WEP '12, Day 29 - Sinning with a Solar Empire

It's the weekend, so my schedule is usually disrupted, so I tend to prefer to do something that takes up less brain space.  Therefore, I'm going to briefly discuss the game I'm playing right now, Sins of a Solar Empire.

Sins of a Solar Empire is a real time space 4X* game that moves slow enough to let you make real decisions but quick enough that you don't die of old age waiting for for fights to play out.  In that respect, I think it actually works better than the Sword of the Stars games that, while I enjoy the greater level of detail that the Sword games give me, the faster and flashier combat of Sins works for me.

There are significant compromises, though.  For one thing, you can't design your own ships.  All you can do is pick from the ship lists and put them out into the galaxy.  Secondly, research, while important, doesn't feel very revolutionary.  Most of the military upgrades are handy but not game changing.  For instance a 10% increase in laser damage is nice, but harder to feel the impact of rather than a brand new weapon or new class of ship that one might get in more traditional space 4X'ers.

Likewise, there's no ground combat.  You nuke enemy colones from orbit, then re-colonize the ruins and build the place up from scratch.  Who ever gets a colony ship to the recently nuked site first gets the planet, and after a few minutes the place will be easily rebuilt and as good as new.

Sounds like I don't like it much, right?  Wrong.  I do enjoy Sins of a Solar Empire when I'm not in the mood for something deep.  There's something satisfying about being able to build battleships and battlecruisers and carriers, naming them, surrounding them with a swarm of escort ships, then launching them into war.

So it's a fun game that I've mastered, and while I'm enjoying my victory, I'm pretty sure I won't play it again anytime soon.  Sins of a Solar Empire is amusing, but shallow.  I've got the game down and there isn't much else for me to do in the game right now.  The expansions, both of which I own, have added new wrinkles, but I've mastered those too.  All that's left is to play a game once in a while, and wait for the next expansion.

Which is fine.  Not every game ought to be Civilization IV or War in the East.  There's room for light strategy in my life, and Sins of a Solar Empire fills that market.

* = 4X games are called that because the general pattern to the game is eXploration, eXpansion, eXploitation, and eXtermination.  That is, you start off with limited territory and little idea of what's around you so you send units out to explore.  Once you have at least a partial lay of the land you expand out to grab more territory.  Then you build up your ability to exploit the resources of your new territory.  Finally, you use those resources to manufacture what you need to exterminate your opponents.