Sins of a Solar Empire

[Crandaeolon]

Game is out now: http://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/

4X space empire game workings and Homeworld-style battles, all in real time. If done right, this could be game of the year material!

Anyone got it yet? First impressions or a review would be very much appreciated.

[Vladimir]

Nobody will beat my MoO ]I[

[Martok]

Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on this one as well. I'm normally not an RTS fan (the Total War games don't count), but I may very well end up making an exception in this case. :yes:



Nobody will beat my MoO ]I[
Wow, that's such a frightening statement, I don't even know where to begin.... ~:eek:

[CBR]

Yeah not a RTS fan myself but since its a space game I had to get it :inquisitive:

Its not a clickfest, with combat taking its time, so thats good. Only played one game and still trying to figure things out. But do far it feels pretty ok and would play again right away if it wasnt for the clock showing 06:00


CBR

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Can you move ships in 3d and not just on a 2d plane?

[CBR]

Can you move ships in 3d and not just on a 2d plane?

I didnt notice if you could but it wouldnt make much sense anyway. The game is more focused on the strategic/operational part than tactics and ship handling. Ships are fighting within the grav well of a planet and (at least the long range missiles) weapons have a big range.

The big capital ships have special weapons/abilities but they seem to be working fine on auto mode. There are some ships with specific purposes as anti fighter ships and orbital bombers etc.

I can imagine a player sometimes would want to pick a specific type of ship to destroy first or take out a certain structure to maximize damage and retreat before enemy fleet comes in from another system.


CBR

[Crandaeolon]

Bought the game, 30€ is quite a reasonable price. Only had time to try it out for an hour or so, but the gut feeling is promising.


Can you move ships in 3d and not just on a 2d plane?

Yes, you can do that, the method is similar to Homeworld. Larger fleets also arrange themselves in 3D formations. However, as CBR said, the focus of the game seems to be more strategic than tactical.

[Xiahou]

Trailer (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/15585.html)
Looks cool. I see that this is published by none other than Stardock- which means it should be for online sale without any DRM. :2thumbsup:

[TevashSzat]

I've been looking at this game for a while now and might end up getting it.

A great factor for this is that the game has no protection from piracy like Securom, ect... Also, you don't need to always keep the CD since you can redownload the game anytime anywhere with your Stardock account

[drone]

Apparently, Tycho is impressed by the game:

Installed Sins of a Solar Empire on the Night Engine yesterday, to see if it would be something we'd consider advertising. Uh... yes. Yes. Yes a thousand times over. This is why it's nice to work with a smaller company, because if they want to advertise something on your site, they're not pulling from some budget a year in advance of the game's release. Stardock sent a full, boxed retail copy of the title and asked if we'd be willing to promote that, as opposed to some theoretical game they might be making in the future. I'll talk more about it on Friday, but I am kind of bowled over by this thing. That someone would pay me to recommend a game as entertaining as Sins of a Solar Empire is really the most ridiculous kind of crap.
This was in Wednesday's entry, so tomorrow they may give some details.

[CBR]

After playing some more I can conclude RTS games still doesnt do it for me. I think I'll go back to Sword of the Stars or perhaps wait for Lost Empire: Immortals for my space fix. Or I should go back to the roots and check out Planets 4, but no singleplayer in that...sigh.


CBR

[Crandaeolon]

I've played a few games now, one small 1vs2 game (an AI teamed up with me, for learning and experimentation), two 2vs2 games on 15-20ish planet maps and one 6 player free-for-all with two star systems and about 40 planets total.

Starting with presentation, the game looks decent enough, though the ships aren't particularly memorable from an artistic point of view. Audio-wise it's okay too, with appropriate weapons sounds, explosions and audio notifications. The music sounds a bit too synthesized to my ear though.

The interface is great; all important elements of the game are visible in a collapsible structure dubbed the Empire Tree. Learning how to use it effectively can take a little time, but it's a great feature once you get the hang of it. Most game functions are mappable to hotkeys like usual, and camera control is quite standard fare, except for the most important feature: zoom.

Anyone who's played Supreme Commander knows what limitless zooming is about, and I gotta say that it fits the game like a glove - the sense of scale is immense, and there's no need for a traditional minimap to clutter the interface. Just zoom out to get the big picture, or zoom in to coordinate ships in an individual battle.

I could write a lot about gameplay, but this time i'll just stick to some of the common issues that are getting mentioned on forums and reviews. First, the real-time nature of the game.

SoaSE is not a fast-paced game. Actually, the available game speed options "Fast", "Normal" and "Slow" should probably be renamed "Plodding", "Dragging" and "Glacial." Seriously, did the designers think that players enjoy waiting, because that's exactly what you do most of the time - wait for enough resources to gather, ships to reach their destination, research to finish or battles to resolve. Also, typical of 4X games, you'll get to wait for an hour or two until you get to the interesting part, which is epic-scale strategy and battles. Unfortunately, there's no "turn button" (=time compression) to abuse to make things go faster.

In anticipation of hardcore RTS haters pouncing to the game's defense, let me just say that the ratio of actions and decisions made per time spent playing the game is severely low. Sure, there are a few times when you need to juggle several things at once, but for the most part it's a waiting game. The lack of in-game time controls further compounds this issue, though it's possible to issue commands while the game is paused.

SoaSE is not quite as deep as, say, Master of Orion 2, but there's enough depth to call it a credible 4X game. You'll send out scouts to gather intel, build fleets, fortify chokepoints and conduct offensives. Combined arms are important; rushing with ships of a single type doesn't work. (In the retail version some players reported about rushing with planet-bombing frigates, though in my experience it's quite easy to repel such rushes with adequate preparation, and this is a moot point anyways since siege frigates will be nerfed in the next patch.)

Another point of contention is the role of pirates. They do periodical raids against players that have the highest credit bounties on them. Again, personally I think it's a non-issue. If you boomed your economy, you should be able to pay the pirates to attack someone else. And, if you spent your credits to build up a fleet, space buccaneers are just XP fodder for your capital ships. The pirates can also be permanently vanquished by destroying their base, or you can simply select or create a map without pirates if you don't like them.

Ship battles aren't very interesting early on (quite normal in 4X games), but in the late game they can be downright epic. You can pull off some impressive maneuvers and ambushes by properly timing fleet deployment and use of special abilities, and chasing a damaged enemy capital ship through a gauntlet of hostile systems is great fun. The AI is careful to conserve its forces and doesn't commit its fleets against overwhelming odds. Actually, it tends to give ground even too easily if it's losing.

SoaSE scales well to different hardware, though the game does slow down quite a lot in large games or during large battles on mid-range systems. Interestingly, there's no hard upper limit to the number of stars or planets and fleet sizes are moddable, so you could theoretically have a mammoth game of dozens of stars and hundreds of planets with thousands of ships per player if your computer can handle it.

Last but not least, it's Stardock. No DRM, and a single license can be used to play LAN games. We can also expect continuous support and changes based on player feedback. Yay!

I wouldn't recommend Sins to everyone, but fans of 4x games and epic space battles might get a fix out of it. The game needs time controls and a bit more dynamic tactical battles.

[Crandaeolon]

I think I'll go back to Sword of the Stars

I thought SotS was a steaming pile of cow dung when I bought it blindly after it was released. I promptly archived the game in the "never to see light of day again" -pile (next to Master of Orion 3) and haven't touched it since. Have they improved it much?

Edit: O wait, the game that I bought blindly after release was MoO 3; I guess it burned me so badly that it forever added the cow dung stigma to new space games. Anyways, I did play the SotS demo and followed the release, but most accounts indicated that the game was quite flawed so I lost interest.

Edit2: Checked out Lost Empire: Immortals. Looks very promising indeed. One niggle I can think of is lack of player-controlled battles, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of doubt - for example, Dom3 works just fine without direct tactical control.

