Sword of the Stars/Species

There are four species in Sword of the Stars. Each species have their own technology tree (with research probabilities and technologies specific to each race) and language.

Human
Human ships travel by nodes. While this allows them to quickly travel across star systems, their drives function only along node paths, allowing them to be blocked by choke points. Traveling on a node requires each ship in a fleet to have enough fuel to complete the jump, since they cannot be refueled in transit.

If necessary, human ships can use slower-than-light travel to reach other systems.

Tarkas
Tarkas ships travel by a faster-than-light drive. As such, they can travel directly between star systems.

Hiver
Hiver ships only have slower-than-light drives. Instead, they rely on gate ships places within each system to instantly transport ships from one system to another.

A technology upgrade gives hivers the ability to teleport ships without a corresponding destination gate.

Liir
Tarkas ships travel by a faster-than-light drive. As such, they can travel directly between star systems.