Sins Forums
Will the next two expansions require having Entrenchment, or will we end up with four separate versions of Sins, dividing the online multiplayer community and perhaps killing the online multiplayer game?
From what I understand you can pick and choose which expansion you wish to play (all none or mix). Everybody can play vaniliia with or without the expansions, after that it is narrowed down to who has what but you will not need to the expansions to play with someone who does have the expansions. They just will not be able to use their expansions when they play against you.
Mabey a multiplayer tool that showes what is being played, and when you join it, it loads those expansions, would be a good idea?
If you use the Entrenchment launcher, when you click 'join' MP games, anyone hosting a match with Vanilla will not be visible. YOU CANNOT JOIN A VANILLA GAME IF YOU ARE RUNNING ENTRENCHMENT.
Then dont run Entrenchment just run the vanilia sins. You do have and get that option.
hmm, the said part is that no game out there have 3 expansion, i belive the most i have seen is two age of empires 3, i believe, you probably will need the base game engine, plus the gameinfo files
The Sims and The Sims 2.
Different genres, but still : P
I realize this, but that still fractures the game community. I would like to be able to run the latest expansion and choose to either join a vanilla game or a game with the expansion. Otherise I have to open sin twice just to check and see how many matches for each are up.
On a not so related subject, I was wondering how many copies of Entrenchment they sold, apparently they sold about 500,000 copies of Sins, with that in mind; I would like to know how many people bought Entrenchment? It would be interesting to have an approximation of how many people still play the game.
My understanding from what was originally said by IC was that if everyone but one player had the expansion, the game would default to vanilla Sins as one person does not have it. This is not the case as you cannot form this game as the Vanilla person cannot join the game.
I don't like this as I would like to be able to have a single client and click the "Play Entrenchment" option rather then having to quit Sins and start Entrenchment....
Let me elaborate.
Right now you can't join a Regular Sins game from Entrenchment. You can't even see them in the Join Games menu. What happens when we have four different versions of the game?
Also, might there be different combinations--like someone who only buys the 3rd expansion and doesn't buy Entrenchment?
That was my understanding as well.
Not to mention that an available slot can fill in the time it takes you to switch engine and log back into ICO again....
true to a point, but still you aren't playing online with friends, and with the sims and the sims 2, once you installed them, you can run normal sims and still get the xpansion stuff
ANSWER TO OP!!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
All expansions are stand alones which will act independantly if you only have one and in cooperation if you have 2or more 3
Honestly it doesnt strike me as that big a deal, right now we launch Entrenchment and see who else is in the lobby for a game, straightforward, i dont have to click this to see Entr, click something else to see Vanilla, click something else to see Second Expansion or click something else for Third.
For newbies its very easy no mess no fuss. And besides ppl are going to have favs, you know?
Some peeps will love Entr, others will say "Hey i like the Diplomacy thing" and go for second expansion, others will say "I want to run 7DS in 1.05" and they will use vanilla, and the others will say "Hey you know.... Three was like AWESOME!"
Maybe later the devs will put in something like you know a load from menu when we boot the game... Load Entr, Load... Diplomacy... Load Three... Load Vanilla...
But its not a big deal, it'll come, and in my personal humble opinion, having just the same version "see" others of the same version is like "Too Easy" I like it alot. 
So dont fret, some changes will come, but i think the devs got the right idea on this, and the restart thingy wont be there forever, just give them time,
-TEal
I never thought about this...let's do the math.
You have the original/vanilla sins. We will call that A.
You have Entrenchment. We will call that B.
You have a second un-named expansion. We will call that C.
You have a third un-named expansion. We will call that D.
Assuming you can mix and match at will like they said you can do, the possibilities are :
a
ab
abc
abcd
ac
acd
ad
abd
That is 8 different "versions" or variants of sins that will be online at any given time. I think trying to find a game is hard enough, but with this it would be chaos.
PS I suck at math and equations, so if I missed one or two possibilities it would not surprise me at all.
What we're gonna need, then, is for the game to work so that people with the expansions can see all of the games they are eligible to play in. Then, for them to be able to join any game they can see and for the expansions they have loaded to adjust accordingly.
At some point Ironclad/Stardock is going to need to give some thought to the online multiplayer aspect of this and to how it's going to have to work for online multiplayer and the expansions to be practical. Alternatively, everyone could just agree to either play Entrenchment or just normal Sins.
You have to have A, So it is the number of combinations of B, C, and D.
My notation below: The apostrophe after means off. No apostrophe after means on.
B'C'D'
B'C'D
B'CD'
B'CD
BC'D'
BC'D
BCD'
BCD
So you have it right. 8 Combinations if you do not want to add mods into the mix. On that note, Mods would fragment the online community even further than the expansions.
Since the forum doesn't seem to want to let me edit my post right now.
I'll second that.
This discussion should ignore mods as they are add ons to a given version. We are talking about the underlaying engine(s) here.
The lolz at you....
Try Everquest, 15th exps
One solution could be to simply allow everyone to join any game, but only allow them to use units and research "unlocked" by the expansion(s) they own. Kind of like Guild Wars. It might be problematic if subsequent expansions radically change game mechanics, but with some design effort it could work. Certainly a better alternative than fracturing an already tiny community.
It won't work. How is a vanilla Sins player supposed to kill a fully upgraded starbase without any of the anti-SB units that come with Entrenchment. And that is just from a game balance perspective.
The player(s) without Entrenchment are playing with a different engine. This means different values assigned to units (e.g. carrier build rates) and any number of things that would cause a desync.
Oh yeah, one other itsy bitsy problem. How can a player without Entrenchment have a star base in the game if they don't have a game that is star base aware!!!!
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