Basic Questions

from an extreme newb

from Sins Forums

Hello All. Let me introduce myself. I am Aesop. I've been an avid console gamer (currently 360 and wii) for years and never really got into the pc gaming scene. Recently I bought my first desktop in probably 10 years and figured I was pretty much obligated to get the best rts game my machine could handle. I've loved the genre since starcraft and obviously controls on a console don't lend kindly to it. I've only had sins for 2 days and am still in the early learning phases so I was hoping you could humor me and answer some extremely basic questions about the multiplayer and the game in general.

Game length: I've read (either online or in the manual or somewhere) that games can take hours, days, weeks or months. How do you play a game that takes months? Does that statement refer strictly to single player or is it touching on multiplayer as well? I don't even understand how you would play a multiplayer game that takes days. Obviously no one can sit at their computer for multiple days straight. So is there some way to save a multiplayer game and pick it back up later? I'm all for epic battles but I also have a job...

The classes: I've played a few 1v1 single player games with the Advent. I picked them simply because I liked an Advent avatar picture the best when setting up my player. I originally thought their strength was brute force, but that wasn't the impression I got in the short time I spent with them. So please set me straight. TEC - commerce, Advent - culture/influence?, Vasari - brute force.

So there are my questions. I know the internet and gaming subculture in general (at least in the console world) is a cynical and unforgiving place but I'm hoping you will take my admitted newb-ness with a grain of salt and assuage my foray into the pc gaming world. Thanks.

4,935 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Game Length: When people refer to playing a game that takes months or days, they mean they are playing a long game in short installments. You can save both single player games and multiplayer games easily. When a multiplayer game is played it saves it on all computers (I'm pretty sure? it does when using hamachi) and you can even change who controls a specific faction when you reload, or replace an absent person with a computer. However there aren't any maps packaged with the game that can't be finished in less than 10 hours. You can make ridiculously huge maps though, so theoretically a game can take as long as you want. I made my own 10 star map with 200+ planets, and it only took like 8 hours, its twice as big as the biggest map packaged with the game. Short 1v1s can take between 30 minutes to 2 hours.

The classes: Thats probably the best stereotypes of the races you'll get for this game, however each race has little things that kinda steal from another species stereotype. Like the vasari have the best metal and crystal upgrades(they upgrade them together instead of separately), and the advent capital ships tend to be the most powerful, even though the vasari tend to have the best units ship for ship (they're more expensive). So you have to be really careful with any sort of stereotypes for the races, they all have strange exceptions or things that dont even fit in a stereotype at all (Vasari have awesome abilities related to phase jumping, which is related to the storyline, but doesn't really fit into the traditional archetypes).

Hope that helps
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
It helps alot, I appreciate your understanding.

If I may pose a follow-up question:
What is the general scenario with mulitplayer games? If you're playing online with random people you don't know it's 1 session? If not, is it difficult to coordinate meeting back up with those individuals to pick up where you left off? Just curious what you're experience has been with multiplayer.
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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Yes it is usually in 1 session! Games that last more than 2 hours are rare. Unless you can speak with people and arrange it before hand attempting such a game will end with few people quitting before its over.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
yep and to your question about game length :

games also vary in length on how your style is. if you like to play it slow and build up ur planets and build a massive fleet b4 u attack, the game will obviously take longer. if u like to rush, the game can be relativly short as long as u don't stretch out ur fleets to far.

and i agree with "TheUnityCalls" all the races have sterotypes but also have exceptions.
the way i play, i am really good with the TEC but i really suck with the advent (i don't really know why) u should play a couple small games with each race to figure out which race ur best using
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Wow, you all are alot less hateful than I'm used to on most gaming forums. Thank you for the info. Maybe I'll look you up once I get a little experience under my belt. I believe my multiplayer name is also AesopDoom but I'm not sure as I've got no experience with the whole friend finding system.

Thanks again everyone and good games to you all.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah you have to be a pretty big jerk to piss off people on this forum, and your just asking perfectly reasonable questions. People here are really good at answering questions, I think everyone understands that there is a lot to know about Sins of a Solar Empire.