Sins of a Solar Empire (PC)

[Winnow]

Has anyone tried it?

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platfor ... olarempire

It's getting good reviews. I don't like RTS games in general but this one is supposedly a real slow (non twitch) RTS so it might not be so bad. Since many on this board are into the massive space mpire building games, I figured someone might have tried this out.

"Sins of a Solar Empire is a hybrid game, blending elements of 4X strategy games with a contemporary Real Time Strategy philosophy. I hear some of you ask, what is 4X?

4X stands for “Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate”. Examples of classic 4X games include such titans as Master of Orion, Civilization, Galactic Civilizations, and Space Empires. These types of games are known for turn-based gameplay, depth of play, complex strategies and a lumbering pace"

"Solar Empire has successfully taken all of the hardcore elements of 4X games, including extensive research trees, a mammoth universe to explore, random maps, economic and diplomacy management...and wrapped the entire thing in a Real-Time Strategy game. Think Homeworld meets Galactic Civilizations and you have Sins of a Solar Empire...only it's better than either of those games and represents a stunning achievement."

"...Sins of a Solar Empire makes no apologies for being ambitiously massive and deep..."

"...SSE sports an amazing control structure that finds you hopping around the galaxy with ease, quickly commanding fleets of ships while always having quick access to pertinent information..."

"Visually, SSE is stunning and shows that a lot of love and care was put into every pixel. The fact that you can zoom-in on an individual scout ship and seamlessly zoom-out to a galactic view makes Supreme Commander's zooming feature look like a joke. Add to this a great, atmospheric soundtrack and you have before you a game that delivers on every single front. Hell, Ironclad even included superb multiplayer features using their own custom network that simply works."

[miir]

Their (Stardock) Galactic Civilizations games are excellent.
One of the best 4x type games in recent memory.

[Fairweather Pure]

Fuck this game and any company that dosen't include a single player campaign.

[cadalano]

i've been playing it a bit



its well done but its an extremely sssslllloooooowwwww game which is the main reason it gets away with being real time and not Turn based. i'm not sure how i feel about it really. my buddy and I started playing this instead of CoH just to give something new a try. I really think its just way too slow for me to play it as a regular game- I have a lot more fun in CoH.. but I'm giving it a good try and I'm not done with it yet. we're right in the middle of a 2v2v2 game right now that we've put about four hours into thus far.

I'm with FWP on the campaign. It needs both single player and coop but the amount of content is still pretty astounding for a little indie company. I will say that Ironclad definitely placed those efforts elsewhere in the games development

one thing I like are the capital ships which are basically Hero classes from Warcraft 3 in every way. Powerful but expensive. they gain experience and choose special abilities, and at a certain level they gain a "super" ability just like WC3

the interface is also well done which helps with allowing the game to be played real time, and the empire window is definitely something that needs to be copied by other games

another neat concept is the pirates which hang out in one central system on the map and periodically launch raids against whichever player has the highest bounty on their head. if someone puts a bounty on your head and you dont have enough money to counter it, then the pirates will come get you and you'd better hope you have a large enough military to fight them off or you will lose structures at whatever planet they raid.

the black market is also very well done. you can exchange credits for resources (metal or crystal) but as each player does this it affects the demand and the prices will be altered accordingly. when the game starts, for example, crystal is lifeblood and the price always jumps from the default 300 to about 900 within minutes, but that 900 comes down once players expand, get more crystal, and sell it for credits since the price is so high from the initial demand. each player can alter how much theyre willing to sell resources for as well, which can affect the market

combat is interesting.. even the weakest ships take a looooong time to die so its all extremely slow paced. its also interesting that at really any point you, or your enemy, can just run away by jumping out of the system.. later in the game though you can supress jumps which I guess is the key to really eliminating enemy fleets rather than just making them scurry off.

the AI could use a bit of work.. they have a propensity to always gangfuck human players and have some kind of secret alliance. Their ships will shoot eachother if theyre close together, but generally their organized attacks always focus on the human players. they are also totally single minded in that they will always attack nothing but border planets.. so if i have zero defense at Planet A, but you cant reach A without heading to B first, the AI will *always* attack B even though A could be taken easily without any way for me to stop him.

one thing i really dislike, which is a personal pet peeve of any 4x game to me, is that you are forced to play very militaristically every game because everyone starts out at war and there is really no way to keep everyone at peace without becoming their bitch. you have to have an enormous military spread out over all your border planets because everything moves so slowly that you'll never respond to an attack in time if you dont already have a large fleet on standby for the planet. if you were to try for a Civic win then you will eventually lose all of your planets.

stationary planet defense seems very weak too. hangars and gauss cannons have so far seemed totally incapable of repelling attacks.. they only serve to keep shit busy while your real fleet jumps in from another system to actually defend the planet and you'd better just pray that their siege boats arent able to finish the planet off before you can push them out.

its a very diverse game though, and although playing it is extremely simple its clear to me that getting a good enough grip on the game to pass a fair judgement on it is going to take a lot of learning.

