Jun 12, 2012  Sins of a Solar Empire could definitely use a good story campaign; would help push it over the top if you ask me. On the other hand, given I can find myself spending all day (or several days) playing a single map in Sins, the lack of a story campaign isn't a huge deal for me.

1. Solar Empire Infinium

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion's new Titan-class capital ships can single-handedly tilt the balance of war. I learned this when attacking an enemy's forward base with a near invincible trio of veteran capital ships and a powerful attendant fleet of cruisers and frigates. My Kol Battleship, Sova Carrier, and Dunov Battlecruiser were sweeping the TEC Rebels toward their defenses when the enormous dark shape of the new Ragnarov Titan appeared beside its foundry.

Foolishly, I directed my fleet to engage it.The Ragnarov is the purest expression of both the TEC Rebel faction's philosophy and the dichotomies that drive the new Rebellion stand-alone expansion. It is a giant spacefaring shotgun whose sole purpose is focused aggression. Its elongated hull serves to mount a massive railgun capable of smashing apart capital ships with the deadly Snipe ability, or it can thin out a more numerous fleet with its Scattershot ability, which not only damages targets in a cone in front of the Ragnarov, but also lowers their armor.

To go toe-to-toe with the Ragnarov, as I tried to do, is to court death. With a rebel yellIt is the perfect weapon for the TEC Rebel faction, who have split with the TEC Loyalist faction due to the latter's belief that the TEC should pursue armed and fortified isolationism and the Rebels' conviction that the TEC will have peace after its enemies are dead. While both factions belong to the same race and share about 85% of the same technologies and units, that last 15% bends them toward very different strategies and play styles. The rebels thrive on aggressive warfare, while the loyalists are natural turtlers.The other races have suffered their own schisms in Rebellion, with a similar impact on how they play. Each race now has a loyalist and rebel faction that largely follows a hawks-doves split, although in the case of the brutal Vasari, it's more like hawks and slightly-more-xenophobic-and-fascist hawks.

You can play to your factions' natural philosophical inclinations, which is an easier, more limiting road, or you can attempt to find a more balanced approach through research priorities and diplomacy.Developer Ironclad Games frames Rebellion as a natural follow-up to the Diplomacy expansion that completed Sins' transformation from a traditional RTS into a fully-fledged 4X game. Where Diplomacy made conciliation and alliance-making a viable alternative to conquest (conquest that was itself more difficult due to the defensive emphasis of the Entrenchment expansion), Rebellion rebalances the game to promote both more conflict and more viable play styles for each faction. It also marks a turn in the game's fiction toward Warhammer-esque grimdarkness. The three original races have cracked under the strain of endless war and are now at war with themselves as they lose hope of achieving either victory or peace. Now, armed with a new capital ship for each race, a Titan for each faction, and new corvette-class support ships (that have a depressing tendency to die like flies), they are ready to shatter the defenses that Entrenchment brought into play, and put Diplomacy under fire. The vastness of spaceWith every Sins expansion I half-expect that the game will finally jump the shark, and each time I am pleasantly surprised to find that Ironclad seems to have an endless bag of tricks for refreshing the four year-old RTS without breaking it.

But I do wonder how much bigger Sins of a Solar Empire can get. The research tree is enormous and faction-specific, with each race having its own names for the same basic improvements. Diplomacy still feels a bit disconnected from the main action of the game and, while you can now keep track of victory conditions in a helpful sidebar, the nature of the diplomatic victory is that nobody seems to be making much progress until suddenly one player is making tons of progress. It's a difficult thing to account for when you're trying to assess threats and formulate strategies. Now each faction has its own spin on the original three races, and it's not always immediately apparent how those differences translate to action.I love that Ironclad has resisted the temptation to include a single-player campaign, typically the worst thing about RTS games, but that also means it lacks a mode which explains the fiction behind each faction and their strengths and weaknesses. It's all well and good to talk about the Vasari's burning hatred for the TEC, and the Advent Rebels' conviction that they must purify their race, but that doesn't help me understand Rebellion's trade-offs, or what some of the new upgrades and abilities are actually supposed to do.

Having a little more flavor can take some of the workload off tooltips and statistics, and require a bit less trial-and-error from the player.That learning-curve issue, however, is mitigated by Sins: Rebellion's ability to convince you to stick around long enough to figure everything out. Grandeur and splendor are addictive in their own right. Clash of the TitansBack to my encounter with the Ragnarov.

With two high-level capital ships lost in action before my fleet could retreat, I realized the only thing that could stop that monster would be a Titan of my own. So while the AI lumbered into a counterattack, I researched and built the Ankylon, which is the TEC Loyalists' defensive-oriented answer to the Ragnarov.The Ankylon rushed to the aid of my surviving fleet as it huddled around a beleaguered starbase in orbit around one of my main planets. Starbases, which used to give defenders an almost unbreakable advantage, meet their match in the Titans.