[CBR]

I thought SotS was a steaming pile of cow dung when I bought it blindly after it was released. I promptly archived the game in the "never to see light of day again" -pile (next to Master of Orion 3) and haven't touched it since. Have they improved it much?
Well I didnt think it was bad. The 3D universe alone gave me a nice warm feeling inside heh. But I doubt they could ever make enough changes to make you change your mind if you felt it was that bad :beam:

There is an expansion out. Bought it when it came out but havent tried it yet: new race, trade routes (that can be raided) and improvements to UI and some other minor stuff I think.

reponse to edit: ah ok then. Yeah I actually dont mind the no control in battles that much. Im used to that in PBEM games like VGA Planets or Stars! anyway.

CBR

[Navaros]

Tried out this one because it seems to be getting near unanimous praise from end-users as a good game.

I never played a 4X game before. So maybe "I'm just not getting it" in regards to the content of this post so feel free to take it with a grain of salt, but here's my impressions so far. Since I do not know anything about 4X games, I do not consider my opinions in this post to be an informed one.

So far I've only did the Basic Gameplay tutorial. Not liking the graphics. I've read comments such as that this game has "great graphics", but based on having played all of the Basic Gameplay tutorial, I certainly ain't seeing that to be true. Quite the opposite, it seems. A few months ago I was playing Star Wars: Empire at War, which was a game released in February 2006 that seems to have similar space combat dynamics, and it seems to me like that might have a lot better graphics than SoASE does. Even Empire at War didn't have very good graphics, but it still looks a lot better to me than those in SoASE. To me the SoASE graphics look circa 1997ish.

I definitely believe the official blurb as stated on the game description on metacritic "They must then test their mettle on a 3D tactical battlefield, where their ships will fight it out in stunning visual glory" is a lie. Maybe sucky graphics are a necessary part of 4X games for technical reasons, I wouldn't know. I do know the graphics are very hard on my eyes though, and don't look at all comparable to other standard PC games released in 2008.

At first I didn't get what happened in the "Basic Gameplay" tutorial. It told me to colonize some asteroids and I did. Then it said that "buildings will be covered in another tutorial" . But it didn't make it clear if that was supposed to be the end of the tutorial I was in right then or not. There was an enemy scout ship nearby that was invulnerable to damage after my fleet was firing on it for over 10 minutes. Seemed to be no way to progress in the tutorial. I started the tutorial a couple of more times and the same thing happened.

Finally on my third or fourth try going throught the tutorial, the tutorial messages kept progressing beyond the "buildings will be covered in another tutorial" message that it kept getting stuck at, which magically made the scout ship change from invulnerable to vulnerable, and I was able to finish the tutorial. The oddest part is that some tutorial messages have an "OK" button to click on to progress to the next message, and some don't. But there was no "OK" button on the "buildings will be covered in another tutorial" message it gets stuck on.

Didn't like that the cap ship seemed really small. Not epic at all, which is what I was expecting after reading it's a cap ship-based game. I don't see how playing the game would get me excited about my cap ships and cap ship battles, seeing as they are so puny. By extension, I don't see why combat in general would be fun since the other ships are even way more puny than the puny cap ships are.

I also didn't like that there didn't seem to be any way to increase the text size of the interface.

The sound was disappointing me too. I found the trademark Star Wars laser blip sounds in Empire at War to be much more satisfying. Hearing SoASE's muted machinegun type sounds during combat is very unfulfilling hard on my ears after having played Empire at War.

I tried playing the next tutorial a bit, the buildings one, but I got really bored with all the technical jargon and dry activities it was describing for me to do, and then exited out of the game. I was getting the impression like this might be at it's core moreso of a spreadsheet number-crunching kind of thing rather than a gameplay-based game. Which might be what is expected of a 4X game, I wouldn't know.

[Crandaeolon]

It's the rarity, Nav. The last truly good game in the 4X space epic genre was Master of Orion 2, released in 1996. MoO 3 bombed in a display of true shock and awe (this is probably the main reason why high-profile 4X games are such a rarity) and most other offerings in the genre are missing something. Space Empires (V) is probably the best of the bunch, but it misses flavor and polish. The GalCiv games are Civs in space - no tactical battles. Sword of the Stars on the other hand is all about battles; empire-building is nonexistent.

SoaSE comes to a starved genre at a time when it has no real competition. People tend to overlook flaws more easily in such a situation. And honestly, SoaSE has potential and the developers seem to listen to feedback. Something good may come out of this yet. Personally, were I a professional reviewer, I'd probably mark up the score just because the genre is in dire need of rejuvenation.

Space battles in SoaSE look okay once you get to the middle stages of a game, which unfortunately takes a couple of hours. There's a lot to improve though; right now ships aren't maneuvering around much and weapons fire (beam weapons in particular) looks oddly synchronised and too precise.

BTW, if you decide to play a proper game do yourself a favor and pick Fast speed. The game is very slow-paced even by 4X standards.

[Crandaeolon]

Update: The game DOES have time compression (up to 8x faster), it's just buried under a billion keybinds and not mentioned in the manual. Man, do I feel stupid. :stupido2: Should have checked the binds more thoroughly.

Gamespy awarded SoaSE 4.5 stars. Sounds a bit high to me, there's still stuff to fix. After a few updates it should be closer to the truth.

[CBR]

Hm did that come with 1.02? When I updated just now I suddenly noticed it under keybinds.


CBR

[frogbeastegg]

Anyone know if a demo is planned?

[Martok]

Anyone know if a demo is planned?
Ironclad & Stardock have said a demo should be out in about a month or so.

I'm waiting for the demo as well, as I want to see how I do with keeping up with the game's pace (what with me being a slow-poke TBS player and all).

[frogbeastegg]

That long? Gah! That goes very nicely with the complete lack of a European release :glares at disinterested publishers:

I brought it. It's downloading now. I had a voucher for Stardock central, and it's been ages since I got a new PC game. The last strategy title to appeal to me was Civ 4's Beyond the Sword. We'll see.

[Crandaeolon]

Hm did that come with 1.02?

Hmm, you may be right. But time control is such an essential feature in this kind of game that it should definitely be included at release.


I want to see how I do with keeping up with the game's pace (what with me being a slow-poke TBS player and all).

You probably won't need to worry about the pace, it's quite a sedate game and orders can be given while paused in SP games. After a couple of learning games you'll likely want to speed things up rather than slow them down. ~;p

Anyone up for a MP game? My ICO playername is the same as on these forums, though it might be easier to set up a time - a typical small MP game (single star system, less than 20 planets) takes about an hour or two, and larger games are multiple hour affairs.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

I am somehow considering buying it...

The part that got me a bit worried is the balance between strategy and tactic elements.

Just like I never though that a MP campaign in TW would be a good idea (strategic unbalance would destroy the interest of battles), I don't know if the concept is going to fly at all in Sins of Solar Empire.

I guess I got to try to figure it out :dizzy2:

Louis,

[Crandaeolon]

The part that got me a bit worried is the balance between strategy and tactic elements.

The balace between economy booming and army building seems OK due to the pirate faction present in most games. If you've neglected fleet building but built a strong economy, you can put a bounty on a player that's attacking you to get the pirates to distract them.

Also, proper force composition, targeting and ability use lets you win even against a somewhat larger force (it takes a bit of micro of course.) The Advent in particular are an interesting faction: they have a lot of shield-boosting ability synergies that can result in a very resilient force, but if you knock out or disable the right ships, they collapse quickly.

However, you're right that a strong material advantage is difficult to beat. Fortunately the strategic aspect isn't terribly complex to learn, nothing like in Master of Orion 2 for example.

[Martok]

That long? Gah! That goes very nicely with the complete lack of a European release :glares at disinterested publishers:
Yeah, there's a lot of very unhappy Europeans -- with the British and Germans probably screaming the loudest -- over on the game's forums right now. It looks like Stardock & Ironclad are hoping that with the acclaim Sins has been starting to receive (especially now that the Gamespy review is out), that someone over on the Continent finally pull theirs head out of their butt and signs a publishing/distributing deal with them.


