Sins Of A Solar Empire Interview (con't)

FiringSquad: How do the playable sides in Sins of a Solar Empire differ from each other?

Blair Fraser: Each race has a variety of unique ships, structures, abilities, research, planet preferences and resource needs. The lore for each race is suggestive of how they are going to play. With roots as a commercial empire, the TEC boast greatest capacity for making money, trading and economics. Their lack of warfare experience or technology shows in their extensive use of old kinetic weapons, crude nukes, and a fleet primarily consisting of hastily converted commercial ships. The Vasari once controlled nearly a fourth of the galaxy and are very accustomed to living and ruling from space. Their technology is much more advanced especially in the areas of nanotechnology and Phase space manipulation which is not only used for more advanced travel but for weapons as well. Being on the run, they are very good at quickly grabbing resources from a variety of sources and in ingenious ways. Perhaps their greatest weakness is they have very few ships left and can’t afford to lose anymore. The Exodus fleet is all that remains of their kind. The Advent are masters of social control, energy weapons, and PsiTech – a strange new melding of mind power and technology. PsiTech comes a price however, as few hull materials do not interfere with it, and those that do are somewhat rare and aren’t very effective for constructing well armored hulls. Consequently, the Advent favor energy shields as their primary means of defense, and suffer with economic disadvantages compared to the other factions.

FiringSquad: What will the single player campaigns be like?

Blair Fraser: Unfortunately, this is an area I can’t say much about. Our attempts at adapting a typical RTS campaign to this style of game have not met our standards. With such an open and expansive gameplay environment it is very difficult to steer the player through a linear story. We recognize the importance of the single player experience and feel we’ve come up with a satisfying solution.

FiringSquad: What are the dev team's favorite units to use in the game?

Blair Fraser: There isn’t much question that the capital ships are the dev team’s favorite units but as to which ones I don’t think there is any particular favorite. It really depends on what strategy one is going for. So why are the capital ships so interesting? Well for starters they are much bigger than the other units (e.g., 500-750m for capitals compared to 150m for frigates and 10m for fighters), they are more powerful, and they are more interactive. We also really wanted to create a sense of investment and uniqueness in your ships so as they are more successful they get more powerful and deserving of the special names you can give them. Capital ships improve with experience which can either be bought (training) or earned through combat. As they level up they get a variety of default upgrades like fighter capacity, damage repair rates, antimatter reserves, and so on. The player can also select from a variety of special abilities for the ship. The choice of abilities helps define the role you want that ship to play and could be different than other ships of the same type and a fair bit of combat tactics revolves around proper timing of these abilities and their synergy with others. Not that all abilities are combat oriented. Some, like the Vasari’s Planet Resource Drain, are purely economic, while others are focused on travel, espionage, support, and sabotage.

To give you an idea of how capital ships are used in a game, I’ll take an excerpt from a near defeat in yesterday’s game. In the last few games I’ve been trying out a variety of Advent capital ship combinations to try to counter another dev’s strategy. My primary attack fleet consisted of 6 siege frigates, 18 heavy frigates, 2 Halcyon carriers (fully loaded), 2 Radiance Battleships and one Subtlety Cruiser. The rest of my ships were in separate fleets guarding my core worlds. I had the capitals upgraded to level 4 and my focus was on Ultra Beam Cannon for the battleships, Telekinetic Push and Illusionary Ships for the carriers and Vertigo for the Subtlety Cruiser. The plan was to stall the front line with the heavy frigates and to send the siege frigates to bombard his planet during combat. The battleships’ role was to flank then focus fire their Ultra Beam Cannon ability on his carriers. My own carriers were loaded with beam fighters which are great for taking down his heavier ships and I added in Illusionary Ships to draw fire. Telekinetic push was to swat away any bombers he sent against my rear line carriers. Finally, the sole job of the Subtlety Cruiser’s was to employ Vertigo on the opposing pilots to reduce their combat effectiveness. Unfortunately, my last attempt was a failure. In the main battle, he had nano hull repair active as per usual but he also got some EMP blasts off before I could focus fire with my battleships, thereby wiping a good chunk of my fleet’s shields, which is particularly effective against the Advent. This also drained a large portion of my antimatter reserves preventing me from employing Vertigo. Luckily, my own carriers were far enough back to carry out their roles as intended and their swarm of beam fighters managed to destroy a hefty portion of the relatively static front line, and my battleships were really dishing out the damage to his rear line. All said and done I finished the skirmish with only a handful of frigates and some heavily damaged capitals, but that’s more than I can say for the other dev’s fleet!

FiringSquad: What will the multiplayer features be like?

Blair Fraser: Up to 10 players can vie for dominance over LAN or the internet. A number of usual formats from 1v1 to free for all to team games are possible. A variety of starting conditions from initial resource levels, galaxy size and more can be adjusted, allow players to fight short deathmatches or conduct lengthy campaigns. Alliances can be made, ex-allies can be betrayed, trade agreements can be established. Online play will be supported via Ironclad Online which is our propriety matchmaking, statistics tracking and player ranking service. Sins multiplayer features should appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers.