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The Stars Our Destination — Let's Play Sins of a Solar Empire!
It's time for Sins of a Solar Empire! It'll be a few days before posts start in earnest, so I thought I'd put up a bit of a primer on the game and what you can expect to see here.
In brief: Lots of space ships blowing up lots of other space ships! The game is a hybrid of real-time strategy games like WarCraft III and 4X strategy games like Galactic Civilizations. It requires (and in fact, allows) much less micromanagement and direct control over the nitty-gritty details of your empire than a 4X, but doesn't call for the brutal adherence to build orders and rushes that many RTS games seem designed to encourage. There is room for both grand strategy and on-the-fly tactics; you can direct your fleets by hand, but your warships are capable enough to handle themselves in a skirmish while you attend to other matters. The playing field is made up of a number of planets and other celestial features surrounding a star, or several stars (for this Let's Play, we'll be using a single star and a relatively small system). Each planet or body connects to one or more others via space lanes, safe passages along which ships can warp through phase space. Solid planets can be developed to provide resources, ship construction, system defenses and so on. Colonizing planets and expanding your empire deprives your enemy of the resources you hold, and allows you to use those resources to build a giant fleet. Well, eventually — the fleet starts off pretty small, with a free capital ship of your choice and a couple scouts. It'll get bigger, though. Capital ships are the backbone of the game; they level up and gain new powers like the heroes in WarCraft III, and are generally the centerpiece of the fleets a player establishes. You may want to put planetary siege frigates in a group with a capital ship that's capable of colonizing planets, for example. Several complementary, high-level capital ships working in concert can be an incredible menace, but they require support from the wide array of frigates, cruisers and fleet upgrades you can build, research and buy. And there's no way you'll have the time to research and buy everything — decisions, decisions! There has been talk of an eventual story-driven single-player campaign, but Sins as it exists now is chiefly a multiplayer game — the game provides for matches against the computer, but there's no plot beyond the back story, and the computer tends to resort to predictable computer-y things that can be exploited for victory. So, myself and `Hrist are teaming up to bring you this Let's Play. We'll be using the most current version of the game, along with the Entrenchment expansion, which introduces a wide array of defensive options to each faction. The game has three factions — the Trader Emergency Coalition, a human alliance that is really good with resource production and ballistic weapons; the Vasari, an alien race with strong, expensive ships that do things like, oh, suck up the surface of an enemy planet and convert it into resources; and the Advent, a bunch of posthuman cyborg hippies that use fancy little pew-pew laser beams. The Advent are smelly jerks; we won't be using them! Instead, I'll be playing as the Vasari, trying desperately to defeat `Hrist's TEC before the mysterious, all-consuming threat that destroyed my original glorious space empire catches up with me. It'll be fun! In our first game, I was thoroughly trounced. My goal this time is, at the very least, to be less thoroughly trounced. Let's Play and see what happens! |
#2
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Technical difficulties have run us aground for the moment. We will get this ball rolling as soon as possible!
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#3
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*nunix rants about how the solar systems make no goddamned sense*
On the plus side, getting to field Wing Commander/FreeSpace/BSG-like space carriers with dozens of fighters is pretty fun. |
#4
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Good, good. Get that out of your system now.
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#5
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HOW CAN I GET OUT OF THE SYSTEM THESE WARP LANES DON'T MAKE NO SENSE! WHY ARE THERE INTERSTELLAR WARP LANES BETWEEN PLANETS AND GRHH ARGHH THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A WHOLE SYSTEM BUT THERE AREN'T EVEN ORBITS AND PLANETS HAVE BIOSPHERES THAT MAKE NO SENSE IN RELATION TO THEIR POSITION AND THE "STARS" ARE MORE LIKE CENTERS OF GALAXIES OR SOME SHIT?! I DON'T EVEN KNOW AGRAGRHGHHH
So frustratin'. MOO2 mastered this, guys, and half a dozen of its freeware clones, why the hell couldn't you? Anyway, I'm glad this is going to be a two-person LP.. there've been a couple of LP vs AI so far (I did one, Malefor did one.. pretty sure there was another?) and it's interesting but getting able to see both sides of the math will be neat. |
#6
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To be fair, I don't think there are many video games involving space travel that feature realistic anything. From single-biome livable planets roughly the size of pebbles compared to a real planet to multiple livable planets in the same solar system close to one another (hello gravity wells), to solar systems basically being within spitting distance of one another... And that's just the physical improbabilities, not even taking into account social unlikelihoods such as universal languages, universal currency, single planet-wide cultures, near-identical appearance for all members of a given sentient species, etc.
