Let's just go ahead and start this by saying that it should have won an award simply for its interface.
Sins of a Solar Empire, developed by Ironclad Studios, bears a striking resemblance to its developers'
Homeworld roots. It certainly looks and feels like
Homeworld at a glance; however,
it is not Homeworld.
Sins of a Solar Empire is essentially a real-time
4X game.
Sins plays out in a full galaxy (or multiple galxies), drawing closer comparisons to games like
Master of Orion. There are 3 races, each pegged with their own theme, boiling down to either diplomacy/colonization (Advent), economy/military (TEC), or technology/travel (Vasari). Unfortunately, there's no single-player campaign, but the game does support single-player skirmishes. The real focus is Ironclad's free online service where up to 8 players can go at it. There are probably more than 50 different game-types, some with objectives, others with the age-old prospect of beat-the-other-guy-first.
There is an alliance system similar to
Master of Orion, but given the game's simple economy, I think it falls a little short. Where
Homeworld had us constantly mining asteroids,
Sins has a system where you build a mine on a resource and it acts like another structure in your empire, becoming upgradeable with specific research. In the game, there is metal and crystal, and a fluctuating public market where players can put their resources up for a price. This works much better in multiplayer than single-player, but also factoring in are
pirates.
Pirates have a stronghold in the center of each galaxy, and are deployed throughout as bounty-hunters. Players can place bounties on one another, and the pirates take the highest bid, setting out on their mission at certain intervals. Pirates announce when they begin taking bribes, and when the bidding ends. At this point, the person with the highest bounty quickly shouts, "Oh, fuck," and does everything they can to prepare for the oncoming wave of annoying
bee-like (apologies for that link) pirate fleets.
Fleets are all combat-centric. You won't find any salvage corvettes or dockable motherships in
Sins. Certain ships have non-combat abilities like colonization, but this is more of a formality, as the game puts it onto both the small scout ship and a powerful capital ship. I mean, it has to be in there somewhere, right?
One of the most interesting parts of the game is that each race gets a mega-weapon. Advent get a propaganda cannon, which when fired at a specific planet, adjusts its loyalty (plus or minus depending on if it's a friendly or hostile planet). Vasari have a portal which
warps in ships from around the universe. TEC have the coolest mega-weapon, though.
The Novalith Cannon. It fires a destructive beam across the entire fucking universe, capable of hitting absolutely any planet.
The game has a lot going for it, but its design is not terribly deep. In fact, you may find yourself at the end of the tech tree, wondering, "That's it?" The genius behind it is in how well everything opposes one another. The game isn't rock-paper-scissors, it isn't how fast someone can build something, and it isn't about how many asteroids you can snatch up from the get-go. There's a crafty way around any obstacle, and according checks and balances.
All in all: Pirates will fuck your shit up, big time.
