Sins of a Solar Empire

[KimB]

I just started playing the beta for this game today. I've enjoyed the Galactic Civlization series, so I thought I'd go ahead and pre-order this one while the beta was still open (it's closed now, sorry).

Anyway, thought I'd list some impressions of the game. It's basically an RTS game where you try to take over a huge solar system that has a bunch of planets (some more habitable than others). It's got quite good graphics, and is, I think, a good premise. On to some of the details:

1. There doesn't appear to be any need for micro management in this game. Just place units in a sector and they'll attack any enemies that enter the sector. Research the right technologies, and the game will even tell you when enemies are entering your sectors. You can, of course, micro-manage, but I haven't seen a need to do much of this beyond simply telling my units to focus their fire on a single opponent. All special abilities seem to be used automatically, as near as I can tell.

2. The learning curve is steep. This is a hallmark of this company's games, so it doesn't really surprise me. I do hope, however, that they have a decent single-player campaign that eases the player into the game. And while it took me much less time to get started playing this game than playing the original Galactic Civilizations, it's still nowhere near the Starcraft or Warcraft games in terms of just being able to pick the game up and play.

3. The control interface is clunky. It's in beta, though, so hopefully this will be fixed. As it stands I have a hard time moving the view around.

Anyway, so far I think this game looks quite promising. It feels very much like Galactic Civilizations placed in a more focused setting. That is, it's got a lot of the same gameplay mechanics (culture, diplomacy, and war), but is realtime and smaller-scale. All in all, I have high hopes for this game. And yes, it does support multiplayer, but I was never that interested in multiplayer RTS games.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Thanks Chal, sounds like too steep a learning curve for me. I got the attention span of an over-ripe grapefruit.

 

[John Reynolds]

Sins looks promising.

Anyone remember a Microprose gem named Master of Magic? Brad's company has the rights and is making a sequel.

 

[KimB]

Sins looks promising.

Yeah, I'm really jazzed about how I don't need to micromanage! If there's anything I hated about other RTS's I've played, it's that I never felt like I was in full control of my units. With this one, I don't need to spend much time worrying about what my units are doing, I can just get on with giving out orders. Now, I think the interface could use quite a bit of work, but I also think it's a great start, and a great way to do this kind of game.

Anyone remember a Microprose gem named Master of Magic? Brad's company has the rights and is making a sequel.

Hmm...just checked the Wikipedia article, and this may not be true:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Magic#Remakes_and_sequel_rumors

 

[John Reynolds]

Hey, what's in a name?

 

[Fox5]

Still waiting for something better than master of orion 2.

 

[KimB]

Still waiting for something better than master of orion 2.

GalCiv2 didn't satisfy that?

Granted, I never played the MoO games, but GalCiv2 is quite a good one in many ways.

 

[Fox5]

GalCiv2 didn't satisfy that?

Granted, I never played the MoO games, but GalCiv2 is quite a good one in many ways.

It was good, but I couldn't quite get into it.

It had a rather meaningless tech tree, lacked a certain individualized touch (often felt like the statistics of the game were too in the face), and combat just blew.


Gal Civ 2 was better in many ways, but I'd still say MOO2 is better overall. The different alien races felt more distinct, you had to make choices about what tech to research (researching one thing would close off another) and the techs were just better thought out/described so that they seemed more real, and moo2 had some strategy to its combat and really let you go full out custom with the weapon loadouts of your ships. Not to mention it had non-weapon weapons such as the gravity generator which spins enemy ships around so their foward facing guns would no longer be facing you.

I believe the expansion to gal civ 2 did fix some things though, but it still doesn't seem like enough to outdo moo2 imo. Many reviews did call gal civ 2 the first game to better moo2 though, but I think its tech tree and combat need a major revamp. Not to mention I don't care that much for gal civ's space station dynamic, but that's a minor quibble.

I'm interested to see how sins of a solar empire ends up though. Pretty much all of moo2 keeps me pretty entertained, but I get bored outside of diplomacy in gal civ 2, if sins ends up as an interesting game all throughout, I could deal with its more limited scope.

 

[KimB]

Well, it sounds like, by large, Sins is tackling the issues you had with GalCiv2. Not entirely, but it's a step in that direction. So far the diplomacy game in Sins seems simpler than GalCiv2, but there are some interesting points.

