Don't worry if you don't like multiplayer, I enjoy this game and I play single player 100%.

There is one victory goal, although you can win by making allies with 1 or 2 AI's also.

I would describe this game as feeling like an RTS that has you controlling massive amounts of units, however the AI does a good job without you at microing abilities and fighting so the micro management, although helpful, isn't anywhere near as important as other RTS.  The fact that it is a cross polination of RTS and 4X games like Gal Civ really only feels like it changes the graphical style, scale of armies and pace.  You don't actually feel like you are playing a real time Gal Civ game as everything feels like you are just taking the style of.  I guess the same way Stalker takes certain styles from role playing games, perhaps borrowing from Fallout games (not played them, just seen them) but at the end of the day it still feels like an FPS with a different flavour.

It doesn't feel like there is a story being told.  But it can feel like you are part of an epic struggle for a large part of the galaxy if you crank up the size of the galaxy map that you play in and have as many as 9(?) other factions on a map at the same time.  With more AI involved then diplomacy becomes important although I think the diplomacy in this game could really use some rework, the second micro expansion is meant to deal with diplomacy amongst other things.

I prefer Sins to other RTS because the scale, pace and AI assistance means Micro Management of units isn't as important, it isn't a click fest.  It's as different to C&C, Starcraft, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes and all the other RTS clones as Stalker is to Quake 3.  Strategy is deffinately more a factor, effective defence, scouting, attack, fleet composition, research, everything is important.  Beyond about 5 to 7 choices at the beginning of each game there is no 'perfect build order', it's about reacting to your environment and your enemies and choosing the best strategy.

Hope my opinion has helped.

You might want to wait a bit longer...

Don't get me wrong, it is a great game! However, in my opinion, it starts to get quite repetitive very soon... You have more or less the exact same moves at the beginning of the game. There are not too many surprises, once you get to know the mechanics behind it.

I rarely play it right now, because IMO there is simply sth missing (in terms of feeling)... It could have been so much greater than it is at this current stage... If you are just interested to "play the admiral", zoom out and guide your fleets into battle (it is a bit of a sandbox, scirmish mode...), then this game is perfect! You can build up a massive fleet in short time and just have fun. You don't have to micromanage everything (if you do, you will have certainly an advantage...). But that's about it (The research is kind of too simplified for me, diplomacy does exist in a very, VERY basic form...) . It just barely touches the surface of a real epic story... As you say, there is no campaign mode (yet...).

BUT: there is an incredible active modding community working behind the scenes! It is really breathtaking to scroll through the forum topics there. And Ironclad does a cool job in further working on this game. In the current stage, the game is build for a very fast attack pace (best defence is a good offence...). In the middle of November, they launch the first of three micro expansions. It will have a lot in terms of defence strategies, for example huge starbases (Ironclad has the nice habbit of listening closely to the oppinion and suggestions of their customers! Thanks guys!). The second expansion is supposed to focus on diplomacy (no clue, how they are solving this issue...) and no news about the third expansion. However, they will implement a campaign mode (and most probably another race as well!), perhaps even a campaign editor (I don't know about the editor though... It is just my personal wish/hope...). Overall, this game is still growing. They are adding new stuff all the time and that is what I really like.The new hings sound cool and allow for new strategies.

Overall, I would say that SoaSE has a lot of potential to really blow minds. Right now, it is just not completely there yet.

Whoever finds wrong spellings or grammar is allowed to keep them...

Yeah, I'd suggest you try the demo.  Since you're aware this doesn't have a campaign, you don't care for multiplayer, and it doesn't meet any of your other requirements, it's hard to say whether or not you'd like it at all.

Personally, I think it's rather dull in single-player as the AI (as in most RTS's) is a predictable dolt that generally won't have a chance unless you stack the deck heavily against yourself (meaning, you versus several opponents on Hard/Unfair).  That's just me, though.

There's really no typical game. Scope wise, large maps on Sins are more than standard RTS large maps because it adds more paths, more gravity wells to fight in, etc. The time it takes to finish a packed large map game rises fairly steeply. The demo is limited to small maps, so you won't really see this but you'll probably be able to get a good feel for how the game plays and imagine how it would be on a large map (100+ planets).

