Well? How's it stack to GalCiv?

Blair,

I am sure I will get flamed for this, but please read before doing so. Because you are not providing a demo of the game ahead of the actual retail release, you only heighten my desire to pirate this game for now.

Why?

Because I have no desire to purchase a game sight unseen. If I plop down $30-60 I am stuck with the game, no return policy whatsoever.

Had you put forth a demo 1 week before the games release, there would be no need for most of us to want to "try before you by".

I have not tried the Beta's, though I have seen them all over the torrents.

These business decisions are what account for many of us pirating. I have done this before and wound up buying many games such as Stalker, Crysis, Vampire the Masquerade while leaving other behind such as Need for Speed Carbon, Kane & Lynch, Ghost Recon.

I don't want to hijack this forum here, but it really bothers me to see "No demo" or "Demo in a month".

Not good.

Thanks, it means a lot coming from you guys. This is where I check my gaming news all day

Bucky is correct, the demo will be about a month from now. We wanted it to be an accurate representation of the game and not have its development eating into time spent on the retail build.

I hope you will forgive us but the tutorials seem to have gotten bugged in the last update. They may or may not work for you. Fix coming soon along with some ICO enhancements. Bucky's suggestion is a great way to learn too.

Nin, I don't know about the manual but there are some descriptive action reports available around the net (e.g http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/?forumid=402&aid=174538#1441876) that give you a good idea how the game plays and we just released Galaxy Forge (Sins map designer) for anyone to download and play with. This will give you an idea of the environment. It can be downloaded for free from http://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/downloads.aspx.

Cheers!

This comment was edited on Feb 4, 22:48.

This game is actually quite easy to get a grasp on (compared to other 4x's) once you've played it a couple times. Very hard to master I've found. Lemme help:

1) You have to build labs (2 types; one for combat, one for building up your planets...and multiple numbers of each).

2) You need metal and crystal...and money (money is most easily gotten by building trade ports at your planets, but you need 3 labs to research, the money to do so, and two planets to trade between).

3) To capture a planet, you have to eliminate the current population and be projecting your cultural influence over that planet, or, rather, a lack of the enemies.

4) Each planet has military slots and logistics slots (both can be upgraded, and are independent of each other). I find the fighter/hanger defenses to be great with the support of the weapons platforms you start with (usually 4 to 6 hangers , one or two defensive do-dads, and a mix of 60/40 bombers/fighters). Fighters and bombers are pretty strong in this game.

5) Explore as much as you can as quickly as you can to find the choke points. Take and hold that, then consolidate what you own behind it...otherwise, you have to slog through whoever grabs the planets and can keep them resupplied with ships.

I dunno. That's just the stuff I remember having problems with initially.

Love this game.

This comment was edited on Feb 4, 22:49.

Re tutorials: Did you play all 4 of them? There is another basic one and 2 advanced

Yeah, I played all of them. The tutorials do a decent job of telling you how to do stuff, but they don't help at all with why to do stuff. After playing a game, I'm starting to get more of a hang of it, but I still don't know whether some of the stuff I'm doing is worth it or not.

Re: The tutorials. They seem a bit sparse to me (all 4 of them taken together) but I think it's just the sheer volume of information that is provided at a glance that is the really overwhelming part.

I think that's it exactly. The tutorials aren't bad, there's just so much to get the hang of.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Depth is good, and I like the fact that I may still be picking up new things days and even weeks into playing...to me, that's an incentive to keep playing.

But it's not such a high learning curve that it's frustrating, either...it's a good mix.


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http://niggytardust.com/saulwilliams/menu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4zXIyyaJss&NR=1

woot! time to make that beta payment pay

IIRC they plan on a demo, about a month from now. I believe their first order of business was getting the game out, then they'll work on the demo. Edit: That's just what I picked up lurking the Sins forums, so take all of that with a large grain of salt. I already have the full game, so my level of interest in a demo isn't very high.


Re: The tutorials. They seem a bit sparse to me (all 4 of them taken together) but I think it's just the sheer volume of information that is provided at a glance that is the really overwhelming part. Fortunately a single player game with no one except pirates and neutrals is a great way to settle in, and the tooltips (esp. the info cards) are a huge help.

