1.03 Preview

[Scott Tortorice]

News from Ironclad:


Sins of a Solar Empire is the highest rated new PC game of 2008 as well as the best selling new PC game of 2008 but we're not resting on our laurels.

Even now, version 1.03 of Sins of a Solar Empire is in internal beta. Stardock and Ironclad are working through the features and testing the new updates based on player feedback. Once that's done we'll get a demo version out and then move on to 1.04.

Here are some of the new features going into v1.03:
1) Significantly updated computer AI. The AI is substantially better than in the current game. We're also evaluating whether to put in a difficulty level that gives the AI added bonuses since, in any RTS, a top human player will always be able to out think a computer AI.

2) LOTS of new game setup options including:

+ Pirates or no pirates in a given game
+ Fleet size
+ Income rate speed
+ Build Speed
+ Ship speed
+ Research Speed
+ Culture Speed

3) The open market for buying and selling of resources has been altered so that there are random fluctuations in pricing and can crash or boom based on player behavior.
4) Imrpoved group phase jumping for large fleets of ships.
5) AI will surrender if situation is hopeless rather than drag the game out.
6) AI players will replace humans in multiplayer if a player drops.
7) Defeated players who are observing can no longer give resources or place bounties (bit of an exploit there).
8) Lots of tweaks to Ironclad Online for messaging users.
9) Improvements to network coding for multiplayer play.

This is by no means a complete list. There's dozens of small changes based on player feedback (we'll give a complete list when we release the update).
Our ETA for this release is late next week or the week after depending on testing. We want to make sure the AI updates work pretty well (and that means, ahem, lots of play testing!) and lots of network testing.

We also have a pretty large list of things to do for a future 1.04 so if your own personal wishlist isn't fulfilled here, there's always 1.04 to look forward to.

[Don Maddox]

I'm glad to see Ironclad is continuing to improve the game. That said, I'm a little surprised at what's not on this list, as 1.3 doesn't appear to address any of the issues that I consider important.

[mr_clark]

What is it that you consider important, Don?
Just a question really.

[Don Maddox]

What is it that you consider important, Don?


I've covered some of this in other threads, but I do a brief recap here:


Sins' diplomacy system stinks. It doesn't need a few tweaks, it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Why is the AI able to do things the human player can't?
Capital ships are impotent. They ought to be renamed cruisers or something and a new class of true capital ships created. Capital ships should be huge, powerful, and able to handle smaller ships with ease. Sins' capital ships are expensive, bloated, and ineffective.
The universe is rather boring. Where are the ancient relics? The mysterious anomalies? Strange alien races? Space is supposed to be a place of wonder and mystery, but Sins manages to turn it into a place of floating rocks and a few gas clouds. In short, there's little out there worth fighting for. The planets are largely generic and devoid of unique qualities worth the losses it takes to seize them. But the player has no choice because that's the only way to win the game.
The tech tree is bland and far too incremental. Unlike other strategy games of this type, Sins' tech tree doesn't give much of a reward for all the waiting and resources it absorbs. Most of the improvements offer a lousy 5% enhancement to a single statistic! That means even when you have researched the entire tree, you might have a 25% improvement over your original values.
Sins' combat model feels like an outdated RTS from the '90s. There's no strategy here; the player just selects everything he has and hurls it in the general direction of the enemy fleet. It's like a giant Zerg rush in space. No tactics, no strategy.
Sins' is essentially trying to be Civilization in space, or Alpha Centauri in real-time. The problem is the Civilization IV bests Sins in virtually every single gameplay category. Civ has wonders, Sins doesn't. Civ has more options for map generation and more options to create scenarios. Civ has a much larger and more diverse technology tree, and the research choices go a long way toward making each civilization unique. Civ has natural resources (like oil) that are rare and really worth fighting for, Sins' universe is generic and rather stale. The difference between an advanced civilization and a backward one is huge in Civ IV; with a few exceptions, Sins' technology advances are barely noticeable most of the time. Civ IV has a powerful and intuitive diplomacy system with lots of options, while Sins has a crippled diplomacy system that doesn't do much and gives the AI options the player doesn't have.
And let's not even compare Sins to Alpha Centauri, as AC created a rich and vibrant world full of wonder and a myriad of workable strategies. Sins comes dangerously close to turning the glories of space exploration and conquest into WWI trench warfare.

In its current form, I feel Sins needs a major overhaul. There is a lot of promise here, but after playing almost nonstop for quite a while I concluded that once you've played a game of Sins you've pretty much seen everything the game has to offer. There's little in the way of tactics or diplomacy capable of making an individual game session unique.

[mr_clark]

Yeah, I read those points after asking here, but thanks again for summing it up as I missed a few.
Yeah, I guess you're right about strategy or even tactics being not really there, and I already commented on the diplo system in the appropriate thread.
But I don't really think the capitals are too underpowered. One battlecruiser can make you win battles with minimal support ships against the typical planet militias with 4-6light frigates 2-4 missile frigates a cruiser or two and the occasional siege frigate. The advantage is the high hitpoints and armor that make this firebase nearly indestructible in ai battles as the ai doen'T concentrate fire on them.
Plus I think the problem with research is not with the magnitude of improvements. Keep in mind that sins is not nearly the scale of Civ (or AC for that matter), and the 25%improvements you mentioned can have quite some impact. You'll get the stats of five ships packed into four.
I think the real problem there is that you are so very static in what you can research and that all races more or less have mainly the same techs with only small variation in where some research can be started. The names and exact values are a little different bur that is that.
I would then very much have preffered Master of Orion like tech tree where everybody could research everything, but then has to make choices for which techs to go and which to not keep. There an AI picklist would have worked well to distinguish the races in game.

[Scott Tortorice]

I finally got a chance to try version 1.03 and I can say that they have improved the diplomatic AI. I actually had an enjoyable game the other day in which three AI-controlled empires didn't pile on, but actually were double-crossing each other and actively engaging me with diplomacy. One AI empire actually allied with me to crush the the last independent AI empire!

1.03 is a definite step in the right direction.