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Hi guys
I've managed to lose my copy of Sins of a solar empire, somehow, but I love the game.
Can anyone recommend something similar, that is free or cheap, and easy to acquire?
I'd rather not buy sins again, as I'll find it probably, but for now, I need some starship goodness.
Any help would be much appreciated
thanks

Gratuitous Space Battles (5.99)

How about Vega Strike? It's free.

Don't worry, Sins is pretty poop. What specifcially do you want in a similar game? A slow RTS? Multiple linked maps? Hero ships?

Depending on your tolerance for old and poop, try Conquest Frontier Wars. No idea if its available anywhere though.

You really have to start writing down your keys somewhere.

Chards, GSB with the campaign expansion might do his business, unless he's looking for an RTS.

I like the slow RTS, with magnificent space battles... Pretty isn't needed, but fleets is a must.

What's wrong with SINS?

The combat is totally static, the stock effects are so bad even after many expansions bailknight's mod still humiliates them, the market system is a complete failure, the pirates only now work as they were supposed to back in the day, and it doesn't even have animated turrets.

Don't get me wrong, I play it too. Fuck knows there's bugger all other games for space pew pews except SotS, which is even more of a lol.

Conquest is from 1999, so it's pretty ugly; but it has multiple-linked maps, similar resourcing, largeish unit caps, etc. It's got a lot of good ideas, but it's very much a game from 1999.

GSB is a hands-off battle viewer, where you design ships and give them orders and watch the hugely entertaining pew pews. It has two flaws; all the multiplayer fleets you can face are 100% pure cheese and boring, and the campaign layer added in an expansion is ludicrously hard. Otherwise, if you're happy with not actually controlling the battles beyond a Rainbow Six style planning phase, it's great fun.

Oh I've played GSB... it's fun, but it gets dull fast. Plus I may have got bored and figured out several pure cheese fleets (mainly spam cruisers I believe)...

I think that's the problem. No-one is releasing space combat games We need new ones people, so we can see the enemy die pretty.

Conquest looks pretty cool. I might see if I can get a demo or something, until I can pick up a real copy.

It's that or find my sins disc, and start playing with mods by the looks of things

The campaign thing tests that a lot; it's easy to beat the vanilla game, but campaign pulls broken fleets off other people. It's still got the inherent balance problems, though.

And yeah, god knows where you 'll get Conquest. It's not on any of the DD sites I checked. It's one of those games that was clearly never finished, so the humans are better than the zerg and protoss, but it's a lot of fun in multi regardless. It has the same slow-moving, drawn-out battles as Sins.

One of the things I really like about sins was eventually having several fleets spread out across what are essentially sectors.... and then drawing them all together at the end for a great big climatic destruction of the enemy homeworld
Seeing several hundred ships in formation around ten capital ships or so is very satisfying. Not fair, but satisfying.

Maybe when I find my copy I'll run a lets play. Keep it all slow and buerocratic (sic) like. Maybe have people in charge of planets

The ships even capsize when you blow them up. :V

In a multi game of Sins once, I was able to use the Zerg's superior jump lane sensors to detect one of my 'allies' moving in for a killshot on my homeworld and move a secondary fleet back there for defence while continuing to collaboarte with them at the front line. On chat they were saying things like 'my fleet will be there in a few minutes', while I could see them moving through the lanes away from the front, towards my homeworld.

When his fleet arrived and he saw what was waiting for him, he resigned. Such a laugh.

Like in Conquest when we played around to demonstrate the broken balance; the Terrans have a cloakable missile cruiser, which I used to break his blockade... but of course it only works once.

Oh they do. And it is awesome

Maybe once I get my laptop up and running again, we should have a crack at some multi? (and when I find the disk again)

What about Star Wolves? I know STRAK will like it because it's a spaceship game made by Eastern Europeans. I saw it on gog for like 10 bucks *shrug*

Star Wolves is much more a story-driven RPG kind of thing than an RTS involving a space empire.

If you tell me that there is the word "fuckshit" in the game, I'll buy it immediately.

(or shitfuck)

There is no pirate ship Hatfuck, no.

It's really sad that Sins is pretty much the only choice for gamers hankering for a massive RTS fleet battle game, particularly considering Stark's accurate criticisms. Another one - vanilla ships are almost all stupid and ugly-looking, so you've got bad effects AND lame-looking ships.

Tanasinn wrote:It's really sad that Sins is pretty much the only choice for gamers hankering for a massive RTS fleet battle game, particularly considering Stark's accurate criticisms. Another one - vanilla ships are almost all stupid and ugly-looking, so you've got bad effects AND lame-looking ships.

Yeah... But I like the ship design.
Okay, it looks like if I cant find my disk, I'm buying the newest version (With all the expansions), and downloading a big bunch of mods. Has anyone got any good ones to recommend?

