Sins of a Solar Empire - Definitely RT, but what about 4X?

SINS, while an awesome game is definitely a let down when it comes to something more than combat.  Even with the new addition of 'Diplomacy' the diplomatic aspect of the game seems like an afterthought if that. 

I just don't understand why the diplomatic component to strategy games always seems to get the shaft.

Victory Conditions - Unless diplomacy added a lot here, it is not possible.

Research Tree - Very moddable, you can make all kinds benefits and make almost anything require research.

As far as I know, the main "limitations" were graphical in nature, though these have been eased with the doubling of the texture and mesh limits. The AI is hardcoded and is the main complaint, but if you label your ships correctly I think it works fairly well (though if you make your ships really big you can start to have problems). I'm not exactly sure what all you would be attempting in a 4X enhancement mod, but you can get all sorts of effects if you use the ability system creatively (sabatoge ships, econ raiders etc).

Edit:

Because diplomatic victories tend to lack pretty explosions...

While you can't make direct victory conditions, you could make abilities that would either require a research with ludicrous amount of prerequisites or have a resource cost and would basicly be a wincondition aka one press = death to all enemies (maybe even allies too ?).

The main problem would bethat you only have the 5 tabs in the research (ships, defense, civilian, diplomacy, fleet) and how to expand/focus on economy/(culture?).

Check out Diplomacy. It has a diplomatic victory (go figure, right? )

Make culture super uber.

I was thinking something along those lines as well, trying to work around the current system rather than replacing it, give the illusion of a technological victory rather than actually making one.

Not quite sure what you mean with this, care to explain a bit further in detail, or perhaps I'm just a bit slow at the moment?

Nah I have a tendency of not going in detail/make it short if I can

What I meant with the research is, that we have the 5 sub windows 2 only affected by military research centers, 1 only affected by civilian research centers, the diplomacy window (not sure what it is affected by) and the last which is affected by both. The problem is the space, as we can't have researches with long tiers without using a lot of this space. Though a possibility could be to make each tier require a good amount of research centers, and then give each research a lot of levels. I am also not sure if the priority makes it posible to stack researches on top of each other on the same position.

With the economy the problem will be in how to develope it? How can you focus and expand on the economy? The logistics build page is already filled out and what can you add and how do you upgrade it? There is ofcourse star bases which could do quite someting.

A fair question, I have to admit, at the moment, I have no idea, perhaps it would be possible to assign trade ports a bigger role in your empires economy? Realistically, without commerce, there would be no empire, as colonies would be dependent on welfare to sustain them (and without spice, there would be no commerce... sorry...).

The spice must flow!

I thought I'd reboot this thread by asking, what do you feel is needed in Sins to make it "more" 4X? What needs to be added? What needs to be removed? What needs to be tweaked?

As far as I can think of:

• Economy
  • I'd change the economy to make it a bit more dependent on commerce (trade ports). Also perhaps having management of your economics on a per-colony basis (through Trade port abilities, or planet abilities?), perhaps raising/lowering of taxes, focus on trade or mining, perhaps even trade, mining, research or military?
  • An Economic victory condition of sorts? Currently, I have no idea of how that would work though.
• Diplomacy
  • Whilst the Diplomacy expansion significantly improved dimplomacy in-game (duh), however, in my experience, the game is mostly aggresion-focused, you often start out with very low relations with other factions, forcing you to complete loads of missions for them to improve relations, and all missions involve attacking another faction. I think this needs reworking somehow (would require some more input here, have mostly played with AI players in Diplomacy).
• Colonies
  • Refine colony management, allow changing individual colonies attributes somehow, perhaps through toggleable planetary abilities that boost certain aspects (if that's even possible?).
  • Planet allegiance representing population "happiness" or your empire's popularity in the colony, more ways to influence allegiance than propaganda structures.
    
