So it's not that often I completely fall in love with a game, but this has happend with sins of the solar empire, it's a combat oriented space strategi game.
In the game you have 3 factions, The Trade emegancy coalition(TEC) Advent, and Vasari.
The TEC are very standard human, most of their ships are actualy trade ships, just armed, they only have like 3 ships buildt purly for combat.
The Advent are also humans, but left the rest of humanity, they are basicly religious fundamentalist.
The Vasari are the only true aliens, they are brutal have mass slavery ect. Also in rebellion, each of the 3 factions are split in loyalists and rebels, the diffrence isn't that big except for the biggest ships you can get, each of these variantions have their own uniqe Titan ship.
There are 3 general type of ships in the game, frigatts, cruisers, and capitals, Frigats are generaly small ships, but can be powerfull in big fleets, some of the frigats are avalable at the start, some have to be researched, cruisers give other types of ships, some are suport ships boosting the other ships, one of them are a light carrier, that has no weapons, but carry sevral squadrons of fighters, you also later in the game get a general heavy cruiser, that is good at most things.
Generaly all ships have have a good side and bad side, some do this others do that, some are strong against this others are weak against this ect.
Capital ships are all avalable from the start, but costs lots of resources, there are again sevral types, a big combat ship, an armed carrier, sevral suport ships, the buff other ships ect. While regular ships, like frigats and cruisers use fleet points, ships cost from 4 fleet points to 25 fleet points, but not only do the
Capital ships use up to 50 fleet points they also use their own capital ship points, This limits the number of capital ships you can get.
Capital ships and titans also gain levels, and become more and more powerfull, when they reach level 6 they get a special super skill, that is very powerfull, so it's important to keep you capitals and titans alive.
You can only have one titan at a time, it uses 90 fleet points and 2 capital points. The game also have huge number of research stuff, you have 3 diffrent military tech trees, one for weapons, one for shields and hull and one to unlock new ship types,
You have a defence tree that deals with stuff like starbases, and hangars.
Then you have civil stuff, dealing with colonzing planets, economy, and diplomacy.
The last page of reseach deals with fleet size points and capital ship points, you start with just 150 fleet points, thats just enough for a few ships, and one capital ship, you also only have 2 capital ship points, so you could at most have 2 capital ships, and very few other ships, or sevral other ships and 1 capital.
As you put points in the fleet size you get more and more points, in the end you could have sevral hundred ships.
In the last game I had, I had one big fleet, it had 1 Titan, 15 capital ships, 50 light corvetes, 25 heavy cruisers, 10 rocket frigates, 1 light carrier, pluss 90 fighters, so about 180 ships total, you can not build fighters, they are always part other ships, starbases or planet hangars. the big fighter ships are ofcousr the carriers, they start with 2-3 squadrons of 3 fighters each, but as the capital carriers level up they can have as many as 9 squadrons each, also all capital ships gets atleast 1 squadron from level 3 and up, so do the titan, you also have light carriers that are always stuck with 2 or 3 squadrons
Starbases can have 1 or more squadrons, so can hangars, Fighters come in 2 versions, regular fighters and bombers, fighters are good aginst small light ships and other fighters/bombers) Bombers are good against bases and big ships.
Everything cost resources, there are 3, credits, crystals and metal, metal and crystal comes from mineing astroids, and credists come from trade and taxes, big planets with lots of people make lots of tax credits, but after you have taken over a planet, you need to spend money to develop it, and under developed planet will actualy cost you money untill you develop it.
If all planets are developed, you really only have 1 expence and thats fleet upkeep, it's start at 0% but as you expand the fleet size points.
You loose more and more to fleet upkeep, the second upgrade makes you spend 9%, and the finnal one,(I've never played a game were I got the last fleet opgrade) would spend 75% of income on fleet upkeep, so in esence, you do not pay for each ship, one you have a set number of fleet points, you pay for the points not the ships, so you are free to build as many ships that the fleet points allow with out spending more on upkeep
The basic game is, explore the plants, colonize them, the more planets you have, the more resources, the more powerfull your fleet.
You also have cold war options, you can influence other faction and their planets, if you spend alot on propaganda, you can infact make the enemy(or you) loose control of planets, so to counter the enemy, you need to spend resources on propaganda your self. The size of each map varies from 1 star and 9 planets, to 10 stars and over 50 planets.
Research is paramont, when you combine research with the levles on capitals and titans, you get extremly powerfull ships, even expencive capitals and titans are not that great at the start. I one example my Vasari Titan had 3500 hull and 1600 shield when just buildt, after spending levles and armor, and resarch, it had by the end of the game 15000 hull and 8000 shield, so almost 5 times as much hull, and 4 times as much armor
Same with starbases when just buildt they have about 3000 hull and 1200 shield, not very powerfull, but you can upgrade them, and by just spending money, you can get them to 21000 hull and 14 000 shield,
But even if you just upgrade it to 11 000 hull and 7000 shield, it will be powerfull enough to hold back a moderatly powerfull fleet by it self. Starbases and also be upgraded to they can have people living there and even be used as trade stations, there by creating credits from tax and shipping..
Anyway I hold hartedly recomed this game, Later I'll review the older version of this game called Sins of the solar empire trinity, it's basicly the same game, but has been out for many years, and therfore has lots of mods, so I'll review som of the mods.
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