[Dregor Thule]

Is this more of a short-term kind of game, or long-term like MOO2 or a civilization game? I'm all for space empire building..

[cadalano]

either, i guess. you can play a 2 hour game with a dozen or so planets or a game that should last you weeks with oodles of planets

[Dregor Thule]

Okay, that's encouraging. Do you research techs, getting more advanced ships and planet upgrades as you go?

[cadalano]

theres 4 tech trees. you get stronger frigates and eventually cruisers but nothing ever really becomes obsolete, everything has roles. they did not include custom ship building because its real time

1 Civic and 1 Military, which are both unique to each of the 3 races. Aside from prereq sequences, you also have to possess a certain amount of Military or Civic labs to be able to research deeper into the trees and since you have a limited amount of space at each planet you really have to plan how far you go into each tree. Too far into civic and you will have a ton of money and resources to buy pussy ass weaponry, and too far into Military and you wont be able to afford many of the fancy ships youre developing

1 Fleet which you use to increase your "pop cap" and also to increase the number of capital ships you can field

and 1 Artifact "tree" which is actually just a place for you to look at the discoveries you've made from exploring your planets.. Most planets let you spend resources to have a small chance of discovering a very beneficial tech which only you get access to once discovered.. These are most closely related to World Wonders from Civ but you dont build them, its basically random.

[cadalano]

played a game last night with my friend 6 hours straight. did a lot better.. we just had to 100% turtle for the first hour or two while the CPU's tried to take our shit over.. eventually we broke out and nailed them

the AI is a bit predictable but I found out theres actually different personalities ala civ. you can specify them or keep them random

we had 3 aggressives and those are the ones that immediately come after you with siege ships

1 economist that had the most cash & resources for a long time but we killed that one first

and 1 that was i guess a diplomat or something. almost no military but had tons of propaganda to capture planets which works just like culture in Civ.




the 3 military guys all went different directions too. One of them went with tons of capital ships.. one guy had no heavy units at all but shit tons of light frigates.. the toughest guy went with an almost all carrier fleet, which are tough ships that have no weapons but release bomber & fighter squadrons. Me and my buddy did not build up any flak style weapons which counter bombers & fighters so we had a tougher time with that guy


time definitely flies playing this game, so i guess i'm having fun

if youre into 4x games at all at least check out the demo

[Sartori]

I guess the demo is about a month out or so. Might just buy it instead!

[Hesten]

I grabbed it last night, along with Speedball 2, so i can try them out to see if theyre worth getting.

[cadalano]

the more i play the more i like. i'm finding that the pace of the game is much more bearable when you set everything to Fast mode

im 4 hours into a free-for-all 10 player game against the computer right now.. the map i'm playing on has 102 planets in it and before I logged last night I just about finished defeating the other 2 enemies who were in my system, leaving me in control of 17 planets including the Pirate's old base of operations in my system.. ... and there are 4 systems left to clear out. systems are similar to continents in Civ.. you can only jump between galaxies by getting a special tech that lets you warp long distances through stars so its similar to teching boats to get over the oceans. The system I control is a total economy powerhouse now.. hundreds of little trade ships flying all over the place making me money.. and it'll be easy to protect it, so I'm going to start building tons of Novalith cannons which can launch warheads to any other planet in on the entire map.. 2 Novaliths firing on one planet will destroy the entire population regardless of any defenses they might have and set it back to Neutral, and also irradiate it so it cannot be recaptured for 3ish minutes.. so they are a great way to sit back in the safety of my system and rape shit that is out of the reach of my fleet.

[Dregor Thule]

It's ok. Not quite what I was hoping for. I need to try setting it to slow to see if it has more of a turn-based feel to it. When I first started playing it I almost turned it off, but I've played a few medium random maps now. Get my ass kicked each time of course, but we'll see if it grows on me more!

[cadalano]

its really a LOT more of a slow-paced RTS than 4x now that I've been playing it for awhile. I dont think i'd even really consider it a 4x game

[Funkmasterr]

I'm obviously late to this party, but I got this in the steam sale and have been playing it all week with a couple of buddies. I've started to try and get more familiar with Vasari, their skill set is pretty cool (and their titan looks awesome). I don't know how much of the content and stuff has been added since the original game, but there is a lot to learn to really get to know the game, and I'm not even close yet.