Sins of a Solar Empire

Sins of a Solar Empire
Developer(s)	Ironclad Games
Publisher(s)	Stardock
Engine	Iron Engine
Platform(s)	Windows NT 5.1+
Release	February 4, 2008 (US)
Genre(s)	4X Real-Time Strategy RT4X
Mode(s)	Singleplayer, Multiplayer

Sins of a Solar Empire is a science fiction computer game developed by Ironclad Games for Windows XP and Vista and published by Stardock Entertainment in February 2008. Sins is a real-time strategy (RTS) game that incorporates some deeper, more extensive elements from 4X strategy games; promotional materials describe it as "RT4X."

Gameplay

Sins is a space-bound game. The playing field is a 2D web of 3D planets and other 3D celestial objects clustered around one or more stars.

Players can view entire solar systems, then zoom in to their planets and even individual fleets, starships, and even fighters, similar to the strategic zoom featured in the 2007 RTS title Supreme Commander.

Players can conquer neighboring planets and explore distant solar systems in a "massively scaled, fully 3D environment featuring entire galaxies, orbiting planets, clusters of asteroids, space dust and radiant stars." In an interview with IGN, Ironclad director Blair Fraser suggests that the game's "Iron engine" is specially designed with new technologies that allow it to handle very large differences in size, scale, and distance.

Resources and Planetary Slots

The game has five main resources to gather: credits (the general currency used), which are gained by completing missions, collecting bounties, and taxing planets; metal (the most common resource, used in the construction of ships and buildings), which is gathered by building refineries on asteroids or colonizing volcanic planets; and crystals (the rarest resource, used for advanced technology and building capital ships), which are found on ice planets and can be gathered from asteroids, much like metal. Supply points are points that are used up when ships are purchased, acting as a population cap for the player's ships. They can be increased by increasing the fleet logistic capacity at the cost of a higher upkeep and thus a lower overall income. Finally capital ship crews are needed to field capital ships in addition to the general fleet supply points.

Players can build ground-based and orbital structures. These are divided into "logistic" and "tactical" structures. Logistic buildings include shipyards, civic research labs and more, while tactical buildings are defense structures ranging from jump inhibitors, which slow down enemy units, to turrets and strike craft hangars. Regarding the three races' ultimate unique defensive structures, TEC has the long-range Novalith Cannon that can bombard other planets across solar systems. It delivers a huge package of nukes that instantly takes out a majority of a planet's health. Two shots dealt at the same time will destroy the entire planet allowing it to be colonized after 5 minutes due to the massive influx of radiation. The Advent have a weapon called the Deliverance Engine that can spread a massive influx of the player's culture from a planet across the galaxy, causing a major revolt that overthrows the government to the user's advantage. The Vasari have a portal that will call in small detachment of Dark Fleet frigates or cruisers of choice every minute or so from different part of the universe. The Vasari also have the Kostura Cannon, which, as like the TEC's Novalith Cannon and the Advent's Deliverance Engine, can be fired across star systems. Upon impact, The Kostura warhead releases an EMP stream that disables and can destroy any ship or structure in orbit, as well some structures on the planet's surface

Planets and Asteroids

The Planets are divided into 9 types. Terran-type planets tend to be the most lush and thriving in lifeforms; this makes them valuable due to the huge population size they can support for taxation and for their balanced metal and crystal resources. Desert-type planets tend to support a smaller population than Terran planets but will usually have more crystal and metal in the area. They can also support a larger logistic capacity compared to the other planets, making them critical in the mid-late game. Ice planets have the third largest population of all the types and an abundance in crystal, but less metal. They also have a slightly smaller logistic cap than Terran and Desert planets. Volcanic planets are the opposite of ice planets, and have the smallest population support and crystal. However, volcanic planets compensate with an abundance in metal, as well as having the same logistical and tactical capacity as ice planets.

There are two types of asteroids in the game: Normal ones have equal amounts of metal and crystal, and support the 2nd least amount of population, tactical and logistic slots. Dead ones have no resources, the smallest tactical slots and no logistic slots. Asteroid belts are small lines of asteroids that cover the middle of a gravity well. The asteroids rarely hit ships but can cause serious amounts of damage - to the point of being able to destroy a low-level capital ship. A lot of players and computers tend to use these as defensive points. Asteroid belts can't be colonized. Gas planets are also not colonizeable and explosions near the planet will amplify and deal an extra amount of splash damage. Solar storms are areas where all ships lose antimatter, which reduces the abilities ships can use. Stars are the largest object in the game. Ships in the area receive a boost in antimatter restoration. Stars are also important in traveling to other systems in certain maps which makes them important staging and defensive places. Space junk is similar to asteroids except that it can't be colonized but can have extractors placed by colony ships. Finally, plasma storms are similar to solar storms, except that strike-craft can't be used or they are instantly destroyed.

