Sword of the Stars

Moby ID: 24070
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/26 8:58 PM )

Description official description

Sword of the Stars is a 4X strategy game, set in space. There are 4 races: Humans, Liir (dolphins), Tarkas ( dragons) and Hivers (Insects) . Each race has a unique style of playing and exploring the galaxy which is 3-D.

The Humans use jump engines to travel through subspace at 4 ly/turn, but they must use fixed node points in space and must be able to jump with the energy provided by the power core,no refuel allowed in 5-D.

The Hivers travel very slow at slower than lights speeds, but once arrived, they are able to set up jump gates, traveling instantaneously to any other gate world.

The Tarkas have a common Star Trek hyper drive, enabling them to explore in a free way the galaxy.

The Liir are able to cover great distances, as their ships use infinite-small teleportation,but slow down at half speed near planets and black holes.

Once you encounter a space hazard (meteors, slavers, asteroid monitors, derelicts or space swarms) or enemy ships, a battle occurs in real time and you may see even the crew working inside your cruisers, as all damage is graphical: no health bars.

Spellings

  • Sword of the Stars: Повелители звезд - Russian spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Credits (Windows version)

90 People (61 developers, 29 thanks) · View all

Lead Design
Design
Background Materials
Lead Artist
3D Artists
2D Artist
Programming Lead
Programming
Alien Design
Cinematics
Additional Art
Additional Programming
Producer
Chief Financial Officer
Controller
Music Composition
Studio Production
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 65% (based on 23 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 8 ratings with 2 reviews)

Wonderful Idea Hindered by Execution

The Good
The best part of Sword of the Stars (SOTS) is its technology handling. The various races have different star drive technologies, which gives each peculiar advantages and disadvantages against the other races. Unlike so many games, this makes a very basic part - transportation - asymmetrical in its character and forces adaptation in tactics to cope. From there, the wide and deep tech tree contains a few low-level techs that are available, after researching, to each; these include such things as language skills, basic ship weapons, and ability to tailor planets to suit each race's preferences. (Planet hazards are never called out; they are are assigned a numerical rating relative to your race's sweet spot.) After that, the tech tree is based on hidden "die rolls" made by the game during the generation of the playing map. Each step on the complete tech tree is rated as a percentage chance to be acquired by each race. These percentages are unequal. Hence, a Human civilization has a 90% chance of being able to research Photonic Torpedoes, but the lizard Tarka civilization has only a 20% chance of having that weapon available to research. If a race "fails a roll" for a low-level branch of the tree, the higher-level ones leading from it are also shut away. The beauty of this system is that (1) each race has certain specialties where they can generally expect to have a lot to research and consequently specialize (Li'ir, for instance, have high probabilities of having various offensive plagues in their possible techs), and (2) since each game generated rolls against the tech tree to see which techs are possible, this forces the player to adapt, as he will not have the same techs to research, even playing the same race repeatedly. The game throws a bone to the player for the techs that he cannot research. If he can reverse-engineer debris salvaged from a successful battle, he may eventually be able to work out a tech the opponent had that is not on his own tech tree.

Another strong point for SOTS is the highly flexible configuration of space ships. Each contain a Command section, a Mission section, and an Engine section. Depending on choice, these contain mixes of small, medium, large, and special-purpose turrets that can be outfitted to the player's wishes. It's possible on the same hull to configure a missile-shooter or a ship bristling with lasers. As particular techs are researched, new variants of the sections are unlocked - for instance, after developing the first Torpedo tech, an Assault variant of the Command section and a Barrage variant of the Mission section are unlocked.

The Bad
The space battles still need work. Kerberos made the design decision to restrict Z-axis movement to a small amount, plus or minus, from the main plane, and these are used to allow ships to pass asteroids or each other. The player has no control of his ships in the Z direction; they adjust according to the obstacles they meet. In practice, this means that space battles are akin to playing bumper cars. Opposing fleets, when they encounter each other, generally run into each other and then the more maneuverable ships are pushed out of the way. When slipping over or under, they can still orient their hulls to maintain fire on their specified target.

While I'm sure there were sufficient and good arguments for not using full 3-D for space battles, Kerberos' implementation makes me think more of neighborhood bullies jostling each other than of sleek spaceships powering past each other for firing runs. Space fills up very quickly with ships, satellites and asteroids and when equals meet, they are both made to bob ineffectually against each other. There is no damage absorbed by all this ramming. It just slows the game down and tends to keep the tactical focus on a small area.

