Sword of the Stars sold on Impulse?

If you're talking about the "A Murder of Crows" expansion, I've not heard any positive rumors that it'll be on Impulse. And I have heard people say that AMoC won't install if you've got SotS from Stardock

[Edit] See here

Where can I purchase the Sots ultimate collection (all 3 games in one) with the box, cd and op manual?

so far the only places that have the game are Steam, Direct to drive and a few other software download places. I don't mind downloading but I really wanted the instruction manual and the story book?    

Stardock is working on it, see paradox games forum.

Are Steam and Direct to drive as good as Stardock when it comes to downloading games from their websites?

If they are not then I will wait on Impulse to get them

Steam is very reliable.

Direct2Drive used to be good, but then they moved to a weird system and I stopped buying from them. Recently I've heard they've gotten better, but eh. Once burnt, twice shy.

So if I want to download Sword of stars gold collection or the new ultimate collection I should use steam until stardock gets them?

How is Steam when it comes to customer support?

Once purchased from Steam can I download my game onto a disk just in case I want to keep  a hardcopy ?

Steam's customer support ranges from good to nonexistent, depending on the issue.  They do not offer tech support for any games; you have to contact the original company.  They - in theory - have a blanket no-returns policy, but people have received refunds on a case-by-case basis by contacting Steam support.  Steam has an excellent friends/community system which is integrated inside many games offered on Steam. Most games also support the Steam overlay, which offers access to the Steam community service

As long as Steam operates, you can re-download at any time. You can backup your files as many times as you want. You can install the game on as many computers as you want.

However, Steam games requires that you be running Steam and that you are logged into your account when you launch the game. Only one computer at a time may be logged into Steam.

Steam - very rarely - has outages for server updates, which has been known to kick people out of games (though I believe that has been fixed.)

Steam is also known to have odd pricing policies. Some games can be gotten very cheaply, particularly during their periodic sales.   But other games cost significantly more than they do in stores, particularly on the European version of Steam.

Now  that Sword of the Stars Ultimate is now on sale on impulse have any of you sinners bought and played it yet?

I am thinking about buying it off of impulse because of some of the wonderful reviews that your guys gave it.