(credits for these shots go to GameSpy)

Screenshots added on Dec 28, 2011

(thanks to sporemaster for bringing these up on the SoaSE forums!)

For more information check: Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion Announced

GameSpy has just published an interview with Stardock’s staff about Rebellion, the new, and highly anticipated Sins of a Solar Empire stand-alone expansion pack. I condensed in this post what were, in my opinion, the juicier parts of the interview. I also added a few personal notes and bits of further information. You can read the entire interview here.

In the interview Stardock clarified that Rebellion will include all the previous titles content, so, all the features included in the Diplomacy or Entrenchment expansions (or in the Trinity pack) will be in Rebellion.

Stardock also provided some details about the 3 new Rebellion (sub)factions. As we already knew each one of the three original races gets split into Loyalists and Rebels. “The TEC Loyalists are very defensive (…) the TEC Rebels are very aggressive”. Stardock also added that each faction gets its own Titan class ship and confirmed that “there are going to be six distinct Titans (…) each has its own abilities and stats”.

Stardock also clarified that regarding more ships offered (from the original Sins’ games) apart from the new 6 different types of Titan class ships there will also be new corvette and capital class ships.

Then GameSpy staff asked the gold question (always have been a Sins debate over this topic). “Are you planning to introduce any kind of single-player campaign?”. Stardock confirmed that “there won’t be a single-player campaign.” although “we are hoping to put some scenarios in, which would be not just stand-alone maps like we’ve had in the past, but a bit more detailed, with specific objectives to accomplish”. So, at least it seems that we are gonna get a few more mission depth with these new promised scenarios.

Now, about the tech trees, and any possible major revamping Stardock clarified that there will be changes that make Rebellion feel a bit more unique regarding research but “probably more of an addition to the existing”. Stardock explained further that the new Rebellion techs were integrated into the existing tech trees (military, civilian and diplomacy).

About the pirate system (a very cool Sins feature btw), GameSpy asked about changes on that. Stardock confirmed that they’ve done some additional tweaks to the pirate system this year. They also added that there will be key differences “the TEC Rebels (…) can actually ally with the Pirates, and use Pirate ships and not have to pay for them”. Now that’s a funny twist.

Stardock then announced that there will be a research victory now. “You have to have researched X number of technologies Then, once you do that (…) a special research condition is unlocked which is really expensive and takes quite a lot of time to research, but if you can do that ahead of anyone else you’ll win”.

About the looks and sounds Stardock said that the UI is not getting significant changes. The only one worth mentioning by Stardock was that each race will have its own UI now. Regarding overall graphical improvements Stardock promised many changes on that aspect. They also added more music and a new intro movie.

About possible AI improvements Stardock replied that “there’s a bunch” of AI areas that were worked on. They add that they have updated the pathfinding for ships so that they don’t try to go over or under one another” or ending up getting stucked. They also stated that they’ve updated the AI to be more effective against exploits like ” massed missile swarms or massed bomber attacks”.

Questioned by release date Stardock replied “As cliche as it sounds: when it’s done“. There was anticipation for a Rebellion release still in 2011, with all the pre-orders and beta announcements. But after a while no more news were heard about that. There are rumors (and only that) in the Sins’ forums that Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion will (probably) be released this spring 2012.

It’s worth mentioning that Ironclad  Games is helping Stardock on Rebellion’s development (or vice versa, can’t really tell). Thanks to Gamespy for putting up this nice interview. It really was informative and very well structured.

This update provides engine improvements (better memory handling and increased performance), AI tweaks, improved Pirate system and updated  gameplay balance for all the factions (TEC, Advent and Vasari) based on player feedback. Checkout the comprehensive SoaSE Trinity v1.2 patch change log.

To play and update Sins of a Solar Empire Trinity Impulse is required. With Impulse, you purchase the game and can immediately download and install it through the Impulse client. Games become part of your account such that when you purchase a new machine, you simply re-download the Impulse client, logon to your account and re-download all your purchases, even years into the future.