• Other
  • More planetary bonuses, both positive, negative and both at the same time, perhaps racial-specific bonuses if possible. For example, let's say that one planet has "Prophet of the Unity" as a bonus, increasing population due to pilgrims, but also give a bonus to Advent religious culture, or a "market hub" which increases the planet's credit output, but spreads the capitalist culture of the TEC. Anyhow, more planetary bonuses allaround.

That's about as far as my brainstorming went this time, so, anyone else got ideas?

I'd like to see ways to work out peace among factions other than yourself and another.

Definitely, but how would this be accomplished? Are there existing game mechanics that could be used (trigger events that affect relationst between factions?) or would it have to be... scripted... somehow?

I would like to see the ability to make executive decisions pertaining to the economics and politics of the empire much like real life corporate execs, if that is possible. Maybe pop-up windows or multiple choice research tiers, like do you want to bend the current laws pertaining to mining a certain planet or asteroid in an attempt to increase profits and risk getting caught and suffering a fine or injunction or a boycott on goods by the "interplanetay U.N." or do you choose to spend the money on safer and "greener" practices. 'Wich one will pay off in the long run?' type questions. One choice could pay off big in eco but carry a risk of being set back so much as to cripple your ability to maintain your fleet and be defeated, the other would be a safer bet but without the big gains. How about an expansion on the galactic stock market? Options to invest in things other than metal and crystal wich could result in making or losing alot of credits. Could also include ships designed specifically for mining both unowned and enemy owned resources, and "spy ships" designed to blow the wistle on unsavory practices.

Maybe work in a choice when colonizing a planet to either commit genocide or incorporate the indigenous population, possibly leading to possitive or negative affects depending on your decision. 

I like your idea, but from what I've gathered, it would be very difficult to add additional windows with specialized functions. Not too big on the "interplanetary U.N" though, however, say if you choose to industralize a planet heavily, the population will be fed up with pollution etc, and your popularity (allegiance) drops, if you go for greenery, it will rise?

As for genocide/assimilation, I'm all for it, would also like to see a way to take over enemy planets without destroying all infrastructure.

Well I wasn't thinking along the lines of industralizing a planet, though that is in itself a cool concept, but more like being not only commander in chief of the military, but ceo of the mining industry as well. So you could choose to implement a promising but untested new technology for extracting metal and crystal that would significantly increase output but would be banned by the authorities until further testing because of safety issues. I realize that this is probably beyond the scope of the game but just trying to think of a way to incorporate an element of chance, a 'gamble' , since in real life all strategies rely on at least some small bit of luck.

Perhaps a multiple choice research, like tier 1 reseach for metal/crystal extraction could force a choice between one or the other, your choice being permenant, between gov. approved mining practices that result in slight increases in output, and illegal technology that greatly increases output but carries the risk of heavy fines if caught possibly crippling your eco enough to be unable to rebuild ships recently lost in a batlte.

How about an expansion on the trade aggreement button under the diplomacy tab. Instead of a simple accept/decline button each faction could offer a list of goods to buy and sell, and this could be completely independent of their favor of you, the list (maybe 4 or 5 items) could include 1 or 2 things that are race specific. Maybe Vasari could sell a new metal alloy that the humans have'nt figured out how to make, thatwould increase hull points on ships and structures, giving you an edge on your enemies that haven't bought it, but would also be expensive and not a one time purchase but a continuing cost. Advent could offer a technology that increases culture spread, increasing planetary allegence and possibly lead to culture killing enemies faster. haven't tought of one for tec. Anyway, the idea is just to be more involved with trade than just yes or no.

This once agian would require the adding of additional screens, additional items that affect gameplay in uniqe ways, I am not sure how or if that can be implemented.

just thought i'd throw some ideas out there, sorry i know nothing about computers and programming. i'm still trying to figure out how to upload a galaxy forge map to the site!

Hehe, neither do I tbh, I just got the general idea from reading the forums.

Anyhow, a sort of expanded player-to-player "trading" system (with Metal & Crystal) would definitely be interesting.