In particular, you can place a bounty on the heads of your competitors, making it so that attacking them awards the attackers money. This offers a whole new, very straightforward way of being the manipulator-behind-the-scenes type. Of course, they'll do the same thing to you too, so I ended up with a monstrous bounty on my head by the time I ended my first game (which I did militarily).

 

[Fox5]

Well, it sounds like, by large, Sins is tackling the issues you had with GalCiv2. Not entirely, but it's a step in that direction. So far the diplomacy game in Sins seems simpler than GalCiv2, but there are some interesting points.

In particular, you can place a bounty on the heads of your competitors, making it so that attacking them awards the attackers money. This offers a whole new, very straightforward way of being the manipulator-behind-the-scenes type. Of course, they'll do the same thing to you too, so I ended up with a monstrous bounty on my head by the time I ended my first game (which I did militarily).

Well, I already decided a while back that I'd be watching to see what happened with sins. GalCiv2 was good, but didn't really suck me in for long periods of time or make me really want to learn the inner workings of the game.

I just recently finally got all 3 endings in moo2. The antaran victory and the galactic conquest victory (the 2nd of which is just kind of a subset of the first in terms of the ending) were easy to get, but the diplomatic victory (2/3rds vote in the senate) was a pain. I finally achieved it only by explicitly going for it (weakening the opposition and then playing nice just enough to get the few extra votes I needed), whereas it only would have taken a bit longer (just long enough for my fleets to spread across the galaxy, probably 20 turns max) to conquer everything. In cases where I've tried for an almost purely diplomatic stance to the game, usually one race is aggressive/populace enough that they get enough votes on their own to hold off any electoral victory. I can't see too many cases where the victory by vote would come up in a game that wouldn't be feasible for you to just conquer everything, power just never ends up evenly distributed enough. On a side note, the combined remnants of my enemies was just large enough that it may have presented some challenge, had I chosen to go against the galactic senate.
Still, despite falling apart at the end game, I thought the diplomacy of moo2 was pretty well done (galciv2 as well) and it'd be a shame not to have that in sins.

 

[KimB]

Well, I just played Sins for the first time on my laptop, and I have something else to add.

I'm hooking up the laptop to a 24" display, and playing the game at 1920x1200 resolution. Even at this resolution, my puny GeForce Go 7600 plays this game just great, anti-aliasing and all.

As for diplomacy, it's not that it doesn't have it, it's just simplified. You can offer alliances, and accept alliances. Your allies will tell you when they're being attacked and where. They'll sometimes come to your aid when you're attacked. It seems like the game developers are going for a more simple and natural diplomacy game than the GalCiv series had. Right now I'm not sure whether I think it's better or not.

 

[swaaye]

75% off on Steam currently too

Sins: Rebellion celebrates its 5-year anniversary with an update that brings significant changes to the game's engine, AI, graphics systems, and more! Modern gamers will enjoy an incredible remastered 4K experience, optimizations to late-game play, and improved memory capabilities.

Major Features:

Graphics Optimizations
Sins: Rebellion gets a face lift in v1.9! The improvements to the memory system have allowed for a new "Extreme" texture setting that makes the game look better than ever. The difference is noticeable in everything from the ships and the planets all the way to shadow rendering. The UI will look incredible on 4K monitors now thanks to user interface scaling.

Memory Optimizations
Concern yourself with space battles instead of space restrictions! Previously, Sins: Rebellion's 32-bit process was unable to exceed 2 GB of RAM usage. New adjustments in v1.9 allows the game to use up to 4 GB of RAM, which reduces crashes and lets modders focus on their creations instead of worrying about hitting the 32-bit limit. Any mods that already exist will benefit from the engine improvements with an overall better look and performance.

Late Game Optimizations
Reduced stuttering and lag during late game battles let you focus on the fight! The game's AI has also received some updates, making for more interesting challenges and gameplay.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion v1.90 Change Log
April 4, 2017 12:00:00 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
Ironclad Games and Stardock are pleased to announce the release of version 1.90 for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion today. We've made a number of improvements and changes with this update for both players and modders.

[ Engine / Mods ]

• Large Address Aware (LAA) is now enabled by default. Warning: if you are using a mod that requires you to apply LAA manually you should no longer do this. Doing so will cause multiplayer desyncs and crashes.
• Added user interface scaling for 4K and other large resolutions.
  
