So we all think that Sins is an amazing game. We'd like Sins 2. Post here if you want it.
Yes, yes, yes.
Make Sins 2 please. Or make a remastered edition with some fancy stuff at least.
Bring us some of that SINS 2!!
Pretty please! I loved the first one. I need some new rts game!
Yes!
Well I would certainly prefer to have the option to buy SOASE2 than not.
To me the biggest thing would be moving it to 64 bit addressing so that the memory limitations go away (well ok still limits but hey I've got 16GB RAM and the most I can go to is 128GB, so it should keep me happy for the rest of my lifetime ). My favorite games are in huge universes with like 8 suns each with 50+ planets, but they just get too slow after two to three hours, so I end up quitting early the mouse lag alone is frustrating. Some multi-threading would help too but it seems the main limitation is 32 bit addressing (and my first computer had 4K RAM so I am used to limits, but this is 2017 after all).
I've tried various other RTS games but Sins is the one I keep coming back too, it's the best. Other things like some more factions to choose from would be nice and maybe an option for multiple titans but the main thing would be to have a game that can go on for days.
Actually multi-threading & 64-bit support are quite independent features used to solve different problems.
The above is most likely a symptom of lag induced by executing on a single CPU thread, not lack of address space in a 32-bit process, and would not be helped that much by 64-bit support. It would be helped though if Sins was multi-threaded - when run on a machine with multiple CPU cores. There may be a small speed advantage to using 64-bit as C/C++ compilers can generate more efficient code, eg by using more registers and a modern instruction set. But the gain would be nowhere near the advantage of using all CPU cores.
The limitation is actually not so much with Sins but with the DirectX 9 Windows API that Sins makes use of, which at the time (Win XP era), only allowed graphics to be rendered on one thread. That probably didn't seem a big deal, at the time Sins was written, as not many machines had multiple CPU cores.
However, Sins would have to use a more modern graphics API (eg DirectX 11, Mantle/Vulkan) before it could make the best use of multiple threads.
Also changing single threaded apps, like Sins, isn't really feasible, hence why the community, including myself, would welcome a new multi-threaded Sins 2.
Naturally it would be compiled for 64-bit as I doubt any new machine with a half-decent graphics card still has a 32-bit processor.
The main advantage of compiling for 64-bit is the amount of memory a process can allocate. For games that mainly means nicely detailed models, eg higher poly meshes and higher resolution textures and the capacity to store more units, ie no need at all for LAA.
The combination of multi-threading and 64-bit would improve overall scalability, ie the address space to store lots of units and the multiple threads required to smoothly animate them all.
So feel free to show support for a second incarnation of this much loved game, but be patient. I'd rather the Dev's take their time and do Sins 2 right rather than rush out something too soon. Here's hoping ...
@ New Horizons
The multi-threading also allows you to build the game differently when handling the AI. You can have more AI controlled processes acting independently while not slowing down the normal game loop. I can't wait to see what the Nitrous engine has in store for the future of RTS.
Indeed, no argument there. One thought I had for how the Dev's might have multi-threaded the current Sins back in the day would be to put the AIs on their own background threads, but I suspect the overhead of synchronizing (eg when an AI needed to control its fleet) with the main thread (that is rendering via DirectX) would have been too high.
Using a modern graphics API, each AI could run on its own thread which also rendered its own units, hence less need to sync.
I guess saying "moving" it to 64 bit was a bit misleading, should have said making it 64 bit in the new system, I've seen this before, "moving" a new version to 64 bit makes a huge difference when you are running out of memory as is happening here. I'm all for a new rewrite from the ground up as long as it keeps the core of Sins, Sins. Multi threading is a whole different ball game and it requires some careful thinking, done right, it sure can help with some things, but as I said running out of memory is my main problem. I would certainly hope a new version would use a 64 bit compiler, but 32 bit compliers are still very much in use (and indeed a large amount of software does not benefit from 64 bit, in fact it can lead to a very minor slowdown depending on circumstances) and I've learned over many years to take nothing for granted .
64-bit ready (with the Oxide engine!) and planetary defenses that you can attack from orbit with your fleet, maybe even abstract marine assault landings, whereas a force of transports have a given attack rating, and the planet being sieged has a given defense rating. You don't directly interact with it yourself, the game itself would calculate based on offensive/defensive rating of the attackers and defenders, and weigh such aspects as research options to improve offensive/defensive capability of each side, as well as the size of the supporting fleet in orbit.
More depth would be great, also a way to automate an empire with the advanced secret AI stardock is building.
Adding more RAM to a machine that does not need it has minimal benefit.
