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[Astral]

I might find a demo of Distant Worlds, I've heard lots of good things about it. I need more grand strategy games in my life.

On Stardrive: It's a decent game, but not for the price. I was in the early access rush, and feel like the amount of progress between then and now is minimal, with patch notes reflecting the "I don't really feel like working on this" aspect of the creators continued development, only containing minor updates and bug fixes, with very little content. It's a "complete" game, but if you're looking for depth, then look elsewhere, as it doesn't appear that new features are being added any time soon. I'm cautiously optimistic that it might be a bit more fun to play in the future, but once you've got the small tech tree researched and half the galaxy conquered over the buggy AI, I lose interest.

It is hilarious to make a Titan sized cargo hauler, and watch as the inertial dampners cause it to miss its jump, where upon it will jump back and forth missing the planet it is trying to resupply each time.

Edit: There are some mods made by users that expand a LOT on lacking content in Stardrive. One such mod that should work with the current version: http://stardrivegame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7091

636 New Modules. Mk2 - Mk6 versions of almost all the vanilla modules in the game plus custom modules, they get significantly more powerful with each level. Gain the upper hand with tech, and blow your enemies away. Fall behind and suffer the consequences.
175 New technologies to research and discover.
1235 New ship designs for you and the AI to clobber each other with.
357 redesigned vanilla ships to bring them more in line with the mod and provide a greater challenge. Some are slight changes, others have been completely redone. I tried to keep Zero's original weapon styles in most cases. (New in V1.03)

I'll have to look into this once I get home from work.

Sword of the Stars was kinda hard for me to get into... I'll need to revisit it at some point, because I lost interest before getting too far into the game. Which is strange, considering how much of a learning curve Dwarf Fortress has, and how much enjoyment I get out of that. It was probably because I started as the insectoid race, who don't have hyperdrives but do have warp gates once you get to a system, making early game a slow crawl.

A game in the same vein is Star Ruler, which I can't recommend the Galactic Armory mod enough for. Star Ruler 2 is in development, but Galactic Armory is a fairly stable (if resource intensive) mod that expands upon the base game by a huge amount, adding things like sustainable mining vessels, helium-3 refining, terraforming at high tech levels, new module and hull types, new customizable race options, and a bit nastier AI at the higher difficulty levels. I say resource intensive due to the fact that asteroids are modeled individually (and will orbit around a star system, if applicable, in the hundreds), and computer players tend to build huge swarms of some of their better ships once they get going, and are extremely efficient at using orbital factories for metals, electronics, and other resources.

[RedKing]

Oh yeah, starting as the Hive is not recommended because of the drive system. I'd say Tarka or Liir for novices.

Tarka, because they're balanced and have a straightforward drive system: point A to point B.
Liir, because they have great research and a similar drive system which is just more efficient over longer distances.

Hive is beautiful if you're a defensive minded player like me, though.

I haven't played the other two, but I highly recommend SotS, if you can find a bundle pack with all the expansions. They really do flesh out the game nicely.

[Sonlirain]

AFAIK, Distant Worlds doesn't have a demo.

It has.
You just need a torrent and a strong will for the demo to not become another game you pirated.

[Zazmio]

I've played a lot of SotS over the years.

Humans are a good race to start with, I think.  Their ships are fairly sturdy, and being restricted to node lines is not as big a disadvantage as one might think.  Hive are hard to get used to, but I think are the easiest to win with.  Their ability to teleport a big defense fleet anywhere they need it is a huge advantage.

The AI does seem tough the first few games you play, but once you figure out how to build up your empire efficiently, you'll end up dominating every game unless you give the AI some kind of advantage.  One key to efficent expansion is to only colonize worlds that are cheap to colonize, in the beginning, and don't colonize too many worlds at once.

[moghopper]

Is it possible to "Save" multiplayer games in Sots, to pick up again at a later date?

[Orb]

Is it possible to "Save" multiplayer games in Sots, to pick up again at a later date?

Yep. Multiplayer/Single player games are treated as the same thing. You can host a single player game and can have your friends take over for the AI.

Just save in multiplayer, and host the save at a later date.

[moghopper]

Is it possible to "Save" multiplayer games in Sots, to pick up again at a later date?

Yep. Multiplayer/Single player games are treated as the same thing. You can host a single player game and can have your friends take over for the AI.

Just save in multiplayer, and host the save at a later date.

SWEET.

Anyone up for a six man game?

[Aklyon]

Perhaps later, once I know how to play again.