The player can interact directly with planets in several ways, such as creating trading routes, by forcefully raining destruction from orbit or by spreading "culture" via propaganda platforms, which may cause the planet to revolt in the player's favor.

Diplomacy, Bounty and the Black Market

The diplomacy options of the game allow players to forge and break alliances and place bounties on their enemies or allies (depending on the game setting) without anybody knowing who placed it. Players can trade resources, establish trade routes between nations and manipulate the commodities market to hinder enemies by utilizing supply and demand. Some planets are inhabited by pirates, who will attack every player in sight. Pirates also launch attacks at regular intervals on the player who has the highest bounty. Using the bounty, players can hinder enemies and secretly kill allies. With the bounty collected, pirates will usually strengthen their homeworld and expand their raiding fleet, thus making it difficult to conquer them if they are not destroyed by the mid-to-late game. There are also five levels of the pirates numbers which grows with the bounty they collect and lowers over a period of time. The more the bar fills the larger the raiding fleet the pirates will send. Moreover, the bounty placed on a person can be gained by anyone who attacks the target.

Tech Tree and Artifacts

The players have two tech trees. Each one focuses on either military or civic improvements and branches off into three race-specific categories. The military tree contains upgrades to armor and shields and unlocks units and defensive structures. The civic tree contains upgrades to resource gathering and unlocks civic buildings, radar, planetary upgrades, diplomacy upgrades, and terraforming. There are many different hidden artifacts that can be found by exploring colonized planets. There are a total of 9 artifacts, each giving the owner a unique and powerful bonus. When an artifact is discovered, all other players are notified of its location but not its type.

Units

The player can control various fleets and order them to go to the front lines, where the AI will control the fleets' movements and attacks if the player doesn't. There is a supply cap which is drained for every ship built, which can be increased at the cost of resources and a higher upkeep.

There are multiple classes of ships in the game: Strike craft, frigate, cruiser and capital. The strike craft is the smallest ship in the game. They can only be controlled in squads and are built in squads of 5 to 12 in hangars, carriers, and special capital ships. Frigates are the smallest warship that the player can build individually and represent the bulk of most fleets — they are generally divided into the roles of front line, siege and long range. Cruisers are specialized ships and mostly play a support role in fleets. Capital ships are considered "hero" units . These ships have the ability to accumulate experience and "level up" via combat. An increase in a capital ship's level gains improvements in its core offensive and defensive systems and unlocks unique special abilities such as "Raze Planet," "Clairvoyance," and "Phase Missile Swarm." Capital ships are extremely expensive and are limited to up to 16 at a time. There are several classes capital ships one can use, such as battleship, carrier, long range dreadnought or support vessel. When a capital ship is in the gravity well of a planet it slows or even stops the spread of enemy culture going to that planet. Each unit has its own abilities that can be passive or active and can affect its fleet or the enemy fleet.

Movement is mostly traveling in so-called "phase lanes" that connect each planet or star system (after researching the right technology) and the gravity well surrounding the planets. Players can also travel in one-way worm holes. The player can manually move ships in the Z-axis (by holding D and issuing a move command) - though ships will automatically move to attack the enemy ships.

Races

The three races in the game are the TEC (Trade Emergency Coalition), the Advent, and the Vasari.

TEC (Trade Emergency Coalition)

The Trade Emergency Coalition was originally a group of trade worlds that descends from earlier human exploration, in the "Golden Age" their economy flourished and society grew. At one point they cast out the Advent, a religious desert sect that the Traders despised (see below) Which lead many to mark the end to the Golden Age. In recent times the Vasari entered the scene as they fled from their Xeno enemy. To defend against the Vasari, the Traders formed the TEC, mobilized their economy into a military economy and managed to hold the Vasari off by converting their merchant vessels and colony ships into warships, and later produced the Kol class Battlecruiser which was their first battleship design in 750 years. The Advent then returned being much more powerful and started a two front war. This forced the TEC to force retired veterans to return to the navy to fight back the Advent. The TEC tends to have heavily armored units and mostly focus on ballistic weapons (missiles and gauss guns) and less on lasers. They have a mixed close-to-long range arsenal but mostly focused on the latter. Their preferred planets are terran planets.

