Update: Sins of a Solare Empire - First Impressions
My copy arrived via UPS a couple days ago... and it has consumed my life.
Short Report: Excellent, excellent game. Go buy it, now!
Longer Report:
Actually, it's exactly the game that I was hoping GalCiv2 was going to be. In my mind it has all the tech, research, trade, and diplomacy detail of the GalCiv games without the (nearly impossible to view or manage in-game) tech tree.
Don't get me wrong though... still a ton of work (and time) involved in researching that tech tree. Can't play a single mission inside of 4-5 hours. It will cause sleep deprivation. I've already had my first couple of back-to-back 3am nights.
It's hard not to comment on this game without drawing comparison to Stardock's other 4x strategy game Galactic Civilizations. To me, Solar Empire seems to be a logical progression of the 4x genre. I can't see myself wanting to go back and play GalCiv now that I have Solar Empire on the drive.
Any 4x strategy or RTS fan should definitely have this one in their library, it'll be around for awhile, and seems very ripe for the (I'm sure now busy) modding community. I think the only thing missing when comparing Solare Empire to GalCiv is the great custom ship builder in GalCiv. However, that just could be my lack of experience with the game... could be that is addressed in the mission builder or some other form of modder support and I'm just not aware of it.
I noticed the game comes pre-configured with a window for enabling mods. So that leads me to believe it must be very modder friendly. People are, of course, already mumbling about Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5 mods... should be interesting to see what unfolds with this one.
Personally, I do sorta prefer the overhead view 2D space strategy games. Ya know, 3D models moving in a limited flat layer of space. Just makes movement more sensible. I found that RTS games in XYZ space (as in the Homeworld series) can be a little annoying when trying to order fleet movement.
Noticeably (and thankfully) omitted from Solar Empire were the annoying full screen popups that announced every research breakthru in GalCiv. At first those screens were mildly amusing with the sarcastic humor... then you realize there's like a thousand of em.
The tech tree in Solar Empire is much
MUCH improved compared to GalCiv. It's much easier to figure out during gameplay what things you need to research in order to get to that next big toy for the fleet. You'll find that certain technologies are collapsed into a single icon that requires you to build up the research in stagies (1 of 3 complete for laser tech, for instance) rather than actually having all three layed out in a monstrously large tech tree and progressing left-to-right. The categorization and bundling of the tech icons makes it a much easier tree to view and navigate within a single screen.
The GalCiv map system which involved searching (or scanning) uncharted space for planets under fog-of-war conditions has been replaced with a branching planet-to-planet universe. As you "jump" to each planet you see connections to new unknown worlds that need exploring. This allows you to focus a lot more on building networks and fortifying certain key positions. You can still research long-distance jumps and wormholes to bypass certain blockades but you at least know at the onset of a game that you're not entirely exposed to annihilation from any/all directions.
One thing that really makes this game standout is the zooming feature. You can truly, seamlessly, zoom from light-year distances to unit-in-yer-face with a few rolls of the mouse scrollwheel. The game also seems to be pretty nimble with its underlying engine. With my system built 3-4 years ago, it runs very smoothly even with large numbers (100+) of units in play. I'm also running the game under Vista-64 without incident.
Okay... nuff said for now, I gotta get back to my space empire building...