I brought it. It's downloading now. I had a voucher for Stardock central, and it's been ages since I got a new PC game. The last strategy title to appeal to me was Civ 4's Beyond the Sword. We'll see.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it then. :2thumbsup:

People in the Sins message boards seem to enjoy the game overall, but it's still hard to get a clear impression as what they really think of it. In addition, there are some pretty heated debates/arguments going on over certain parts of the game (is feature A overpowered, is feature B unbalancing, etc.), which further muddies things.

So given all that, I'm particularly interested in what you fellow Orgahs have to say -- I've long come to respect people's opinions here more than elsewhere as a rule. :yes: CBR and Crandaeolon's comments make me cautiously optimistic, but I'm still on the fence right now. I'm halfway tempted to buy Sins soley to support Stardock& Ironclad's policy of no copy protection policy, but ideally I'd like to buy it because the game's actually worth playing as well. :smash:




You probably won't need to worry about the pace, it's quite a sedate game and orders can be given while paused in SP games. After a couple of learning games you'll likely want to speed things up rather than slow them down. ~;p
Yeah, that's what most people have been saying, which is definitely good to know. :bow:

I still think I'll probably have to wait for the demo to find out for myself, though. Trust me when I say that you have no idea as to just how long I can take to play strategy games -- my pace would probably be called plodding at best! :whip:

[Xiahou]

How long does a single-player run through take? I'm very interested in this game, but I don't know if I can take on another big time-sync when I have so many of those games already. :sweatdrop:

However, if you can get thru a game in a few hours, that'd be perfect. :2thumbsup:

[Crandaeolon]

People in the Sins message boards seem to enjoy the game overall, but it's still hard to get a clear impression as what they really think of it. In addition, there are some pretty heated debates/arguments going on over certain parts of the game (is feature A overpowered, is feature B unbalancing, etc.), which further muddies things.

Heated debate is always good! It shows that people care. ~;)

Most of the discussion probably stems from inexperience. Siege frigate spam, for example, was counterable even before the 1.02 nerf. Granted, it can be a devastating blow against an unprepared opponent, and people cry nerf all the more easily since it's an obvious "spam" strategy. However, if you're prepared properly it will quickly backfire on the spammer.

I've played a few MP games and watched several replays, and many kinds of approaches seem to work. Even saw a culture victory once. This would seem to indicate that either the community is still too inexperienced to have a good opinion on balancing, or that the game is relatively balanced at the moment.

Some kind of method to prevent jumping more effectively is prolly the biggest issue at the moment. The devs are looking into it, and a patch is on its way.


How long does a single-player run through take?

Depends. Small map (1 star, a dozen planets) vs 1 player, less than half an hour. Huge map with several star systems and 10 players... lots and lots and lots of time. Tens of hours. (I wouldn't recommend that, though; the game is currently broken on very large maps. You'll run out of stuff to do, and the fleet cap doesn't scale with scenario size.)

IMO the best scenarios in singleplayer are medium size, 1-3 stars and around 30-40 planets with 5-6 players. These take maybe 6-7 hours, but after the 1.02 patch you can compress time to make it go faster.

[Xiahou]

Heated debate is always good! It shows that people care. ~;)

Most of the discussion probably stems from inexperience. Siege frigate spam, for example, was counterable even before the 1.02 nerf. Granted, it can be a devastating blow against an unprepared opponent, and people cry nerf all the more easily since it's an obvious "spam" strategy. However, if you're prepared properly it will quickly backfire on the spammer.
That's always a concern for me- that concerned developers might actually listen too well. Just because people are clamoring that something is unbalanced, doesn't necessarily make it so. Hopefully they'll be very careful about balance issues.

Otherwise, this looks like a good game- Ill probably be buying it. :yes:

[frogbeastegg]

This is the first RTS I've purchased since that Star Wars edition of Age of Empires II. There have been a few demos I've dabbled with, none which impressed me sufficiently to make me buy the game in question. I used to play a lot of RTS games when I was younger; STW changed that. By the time STW hit the shelves the demo had already made the RTS seem like simplistic twitch-based gibberish to me. I'm saying this because I'm very out of touch with the genre and so don't know how Sins sits within it. Sins is the first RTS to sound like it might be good in a long, long time. Stardock's involvement is partly responsible for that; I've been nothing but pleased with GalCiv 2 since the day I put my doubts aside and brought the posh tin version from my local game shop.

NB: I play SP. Only SP. Never MP. Never will. AI is important to me. MP balance and all that is not. I know the same is not true for a lot of people here, thus your mileage may vary etc.

I've played the 4 tutorials, and initial impressions are mostly good, if conservative.

With all the options turned up to maximum it looks pretty enough and rattles along at a glassy smooth frame rate. Speaking of options, there do appear to be plenty of them. A favourite of mine is lurking under the cinematic category - the game allows you to disable the opening splash screens! Right from the beginning! With no config file editing! Add this to the lack of a CD check on launching the game, and it's a comfortable experience to boot the game.

Anyone who has this game owes it to themselves to play with the zoom options. Go riiiiight out and there's a galaxy on your screen, go as close up as you can and there's hundreds of tiny little ships buzzing about in traffic lanes above your planet's surface. I do find the zoom levels a bit too pre-described for my taste. It's not progressive, it's in stages, and I couldn't always get the distance I wanted.

The tutorial hints at quite a lot to do. Admittedly most of the RTS games I've played appear to have plenty of options. It's the fact they don't truly which causes me to dislike the genre. Once you figure out which resource gatherers to build where and when, what to research and what uber army to put together before stomping the map, that's it, job done and victory assured. Sure you can build chariots instead of horse archers, but where's the real difference?

It does have a good feel to it. The speed was fine, not too fast and not too slow. I expect this opinion will change when I play a proper game; the tutorial is very scripted. The options are ... centred, let's say. It doesn't look like I'll be zooming around like a pinball between structures to build and research. Hurrah. Nor will I be sat around with a building open waiting for the last couple of seconds of research to finish so I can queue up some new units, due to the ability to queue units the moment research starts. That's a nice idea.

Battles are visually boring. The ships sit still and shoot thin red lines at each other. I'd expected some manoeuvring, different types of weapons firing. Oh well. Substance over style, if I can't have both. Fingers crossed.

I haven't seen xbox 360 style achievements in a PC game before. Sins has a large collection of them, viewable via the main menu. They look quite good for encouraging players to try out many different angles of the game, and some of them are quite humorous.

Based on my experiences with GalCiv2, and from what’s happened so far, I’m hopeful that Sins will receive proper support. The support for GalCiv2 is the best I’ve encountered in the PC industry.

The brief dabble has left me wishing my boxed copy had arrived so I could browse the manual. I’m not a fan of reading manuals on my PC.

[Xiahou]

The brief dabble has left me wishing my boxed copy had arrived so I could browse the manual. I’m not a fan of reading manuals on my PC.Find someone with a laser printer, buy them a cheap ream of paper and have them print it. :beam:

Seriously though, thanks for the review. Guess I'm gonna go buy this- the question is do I just buy the game or get the 10 Totalgaming tokens and use 6 of them to buy it. Since it nets me a slight discount and will leave tokens enough for the GalCiv2 expansion (and still 1 left over), I'll probably go that route. :smash:

I can't say too much good about Stardock and I'm happy to support them. :2thumbsup:

[Crandaeolon]

I do find the zoom levels a bit too pre-described for my taste. It's not progressive, it's in stages, and I couldn't always get the distance I wanted.

Hold SHIFT to get a finer-grained zoom.


Admittedly most of the RTS games I've played appear to have plenty of options. It's the fact they don't truly which causes me to dislike the genre.

The real-time nature of RTS games as well as the possibility of gaining a decisive material advantage by efficient building tend to blind people to the available options. For example, Starcraft's combat is actually technically more complex than that of Total War games, with more rock-paper-scissors relationships, more units to manage at once and more meaningful micromanagement. But it doesn't matter much if your opponent turtles, techs up, and lets you build a huge force of Hydralisks.

