I thought that at first but after getting into it for awhile, over 80 turns, I am starting to see that it may be worth it. I would love to get some feed back from more people out there and see what the general feeling is.

I found it extremely boring. Everything about it seems to involve unnecessary steps with no chance for avoiding them.

For example when you complete research a box doesn't come up asking you to pick something new; you have to hear the audio announcement that research is done or spot it in the newsbar and then open up the research window.

Ship combat is slow and hard to control. There's no retreat button on the interface and it's not particularly clear what the orders do because even the 'approach and fire on enemies" button has no noticeable effect. Move orders are slow to be enacted and, due to the small size of the projectile graphics, it's hard to tell when attack orders are being carried out. If one of your fleets is destroyed in orbit you have to wait the remaining time (default is 4 minutes for a full space battle) while the attacking fleet bombards your planet...slowly.

The starmap has no panning feature, so you have to rotate the entire map to see where things are.

The shipbuilding portion is an interesting approach and if I works like I think it does (the strongest weaponry is automatically placed) it's a good idea. Basically the ship is split into thirds. The front houses the command structure. Bits from the demo that fit here range from a poorly armoured sensory array to the standard one to one designed for attack ships. The middle section is the 'meat' of the ship and it's where you choose the ship's role - combat, communications, tanker, colony, missile boat, long-ranged etc. Each of these middle sections has different weapon mounts and, with research, different options for improvements. The third section is the engines which are fairly unremarkable.

That setup makes it easy to put together the right ship for your task. For those who are familiar with other space-based games it's a little easier than the Master of Orion games but not as featured as Galactic Civs.

The way different races travel through space differently (humans use star lanes, the hivers have slow drives but drag gates which allow instant transport and the rest have the standard drives of other games) is innovative but not something you could really see in the demo due to the race limitations.

Overall it's not a game I would buy but if you like slow-paced finicky space games then it'll probably appeal.

Well i personaly think your assessment is a little off, cactoblasta. In the demo you only have access to about the first third of the tech tree. not nearly enough of the game to make a good up or down decision. Also things further down the tech tree eliminate or ease most of the things you find wrong. For instance, the reason the battles seem slow is because you only have access to the smallest ship type. Larger ship types enable the bigger weapons and open up more in the way of tactics. I advise everyone to wait until the game comes out then read several reviews. to write the game off now is very narrow minded.

For example when you complete research a box doesn't come up asking you to pick something new; you have to hear the audio announcement that research is done or spot it in the newsbar and then open up the research window.

There are four cues that research is finished:

1) An verbal announcement(and with that voice I don't know how you miss it!)
2) The research icon disappears
3) The news events listing/ticker shows it
3) There's no research allocation in your budget pie at the top of the page

How much spoonfeeding do you need?

Forums I hang on seem to have an unusually vocal minority bigging up this game. Bluesnew had a regular guy-off-the-street turn up and defend the SOTS demo like a momma bear defends her cubs, on his first post. Draw your own conclusions.

I tried the demo and thought it was horrible. I do not envy anyone releasing a 4X game in the wake of Gal Civ 2 (I'm looking at you Aaron Hall!) but SOTS doesn't even come close.

AGoetz said friendly fire is a problem during real-time combat.

Seems like the perfect place for the RTS crowd.

Actually in SotS research isnt as important as it is in other strategy games. You see in SotS your dealing more with the finances of the empire, so it might be a good idea to let your researchers idle for a time. Let me clear it up a bit. Every turn your empire generates money. Out of that money you pay for resaerch, improve your worlds, buy ships, ya know that kinda thing. I think what the devs where aiming for was a tad more realistic approach to empire management. In some parts of the game those nifty new engines might not be as essential to the empire as that new war fleet. The construction of ships in SotS is alot like the purchase of ships in GC2. In SotS your not going to have planets that constantly churn out warships. If you do that your empire is gonna be in seriouse finacial trouble. Likewise a particular path of research might be too expensive to pursue at a particular time. In some cases you may need to save up your money to buy your war fleet. The fastest way to get to your monetary goal may be to halt your resaerch alltogether.

You see the point Im trying to get across is that resaerch in SotS is not neccesarily supposed to be an ongoing thing, therefore the game doesnt force you to continue research. Now as for panning Im still kinda confused about that.

