Sins of a Solar Empire 2

[Rahdulan]

Will they keep the hours-long matches, though?
https://www.sinsofasolarempire2.com/

WHAT IS SINS OF A SOLAR EMPIRE?
Sins of a Solar Empire II is a real-time strategy game with many traditional 4X elements (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate). You take the role of leader of one of the game’s factions in order to build a stellar empire using force, trade, alliances, subterfuge and more.

WHAT ARE THE CORE FEATURES OF A SINS OF A SOLAR EMPIRE GAME?
Starting on your homeworld, you begin by exploring your local system. Each area in the game is pre-populated, however, so to expand you will need to use force of arms. To do this, you’ll construct capital ships, cruisers, frigates and strike craft to take over the planets around you. With each world, you can increase your empire’s capabilities and specialize your planets. You’ll also build research stations to learn new technologies and to unlock new ships. Eventually you’ll encounter another major player and it’s at this juncture you must decide if you want to try and be friends or not.

WHAT IS THE CURRENT STATE OF THE GAME?
Very similar to the state we began the original Sins of a Solar Empire ‘early access’ program in. At present, most of the gameplay systems are implemented. We are making steady progress on the visual content and overall UI/UX, representing roughly 1/4 of the content overall. We’re still working on many models, particle effects, damage effects and debris, user interface art, music, voice work, sound fx, and more.

 

[L'ennui]

A welcome surprise. Sins was one fine blend of 4X and RTS, I thought they'd never do a sequel.

 

[Joggerino]

Really great. I hope the new game turns out good!

 

[fork]

It will be shit.
It's current year.

 

[BrotherFrank]

That glorious Kol battleship.


Tentative optimism on my side, SoSE 1 on my list of top rts games, especially when you factor in the mods but a couple of things worry me though:

-Drooling over new tech, once upon a time I'd have been excited for technical innovation but now i just want a game that runs decent and doesn't look horrible. With that regard having every weapon individually modelled seems like the kind of autism that doesn't really add anything for most people (i guarantee you only the 0.001% of turbo try hard autists will be microing the positions of their ships weapons relative to the enemy) and just seems a performance sink.

-The whole lanes and planet shifting bs... Who is this for? Outside of MP (and even then, specifically competitive players) i'd imagine most gamers would hate setting up a nice series of chokepoint system only for your defensive line to be bypassed every 15 mins when virgo is ascendant or whatever. Thankfully they had the good sense to keep this optional.

Both of these changes point to me a desire to chase the mythical mp esport pro scene, a common mistake a lot of strategy games make, and then they die because it turns out the vocal mp players are a tiny fraction of the actual playerbase and most people prefer playing compstomps and silly custom games to FFAs and ladder.

Otherwise not much else to go on yet, hoping they don't fuck this up.

 

[Doc_Wolverine]

That glorious Kol battleship.


Tentative optimism on my side, SoSE 1 on my list of top rts games, especially when you factor in the mods but a couple of things worry me though:

-Drooling over new tech, once upon a time I'd have been excited for technical innovation but now i just want a game that runs decent and doesn't look horrible. With that regard having every weapon individually modelled seems like the kind of autism that doesn't really add anything for most people (i guarantee you only the 0.001% of turbo try hard autists will be microing the positions of their ships weapons relative to the enemy) and just seems a performance sink.

-The whole lanes and planet shifting bs... Who is this for? Outside of MP (and even then, specifically competitive players) i'd imagine most gamers would hate setting up a nice series of chokepoint system only for your defensive line to be bypassed every 15 mins when virgo is ascendant or whatever. Thankfully they had the good sense to keep this optional.

Both of these changes point to me a desire to chase the mythical mp esport pro scene, a common mistake a lot of strategy games make, and then they die because it turns out the vocal mp players are a tiny fraction of the actual playerbase and most people prefer playing compstomps and silly custom games to FFAs and ladder.

Otherwise not much else to go on yet, hoping they don't fuck this up.

Yeah, I loved SoSE, and I'm cautiously optimistic about this game so far. We've got the Epic players to betatest the game for us so it will be finished by the time it hits Steam or it will unfortunately be balanced tested by the the comp players. The phase lane shifting looks interesting, and I'm hoping it isn't completely dynamic, where no matter the in game time there will be some planets that will never connect. Otherwise, I can see multistar maps being more popular and chokepoints being shifted to the stars instead of specific planets. Otherwise that sucks all of the fun out of playing a TEC loyalist:

I'm hoping they bring back Loyalists and Rebels as well, or they become more dynamic, where your gameplay can lead you to either becoming a Loyalist or Rebel. I'm kind of ambivalent about the turret tracking, and I agree it will probably be a performance sink.

The new designs look good though. I love the updated Kol and the new Akkan look great:

 

[Wassersäufer]

Cautiously fapping, I just hope they update the game and finetune some of it (mfucking influence).

 

[Joggerino]

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

The original badly needed a campaign or three. MP was poorly balanced. Still it was interesting in some ways and at least tried some original things.