The correct response against a teching-up turtler is to rush them. This is also the case in Sins, and the computer can do this against you as well. You'll need to balance teching up and force building to get a meaningful game. Fortunately in Sins, you can control the AI's playstyles to more closely match your own.


Battles are visually boring. The ships sit still and shoot thin red lines at each other. I'd expected some manoeuvring, different types of weapons firing.

Real battles are better than the very limited stuff in the tutorials, though the criticism is definitely justified.

[Mikeus Caesar]

After reading the positive reviews and reading this thread, i'm definitely going to get this once i have the money. Unfortunately, i won't be able to play it until the second week of March, as my computer still hasn't arrived...

I want this game so bad.

[frogbeastegg]

Hold SHIFT to get a finer-grained zoom.
Thanks. I'd done a quick browse of the hotkey screen and completely missed that one.


The real-time nature of RTS games as well as the possibility of gaining a decisive material advantage by efficient building tend to blind people to the available options. For example, Starcraft's combat is actually technically more complex than that of Total War games, with more rock-paper-scissors relationships, more units to manage at once and more meaningful micromanagement. But it doesn't matter much if your opponent turtles, techs up, and lets you build a huge force of Hydralisks.
In my experience it's all limited by the AI. Against humans I can see how it would be more varied, however I don't do MP.

I started a proper game last night, a 1v1 on a small map with no pirates. I suppose I'm playing on easy; I didn't see an option for difficulty anywhere. I hope I'm playing on easy, because when I saved and quit after half an hour I was ahead of or tied with the AI in every respect and I have no idea what I'm doing in the game.

Leaving the difficulty aside, I liked my 30 minutes. The default pace is nice and slow, I only needed to pause so I had time to hunt through the tooltips and find the best selection. Had a few tiny battles, colonised two asteroid planets, did a bit of research, built a lot of space stations and gun platforms, and dithered about being confused.

This game looks well suited to one of those versus maps with a resource rich choke point in the middle. I'll have to give the map maker a whirl.

[Crandaeolon]

I suppose I'm playing on easy; I didn't see an option for difficulty anywhere. I hope I'm playing on easy, because when I saved and quit after half an hour I was ahead of or tied with the AI in every respect and I have no idea what I'm doing in the game.

The default difficulty is normal. It's adjustable at the screen where you pick your race, team and so forth - it's the last icon in the row.

AI personality also affects difficulty (it's next to the difficulty icon.) Defensive and Researcher are probably easiest, Economist is middle ground and Aggressive is hardest for most, I believe.


This game looks well suited to one of those versus maps with a resource rich choke point in the middle. I'll have to give the map maker a whirl.

Ah, yes. I meant to mention about that, but forgot. Anyways, be careful when using the map maker - at least for me it tended to generate maps with agonizingly long phase lanes. Better keep the distances relatively short at first.


I don't do MP.

Sins MP is quite fun, and the community is way more courteous and mature than usually. Actually, a lot of it reminds me of the TW community when I used to play MTW.

[frogbeastegg]

Played another 1/4 of an hour. Things are heating up. :gring:

I researched the techs which allowed me to colonise ice and lava planets, and snagged the two planets I'd found of that type. A bit more military research gained me missile frigates, so I expanded my light frigate forces to include them.The usual building up of economy and whathaveyou continued. Got lots of cash, metal and crystal coming in thanks to my building up, and so spending was a smooth process.

Scout ships have an auto-explore option. Having discovered this I took advantage, and bing, I found the enemy ... and the enemy ... and the enemy ... and the enemy holding a single choke point which controls access into and out of my half of the map. That choke point must be wrested from the AI ASAP! To this end I built a second capital ship to head the fleet in the sector which links to the choke point. Points of interest: 1. I can't tell what faction the AI are playing as. 2. Their faction colour is a light green shade which is very difficult to differentiate from the forest green I chose.

A minute or two later a massive AI fleet warps in. After a brief but messy fight the survivors retreated. Ha ha! Time for a swift counter strike. My fleet jumped, reinforced my some posh new anti-fighter frigates. One messy fracas later and I couldn't tell who was winning due to the AI's foul tactic of choosing a colour which is much too similar to my own. I suspected I was losing (there were a lot of enemy ships in the sector when I arrived) and enemy ships had warped in to the barely defended sector I'd launched the attack from. This time it was my turn to retreat.

If I can take and hold that choke point I'll be able to control half the map without danger of attack excedpt in that one predictable location. If I can't then the AI will be able to strike at 3 of my sectors directly, and the other 2 by jumping straight through the outlying sectors. The gun turret platforms don't seem to do much. I do have other fleets; I'm not fully confident in them.

The plan is for a spurt of militarisation. I'll expand my force limit and increase the size of my key fleets. Some research has been done into military tech; I'll do more. Then I'll go back to that choke point and kick the mysterious enemy out.



The default difficulty is normal. It's adjustable at the screen where you pick your race, team and so forth - it's the last icon in the row.
:wants her chunky paper manual now!: I guess this is normal then. Disappointing - my struggles all stem from my being clueless about how to play. With hindsight I can see how this map would have been far easier, and I'm not struggling for survivial now. Larger maps, higher difficulties and more factions in play could make a difference?


Sins MP is quite fun, and the community is way more courteous and mature than usually.
MP is incompatible with the way I play PC games, and it's not what I really want from them either ~:)


I'm going to break my eyes with the PDf manual.

[Crandaeolon]

1. I can't tell what faction the AI are playing as.

Open diplomacy screen, look at the portraits. Human (males) are TEC, chicks with weird eyes are Advent and uglies are Vasari.


2. Their faction colour is a light green shade which is very difficult to differentiate from the forest green I chose.

Try turning on Team Colors option at the Interface tab; it makes you green, allies blue and enemies red.


The gun turret platforms don't seem to do much.

This is a question of some debate, the static defenses are somewhat weak by design to discourage turtling. They'll stop small raiding parties and pirates, but not a determined force.


Larger maps, higher difficulties and more factions in play could make a difference?

Yeah, they do. Try playing around with AI personalities too.

EDIT: Found a helpful chart about damage types. I'd been looking for this info for a loooong time, so I thought I should share it ~:p


SHIP CLASS...........ARMOR TYPE..........DAMAGE TYPE
Scout................Light...............Antilight
Light Frigate........Medium..............Antiheavy
LRM Frigate..........Light...............Antimedium
Flak Frigate.........Heavy...............Antiverylight
Siege Frigate........Light...............Antiheavy
Trade Ship...........Light...............N/A
Utility Frigate......Heavy...............Antiheavy
Carrier..............Heavy...............N/A
Heavy Cruiser........VeryHeavy...........Composite
Capital Ship.........Capital.............Capital
Structures...........VeryHeavy...........Antimedium (for turrets)
Bomber...............Light...............Antiveryheavy
Fighter..............Verylight...........Antilight


Damage percent bonus by damage type vs. armor type

DAMAGE TYPE......VS.....CAPITAL...VERYLIGHT...LIGHT...MEDIUM...HEAVY...VERYHEAVY
Antiverylight...........25%.......150%........100%....25%......25%.....25%
Antilight...............25%.......100%........200%....25%......25%.....25%
Antimedium..............75%.......100%........100%....150%.....75%.....75%
Antiheavy...............50%.......100%........75%.....100%.....125%....50%
Antiveryheavy...........75%.......50%.........50%.....50%......50%.....100%
Composite...............75%.......100%........150%....100%.....125%....125%
Capital.................100%......25%.........75%.....100%.....100%....100%
Capital Ability.........75%.......100%........100%....100%.....100%....100%

Chance to hit by damage type
DAMAGE TYPE.........BOMBER....INTERCEPTOR
Antiverylight.......85%.......70%
Antilight...........75%.......65%
Antimedium..........10%.......10%
Antiheavy...........10%.......10%
Antiveryheavy.......20%.......10%
Composite...........10%.......10%
Capital.............10%.......10%
Capital Ability.....100%......100%


The only exception so far is Advent's long range attack frigate (Illuminator?), it does "anticapital" damage.