[Duuvian]

If you are playing a SotS 2 game, I'd be down to play. I also have SotS one from the same Paradox bundle but I enjoy SotS 2 more, except for it's tendency to have long turn times on a few maps.

One thing to remember with SotS 2 is never to play on the Real Stars map. Although it seems like it would be the standard map to use, it's much larger than most maps and will make your turn times much longer once you get 100+ turns or so in.

[moghopper]

If you are playing a SotS 2 game, I'd be down to play. I also have SotS one from the same Paradox bundle but I enjoy SotS 2 more, except for it's tendency to have long turn times on a few maps.

One thing to remember with SotS 2 is never to play on the Real Stars map. Although it seems like it would be the standard map to use, it's much larger than most maps and will make your turn times much longer once you get 100+ turns or so in.

It would be Sots 1

[Aklyon]

I'm assuming it'll be with all expansions?

[BFEL]

A game in the same vein is Star Ruler, which I can't recommend the Galactic Armory mod enough for. Star Ruler 2 is in development, but Galactic Armory is a fairly stable (if resource intensive) mod that expands upon the base game by a huge amount, adding things like sustainable mining vessels, helium-3 refining, terraforming at high tech levels, new module and hull types, new customizable race options, and a bit nastier AI at the higher difficulty levels. I say resource intensive due to the fact that asteroids are modeled individually (and will orbit around a star system, if applicable, in the hundreds), and computer players tend to build huge swarms of some of their better ships once they get going, and are extremely efficient at using orbital factories for metals, electronics, and other resources.

I bought Star Ruler, and I really REALLY wanted to like it, as it seemed to have every awesome thing a game like this can have.
But unfortunately the game HATES me and I am entirely unable to learn it. I'm not even talking about normal "oh wow this has some weird mechanics" I mean I just lose. On trivial. For no reason.
I can literally focus my entire time in that game into say research, to the point where in any other 4X I would be lightyears ahead of everyone else and when I look an hour later I am still the least advanced. In everything. ESPECIALLY research. To spite me.
Meanwhile I will look on its forums and every player and their mom, and their mom's cat will have commented that "Damn the cheating insane ai is so freaking easy" and I just

[moghopper]

I'm assuming it'll be with all expansions?

Indeed it will.

[jhxmt]

I'm assuming it'll be with all expansions?

Indeed it will.

Ah, what the hell.  I'm in.  I'll caveat this that I'm (a) hopeless at the game and (b) have a tendency to be immensely unreliable when it comes to taking my turns in things, but hey, I'll give it a go. 

I've never actually played a multiplayer game of SotS.  This may be my undoing.

Edit: although worth noting I'm in GMT in terms of timezone, so I appreciate I might not match other people's scheduling!

[Sean Mirrsen]

Per the OP's question, I'd rate it as SotS->Stardrive->Distant Worlds, however only because I have never played Distant Worlds and don't have any opinion on it at all.

SotS, with all expansions, is my favorite 4X of all time. It does pretty much all of its aspects right. The variety, the lore, the challenge, the ship design and combat, it finds a happy medium in all of those things. SotSII was graphically superior, and was mechanically superior in some aspects, but it flunked absolutely in the core control mechanics area. SotS, while being inferior graphically and terribly difficult to mod, is still a much superior game.

Stardrive... well, it's rather an odd thing. The game that was planned initially, the game it is now, and the game it will eventually be, are three entirely different things. It has the best ship design and combat system of pretty much every game ever, and most of the game's mechanics work, but the game's been plagued by its creator's bad decisions - starting with his choice of engine. If it wasn't for the content converter I wrote, I'm not sure what state the game's modding scene would be in right now. Pretty much all of the game's technical problems stemmed from that, and with those the development speed and the features all took a hit. Multiplayer is essentially impossible now. The game is tentatively planned to move to Unity, but it seems the all-realtime structure of the game didn't jive with the creator either, and the new game is planned to lose that in favor of a turn-based aspect with discrete realtime battles a-la SotS. All in all, StarDrive is/was a great game in planning, but sputtered out midway. What's left is definitely fun if you enjoy a simple one-player game of strategic spaceship combat, as that's one thing that the game does really well, but the style of the universe disregarded, that's about the only thing it actually does good.

Distant Worlds, as I've said, I have no idea about, but I heard good things. I might try it out sometime.

edit: I have, for the record, also never played a multiplayer game of SotS, but I would be willing to give it a try if by some miracle I manage to match my free time with everyone else's. I would also like to note that I am a hopelessly tinkery person. I am liable to get stuck in the ship design screen every time my tech level significantly increases.