The AI is very predictable in battle. Almost every time, it will line its fleet up in a "V" with the command ship at the apex. (Once in visual sighting range, examining the ship's appearance will confirm this.) Taking out the command ship restricts the opponent's reinforcements, if he doesn't have replacement command ships available. As long as the AI is fielding warships, it will drive directly at you and mix it up at close range. And my observation is that even with equivalent engine tech, the AI's ships will always be faster and more maneuverable than yours. It's rare to be in a tail chase where you catch the AI ship or escape the ones chasing you. In one game with both Li'ir and Human using Antimatter engines with enhancements, my six destroyers were trying to evade four cruisers. The cruisers turned first and accelerated first, but the destroyers got up to speed just out of range of the cruiser weapons... until a minute later when three inexplicably slowed down and were burned by the pursuers. So some cheats for the AI appear active. The manual says you can target individual weapon stations on the opposing ships. You can, and it's fun to see hits scored, but the weapon will only stop firing when the entire ship section it's mounted on is wrecked. There is no practical outcome to detailed targeting. Now, about items that are really make no sense and ought to be fixed: In the Research Module, the stats of weapons that can be researched are given graphically (damage, range, accuracy, rate of fire). Some upgrades to weapon systems have no discernible difference in the length of any of the graph bars and thus seem to give no advantage or reason to acquire them. Only by digging around on the Internet (www.sots.rorschach.net) can you find numerical values that prove the upgrades actually do something useful. This info ought to be in the manual.

When one race invades a colonized world of another, planet defenses are abstracted as planet-launched missiles that fire every 30 seconds, with the number of missiles depending on population of the world. These missiles go straight to the enemy ships, following them if they attempt to evade, even if the ships are not on tactical sensors and hence visible to the player. Surely if the planetary defenses knew exactly where to shoot missiles, they would pass along the sensor data to the fleet that is standing nervously nearby, waiting to see the enemy sweep into sight? Right? Sorry, no. If the enemy is not eager to join battle because they are just scouting, the only way to find them is run up the track of the missiles and hope to catch the enemy ships too occupied with swatting missiles to evade you.

Incidentally - kudos to Kerberos for making the planet defense missiles arc above and below the main plane of play; this presents targeting problems to the ships that are trying to shoot them down before impact. But this makes you realize that the ship design module has a major problem - firing arcs for the guns are only shown in two dimensions. There is no indication which, if any, weapons can swivel in the Z-axis to hit targets above or below the ship's own position. Consequently, it is really difficult for most ships to shoot down planetary defense missiles. The small weapon mounts suitable for point-defense lasers or guns do not usually have a decent arc of fire and are really challenged to hit approaching planetary defense missiles, which always approach from above or below. In fact, ships that adequately cover the area above themselves usually have a blind spot below - meaning half the missiles attacking the ship are unchallenged by the defensive weaponry. The designers of space ships really ought to place defensive turrets where they can counter the most common threats.

In playing the game, you will choose (many, many times) to play out tactical encounters that are so lopsided that you would wish to auto-calculate the results. The option to do so exists. With a really lopsided battle, generally one side will be annihilated with no loss or damage to the stronger fleet. But at some unknown ratio, the calculation starts to mete out damage to the stronger fleet. This is totally to be expected - but far too often, the game takes the damage against the support vessels, not the warships. It's as if you sent your repair and refueling ships out as bait and then shot the enemy fleet while they were killing the support vessels. No admiral would lead with his noncombatant ships. This kind of battle result is just plain broken. The only way to avoid it is to play out the tactical encounter personally. By default, that's 4 minutes by the clock. When you have three or four encounters per turn where exposing certain ships to this battle model can't be risked, you'll spend far more time in tactical mode than you'll want.

That need is exacerbated by the lack of any available command to your ships to "evade." In the early game, scouts will show up at inhabited worlds with formidable defensive fleets. In tactical mode, you might be able to manage the scout's survival, perhaps by hiding in an asteroid field from the planetary missiles. In auto-resolve, you will always lose the scout and get no look at what killed it. With that arrangement, the scouts are only good for finding where the enemy has not yet reached.

Finally, the concept of how the command ships work makes no sense. Destroyers are assessed 2 command points, cruisers are 6, and dreadnoughts are 18. Buying a command ship allows you to operate a fleet of a certain size. A Squadron handles 20 points, a Strikeforce handles 36, and an Armada will command 58. These arrangements mean, though, that the bigger the ships, the fewer can be handled. It's ludicrous to think that the lowly Squadron CNC destroyer can handle a fleet of 10 destroyers (9 plus itself), while the Strikeforce can only direct the operation of 5 cruisers in addition to itself, and the Armada CNC - the epitome of command staff size and efficiency - can only manage to say "go here and shoot that" to two other dreadnoughts. Kerberos should have come up with a better concept for fleet arrangements.

The Bottom Line
From the list of issues I have with the game you might think I would call it a waste of time. You could be right - I've certainly happily wasted hours and hours playing SOTS! In spite of its issues - it's fun! There is a community of enthusiastic players producing mods and making suggestions for the inevitable sequel. I'm with them. I like the game a lot. It plays differently with each race and even with the shape of the galaxy chosen for the game. Re-playability is vast. I can only hope that Kerberos will knock off the rough edges on the next iteration. For now, SOTS is probably the best 4X game ever made, with respect to the tech tree, real differences between the various races, and customizing the galaxy in play. With tweaks to ship design and tactical combat, it could be the best all-around.