 - The diplomacy is lacking compared to a traditional 4x. The AI asks you to do stuff or give them resources. When you complete these, they become happy with you. When you fail, they like you less. You are able to (and they offer themselves) various treaties along the way. Cease fires are fairly simple to get, trade treaties, planet/ship vision, and full fledged alliances can be formed as you climb progressively higher on the happiness meter. When it drops, the AI can revoke these treaties. You can't trade anything with AIs, but really there's not a whole lot of reason to. A black market exists for buying/selling resources, and each race has unique tech trees where tech trading is not possible. Because of this, there's no haggling for anything.

But, Ironclad is currently developing a micro-expansion pack that will add to the non-combat side of Sins, namely diplomacy. We don't know what yet, but they've been planning on it for a long time, admitting that diplomacy isn't the best thing about Sins.

- Upgrading planets doesn't need too much. Selecting a planet shows gives you upgrade and build options. There are upgrades for population, hp (infrastructure to survive bombardment), logistics and tactical "slots" to house more orbital buildings, and exploring the planet to find bonuses and artifacts. There's no population happiness, no building on the surface or anything of that nature that can be found in a game like Gal Civ 2.

- Resource gathering requires no micromanagement. Most planets (and some neutral anomalies/planetoids) have resource rocks. For planets you colonize, you just build mines on them and extraction is automatic and infinite. For the neutrals, each race gets a ship that can capture them. There are no workers or anything like that.

- Real-world time passage is not easy to describe. Because each extra planet on the map adds more than just an area of a map, large maps can take much longer than small ones. In a typical RTS, a bigger map means more space but it's still on a single map. In Sins, each planet comes with its own mini-map (the grav well). So you have your big galaxy map with planets, but each planet also has its own gravity well to build in and to fight in. A ballpark figure that's been thrown around and is crude but close enough to accurate is that each planet adds about 10 minutes of play time. Once you get better it'll shrink, and a 100 planet map hasn't taken me 1,000 minutes for a while.. but it's in the area of 7-8+ hours, when fully populated with AIs.

- Ingame time.. er, I don't know how you determine it. Ships don't really zip about and you get the feeling that they are big hulking ships that take some time to get to places. Travelling between two planets can take a few minutes, if the ships start on the opposite end of one grav well and have to fly through to jump out to the next planet.

Hope this helps a bit

From what you said about what you like/dislike, I think that you're more of a GalCiv than a SoaSE player.  Galactic Civilisations II is turn-based like Civ and the TW campaigns, while SoaSE is an RTS.  Both are published by Stardock, although SoaSE was developed by an independent firm (Ironclad) in cooperation with SD as opposed to being made by SD itself.

I have both...

I noticed that you said you like good single player campaigns.  Right now the game has no official campaign whatsoever and what story is there is very bare bones.  I love the game, as well as its scope, but I figured you'd want to know.

Hi all!

Am I dissapointed about the game? Well, yes and no. I loved HOMEWORLD. This was a game which really got me excited. Using different tactics to beat the enemy mattered and the story was awesome! (And I actually thought SoaSE is sth along this line, that's why I got it, next to the good reputation of Stardock) This is the one thing I am missing here... It might be a bit unfair as SoaSE does not try to be a homeworld clone but sth different. It IS a good game and as Vandenburg mentioned: it is as good as bugfree in it's basic form (something you don't have often...).

However: After a couple of rounds, I had the impression, that positioning tactics do not matter so much... It comes down to a mathematical problem: Who has more powerful ships in a battle wins ( DPS comparison: Damage per second, am I right?). Each shot is a 100% hit. You substract shield/ armor and the rest is damage...Heck, I read sth about the correct build order in the beginning of a game: You should build the capital ship factory before you  build the mining complex, because if you do it the other way round your opponent will have a couple of ships more (build during the time you built your mining complexes...), which will be the end for you in a multiplayer game... Well, I am not sure if I understood it correctly, because I did not follow that thread... And you don't want to play multiplayer anyway.

The main bulk of the ships don't move, thus they simply slug it out. In theory, you can very much predict if you are going to loose a fight or not. This has an advantage: If you don't have to count probabilities for hitting a target and the ships don't move while fighting ( we are talking about a LOT of ships), you reduce the computational cost, thus a low end computer can still have a good run with it (an idea I actually really like: You can have a new game without buying a new computer along with it). But for me, it reduced the fun a bit... I want to see the ships moving, trying to position themself for optimal fire, even use evasive tactics... THIS would have given me the feeling of actually seeing a real space battle. It would be more dynamic (I think, the modders already addressed this...) and dramatic. In the current version, I usually zoom in on a fighter or bomber, because those indeed move and it gives me a cool movie like feeling...

