@Timmaigh : This sounds so much like "Star Trek Birth of the Federation"  Anyway the idea of minor races that can be either conquered or peacefully (by the use of diplomacy) integrated into your empire is great itself but adds another unstable factor to the game setup. it is either an advantage or a disadvantage to have these minor races around and either way it affects the starting balance of MP games.

As for the fourth race: So many folks here seem to hope for a new playable race but I am convinced the three races we have is all Sins needs. For two reasons:

1. There are the 3 aspects econ, war and culture and each race favors one of these aspects (TEC are the economists, Vasari ought to be the brutal warriors and advent is the funny singing culture club). Adding a fourth race would lead to a mixture of these aspects but nothing that is uniquely favoured by that race. (unless with diplomacy a race of diplomats is added, but honestly who wants to play diplomats in such a game, where the strongest cap ship is called EMBASSY?)

2. Almost all players are naggling about balance issues in this game. Adding a fourth race would increase the balancing issues by factor XX (insert whatever you like). With Sins and many other games we have learned that balance is a fragile building. I imagine it as a building made of millions of screws and connected with billions of wires. Turning one of these screws just a little bit will affect thousands of other screws and wires (we have seen this with patches changing things back and forth and just moving balancing problems from one unit to another). So with a new race we get another million screws and another billion wires and surely we will never get balance to this game. 

while you can have your opinions, it seems to me that everyone else disagrees with you on this point. we understand perfectly what you are saying, we just think it is wrong. key word here is think. it is our opinion and we are not stuffing it down your throat. what we really objected to was your statements about how you were right and everyone else was wrong. could you please explain the logic of that to me?

thats what i figured... it really sounds like a good plan to me... trying to re-work Sins 1 (as it were) so that it would work with a campaign seems far too difficult for the returns

when you start the game doesnt it specifically say "Single Player" on the top button. 

im at work so i cant verify it, but im pretty sure.

I was like yeah I'm getting a compliment! Then I saw who wrote this and now I'm embarrassed that he likes me....but come on, really Darksxx? If you're going to keep on arguing when FROGBOY HAS ANSWERED U

at least do it politely. There are a lot of posts about if Diplomancy will be good or not, but those get thoughtful, well reasoned answers instead of us all laughing at how stupid you are because the OP is POLITE on how he/she questions Diplomancy. Just a pointer.

And another thing that's been really bugging me,

WHO is brad????

actually, trading tech was mentioned in one of the info snipplets, I think the one from IGN. no idea what else is in there, that's what makes judging this so difficult now. we don't really know the capapilities and limits of the new system and what compromises is makes to work in a rts environment. though if it is their main selling point, I expect it to be quite comprehensive (blair I think said, long ago, they take the old diplo system out, trash it, burn it, burry it and place something new in, so it IS going to be a rather radical change I believe).

Me I have no doubts that the new addons for diplomacy will be good and that they will add much needed depth to the game. I belive I will ahve many prayses for them on that issue. Hoever with the other hand I might be taking out my FLAMEBAT and letting them have it on the issue of game balance. But one must also take in mind that some of the diplomacy addons migth chnage the current game balance, witch may cause some balance problems to go away. I say SOMe because some problems like lums being OPed and that the chain of counters is broken will not be solved by diplomacy addons alone.

I've been following this thread and I'm finally going to chime in.  No one (except the devs of course, and even they can't see the future) know how the new xpack will change gameplay.  Bashing or praising it at this point in time is not going to do anything.  It never hurts to be optimistic though.

Also, Dark.  Your definition of "Single Player" might be a little off.  What you are referring to is a campaign which I know you've said before.  But to say that the game has no SP just for the fact that it has no Campaign is not correct.

Campaign=SP

Skirmish=SP

SP does not always=Campaign

SP does not always=Skirmish

To clarify, you can have Campaign and/or Skirmish and it's still considered SP.  One or the other, or both.  I think that's one of the reasons everyone else is seeming to gang up on you.  You fail to see the point that Skirmish is SP (just not the SP experience you want).

Onto the your point about the game not being designed for Diplomacy.  If the game was not designed to have the option of diplomatic relations with other players, it would never have even been put into the original game.  While the diplomacy system is very limited right now and pretty much broken, the xpack is supposed to flesh it out.  And no one knows yet how the xpack will affect both SP and MP play.  But saying that the game was not designed for diplomacy in any way is also not correct.

I personally believe that the game will always have a very RTS feel to it and that the 4X factors will take a backseat.  Though the future is uncertain and who knows what this xpack will do. That doesn't mean, however, that the 4X goodies should be taken out.  Everything put together is what makes Sins SINS.

I recommend that if you have such big problems with this game or just Diplomacy, forget it exists.  Just play Vanilla or Entrenchment in Skirmish if you will.  If you really need the Campaign option, you will have to go to another game.  At least for now.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.  I'm sure it's one of my longer-winded posts.

AMEN!

I read your post and I thought to myself, WTF?  The warring--the "skirmishing"--against the other players IS the game.  It is a real-time strategy game!  It isn't about cheesy cutscenes and a ghey story.  If you want a story, go play an adventure or mystery type of game or just rent a movie.

Let's see what they come up with.  I was very skeptical about Entrenchment when it first came out too and even after people started saying that it was worthwhile, but when the MP community moved to Entrenchment, I went and purchased it and now I'd much rather play that over vanilla Sins.  I'm very skeptical about Diplomacy as well, but I'll withhold judgment until we learn exactly what's in it and how it all works.

Are you saying that it has something to with computer power?  Perhaps with video cards having to handle textures for four different races?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I got the impression that currently with everything out we started to run out of memory to run the game, but there are mods out there that add races so perhaps it's possible.

I always thought that the reason I start losing special effects end game, invisible bullets/wave ammo, beam weapons just being invisible with just the sound was because my game was running out of addressable memory.

Hey Darksxx!

up yours Darksxx