History VideoGame / SwordOfTheStars

* GameplayAndStorySegregation:
** Averted with the way the computer will drive species after the in-story psychological profile of said species.
** Sometimes played straight, as Humans and Hivers can ally against other players.
*** That part is not that strange since humanity only went to war against certain hiver clans (the hivers aren't necessarily united, and weren't at the time.) Where this starts to come into effect is when you are able to build alliances with ''Zuul''...

* {{Two-D Space}}: Tactical combat is 'Two and a half-D', at least as far as the player can control, though ships will automatically move "up" and "down". The strategy map is aggressively three-dimensional. The sequel will introduce limited player-controllable 3D maneuver.
** Specifically, ships will be able to move between 3 planes, making it pseudo-3D. Also, ships will be able to rotate in order to bring certain weapons to bear or put stronger armor in the line of fire.

* AbsoluteXenophobe: The Zuul. The sequel seems to subvert this due to indications that one of the factions is a Liir/Zuul alliance.

* AIIsACrapshoot: AI rebellions are infrequent but devastating when they happen. There's also a scenario where six players gang up on the AI... which is made of AI versions of the races.

** All Leviathan-class ships in the sequel are supposed to be this by carrying short-range support craft into battle. ''Dreadnought'' riders, otherwise called battleships, [[http://asia.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/swordofthestarsii/news.html?sid=6306686&mode=previews have been promised.]]

** [[http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=19767#p300875 KP has indicated that]] Leviathans will be able to ''turret-mount'' Impactors. One is afraid to think of what is so big that even a Leviathan has to use a FixedForwardFacingWeapon configuration for it.
*** Given who you'll have to fight, you'll probably need it.

* CreepyCoolCrosses:A favored fashion choice amongst the Zuul.

* DoubleUnlock: Salvage projects in the first. SequelEscalation in the second where every non-essential tech needs to undergo "feasibility study" first.

''SwordOfTheStars'' is a 2006 turn-based strategy game published by Kerberos Productions. It is of the FourX kind, with a StandardSciFiSetting.

* GhostShip: The Alien Derelicts. Morrigi ship graveyards may also count. There is also a Ghost Ship random encounter.

* HyperspeedEscape: You can retreat from tactical encounters. Humans have to retreat to a nodespace node to do so, however, which can be really frustreating.

** In the sequel you can declare system 'open' and your civilian population may decide to colonize that planet on its own. It helps getting around the sometimes prohibitive costs of starting up a new colony, but don't expect them to listen to you quite as readily as your personal colonies.

* SpaceNavy: All the factions have one, and the setting unironically uses wet naval terms like admiral, fleet and (battle)cruiser.

* TheFederation: Morrigi are the heads of one by ''Lords of Winter'', which will also expand the options for peaceful incorporation with NPC races to assimilate.

** The PlanetEater and The Swarm are other examples of AI going nuts and trying to kill all organic life. The Swarm are said to have had an off button at least...once upon a time. WordOfGod has been emphatic on the fact that Von Neumann, on the other hand, are ''not'' sentient AI but merely taking their job of "probe for resources, mine them, remove obstacles by force" to its logical extent.

** Some of the sequel-era Zuul leaders may be familiar to ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' players. The Warmonger is an extreme BloodKnight. The Bloodweaver

* EldritchAbomination: Subverted with the Suul'ka. Sure, they ''look'' pretty Lovecraftian, being giant, betentacled, aquatic-looking cyborgs quite capable of living in space...[[spoiler:and then you realize that mechanical skin is ''Liir battle armor''. They are, in fact, perfectly normal [[SpaceWhale Liir elders]] who have decided to abuse their race's immortality.]]
** There's nothing [[spoiler: "normal" about them, having the power to enslave entire ''planets'', and tear the spacetime continuum a new one by sheer psionic will]].
*** [[spoiler:By ''Liir'' standards, they are-the gradual increase in psionic power as one gets older and bigger is a natural quirk of their biology, and it's well-documented. The Suul'ka are simply very, very old Liir elders, nothing "aberrant" about them. As far as their personalities go, however...]]

* {{Expy}}: Several Grand Menaces carry inspiration from earlier sources. The Puppet Master is based on the Beast from ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}: Cataclysm'' (which was made by the team that would become KP). The System Killer reminds one of the [[PlanetEater The Doomsday Machine]] from ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}: TOS''. The Peacekeeper is based on the spaceship in ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill1951''. [=SolForce=] resembles [[Series/BabylonFive EarthForce]] in more than just name.

* HitPoints: The first game normally shows the ship's "health" as a color-coded plus sign (green - optimum condition; yellow - heavy damage; red - critical). The sequel will show four health bars for each ship section (12 total) with damage distributed to top, bottom, left, and right (or your favorite naval equivalents of these terms). Damage to the front and rear will be distributed among the other four sides.

** And then there's the last added scenario, where the objective is to gather the huge alien wreckages that served as random encounters from the beginning, to restore them to working order. Once you do, it turns out those huge things were just ''helmets'' of the Suul'ka. Oh, and they now send a signal to wake them up. Cue the sequel.

* SequelEscalation: ''Lords of Winter'' will start in the Cruiser-Fusion era and have a "tech forest", multi-planet systems, even bigger ships and generally lots more options to play with.

* OutsideContextVillain: The Grand Menaces almost all have capabilities beyond the reckoning of the playable factionss. The System Killer is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin in a universe where the lesser factions can only glass planet surfaces. The Puppetmaster can somehow subvert enemy ships and even whole planets without recourse to lesser methods like {{Boarding Part|y}}ies and ground invasion. The Locusts are PlanetLooters that replicate exponentially if left unchecked. And those are just three of goodness knows how many. All will mop the floor with an unprepared player blindly going AttackAttackAttack and are hard fights even with planning and strategy.

** The Steam achievement for colonizing a new world is called [[{{Firefly}} "and we shall call it... 'This land'"]].

The sequel adds a Liir-Zuul alliance, building on some of the lore that suggested certain Zuul may be willing to deal.

* PlayerPreferredPattern: The developers tried to defy this with the randomised TechTree being supposed to make it hard for this to come to pass. Given that most species have specialties with very high chances of occurring, it can still occur.

* GameplayAndStorySegregation: Averted with the way the computer will drive species after the in-story psychological profile of said species.

**** Except for the Liir-Zuul alliance in the coming sequel.
**** Some of the stories by Arinn Dembo suggest that certain Zuul may be willing to deal.

* {{Expy}}: Several Grand Menaces carry inspiration from earlier sources. The Puppet Master is based on the Beast from ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}: Cataclysm'' (which was made by the team that would become KP). The System Killer reminds one of the [[PlanetEater The Doomsday Machine]] from ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}: TOS''. The Peacekeeper is based on the spaceship in ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill1951''. [=SolForce=] resembles [[Series/{{Babylon 5}} EarthForce]] in more than just name.

* PerfectPacifistPeople: The Liir... mostly. Occasionally however they declare your race a threat to all living things and exterminate you with bioweapons.

* GoneHorribleRight: Subverted with the Via Damasco virus. While it was originally meant as an anti-Hiver weapon by its human creator, the genius of its programming allowed it to spread to all the other empires and created a new rival civilization from their rogue AIs...except the creator by that point had long since lost all compassion for other life, and thus simply did not care-[[GeneralRipper it hurt the Hivers, and that was fine by him.]]

* FateWorseThanDeath: Reprogramming for the Loa.

* GoMadFromTheIsolation: What turns [[spoiler: an Liir Elder into a Suul'ka]] is the fact that they end up surrounded by beings which are orders of magnitude beneath their intellect.