonize a world? (There's one where it's a Hazard 23 Size 8...I want it yesterday, but don't really want to gut my fleet defenses to do so.

If you have accurate weapons like lasers or emitters, just one or two ships. You can get in close in the derelict's blind spot, and follow that blind spot around, enlarging it by stripping weapons as you go until the whole thing is disarmed. Takes a bit of practice but not that hard. If you have a few ships with lasers you can auto and let the AI have a go at stripping turrets, which it will do if armed appropriately. You will take a couple losses but only need a handful of ships.

3) Overharvesting and # of colony ships: I've mostly been doing 1-3 colony ships (partially out of Avoid The Traps), and burning ~500 resources a world to get them going faster. Since my current game is as the Tarka, I've been trying to settle (and explore) far and wide, I haven't really had the colony ships to send a LOT of them at an individual world. I've also lucked out that most of the worlds are either 600 hazard or 100 hazard, so they've been cheap or ignored.

Not really a question here, but that sounds like a reasonable approach to me. 1-3 colonizers could settle a 100 hazard world just fine, though I would probably make an effort to use more colonizers for higher hazard worlds than that.

4) Random question: Is the relative hazard rating between different species different from game to game? In my current one, the hazard for humans and Liir is about 1 unit apart.

Yup!

5) Any reason why in many battles (unaligned Asteroid Monitors and Derelicts, many AI battles) I can always successfully dove the battle if I go manual without firing a shot, but if I auto-dove, we end up fighting? It's really time-consuming to have to do that if I don't want to fight the AI yet EVERY BLOODY TURN.

Auto-peace rules are if both sides agree to peace at the start of the battle, then peace happens, but if one side does not agree to peace, then it autos. For monitors and derelicts, they never agree to peace unless you are a certain distance away, so no auto-peace is possible. For your rivals' ships, they will usually only auto-peace a couple times the first couple turns they are at a new world, after that if the scout is out of gas they will autoresolve it to get rid of your scout or theirs, and take the maintenance off the books. This can be a bit annoying, but I've found the best solution from a diplomatic point is to put an extra scout or two there and autoresolve peacefully. You'll lose the first contact hold fire, but the other guy will get improved relations with you even though he lost a scout, because he was the first one to shoot. The first contact hold fire never lasts that long anyway.

[Zed-F]

Here's a link to a GDC 2011 video walkthrough for SotS2. I haven't had a chance to take a gander at it myself yet but it's bound to be informative!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckk_XTP93Uo

EDIT: talks a bit about the starmap and ship design. Worth a look to see what the ships will look like in SotS2!

[Zed-F]

For anyone interested in jumping into a SotS SG, we are in the process of organizing for RB SotS1 SG2. Anyone who'd like to give it a shot is welcome, especially people who were interested in SG1 but who couldn't make it for a variety of reasons, including T-Hawk, Ilios, Acalostas, Antisocialmunky, and Maniac Marshall.

If you don't already have the game, it's available for digital download on Steam, GamersGate, Impulse, and at Amazon Digital Download, the latter of which is currently having a 20% off sale. The normal price for the complete collection including all expansions is $20, at Amazon it's $16 right now (or was last I checked.)

[Zed-F]

Some more SotS2 information coming out of E3...

Video of a bunch of ships, showing off the detailed models:
http://www.idg-entertainment.com/video/t...of-winter/

SotS2 nominated for best strategy game of E3!
http://www.kerberos-productions.com/foru...37&t=20209