Sins Of A Solar Empire: Rebellion

In my best Ace Ventura voice, "alrighty then!" Time to wrestle this beast to the ground.

                        

Sins of A Solar Empire is by no means a new game. The base game was released in 2008, with the two expansions a year and two years later respectively. However, just this month Rebellion (the third and most probably final expansion pack) was released, piquing my interests and beginning a week or so of solid play. I feel that you, my beloved reader, would benefit more from a well rounded piece that includes and critiques all aspects of the game over just my rantings regarding the new shiny bits.

The Tale So Far....

Do you remember Homeworld? That stunning title from Relic/Sierra released way back in the last millennium? Well I do, and it was fantastic. If you have any love for bastard-hard RTS games then check it out, as well as the sequels in that series; Homeworld: Cataclysm and Homeworld 2. I bring up this wonderful series because, for a time at least, Sins was heralded as "basically gonna be Homeworld 3, brah," which is what first caught my eye. That claim was unfortunately quite off the mark, but this did not disappoint me, and I am eternally grateful it at least made me aware of Sins.

I actually own this game three times. Yep, three. It was the first title I purchased through a client and after changing from my laptop to my PC, I completely forgot that I could just reinstall it. So I bought Trinity, which came with both expansions. Since then, I've purchased Rebellion via Steam, and Rebellion is a stand-alone game, with all the previous content included. I love this game that much.

Gameplay

So let's get into it.

Sins advertises itself as a "RT4X" game, meaning it's pure strategy but with more to winning than just having the biggest gun. This is one of the key elements to the game's appeal for me, as every new match has the potential to be won in multiple ways, depending on the player's style and choices as well as the faction they choose.

From small beginnings....

There is no single player campaign, challenge mode or other such game type. The game is centered around deathmatches with up to 8 players, online and off, competing across a map that ranges from a single star system of 12 or so planets to 5 star systems and over a hundred planets. I do not exaggerate when I say I've played a single game for 40 hours and I still ended up losing. That's longer that it took me to 100% Red Dead Redemption. A. Single. Game.

Expansion of your mighty fleet

In a typical game, a player will find themselves with a Capital World and some resources, with the entire map, save the adjoining gravity wells, under the Fog of War. From this point the player can then begin to expand to neighboring planets, some able to be colonised and some not, and begin to pacify local forces in each gravity well, adding them to the player's empire. Eventually their sphere of influence will begin to brush up against that of another faction, and then comes the RT4X choice moment, giving the player the opportunity to decide how, not if, they are going to subjugate the other player. The size of the fleet, the number of units the player can control at any given time, is proportional to the number of planets s/he has in their empire. This is cleverly done by capping the fleet until research is completed, and that research requires a number of buildings to be constructed, and those buildings require space which, ironically for a space game, is at a premium early on.

What do I need more of, shooty things or shiny things?

Each player can choose from one of three factions, each with their own unique ships, structures, research tree and feel: The Trader Emergency Coalition; a human hyper-capitalist society that has been forced by impending war to band together to form a rag-tag defense force, The Advent; exiled humans who were shunned due to their embracing of psychokinetic adaptions, now returning to avenge their banishment, and The Vasari; a true alien race fleeing from the destruction of their galactic empire and looking for fresh worlds to conquer.

Each race has their specific traits; strengths and weaknesses, which lend themselves to a few key strategies. For example, the TEC are the eco-boomers, able to rake in the cash at an alarming rate in order to bolster their average strength fleets with constant reinforcements; The Advent have a more 'peaceful-until-provoked' style, focusing on converting enemy planets by remotely spreading their culture, The Vasari are the rush (if you count an hour as a 'rush' play) faction, having the best starting ships and highest mobility. Taking these traits into account, utilising them and adapting them to each game enables players to enjoy random deathmatches for a considerable length of time. Personally, I set my faction choice to random, and make do with what I get. This way I'm never stuck in a 'rut' of only being able to play with one faction, which can quickly get boring.

Expansions

As I mentioned, there have been two expansion packs for Sins; Entrenchment and Diplomacy. Each pack adds another panel to the research screen and another unit. This may sound like a bit of a rip off, and I'm sure at the time it was, but when I purchased the Trinity edition I was incredibly thankful for the additions. Entrenchment allows the construction of starbases within any gravity well. This is vital, as it enables the defense of areas that cannot be colonised, areas which pre-Entrenchment would either be left undefended or draw valuable ships away from the front lines on the off-chance you're playing a sneaky Vasari player who can nip round the back of your entire empire with a fleet or 3. Each starbase is tailored to the traits of it's parent race. The TEC Argonev starbase has the ability to act as a trade depot, further increasing the income of the TEC player. The Advent Transcendia starbase focuses on huge hangers of strike craft, able to swarm invaders (they can also turn local meteors and enemy ships into a diabolical Newton's Cradle). The Vasari Orkulus starbase, whilst resembling a flower, is a mobile fortress of death and destruction able to heal itself from the wreckage of enemy ships as well as open a phase stabiliser node to allow rapid reinforcements.

Never liked you anyway....

Diplomacy couldn't be more different to Entrenchment if it tried. As the name suggests this expansion adds a much greater ability to negotiate with other players and eventually sign peace treaties, trade agreements and even implement pacts which provide bonuses to a wide variety of things so long as the pact stays in effect. The diplomatic rating system in Sins is simple and elegant. Each faction has a relationship with every other faction, represented by a number within the range of +/-20, with 20 being the most friendly. There are many factors that can alter this rating, an entire panel in the research screen is devoted to improving relations and implementing pacts. Early on in any game the rating between two factions will be dependent on inherent traits of each race. Naturally, two Advent faction will be friendlier than an Advent and a TEC faction. These inherent traits include racial tensions, which are one of the many things that can be mitigated for through research, allowing for a more peaceful relationship to develop. Envoys, cruisers which are immune to enemy fire, can be built and dispatched to the territories of other factions. Whilst within the gravity well they slowly increase the relationship between the two factions and, with research, can provide powerful bonuses to that gravity well in exchange for an enhanced relationship.

