To add to my earlier comment, I'm sincerely hoping that the post-release support (which Stardock is deservedly famous for and Ironclad has said they'll keep to) will add some much needed depth and diversity to the game. Failing that, I guess it falls to the mod community.
Yeah, it's a lot shallower than it's advertised to be, what can you do but live and learn from the error? You and I both should have waited for the demo. I'm hoping future patches, or failing that mods, will add some needed depth and diversity to the game.
Pretty much, yeah. The tech tree differences have an impact, certainly, but at the end of the day there's a real lack of diversity in the factions. The ships are all equivalent to one another, role-wise, and the buildings are of course identical. This'd be less irritating if the game were more towards the 4X end of the spectrum, where the depth of the game makes up for it, but since it's mostly just an RTS it's one more thing that brings it down.
"Single player" and "campaign" are not remotely synonyms.
It's far more an RTS game than a 4X game, if you're not an RTS fan I'd avoid it. If you want to make sure, wait a couple of weeks for the demo and give that a try. Gal Civ 2 in real time it's not, more like a really slow hybrid of Homeworld (sans story) and Supreme Commander. I wish I'd waited for the demo myself. On the other hand, I can't recommend Gal Civ 2 and its expansions enough as a deep, thoroughly enjoyable 4X TBS game that is entirely focussed on the multiplayer experience (
[quote]If you really wanted to sell it, you would have gone to Ebay and not these forums.[/quote] Stardock's registration has the effect of making their games non-sellable, period. It's damn unfortunate, and something I'll take into account before taking a chance on another SD published game.
I don't really see how a campaign would help. The basic gameplay is either deep and diverse enough to maintain a sustained interest in the game or it isn't. For me, at least, it isn't. Tacking a story structure onto the game is the last thing I'd suggest as a cure for that problem.
Because real planets are all on roughly the same plane in a given star system, it's elementary astronomy. If you play with multiple stars you'll get significant z-axis alterations in their location (but not their orientation, weirdly enough).
Look on the bright side, I bought the Collector's Edition and ended up being out $50. See? It could be worse. I was expecting a game with the depth and strategy of a 4X title, and got this instead.
[quote]You bought an RTS, not a 4X game.Why do people keep saying that? This is not a RTS, or a 4X, its a RT4X. Its an entirely new concept, and at this stage really more of an experiment than a full fledged game in my opinion.[/quote] Why do people keep trying to claim it's an entirely new concept and a new genre when it's just a run of the mill RTS? Seriously, this kind of nonsense is what prompted me to waste money on the thing, so I'm here to tell any potential buyers that no, this
You bought an RTS, not a 4X game. If you were hoping for something with the depth of a 4X game you have my sympathies, I made the same mistake.
A demo will be along in a month or two. And no, the gameplay's not any more like HW2 than it is other RTS games. It's more like Supreme Commander with more bases and much slower.
SP diplomacy in this game is well and truly broken, play with locked teams until they (hopefully) completely overhaul it. As it stands, those inane missions are the only thing the AI looks at, so you'll always be the target of everyone's hostility.
It really, really doesn't. RTS's, contrary to the Blizzard school of thought, are actually pretty lousy story telling devices.
Sins is not a detailed strategy game, it's an RTS with some very light 4X flourishes thrown in. Based on what you say you want, you'd be better off with Lost Empires. Are you aware of Gal Civ 2, by the way? It's a fantastic 4x turn based strategy game with plenty of detail.
It's not you, the UI's just terrible. The game's actually much less complex than it looks.
[quote]Oh ok...and I am guessing there were never Hero units before wc3? [/quote] Of course there were, but that's really beside the point. Here's how heroes worked in WC3: You have a hero, they have four skills unique to them, one of which they can't level in until level 6 (that's their super ability). Their maximum level in the others is one half the current level of the hero rounded down, which means you can't just level in the same skill every time. There are neutral enemies scatter
Someone never played Warcraft 3. Those are neutral ships, they exist principally for you to kill them with your capital ship thus gaining experience and levelling it up (a process known colloquially as "creeping").
Rise of Nations is a better analogy than Warcraft 3 (being something of a TBS/RTS "hybrid" that's mostly an RTS itself), actually, though the cap ship system is [i]straight[/i] out of WC3 so I understand the comparison. There's nothing in this game, at least nothing good, that hasn't been done at least as well in RoN, WC3, or both. Over all I tend to think RoN does far more justice by the Civ series than Sins does by Gal Civ. I know which one I'll still be playing a year from now, and it's not S
Buying it doesn't automatically imply liking it, especially since there's no demo. I for one regret having dropped $50 on the Collector's Edition, and have already uninstalled and shelved the game.
It's really just an RTS, and it plays like it. That means you explore, exterminate, and expand (so its 3X) but then that's what you do in every RTS on the market. The other one is exploit, of course, which you can do in any game with a diplo system. Considering how terrible diplomacy is in this game, I always play with that off, so we're left with exactly the same 3X gameplay you'd find in any RTS on the shelf. I bought into the 4X line myself, expecting something with considerably mor
If you have to make a campaign, at least make a non-linear one.
The AI's not very strong and the single player diplomacy system is lousy. I mostly play single player and I regret having bought the game at this point, you'd be smart to wait, at least until they release a demo and you can try it out.
Yes, the game is astronomically nonsensical, which does have a way of killing the immersion. The proportion of habitable to non-habitable planets, the proportion of rocky worlds to gas giants, the sheer volume of planets around starts, the total absence of moons, it's all kind of a mess. It doesn't really matter to gameplay, of course, but it's a weird design decision that kills a lot of the immersion of playing a space game for me. As to the interface, try LazySumo's Minimal Interface
I'm in no way troubled by the lack of a campaign, I never play story based campaigns anyway (and usually only buy RTS's that have strategic map campaigns these days, as I vastly prefer those). However, because the diplo system is so bad, the SP utility of Sins is more limited than it should be.
