Sins of a Solar Empire

[MDA]

...is out in retail as of yesterday, I see. Anyone picked it up and would like to say a few words?

[Chris]

I have the beta Brad Wardell sent me, I need to contact him if the game is done.

[Chris]

I have a thread with some beta screens if you want to see what it looks like:

Link here

[MDA]

Thanks. I'm vaguely reminded of Homeworld by your short description of it.

I'm mostly hoping to figure out how much meat is in the single player game/story and how slow-reflex friendly it is (i.e., is it pause-able) since my experience with multiplayer RTS is a long series of humilliating defeats that I don't care to add to.

[Funko]

Looks like a very interesting idea.

It was good when we had a few CGers playing WarCraft III MP. Much more casual skill level for people with limited playtime, real jobs etc. So at least my many defeats were narrow.

If another good RTS comes along I'd be interested in getting involved with something like that again. And this does look interesting.

[Fistandantilus]

It was fun yeah

[Venom]

I hated Homeworld.

[MDA]

I liked the early game, I liked the story, and I hated how the only way to reliably get to the end of the game seemed to be exploiting ship captures.

[Venom]

I liked that I was smart enough to question how much I would like it that I pirated it.

[Chris]

Well, I will be getting a review copy of it, so I will let you guys know.

[Shining1]

Woo.

[Beta1]

if nothing else its a great name for a game.

very Iain M Banks.

[Funko]

As with all these RTS, probably worth waiting for patch 2 anyway.

[Chris]

Hard to say about patches, Gal Civ 2 worked without patching, but they did make some anyway.

[Funko]

Yeah, with RTS it's mainly the MP balance issues that you don't find out about until you've got people really trying to exploit them.

[MDA]

Some might even go so far as to say the GalCiv 2 patches were enhancements.

[Funko]

I have got GalCiv 2, and played one game of it, but it didn't inspire me hugely. I'm still playing Civ IV if I play anything, but I might give it another go sometime.

The planetary based system just seem naturally as much fun somehow for a TBS.

[Chris]

You never played Dark Avatar?

That ahd a lot of improvements, including really cool graphic updates.

You could actually see the ships you designed orbiting planets.

[Funko]

No, didn't seem worth it when I'd barely scratched the basic game.

[MDA]

I just upgraded to DA this Christmas after playing the orignal a ton.

Lately I've been playing SMAC. Its funny how hostile/schizo the AI is compared to newer games like GalCiv2 and Civ4. They may be cooperative/magnanimous one minute, then demand a tech, and if you refuse, declare vendetta because of your gov. choice. Particularly if you're doing well.

I see Penny Arcade did a paragraph long recommendation for Sins, which is probably a good sign.

[Beta1]

LOL I thought I was the only one whoed been sucked back into SMAC and was keeping quiet about it.

[Fistandantilus]

Well I played MoO2 a bit this w-e

[LoD]

Originally posted by Beta1
LOL I thought I was the only one whoed been sucked back into SMAC and was keeping quiet about it.

We still have active PBEMs (OK, one at the moment) at our site.

[MDA]

I kinda stopped playing Moo2 when I got GalCiv2.

I don't even know if I kept my Moo3 disc. Even the player-made patches didn't completely fix it.

PA compared Sins to Hegemonia today. Then they sidetracked into Hegemonia nostalgia.

[Chris]

It arrived yesterday, starting playing it today.

The visual controls take some getting used to, it's hard to view all the things inside a planent's gravity well at once.

There is a ton of detail, I went through the tutorials which seemed easy enough, and have begun a campaign.

The first thing is, there is no mini-map.

None at all.

The game designer says 'mini-maps' limit the gameboard size, so they found a different way to do things, and supposidily the game can have huge maps.

It kept my attention for a few hours, but I was really just feeling around.

[Funko]

Interesting, keep us posted. Look forward to the review.

[Chris]

It also lets you chose your faction color and Icons, which is pretty cool.

You definetly get a feeling of the vastness of space, and you can zoom and rotate the camera all over the place.

It's RTS, but making lots of one ship type is said to suck, according to the info that comes with it you need mixed fleets.