This is kind of off topic, but could anyone here comment on the game Master of Orion II, in the context of this kind of space strategy game?

barnest2 wrote:

Tanasinn wrote:It's really sad that Sins is pretty much the only choice for gamers hankering for a massive RTS fleet battle game, particularly considering Stark's accurate criticisms. Another one - vanilla ships are almost all stupid and ugly-looking, so you've got bad effects AND lame-looking ships.

Yeah... But I like the ship design.
Okay, it looks like if I cant find my disk, I'm buying the newest version (With all the expansions), and downloading a big bunch of mods. Has anyone got any good ones to recommend?

There's a FANTASTIC Star wars mod. (The newest version requires diplomacy or entrenchment).
It's by the same team who did the SW:Warlords mod for homeworld. I can't stand the vanilla sins game, but the sw mod made me pick it up for quite a few times . (It even has the orchestral soundtrack).
Star Wars - Requiem
http://sins.imperial.cc/

(I tried the demo of Gratutious space battles + a SW mod for that after reading this thread, but I miss the incredible level of detail and quality present in the requiem SW mod).

Are you serious? Everyone loves MOO2 despite it being crap, and in context it isn't realtime, it has even worse AI than Sins, and the combat is both ugly and hopelessly unbalanced. The first one has a grander scope, but is still way too clunky to get the ADMIRAL ON DECK feel you get with hands-on games like Sins, SotS, Conquest, even HW.

barnest, I'm assuming you already use Bailknight's effects mod. I find the other most interesting mods are never finished; a guy applied fighter movement to frigates to make the game less visually boring, but never finished it. I don't find the mods that add 10000 more planet mods very compelling, and only the Star Trek and Star Wars TCs are anywhere near finished. I just play vanilla with decent effects.

Eh. star wars ship battles bore me, really fast. I think it's having a lifetime of it has just left me finding the ship design so familiar as to be dull. I think the big thing that appeals to me about sins, and games like it, is seeing ships battle that I have never seen before, that are new, and that aren't something I grew up with.
However that does look fancy. I may try it once or twice.

Stark, no I've never modded my copy. What's bailknights mod like?

Stark wrote:Are you serious? Everyone loves MOO2 despite it being crap, and in context it isn't realtime, it has even worse AI than Sins, and the combat is both ugly and hopelessly unbalanced. The first one has a grander scope, but is still way too clunky to get the ADMIRAL ON DECK feel you get with hands-on games like Sins, SotS, Conquest, even HW.

I'm not saying it isn't crap, and I'm not suggesting it as an alternative to any of the other games on this list. But it's one of the few games anywhere in the general genre of space strategy I'm familiar with, so I was curious about what people thought about it and how it stacks up.

You argue that it's crap for a number of reasons; I can't blame you.

barnest2 wrote:Stark, no I've never modded my copy. What's bailknights mod like?

It's just replacement effects for pew pews etc; it makes the battles not look like green turds sailing between grey turds. I literally can't play the game without it. Finding a version for the current version of diplomacy might be tricky, but just delete the gamedata shit from the mod and it'll just do the visual changes instead of the rof changes that make the guns look more visually interesting without changing balance.

Balknight's graphics mod and Requiem are both good.

I tried Distant Stars a few times, and it's not bad. There's also a reasonable SG mod somewhere on the SINS forum, called SG Races. Gives you the Asgard, Ancients and Wraith. It's complete in that all races work and are balanced, but some of the models are decidedly incomplete, as in they are a rough shape finished in reflective silver. But if you don't mind that it's good.

I've heard a lot about the 7 Deadly Sins mod as well, but I can never make the damn thing work properly.

Oh, and barnest, FYI modding SINS is absurdly easy to do. Should have no troubles at all.

Sins is just garbage, yeah. Personally, you should probably find Homeworld to be glacially paced enough for it to count as a slower-speed RTS, and the upside is that it looks a quintillion times cooler than Sins while also having an equally larger amount of actual tactical genius involved on your end. Super cheap too, or should be, given the age of the product. Sins is just bad in every way.

MOO2 is a great game but it's incredibly ancient by now and anyone playing it has to remember that it's totally retro or will wonder why it feels like Baby's First Strategy Game, because it basically was. It was a huge step up from games like Heroes of Might and Magic because now your ships didn't all come stacked into big piles of similar sorts and entirely ignore strategy. I think it's somewhat telling that HoMM still clings to the "5 units, 5 unit slots, all units of similar type grouped" mechanic despite even MOO2 realizing that was out of date back in the day. The biggest MOO2 issue is that it isn't well balanced in terms of racial powers, but it's basically only singleplayer... but the AI is, quite understandably, primitive. So once you know what you're doing it's not hard to win each time easily.

If MOO2 came out today, despite how much I love MOO2, it would be a shitty game. Like if Doom1 came out today, it'd be terrible, since the conventions have matured a lot since then. MOO2 is simply grandfathered in. It's not un-fun to play but it's definitely a retro experience that you play for joy of simplicity rather than quality.

I have homeworld 2... meh is my only comment. It's alright, but I'm probably missing something...