Take the battle for galactic supremacy to its ultimate level in Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion - a standalone RT4X game that combines the tactics of real-time strategy with the depth of the 4X genre (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate).

1. Sins Of A Solar Empire

. (. ).Sins of a Solar Empire is an RT4X game, fusing both and gameplay into one package. It was released on February 2008 to wide acclaim.There are three factions in the game.

There's the Trader Emergency Coalition, a semi-cohesive organization of humans trying to defend their worlds from aggression using, heavy armor. There's the Advent, humans who were exiled many years ago for tampering with, and, and are now back for. And there's the Vasari, actual aliens who once ruled a huge interstellar empire, but whose worlds have been gradually swallowed by. Every ship sent to investigate this menace has disappeared, except for one ship which returned with its crew. The remnants of a Vasari colony, now surviving as nomadic, have fled to this corner of the galaxy, leaving warning buoys behind them.

And watching in dismay as those buoys wink out, one by one.Sounds like an interesting potential plot, right?-, possible, who knows what else. You can set up a multiplayer match vs. AI or a multiplayer match vs other people, but there's no single-player campaign. However, there is abundant backstory, very dedicated to showing that each of the 3 main races has committed sins of their own and are now paying for them (hence the title).The game was designed from the ground up to be playable on a wide spectrum of hardware configurations, including ones most of its contemporaries would write off as 'obsolete'.

(This was also part of what helped it sell) It was also free of, making headlines at a time when invasive, unnecessary DRM was turning people off. A pirated copy was essentially a fully-functional demo, allowing you to skirmish against AI but not to play over the Internet; you needed to buy the game for that.

Those who held pro-DRM attitudes predicted failure, but as of September 2008 Sins had sold 500,000 copies, recouping its $1M development costs months before any of the $10 came out. (There's no hard data as to how and why this game managed to be financially successful, but you can guess what most tropers think.)Speaking of expansion packs, there were two 'micro-expansions' released: 'Entrenchment' added new ships and starbases; 'Diplomacy' added more diplomatic options, including a (theoretically) non-military win condition. A third was supposedly going to contain a single-player campaign. But before being (Without no campaign) in March 2011 as 'Rebellion,' a full-sized expansion in which players of each faction can choose loyalty or, and gain access to new tech trees in doing so.

Sins Of A Solar Empire

A beta containing Rebel and Loyalist versions of the three factions is now available for those who have preordered. Finally, for those who don't care to fork out more money, there is a robust and thriving scene, dedicated to doing anything from providing factions from pre-existing sci-fi franchises to graphical updates to full game overhauls to code optimization so that the game doesn't crash as much. That's right, fans love their Sins so much that they are voluntarily debugging it.This game provides examples of:.: The TEC. Slowly edging towards as time progresses and the society centralizes.: The CPU players taunt you when they invade your planets. Especially painful if they have a large invasion fleet, and you either have a meager fleet (possibly as a result of a failed invasion of your own which cost you a lot of ships, or you're focusing on research instead of building a military force), are being besieged by another player/CPU in another planet, or the planet they invade is really far away from your own forces, and reinforcements will take a while to get to the besieged planet.: The Vasari arguably.: All three sides, really. The TEC are fighting for their home, the Vasari are fighting for survival, and the Advent are fighting for justice.: Each faction uses a different flavor of phlebotinum - the TEC use, the Vasari use, and the Advent use.: Class 2 constantly happens.: Played straight for the most part. The exception is Advent Rapture capital ship, which has a special ability, 'Dominate', which allows you to steal non-capital enemy ships.

On large maps, the game can start to get a little choppy and slow if there's a large number of ships.: Upon selecting a just-constructed Advent Mothership: 'All shall join the Unity, in time.: the AI in this game is not the brightest bulb in the fridge. Instead of sacrificing its fleet to protect its planets, it will happily sacrifice planets to protect its fleet, thus allowing you to attrition it to death. It rarely builds planet-damaging bombers; if you do, you will almost always out-DPS it. If it loses all its ship factories, it will not demolish old buildings to make new factories either. Developer updates have alleviated some problems, but not much; and the fact that there is no Campaign, just Skirmish mode against other players or AI, only exposes these problems more.

The game has also fixed the highly-annoying practice of going the opposite direction from where you come, meaning that if you attack a hostile planet that's next door to yours, the enemy will have jumped just then to try and destroy your world. Game patches have rectified this to a degree.: Rightfully a touted part of the game. Zooming between a close-up of a single bomber and assessing the position of your forces over different solar systems at a glance, is a press of a button away.: Advent strike craft are piloted remotely, by telekinetic specialists called 'Anima'. Seeing as how telekinesis is the equivalent of winning the, even the ruling Coalescences are careful not to piss the Anima off.: The TEC in the backstory.

