Kuattro
Augur
I like SotS quite a bit. What is Distant Worlds like in comparison?
Completely different I would say. I know it might seem strange since I compared them in that post, but in my defence, I was referring more to the fact that Stellaris takes ideas from both of them.
Also, I haven't played Sword of the Stars for a long time, so I might be remembering some of it wrong.
First of all, Distant Worlds is real time. I mention that in case it's a deal breaker, so that you don't waste time. I find myself pausing every ten seconds because there is always something to do, but still, it's RTS.
I think the most distinctive part of DW is it's economic aspect. Your planets do not have "production". That is, there are construction components that produce other components at a certain speed (also they are only for orbital shipyards, only big ships like colony ships and bases are built on planets), but they all need resources, and there's a lot of unique resources: various types of metal, used for building main components; various types of gas, used for building weapons, engines and as fuel (yes, the ships use fuel and need to refuel, and that's the stuff of nightmares in the late game); and other special resources like crystals and luxuries (which make your people happy and reproduce faster). You control where the mines are built, and sometimes will find yourself in resource wars when that single adamantium asteroid in the entire vicinity shows up between three empires, and then the private sector moves them around. You design the freighters, but they are bought by the private sector and operate independently, which, again, sometimes can make you find yourself cursing the merchant's stupidity. Such is the way of corporate capitalism.
Ship design is another big difference with SotS, which if I remember correctly functions with the three modules system. In DW you can design your ship component by component. You don't even have restrictions for ship's roles, you can make your destroyers as big as your battleships, or even bigger. The roles only come into effect when you automate the ships/fleets (more about that in a moment). Every component you add affects things like energy consumption (which means you need to fit more reactors and energy collectors), size of the ship (more engines or it moves like a slug), speed (can move at impulse, drive, or sprint, and each one consumes a different amount of energy), range (fuel containers or it will not get very far), so you need to balance weapons, engines, defences, reactors, fuel containers, etc. (which I like very much, but maybe other, normal, people will not appreciate as much as I).
As for different species, vanilla DW doesn't have much of it. Yes they have different modifiers, and preferred types of planets, but it's pretty basic. SotS has different hyperspace types, at least, in DW everyone uses the same. I use a mod (Unleashed Extended) that tries to introduce some different gameplay for each one, but in the end there's a limit to what the engine permits, so other than different reproduction rates, and some playing around with the modifiers, there's not a lot more I would say.
Same can be said about the tech tree. Here I think SotS is far better than vanilla DW, which has a pretty linear and limited, fixed tree. You just get newer, better components with technology, and that's it. The mod I use does make things quite a lot better here because the game is more flexible, and so it has a bigger tree, with more options and more differences between species.
And the combat is more or less the same as SotS, well, more or less the same as MOO2 only real time like SotS, there hasn't been a lot of innovation there. It's 2D, on the same map, so not much fancy maneuvering. You have blasters, missiles, ion canons, gravitic weapons, kinetic weapons, point defence, shields, armor... just what you would expect.
DW is micromanagement heavy, I would say. A bit less than Aurora if you know it (well, a LOT less), but still quite a bit more than SotS, so that can also be a deal breaker. On the plus sides, DW gives you the option of automating almost every single aspect of the game, whether it be diplomacy, economy, colonizations, ship design, even your ships and fleets (which is where ship's roles come in effect, escorts will, well, escort your freighters around, destroyers will patrol your mines, battleships will defend your colonies...) and the AI does a competent job of it, not perfect of course, but at least acceptable enough that you can forget about it without fearing disaster.
As I said, they are fairly different games, enough that it would be hard to say "if you like SotS, you will love DW". I much prefer DW, but that is because I'm a bit anal and enjoy micromanaging everything.
I would probably recommend watching some Let's Play (I enjoyed Sabouts, if only because he is competent at it and his voice doesn't end up making you want to kill yourself. He has two of them, unfortunately both with mods so the problems I mentioned might be camouflaged a bit) and reading a bit more, especially at the Matrix Games forums to see if it might be your thing. I say that because sadly if you want to try it, you've just missed a pretty big sale on DW, which being a Matrix games does not go on sale that frequently and normally their sales are a bit shit, and right now it costs 55 €. I've played something like 500 hours and mounting so I'd say I've got my money's worth, but it can be a bummer if you're not into it. Steam's summer sale will probably have an interesting discount.
PR over.