Sins of a Solar Empire

[Dis]

Got an email from Stardock today, went to Wiki and found this:

Sins of a Solar Empire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I am very interested, kinda ramping myself up for StarCraft 2 (who knows when that will be released), so I am dieing from some RTS goodness. Beta started in Apr 27. I am curious if anyone got into the beta, and give me a vague opinion on it (without breaking NDA) or hell, just give me a very concise opinion, to hell with the NDA

I am a huge fan of Galactic Civ series, thats why I get these emails.

[Zarcath]

Hmm...is Stardock involved at all with the development of Sins or are they just publishing it?

I played the shit out of GalCiv2, didn't get the expansion though.

[Dis]

Originally Posted by Zarcath

Hmm...is Stardock involved at all with the development of Sins or are they just publishing it?

I played the shit out of GalCiv2, didn't get the expansion though.

Publishing it, Ironclad is the dev, but they say it 4X and RTS genre game. Screenshots look cool, but curious about the depth of gameplay, UI, storyline, and just basic gameplay. Wiki says it compares favorably to Gal Civ, but RTS vs. Turn based.

[Zarcath]

Well, if it ends up being GalCiv2 with multiplayer that'd be fun enough.

[Burf]

I just picked up GalCiv II w/expansion not long ago, and if it has anywhere near the depth, it should be pretty darn good. Graphics look nice, too.

[Millie]

GalCivII + Expansion Pack ("Dark Avatar") were great, but filled with memory leaks that made the game all but impossible to play over the long term of any given game. Hopefully Stardock learns to fix this issue in forthcoming releases.

[Grez]

Played this for a couple days. Though its probably far from being complete, from what i've seen, the game is a pretty dumbed-down rts.

Basically you start with a planet and a bit of "playfield" around that planet where you can build shit. Beyond that "playfield" are other planets with their own "playfield" that you warp to. Basically: Warp to neighbour planet, kill everything in sight, colonize planet, repeat. So far the tech tree is pitifully small for a 4x game. There are about 15 different types of ships (5 per class size, only the capital ship classes get experience and increase level). 3 resource types: Money, crystal and metal. Money is obtained by taxation of the populous, crystal and metal deposits are found in orbit of most planets (just build a mine on it).


This game is in beta 2 (anyone who preorders it can play the beta); hopefully it'll be way the fuck better in beta 3. Also if you want more info on it, the game's website has a forum where everyone can talk about all aspects of the beta ect. So, imo, its open beta w/ no nda. *cough torrent cough*

Honestly i don't fucking know why companies just don't accept that MOO2 was the best fucking space based 4x game ever made, and just create an RTS version of it.

[Dis]

Originally Posted by Grez

Played this for a couple days. Though its probably far from being complete, from what i've seen, the game is a pretty dumbed-down rts.

Basically you start with a planet and a bit of "playfield" around that planet where you can build shit. Beyond that "playfield" are other planets with their own "playfield" that you warp to. Basically: Warp to neighbour planet, kill everything in sight, colonize planet, repeat. So far the tech tree is pitifully small for a 4x game. There are about 15 different types of ships (5 per class size, only the capital ship classes get experience and increase level). 3 resource types: Money, crystal and metal. Money is obtained by taxation of the populous, crystal and metal deposits are found in orbit of most planets (just build a mine on it).


This game is in beta 2 (anyone who preorders it can play the beta); hopefully it'll be way the fuck better in beta 3. Also if you want more info on it, the game's website has a forum where everyone can talk about all aspects of the beta ect. So, imo, its open beta w/ no nda. *cough torrent cough*

Honestly i don't fucking know why companies just don't accept that MOO2 was the best fucking space based 4x game ever made, and just create an RTS version of it.

Huge thanks

[Kez]

Heres the Sins of a Solar Empire website. There is no NDA for any phase of their beta, so just hit the forums and read up on it. As far as what is in the game right now and what is their focus on testing, here is a post about Ironclad's expectations for Beta 1 & 2. Beta 2 is open until July 31st.




For those of you who have been through a Stardock-run game beta program, welcome back. You know what you're in for so most of this will be just like what you've heard from us before.

But for those of you who haven't ever gone through a Stardock game beta, this post is designed to get your expectations ready.

Sins of a Solar Empire Beta 1 Objectives:

The goal of beta 1 is for us to test out the game engine. How well does it run on a wide range of PCs? How is the perfomance? How is compatibility?

There has been much discussion on galciv2.com by players who note that our games usually require few "patches" to fix major bugs. This is why. We release publicly the games during early beta to nail down these issues long before it hits the shelves.

These days, many "beta" programs are little more than late-term demos designed with marketing in mind as well as nailing down final balancing issues. That's not what this beta is for.