But when my Ankylon joined the fight, the rebels' Ragnarov-led fleet met its match as well, and Rebellion showed-off its upgraded fireworks.The lighting on these ships is just incredible. They glimmer in the dark of space, and then blaze with laser beams, a wash of explosions, and the fire of distant stars. The Titans move with a ponderous menace: my Ankylon pulled into range of the Ragnarov and the slowly rotated to bring its massive, slab-like sides to bear for a crushing broadside. I could make out the main guns firing massive plasma projectiles down at the Ragnarov, while pulse weapons reached out like tendrils for nearby fighters and bombers.

The Ragnarov slewed around to fight back, the lights of incoming weapons playing over its mottled sheet-metal hull.Even as it brought its guns to bear, the fight was turning against the rebels. Boosted by the Ankylon's Group Shield ability, which gives friendly ships in the area a big defensive boost, my fleet was steadily whittling down the Ragnarov's backup, and the Ragnarov itself didn't quite have the firepower to take out the Ankylon.

It fell back alongside its surviving fleet, while my own forces regrouped and started getting ready for the next round of the struggle. In Sins of a Solar Empire, the struggle always continues.

Solar Empire Infinium

Sins of a Solar Empire is my favorite multiplayer real-time strategy game. It's so well balanced, its interface so intuitive and brilliant, its scope so sweeping, its production values so high, and its gameplay a perfect balance of challenge and fun, that it simply leaves every other RTS wallowing in the primordial slime of creation – at least insofar as multiplayer is concerned. It did have one glaring weakness, however: lack of a single-player campaign mode.Unfortunately, the new standalone expansion for the game, doesn't add a campaign - although it does still allow for players to skirmish against the AI, a prospect made alternatively too easy or too hard to be fun by the game's difficulty settings. Still, this is a multiplayer-focused game, so (despite some tantalizing, story-driven cutscenes), the lack of a campaign is no huge letdown.In Rebellion, Ironclad Games legitimately buffs up Sins of a Solar Empire's graphical engine, enhancing visual effects and allowing for more stuff to happen smoothly on the screen at once.

Rebellion also adds many worthwhile tweaks, including three 'new' factions (more on that in a second). Also new are the Corvette and Titan class ships. Titans are gigantic, superweapon-esque battle platforms that can single-handedly take on flotillas of enemy vessels. They also have powerful 'buffs' they can impart to friendly ships, making your side able to take and dish out more damage (and look much more intimidating). Corvettes, on the other hand, fill the fleet role between the workhorse frigates and the large cruisers. Corvettes are small and generally require less research to unlock than cruisers, but offer more versatility than frigates. They're also unique to each faction and tend to feature 'debuffs' to enemy abilities rather than direct damage: the Advent Rebels, for example, use their Vespa-class corvette to knife in among enemy ships and damage their shield recharge rate, whereas the TEC and Vasari Loyalists have corvettes designed to stop enemies from engaging their long-range engines and escaping from a battle.

These new ships add a yet another layer of complexity to fleet combat in Rebellion that makes it as in-depth as any chess match, and are much more interesting to would-be tacticians than the honkin'-big Titans.Now, you may be wondering what I mean by 'Loyalist' and 'Rebel.' Here's how it works: the three 'new' factions included in the expansion aren't really new at all: they're just 'rebel' versions of the three original factions. Ostensibly, these rebel versions have a new raison d'etre that differs from their original clan (the Vasari Rebels, for example, are more willing to co-operate with humans than their loyalist brothers), but since there's no story or campaign, that all ends up being flavor text in the game setup screen. Otherwise, Rebel and Loyalist versions have a lot more in common than not: Corvettes and Titans are unique to each, but every other ship type is shared, and they all look and sound the same, too. You do get a few faction-specific technologies for each (these often tie in somehow to their general ethos – the defensive-minded TEC Loyalists can build two starbases in a single gravity well, for example). So, the reality is that the rebel factions ought more properly to be termed 'tweaked' than 'new'. Advent players who'd rather focus on combat and internal improvement, as opposed to culture bombing and influencing pirates, would choose the Advent Rebel faction instead of the Advent Loyalists, for example, but would still basically be playing Advent.And there's the rub, really.

For the most part, Rebellion offers tweaks: graphical tweaks, faction tweaks, technology balancing, etc. It doesn't give you a lot of honest-to-goodness new content. As a result, when you play through it (at least as a veteran of the series), it feels thin, especially at the $40 price. Part of this feeling of thinness was inevitable: because Sins of a Solar Empire has been painstakingly balanced, through patches and expansions, over its life cycle, and because adding things to the mix always screws up that balance, Stardock's development team is put in a tough position.

Do they go for new and fancy and risk breaking the perfect formula, or do they play it safe and hope players will think the new-ish content is worth the money? Rebellion proves they've unequivocally chosen the latter. There's nothing basically wrong with that, of course, but it feels more 'patch-y' than 'expansion-y.'

Then again, Rebellion does give you access to all the content on the previous two expansions, Entrenchment and Diplomacy, so starbases, planetary defenses, and diplomatic victory are all here. Much more worthwhile if you're new to the series. Amended an inaccuracy regarding a faction ability. 10 Presentation The single greatest GUI in strategy gaming history.