Having watched the trailer I am left wondering why the developers chose to render the universe in 3D. The battles are in 2D and the universe in on a 2D plane. Maybe I am just grouchy in my advancing age, but I just don't see the point. I wish developers would simply use the medium that works for their particular game, and in this case this is clearly a 2D game.

In the trailer you see the player panning the camera around looking at different things, including ships. Since the battles are 2D (which in fine, IMO), what purpose does having 3D ships serve? It seems like they spent a lot of time working on parts of the game that have no affect on gameplay. I may be judging a bit early, but I think this bodes badly for the game. A good game has a good design from the get-go. I am thinking Star Lords may be a bit confused in what it is trying to do.

Jumping on the 3D bandwagon I suppose.

I like 2D & isometric games still.  Having to wrestle camera controls is often just a PITA.

It's all in the GUI I suppose but I agree- sometimes 2d is far better. Sword of the Stars (the original and not the buggy follow up which I have not tried) is completely FUBAR to play in my opinion because of the 3d presentation and the awful obtuse GUI that goes with it- all to present really a simple design under all the golash.

It can work if done right- but many games-such as Jagged Alliance 2 are far superior to any recent attempt on the francise mainly due to the 3d. be it Hired Guns, back in action or the online attempt-

Silent Storm II worked however so it's possible but generally no-- this is mainly why I stopped midway in MJ12 it just wasn't working. And I'm under no pressure to release ho hum to get returns on investments. A major advantage only indy guys can do.

I'd rather they spend their resources on a deep, fun game rather than eye candy that may actually make it harder to play.  I like SOTS, but that map gives me a headache.

Didn't the first SOTS have an option to 2D the map?

Actually when it comes to building assets like units, NPCs or terrain features like trees, hills, water or whatever 3d is not only easier and quicker but takes far less resources from the memory and CPU of the computer.

For example- once I have my character animations done I can apply the very same animation to every character in the game (assuming they are simuliar; (human, humanoid- a horse would require a different one) and I am basically done. I just need to click 'add' to add the character. wether there is just one-or 30- since the very same animation is used it's only using one segment of memory as well.

2d on the other hand requires multiple frames of art for each character. At least 8 if you want somewhat decent unchoppy animation, which the frames need to be flipped for each character. Each character then eats ity's own segment of memory- it's own CPU cycles and so forth. Wether creating those 8 or more animation frames is faster than creating a 3d character model depends on what is being made. Geometric models are very fast to model as almost all engines at least come with built-in geometric shaps like squares, triangles- so walls and houses model quickly. All engines I've used even have several for bridges, houses, churches and so on. Texture packs are cheap and abundant for this and terrain- and terrain generators speed map making 10 fold.

Also whereas 2d only sports single animation 3d supports multiple. (A tank moving forward with a hatch opening and turrent turning as it moves cannot be done in 2d nor can a soldier walking with his head looking here and there-so again you also are very limited to what can be displayed.

So in the end simuliar maps in 2d each far more memory and CPU resources take longer and run slower than a 3d counterpart. Not to mention the tools that create it are usually old and outdated so your workflow is not nearly as good.

I really do not know why people assume 3d is harder or more resource extensive- it is quite the opposite and even old school developors recognise this.

As en example read the update on Wasteland 2:

The Unity engine has this wonderfully integrated asset store, full of props, environment sets, FX and tools, and it seemed the perfect proving grounds for our first pass at this new approach of game environment creation. Certainly, purchased or prefabricated assets are nothing new; a variety of sites are out there selling "game-ready" props, and like most developers, we are familiar with that opportunity. But Unity's Asset Store had a few distinct advantages that we found appealing. The store, being accessible from within the editor itself, along with the purchase, downloading and importing of those packages, made this surprisingly painless. Packages containing not only the models and textures, but also materials, particle attachments, and animations were ready to use and then modify immediately.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts

Besides the items mentioned above, high on our list of requirements for an engine was ease of use by the artists and level designers for getting assets into the game and editing levels.   We are a small team and must be able to work very efficiently.  

Now wether it looks better depends. I still think the 2d maps, with the intregrated 3d effects of Baldur's gate 2 maps look better than most 3d rpg maps to date. This is absolutely true if the game is on a console using subar textures because of memory limitations. Dragon Age does not map wise even come close (they used most resources for character models.)

I see what you are saying and you have the experience to back up what you say. At the same time I think we agree that the UI is somewhat confusing. If you have a 2D game, lock the camera.

SOTS has 2D battles but most of the maps are 3D. 3D maps give me a headache so i always play the Disk map which is relatively flat, and there is also the option of a pure 2D map.  If you have the game but couldn't get into it, the disk map is your ticket to playing a great game without the 3D headache

Give me the smooth zooming seemless performance on the latest Paradox games with its 3D engiine over the stepped zooming and laggy feel that 2D games like AGEODS have anyday.

So who has the game? I am not convinced by that video because the planet and ship UI descriptions look very basic in design.What is the depth?