I personally like both GalCiv2 and Sword of the Stars. They play very, very differently though. If you would like to control (or at least choose to control) your fleets in combat, Sword of the Stars is it. It's entirely possible to win a battle through better tactical control even with fewer or less technologically advanced ships, which i find a compelling reason to play.

GalCiv2 has a much more rewarding diplomacy model, and more options than "kill everything to win." It's possible to get an alliance win in SotS, but really a military victory is the most likely win scenario.

I guess I can't really recommend one over the other so much as point out their differences. One thing I would suggest though, play the demos.

Both are pretty good games. If I had to pick the better of the two (I have both of them as well as all x-packs) I would say GC2. The last x-pack just put it over-the-top by a big margin feature and function wise.

You have to defend against missle weapons with point defense lasers or phasers.  In late game rocket weapons are near useless for defending against a dedicated assault.  You can build many different types of ships on many different types of technology.  Since the research tree is random you cant depend on one type of technology strategy.  Some times, for example, you wont get point defense or phasers.  In this case you will want to invest in sheilds, light lasers or lots of armor.

Random events can be very unforgiving in Sword of the Stars.  I have seen all surviving races team together to take out a threat that spawned in. You can turn these events off, but the horror factor of not knowing what might be floating out in the dark can be a lot of fun.  Some things you fight, some things you run from.

You can also send ships against an enemy system and raid commerce there.  Piracy gets a lot more personal.

Maybe it's a difference between vanilla Sword of the Stars and the later Born of Blood (and A Murder of Crows) expansions? All I can say is defense satellites, when I run into them, are only a nuisance.

I had a fleet that was 3 normal (not shield, not point defense only) cruisers interdicting a developed world. One cruiser didn't have a drive anymore (which is one of the reasons they I didn't have them leave). Instead of abandoning it, I sent a repair ship that direction which was going to take about 9 turns. They just hung out at the edge of the system and destroyed missiles until the repair ship showed up.

Generally I take along a few destroyers armed with lasers/phasers/PD/whatever-I-have to act as missile defense when attacking a colony while my cruisers take along larger weaponry because if you don't take anything to combat missiles, yes they can be a problem. Usually then I destroy all or most of the defense sats (manually targetting them). Still, I rarely run into a world with more than 5 small and 5 medium sats. I could see coming up on a planet with a full complement including the largest taking awhile to pound through.

If I didn't like to play out the battles, though, there's no question in my mind that GC2 is the game to pick. On the other hand, if you want weapon placement/ship design to matter beyond rock/paper/scissors then SotS is great For me, they fulfill different gaming itches so I like 'em both.

I have to agree with 44RS. The Liir are awesome,and i personally wish i had the time/knowledge to port the Liir over to Sins.

  Maybe thats what the Vasari are running from.... extremely angry space dolphins.

thank you all for your input, i have gotten the game Sots and have been playing it for a while. one question i do have is are you able to refit your ships or do you need to build a new model every time you research an upgrade?

I dont believe you can refit old ships.  You can scrap them or position them to the back lines where they can still perform defensive roles for a while.  If you watch  AI fleets, sometimes they are held back by ships with primitive drives and at times you can see every type of weapon they have represented. 

Additionaly Born of Blood adds radom encounter types, diplomacy options, technologies, ship types, and a new race.

You can install AMoC over the Impulse version of Born of Blood. Unfortunately, the Impulse installer doesn't set up the registry correctly when SotS/Born of Blood is installed, so you need to edit both the install path and version number in the Sword of the Stars registry entry before installing AMoC from Gamersgate.  A Murder of Crows is definitely worth the upgrade.

4:37 PM <CrazyC0330> apparently Sword of the Stars has another expansion pack. we have the base game and the first expasion pack up on Impulse. any word on the new one?

4:38 PM <Yarlen> We won't get the new expansion. It's exclusive to Gamer's Gate because they paid for it.

It's not that we don't want the game to come to Impulse, it's that we can't get it.

As for the other thread's wording, it does say we are getting the "majority" of the Paradox titles, and that (as far as I'm told) is still entirely true.

Awwwww, that's unfortunate ... guess I'll have to pick up AMoC and sort out the install.

dreamer of pictures - Yeah, I noticed that when I was reinstalling through Impulse after a fresh OS install. Pre-Impulse they installed to two separate locations with their own disk paths, registry etc, but then post-Impulse it overwrote vanilla SotS.

I asked about it, thinking it a bug, but it's apparently intetionally installed that way. Not a gigantic deal, unless you wanted to play vanilla SotS for backstory (or to remind yourself of all the goodness of BoB or AMoC).

I would go with GalCiv2 for the fact that the base game itself goes above and beyond anything Sword of the Stars has, then their are the two expansions. And if you haven't purchased any part of the game yet you can get GalCiv 2 and its Expansions for only $60.

Sword of the Stars is an interesting game don't get my wrong, but the only way you will really win is through military might.

Itys realley a shame that Stardock cant get murder of crows up on Impulse onsidering they have the other 2 hope some day they can make it happen.