Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

[PanzerBoxb]

Even with all the hours I have spent on SoaSE, its micro expansions, and the glorious mods dished out by the community, I must admit to having missed entirely on the news of this forthcoming expansion until I stumbled upon the first screens over at Joystiq.

A gander over at the main site shows a preorder for $39.95. Alas, no release estimate as yet.

Gamespy has an interview about the game. Link

It sounds like they've rolled everything up, updated the graphics, split each race into two factions, added new classes of ships (corvettes and Titans), and tossed in some new game modes along with tweaks to many of the game mechanics.

Lastly, for all those I know who complain about the lack of a campaign, that is not going to change here.

GameSpy: Are you planning to introduce any kind of single-player campaign?

Brian Clair: There won't be a single-player campaign. We are hoping to put some scenarios in, which would be not just stand-alone maps like we've had in the past, but a bit more detailed, with specific objectives to accomplish.

 

[HardwareSearcher]

SoaSE was a superb game when it first came out - one of the best available. There still isn't anything else that now that matches what it was then. However, I am afraid it is increasingly looking like this series is dead. Either it never sold enough in the first place or the developers behind it have squandered the profits they made with the first - not sure which. Sins came out almost four years ago. They have sold two mini-expansions since, both receiving good reviews just like the original game.

Now, four years later, instead of making a sequel, they are pretty much doing what modders have already done: add yet more content. Sins is a 4X strategy game, it is called sins of a solar EMPIRE for a reason. The entire game centers around building and expanding a great empire - not a tiny nation. However, the most central negative aspect of the game that is holding it back four years later, will be entirely unaddressed by the $40 full-expansion-price Rebellion. That issue is: ZERO multi-core support. The entire game runs on a single core, and not one single piece of it uses a second core, much less a third or fourth. The lag becomes atrocious in any reasonably sized, interesting game. Not only are they apparently not able to add any multi-core support without creating a sequel, they are not even able to make any further engine optimizations at all, even to improve performance on a single core.

As I said, either the original game and its two mini-expansions were not successful enough to support funding a true sequel, or the developers squandered the profits and investor-publicity that they needed to fix this series - completely without the forward vision to recognize the importance of multi-core support in the future to fix their lag-broken game. And yes, I did purchase both the main game and the mini-expansions, hoping I was supporting the future of the series - apparently I was not though.

 

[Intel_Hydralisk]

I can't even keep track of all the expansions that have come out...

 

[Master_Pain]

The reason it doesn't support multicore systems is that the game engine was written a long time ago. The devs actually came out and said that they would like to have multicore support, but that they would have to rewrite the entire engine.

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

Would love to pre-order this. I still don't have the expansions for the original SoaSE, so this would be damn nice. It definitely is fun when you get to play with a few friends.

 

[Forceman]

The reason it doesn't support multicore systems is that the game engine was written a long time ago. The devs actually came out and said that they would like to have multicore support, but that they would have to rewrite the entire engine.

You'd think maybe they'd put some effort into that, instead of making a $40 expansion pack. If they are selling it for $40 it ought to be a full new game.

 

[Crotan]

The reason it doesn't support multicore systems is that the game engine was written a long time ago. The devs actually came out and said that they would like to have multicore support, but that they would have to rewrite the entire engine.

Wow I was interested in this game until I read this. That's pretty nasty for any game released in 2012, just looking at some of those videos, I can imagine how bogged down it could get, and only running off of one core

That reflects very poorly on the developer for a game not even released in 2012

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

Even with that being the case of the engine, you shouldn't deprive yourself of such an amazing 4X game.

 

[drako]

I have to say, the lack of a campaign by this point really feels like they are dropping the ball. If you are going to charge $40 for something, you have to either make whole scale changes to the engine or significant content additions... or really both. What they are proposing doesn't sound worth more than $20.

The first game is indeed great though, and anyone who likes strategy should pick it up.

 

[FreiDOg]

$40 seems like a lot for what's in the PR brief. New factions to add a bit of diversity to each race's play style, a couple new ships and a nice coat of paint. I quite enjoyed the original, so I'll keep this one in mind; but we're not far enough removed from the first game for a simple refresh to draw me in.

The reason it doesn't support multicore systems is that the game engine was written a long time ago. The devs actually came out and said that they would like to have multicore support, but that they would have to rewrite the entire engine.

To some extent that's fair, I think they made the first one for about $1 million, which isn't chump change, but Epic and id probably spend that on their sound processing engine.
But I think a game like is really going to suffer as a result of that decision. Big fleets spread out in distant systems, lots of path-finding and physics as projectiles and ships try to move around each other, lots of AI prioritizating targets and construction all lends itself very nicely to multithreaded programming.