There will be at least 3 major beta releases. Possibly 4 depending on how well public feedback is.

There are no NDAs involved. If you don't like what we're doing, tell us. We do not require NDAs precisely because we don't want you to feel any constraints on giving feedback.

Most of you have no doubt played games where you later hear the beta testers didn't think the game was ready for release but they were stuck under NDA. I've never seen an example where the beta testers were wrong.

Beta 1 specifics

In beta 1, it's a single player game. The multiplayer functionality has been disabled. The reason for this is because many game mechanics "work fine" when you're playing against another human on-line. People will work around problematic design decisions. But in the real world, the single player experience has to be good and so we want players to be able to tell us what issues they run into.

Beta 1 only has one of the 3 factions in it. The other two are currently disabled. They'll come in later when we've sorted out things with engine compatibility, performance, etc.

Setting Expectations

Those who were in any of the GalCiv betas know that the early betas for these games aren't very fun. I don't expect Sins to be any different. Think of your favorite PC RTS of all time. Starcraft, Total Annihiation, etc. Imagine if in Starcraft you ran out of crystals very quickly. Imagine if in TA if the commander didn't have a Dgun how "rushing" might have gone. It only takes a few little tweaks to turn a classic game into disaster.

That doesn't mean we don't want to get your feedback on game mechanics, but what we mostly need to find out from you for beta 1 is how well the game runs on your computer and how stable it is for you.

If you'd like to see our Galactic Civilizations II beta schedule to see how that went click below:

Galactic Civilizations II: Beta Schedule - A Forum Post by Frogboy

Here is what was posted about beta 1 and 2 of Galactic Civilizations II:

March: Beta 1
Goal: Compatibility and performance. How well does the new 3D engine work? Does it blow up on people? What hardare issues will people have?
Feedback we need: If it doesn't run on your computer or has some problem, we need to know your hardware specifications, what OS you're running, etc.
Feedback we DON'T need: Spelling errors, complaints about missing features, "suggestions" on UI, complaints about game balancing or "that it's not fun" (beta 1 won't be fun, we'll make it our business to ensure it's not fun in order to keep focus on the compatibility and performance ). "This game sucks, where's the starbases? Where are the fleets? I hate to say this but this is a big step backwards from GalCiv 1. Perhaps you should read up on about the differences between 'alphas' and 'betas' and think over your obvious ignorance on basic software development. I'll check back in a few months to see if you'e managed to cobble together a decent game but I won't count on it. In the meantime, I'll be on Usenet and IRC making sure everyone knows you guys suck."

May: Beta 2
Goal: Performance/Compatibility still. But now with the focus moving towards user interface design. Is the UI looking okay? Is it intuitive? Are the basic game mechanics easy to figure out? Can you play the game without needing a manual (the game will have a manual but a well designed game shouldn't need much of one)
Feedback we need: Suggestions/complaints on UI. Crashing issues. Performance and compatibility.
Feedback we DON'T need: Spelling errors, complaints about missing features, , complaints about game balancing or "that it's not fun" (beta 2 should be playable but it won't be balanced yet). "First off, you spelled 'manufacturing' as 'manufaturing'. Secondly, I can't believe that a capital ship only takes 4 months to build but a fighter take 3 months. Hello? Why bother with a fighter?"

[Indiana]

What an amazing and refreshing take on development. I hope it translates in to a great game, but so far it doesn't sound all that interesting.

[Vorph]

So now even the last bastion of turn-based gameplay, 4x, is going to be fagged up with RTS?

Sigh.

[Kato Danzo]

It was only a matter of time.

[Grez]

i kinda feel that *slow* RTS games are a good replacement for TBS. Moving entire fleets/armies from point A to point Z in 6.2 seconds is just too fucking retarded; slow it the fuck down and you can fully include TBS-quality aspects: engaging economic model, deep science tree, *TACTICAL COMBAT -- hi! having entire armies/fleets die in 0.3 seconds isin't tactical, ect.


Also, they really need to increase ship size in this. Seriously, the ships are just way too fucking small. You can't see the pew pew = (

[Antarius]

Semi-Real time works really well in turn based games, and is an essential requirement for online multiplayer.

Nothing better than sending some Macemen/Longbow/Catapults towards a city in Civ 4 to make your opponent think you're going to stage an attack/Seige there, only to sneak up a huge stack of knights 1 turn later to another city 6+ squares away after he's already committed most of his troops to defend the initial city.

[Vorph]

Originally Posted by Grez

i kinda feel that *slow* RTS games are a good replacement for TBS.

I would say that we already have enough damn RTS games and there's no need to 'replace' what pitiful amount of TBS games are still being released. I like my strategy games to have have some strategy in them, and imo that goes out the window and becomes just another twitch game the moment you move to realtime.