  
• Increased the max texture and particle simulation type counts for mods. This will improve performance and memory usage as mods that exceeded the limit were engaging dynamic memory allocation which is slow and fragments memory.
  
  
• Added an adaptive texture memory use system to help constrain large mods from running out of memory (which could occur even with LAA enabled).
  
  
• Fixed FPS stuttering in big battles with certain hardware combinations. Warning: if you previously tried to solve this by converting ogg files to wavs you will need to revert back to ogg files.
  
  
• Fixed bug where exiting a mod that setup starbases as tradeports as part of the galaxy creation process would crash the game on exit.
  
  
• Fixed various crashes when enabling/disabling mods in-game. You should no longer need to edit the mod text file to enable/disable mods.
  
  
• Fixed potential crash if a mod was disabled from the options screen but assets from the mod were requested after being disabled.
  
  
• Fixed modding crash that is caused by defining a roleType (e.g. StarbaseConstructor, Colonizer) but not providing the expected ability. While the crash is prevented the abilities should match the roleType or the Ai will not work correctly.
  
  
• Fixed potential crash in a mod where no random capitalShip or starBase names were defined.
  
  
• Fixed crash that would occur in mods that used SpawnRacialBuffAtLocation() where the number of races exceeded the number of defined buffs.
  
  
• Modders can now use negative trade values.
  
  
• Updated Particle Forge shaders.
  
  
• Fixed slowdowns caused by Steam DLC queries.

[ Graphics ]

• Added a new "Extreme" texture setting that takes advantage of newly available memory and optimizations for improved texture rendering and related graphical effects.
  
  
• The old "Highest" texture setting has been renamed to "Higher" to imply there is a new setting beyond it.
  
  
• The new default texture settings are all "Higher" instead of a mix of "High" and "Medium".
  
  
• Renormalized the texture settings to support a wider variety of hardware. For example: "Low" is reduced in fidelity and "Higher" is increased in fidelity.
  
  
• Added a new "Extreme" shadow setting.
  
  
• Improved shadow rendering.
  
  
• Fixed various mesh issues with the Advent Rebel Titan. Thanks ZombiesRus5.
  
  
• Fixed texture reference issues with Varari's Orbital Cannon surface impact, Vasari Envoy's Mutual Threat, the blue star's flare and the green star's flare. Thanks ZombiesRus5.
  
  
• Reduced particle sizes of Gamma Ray Burst random event.
  
  
• Reduced particle size of Pulsar beams.

[ Gameplay / AI ]

• Fixed bug where militia ships were showing up in the supply cost tool tip.
  
• Fixed bug where militia ships were being grouped with non-militia ships in the empire window.
  
• Fixed bug where you could utilize the starbase max count bonus of a planet you didn't own.
  
• Starbases phase-spacing now correctly account for the max starbase count at the target planet.
  
• Truce Amongst Rogues no longer has any research prerequisites.
  
• Fixed bug where starbase upgrades with values at level zero were not being applied properly (a common problem with mods that placed starbases during the galaxy creation process).
• Minor improvements to AI selection of unit counters.
  
  
• Fixed bug where AI could stall on launching an attack.
  
  
• Fixed bug where AI could stall on colonizing a planet.
  
  
• Fixed bug where AI could build endless Scouts, Anti-Mine or Anti-Structure units.
  
  
• Fixed bug with MadVasari incorrectly using militia ships.
  
  
• Fixed "ANTIMODULE" attack type from behaving like "CanOnlyTargetModules".
  
  
• Fixed bug where units that had missing weapon points (and thus had default ones created for them) wouldn't fire from those weapons after loading from a save game.
  
  
• Fixed weapon and bombing data on the Advent Loyalist Titan, both Advent corvettes, the Vasari Rebel Titan, and the Vasari Nanites. Thanks ZombiesRus5.
  
  
• Alt-Enter is now the default full screen toggle key combo. Changed to avoid conflict with Steam's overlay key combo.

This update is in memory of Ed Sarabia, whose wonderful art shines in the Sins universe.

 

[homerdog]

I haven't played this game in ages but it is fun as hell. Nice to see an update after all this time.