For more details and review of this great game checkout the SpaceSector’s article “Sins of a Solar Empire – Trinity – Review“.

Very Short Introduction and Glimpse Review of Sins of a Solar Empire

The next two chapters are a clip of my review of SoaSE Trinity (SpaceSector score: 9.2).

SoaSE provides a mix of real-time strategy and 4x mechanics which results in a much more tactical game like Starcraft or Command & Conquer but still preserving a good depth of strategic options. Sins is not like Master of Orion 2 or Galactic Civilizations but much more like Homeworld, Imperium Galactica or Star Wars: Empire at War.

Sins of a Solar Empire – Trinity – is a very nicely done game. It excels on providing a rich gaming experience that will no doubt entertain you for many hours. Ironclad and Stardock deserve an applause for having created a game that successfully mixes the RTS mechanic with the 4x genre in such a fantastic way.

If you’re unfamiliar with Sins of a Solar Empire or you want to know more about the SoaSE universe I invite you to read my SoaSE Trinity review before you read about Rebellion.

Now It’s Rebellion Time

Stardock describes Rebellion as a “full fledged stand alone expansion” to the original title. So to me this means that you don’t need to own the original game to play Rebellion.

Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion promises to continue the successful mix of 4x strategy elements with real time strategy space combat. Rebellion will offer two separate factions: the Rebels and the Loyalists. Stardock promises that there will be new ships, including a Titan class ship, a massive spaceship.

Apparently Rebellion will not include a single player campaign, as the previous titles also didn’t. This is an old request from the fans however Stardock did not added this up. Rebellion will however provide graphics improvements, namely enhanced lighting and particle effects and new victory conditions.

Rebellion is currently in Alpha stage. Stardock announced that folks that pre-order Rebellion will be able to participate in the game’s Beta phase. Owners of the original Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity game will get discounts when purchasing Rebellion.

Rebellion New Features

• New Factions: Players decide whether to become Loyalists or Rebels, which unlocks a unique new tech tree granting them new technologies and ship variants.
• New Titan-class ships:  Massive warships for each race that dwarf capital ships, these deadly new monsters are capable of wiping out entire enemy fleets single-handedly.
• New Capital Ships:  A new capital ship class arrives, giving players new strategic options.
• New Corvette-class ships:  Small, highly maneuverable light ships that are adept at a variety of tasks.
• Loyalist and Rebel versions of some of the existing Sins’ frigates and cruisers, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses.
• Updated lighting and particle effects for enhanced visuals.
• New Victory Conditions to allow for more variety, differing strategies and shorter game sessions.
• Additional capital ship ability levels, for greater strategic choice.
• Impulse::Reactor support for chat, friends, achievements and more.

Pre-Order Rebellion

If you pre-order Rebellion you will gain access to the Rebellion Beta scheduled for later this year (\edit (27-12-011): by the time this post was written). If you want to pre-order Rebellion follow this link: Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion [Pre-Order].

For more details on Rebellion checkout Stardock’s Rebellion Press Release in the Sins of the Solar Empire website.

Sins of a Solar Empire does all that but in real-time, but this is not really a novelty since Imperium Galactica and StarWars Empire at War are also 4x RTS games. Sins provides a very interesting mix of real-time and 4x mechanics which results in a much more tactical game like Starcraft or Command & Conquer but still preserving a good depth of strategic options. So Sins is nothing like Master of Orion 2 or Galactic Civilizations but much more like Homeworld, Imperium Galactica or Star Wars: Empire at War.

But enough of comparisons, now its time to talk about Sins of a Solar Empire.

The Story and the Races

The game offers three races for the player to choose from. These are the Humans, the Advent and the Vasari. The intro cinematic is quite good and unveils a bit of the game story. The adventure takes place somewhere in the future were Humans control now several systems and operate trade among them. The Advent is a race that possesses mystic powers and want to spread their religion; the Vasari are the nasty Aliens that just want to take control of everything and everybody.

