2008 Strategy Game of the Year - Sins of a Solar Empire

LiquidMantis wrote:

For anyone else looking at getting this who hasn't already, it's only $40 at B&M stores. As far as I can tell the only physical box is the collector's edition too.

According to posts from Stardock on the official site, the collector's edition is only available direct. The $40 boxed retail version is not the same thing. I don't know exactly what the difference is, except that there's supposed to be some CE bonus content that will be available for download on Day 1, and the collector's edition apparently weighs 3+ pounds.

Ah.

Sins of a Solar Empire comes in two forms:

Standard Edition ($39.95) which is what is available at retail.

and

Collector's Edition ($49.95) which is available direct as well as certain retailers (I think Fry's is one).

So what's the difference?

The Collector's Edition box includes the following bonus items:

* a foldout tech-tree poster
* artwork posters
* a hotkey card
* a music CD

For users who are doing download only, the Collector's Edition is only $44.95 but they will still be able to get the music CD (we'll be providing it as a digital download shortly after release) and PDF versions of the other materials (which we will also be providing after release). Since there's less physical materials, it's $5 less than the actual boxed version.

If you decide later you want the boxed unit, you can order that for $5 plus the cost of shipping and handling.

Also Collector's Edition users will receive the Sins of a Solar Empire MyColors theme.

I'm thinking about buying this without ever having played it. It's weird to say, but I've essentially run out of things to play and I need a new game or two.

I'm a bit of an RTS nut and the idea of playing one with a slower pace sounds super appealing right now.

Especially if I can run it on my laptop.

My worry for it is that I'll get it, I'll love it for a short time, get lost in the interface, and then stop playing when I don't know what to do next.

Release Day! Here is a gameplay example that Brad Wardell did for Sins. The Novalith cannon looks intriguing. It is a new addition since beta4. From what I understand it can be fired at any planet in the starsystem through the connected phase lanes. I am extremely excited to get rolling tonight.

@ThinJ - The interface is pretty easy to manage and there are apparently a series of tutorials that come with the release game.

According to various forum posts, the full game download is available for anyone who was in the beta, or who ordered through TotalGaming.net .... other pre-order activation keys are supposed to be mailed out this afternoon.

Too bad I'm at work.

Is it actually available in stores today? I'd like to go pick it up, but the various store websites seem to indicate tomorrow being the release date. I'd hate to drive into town and not be able to get it today.

Generally if it releases today, then it won't be on shelves until tomorrow. I know the thought is abhorrent, but you could call a shop or two and see if it's in stock, before you make the drive

I don't think it's in stores yet but if you order a boxed copy they'll let you download it and play that version while your physical copy is on the way. The full download is ~1.02GB.

Mr Crinkle wrote:

Generally if it releases today, then it won't be on shelves until tomorrow. I know the thought is abhorrent, but you could call a shop or two and see if it's in stock, before you make the drive :)

Use a telephone and converse with an actual person? My god man, what is this, the stone ages?

This sounds intriguing. I'll add it to the growing list of games to buy.

*Sigh*

Thin, I doubt Stardock would be involved in any kind of game that was genuinely hard to figure out. GalCiv2 was pretty complex, but it was nicely accessible after a little learning. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't that hard to find what you needed. I'd give it 8 on a 10 scale... stuff was sometimes buried in slightly odd places, but once found, any given screen made perfect sense.

This is, from what I understand, kind of a collaboration between Stardock and the guys who made Homeworld. Homeworld had an excellent interface, so this will likely be quite good.

Downloading now.

Edit: dayam, they've got themselves some SERIOUS bandwidth. Pulling 1200KB/sec.

Second edit: 1 gig, 15 minutes. WAY faster than going to the store. Starting now.

Yeah, 1200kb/sec here too. I'm looking forward to posting some impressions and hearing what you all think as well. Probably won't get to play much until Wednesday, so you all will beat me to it, but such is my tortured life.

The first tutorial doesn't seem to be working. Not a real promising start.

Edit: a quit and restart seems to have gotten it working.

This has no copy protection.... who wants to hook a brother up?

I'm very tempted to buy this when I get home tonight. But I don't know if I can justify $50 on a game I've never played before when Gears, Bioshock and Gametap are all sitting around nearly untouched.

kaostheory wrote:

This has no copy protection.... who wants to hook a brother up?

Are you fing kidding me?

Argh! LIke I NEED to spend more money!!

I'll have this tomorrow, I suppose

kaostheory wrote:

This has no copy protection.... who wants to hook a brother up?

