Sword of the Stars

Kerberos Productions developers bring us Sword of the Stars, an economical strategy and tactical space combat hybrid placed in a Sci-Fi universe where survival of the fittest is the law. Lighthouse Interactive launched the game in the US and Canada on August 22, 2006, only to continue with the steadily release in localized versions all over the world during the following months. In what appears to be a rather old game concept, Sword of the Stars brings us the thrill of building up lasting space empires out of nothing and the inevitable power struggle against enemy alien nations.

Story

Late during the 21st century, humans made a great technological breakthrough which enabled them to escape Einstein?s cage and reach for the stars. Mankind's early dream of space dominion saw their fulfillment with the discovery of Nod drive propulsion. The first colonial ship took years to be built, as Nova Maria hosted the greatest minds our planet ever gave, joined in an effort to claim what for generations we thought it was ours. Who could have guessed that this shattered the veil of anonymity that for so long protected humans from the rest of the alien races? Without warning, nor demands, the Hivers attacked first, swift and deadly, almost obliterating life on our home planet. Later, humans found out they were hit by just a small nesting fleet, only a teaser for the great swarming alien power. The Tarkas, Liir, more and more races joined the fight for galactic supremacy and humans were forced to adapt, in a universe where weakness means extinction. Thus, they came to develop weapons, stronger and faster ships, eventually coming to wield the Sword of the Stars and walk among the four races as rulers, not as slaves.

Unfortunately, there is next to no story implementation in the game and Kerberos developers managed to reach this performance by having no single player campaign whatsoever. The only part resembling a storyline comes from the rather scarce map descriptions so don?t expect any cutscenes, in-game movies or Star Trek warlike introductions because they aren?t here.

Concept

You will enjoy the Sword of the Stars experience by playing one of the four races: the Sol Force human upstarts of the space age, the insect swarm of Hivers, the reptilian Tarkas Imperium or the mysterious Liir dolphin-like creatures. Each faction has its own technological tree and exclusive racial features that strongly differentiate their advancement style. Starting a new game will find you commanding one or more planets, according to customized starting conditions, yet primarily relying on your home base planet for resources and factory output. Skills are gradually unlocked as you reach their prerequisites. Since you?re going around blindly, experience will eventually have the final word in successful technological strategies. It?s always good to have extra options as you can supplement research with additional funding and skip the long waiting, on occasion. The dynamic tech tree will change every playing session, providing additional technologies to be researched and special research paths to be followed. Tech options will always differ by a small amount, as random branches appear on each new game, adding great replay ability to Swords of the Stars. Developers had to make a decision and lean towards either intuitive play or the number crunching alternative. While neither holds supremacy over the other, Sword of the Stars involves a great deal of repetitive play, since the AI is limited when it comes to economical macro management. Just picture yourself visiting all your planets every two turns in order to update the ship building status, research and trade ratio.

Full ship customization can be handled via the ship Design panel. Initially, there are just three researched destroyer types, like colonizers, armors and tankers, while more can be unlocked through research. According to command, mission and engine, you can select more craft options, along with weapons, the most important aspect of combat ships. You can mount up to ten small lasers on a destroyer, along with other more menacing weapons like ion beams or nuclear warheads. Players will spend a good deal of time looking into each and every implement of destruction Sword of the Stars has to offer, while searching for that ultimate cruiser setup, the mother of all starships. Once you?ve completed assembling a suitable design, it will be saved in the database for the rest of the game. Developers were quite adept at handling the automatic ship naming and you?ll soon enough find yourself printing the blueprint for Tanker MK- VI. In order to actually build the craft, you must access the factories and queue production for the subsequent turns. Research is ever generous at improving planetary industrial capabilities along with lowering ship production costs, so be sure to spend some turns upgrading factories.

I can?t help noticing the game greatly resembles Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain, a title that saw more than 9 years since its original release, but I can?t hold it against the developers, as the genre died in its infancy only after a couple of releases. I am overjoyed at the perspective of a 2006 reiteration of a very generous gaming concept, two parts entwined, macro economical strategy and tactical space combat. It saddens me to see that such an old game has more features than this fresh release, yet there must be some improvements. I found them in the random encounter department. You?re not alone in space, so during the journey, you?ll eventually encounter stray ships that still cling to wars and allegiances long forgotten. Dealing with them is a nuisance for colonizing ships, but once they have been disposed off, you can reap the benefits of special technology being unlocked for you along with free access to resourceful planets. Hilariously, large galaxies provide never-ending fun along with unwanted encounters with meteor storms, devastating effects to ships and planets alike.

Gameplay

At a first look, the game provides an impressive display of stars, each with its separate characteristics in terms of evolutionary proficiency and resources, but with distinct looks that will send you dreaming about the mysterious outer reaches of the universe.