[Papewaio]

This game looks good.

Seems to be some base damage synergies.

So a mix of Heavy Cruisers and Capital ships gives you a 100%+ damage in all categories.

OR A carrier fleet (bombers and interceptors methinks) supported by LRM Frigates will take on anything sub-capital with glee. Add a Heavy Cruiser and you have all bases covered.

Seems the composite damage makes the HC the most damaging (much like STW ~;) )

So I assume other fleet compositions come to the fore with other items taken into account (cost of deployement, you might only do 25% damage but if you field enough of them it makes up for that price).

[Crandaeolon]

RPS relations in the game work like this (and I'm approximating here, there are lots of "soft" and tactical counters too):

Light frigates are good vs support vessels (carriers, utility and flak frigates)
Long-range frigates are good vs light frigates (Advent is a special case, see below)
Fighters are good vs long-range frigates, bombers and siege vessels
Flak frigates are good vs fighters, long-range frigates and siege vessels
Siege frigates kill planets (duh)
Bombers are good vs heavy cruisers and capital ships
Heavy cruisers are good vs pretty much everything
Capital ships are good vs pretty much everything
Utility frigates are good vs heavy cruisers and capital ships (primary weakness of heavies is lack of numbers; utility vessels with various debilitating abilities are more effective against smaller numbers)

Advent is a special case, since it doesn't really have long-range frigates at all. The equivalent ship deals anticapital damage, which is effective against everything. Advent's Achilles heel is their reliance on shields and antimatter, which means that disruption ships are particularly useful against Advent.

I hope I'm not spoiling too much... ~;)

And yes, research and deployment costs muddle the waters even more. The factions research ships in a different order and generally stress different aspects of the fleet.

[Veho Nex]

Picked it up, now this game is like Space empires but not as confusing in your first match, (me i never play tutorial), but I was incredibly confused and note that playing on hardest insures your doom with in the first hour, no matter how powerful you think your armada is.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Since I'll be travelling around a bit, I have not bothered to pick it up yet, but I seriously consider it.

I'd like to see a demo, but none is available, correct?

Also, I read that the min requirement for video card is Radeon 9600 and recommended is Radeon X1600.

I got a Radeon X800SE: how does that compare? Is it good enough?

I meet other requirement, so let's hope I meet that one :sweatdrop:

Louis,

[Crandaeolon]

I think Ironclad is working on a demo, might be out in a month or so.

The game is mostly CPU intensive, i think that display card will be fine.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Thanks,

Then, I'll get it when I'll be back from central europe.

Louis,

[sapi]

I found SoaSE quite an interesting game, especially since I haven't really played and 4x games before.

The general idea works great, however it does have a few problems, the main one being that unit spam works far too well :grin2:

The AI, at least on normal, doesn't push things nearly hard enough, so you have plenty of time to build, say, two or three dozen light carriers. Once you've got those, jumping into a system will trigger a mass retreat on the part of the AI, as ~25 bombers can take out most capital ships in two or three passes, and nothing can really kill them. Of course, since the AI is running, it isn't targeting the carriers, allowing free reinforcement :laugh4:

[Martok]

Yeah, there's been a fair number of complaints that the AI retreats far too easily & often, particularly when it's defending. Most people there agree it's one thing to withdraw an invasion fleet if you discover the defenders are stronger than you initially estimated, but it's quite another to abandon your planet(s) just because the attacker's fleet is slightly stronger than yours. ~:rolleyes:

Ironclad's said they were going to take a look at the problem, so hopefully they can stiffen the AI's spine a little.

[sapi]

Yeah, that'd be nice if they could :grin2:

The main problem I have with the AI now isn't really that it decides to retreat so often; it's that it decides to retreat its capital ships when under attack from faster craft. It really needs to be able to recognise when it can't retreat (because it will lose those ships before they jump anyway), and just stay to fight as long as it can :yes:

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Ok, I got the game, did the tutorial, and started a SP game...

3 hours later, I can at least say that it keeps entertained for 3 hours and that time fly. I was a bit lost at start about what to do, it took me quite some times before figuring out to make a capital ship (I am that noob) or how to find some specific ship in my fleet.

I am surprised noone post here anymore: is the charm of this game fading after a while? So far, it does look good, and fun, and has lot of potential!

Louis,

[Crandaeolon]

Hey Louis,

I'm still playing, mostly MP like always. If you've got the time (a couple hours per game), mid-large free-for-alls can be quite fun affairs with nice Machiavellian plotting, lying and backstabbing. However, Sins needs some additional tweaking to be a viable competitive game for 1vs1 or small-scale fixed teams games.

You'll get over the initial confusion soon enough, fortunately Sins is a pretty simple game at its core.

Some starting tips:

- Buy some crystal at black market right away, about 200 units is good
- Build a couple of scouts and set them to auto-explore
- Get a capship ASAP (3 hours is maybe a tad long... ~;) )
- It'll probably be a long time before you can afford another capital ship. Consider scuttling the capship factory once your first cap is built. This gives you back some resources and frees up logistics slots.

- Remember to build extractors (I _still_ sometimes forget to build those damn things...)

- Asteroids are good first colonies, since they are lightly defended and their underdevelopment penalty can be paid off with just one upgrade.

- Expanding and teching up is expensive. On very small maps it's usually better to focus on fleet production after snagging that initial asteroid.

- Neutral extractors (extractors without a colonizable planet in the same gravity well) can be a very nice economy boost; all they cost is a bit of antimatter to capture. They're particularly useful to Vasari, since Vasari scouts can capture them as opposed to colony ships for other races.

- For chokepoint defense, a couple of repair stations and a few turrets should be able to repel early pirate raids easily and even stall a larger force for a surprisingly long time.

I hope to see you online sometime!

[Martok]

I am surprised noone post here anymore: is the charm of this game fading after a while? So far, it does look good, and fun, and has lot of potential!

Louis,
I suspect the more likely answer is that everyone's too busy playing the game to post. ~D

Now if only they would come out with that demo so I can try it out....

[frogbeastegg]

Not had chance to play since my last post ~:(

My boxed copy has arrived. The paper manual is identical to the PDF included with the download; it's far easier to reference and I feel I have a better grip of what the game's about now I've browsed through it.

My feeling at present is that GalCiv2 + Sins = pure awesome on a CD. Sins fills GalCiv2's main lack: combat. GalCiv2 fills Sins obvious lacks: diplomacy and worthwhile non-conquest victories.

[frogbeastegg]

Gametrailers.com have put up a video review (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/31207.html?type=wmv). 8 minutes of video explain how the game works better than a ream of text.

[Crandaeolon]

Good review, and certainly gets the gist across better than text.

One thing I've noticed after getting more accustomed to the game is that it appears a lot more complex and intimidating at first glance than it actually is. Most of the reviews seem to echo that Sins is a deep game with a relatively steep learning curve, but after a bit more playing you'll notice that some of the depth is only superficial - the tech tree and unit variety, for example, are comparable to traditional RTS games, including Starcraft. It's the scope and pace that distinguish Sins from the rest.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Finished my first game, really nothing to be proud of, it took me 6 hours to win a 14 planets map :embarassed: :juggle2: , I guess I got scared by a massive AI raid in mid game (I was TEC, AI was Vasari with a lot of bombers / fighters), so I end up turtling in, making flaks and cruisers. Eventually, when I estimated I was good to go, AI was much easier than expected. End game was pretty much about cornering AI.
I probably could have done it in half the time.

I really like the very good interface that make it easy to give orders and manage an empire. The scope and pace of the game is also intereting, I feel like trying huge games, small games, etc... With different set up and strategy in mind. I don't know if replayability is really there, and if it is really interesting to play a slow research, huge maps, but hey, I'll give it a try!
I somehow wonder how game performance will scale with map size...
As far as pace is concerned, there is always something to do, even on a 14 planets system for 6 hours :laugh4: . I don't know how far down I can go in microing; my main issue in battle was that really, I had no idea what the other ships were doing, or were good against, so I gave up on targetting, and instead was trying to avoid problems. Once I'll know the ships and ability, it might prove fun!

