Sins of a Solar Empire

Ever since reading Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card’s science fiction masterwork, I have been continually searching for a way of putting myself in the shoes of a conquering Ender Wiggin.  Over the years, the only 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate) game that ever came close was the ‘90’s classic, Stars!  Designed by two former Microsoft employees, Stars! was the preferred title of hardcore strategists and often described as the “Harpoon of 4X games.”  Unlike other games that seemed determined to force the gamer in the role of ship-designing engineer or paper-pushing bureaucrat, Stars! kept the gamer focused on the big strategic picture with an interface that resembled a war room more than anything else.  Stars! has now passed into gaming history and I have been on the prowl for a suitable replacement ever since.  Well, at long last, I can say that the successor to Stars! is here and it is called Sins of a Solar Empire, a 4X strategy game as deep as it is beautiful.

Unfortunately, Sins of a Solar Empire (henceforth, just ‘Sins’) was not available in any local stores on launch day because of some sort of distribution bottleneck, so I was forced to do a direct-to-drive download.  Normally, I don’t care for the hassles involved with such gaming downloads, but I have to say that Stardock made the process superbly easy.  I literally just had to click the ‘buy’ button and enter the requisite financial information, and Stardock did the rest.  The download arrived quickly over a blazing fast connection (I topped-out around 1.5mb/s, albeit the connection sometimes dipped to around 750kb/s), with Stardock then automatically installing and registering the product without any interaction from me.  Could you ask for an easier experience?  Well done!

The game starts with a snazzy opening sequence, illustrated in the fashion of epic-styled science fiction art commonly seen in games such as EVE or Warhammer 40K, which explains how the solar empire came to be and what sins it carried on its collective conscious – although I confess that I still am not quite clear on the exact meaning of the game’s title.  As I wasn’t really playing this game for the storyline, I shrugged my shoulders and quickly moved on to the gameplay options.  Upon selecting the Single Player option, I was immediately struck by the many different ways to configure a game.  There is a host of options, including such items as the size of the game map (varying from a small map with a single star and a few planets to six or more stars with over 100 planets!), the number of players (including the ability to create mixed AI / human teams), the speed of the game, the strategic nature and strength of the AI and other factors.  You can even elect to change the racial picture set for the three different factions!

Speaking of factions, you have three to choose from.  The first is the Trader Emergency Coalition, TEC for short, that are humanoid hyper-capitalists that mistakenly put profit before the common defense and are now fighting for their lives in a two front war.  Being forced into a hasty war footing, the TEC has converted civilian vessels into warships armed with powerful but rudimentary weaponry.  The second group is the Advent, a fanatical religious sect that was banished by the TEC and have now returned to reap a little vengeance with their sleek and advanced warships, some of which sport psionic weaponry.  The last faction are the Vasari – no, despite the name, they are not some sort of mafia family but an ancient alien race fleeing some unnamed terror, pillaging as they go, of course.  And like the Advent, they too outclass the TEC in technological sophistication.

After making a few (haphazard) selections, including the selection of the TEC as my faction, I was off to my first game.   It is here that the player first realizes that this isn’t his father’s 4X game.  Immediately, the gamer is confronted with a 3D milieu that is striking in its beauty.  Your homeworld occupies the center of your screen in all its glory.  In fact, if you zoom in, you can even see little craft orbiting the planet as they go about their business.  Indeed, everywhere you look the realization that this is a space game first and foremost is driven home, from the beautiful scenes of distant nebulae and asteroids, to the many different spacecraft and structures that populate the gravity wells of your various planets – all rendered in glorious detail.  Best of all, this is one of those games that gives the gamer complete freedom to pan and zoom so as to thoroughly enjoy all the sights (the interface has a handy button to remove the iconography for some dazzling screenshots).

The zoom function is particularly important in this game as even a small map is rather large – heck, this is space after all!  You can zoom all the way out so that all you see are the individual stars, connected by the phase lanes that are the highways of Sins, and, conversely, you can zoom all the way into a particular planetary system.  This ability to effortlessly zoom in and out proves essential to the interface of Sins as, without it, managing a far flung empire would be an exercise in frustration.  With it, visualization of the oh-so-big strategic picture becomes much easier and Sins becomes a visual delight.