In terms of gameplay the races are “skins” of each other with respect to units and the infrastructure that can be built though however the research path is substantially different and the capital ships powers and other small details are also different. Albeit all that the three races do offer a different and unique experience to play and possess specific sound effects, music and concept art.

In the Beginning …

Like in a regular 4x space strategy game you start with your home planet. You then start to collect additional resources (metal and crystal in Sins) nearby and develop the infrastructure to increase population (in order to increase credits). In Sins you can construct labs, trade centers, refineries, resource extractors and other military and civilian infrastructure.

Regarding warfare you can build three types of spaceships (in increasing order of size and importance): frigates, cruisers and capital ships. You need to pursue your way through research to unlock many of the spaceships prototypes but the types of ships that certainly will catch your eye are the Capital Ships.

Capital Ships are the Queens of the Sinful Empire

Capital Ships are the backbone of your fleets, they possess special powers that you can unlock with time as long as you allow them to survive and gain experience from battle. And this is one huge fun factor in Sins. Not only they are gorgeous, big and powerful they can gain experience and level up. In this sense Sins offers a certain degree of RPG element to the gameplay.

You tend to really care about your capital ships since you cannot build many and so you tend to look at them as special, as your heroes in the battlefield. Their powers bring a lot of strategic and tactical depth because their special powers are diversified and serve specific roles. Some powers are for fleet carriers, others for bombing capabilities, others for support, others for offense. You have to think wisely how and where to deploy these ships and when or not to use them in the battlefield because their loss may cost you the battle.

Playing Sins is Fun

A lot is going on and lots of decisions can be made when playing Sins. And being an RTS all this happens in real-time in a nicely balanced tensed environment. Yes, RTS is more for the gamers that enjoy the adrenaline over comfortable chair experience.  When you are not developing your infrastructure you may be thinking in evolving your research. When fighting battles you may need to take control of your capital ships powers or acquire new powers as soon as they level up. If you’re not fighting wars you may, and should be, preparing for them and building ships.

From time to time your foes will give you quests and you should pay special attention to those since they may bring you closely to an opponent and prevent an imminent war. When you successfully complete some quests for a specific opponent he may be willing to agree on a cease-fire with you or even to accept a peace or trade treaty. And although the diplomatic options of Sins are basically these, until Sins Diplomacy expansion was released at least,  they are sufficient to give you enough strategic options when grouping and forming alliances to decide who to attack or not next.

Another fun aspect of Sins is the Pirate System. Pirates are a third-party opponent that is generally present in all games. As pirates you expect them to be treacherous, they don’t takes sides, their single purpose is to profit from bounty. Throughout the game players may put bounties on other players and Pirates will be driven to attack those players. So one interesting side-plot in the game is to fight this bounty war with your rivals since you can raise the bounty and in an instance divert the attention of the pirates from yourself and use them to strike your rival while you happily mass up your fleet to attack him next .

The User Interface gives you great control and is very functional

You may find all this overwhelming, and so did I thought at first, but surprisingly Sins plays very smoothly in an almost comfortable pace. The game is so well-balanced that you never feel too overwhelmed while battling or developing your empire at the same time. And part of the blame for this nice balance is the User Interface.

The UI is very well-built to help you achieve your goals as it provides you a great sense of control and overview over your empire. And your empire can be quite big with lots of planets and lots of ships fighting diverse battles. Planets and fleets are organized  in a very useful way and so you are as far as a button click from a fleet fighting a battle as you are a double-click from jumping to inspect a planet or give a construction order on another planet. Therefore it’s easy to give navigation orders to fleets, to retreat or to engage a determined planet all almost at the same time. In summary all these inter-galactic orders can be obtained at a distance of a single or double-click mouse button which is quite an achievement.

Graphics, Music and Sound

Sins looks and sounds great. The ships and structures models are really well done that even when you zoom in the maximum they still look fine and even have interesting details like bleeping presence lights. The User Interface is also beautifully well crafted with the information well in place with pretty icons.

