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Sword of the Stars

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Sword of the Stars
Sword of the Stars cover
Developers
Kerberos Productions
Publishers
Paradox Interactive
Lighthouse Interactive
Release dates
Windows August 22, 2006
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Series Sword of the Stars
Sword of the Stars guide on StrategyWiki
Sword of the Stars on MobyGames
Sword of the Stars on Wikipedia
Sword of the Stars
Sword of the Stars 2006
Sword of the Stars II: Lords of Winter 2012
Sword of the Stars: The Pit 2013
Sword of the Stars: Ground Pounders 2014
The Pit: Infinity 2019

Warnings

GameSpy online services have been shut down (see Network for solutions).

General information

Developer's forum
GOG.com Community Discussions
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions (Complete Collection)
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
CD key
SecuROM 7 DRM
Windows
Amazon.com
DRM details are not known
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Complete Collection - includes all expansion packs
Windows
Green Man Gaming
Icon overlay.png
Windows
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Complete Collection - includes all expansion packs
Windows

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
Born of Blood
Windows
A Murder of Crows
Windows
Argos Naval Yard
Windows

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>[Note 1]
<path-to-game>\Profiles[Note 1]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/42890/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\SavedGames[Note 1]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/42890/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

General settings.
General settings.

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
Stretched 1920 resolution.[citation needed]
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
High dynamic range display (HDR)
See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

Input

Keybindings.
Keybindings.

Audio

Audio settings.
Audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Master, Sound Effects, Speech, GUI, Music
Surround sound
Mono and Stereo only.
Subtitles
Some announcements are audio-only.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Will still give important alerts (e.g. during multiplayer, on new turn or last player to act).
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Players Notes
LAN play
8
Online play
8 GameSpy services have been shut down;[1] see GameSpy for workarounds.

Connection types

Long loading times for battles

The game is very slow to load battles on modern hardware. Forcing the game to use one core can improve loading times, at the expense of turn resolution.
  1. Open the "sots.ini" file with notepad, in your root SOTS folder.
  2. Add "[CPU]ForceSingleCore=1" as an entry and save. Be sure it has a format similar to default entries.

Memory Capacity

Being a 32-bit program, SOTS by default uses 2gb of memory. You can expand the amount of memory it can use by enabling the 4gb flag.
  1. Go to "https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/large-address-aware.112556/", and download "Large Address Aware".
  2. Extract the archive, and use the program to alter the SOTS executable to be LAA.

Issues unresolved

Invalid CD Key

The Steam version has recently provided nonfunctioning CD-keys, or has them missing.
Instructions[2]
  1. Open 42890_install.vdf
  2. In the "CDKey" option, change %CDKEY% to the valid CD key.
  3. Launch the game.

Notes

Requires access to a prior known CD-key. You should find it in HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Valve/TestApp42890 from previous use.
A valid CD key may exist in a different Swords of the Stars entry in the game list (e.g. "Sword of the Stars Complete Collection" rather than "Sword of the Stars").

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 9
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Cutscenes Bink Video
Multiplayer GameSpy

System requirements

Windows
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 2000, XP, Vista
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 1.5 GHz
System memory (RAM) 1 GB
2 GB (Vista)
Hard disk drive (HDD) 3 GB
Video card (GPU) 128 MB of VRAM
DirectX 9 compatible


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).
  2. 2.0 2.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/42890/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (42890) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References