With their formidable industrial base, they are quite capable of pulling this off in-game as well. They are also able to start trading earlier than the others, giving them a higher cash flow.: The narrator / Kol battleship captain sports one.: Many examples among each side's capital ships, from battleships with strikecraft capability to full carriers that - in the case of the TEC's Sova-class - can even look like aircraft carriers.: The Advent's warships in general. The Halcyon Carrier capital ship carries up to 7 squadrons of fighters and/or bombers (which are all armed with beam weapons) in addition to the 8 heavier beam cannons mounted on the ship itself. And don't even start about the Illuminator Vessels. The Vasari, on the other hand, use Pulse Wave Cannons, which are generally used by Capital Ships. A varient of these beam cannons are used for bombarding planets.: All superweapons can be considered as one of this. Except the Advent Deliverence Engine, which is essentially a Big Freaking.

Also, the Marza Dreadnought's Siege Cannon.: None of the three sides really know how Phase Inhibiters work. TEC and Advent just steal them, while the Vasari use nanomachines to copy them.: When an AI empire comes to you with a mission to accomplish and on the line, there's no 'Sorry, not interested' option: either you do the mission or you take the relationship hit. Two failed missions and they break the cease-fires, which verges the diplomacy mechanic into a case of. (Oh, and, until the 'Diplomacy' micro-expansion, this was solely one-way: from AI to you.). In the 'Diplomacy' micro-expansion, you can refuse missions now (for a limited time after they are issued) to take a smaller relationship hit. 'You shall come no closer.' .: While it doesn't blow it up, the TEC's Novalith cannon will heavily damage a planet.

Repeated hits will cause whoever owns it to lose said planet, unless they have a starbase in orbit with the remote government upgrade. In Rebellion, the Vasari Loyalists can strip a planet it owns for resources, turning it into a worthless dead asteroid after an explosion occurs.: All sides can overthrow enemy planets this way via the 'culture' mechanic. The Advent are the most adept at this ( or a genuinely better society - you decide).

There are six main types of ships in Sins of a Solar Empire. Are the smallest ships and must be carried into battle by larger ships. Are the most common ships that fulfill a variety of functions from scouting to colonization.

Are larger than frigates and perform more specific roles such as carrying strike craft, supporting fleet operations, or direct heavy assault. Were the largest and most powerful ships, until the addition of Titans, but are very expensive; they can be upgraded in level with a maximum level of 10, making them superior to all vessels within their respective fleet.In the Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment micro-expansion, are the largest and most powerful military structures, but are extremely expensive, while provide the firepower to counter Starbases, and change the shape of the battlefield.In the Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy micro-expansion, expanded the diplomacy aspect. Each of the three factions possesses a unique set of ships, but they all fulfill the same general roles, however, unique ships appear in the two micro-expansions.In the Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion stand-alone expansion, have become the largest and most powerful ships, dwarfing any known ship, and bridge the gap between Strike Craft and Frigates. The three factions have fractured into Loyalist and Rebel camps, that have their own variants of the Titans and Corvettes. Each core faction also gained a new capital ship.This page describes which types of ship are effective against which other types, but for a quick overview, see.

Contents.Strike CraftMain article:Strike Craft are carried into battle by larger ships or deployed from planetary defense hangars. They are free to build and difficult for other ships to destroy. The two types of strike craft are fighters and bombers. It should be noted that in Entrenchment, the designs for the strike craft were overhauled (TEC Bomber, Advent Bomber, Vasari Bomber, etc.).Fighters=Main article: Fighters move quickly, engage targets with precision weapons, and will utterly destroy bomber squadrons. They are extremely vulnerable to enemy Anti-StrikeCraftFrigate flak frigates. Generally, they are quite ineffective against ships with anything other than light armor.:.:.:BombersMain article: Bombers are slower than fighters and vulnerable to fighter attack, but they carry powerful munitions designed to destroy large ships and structures.:.:.:CorvettesMain article:Corvettes are small cheap multi-purpose fighters that are produced enmasse. They have a special niche of being able to debuff enemy ships and also serve as a core fleet unit within the early game.

Their usefulness will, however, fall off once flak weaponry is deployed. Due to their mobility and speed they can also function as a pseudo scout.: Shriken Corvette.:.:.:.:.:FrigatesMain article:Frigates are the small, cheap workhorses of every fleet. A well-balanced armada is likely to be numerically dominated by specialized frigates, which may be used as scouts, skirmishers, colonization ships, and anti-fighter escorts. Frigates are built at.There are six different types of frigates.Scout FrigatesMain article:These frigates are used to scout out planets and harass enemy supply lines later in the game. All scout frigates have the ability which can be activated to automate exploration.

Although weak individually, scouts are very inexpensive to build and in sufficient numbers are actually respectable combat units. Be sure to turn on auto-attack if you want to use them in combat.