Well, it’s 6am and I just got done er uh “testing” Sins of a Solar Empire beta 4. We game developers have a hard life. At least, that’s what I try to explain to social services when they see my kid running around unbathed naked around the house…
Anyway, for those of you interested in a game that could be best described as Homeworld crossed with Total Annihilation with some Civilization thrown in, here’s my own highly biased write-up of Beta 4 (bugs and all):
Blimey, haven’t even started beta 3 yet!
I pre-ordered Sins last week, and it’s definitely shaping up to be a solid 4x. They added another race, the Vasari, in Beta 4, so it’s not all TEC (the trader faction) vs TEC battles anymore if anyone has tried the other Betas.
A lot of things are still getting hammered out, and it’s still pretty rough in some areas. They seem to be selectively incorporating user feedback into their updates, which is a good thing. Gameplay is smooth, though, and you can’t really go wrong with massive fleet battles and laser beams, autocannon shells, and missiles flying everywhere.
The Capital Ship experience mechanic is interesting, they’re sort of your “heroes” in Sins. There are a bunch of different Capital Ship types, and they each have a few different upgrade paths available as they gain experience. At first you’ll only have one or two Cap Ships, but eventually you’ll have multiple fleets of four or five duking it out and raining holy terror on unsuspecting plebeians. You’ll have frigates and cruisers as well, but they only can only match capital ships in large numbers.
Ships aren’t customizable apart from Capital Ship upgrades, but they have a lot of different ship types to research and build, so I’m not really missing it. The smaller ships are pretty minor players in the grand scheme of things.
If you’re a fan of 4x games, it’s worth keeping an eye on as they move closer to reslease.
I’d toss Conquest: Frontier Wars into the description, which is a good thing.
Exactly what are the sins of a solar empire? I’m thinking pride. Definitely pride. Maybe some greed as well?
I could use another 4X though, when is release?
Brad’s link says Feb 2008 is the release date (although i thought it was Jan). I’m so pumped for Sins. Being published by Stardock is just the icing on the cake. I am holding off on the Beta since i tend to play the hell out of good beta’s and get burnt out before the game actually comes out. It’s actually the reason i’m not playing Hellgate right now.
I laughed until I spit out a little coffee. Then my neighbor gophered over the cube wall to ask what was wrong with me.
In 1272, the Abbey of Ste-Anne-de-Doubervilles hosted a small sect of Dactean monks that met in synod with three other sects and quantified the Sins of a Solar Empire. Most of those determinations have been lost to time as the scribe at this meeting was of the Parkean faith, and had taken a vow to only use “implements of the sea” in his documentation process (which, in this case, involved squid ink and rotting whale hide). Since the monks who lived at the Abbey neither had the storage capacity nor the olfactory hardiness to keep the original documents, the scriviners managed to salvage a copy, in which, unfortunately, the original text was obscured by more salient points such as “Dear God, this whale hide smells.”
You’re an evil-evil man, Brad.
You’ve made me cry.
Brad, your post says this:
Is this new in beta 4? In beta 3, asteroids definitely ran out.
Yes that is new, we changed the resource asteroids to no longer have a depleted state.
Brad you had me here:
Now where on the site can I sign up to try or is it too late to get in to beta?
Hate to rain on your bubble, Ben, but it’s pronounced sloath.
Rain on your bubble? Maybe this mean you’re joking? I’m not up on the subtle indicators. Anyway, dictionaries seems to have the same pronunciation (same entry) for the sin and the animal.
Trust me, it’s (pronounced) sloath. I’m a well-trained, traditional Catholic. What’s surprising to me, in checking out the online dictionaries, is that they seem to say either pronunciation is o.k. for both the animal and the sin. However, I’ve never heard the animal called a sloath, nor have I ever heard the sin called slawth, except by non-Catholics.
Sorry to burst your parade.
Common language has altered the original meaning, I rather suspect. Both have been pronounced either way for so long that it’s perfectly acceptable.
Sorry, didn’t mean to drag the thread off-topic. Brad, I’m not sure if it’s me or the game, but I feel like it’s becoming complex to the point where I don’t want to invest the time in playing it anymore. Specifically, the effort required to conduct research intelligently is just too much. I find myself more or less hitting whatever button sounds good at the time when I do my research. The alternative would be to sit down some afternoon and memorize the tech trees, but there again…too much effort required.
Just my own reaction. Other people probably like the complexity.
Sounds like you’re guilty of slôth to me.
No, it’s just that with only three toes I can’t keep up with you stinky humans.