I'm very tempted to buy this when I get home tonight. But I don't know if I can justify $50 on a game I've never played before when Gears, Bioshock and Gametap are all sitting around nearly untouched.

Finish Bioshock and wait for impressions here. This game has a definite "hybrid" quality to it, which may or may not appeal to you or the other folks here. I'm curious to see what we all think. I hated Homeworld because it baffled me, but loved GALCIV. So far this game is almost a perfect 50/50 combination of the two.

I also, await impressions. Isn't this mostly designed to be a multiplayer game? I'd like to hear about that. How long does each game last? etc

Call me superficial, but I think what may hold me back are the ship designs, they don't look all that good in the screenshots. I'm kind of picky when it comes to that.

Duffman wrote:
kaostheory wrote:

This has no copy protection.... who wants to hook a brother up?

Are you fing kidding me?

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner.

I figured the talking about trying to decide whether or not to buy it was sufficient for saying that I wasn't going to actually steal the game.

Yeah, in retrospect, I figured you actually were joking, but I've read an astounding number of really dumb posts on other forums today. Colored my perceptions.

Duffman's sarcasm detector = broken.

I really loved Homeworld, and I really loved Civ IV. Does that mean I will really love this? Or does that mean I should really be loving Galactic Civilizations II?

This looks great, because I'm a 'slower' RTS player, and I really love the management side of cIV, but I'm not sure how I'll feel about a blend of the two. Will it be too fast for the management side? Or will it be too slow for the epic space battles?
I'm so confused.

And I just finished Bioshock, so its either SoaSE or The Witcher, I think. What a dilemma.

Well, so far I'm pretty meh. The graphics are so-so. The game pace seems very slow, at least on Easy, and while it takes ages to get upgrades, the upgrades aren't that major. I don't see that the game fundamentally changes that much from the start to the finish; the improvements are very incremental and there aren't that many of them. It doesn't appear to be at all like Civ and MOO and MoM, in the sense that the game doesn't transform into something new over time.

I guess I just haven't seen the 'hook' yet... why would I play Sins as opposed to some other game? That's not obvious to me at this point. I've spent the last two hours waiting for the fun to start, and it really hasn't.

Homeworld, by comparison, had me absolutely glued to my chair within the first five minutes.

Can I get this through Stardock Central? It lists the old beta version, and when I try and get it through TotalGaming's website it doesn't give me an option to use tokens. Forgive the foolish questions, but I can't seem to figure this out.

So far this reminds me of Homeworld. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Back to the game.

I like the old timey sci fi music.

DrunkenSleipnir wrote:

Can I get this through Stardock Central? It lists the old beta version, and when I try and get it through TotalGaming's website it doesn't give me an option to use tokens. Forgive the foolish questions, but I can't seem to figure this out. :)

I just got it off of the sins of a solar empire site. If you buy it off of there it just gives you a serial to feed into stardock to get your download.

DrunkenSleipnir wrote:

Can I get this through Stardock Central? It lists the old beta version, and when I try and get it through TotalGaming's website it doesn't give me an option to use tokens. Forgive the foolish questions, but I can't seem to figure this out. :)

You might need to download Stardock Central again and/or restart it and/or something else. I had the same problem after I purchased the game with a credit card through their website. I got the confirmation code, but when I entered it, it showed up as version 0.9 in my "purchased games" list rather than 1.01. I couldn't install it. But when I downloaded Stardock Central again and restarted my computer, it showed up correctly as 1.01 and I was able to begin the download.

I'll wait for reviews and/or impressions before buying this. I've read several previews stating that "several bugs and features needed fixing" before retail.

That and I need to fix my as-yet-undiagnosed computer problem.

So.. it's possibile to play co-op against PC players?

If so, and assuming the reports that the skirmish AI is great are true, this will become a buy for me.

Montalban wrote:
DrunkenSleipnir wrote:

Can I get this through Stardock Central? It lists the old beta version, and when I try and get it through TotalGaming's website it doesn't give me an option to use tokens. Forgive the foolish questions, but I can't seem to figure this out. :)

You might need to download Stardock Central again and/or restart it and/or something else. I had the same problem after I purchased the game with a credit card through their website. I got the confirmation code, but when I entered it, it showed up as version 0.9 in my "purchased games" list rather than 1.01. I couldn't install it. But when I downloaded Stardock Central again and restarted my computer, it showed up correctly as 1.01 and I was able to begin the download.

No good after a clean re-install. I see that I can get it through the website, but not a way to use tokens, which I see on Stardock Central (which lists version 0.70). I'm a really big proponent of Stardock as a DRM-free download client, but weird things like this bug me.