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Okay, so you've made it this far. You fools! A little history on this game for those who don't know. It was highly anticipated as the first Sword of the Stars is really good, and the sequel promised to fix some of the gameplay issues that were part of the engine.
Unfortunately, as you might guess by it being here, this isn't what happened. What happened was, on release, we got a highly buggy Alpha. ORIGINALLY this was reported as being the developer build from 6 months ago. When they updated it, it turns out the 'finished' product was not much better. A lot of people demanded, and recieved, their money back because it was that bad. Even now, 2 years or so AND an expansion pack, it is STILL a bad bad game. Which is why it's here. I'll be pulling bits from the patch notes in later updates to add to the comedy. But for now, let's look at the actual game, with occasional comparisons to its predecessor.

To start off with, I'll be playing as the Tarka. Since then I don't have to explain how their drive systems work. I'll be abbreviating Sword of the Stars to SOTS.

The very first thing to do is go to your budget screen. There's a problem here. Can you see where it is?


It's here:

The security slider starts off mis-set. Since it's never ever ever efficient to not have it on that little white mark there is NO REASON AT ALL to ever move it. It has no reason to exist at all.

But then we get on to the meat of this update. Because I forgot to take screenshots of some of the other bits, but oh well.
In SOTS 2 there are 2 parts to researching technologies. Feasibility studies, and then the actual research. As you'll note, the feasibility study is going to take roughly 36 turns. -_-

This, by the way, is a basic tech in SOTS1. It takes about 10 turns to research for 1 planet there. In the default start in SOTS2 we have 3 planets. And it's 36 turns to learn if we can research.

So we'll come back to that later. For colonising worlds, you send a colonisation fleet and get this window. Note that colonisation doesn't use up your colony fleet either, so you don't need to upgrade your colony ships much.
The colonisation UI itself is pretty decent. So yay for one decent feature?

Also - it takes 2 turns for my colony ship to get there. But 36 turns to START researching upgraded mass drivers. Research is the worst.

Hurrah, we had a breakthrough after only 4 turns. So now we can start ACTUALLY researching our tech. With a 76% chance of actually getting it. -_-


It should be done in about 30 turns...


To colonise a system, first you have to explore it. Then you get a summary of the system like this one:


Which, like the colonisation window, is actually decent. You'll also note that starsystems can now have multiple planets in them, so this system can have about 20 billion people living in it.

Hey look, our first tech, only 22 turns in for a basic technology, woo.


one of the things players complained of a lot in SOTS1 was that Point Defense weapons weren't guaranteed. VFR systems is one of the paths to get to Point Defense (also our starting ships pack mass drivers, so it's not a bad choice either way).
[img]http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/884112698590834659/79FA4D13BA42FBC6A1DF7DB0F78959547265D9DF/[/timg]
So we'll find out about that in 32 turns (or, like last time, 4 turns.)

WELP. Thanks game. At least it only took them 4 turns to tell me.


While this has been happening, we've been exploring, and found two alien species. So lets look at the diplomacy screen.

Lets not (I haven't unlocked the diplomacy tech yet either)

I get my um. Third tech. By turn 68. SUPER INTENSE ACTION.


Now, one other thing I have, is a level 2 energy weapon focused science station. I won't go into details on the station mechanics this post, but just remember it's turn 68, I have about 10 planets, I have a station dedicated to energy weapons. And it's still going to take 15 turns to get bigger lasers.


One other thing I'll go over is Prototyping. Basically, in SOTS2, if you want to build (or UPGRADE) a ship, you first have to prototype it. This costs 4x as much and takes ages. I guess because it's a 4X game?

This means that say, putting those new lasers on my cruisers, when they're done, will cost a ton.

Researching X-ray lasers does unlock something that might be handy. And look, only 14 turns to figure out if it's possible!


NOPE.JPG


Never getting Point Defense.

Or improving our industry:


SOTS2 ladies and gentlemen. Improvements over SOTS1. um. Multiple planets, I guess.