The sound effects and dialogue also do a very good job. The music also helps establishing the right atmosphere depending on if you’re in peace times or war times.

A word about Entrenchment

The first expansion pack developed by Ironclad and Stardock for Sins was Entrenchment. They call it a micro-expansions mainly due to the small amount of changes it adds to the game and the fact of being sold for a relatively low price (~$10).

As the name suggests, Entrenchment brings new defensive options to the game. And these are good additions since sometimes you do feel a bit nervous about leaving your planets undefended while you strike the enemy, and splitting fleets is not always an easy decision. To alleviate a bit this stress Entrenchment unlocks Starbases, Mine Fields and new Tactical Defense upgrades. Entrenchment also allows you now to increase the speed of the game.

Starbases are very powerful and albeit expansive to build and upgrade they do take care of the job pretty decently. A single starbase can some times defend a planet single handed. Minefields are also a good defensive addition. The tactical defense upgrades also enhance substantially the global planetary defense network.

A word about Diplomacy

Diplomacy was the second and last micro-expansion to be released for Sins and as the name suggests it brought new diplomatic options to the game. Among the additions are a completely new technology tree specifically devoted to diplomatic options. Diplomacy finally unlocked one aspect that was surely lacking in the original title: – the capability to launch missions or quests to your rivals, this is surely a nice new feature.

Among the additions you also account a new panel called “relations” that gives you a nice overview of your relation status with each rival and also relations between themselves. There are lots of modifiers that affect your relations, as examples: – resources given in the past or the size of your fleet. Many more factors will affect the overall relations.

The Trinity product, this that is being reviewed, includes both the Entrenchment and Diplomacy expansions.

The bottom line

Sins of a Solar Empire – Trinity – is a very nicely done game. It excels on providing a rich gaming experience that will no doubt entertain you for many hours. Ironclad and Stardock deserve an applause for having created a game that successfully mixes the RTS mechanic with the 4x genre in such a fantastic way.

Sins of a Solar Empire is a very fun experience and I strongly recommend it to all Sci-Fi fans that love Real-Time strategy, this is a must title for you guys. For the Sci-Fi Turn-Based fans that enjoy more the traditional 4x experience I also recommend you have a try, I include myself in this last bunch and I can assure you that I have a lot of fun playing the game.

Sins of a Solar Empire – Trinity  (Buy at Gamestop/Impulse)	Space Sector score: 9.2 (about the score system)

Developed by Ironclad and published by Stardock, Sins of a Solar Empire is one of the best space RTS experiences available. SoaSE incarnates the Homeworld style but where in Homeworld you control a single fleet in complex tactical battles embarking in an epic story in Sins you control many fleets and conduct epic battles with simpler tactical control over them. Sins offers epic battles with lots of spaceships in gorgeous sets.

Stardock and Ironclad will release it’s new Sins of a Solar Empire expansion February 2010. This new expansion is named Diplomacy.

Ironclad said in their site that Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy will be the second and final micro-expansion pack for Sins of a Solar Empire (the first was SoaSE Entrenchment). As the name suggests the part of the game that will have significant changes will be the diplomatic options where the main new feature will be a new tech tree.

This new expansion pack adds the following main new features:

1. New Diplomatic Technology Tree
2. Enhanced computer AI
3. New Relations System
4. Interstellar Negotiation and Treaties
5. Computer controlled players that can become pawns in the game
6. New Diplomatic Envoy

Some screenshots (click to enlarge)

Sins of a Solar Empire Diplomacy is a micro-expansion and requires you to have Sins of a Solar Empire and Entrenchment expansion installed.

Check Ironclad’s website for more information on Diplomacy.

You can also go to the forums for detailed information on what’s new in this expansion pack.

You can pre-order Diplomacy at Stardock here.

Stardock kindly accepted my request for sponsorship and supported my initiative by providing the prize. So the prize will be one of Stardock’s flag games. The winner may choose one of these game for free: Galactic Civilizations 2: Ultimate Edition (full edition – includes all GalCiv2 expansions – $39.95 worth) or Sins of Solar Empire Bundle (includes the Sins expansion – Entrenchment – $22.99 worth) .

