Chris Stewart on Sword of the Stars
Feature
When we published our preview of Sword of the Stars back in May, we felt that it didn't quite do the game justice. Some of its unique concepts were begging for a better, more in depth explanation. We contacted Kerberos for an interview.
Hooked Gamers: Hi, thank you for participating in this interview. Can you introduce yourself to our readers?
Hooked Gamers: Good to hear you have the right hat! First question then. Many of the developers working on Sword of the Stars were involved with the game Homeworld. What made you decide to go turn-based after being so successful creating RTS games?
Chris: It wasn’t a decision to go turn-based, it was a decision to look at a genre that we loved, and that hadn’t been properly addressed in a number of years - in this case, 4X games - and use our experience making space combat games to update areas we felt needed some updating. Once we decided to go that route, the turn-based aspect was a natural part of the whole package.
Hooked Gamers: Hiver gate technology sounds very intriguing. It has been said that gate technology changes over time. In what way does this influence gameplay?
Chris: Though unique to the Hivers, gate technology, and the changes made to it over the course of the game via research, serve similar purposes as improvements to any of the other races interstellar drive tech. I won’t talk about where the technology ultimately ends up, but the mid-game move from destroyer to cruiser gate ships has big strategic implications for the Hivers and their opponents.
Hooked Gamers: In Sword of the Stars, players are able to create custom ships in a modular fashion. Can you explain how the modules system works?
Chris: There are three size classes of ships; destroyer, cruiser, and dreadnought. And in each class, the ships are divided into three sections; Command, Mission, and Engine. Players start with a few basic modules for each section, and through research, they can unlock more. They can then mix and match the available modules to suit their purposes, like putting a Deep Scan Command module with a Point Defense Mission module. Or when they successfully research better drive technology, they can take an old design, swap in the newer Engine module, save the design, and then start producing these improved ships. Some technologies produce sections for each of the size classes and others can only be applied to certain size classes - Assault Shuttle carrying modules are only available for the Destroyer class, or Spinal Mount modules are only available for the destroyer class, because the weapons placed in the Spinal Mount take up the whole section on a destroyer, but are a single, motile turret on the larger ship classes.
Which is something else I should mention about customizable designs each section has weapon banks, in which the player can place various weapons technologies. So, if each race has 80ish sections spread out over three size classes, and then customizable weapon banks, and then special technologies that can be applied to a given section module, you can see how that turns into a large number of design possibilities, all of which results in tangible differences in real-time combat. In our game, what you do to your ship actually means something in combat.