Ironclad being Ironclad and Stardock being Stardock, you can be sure of one thing: Added content! I already mentioned it. This game is still being polished. (For example: Someone wrote in a thread, that z-axis movement has been restored. That would be awesome for me. This would give me the feeling of being in space, rather than being on a sea like 2D environment... Need to check it out this weekend ). And there will be a campaign mode eventually. Already looking forward to it.

Just my two cents. Yeah, trying the demo is the best thing I guess.

Cheers

Thanks again for all the replies. Most helpful. The demo looks fine, though it will take a few more goes before feeling comfortable (e.g. only in my third attempt did I notice a structure called "Capital ship factory" I could build).

Pirates seem a bit of a pain in the bum. Is this always the case?

My personal observations, judging from what I've seen up till now:

• On a scale that goes from C&C - Rise of Nations - Civ, this one seems to sit in between RoN and Civ; this is a good thing.
• I still feel a bit overwhelmed by everything. This should get better at repeated plays.
  
• Tech tree though seems a bit limited, though much bigger than any RTS I've seen. Did I understand correctly that other races have other tech trees and units? I'd imagine that it's easy to research the entire tree on a bigger map. This makes me suspect that a bigger map with slower play is not what this game is designed to do well.
  
• Still not quite sure what the papers-scissors-rock is for this game. That's because I don't know for sure yet when a unit (especially pirates) is a fighter, a small ship or a capital ship and it's not clear to me from the unit descriptions what units are good against what units (especially: which squadron type to use against smaller, I think frigate-sized, ships)
• Diplomacy seems a bit weird. Is there a way to offer "missions" to others instead of just receiving them?
• Battles play like a larger scaled wargame. Just get your units at the right place and battle will ensue. Targetting decisions is almost always obvious and concentrating fire on 1 ship at a time seems the way to go. Defensively, the only thing you have to worry about is straying out of range of your defensive gun platforms. Not a bad thing though.
  
• For a game with this much graphical sauce, the ships seem just a bit too small. Weird.
• From the demo, I obviously have no clue on the other races. Are they different enough? I mean, like StarCraft-different, though still balanced? Or just like RoN-different, with a unique unit or two and some race-specific bonus?

Verdict: to me, this game is a bit on the edge, though I can't think of a better game in this niche. I think I'm going to wait until the first three micro expansions come out, especially the diplomacy one. This will have the added benefit of knowing if the direction of Ironclad is good or bad for me.

Yeah, the tech tree hasn't the scope of your usual 4x tech tree and your correct that on larger maps you'll most likely have researched everything important about mid-game.

But you can easily change some of the research items by moding some numbers to expand the tree significantly. (I for example have made all end-tier weapons, shield, hull, culture, etc. upgrades go up to lvl 99 so I always have something to spend my ressources on on very large maps.

Yeah, diplomacy sucks a bit, it's just a bit over your usual rts diplomacy so not really good.

As for the rock, paper shotgun system you can hover over the ships icons in the construction menues (as in the squadron build menus) and it will give you a good idea what's strong against what.

As to find out what type of ship is what class playing each race would be the easiest to find out. But basically each race has a light frigate, it's just not called that for every race. For the Advent the name is Disciple Vessel and the Vasari one is the Ravastra Skirmisher. Also each race has a long range frigate, an antifighter frigate, etc.

As to find out which ones are capital ships, that's easy. The large ships that kill your smaller ships in droves, those are capital ships.

That's inherent to the zoom system used. In SupCom for example it's even worse, most units there appear really tiny since you can't zoom that much in to make them appear large.

If you zoom into the ships they'll appear large enough but then you probably won't have a playable field of vision.

They aren't StarCraft-different, but they're different enough. Each race has the same unit concept but with different executions.

For example each race has a light frigate, but they all cost different amounts of ressources and aren't the same strength. Differences are mostly from capital ships and their abilities (which are very different between each races) and the support cruisers with their abilities and some differences in structures/culture and fighter/bomber powers.

This means that while each race has a unit to roughly correspondents to the other races unit the fleet mixup is stilly quite different because of the supporting abilities you get for your ships are very different.