Aesthetics 

Boy did this game look sexy back in '08! Time hasn't ravaged it's once youthful features either. In fact, with the release of Rebellion, the visuals have been given a spit-shine to bring them in line with more modern standards.

Arr, we be bombing the pirates

My desktop can run this at Ultra. So can yours, most probably, it runs on XP for crying out loud, which is no mean feat. Usually there is a direct trade-off between scope and shiny; the larger you make the game world (i.e. the more that has to be rendered at any given time) the lower the quality of aesthetics you're going to be getting. Somehow, the Iron Engine manages to shine even when it only supports DirectX 9.0c, not 10 or 11. For the less technically-minded of you, this might as well be equivalent to using potatoes to paint the Mona Lisa, these days.

The planet/building detail is great, making for a great background to the units, especially during combat. The weapons fire almost has haptic feedback when engaging in large-scale fleet action, something most other RTS games have yet to mange. The interface and map are both polished nicely, allowing the player to get stuck in without bleeding from the nose and eyes after an hour of staring at a garbled mess, which is always a positive.

A medium-scale battle between two factions

Longevity

A single star system, soon to be owned by me

There are a limited number of set scenarios, ranging from 1 star/12 planets up to 5 stars/100+ planets. I've played maybe half, in 4 years. That's not a criticism, more a compliment to the well designed random map generator, which is able to provide you with precisely the scale map you want whilst still having that edge of exploration that is such an important factor in deciding the outcome of each game.

Let me give you an example; I'm in the process of playing an 8-player game with my friend (yes, you can save online multiplayer games, it's fantastic!) and we've both started within the same star system in a 3-star game. He managed to expand and colonise 7 planets in the time it took me to colonise 3. Why? Four reasons; 1) the planets surrounding me were high in resources, which sounds like a good thing, but it also means that the local forces are stronger, meaning I had to build up a better fleet before leaving my first planet, 2) all three planets required research before I could colonise them, two were volcanic and one was an ice world (you can freely colonise desert, terran and asteroid planets without research, which is what my friend was surrounded by), 3) he was TEC and I was Vasari, meaning he has access to the eco-boosts much sooner than I, allowing him to swell his fleet faster. He ended up with a flagship and 15 frigates to my single, low level flagship, and 4) I was busy spending all my resources on my Titan (more on that later).

What this example illustrates is the sheer number of variables that can effect the outcome of any given game, at any given time! I could say this means that there is no end to the life of this game for me, but that isn't true, as eventually I'll spot something shiny and fly away.

Rebellion

So far you've read about the game and my experiences to date. Now I'm going to talk about the latest expansion and how outraged I am.

Eradica Titan; a fairy with an oreo

Rebellion adds three things to the game; it splits each faction into two (Loyalists and Rebels), it adds a super-heavy unit for each faction (Titan) and sprinkles in a new capital ship (useless), corvette (useless) and some new technologies in the research screen. These additions, especially the faction splitting, are great in principal, as they only add to the longevity of the game as a whole. The titan class ships are part-death machine, part-fleet support, and a helluva lot of fun to build and then throw against enemy fleets. Whilst early on they can withstand pretty much anything, they are by no means invincible and so do not un-balance the game thankfully. The corvettes, one for each faction, are light, fast ships designed to disrupt enemy healing, abilities or damage with negative buffs. They do fill a missing niche in the game, but a niche that I tend to ignore in favour of brute force and explosions, therefore I find them inconsequential.

But I said I was outraged....? And I am.

Make an estimate as to how much you think Rebellion costs. Go on, I'll wait. Done? Good. If you said £7.99, then well done you get a Gold Star of Approval from my Vault of Patronising Incentives, for choosing what it SHOULD have costs. In reality, that dark and frightening place that I cant code how I like (yet), it costs £25. For some new ships and an updated aesthetic. That's a whole GAME'S WORTH of my money. This has been justified by including all previous content in this 'stand alone' expansion, meaning that new players to the series can wander over and pick up the entire collection for a mere £25. That's grand, I agree with that. What I don't agree with is how consumers, like myself, who have already got all the back collection of expansions as well as the original game (twice, as I said) are being made to pay £25. It would've been very little effort for IronClad/Stardock to release the stand-alone but also have a digital only download for Rebellion, for a reduced cost, for consumers who already own the original game and it's expansions. I don't like to think of the yawning gulf between game developers/designers and the suits that run the business but it's incidents like this that basically slap me in the face with the corporate trout, reminding me that however much I love and enjoy the vast scope, scale and quality of the gaming market, there are still people running the show that either have no idea about games or only view the industry as a business. Now, I'm not saying all the business aspect of the games industry should be scrapped, that would be silly, just that seeing a lot more of the publishing power with the developers would go a long way to making this industry a better place for the end user, not the MD.

Conclusion

I'd wholeheartedly recommend this game to all RTS fans, it's a solid title that has very little in the way of short comings. If you only play RTS games for the story, (what's wrong with you, go and play an RPG) then maybe give Sins a miss.

For fans of: RTS games of all kinds, any game in a Sci Fi setting, blowing shit up with big lasers.