After playing around with the zoom function for far too long (ahem), I got to work playing the actual game.  Now, Sins breaks no new ground in this department as what you have here is your basic 4X formula:  mine resources (metal and crystal); use the resources to build planetary infrastructure (research labs, civilian shelters, etcetera) and vessels; and uses your vessels to conquer new planets and repeat the cycle.  Of course, Sins does add its own unique spin to this process, but the procedure will be familiar to 4X fans everywhere and quickly learnt as a result.

Innovation

Where Sins innovates is in a number of other areas.  First and foremost, Sins is a RTS game, or as Ironclad prefers to call it, a RT4X game.  Combat, along with diplomacy and other game events, occur without any turns or pauses, forcing the player to think and respond on the fly.  ‘But how can I possibly manage a whole empire in real time?’ you might be tempted to ask.  It is here that Ironclad came up with an innovative interface that goes a long way in resolving this potentially game-killing stumbling block.  Along the left side of your screen is the Empire Tree, a cheat sheet of sorts for interstellar emperors.  Using a series of easily understandable icons, the Empire Tree allows the player to quickly gauge the status of planetary systems with a mere glance.  Both friendly and enemy vessels are noted, along with a summary of the status of your ships.  You can even issue orders via the Empire Tree, making it a very elegant and functional system.  Combine the Empire Tree with the ability to zoom out the map until units are visible as icons, similar to what you have in Supreme Commander, and you have a very effective means of managing a large number of planets without having to focus on each and every system in close-up detail.

A second area of innovation is the tactics-heavy combat that takes place in the gravity wells of planets.  All ships and structures operate in this spherical area that surrounds every planet, asteroid field, or other stellar terrain.  Just as in real life, gravity serves to speed vessels toward the planet but slows outgoing traffic.  Furthermore, gravity wells have phase lanes, routes that vessels must use to reach different worlds, connected to them at various points.  All these factors create a number of tactical considerations that will affect the strategy of the player.  For example, if there is a single phase lane connected to your planet, you probably want to build your structures as far away as possible from this potential ingress route of enemies and place a bunch of defensive weapons systems to guard this stellar off ramp.  Also, you want to build your labs and such closer to the planet, forcing enemy ships to sink deeply into the gravity well, making their escape all the more difficult when your relief forces arrive.  Get it?

But the best innovation of Sins is the actual battles.  Like the rest of the game, it all takes place in real time, making Sins a sort of Total War in space.  And let me tell you what an experience this can be when, after investing more than a little time researching the latest weapon systems and building a diverse assortment of vessels, especially the massive, fleet-leading capital vessels, they eventually clash with an enemy fleet!  It is an awesome spectacle as laser blasts and missiles shatter hulls, fighters dogfight and bombers release their payloads, and capital ships use their uber-weapons to tactically hobble and then eviscerate opposing capital vessels!  Add to the onscreen carnage a fitting cinematic musical score that adds tension without being obnoxious, and you have the type of sci-fi experience that Hollywood has forgotten how to make for the silver screen.  I recall one incident in which after a lengthy chase, I had finally trapped a large enemy fleet with a two pronged pincer attack.  The resulting battle had vessels erupting into incandescent clouds with a frightening pace.  After a tense game of chicken, the AI decided it had had enough and tried to make a run for it from the gravity well of the planet.  Quite to my surprise - and the surprise of the people in the room with me at the time – I found myself shouting at my vessel captains “not to let those SOBs escape!”  The enemy flagship, heavily damaged and limping behind the rest of the fleet, made for an ideal target.  I promptly ordered all my vessels to pour fire into him before he jumped from the system to safety.  “Get him!” I kept exclaiming until, much to my relief, the flagship erupted in a huge explosion, effectively decapitating the enemy fleet.  I actually hooted in victory, feeling as victorious as Winston Churchill must have felt upon learning that Bismarck had been sunk.  It’s been a long time since a game has made me emote like that.