Now that I've started to get a feel for the game it's coming easier, and having all the info available is damn handy.


Congrats to Ironclad on a game very, very well done. This is one that's gonna consume my life.


This comment was edited on Feb 4, 22:27.

Yeah, I'll need a demo before I make a decision.


"Grab a napkin, homie. You just got served."
- Wolowitz

Blair, this game is awesome. I was impressed with the betas but am blown away by the final game.

Thank you for making the space based RTS game I've always wanted to play.

For those of you sitting on the fence, don't be. This is one of the best RTSes to be released in a long time.

Hey Blair!

2 questions:

1. Do you plan to mirror the manual online? I thought it might be an easy way to entice people and help answer questions.

2. Plans for a demo? Again, to help reel people in that might be on the fence.

Congrats to your team at Ironclad! If you can win over us cynical folks here at Blue's (and it looks like you have), I think it means you've got a great product! Thanks for your hard work!




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http://niggytardust.com/saulwilliams/menu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4zXIyyaJss&NR=1

Re tutorials: Did you play all 4 of them? There is another basic one and 2 advanced


This comment was edited on Feb 4, 21:31.

I am buying this game on Bluesnews peoples referrals only. You fellas better not let me down

Please. We have never let anyone down!

And for those of you who feel that we have, it's not our fault you have crappy taste in games

Creston

Downloading now.

It looks like they again severely underestimated the demand for the game, though, as Stardock is giving me ~30k/s. Not that my pipe is much bigger than that (90k/s) but I expected it to at least easily fill my total download bandwith.

Oh well, guess I'll just leave it running for 24 hours or so.

Btw, for those that are new to Stardock, here's a few handy tips :

1) Your Stardock STORE account is NOT the same as your Stardock Central account! They are separate accounts.
2) Make sure to have both accounts registered to the same email address. You will hate yourself if you don't do this.
3) When you purchase the game online, you will get an order confirmation code. This is NOT your game's serial number. That will come in an email to you and should also show below the order confirmation.
4) The page displays a number of steps you have to take to install the game. Follow these steps precisely.

I've known two people who didn't read all the instructions and whined at me for ages that I shouldn't have recommended Stardock blablabla, even though they themselves didn't RTFM.

Oh goody, 1% complete of the first file

Creston

w00t

Beta was great...so looking forward to it.

If you have the game you can find it in the manual, either the paper version or the .pdf buried inside the game directory.

That's a good point...wonder if they'd get pissed if someone posted the manual.

Damn, it's 30 meg!



------------------------------------------------
http://niggytardust.com/saulwilliams/menu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4zXIyyaJss&NR=1

Wow, the tutorial is extremely brief and basic. After going through it, I'm not sure I have the slightest idea how to play the game.

Guess it's time to just jump in and try it. Nothing like getting your ass kicked to start off a new game.

err.. where can i find info on how you can outfit your ships? That's something I am really interested in.

It's only with specific things, either through research provided abilities (for instance, some scouts can drop sensor pods onto planets) or through veteran upgrades in the capital ships which are a set of choices based on the ship and race; things like mass driver upgrades or shield upgrades, for instance. From my limited experience the cap ship upgrades tend to be pretty powerful, but are limited by anti-matter quantities (or are weaker if it is a passive always-on effect).

As for the where, I'd assume a wiki will be popping up for this game soon enough. If you have the game you can find it in the manual, either the paper version or the .pdf buried inside the game directory.

err.. where can i find info on how you can outfit your ships? That's something I am really interested in.
types of ships, amounts, weapons etc..

where is that?

hrmm, download or box.. download or box..

download!

Download and you'll be playing in under an hour.

Or do like I did and pay $5 more and get the download now and the dvd in the mail...

edit:

Thankfully you can start single player games just by yourself. I think I forgot to turn off neutral players so the other planets are defended, but it's a good way to get a feel for the game.

I want to try that next, just to get the hang of things...


------------------------------------------------
http://niggytardust.com/saulwilliams/menu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4zXIyyaJss&NR=1
This comment was edited on Feb 4, 20:41.