Sins of a Solar Empire

I am very glad to say that the game has been improved on wonderfully since beta. The developers have done exactly what all developers should do when incorporating Open Betas into their development process.

Let’s start with Graphics. One word here, prettyfull. And yes I know that’s not a real word. The Ships look much better than the previous Betas. Bump mapping and all, but for those of you on machines that should be in a museum there are options to turn all that stuff down. The planets are the best looking planets I have ever seen in a 4X game. I love the fact you can see the transports flying over the planet. All the laser affects look top notch, explosions look good and the warp effects look spectacular.

Now to the meat of the review. In my beta review I said the action was a little dry. This is true for games on small maps. It’s a little boring simply clicking attack and watching the lasers fly, thankfully you can set the game speed before you start the game so I select fast if I’m on a small map. Where the game really gets exciting is in the huge games. Where you can have five, ten even twenty battles happening at the same time. You’lll go crazy trying to fight one battle then the enemy jumps into your home system with a load of ships and starts beating the crap out of your home world. Though thankfully the AI is competent enough for you to simply tell them who to attack then run away to deal with other problems.

Unlike Galactic Civilizations 2, you cannot design your own ships. Instead you have three main types: Capital Ships, Cruisers and Frigates. The Capital Ships are essentially the Battlestars of Sins of a Solar Empire. They look amazing, they’re about 5 times the size of Frigates and they move, sound and look huge. They take long turns and they sure can take a pounding. I often find myself just watch one of my Capital ships take on 5 enemy frigates, watch the lasers deflect of it’s shields and watch the volley of missiles it releases onto the enemy.

The Cruisers are the mid-ships of the game. They all have very specialized roles, some launch fighters, repair other ships and some specialize in specific combat types. You get these about mid-way through a game. You don’t get any of these when you begin, you must research all of them.

The Frigates make up the bulk of your fleets. You start off with Scout, Colony and light frigates when you begin. Scout’s aren’t good for anything except exploration. Colony Ships are used for colonizing, I’m sure you could’ve worked that out. The great thing about them though is you can use them more than once, they don’t disappear. Light Frigates will probably be the only thing in your first fleet except for your Capital Ship. They are basic ships, they just go pow pow with their lasers. The other Frigates you have to unlock. Some specialize in rockets, some in flak and some in planetary siege.

Diplomacy is perhaps one of the best parts of the game. Mainly because it is not an after thought to the game and it is nothing to do with negotiating. The geniuses behind the game have developed a diplomacy system that creates Peace from War. Basically the other AI in the game will give you missions. If you complete them, they like you more. If you don’t they like you less. The missions can range from anything from “Give me 1000 metal” to “Kill 10 ships of the Vasari Conclave”. Then if the AI like you enough you can offer a treaty which can be a treaty of Trade, Ship Sight, Planet sight, Cease Fire or Peace.

Another Unique feature in the game is the Pirates. No not the pirates with eye patches. Basically they’re essentially a neutral faction, kind of. They don’t have planets, though you may at some point find a Pirate Base. Basically they appear in a system and attack everything in it. But to stop this from being merely an annoyance, you can affect who the pirates attack. You can place a bounty on the faction you want the pirates to attack, and others can add bounty to you. So your essentially bidding for the pirates’ services.

One of the most evolutionary things in the game is the Tech Tree. It is much more interesting than the one in Galactic Civilizations 2. There are rarely any repeats in it, most of it unlocks new things than simply making your current stuff better and everything you unlock feels worth it, you can really see the effects of it. It has been improved a lot since the beta, it is now organized into 4 Catagories. Military, Civics, Fleet Logistics and Artifacts. Military is all things that go pow or ka-pow, it unlocks new ships and better lasers. Civics varies a little, some of it’s to do with mining, planets etc. And then you get ones which increase Jump range or let you use wormholes. Fleet Logistics is all to do with how many ships and Capital Ships you can have. And Artifacts are things that unlock special technologies, you find Artifacts from exploring planets, I’ll get to that later.

The other key part of Sins is Empire building. The space in the game is divided into sectors, each of which has a planet, star, asteroid, asteroid field, wormhole or lightning storm. If you own the planet or asteroid you can build structures around your planet to about half the radius of the sector. This is so that when enemies jump in they aren’t destroyed immediately by your defenses. The buildings are divided into two types, Logistics and Tactical. Logistics is Mining, Research and bulding. Tactical is all your defenses. The actual planet you own can be upgraded, a larger population so you gain more tax, increased planet health, exploration which discovers Artifacts, Logistic building capacity and Tactical building capacity.

The sectors are separated by large amounts of space. These are traversed by your ships using their jump drives. Now don’t fool yourself, these take awhile to start up. So don’t think that having one fleet will be able to defend three or four planets. When a battle starts you’ll be screaming at your ships to “Hurry the fuck up!” and kill the enemies. So you will always want to keep at least a few ships around your planets to defend. I found this out the hard way.

Overall, Sins of a Solar Empire is a must play game. You will find yourself being sucked into this game, you’ll start playing then realize you’ve four days of the real world. You can’t miss this, yes it may have some flaws but you need to play it just to say you’ve tried it. And this is most definately a candidate for my GotY 2008.