Comon guys, we all loved HW and Cata, and I know I wasn't the only one who has played the SP campaign of each of them 4+ times over for the story alone.
The writer, as credited in the manual/credits is Montgomery E. Crabapple (miss Crabapple, Monty Burns, heh), was really Arinn Dembo, who wrote both (I believe cata together with Mecron, lead designer for SotS) and also the full backstory and fluff for Sots. Now, for the upcoming Sword of the Stars collectors edition, she's written a full book, which ships with the box.
Gold Box Ridiculously cheap at 30 euros.
It's got the original sots and the expansion Born of Blood, plus ofc an entirely new patch (and sots patches are GOOD, each one so far has either introduced a new 'grand menace' (something which turns up every hundred turns and tries to much the galaxy in some way or another), a new race (the zuul were introduced as slaver encounters which grew bigger in a couple of patches), new features and functionality... or all of the above). The most recent patch has introduced the 'crows', a race which uses winged shape ships with advanced cloaking (fire while cloaked) technology and has a fondness for phasers and gravity manipulation... these are slated to be the new race introduced with the upcoming AMOC expansion, planned for... well, we don't know when, but it's not far off
It's a great game, IMO better than HW, though empire management/production is turn based, combat is realtime, 3d and fucking gorgeous.
Check out the tactical combat walkthrough video, made for the gold edition, here made available on the sots wiki:
http://sots.rorschach.net/Tactical_Combat the video is down the screen a little, it's about 12 minutes long.
Each ship is fully (and if you want, individually) customized, you choose the engine section, mission section, and bridge section for a design which you can then produce. Each section with advantages and occasional special abilities (shield command section, biowar mission section etc) and then you choose the exact weapon you put in each slot... how about some missile launchers on the rear, which ignore firing arcs as they're tracking, and a mix of fixed beam mounts, target hopping lightning guns and 'thumper' mass drivers (they knock enemy ships out of formation and back a long way) at the front?
http://sots.rorschach.net/Design_Interface another video tutorial/walkthrough (8 minutes)
tech tree it has the chances each race gets each tech in percentages listed (each game is new chances for all the random techs, and individual players with same race get different rolls on the techs)
http://sots.rorschach.net/Research_Interface (6 mins)