Cranda, let me figure out which ships are what, and I'll join the lobby ~;)

Louis,

[Crandaeolon]

Huh, forum ate my post and left only the last line. Oh well.

Anyways, ships and technologies are sometimes indeed a pain to identify. TEC have nice, functional names but the other two factions are somewhat arcane. The various techs also have silly pseudo-scifi names instead of simple labels.

BTW, the AI does not "cheat" at any level - increasing difficulty only adds more tricks to its repertoire. Thus, Hard AI is the way to go.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Well, 2nd game, same scenario (random small map, 14 planets), end up with advent against advent; victory in 3h40. I think I can go under 3h, spending less on research, making more ships... I research too much useless stuff. Or usefull stuff on large maps, but it's useless on those short scenario.
Less research, more agressivity: I'll make it under 3 hours :whip: .

Advent against advent was odd, since I failed to recognize ships I had and built the worng counter ships... Building defenders against purgers helps little :wall: ; the good news is that purgers help little, and that AI picked carrier cruiser to play with...
The Advent AI I played against failed to tech up enough and was a bit shy.

Still it was a good game. Resources balancing was fun; way too much cash (my fleet was quite small) and crystal, and starved on ore (I had arctic planets...). With more balanced resources, it would have gone faster...

Neat game overall!

[Crandaeolon]

Advent are pretty slow to get going, their strength is in the late game. Still, you should be able to cut that time to an hour or so, and halve that again to get the time that typical 1vs1 games take to figure out a clear winner. (In MP, opponents usually surrender at that point so you don't need to mop up.)

On small maps it's usually not worth it to research civic stuff at all, except maybe trade ports for TEC and even that puts you on the defensive. Vasari are probably the best faction for very small games because their scouts can capture neutral extractors and their "mainstay" combat ship (Assailant) is available very early.

edit: scratch that "hour or so." I played a similar game, Advent vs 1 hard AI, random small map, and finished it in 1h 50 mins. I made a couple of mistakes (had to defend against a pirate raid with main fleet, missed a colonizer which re-colonized already destroyed worlds), but in any case it'll be damned hard to get a victory within an hour. Hopefully, the oncoming 1.03 patch will make it easier to mop up vs the AI.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Well, the last 1v1 on a small map was Vasari, 2hours, and I lost lot of time because I let one enemy settler wander around, and I had to hunt it before it rebuilt too many planets...
I guess I shall keep ennemy / neutral planet on closer watch ~:)
Sieging was a bit long, I shall have made more siege craft, well I would have needed to research it to start with :dizzy2:

The only bad news about that Vasari games is that I barely scratched the Vasari tech trees, so I got very little idea what they really look like!

I probably got to play them again for educational value :dizzy2: , otherwise, MP, here I come!
Mopping up vs AI is indeed a bit long, AI shall learn to surrender, chess AI can do it, why not Sins AI?

Louis,

[Crandaeolon]

I managed 58 minutes with Advent, 51 mins with TEC and 40 mins with Vasari. Not gonna play vs 1 AI again before they tweak it, it's far too timid now even on Aggressive/Hard. Not to mention that long range frigate rushing (or attack cruiser rushing) always beats the AI, since it tends to build lots of light frigates.

The 1.03 patch is due late this week or early next week, IIRC. Improved AI, AI surrender (yay!), tweaks to market system, long range frigates nerfed and more startup options.

Vasari are the most powerful faction in sheer military potential, with the most devastating weaponry in the game (phase missiles), best late game strikecraft, strong ship hulls and great support cruisers (Subverters.) Vasari also have the best mobility with Marauder capitals and Phase Gates. Economy-wise they're the weakest and have the most expensive ships to boot, so it's particularly important to conserve ships as Vasari. The "late game" tech Returning Armada is currently hideously overpowered (it can be rushed in 20-30 minutes), but that should be fixed in 1.03.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

I have no doubt that you can manage a lot better than I do, and I can easily see how I do not optimize my expenses and fleet movement to get to that kind of time-to-beat-AI. I probably could have done 1h30 as a noob, 40 min is an order of magnitude more impressive, congrat on that!
I started a large solo game, mainly to see the diplomacy game, and also to figure out if my computer can handle very large game (3 stars, 8 players).
Good news is that even a 3 years old puter can handle large game like that, and I have played 2 hours into it, so I am not worried that the world becoming much busier is going to have an impact.
That game is really low spec friendly!
On the bad side, I don't think it gets more difficult with larger game, maybe just longer. Diplomacy is not the game strongest point...

I somehow hope that MP is a bit more than second guessing what the opponent has rushed ~:) or maybe I'll turn to somehow slower larger game.

Speaking about that, Sins lobby was kind of unimpressive, either you try to join a game OR you talk? :dizzy2: :no: FFers know that gaming is a chatting business ~;)
I liked to see many untagged people, it feels like the beginning of the world ~;)

Louis,

[scottishranger]

Anybody wants to play, my name is Trajan.

[Crandaeolon]

40 min is an order of magnitude more impressive, congrat on that!

Memorizing a build order and exploiting AI weaknesses is not impressive, quite the opposite - an indication of too much time to waste. ~;) The random nature of, uh, _random_ maps also makes luck a pretty large factor.

1.03 unfortunately doesn't improve diplomacy AFAIK, but the AI does get a boost, thank goodness. Diplomacy improvements are coming in 1.04.


I somehow hope that MP is a bit more than second guessing what the opponent has rushed

No need to second guess when you can scout. ~;) The RPS system in Sins is not very strong, but after LRMs and Assailants get toned down in 1.03 it should be enough to promote diverse fleets.

MP is basically about the old stalwarts of getting intel, countering, positioning and coordination. Good microing helps too, but fortunately the pace is rather forgiving so you won't need the reflexes of a cockroach. Below MTW level even.

The lobby is indeed horrible in its current state, but 1.03 should already improve it somewhat.


Anybody wants to play, my name is Trajan.

Sure, let's catch a game sometime. My playername on ICO is the same as on these forums, timezone GMT +2.

Louis, I think I figured out your playername. ~;)

[Crandaeolon]

1.03 is out! Looking good, except Siege Frigates got some unneeded nerfage.

Also, be aware that this patch invalidates earlier save games and replays.

Full changelog:

Greetings! Ironclad has been hard at work on an update to Sins based on player feedback. We've got lots of new features in this build that we hope you find compelling.

Version 1.03 will be released later this week. We can assure you that we are intensively play testing this new update over. And over. And over. Because we love you guys, we are going that extra mile in making sure the update is just right by playing it all day and all night sometimes. That's the kind of sacrifice we are willing to make just for you!

Here is the full list of changes:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sins of a Solar Empire v1.03 Changelist
---------------------------------------------------------------------------


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gameplay / Balance:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-New Game Options Screen:
-Locked/Unlocked Teams
-Fleet Size
-Pirates or No Pirates (arrrr!)
-Income Rate Speed
-Build Speed
-Ship Speed
-Research Speed
-Culture Speed

***REMINDER***
-In singleplayer you can accelerate / deccelerate time by pressing the +/- buttons respectively. I'm mentionning it again because this request is coming up a lot even though it was implemented in the v1.02 patch.

-New Market System:
Highlights:
-Random fluctuations in addition to user influence on price.
-Can cause crash or boom by selling/buying too much.
-Known exploits removed.
-Can now buy and sell resources on the market in large increments again.

-Improved Group Phase Jumping for large groups of ships. The group will only wait for 90% of the value of the ships to be ready. The stragglers will follow shortly after. Typically, its only a couple ships that cause the whole operation to stall so this should eliminate the majority of problems.