Speaking of real world naval battles, I would like to add that there is an uncanny feeling of historical realism to the fleet engagements.  By that, I mean that they do not feel like superficial sci-fi nonsense.  The hit-and-run fleet tactics are akin to the naval strategies of both World Wars where capital ships would stick around only long enough to deal out some damage to their foes and then hightail it out of town.  I’ve had more than a few Jutlands.  Add some carrier-based fighters and bombers to the equation, and I can say that I have also had my share of Coral Seas and Midways as well.  I think this sense of realism comes from the fact that the ships are modeled with some depth and the friendly fleet AI does a darn good job of organizing the vessels into formations that make tactical sense, not to mention also easing the burden of micromanagement from the player.   This is not a game where victory is achieved by constantly redesigning your ships with the latest gadget, but by using technological improvements in conjunction with smart fleet compositions and appropriate tactics and strategy to overcome your opponent.  In short, Sins brings some badly needed hardcore naval realism to the 4X genre.

And I’ve only scratched the surface with what is so good about Sins.  In addition to the above, there is also a very clever bounty system whereby players can anonymously place a bounty on an opposing empire, enticing NPC pirates to attack them.  There is a deep tech tree.  Empire economics can be enhanced with the building of trading outposts to generate some extra income, which, of course, means players can stalk the shipping lanes looking for some tasty enemy commerce vessels to sink…er, destroy.  Cultural warfare is possible with the construction of broadcast centers and, taking a page from Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History, capital ships spread your culture as well…and not just with guns.   There is also a robust multiplayer component that allows for saved games (finally!).  Sins even awards the player “achievements,” something like a merit badge for accomplishing certain goals (I earned an “expert bombardier” achievement for inflicting a lot of planetary damage). Did I mention the battles?

So What's Not to Like?

Not all is perfect with Sins and I do have a few minor irritants.  Of course, there are the usual minor bugs and balancing issues that are expected in a game of such complexity; issues that I am sure Ironclad will quickly, er, iron out.  Besides those, my biggest complaint is the aforementioned hit and run tactics common in the game.  I have found it exceedingly hard to smash an enemy fleet and obtain a decisive victory.  As I detailed above, whenever the battle turns against the enemy (or the gamer for that matter), it is far too easy to just warp out of trouble and run from system to system, always avoiding a devastating encounter.  There are some techs in the game to help alleviate this problem, such as phase inhibitors to delay the egress of a fleet, but I have found that they do not provide sufficient assistance.  As a result, the player can spend a great deal of time playing cat and mouse with an enemy fleet, sometimes literally lapping the solar system over and over again in endless pursuit.  Realism is nice, but Sins eventually makes you feel like an Admiral Sisyphus.

Pirate raids can be annoying as well.  Admittedly, the bidding wars that occur to purchase the raiders assistance can be quite fun.  However, the ultimate target of the raid will consume a great deal of time and effort to overcome the pirate’s attack.  It quickly becomes clear that a player who is constantly subjected to these attacks will eventually collapse under the drain, costing him the game in short order.  As such, pirate raids are a bit too powerful in my book.  To the credit of Ironclad, you now have the option of disabling the raids altogether, but I hope a better solution is ultimately found.

Diplomacy needs work too.  During the course of the game, the AI will offer the player certain missions in exchange for better relations or other perks.  Unfortunately, the gamer cannot do the same and is limited to a rather rudimentary set of diplomatic options - the usual options of peace treaties, cease fires, trade compacts or the gifting of resources.  I would like to see the diplomacy screen be a little more useful, especially in a game that is so diplomacy-heavy.

I think the ship graphics could use a little tweaking as well.  Don’t get me wrong, they are very nice, but not quite as sharp as I would like.  I think the various vessels, especially the capital ships, could use a little more chrome to make them seem as imposing as they actually are.

Lastly, I would like to see more units and structures.  The current assortment of vessels and orbital equipment is a nice start, but this game cries out for more.  Make that: ‘More!’ Granted, this is less a complaint and more of a wish.