Today Stardock & Ironclad Games are proud to announce the first of several micro-expansion packs, for the award-winning Sins of a Solar Empire. The first micro-expansion Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment is currently in development and will be released late 2008 for $9.95 via Stardock’s Impulse digital distribution platform (www.impulsedriven.com).
Developed by Ironclad Games, Sins of a Solar Empire is a real-time strategy game that adds an extreme amount of depth normally only seen in turn-based releases. One of the highest ranking real-time strategy games of 2008, the title has sold over half a million copies and won several Editor’s Choice awards.
Specifically, Entrenchment promises to bring fans a Starbase defense platform for each race (extremely powerful and armored bases housing a variety of weapons and other upgrades capable of defending an entire planet), turret upgrades for each race to make them more powerful (not only stronger than the current versions, but also upgradable with long-range weapons), mine fields and a Subspace Inhibitor platform that will slow enemy ships within its range.
Ironclad has two additional micro-expansions in development as well. One of which adds new diplomacy features to the game and another that will add new technologies and ships.
The expansions are being developed to prevent fracturing of the multiplayer community. If both players have a given expansion pack installed, the features are available, but if one does not, the expansion pack features are disabled for that particular game.
You can pre-order the micro-expansion now for $9.95 directly from the Impulse Store. Entrenchment is only available through Impulse.
So by next summer, will the next major expansion be already out. I think Kryo said in one of the earlier thread regarding a major expansion, the earlist date we can expect to see one is sometime next feburary.
3 new buildings and a couple of upgrades for $10? no thx
Could this screw the AI?
I will be soaking all of this up XBOX style.... if they are really good addons..... with lots of content
What i do not want to be doing is XBOX style, be paying $10 for a single skin or other silly accessorie.
Do Not like the idea of not being able to use extra content VS people who have not purchased it.... but this os ok really and necessary to give everybody a fair go. It will result in nobody playing with you if you did not get all of the upgrades though.
This does not sound like a complete solution in my opinion, as while yes we can still play with others without the expansion packs, if the expansion packs add so much to the original game (such as the seemly sorely needed aspects which the expansions seem to be aiming for) these expansions will set such a new standard in Sins gameplay that the players who have the expansions won't want to experience the game without them.
I can already see it now, players who do not wish to buy the expansions will be kicked out of many a game because players only want to play games with all the content that they purchased in the first place.
Its a double-edged situation sadly, with no clear solution. This is from the multiplayer side of things of course, from the singleplayer side there is nothing but advantages in regards to the DLC proposed.
QFT, this will happen, I've played enough online games to have experienced this. Fragmentation will happen, as it always does when there are different versions/flavours of a game, usually to the death of the game. Not a clever move by the devs.
When you guys wrap all three of the expansions in one will it be sold in stores ? I really hope so cause i dont feel comfortable paying for things online.
It's not like UT2004 or something where there are 500 different types of game and 3 people playing each. Some people will like the improved defenses and some won't. These people won't want to play each other anyway. I think Sins can handle a couple different types of online play without becoming so fractured that we can't find opponents. The upcoming mods may create additional options, but from the sound of it, better diplomacy and more unit types will be something that most everyone wants.
edit: Oh yeah, and I'm definitely in for this one. Just pre-ordered, which is a first for me.
Same here with the pre-order.
And I agree with both points, I think MP players will still find enough opponents, but I do think it will thin the ranks somewhat, so to speak. Me, I don't play MP so 3 new (defeinsive) structures and some upgrades are just what I needed, 10 bucks is nothing.
Someone did pose the question as to whether or not the AI will use these new features...
Sweet cant wait
Boo no retail release. Looks like I won't be getting this. (No Internet access @ home)
sweet i want the first one
Bye bye to Sins for me then.
I cant afford to get a few small expansions.
I prefer a tradisional big expansion.
BTW: I forgot to post this the other day...
The micro x-pack made Wired. You can about it at the following URL:
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/08/micro-expansion.html
(WHat is up the link feature being disabled?)
interestingly no one asked: will there be a beta for these? when would they be?
$10 is about what I expect for new content at this point (although why anyone would volunteer to pay that money months and months ahead of time makes no sense to me at all; also, it's kind of BS that an online-only release that obviously cuts costs does not pass along any savings to the customer...). The point of business is to make profit after all. But...
I'm not clear on how these 3 expansions will prevent fracturing in the multiplayer community.... The way I see it, fracturing that already exists is one of the biggest problems online: the already weak online player community was divided when a partion upgraded to the beta 1.09 and a portion did not.
Now the same thing is going to happen again and again? It's already very nearly impossible to find a game in 1.09 --imagine how hard it will be to find a game to play with someone else who just happens to have the same two out of three expansion packs that you chose to install! The number of possible combinations of expansions vs no expansions at all is way too high, and assuming the different versions are truly compatible with one another, people will still want to find other players with their same set up updates. I'm afraid this may fracture the online community to the point that everyone just gives up playing there at all. That's practically happened already...
Quote Kryo:
Yes they did, both early in this thread (Zoomba) and in another thread (Kryo)
"Now the same thing is going to happen again and again? It's already very nearly impossible to find a game in 1.09 --imagine how hard it will be to find a game to play with someone else who just happens to have the same two out of three expansion packs that you chose to install! The number of possible combinations of expansions vs no expansions at all is way too high, and assuming the different versions are truly compatible with one another, people will still want to find other players with their same set up updates. I'm afraid this may fracture the online community to the point that everyone just gives up playing there at all. That's practically happened already..."
If you didn't noitice, "The expansions are being developed to prevent fracturing of the multiplayer community. If both players have a given expansion pack installed, the features are available, but if one does not, the expansion pack features are disabled for that particular game."
I noticed. I still think that having multiple expansions options will cause fracturing, not prevent it.
Only through buggy Impulse?!?! NOOOOOOOOoooooooooo.........
I have had nothing but trouble with Impulse. I'd gladly pay more to get a copy some other way that actually works. I'm still having problems with some of my GalCiv2 installs on Impulse. Frankly, my impulse is to ditch Impulse.
I just tried to look up this expansion pack on Impulse and guess what? It's not there (or I couldn't find it at least after seaching and searching). If I buy it from the link above, will it work with my Impulse (that doesn't seemt to have it) or will this just be yet another Impulse problem?
I'd love to preorder, but I'm very reluctant to use Impulse again after the multitude of problems.
small $10 expansions worked for battlefield 2 it will work great for SOASE also
I run Sins with Linux... work great... font problem was resolved ( thank to these forum ), sound is sometime not very great but it work ( strange sound on the 2 HD box, 7.1 only is great )...
But the Impulse installer don't work with Linux... do you plan a working version of Impulse for Linux user ? Or maybe a boxed version made from several "micro-expansion"...
There will be a retail release with all the micro expansions.
I don't think there will be an Impulse for Linux, though.
If this was $3 less there would be no complaints.
Say the first one is $9.95 and the complete summer pack is $25.
I think you would make more money if you charged $9.95 for the first of them you buy, then $8.00 for the second and $7.05 for the third. This would mean you don't have people waiting for summer and if people only buy a few your stil getting more out of them than you would otherwise.
I'm not saying price them as such in the order of release, I'm saying after the first give a discount on the second, then third. This in whatever order you buy them in.
Well, unless you do this I'm gonna be waiting for the summer release.
Charles
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