The Advent for example have quite cheap ships with low hull and armor ratings but very powerful shields and higher shield mitigation. They also have a good capital shield which can easily refill shields to complement that ability. The Guardian support cruiser also has an ability that lowers all damage by a third by taking part of damage done to nearby friendlies on its own shields.

In multiplayer, yes. Whack-a-mole is a problem.

In singleplayer it isn't that much of a problem, because if you fortify a planet enough the AI usually won't bypass it like a human player would thus giving more or less stable frontlines to fight at.

Nope. Influence changes some "battle values" if you are fighting in your territory to your favour. Besides that, it prevents a planet under your "influence" to be settled by the enemy for a period of time. However, this might be adressed in the upcoming of the second expansion...

Nope. (at least not yet...)

I tend to agree on this...

Not yet. But there will be one. Many people have asked for it. And thus Ironclad is introducing a campaign. It will come...

Not really, they are focusing on slightly different aspects. Different enough to make them -well... different... and similair enough to make the gameplay not unbalanced.

only random artifacts o be found on planets. Hopefully this gets adressed too. It is a topic now and then in the forum

Hehe, won't comment on my own post...

Wait until you see the expansions. They might add some spice! Perhaps, someone can verify what I said (or counter it...). Thx!

Cheers!

Perhaps one more thing about strategy:

I said that the battle is more or less decided by weight of numbers. To be honest, this is not entirely true. The various ship types have distinct abilities. They have different weaponry, shields, hit points etc. That means, you have to balance your fleet and rely on a specific function. You can build up a fleet with long range weaponry, but if you don't have decent close range ships in your fleet then you might be in trouble, once the enemy closes in... The capital ships gain experience and get better and better. With each leveling up, you can choose from some additional features for this special ship. (an additional fighter squadron for example, or a colonization modul, higher damage output for friendly ships ect.). That means, there are different strategies in building up a good fleet (idealy, you need to scout the enemy fleet, see what kind of ships there are and then counter them with the corresponding ships...). You should be able to figure this out by playing the demo. In online multiplayer however (Ihaven't tried that so far, I have to admit. Thus, what I am saying about that is just what I read on the forums...), some people spam a single type of ship by litteraly mass producing it. This is about to change as far as I heard (expansion #1).

So, there is some strategy involved in building up a mixture of ships for your fleet. Just not in terms of ship formation like in "Homeworld". But then again, this game does not try to be a Homeworld clone. It IS a good game, it just might not be what you have been expecting (as you said, right now it might be a bit "light". I totally agree...).

But I had a similair experience with Gal Civ II. When I played the very first version without any additional patches, I thought that MoO2 is the better game. After two Addons and countless free updates (thx Stardock!) it is beating MoO2 in nearly every aspect (just think about the countless victory conditions, the race specific techs, the good diplomacy, the realy cool AI, and so on...) And they just released another update.

I see the same thing happening here. Ironclad listens to the people. And they are adressing their wishes (they introduced the campaign idea again, after the community has been asking or it...). The expansions are going into that direction. If you are undecided, just wait for the next expansion (coming in 12 days!) and check the forums. Still not convinced, then look it up again in half a year, you can bet, that they will have added more content.

@GHenrikG - With reference to combat, yeah I can see the rock paper sissors thang, as I said just seems 'light'.  Managing those forces; I'm having to micro to stop my Javelis frig's parking next to enemy Kodiaks.  A fleet formation would stop this, but not add the je ne sais quoi that I'm after. I just love being out numbered and then beating an enemy through sheer tactical skill!  It's good, but I want awesome.

@N3rull - Yeah I love a lack of micro'ing - and saw the way it queued stuff - very nice.  I probably agree sadly on the empire building.  It does have room for expansion thou - Planet Management has 3 blank icons and Develop Planet has 3 too.  So I guess I can hope and keep my fingers crossed.  I definately agree with you that I'll wait till more of the micro expansions come out - I don't want to get frustrated with what I personally perceive as the limitations of Sin's atm.  Either empire building or combat expansion patch will get me in...  Or the one that would get me buying it tomorrow is a single player campaign.

I put on my best arnie voice and say... "I'll be back!"

sins is definatly meant to be a multiplayer game,   no campaign and predicatble AI's  get the fun out of it pretty fast

playing over LAN with friends is in my opinion the best mode....  just 4 friends playing 1v1v1v1  or 2 v 2,  nothing et's more fun,   unknowns in multiplayer leave once they think theyre dead anyways