Windows · by Professor (105) · 2010

The best 4X game since Master of Orion 2

The Good
That's an absolutely fantastic game ,set in realistic galactic conditions. There are 4 unique races ,each having a unique way of travelling: -the Humans have discovered nodes in the 4-D continuum, which lead ,through 5-D space, to another 4-D point ,making travelling between those 2 points much faster ;but they can only travel along "node lines" ,and in a single jump ,making power upgrades critical -the Dragons(Tarka) employ a standard "star trek" hyperdrive engine, which delivers them slowly across the galaxy -the Dolphins(Liir) have found a way to propel giant ships,filled with water environment ,through microscopic teleportations, delivering them faster across empty space and slower near planet masses -the Insects (Hiver) move slowest of all races, but they have instant-teleporting gates, making "zerg" attacks very simple

The combat is in the best 3-D environment I ever seen! Everything is alive from the missiles hitting and turning around ,to the ships having crews inside and experiencing partial destruction of their inner or outer hull sections

The ship design is streamlined and easy to use ,though strategically complicated to use :each ship has a command section (standard,assault,hammerhead,deep scan...) ,a mission section( armor,barrage, transport,deflectors...) and an engine section( fission,fusion ,antimatter and their improuvements).You many add armor and improuvements ,such as suspended animation for the colony section ,to each section

You have to employ different mission ships on your attacks: -a tanker ship for resupply -armor ships for attacking -barrage ships for destroying sattelites -scouts for deep scans -deflector ships for screening the entire fleet from enemy attacks -colonizer ships for re-colonizing the enemy world after you wiped out its population -refinery ship for refining fuel along the route -assault ships for quickly exterminating population centers -gate ships (if you're a Hiver) for establishing teleport gates -mining ships for mining minerals and improuving the planet,after the conquest -command ships for fleet control -and ,finally,repair and salvage ships The loss of all ships from a mission design severely hamper your fleet.Your inability to withdraw ships to the last lines and promote battle ships only to the front lines severely reduces your chances for victory.

All these come in 3 sizes:Destroyer, Cruiser and Dreadnought ;each having different mission sections.In it all ,it's a huge tactical game; and it looks beautiful.

Besides,the strategic part is realistic:you have to build infrastructure on a planet first in order for the population to grow (at a rat-crazy 275%/year ratio) ,then terraform it ,so you stop paying huge amounts of money for maintenance each turn;then watch the population grow by millions each turn and getting ready to build ships. If you don't do this properly, your people will live a long time like in Romania,my country....



The Bad
The game seems to be unfinished,to put it lightly: -no winning conditions: kill everyone else -no fighters -no ship capture, just destroy them -no way of interacting with the other civilisations in the game, except for gifts and non-aggression pleads -no planet capture, just kill them all and colonize ,using the remaining infrastructure -no diplomacy -no spying -no trade -minimalistic controls: no button for cycling fleets, for example -graphic interface with no obvious controls And the random events are too few. The research 3-D tree is many times unbalanced ,casting a very difficult game, as you cannot defend properly or colonize in an efficient manner

The 3-D strategic map gets confusing at times,as it masks the names of the ships and planets from a certain distance,so you always have to rotate and zoom in and out in order to get your perspective

In the end ,you build your empire,colonize hundreds of planets ,research everything possible..then you ask yourself :"Now what?"

The Bottom Line
The next generation of TBS/RTS 4X games has started with this game.Although full of flaws,it describes a living universe in the future era of faster computers.

No more spreadsheet games! No more looking to a poor 2-D picture and try to imagine it's a tank or a spaceship.No longer painfully controlling each of your hundred worlds each turn! No more issuing building orders every other turn!

Now everything is in 3-D:even if is still primitive (wooden,single layer ships ) and ground combat is non-existent (Kerberos explained that it was too much for a player to control naval ships,aircrafts ,tanks and troops at the same time when the space battle was going on in the skies) it lays the foundation for future strategic games,who will no longer be a "niche" for only the smartest and hard-boring people around.

Windows · by lucian (36) · 2006

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Sword of the Stars: A Murder of Crows
Released 2008 on Windows
Sword of the Stars: Born of Blood
Released 2007 on Windows
Sword of the Stars II: Lords of Winter
Released 2011 on Windows
Sword of the Stars: Argos Naval Yard
Released 2009 on Windows
Sword of Fargoal
Released 1983 on Commodore 64, 2019 on Antstream, 2022 on Windows
Strength of the Sword
Released 2013 on PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox One
Tecmo Secret of the Stars
Released 1993 on SNES
Beyond the Wall of Stars
Released 1992 on Windows 3.x, Macintosh
Sword of the Elements
Released 2014 on iPad, Android, iPhone

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 24070
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by lucian.

Additional contributors: Jeanne, Sciere, Klaster_1.

Game added September 20, 2006. Last modified January 29, 2024.