[Funko]

RTSs always say that, hopefully it's true in practice too.

[Chris]

From what Brad told me, you get massive bonus attck points with different ship types.

If it works I can't say, haven't played enough yet.

[Chris]

Haven't had time to work on this, but I will this weekend.

[Sir Penguin]

Demo:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/...d_6188180.html

SP

[Funko]

Cool. Might have to try that.

[Funko]

Anyone else up for playing this MP? if I get it? Reviews sound good. And MP sounds suited to groups of friends rather than random play.

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=93758

[Shining1]

I could be tempted.

[Funko]

Well, I'm downloading the demo.

[Funko]

Demo doesn't work. Black screen. Apparently they are working on a demo patch. Bah.

[Shining1]

There's a new DoW xpack, btw. =D

[MoSe]

Originally posted by Fistandantilus
Well I played MoO2 a bit this w-e

I MoO 1

[Funko]

Got demo working using this guide:

http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/174432

Will play at the weekend I reckon... left handed should be fun.

[Fistandantilus]

mmm will try it

[Funko]

Interesting looking total conversion mods being worked on for this game. Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestart Galactica, Battleship Gothic, Babylon 5. I imagine it'll be a while before any of these surface but at least one of the development groups have completed conversions on previous games.

[Funko]

OMG NERD!

[LoD]

You've obviously never seen the mods for Homeworld 2, Funko ...

[Funko]

No, and I haven't seen Homeworld 2 either.

The Star Wars and Star Trek conversion teams are pretty much the same as the Homeworld 2 teams, which is why it sounds promising. I haven't read about the other mods.

[Funko]

Played the demo, liked it, bought the game, played my first game.

First impressions:

It's big! Even the small maps feel impressively large and you can build up fairly huge fleets. I ended my first game with 3 fleets including 8 capital ships, although I later found out that was massive overkill.

It's basically a cross between GalCiv II and Warcraft III. Any regular RTS players will find it all reassuringly familiar. You've got all your traditional RTS aspects. The mix of units is what you'd expect you've got building units, colonising units, attack units, long range units, repair units, buff units and capital ships which are similar to WC3 heroes even down to their types. You've got your tanks, buff capital ships, healers etc. They also have abilities that level up and at level 6 you get to have the hero, er I mean ship's super ability activated.

You've also got 3 resources credits, metal and crystal. You need to mine metal and crystal but it's fairly automatic. If a planet you own has a metal or crystal rich asteroid circling it you click the planet and tell it to build a crystal mine and leave it to it. No fucking peons thank god.

The control system is surprisingly intuitive. It's not really 3 dimensional in terms of combat. All the ships basically fly flat loops around the equator, but you don't feel bad about that. Combat looks great when you zoom in. You can build everything that can be built at a planet without leaving the main planet screen which is very handy. You can group your ships into the traditional Ctrl+# groups as well as into fleets.

It's slow. Although it's an RTS it's not frenetic. I haven't played multi-player but I don't get the impression that a couple of seconds either way are going to make the same kind of difference they do in WC3 or Dawn of War. Combat takes a long time, which gives you a chance to micro-manage stuff, although the default attack actions of the fleet are very good, leaving you to intervene in key areas or manage your capital ships abilities. If you outnumber the opposing fleet you can just leave them to it. The downside is that games can take a long time and fleets can take an age to travel long distances.

The tech tree is big and you definitely have to make choices, you can't afford to research everything.

There's no frills. No campaign just sandbox (which is what I prefer in RTS anyway) a rudimentary intro video. The interface outside the main game is functional enough.

I can see why people are making mods of this. The space battles are very atmospheric and really do look great.

[Fistandantilus]

Does the demo support multiplayer?

I know I know I should find the time to download it and try it myself

[Funko]

No, single player only in the demo.

Download only version from the states is $44.95 which is only €28!

[Funko]

ps. I'm happy to do a full CG review for it, once I've played a bit more if anyone is interested.

[Funko]

Oh and I just found out you can play with the game speeded up. Might try that next.

[Venom]

Do it!