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Sins Of A Solar Empire (PC)
by Jenraux
Sins of a Solar Empire comes under the large-scale space battle game, similar to the Homeworld series, but usually on a much bigger scale, the biggest maps taking hours to get from one side to the other, this can be a good thing and a bad thing.
The game is fairly in-depth, there are 3 types of resources, Metal, Crystal and ... Credits. All 3 are used in the construction of ships and stations. Credits are also used in order to place bounties on other players, which we will discuss later.
There are large varieties of ships, cruisers, frigates, battleships, carriers and so on. The game will allow you to have several hundred ships, the limit increasing as you research new supply technologies. You are also allowed to give your ships special abilities, as the game contains a leveling experience system for each unit, meaning ships that survive several battles will increase in power.
The game supports 2-10 player in LAN games and over the internet, the only game mode worth playing in my opinion. Luckily the game does allow AI computer players in online games, so if you dont have a good amount of players you can still have a decent game.
The games maps are built up of multiple planets, which serve as bases and battlefields for the players. Whilst warping to unexplored sectors the player can come across several types of sectors. Planets which are the most common. Asteroids, these are colonizable but support minimal populations. Asteroid belts, these are not colonizable, however if a ship is struck by an asteroid, it may be heavily damaged. Gas Giant planets are viewed as more of an anomaly than a planet, as they are not colonizable, they may release pockets of explosive gas which can heavily damage ships. Solar storms will drain your ships power and render their special weapons inoperative. Stars will increase the rate in which your ships recharge their power, but have high gravity levels, meaning battles taken place here will be rife with weapons fire but slow in movement. Space junk can be found and harvested for resources by ship extractors. Electron Clouds will render special weapons inoperative. Worm holes allow players to move their ships great distances in seconds. Plasma Storms will drain ships power, like Solar Storms, however strike-craft will be destroyed if used.
So as you can see, the game has a lot of depth to it, there are a good amount of technologies in the game, not enough to make the game over-whelming, but enough to keep you busy for the games duration. Technologies are split into Civillian, Millitary and Supplies. Civillian technologies aid in areas such as population limit on your planets, increasing the tax earnt, as well as improving colonization abilities in order to colonize new types of planets. Millitary technologies aid obviously in combat situations. They will increase damage done by your weapons, as well as increasing the strength of your ships. Each race has its own Civillian and Millitary tech trees. Supply technologies are shared by every race, all supply technologies do is add population slots for your capital ships and small craft.
There is a downside with this game though, as i mentioned at the start of the review, the game does feature very large maps, the smallest maps being around 20 planets, the biggest featuring 100+ planets. In a standard 5 player game, with around say 40 planets, each player will own 8 planets, in order to travel from one side of your empire to the other, would probably take around 15 minutes, and fleet engagements can take more than an hour with large fleets and evenly balanced players. Your looking at least a few hours for a decent 5 player game. This is definitely a game were you need to save and play it again at a later time.
In my mind, this game is great, it just drags on too long, not only are the maps very big, which isnt all that bad as there are several sizes to choose from, but the battles last a long time and the games often result in stalemates.
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Sins Of A Solar Empire (PC)
by Latruska
So what is sins of a solar empire? Well as with most games with the words 'solar' and 'empire' in them its a space strategy game. The technical categorization for this game is a 4x game, no that's not an Australian beer, but rather it's short for eXploration, eXploitaion, eXpansion and eXtermination, with more emphasis being on the ... later, obviously.
So in a more broader explanation I will now explain the gameplay. You start off with one home planet, and 2 ships, and a little bit of money, metal and crystal. Metal and crystal are the two refinable resources in the game and you can put this towards more ships, more buildings, well not buildings more like satellite's but you get the idea, if you have ever played any strategy game before you won't find anything new in this part of the game. Money you can get by taxing your citizens on your planets, and you can upgrade your planets so you can tax them even more, however you don't want to stop with one planet, and before long you'll find yourself building a little fleet to conquer a few worlds around you home world.
To expand you will need to build a fleet, so what type of ships can you build? Well this comes down to how much you have researched. There are 2 main groups of research civilian research, and military research. As you can probably guess, military research is about researching new ships, and new upgrades for them ships, while civilian research is more about helping to improve your economy. Anyway back to the fleet side of things there are 2 types of ships, your bog standard frigate like ships, and then your ultra supa dupa capital ships. How many ships you can have at once depends on how much you have researched.
Now would be a good time to explain the differences between the 3 races, the Vasari, the TEC and the advent, on the surface they seem extremely different races, the TEC are the human like race indigenous to the galaxy, while the Vasari are the remnants of a massive empire who have fled the wars in their homelands to live on here, and the advent are the crazed spiritualistic race wit a grudge against everyone who doesn't believe the same thing as they do. But this is a strategy game and balance comes before story any day, so despite the 3 races not growing in tandem, they all seem to end up using extremely similar ships, allbeit with different names and looks to them, underneath they use the same sort of weaponry and pack the same sort of firepower. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing, as if the developers at Ironclad had decided to go a different route with completely different races, then balancing the 3 races would have been extremely difficult, and there would also be the problem of players having to learn to play 3 very individualized races.
So despite the varying looks of the three races, very similar in fleet and planet development, and mostly in research as well, although as you research more, there are specialized technologies that can be unlocked for each race, which adds a touch of individuality to it.
The fighting in the game is just about what you would expect, there are types of ships that fire from long range, and other types that are better at taking damage than receiving, and the capital ships, and a small number of the frigate ships are able to do a special move on command. However once you get later into the game try to micromanage your ships so as to get them in the best firing position is difficult and tedious. I wouldn't say the gameplay is bad though, if you want a more relaxing game you can just issue the odd order and let your ships fire on who you want, as they'll auto attack if in the orbit of the same planet.
So you've built up your empire you have a sizeable fleet, and you have manage to do some research and build some sort of an economy? It's taken us long to get to this part hasn't it? And then omes the sudden realization of how long this game drags on, 4 hours into the game you realize that altho you've been in constant battles with the pirates and constantly upgrading your economy and research new tech, you've only seen scout ships of your 4 competitors and haven't actually had a battle with them yet, and this is the place where the majority of people realize how silly this game is, yes the gameplay is moderately fun, and it is a well balanced and good to look at game, but who cares if a single game of this sucks hours and hours out of my life how can I possibly continue to play it? When will I eat sleep work play etc.? Bottom line is if you enjoy a strategy game that mixes the likes of civilization with the likes of age of empires, then transport the game into the far reaches of space and adds a 10x multiplier to the amount of time the game takes, then you will love this, but for the majority of people, it will take too long to finish a simple game off, this is mainly down to the insane size of the map's that you play with, and to the slow and relaxed pacing of the game.
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