The Black Swimmers
The following is an example walkthrough, meant to introduce those new to Sword of the Stars to the particulars of commanding a Liirian fleet and the unique early game feel when playing as the Liir. The Chorus would like to thank Rorschach of Earth Admin for preparing this article.
Setup:
Star Map Shape: Rift
Star Density: 85 stars
Available Species: All
Players: 6
All following settings are default
Strat Turn Length: Unlimited
Combat Turn Length: 240 seconds (4 mins.)
Alliances: On
Random Encounters: On
AI difficulty: Normal
Initial Treasury: 50,000
Initial Colonies: 1
Initial Technologies: 0
Economic Efficiency: 100%
Research Efficiency: 100%
Turn 1:
Homeworld is Alyu positioned at the “back” of one of the two star clusters seperated by the rift so I’ve got a bit of protection from one side and a ways to go before I have to worry about jumping the rift to the other star cluster. I design a basic Standard/Extended Range/Fission destroyer as my scout. The range of 15 will get it to about 13 (!) stars near my homeworld without refuelling. Since I don’t need to worry right now about the range of my ships I research Gene Modification to give me a boost in population when I start setting up colonies. I start construction on 3 scouts which is the most I can afford without going into debt. Each scout destroyer costs 14,200 in savings so I set my research budget to make sure I’ve got enough to build two more next turn. Everything else automatically goes to research so the estimate is 7 turns for Gene Modification.
Turn 2:
First wave of scouts are built and I queue up two more. I split the scouts into three seperate fleets and send them out to the three closest stars. At a maximum speed of 3 in open space they’ll get there in 5, 6 and 6 turns respectively. Although the relative density of stars makes me rely less on tankers, it slows down the Liir since they only really move fast in empty space far away from any star.
Turn 3:
Second wave of scouts split and sent out to the next nearest stars. With all of my eggs in one basket I decide to defend the homeworld and queue up two Standard/Armor/Fission destroyers.
Turn 4:
I decide one more scout should do it, there’s a star within 10 that’s calling to me so I queue up one last scout for now. I won’t be building any ships for a while and I’ve got a little over 22k left over so I crank up research to the maximum (some is going toward fleet maintenance) and the estimate shaves off a turn.
Turn 5:
The final scout is sent out. Happy day, the Gene Modification completes early! I decide to continue down the biotech tree and research Suspended Animation to increase my colonizer capacity. If I can keep the research at max it should only take 3 turns.
Turn 7:
First scout fleet arrives at a new world. Shiimo is a size 4 world with good resources but not an ideal world with a hazard rating of almost 150. That’d require a little less than 20% of my current budget a turn to support a colony there until it gets going. I might not colonize there first if I can find a better world, but since my other scouts are almost there I queue up an Armor as escort and turn down the research to pay for a tanker and colonizer in future turns. Setting research at about 3/4 total budget and letting the rest go to savings and fleet maintenance. The slider and pie chart makes this a snap to do and if you want to dig into the numbers you just click on the pie to see the details.
Turn 8:
Two more worlds explored. Liruuma is a size 5 dead world with a hazard rating of over 500, can’t even try to land there. Aniim is much better, a size 3 but good resources and a Hazard rating of 15.81. Can’t get much better than that. I queue up another Armor escort but leave the research where it is so hopefully I can get Suspended Animation installed on my colonizer quickly. I forgot to send Shiimo scout onto the next world last turn. Unfortunately neither it nor the Liruuma scout can make it to any other unexplored worlds but I can make it back home for refuelling. The Aniim scout has another star in range so I send it on to Rigel.
Turn 9:
Two more worlds explored. A dead Size 3 and a Size 4 with a Hazard Rating of almost 250! Also I’m not happy that the Suspended Animation is now 31% over budget. This last turn should do it though. I queue up a Tanker in anticipation of building the Colonizer next turn.
Turn 10:
Research complete. I switch over to Industrial and start on Waldo Units which is a great starting tech not only for the Hammerhead section but the industial output and ship cost bonuses. I design in suspended animation to my Colonizer to make a Mk2 version and queue one up for building.
Turn 11:
I merge two Armors, a Tanker, and a Colonizer Mk2 into a fleet and send them hurtling towards Aniim.
Turn 13:
One scout makes it back to the homeworld and I redirect it to the next unexplored star. The final scout of the first wave makes it to an awesome size 8 world with tons of resources but it’s hazard rating is over 900. Fortunately it can make one more leg to another unexplored star before it runs out of fuel.
Liir FTL Note - The FTL travel of the Liir is funky and takes some getting used to. Your fleets will fly across the open expanses of space but slow waay down when they pass near or approach a star. As and example sending my colonization fleet a distance of 7 into the cluster takes the same amount of time as sending a scout out across an almost completely empty space to an outlying star at a distance of 11! This also means that without some serious tech upgrades you’re not really sneaking up on anyone as you spend a turn or more very close to your target world crossing that last 0.1 of space.
Turn 14:
The scout that found Aliim has found something at Rigel. I can’t tell you what I found because that would ruin one of the many surprises KP has in store for us, but my scout didn’t last long at all. The real kick in the ass is the world looked beautiful. Probably has a Hazard Rating of under 20 so now I need to decide if I should divert my empire’s focus from scouting and tech to building and armada to defeat the [deleted] and claim the world. One of the really cool things is when I zoom in on Rigel I see a little icon in the title bar of what I found so I don’t have to remember that I need a big fleet before I go back to there. Another first wave scout returned to the homeworld and was redirected. I also manually fuel up the colonization fleet so it can make it to the planet easily.
Turn 15:
Another scout comes home and is sent back out. Waldo Units are done so I decide to research a weapon to eventually take on the [deleted]. I can bypass Green Lasers by virtue of the random tech tree and go straight to UV Lasers which is a great small sized weapon so I research that. I’ve got over 100k in the bank so I crank up research to the max. Estimated completion in 10 turns.
Turn 17:
Colonization fleet enters orbit around Aliim. I start the colony and my aide exclaims his/her happiness that we have “a new sea to explore, Elder”
Turn 18:
Another scouting mission another crappy world. This one I can still start a colony on, and it’s got the most resources I’ve seen yet, but with a Hazard Rating of over 320 it’ll cost me almost 40k every turn to support a new colony. Maybe later, it’s looking more and more like I need to take Rigel away from the [deleted].
Aliim is off and running with an infrastructure of 1.57% and a population of 645 happy citizens. With such a low hazard rating I’m only shelling out (heh) a little over 1k a turn in support. Setting infrastructure improvements to the max I’ll increase it by 0.23 next turn. But if I use full overharvest, that improves to 3.11. So don’t say I never gave you any hints.
With my second colony started and probably a big fight for my third colony I’ll leave it there. Hope you all enjoyed it, I actually just typed it in as I played it so it wasn’t that hard (yay for SotS window capabilities). Let me know if there’s any questions or anything I can clarify for you.
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