And to the guy who wonders why there are only four playable races in SotS. In GC2 the only real difference between the races are a few numerical bonuses in a few areas and in some cases asthetics. With that system it isnt that difficult to have nine races, its not even extremely difficult to have thiryt races. But in the case of SotS the races are nearly totaly unique. Each race has its own form of FTL travel. In the demo you only get to see the Human and Tarka propulsion systems. The humans travel down star lanes that dont neccesarily do to the next star, whiel the Tarka have a traditional warp drive. In the full game you will have acces to the Liir. Thier Propulsion system is reactionless. Its kinda hard to explain but they dont apply force to ove through space they teleport very rapidly over very small distances. In the game they move in a similar way to the Tarka. the main difference is that while near gravity wells they go kinda slow, but the deeper they get into space the faster they go. the other race, the Hivers, dont posses FTL travel at all. They send thier ships to other systems at STL speeds. Once they get to that system, if they have brought along a gateship they can deploy a star gate which allows for near instantaneous travel between the stars.
Another way the races are different is the basic design of thier ships. not only do they look different they also have different charecteristics. For example the Tarka tend to have most of thier weapon mounts near the front of thier ships leaving the engine sections lightly defended. On the other hand since the Hivers dont have FTL systems on thier ships thier engines tend to have much more weaponry. Also since 70% of the games tech tree is randomized some races are more likely to have certain techs than others. For example the Tarka favor mass driver weapons much more than beams. so they are more likely to have the cool adavnced mass driver techs tha the Liir who are the opposite and tend to like thier beam weapons much more.

In closing i think it is a great relief that the developers of SotS are going at the game at a different angle. I find much of the game to be very interesting and innovative. That combined with its multiplayer component will give it a long stay on my hard drive. Im sorry for the long post but I think we should at least try to look at a game from the Devs perspective before we say such incredibly rude things about it. I mean if I had used the same tactic for rating a game as some of you GC2 would have never even been considered and look at it now a great game with tons of variety. None of that could have been done without an understanding audience.

And to be honest even the slightest clunk in an interface is enough to turn me off a game. I have no intention of being caught paying retail for another MOO3.

Sorry, but I don't find that believeable. I love GalCiv2, but there are any number of clunky issues with its interface. Fleet management, moving ships into and out of fleets was extremely clunky - I found that very irritating. Others have posted any number of simplifications that should be in the interface - some of which have been addressed in patches, some not. But if you really believed what you stated, you wouldn't be playing GalCiv2.

I find what counts is whether I enjoy a game from an overall perspective. No interface is perfect and I'm usually able and willing to work through any quirks. SOTS had its quirks, but any honest appraisal of GalCiv2 would agree that it has its own also. And SOTS is no MOO3 by a long shot - there is a game in SOTS - there isn't much of one in MOO3.

As for the research notification, I don't know why they didn't use a pop up. But they do give you four cues - more than adequate for most - and it's just a matter of getting used to it - it's really not all that hard. And I have no problem - and I think any strategy gamer worth his salt has an idea when his research will be done and will be looking for it, anticipating it

It sounds like the problem is all yours Cactoblasta. GC2 1.0 had its quirks but was far from unplayable. And if you have such a low attention span then get into another genre Im shure the FPS guys would love to hear you complain about it being so hard to aim the sniper rifle from point blank range. Yea why not just have the gun's bullets track, that would let you be able to just press buttons and win. no real play involved.

MOO3 is the best game of all time

Please tell me you were being sarcastic, and that I just wasn't able to detect that....  

I have purchased this game and YES it is untraditional, but so far I like it! I will try multiplayer after I become much much better at it Cactoblasta is dead on with the amount of unecessary BS u have to click, it does get boring. But I hope they will patch this. Also the notification about research not being done can lead you to miss some tech turns, but this is a game where you are not supposed to research every turn. If you get more into the game you see you have to skip some turns to build up your savings.

Anyway the game does need some tweeks but the combat is solid. It involves planning, you have to make very well balanced fleets for their tasks, not jsut spam one kind of ship. That is very refreshing Many of my fleets have failed because of bad make up and improper order in which my ships entered the battle :/

So I look forward to many mroe hours hitting that turn button

I just purchased this game and I have to say that it looks pretty good. I like the concept and they just released a patch that improved the game somewhat. I still tend to prefer the depth of GalCiv, because I am the kind of guy who likes manageing space colonies and building ships out of 6 or 7 hull designs. Nevertheless, while your ship designs in SotS are more limited both in both design and aesthetic value, what you can do with the ships is much more interesting. The RTS elements are imperfect, but I respect the designers objective of being "Total War" in space rather than Civ in space. Occaissionaly it does seem as if they made amatuerish decisions in the game design overall. Even their web site seems hard to navigate. Still this is a fun game chaseing a novel concept into space.