Advent

The Advent was originally a desert religious sect that mastered psychic powers. They originally isolated themselves and followed the "Unity," a religion like the Aeon Illuminate from Supreme Commander. The Unity is a religion that believes that everyone should unite mentally into a collective mind in order to ascend to perfection. During their exile they focused all of their resources into advancing their technology using their psychic powers to create the psi-tech. They are 1000 or more years ahead of the TEC. They have returned to exact vengeance on the TEC and unite the human race with the "Unity". The Advent tend to favor cheap lightly armored units but make up with energy weapons (lasers and plasma), psi-weapons (weapons that are mentally charged with a user's mental powers) and shields. Their units are very sleek and have most of their shape similar to the rebel alliance in Star Wars. They prefer desert planets due to their history.

Vasari

The Vasari are the only alien race in the game. The Vasari Empire was once the strongest in the universe. Their empire was formed by peacefully assimilating primitive races and brutally crushing more advanced races, turning the populations of both into "valued citizens". However, at some point they started losing contact with their worlds. At first, it was believed to be acts of rebellion, or the work of traitors, but as more worlds were lost, it became clear the situation was very serious. Fleets were sent to deal with the problem, but none of them ever returned, and the Vasari still had no clue as to the identity of the attacker. Finally, the Vasari recalled all of the available ships of their conquering fleet, the Dark Armada, and sent them all to the last planet they lost contact with. Only one battleship returned, literally falling apart, with its crew driven completely insane with fear. It was then that the Vasari Empire as a whole began to flee. They began their exodus, leaving their home systems behind, stopping only to harvest resources, rebuild their population, and to drop warning beacons in order to determine how close behind the unknown enemy was. As they fled, the beacons fell silent one by one, prompting the Vasari to continue their journey. Arriving in TEC space, the Vasari began their routine of conquering in order to collect resources. The campaign went smoothly at first, with the TEC having forgotten all the ways of war, but the TEC recovered and after 10 years, the Vasari are in a complete deadlock, with still more and more of their warning beacons going dark.

The Vasari tend to have fewer, but more expensive units that have extremely hardened hulls. Their ships tend to use Phase Missile technology, which has the possibility of completely bypassing the shields of enemy ships. Their preferred planets are Volcanic.

Customization

Sins has an inbuilt map editor that allows generating maps for both single and multiplayer use by setting their general properties. The game also comes with the option of recording games and watching them, and supports custom modifications. Ironclad Games maintains a collection of user-created works of all three kinds. The company has also released the editor used to create the game's scenarios and an incomplete set of the development tools.

The game keeps track variety of "Achievements," some of them triggered by ordinary gameplay actions (e.g. winning as a specific race, collecting enough resources), others by winning with voluntary restrictions (e.g. no capital ships or strike craft), one listed as "Space Ponies!" with a description of "Um... What?"

Graphics

Sins offers new size and scale technologies that deliver convincingly large stars and planets next to comparably small orbital structures, starships and tiny fighters. The game features bump mapping on planets and ships, specular lighting, dynamic fractal generation for stars and clouds, and bloom.

Reception

Game Reviews

Source	Score	Award
1UP.com	8.5/10
Game Informer	9/10	PC Game of the Month
GameSpot	9/10	Editor's Choice
GameSpy	4.5/5	Editor's Choice
IGN	8.9/10	Editor's Choice
Maximum PC	9/10	"KickAss" Award
PC Gamer	91%	Editor's Choice
Pelit	90	Pelit recommends
X-Play	4/5
Metacritic	89%

Since its launch, Sins of a Solar Empire has received almost universally positive reviews. It was named Game Informer's PC Game of the Month, and was awarded a 9/10 review. PC Gamer awarded the game a 91%, as well as an Editor's Choice award. GameSpot awarded the game a 9/10, as well as an Editor's Choice award. GameSpy awarded the game a 4.5/5, as well as an Editor's Choice award. IGN awarded the game an 8.9/10, as well as an Editor's Choice award. Maximum PC rated the game a 9/10, and bestowed upon it their KickAss award. In addition to these accolades, Sins of a Solar Empire has received Editor's Choice awards from FiringSquad, Gamer 2.0, GameShark, and GameTap.

Common praise for the game has been directed towards the game's clever blend of RTS and 4X gameplay (hence the RT4X moniker), the seamless zoom function, and the user-friendly Empire Tree and UI. That the game was designed to play efficiently on older as well as newer PCs has garnered considerable praise. Criticism has been focused on the lack of a single-player campaign, and the sometimes lengthy game-play times.

External links

• Official Sins of a Solar Empire website
• Official Sins of a Solar Empire forums
• Sins of a Solar Empire wiki
• Sins of a Solar Empire wiki at Wikia