-Research subjects queued in different fields can now upgrade in parallel.
-Overseer's Nanite Reactive Armor ability can now properly stack heals (but not the armor and max HP bonus).
-Kostura Cannon now only disables enemy units and structures at the target planet as originally intended.
-Autocast for many disabling abilities improved.
-Disciple's Transfer Antimatter no longer targets other Disciples when autocasting.
-Transfer Antimatter can no longer target entities with full antimatter.
-Can't attack unbuilt structures anymore.
-You can now change game options when loading save games.
-Defeated players can no longer give or be given resources in unlocked teams games.
-Defeated players can no longer place bounties in unlocked teams games.
-Fixed unintended halving of galaxy culture coverage in the game statistics. Pop Idol achievement is now actually achievable.
-No pirate maps removed due to new game option to remove pirates.
-Large and Huge random maps split into single and multi star system variants.

-Mission durations increased by 10 mins.
-Mission failure penalties to happiness reduced.
-Rebalanced happiness losses for killing various items (Killing enemy scouts no longer causes a loss of happiness).
-Phase Jump Inhibitors:
-cost reduced slightly.
-slot cost reduced from 3 to 2.
-jump charge rate penalty increase from -250% to -700%.
-Passive allegiance shift rates increased by 100%.
-Allegiance shift rates from culture increased 25%.
-Illuminator, Javelis, Assailant:
-Increased credit cost by approx 10%.
-Increased resource cost by approx 20%.
-Increased range by approx 30%.
-Illuminator and Assailant survivability tuned to be proportional to Javelis's on a per supply basis.
-Siege Frigates:
-Survivability reduced by ~20%.
-Build cost increased by ~25%.
-Supply cost increased from 12 to 15.
-Development Mandate research subject's max level reduced from 2 to 1.
-Tier 1 research times increased approx 40%
-Tier 2 research times increased approx 20%
-All other tiers research times increased 5%


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Graphics:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Fixed sometimes drastic frame rate drop when chat messages are displayed.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sound / Music:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Sins handles no soundcard now.
-Added sound option for varying music vol in battle.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
AI:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-AI now knows how to surrender (based on time elapsed, relative economy, relative fleet value, resource reserves, and allied strength). Also, an AI player will not surrender if he has a human ally.
-AI is now smarter about retreating and is willing to commit local suicide or accept local Phyrric victories if the global gain is higher and will also factor in local allied forces.
-Fixed various AI researching and building stall outs for the various trees (military in particular).
-Rewrote AI siege building and attack logic.
-Improved AI use of Black Market.
-Autocast for many disabling abilities improved.
-New AI Difficulty "Unfair" that gives the AI a tax income bonus and resource income bonus from resource asteroids (there is no other AI cheating in the game even at the Unfair difficulty level).
-Wide variety of AI upgrades.
-Improve AI taunting.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Networking / Multiplayer:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-AI will now take over for dropped players.
-You no longer have to kill all a dropped player's planets to win even when the AI takes over for him.

-Unified the in-game and ico chat system. They now share the same irc/wow like commands. Full autocomplete with tab/shift-tab. Autocomplete will attempt to either complete the name field or cycle through the available names.

<command> <name> <message>

Commands:

<none>: send to all
in-game: send to all human players in game.
ico: send to all players in current lobby

/w: whisper
in-game: if player is in game, uses the game chat system (will be recorded), otherwise go through ico.
ico: send directly to player (even if playing a game). tab autocomplete will cycle through all players in channel.

/a: send to all allies
in-game: send to all human allies in game
ico: n/a

/f: send to all ico-friends
in-game: send to all ico-friends, even if they are not in game
ico: send to all friends no matter where they are

/wa: whisper ally
in-game: same as whisper, but tab autocomplete will be constrained to only allies.
ico: n/a

/wf: whisper friend
in-game: same as whisper, but tab autocomplete will be constrained to only ico-friends.
ico: same as whisper, but tab autocomplete will be constrained to only ico-friends.

/r - doesn't take in a name for the second parameter, will send automatically to the last player who send a whisper
in-game same as ico

/wr - allows you to autocomplete with <tab> through all players who have recently sent a whisper.
in-game same as ico

-You can now send whispers to players with spaces in their names by using quotes. Autocomplete properly handles these names.

-Rewrite of ico friend status. all clients are now kept up to date on the current status of every friend at all times. This allows for a more friendly ui, the friend list is colored to show who is logged in/playing games. There are globbal events to notify the user of what friends are doing. This can be disabled like the channel notifications.

-Channel name list now saves the visual and selected state on any change, so it is now possible to select players on busy channels.
-There is now a setting for if the user wants to see "<x> has left/joined channel". checkbox in ico chat screen for controlling the setting.
-Players now leave their chat channels when playing games.
-Players rejoin their old chat channel when quitting a game.
-Quitting a game now brings you back to the lobby screen chat tab instead of the join or create game tab.
-Simplified game filtering.
-Hooked up the ability to change game options for ico games.
-Changed how the lobby screens get their game options so that it will come from the save files when needed.
-ico server now ignores case when searching for games.
-Deep checksumming is now employed before joining multiplayer games (to help avoid crashes and desyncs caused by modded data).


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
UserInterface / HUD:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Added culture flipping planet event.
-Made the use of 'strike craft' when refering to both fighters and bombers more consistent (often just fighters before).
-Various text color updates.
-Improved description of Development Mandate research.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Modding:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Can now mod in different textures without copying the entire texture directory.
-Fixed corrupt particle effects when loading mods up in-game.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Misc:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Various crash fixes.
-Game stats infocards now sort by value.
-Game stats now track the number of active units instead of built so that the graphs are more interesting.
-Game stats no longer tracks the number of units lost in combat as this was confusing with number of units killed and the information is now apparent from the number of active units stats.
-Scenario names are now localized, no longer use the filename, but instead use a string inside the file.
-Removed no pirate maps (not needed as its a game option now).
-Other very minor additions and changes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
End
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next stop is the demo version and then it's on to v1.04.

[frogbeastegg]

demo (http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/305055).

[Gregoshi]

demo (http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/305055).
Downloading now... Thanks for the info froggy. :thumbsup:

[Gregoshi]

Downloading now...

...and uninstalling it. :thumbsdown:

The demo wouldn't run - black screen immediately upon launch and could do nothing after that short of powering off the computer. My new firewall may have had a hand in it though. The mouse still worked though the pointer disappeared everywhere except around the border of the screen and the pointer turned to a hand as if there was a clickable link I couldn't see down above the system tray where the firewall popups appear. But no amount of clicking could get me any further. None of the usual keystrokes (CTL-ALT-DEL, ALT-TAB, ESC) helped either. Support forums for the game were no help. Don't have enough game time as it is to burn all that time messing with something that doesn't work.

Upon reflection, it probably was my firewall. On its current settings, it has all the traits of paranoia. I swear during the SoaSE install it was going to have a nervous breakdown. :laugh4: I was probably too quick on the trigger to uninstall the demo. Maybe I'll give it another shot once my firewall has a few therapy sessions under its belt. :dizzy2:

[Crandaeolon]

Yep, that's a software firewall acting up.

You can set the game's permissions beforehand with your firewall program or launch it first time in windowed mode by editing C:\documents and settings\<username>\Local Settings \Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting\user.setting (use notepad to set VideoIsWindowed to TRUE and set an appropriate resolution at VideoWindowedWidth & VideoWindowedHeight.)

That's on XP, by the way. The Vista path is different.

[Divinus Arma]

Just got this last week. I'm loving it. It's great.

[Marshal Murat]

I got it today, played through the tutorials to get a grasp of the mechanics.

Overall it's good, I'll say that. Alot better than Sword of the Stars, if not in another galaxy. This game took was SotS had, and made it better. Better interface, better transfer between planets, better. The only two problems that I have with the game are...

1. The zooming is a little difficult, since mine follows the mouse, and I've got an active mouse. I think there's something for that, but I can't seem to find it.

2. The warships, while interesting, don't look aesthetically pleasing. They don't look like warships or sci-fi, or anything. It looks like the developers took an industrial park, flipped it, cut it into bits, glued it together, and called it a warship.

Otherwise it is a very good game.

