Sword of the Stars II: Lords of Winter Updated Impressions - Ship Specifics

Released back in 2006, the original Sword of the Stars was a turn-based, sci-fi strategy game that chronicled humankind's first (violent) steps onto the stage of galactic politics. For the upcoming sequel, Sword of the Stars II: Lords of Winter, the development team at Kerberos Productions has a long list of tweaks and additions planned. In our previous coverage, we detailed the new Leviathan-class ships, the three-tiered combat plane, and the dynamic government system. We got some additional details on the game in a hands-off demonstration with Kerberos designer and chief operating officer Chris Stewart.

We'll start with your ships, the true swords of the stars. You ships will now be grouped into fleets, which you assign to a star system that acts as a base of operations. From this base of operations, your fleet has a limited range of other systems to which it can travel to in order to carry out missions. Fleets can also influence the system they're stationed in based on the types of ships that make up the fleet. For instance, construction ships can boost a system's production rate, while a ship outfitted with a negotiations suite can help with diplomatic relations. They can also work in concert with planets that have been developed to excel at certain roles, such as economics.

The admiral assigned to manage a specific fleet brings his or her own traits to that fleet to further tweak its performance. However, Stewart wasn't ready to dive into the specifics of those traits just yet. Naturally, you will be able to swap and trade ships between fleets, but this process takes time. To cover a sprawling galactic empire, you'll have to divide up your forces wisely and strike a balance. The idea for grouping ships into fleets and restricting their capabilities came from the developers' desire to remove some of the abstraction from combat. As Stewart explained it, in the previous game, combat was all about who had the most ships. Now, your ships will be spread out, forcing you to do more with less.

On the topic of ships, Steward was happy to announce that Kerberos has added a much-requested new feature: weapon-family retrofitting. Now, if your favorite ship is equipped with a sexy battery of beam weapons and you unlock the next upgrade for beam weapons, you don't have to build a whole other ship just to make use of that upgrade. You can simply retrofit the ship with the upgraded weapon type. Ship production has also been tweaked to reflect the cost of prototyping new ships and laying the production infrastructure. When designing a new type of ship, you will be presented with two prices: the price of producing each individual ship and the cost for building the very first one (which includes the cost of design and setting up production). Of course, the cost of producing individual ships is nowhere near the cost of prototyping, and when you get up into the gigantic Leviathan-class ships, the number of zeros tacked onto the price is truly astronomical.

In addition, a slight element of randomness will be introduced into your production line. This idea actually came from Stewart's uncle, who worked at an undisclosed automotive manufacturer. At the manufacturer, for every 100 cars produced, 95 of them would be of average quality, with no alterations to the basic design, four would be total "lemons," requiring constant care and maintenance, and one would be the super car, an expertly crafted vehicle that would run forever and exceed expectations. Stewart has adapted this design practice into the game, though the alterations will not be quite as drastic. As an example, he stated that you might just find that a ship turns a little better than you expected or requires a little more fuel than you thought.

Despite our best efforts, Stewart wasn't ready to divulge any additional details on the new faction coming to Sword of the Stars II, other than saying that "they're a whole different animal." Whatever they turn out to be, we're excited to get our hands on them and take a stab at intergalactic conquest. Gear up and get ready for Sword of the Stars II: Lords of Winter this September on the PC.