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#7
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And the whole thing of combat in space, at space distances and space speeds. This is what the whole "suspension of disbelief" thing is for.
Anyway! As I mentioned elsewhere recently, this game is on the short list of things I want to play as soon as I have a comp capable of playing it. I'm looking forward to this LP! |
#8
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Sometimes I really miss having a PC. There are just some genres and styles of games I haven't been able to play for nearly a decade.
EDIT: Also, kudos for the Bester reference. |
#9
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I'm interested in this game, but I've never gotten around to picking it up, so I'm really looking forward to this.
When I first saw previews of this game, I thought it was going to be like Homeworld, and I was disappointed when I found out it wasn't, though. |
#10
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Our technical difficulties have been surmounted. We'll be putting up posts soon.
Last edited by Sarcasmorator; 11-23-2009 at 12:26 PM. |
#11
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I'm excited to watch someone play the game thats been sitting on my hard drive for the last year as I go about doing other things...
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#12
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I hear this game is like Homeworld confirm/deny?
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#13
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Confirm in that it features space battles
Deny in that new construction is not taken care of inside a "mother ship," but on a planet |
#14
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I don't think you can zoom in and out like you can in Homeworld either or that the camera is as free floaty but I don't know for sure
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#15
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Quote:
They both have a tech tree and have real-time strategy battles. That's really the only thing in common. Not even the battles match up for comparison. Sins is Civilization (innnnn Spaaaaaaace) + Starcraft, Homeworld is Starcraft + some kind of naval fleet RTS game of which I'm sure some exist but none immediately spring to mind. |
#16
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mad props for the alfred bester shoutout.
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#18
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The GalCiv2 blogs are some of my favorite things ever written.
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#19
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Quote:
YES Last edited by Sarcasmorator; 11-24-2009 at 01:41 AM. |
#20
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Now that I think about it, those blogs might be the first LPs I've ever read. It interests me that despite my affinity for Boatmurdered style in character LPs, I still like those two more.
On topic, how will the LP work? Will we be seeing explanations from both sides? Am I too impatient? |
#21
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We'll each be posting about our own side of the match, with our own takes on proceedings. And breaking it up into manageable chunks, of course.
Incidentally. Last edited by Sarcasmorator; 11-25-2009 at 10:49 PM. |
#22
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* destroys all of Sarcasmorator's and Kat's bases, since they are obviously off doing something else besides playing the game and writing LP posts and thus vulnerable to sneak attack strike *
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#23
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Oh was it Thanksgiving this week I hadn't noticed
But seriously I mean to have at least one post up before the weekend is out. |
#24
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nunix is british; its understandable that he wouldnt know our holidays.
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#25
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But he lives in Oregon!
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#26
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What do I care for your suffering? >=(
Only in my spelling. It is a combination of Lone Wolf books at an early age and recognising the inherent superiority of 's' over 'z'. Pacific Northwest has a metric tonne of British and Irish expats, so it works either way. |
#27
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I initially read this as "What do I care for your stuffing?"
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#28
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I'm now especially looking forward to this, since I get to see what the $10 I spent on Impulse will give me!
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#29
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Incoming Transmission Vasari attempting to gain foothold in Mirrin System Proceed to Mirrin. Use all means to sink enemy fleet & capture enemy base A Brief Introduction to the Trade Emergency Coalition Last edited by `Hrist; 11-27-2009 at 09:20 PM. |
#30
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Expedition Commander's Log: Just arrived at Mirrin. Still adjusting to all the green. Now that we have a foothold in the system, we need to prepare for our campaign against the Vasari. Commander Bright Noa will be taking command of our forces in this conflict. I'm told that he's a veteran of the One Year War and the Gryps Conflict. I'm also told that he's not afraid to enforce discipline among the troops. Last edited by `Hrist; 11-27-2009 at 09:16 PM. |