[Papewaio]

Another 3 weeks before it even gets released. I hope my pay review is stellar to afford this. :2thumbsup:

[Divinus Arma]

That seems odd to me Pape. No way to order it online or something?

It really is quite decent. Its basically a very advanced version of the very old "Overlord": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8b45jvTDRc&feature=related

I'm enjoying it but there are some gameplay flaws that I find frustrating. The major problem I have is with the enemy's ability to basically bypass any chokepoint that you have by simply phase jumping to another planet as rapidly as possible. When they have a large fleet, nearly every one of their ships will get through. At least until you have the phase jump inhibitor technology, which takes many hours of gameplay to reach. By then, you have AI players phase jumping all over your territory, making strategic fortifying worthless. Every planet will be on its own and you end up chasing the bastards all over your system. Pretty lame.

It looks pretty and I enjoy following a fighter around as it buzzes bigger ships engaged in huge battles (which are usually just frigates, cruisers, and capital ship stopped in mid-space with no motion blasting away at whatever). They should have required movement on the part of at least frigates to keep it interesting. You end up with 10-20 frigates stationary just blasting away at another frozen group of 10-20 frigates. Thank God for the fighters or I would be bored to death.

[Crandaeolon]

1. The zooming is a little difficult, since mine follows the mouse, and I've got an active mouse. I think there's something for that, but I can't seem to find it.

There's a "toggle zoom to cursor" option next to the Menu button, also bindable to a key of your choice.


2. The warships, while interesting, don't look aesthetically pleasing. They don't look like warships or sci-fi, or anything. It looks like the developers took an industrial park, flipped it, cut it into bits, glued it together, and called it a warship.

Funny thing is, that's pretty much how TEC warships are supposed to look according to the backstory - they're just freighters and civilian vessels with armor plating, guns and fighter bays strapped on. It's, of course, another question if such a backstory was a good idea, since it makes a third of the ships in the game look like boxes with bright lights. :laugh4:


The major problem I have is with the enemy's ability to basically bypass any chokepoint that you have by simply phase jumping to another planet as rapidly as possible.

The AI bypasses chokepoints only rarely, it just tries to destroy the colony and retreats if it fails (that was the case in 1.02 at least, haven't played against the AI in 1.03.) Even so, what I've observed in 1.03 is that if the AI encounters what it considers a superior defensive force, it'll simply retreat to an adjacent friendly or neutral system.

Human players are an entirely different beast of course, and there have been arguments both for and against better defenses. Personally I don't like powerful defenses or movement inhibition much, they make for less dynamic games. IMO, splitting fleets and managing offensive and defensive task forces on the fly is more interesting gameplay than pushing around one huge blob of ships to overpower turtled worlds one after another.


At least until you have the phase jump inhibitor technology, which takes many hours of gameplay to reach.

PJI is tier 2 military for Vasari, tier 4 military for TEC and tier 3 civilian for Advent. It doesn't have any prerequisite technologies. You're doing something wrong if it takes "many hours" to reach it.


They should have required movement on the part of at least frigates to keep it interesting.

I used to think so too, but once you get more hands-on involved in the battles with positioning, focus fire and ability use, it's a pretty good thing that the ships don't fly around willy-nilly. Real battles between good players have a plenty of tactical movement and positioning involved.

[Marshal Murat]

RANT AHEAD....
TEC is my usual team
I was playing a medium map against the AI, and their scout ships were zooming through my systems. Some Vasari ships just slipped by my Gauss Guns and slid into my soft underbelly of research planets.

To counter it, I often had to build obnoxious amounts of light frigates to harass every scout. My defenses were often Gauss gun platforms backed by two hangars of bombers (4 squadrons). Those failed to defeat any scouts, consistently, and when confronted by a major foe, often failed to defeat them.

I cannot stand frigates. The small frigates are gold early on, but it requires so much development to get something to replace them (Kodiak), that it isn't worth it, imho.

The different frigates, since they are specialized, fall into ranks as they zip across the galaxy. However, once in battle, they are stagnant, and my Javelin frigates are often picked off, very swiftly. I assume I could get my frigates to protect the javelins, but they're dealing with twenty other frigates. Same with the carriers. They have a squadron of fighters (if you're going to have a carrier, it would make sense to carry at least four squadrons) but then they are fresh meat, who don't try to avoid battles with other frigates or cruisers, but sit. I'm managing a battle, and I have to figure out these dang-nab carriers?

While playing this game, I seem to recall David Weber's excellent series...

In Death Ground (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Death_Ground)
Shiva Option (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shiva_Option)

While the game mirrors the books somewhat, it falls short many times of what the ideal is. The capital ships are too small for capital ships, and there should be more. The gravity wells should be expanded for better battles.
Diplomacy is more like "Give me your resources so I can destroy you later, but you can't take anything from me." U.S. foreign policy in a nutshell.

[Divinus Arma]

Diplomacy is more like "Give me your resources so I can destroy you later, but you can't take anything from me." U.S. foreign policy in a nutshell.

LOL. :laugh4: Hey!

[Crandaeolon]

To counter it, I often had to build obnoxious amounts of light frigates to harass every scout. My defenses were often Gauss gun platforms backed by two hangars of bombers (4 squadrons). Those failed to defeat any scouts, consistently, and when confronted by a major foe, often failed to defeat them.

Light frigates or bombers are not the correct counters against scouts. Use Fighters, LRM frigates, Flak frigates or other scouts. Also, scouts are fairly harmless. The AI doesn't use them to attack or harass.

Static defenses are not supposed to defeat major attackers. They can repel harassment parties and pirates, but you'll need a defensive fleet to deal with serious threats. Often, the most useful defensive structures are repair bays combined with a defensive fleet.


I cannot stand frigates. The small frigates are gold early on, but it requires so much development to get something to replace them (Kodiak), that it isn't worth it, imho.

Frigates provide far more bang for the buck than capital ships. LRMs and Kodiaks are the primary damage dealers of TEC; capital ships are mostly useful because of their support abilities. You can get Kodiaks in about 20-30 minutes of gameplay if you aren't forced to battle immediately. Over-use of capital ships is a pretty common newbie sign.

As for battles, you'll just have to micromanage if you want optimal results. And that's good by the way, there's more stuff to do and one's attention to a specific battle is actually worth something tangible.


Diplomacy is more like "Give me your resources so I can destroy you later, but you can't take anything from me." U.S. foreign policy in a nutshell. :laugh4:

Yeah, diplomacy sucks. You can order allies to attack or defend a specific system though, so building up relations is not totally worthless.

[TevashSzat]

Finally got this game and must say I'm loving it.

I play the Advent(horray imba illuminators and guardians) and my usual strat is as follows: mothership as first cap, try to expand quickly early on with it and disciples while rushing to civ tech 3 for trade ports. Once a nice early economy is set up, I rush for iluminators followed by guardians, destras.

After the mothership, I go for a radiance. After that, either a rapture and a halycon if I just have one big fleet or multiple radiances supported by raptures should I need to split my fleet up for multiple fronts.

This obviously only works on medium-large maps though since a nice TEC rush will end this quickly on a small map, but once it gets started, the midgame fleet is almost unbeatable

[Mikeus Caesar]

Got this just yesterday, after a few games getting comfortable with it, i set off on my first proper game on the largest map. Needless to say, my growth from the outset was slow due to me being surrounded by asteroid fields and the like, while nearby planets were volcanic and thus required research, or large asteroids which weren't good for much. So i sat there, in the corner with my 3 planets, while my neighbour kept picking on me. And i sat, waiting, growing.

I'm now currently on a spree of destruction, with my giant fleet (2 cap ships and zillions of frigates and carriers) within a phase jump of their homeworld, leaving a trail of dead planets behind them. Revenge is sweet. Although, to be quite honest, my fleet isn't that big. Massive injection of funds into research had allowed me to maximise the amount of resources i was getting from my piddly collection of space, and thus inject even more resources into military research, thus giving my ships the edge.

Meanwhile back at home i'm building up another fleet for my incursion into the space of yet another neighbour. The galaxy shall fear the day they messed with me!