However the converse is true:- a machine with insufficient memory will run poorly due to two factors:
1) Paging/swapping. When a machine starts to run out of memory the operating system will write the address space of dormant processes to the page file. That space can then be reused. However, when one of these dormant processes becomes active the OS has to read those swapped pages from the swap file back into memory, before that process can continue to execute. That may require yet another process to be swapped out of memory to the page file before that can happen. This incurs a lot of disk I/O and which is slow, especially with conventional (non-SSD) disks.
2) Lack of file-system cache. The first time a program opens and reads a file the OS will read the data from the disk, and store it in memory set-aside for caching files, before making it available to the program. Subsequent reads of the file will get the data from the cache, if the file hasn't changed, and is therefore much faster. If a write to a cached file occurs the OS will update the copy of the file in the cache memory. The actual write to disk (sync) may well be deferred until later, eg when the machine or disk is idle. If there's not much file-system cache, because there's not enough RAM, then fewer files can be cached thus reducing performance as the OS now has to access the disk more frequently.
However, some 64-bit applications that operate on large amounts of data, eg video editing, image manipulation, etc, can benefit from large amounts of RAM. However this is a similar advantage to file caching - they can read shed loads of frames/images up front, do whatever processing in memory, without reading/writing to disk quite so much.
When are we ever going to hear about a Sins 2. It's been 10 years at this point and the fact that they continue to give attention to the first game tells me that they still remember it. Come on guys! Give us some information!
I hope upcoming Sins 2 could do better on adding new units which requires specific artifact access to conduct research like top-secret hybrid-type Capital Ship, unique-yet-rare Flagship which uses Dreadnought that rivaled titans in overall aspect, specialized tactics unique to each different faction and hopefully at least there's more than 1 titan to choose although just one can be deployed.
Seriously now, its been 10 years, just announce the thing for the love of god, so we all have one game to look forward to again. Does not matter if at this point you have just bunch of concept arts to show, it would still be better than nothing!
Thanks
Things I hope are in SoaSE2:
- More skills/levels so you can really customize your capital ships/build them a certain way.
- Veteran ranks (maybe even skills) for frigates/cruisers, make the ships that last a long time more powerful/worth protecting.
- More robust pirate faction that actually does stuff and gets stronger throughout the game.
- Wider variety of planets, planetary specializations, and planetary bonuses.
- More artifacts and other bonuses you can discover.
- Vastly expanded neutral factions/interactions with them.
Highly unlikely things that probably won't be there, but I would really really like:
- Ship/structure customization, a la GalCiv3... Even if it is only visual customization, just to change things up from time to time. Would work well with the expanded neutral faction desire above.
Really looking forward to the sequel, after all these years Sins of a Solar Empire is still my most played game on Steam.
I wonder is this is ever going to happen.
DANMAN
Also, if possible, please make a far greater improvement about faction's pact like Armor and e.t.c, 2-way side pact agreement and possibly a temporary pact with neutral faction for a limited time even though just 1 kind of pact per faction is good enough..
If you haven't tried it already, checkout GoaFan's E4X mod which already has some of these features.
Regarding E4X, i already tried it.. when it comes about pact agreement, the Crazy Mod made by TheyCallMeProphet make it far better in terms of pact details which gives obvious difference in most of it while E4X only makes minor increase and adds some extra feats which it's not available in vanilla game and other similar version mod.. What i'm hoping for is each faction at least have 1 specialized pact at the 6th or 7th pact slot relating to their faction's specialty, 2 or 3 pact which it has some part of it gain increase..
For Example: Armor Pact
Additional Armor: 2 (4 for TEC faction)
Additional Max Hull Per Armor: 50
Additional Max Hull Point Bonus: 4000 (6000 for HTS faction)
2nd Example: Shield Pact
Additional Max Shield Point: 30% (50% for Orthodox)
Additional Max Shield Regeneration: 50%
Increase Phase Missile Block: 15% (25% for Ascended)
And so on... and on ... and on..
In addition, 1 specialized pact gives one-way benefit for player itself or AI who propose it.. Like TEC's specialty is defense, so like this;
Max Hull Point Bonus: 10
Damage Bonus:
Armor Bonus:
(Specialty gained when pact signed: 1 extra Star Base and 10 additional tactical slot)
--- This special pact are only breakable when faction go to wars with related faction but not applicable when playing allied victory mode which it's gives certain time limit instead in order to balance oncoming gameplay.. Also it's a pact which requires both side to reach over 20.00 point and all pact related are signed to unlock it..
Want!
We (Stardock/Ironclad) can't really discuss this presently. But as I've said before, we are listening. It is a significant challenge to top Sins of a Solar Empire without massively increasing the team size which would change our shared culture.
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