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.

Nobody will beat my MoO ]I[

Wow, that's such a frightening statement, I don't even know where to begin....

[CBR]

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

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
Looks cool. I see that this is published by none other than Stardock- which means it should be for online sale without any DRM.

[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

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. 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.

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

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.

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. 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.

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.

Yeah, that's what most people have been saying, which is definitely good to know.

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!

[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.

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

[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.

[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.

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.

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