There is one particular line you don?t want to hear coming from your lieutenants: ?We?re out of fuel, Commander!? Every once in a while I get an itch to take things easy and what do I do? I mass torpedo launching flyers in the hope that brute force will do away with alien opposition. Here is how you do it. Set factories on loop with your favorite ship design, with the three planets closest to the war zone building the said low level crafts. Rally the ships after three turns and you might have enough to take down defenses on that next enemy planet you?ve had your eye on for some time. The trouble is ships need fuel in order to advance in their journey towards destruction and space travel will often enough leave your fuel tanks empty. Player reactions range from hilarity to annoyance when they see half their fleet stranded in the middle of nowhere, without fuel to either reach their current destination or come back home and defend against intruders. Thus, be sure to throw some laser wielding crafts in the mix, along with the needed fuel tank ships and maybe a repair vessel. There is no substitute for being prepared.

I often enough get the feeling that battles are just for show. There are not that many options available to the gamers when it comes to directing your fleet to do maximum damage. Combat rarely has anything to do with positioning, real time tactics, micromanagement and reflexes. Sword of the Stars is all about technology and fleet makeup, and the outcome of a battle is usually decided even before the two fleets engage each other. To spice things up, developers allowed for multiple factions to take part in the same battle, thus you can have up to five separate races fighting in one major big bang. Only when you have 20 ships unleashing hell can you truly appreciate the beauty of the Nod Missiles, one of the few weapons in the game that you can actually guide by yourself. They do incredible amounts of damage over large areas thus you can play tag with your opponent?s ships. It is a most perilous task since you can easily raze your whole fleet should you act with impunity.

On your mission to colonize uncharted space, you?ll eventually encounter alien civilizations having the same aspirations of greatness and space dominion. Alliances are indeed possible, but more often than not, negotiations will be carried with the Sword of the Stars spearheading a frontal assault. There are two battle modes available while taking the field yourself. Sensor mode is a frame wire combat mode depicting the battlefield from a tactical perspective. It has its uses since there is a good area of space where you?re going to carry on.

There were some stability issues that made it into the retail version. Although there is no graphical corruption after alt + tab, the game unexpectedly crashes upon completion of the combat turn, without any warning or error messages. Soon after launch, patch 1.1.1. has been promptly dispatched to address the said crashes and other community concerns. Thus, balance changes have been made to accommodate fair multiplayer play and you can now properly act around the battlefield with the help of additional keyboard mappings. Sword of the Stars works just fine after patching.

Video

While the core idea has been borrowed from the experience of previous economical strategy and combat simulator titles, it appears graphics follow the same conceptual line. The main difference between Sword of the Stars and one of the aforementioned games from nine years back is the use of DirectX eye candy implements, particularly evident in lighting. While combat scenes get messy at times, with several ships blowing up simultaneously, rockets flying across the screen and plasma projectiles getting lost on the horizon, I can?t say developers went for the same realistic approach when it came to menus and loading screens. Graphics are a mix between cartoonish and conceptual post punk art and 3D ship models. I was disappointed to note the battlefield gives a false impression of spatiality, since you can only move your fleet on two axes. While you can zoom in or mouselook around the combat area, movement is limited and often enough, you?ll need to squint at the screen in an attempt to focus fire critical enemy targets.

Sound

Credits reveal five individuals doing the required voice acting, with additional help from three more, which leads me to believe it was an in-house job at Kerberos. The end result doesn?t really qualify as professional voice acting, since lines are short and to the point, bound by utility. They fail to provide the in-depth immersion I would crave in a space game. The racial faction messages are being delivered by as many as three different voices and it gets old really fast, adding to the frustration of not having a story driven single player campaign. The simple menu sounds and repetitive battle audio pair up with mediocre music in giving the user the feeling that Sword of the Stars is rather unpolished and could have turned out much better.

Multiplayer

Sword of the Stars heavily relies on multiplayer games to draw attention from potential fans, yet there are no notable differences between AI play and human-only galactic empire clashes. Developers did a nice job out of creating deathmatch type maps, taking advantage of galaxy layout to design special strategic encounters. Sphere, cluster, spiral, arm, hourglass or rift galaxies will provide excellent opportunities to reveal your leadership abilities. Gamers must adapt their playing style accordingly. In some cases, you must be swift and seize strategic checkpoints, while in other cases, steady advancement with technological research and good planetary defense might be the way to go. It?s all reflected in the random map generator, packed with racial options, random encounters, the ability to forge alliances and various economical starting conditions. Kerberos added a nice touch by providing players with the opportunity to join multiplayer games that are already in progress, without the extra hassle of having to load up saved games.

Conclusion

While reading the gaming press and marketing statements, I saw that Sword of the Stars launched a lot of promises it could not keep. I have the greatest appreciation for the game concept, gameplay is addictive enough to warrant the title a chance, yet the final result is unpolished and fails to deliver enough content for my taste. No story driven single player campaign is a definite dent in the title?s expectations and even similar titles, albeit much older, had additional features to beef up that space simulator taste you?ve been craving for. Regardless, Sword of the Stars is not a failure and will provide enough hours spent in front of the monitor while trying to best your friends in large galaxy conquest games.