wow an actual Good Old Game :)
what a nice surprise!

Please more of this and less shady Preorders.

Thank you very much for your detailed answers, especially for the description how to disable the end turn counter.

Does that mean you can change the strategic map from 3D into some kind of 2D which is easier to navigate?

Maybe try out one of the demos. It helped me a lot to see what kind of 4X game this is.

For my taste the game is too much focused on combat. It makes the impression that it mainly has been designed for battling in multiplayer mode. Other aspects of the game are somewhat neglected.

It's still a good game, just not my preferred style. I still may end up buying it some day though. :)

How do you set this?

And how do you end a battle without it being counted as defeated when all enemies are gone?

Is there any way to control the camera directly (in combat and strategy mode)?

I forget, does this have a single player legit campaign?

Yes (see attached screenshot).

But Disk is pretty flat too, and also rounder, while on the 2D map you can end up in the end of a "tail", which can be problematic...
Yeah, it really shines in multiplayer!
Ah, yes, it's kind of an obscure setting :
in Profile.ini, add under [GameOptions] :
AutoPause=True
"Defeat" means you have no units (ships, planet, satellites, stations) left, while the enemy has. Not sure what happened to you...

Only in combat :
Ctrl+C toggles between Focus and Free Camera modes.
(Use keyboard arrows and mouse to move in the Free Camera mode, FPS-style.)

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/release_sword_of_the_stars_complete_collection_9cee6/post102

I have tried to get into this game a couple of times, but the interface has always thwarted my attempts. I should probably watch a let's play on YT or something.

Not sure if it will be easier to navigate for me, but worth a try. Is this a map setting or toggled by another hidden key?

Thanks! I will try to add that.

I still had some ships, but there were no more enemies. I did not want to wait the nearly 10 mins of the countdown and did not see any other way to end the battle, so I clicked the "Retreat From Battle" button.

Slow, but much better. :) But it only works in battle view, not in sensor view. And why not also for the strategic map?
Why does this game do such a good job to hide the useful keys and settings? ;P

Indeed! After playing the demo for a couple of hours now the controls resp. the lack of control is my main complaint. I start to enjoy the game, but the controls drive me crazy.

It's a bit sad to see that the GOG version of the game requires the installation of so many native libraries. The demo of the game runs on Debian under Wine 1.8 without any native libraries or other winetricks.

It's not a setting, it's one of the maps you can choose. Most of the maps make full use of the 3d space, but one of the maps (named "2D" in the map selection menu, that's the one in Templar's screenshot) is 2d, and the map named "Disk" has a 2d distribution with systems moved slightly up or down. Viewed from directly above, Disk is the same as 2D, but it's much easier to navigate between systems... Liir and human FTLs have trouble with 2D. BTW, you can see a preview of the selected map when starting new game, fully zoomable and rotatable.

I also find the maps with a simple 3d structure, like "Helix", "Tube", "Hollow Sphere" or "Clusters" relatively easy to navigate.

What did you expect? Retreating from combat means that you lose. If there are no enemy ships left, the combat automatically ends in 5-10 seconds. If it didn't end, that means that there were still enemies present, probably outside of your sensor range.

One thing you can try is clicking the crossed-swords icon in the lower left, next to your name. If the enemy is trying to run from you, it means that they don't want to fight anymore. If so, the icon next to their name is going to be a dove, meaning that they want a peaceful resolution. Clicking the icon next to your name (or pressing ctrl-x) toggles between "want to fight" (crossed swords) and "ceasefire" (dove). If all combatants select ceasefire, the combat ends in a draw 10 or so seconds later.

All of the keys can be easily seen in-game, in options -> key bindings. Unfortunately, you can't change them, but you can at least see them!

I find the combination of middle-click to focus, right-click-and-drag to rotate and mouse wheel to zoom a second nature, but then I've played SOTS on-and-off for five or six years. It's one of the few games I always return to.

After watching a bit over an hour of these Let's Plays, I decided to take the plunge and bought it :)

While I "technically" like these types of games, for some reason I haven't been able to get into MOO or SOASE or the Gal Civ's.

For whatever dumb mental reason, I always start one of those games and then a voice in my head says "hmm not enough like Stars!" and I end up not playing very far.

This game, well, by the Let's Plays, seemed to hit a "oh cool - more like Stars!" vibe in my mind - so I'll take a chance and find out - see if that voice starts in my head try to start playing :)

In multiplayer, how do you repair your allies ships? I've done it a couple of times somehow, but it's not very clear to us.

I think the only way to can repair allies is by having at least one of my own that needs repair, then clicking repair all. At that point the RP i dont use are used on my allies?

Either way, shit's confusing yo, especially compared to how easily you refuel allied ships.

I was not going to buy this now, I wasn't. Same for the weekend sale but I ended up spending $7.26 there so my mind, the treasonous thing, went "What's $4.99 more?".

I've spoke with a Kerberos rep and he told me today they've contacted GOG many times about this issue. It's therefore in GOG's hands. This really upsets me because while I love GOG, I'm not sure if I want to continue supporting a company that's refusing customers patches that go out to everyone else and are implemented.

Same here, I love gog but I just don't understand what the holdup is. If I don't have as much cash to spend here because I had to rebuy the game on Steam just to get the latest version because gog won't update their game, then that's on gog and it's their loss.