What do you have to do to have the chance to win one of these excellent space strategy games?

Prizes

As said above the winner of this contest will receive one of these great games (of choice of the participant):

• Galactic Civilizations 2: Ultimate Edition

GalCiv II: Ultimate Edition (Download + Retail Box)

• Sins of a Solar Empire Bundle
  

  Sins of a Solar Empire Bundle

How to Enter the Contest

To become a valid participant in the contest you only have to do two things:

1. Leave a comment on the forum under this topic (you need to subscribe in the forum for this): don’t forget to include in this subscription comment your prize pick (GalCiv2 or Sins);
2. Subscribe the SpaceSector.com Newsletter (you can subscribe it when filling the forum register form or in the main page sidebar)

These are the minimum requirements that you need to satisfy in order to enter the contest (this gives you 2 points).

To increase your chances of winning you have to do the following actions, that provide additional bonus points:

• (for 1 to 10 extra points) Make a comment to one of the SpaceSector’s articles. You can pick an article of your choice. The content of the comment will only be made public at the end of the contest. This will give you from 1 to 10 additional points depending on the quality of your comment (see “How the Winner Will be Chosen” below for details)
• (for 2 extra points) Follow SpaceSector.com on Twitter: you need to provide your twitter username in your subscription comment (point 1.) and follow the spacesector username on Twitter to validate this;
• (for 2 extra points) Twitt about the SpaceSector’s blog contest or make an entry about the SpaceSector contest on your facebook account for 2 extra points: you need to provide your twitter username or link pointing to your facebook account in order to validate this action;
• (for 1 to 2 extra points) Tell your friends about SpaceSector.com. If 1 of your friends registers the SpaceSector.com Newsletter you gain 1 extra point; if 3 of your friends sign the SpaceSector.com newsletter you gain 2 extra points): you need to provide the user names of your friends in your subscription comment (point 1.) in order to validate this step;
• (for 2 extra points): Make a blog post on your own blog about this contest with a link to this blog post. If you don’t have a blog don’t worry, you can gain the 2 extra points also if you post and link to this page on a relevant website forum (related with space or games) or on a social site like digg, reddit, stumbleupon, other. Just don’t forget to provide the link of your submission on your subscription comment.

In summary the only requirements to enter the contest are the first two (1 – leave a comment and 2 – register the newsletter), the other actions provide additional bonuses that I leave up to you to satisfy in order to increase your chances.

How the Winner Will Be Chosen

The participant that makes the most points wins. The maximum amount of points is: 20 (all actions fulfilled and top score achieved on comment to article)

All actions that provide bonuses are scored objectively except the one regarding the comment about one of SpaceSector’s articles. For this last action (the more valuable one) the criteria will be: relevance, quality of the content and humor (size is not a criteria). Chewbacca moderator and Myself will score the comments.

In case of a Tie

In case of a tie the number of fulfilled actions will be used to pick the winner. If that does not solve it the participantes sharing the same score will take straws, which means that the winner will be randomly picked from the final bunch.

Sponser

This contest is powered by Stardock, which I humbly thank for having supported this idea.

Stardock Entertainment is an emerging leader in the PC gaming industry. It develops and/or publishes a variety of popular games including Galactic Civilizations, Sins of a Solar Empire, The Political Machine, Demigod and more. Stardock has 2 of the top 10 highest rated PC games of the last couple of years according to Metacritic.

Start, End Date and Prize Claim

The contest started today at the time this blog was posted.

The contest ends in 18th of December 2009. In this day the winner will be announced. To pick the prize the winner just needs to create an account at ImpulseDriven.com (Stardock´s download central and Store) and after I announce the winner to Stardock the game of choice will be put in the user’s shopping cart for free.

Hope you enjoy the challenge.

Have Fun!

Adam Solo