Many of you have been with us for a long, long time. We have been doing “early access” since 1993 when we put out the pre-pre-alpha of Galactic Civilizations for OS/2. Back then, it was a radical idea to put something out for player feedback that was unfinished.
These days, games are frequently put out in “early access,” but they are typically very late betas or even demos, where it is far far too late for players to have any meaningful impact on the game’s direction. That isn’t the case here.
Here, we want to put something out early enough where we can make pretty dramatic changes based on player ideas and feedback. This also means we will be trying out some things that just won’t work.
We need your help communicating to others that what is in a given build may not be in the final release. We need to be able to try out ideas that may end up not working without fear that people are going to misrepresent the entire game based on this.
In this article, I'm going to give a few minor examples of things that we want to try, but may or may not work out.
For starters, we need to set some expectations for the Technology Preview series of builds we’ll be releasing this Fall (2022) and Winter (2023).
You guys probably already know this, but most people don’t: there are very, very few new video game engines being made today. Almost all games now use either Unreal or Unity. Neither of those engines would work well for this particular game. Sins of a Solar Empire II is built on a new engine. It’s a rewrite.
Because there are so few new game engines, the GPU makers (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel for instance) tend to focus their optimizations and compatibility efforts on the major engines. This means a new engine is likely to have problems that we won’t know about until it’s been out there for a while.
The first public builds of this game will be trying to answer a simple question: does it work? We don’t mean, "is it fun?" We mean, "will it load up on your PC? Do you end up with a bunch of purple graphic artifacts? Does it just randomly crash? Does it make your PC get too hot?"
So if you’re joining the Technical Preview hoping to get a “fun game” to play, we highly recommend you not do that. Go get Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion and play that. It’s going to be a while before this is anything close to a “good game."
In the original Sins of a Solar Empire, there were no “space buildings”. There were no asteroids to mine. Until late beta, when we did add asteroid mining, they eventually ran out.
The first public alpha didn’t even have phase lanes! Yea, imagine Sins where you could travel anywhere. It was whack-a-mole. Back then, there were no Streamers, YouTubers, Twitter, etc. to spread the word that our game wasn’t fun. Because of this, we were able to try out different ideas with our community until we hit on the ones that worked.
We are trying out new ideas with the technical preview - not just in terms of UI design, but also the UI visuals. Everything is on the table. Skeuomorphic UI? Monochromatic? Fly out menus? Docking based UI? We’re going to be trying a lot of things, and while almost none of these ideas will work, we need to try them to get to the ideas that do.
The first goal of Sins of a Solar Empire II is to catch up to where Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion was. We want to get to that point and then grow beyond that. This is a new, core-neutral, game engine that can handle thousands of entities simultaneously.
If you have a question regarding gameplay, our answer will probably be: “We don’t know yet.” We’re not in a hurry. It’s been 15 years since the release of Sins of a Solar Empire, and Sins of a Solar Empire II will become the basis for many years of expansions, improvements, new ideas, etc.
We are trying out different art styles. We have already tried several even before announcing the game. We want to try out more, but that only becomes possible if we are allowed to fail gracefully. That means when we release a build that uses Pink Space Pony anime ships and it turns out that was a bad idea, you guys communicate that to us, but at the same time not just assume that Sins of a Solar Empire II is going to be a doomed pink unicorn game.
Let us try things out. Let us make mistakes. Let us work together together to make the best game we can.
We are really excited to share our ideas with you, but we are also more than a little bit nervous. We know that Sins of a Solar Empire became such a classic because we were allowed by the community to try out a lot of ideas that turned out to be terrible and then fix them.
Sins of a Solar Empire was made during a time when we could attempt new things that didn't work using a public early access program and know that we could then try something else without there being a “social media narrative” because those things didn’t exist back then.
It is unavoidable that we will have some early access participants who will play a build and see bad UI, gameplay, graphics, or something else and be on the Internet in moments to spread the word that, "this is a disaster - and don’t forget to like and subscribe!”
This is the world we live in today. What we are hoping is that enough of you remember the process that made Sins of a Solar Empire a classic, and help communicate that this isn’t a demo. It’s not a late beta. This is a collaborative effort with the space strategy game community to make something truly special.
I bought it and had a quick match, for a technical preview it feels solid. As long as it doesn't go all cartoony and is made to target a lower common denominator much the same way Sup Com 2 simplified things and was outlived by Sup Com and the FAF mod
From one old man to another, I don't think any of these questions are dumb, wish I would have thought about them. I know this game is 64bit but is it multithreaded, think of the possibilities. I'm running a GeForce 3080 (not a fan boy but it is a good card so far) but let's face it, both Nvidia and AMD are the go-to for video cards so having the game optimized for them is not a bad idea.
Multithreading can only do so much as not all operations can be made to work in a Single Instruction Multiple Data format. Some operations need to be done in order.
Even then, if things aren't developed using a data-oriented design like Unity's ECS or UE5s Mass systems then the gains from being able to use multiple threads are lessened. As there are things like cache misses that need to be taken into consideration to get even more performance.
An example of a performance gain would be for transforming the positions and rotations of all the ships on a single core it could take for example 100ms for many thousands of ships (this is slow but it's an easy number), 2 cores, that halves to 50ms, 4 cores, halves again to 25ms, the gains get reduced each time and eventually you're up against things like how long it takes to get the data to and from RAM, L3, L2 or L1 cache. You could argue to put calculations onto the GPU but then you're up against how long it takes to get the data to and from the GPU. Just to temper expectations with multithreading.
Still, having different things run on different threads is far better than a single thread performance-wise.
Hello eveyone. Im sori, my english is very poor. But i very love Sins1 and i wanted to see part 2 of this game. I was very exited when saw news about SINS 2.I joined to early acces and played in pre-alfa card.I think, we need gameplay option with Militia units, like in SINS1. Yes, we have garrison in primary planets, and its can placed in ather planets. Also, in SINS1 neitral planets can spawn powerful cruisers, i think its good mechanics, what do game in first 20 minites interesting.Also in SINS1 levels of civilian infrustructure in planet get more credits in a time, not permamently, while pipulations grown. I think its good mechanic and needs to be in SINS2.Also i like in SINS1 find a neitral metal and cristal extractors and fight to control them, I would like to see similar mechanics in Sins2.Also fleet-suply tehnologies takes penalty to all benefits of primary resourses in Sins1, i think similar reductions need in Sins2.Thanks again, you are the best.
Good Solid game so far, but I do have a UI issue. The red used on the blue background in the research tree is difficult for me to see. I do understand that this maybe a 'me' issue, but I thought maybe slightly different hues might make it easier to read for more than just me.
Thanks for putting this together.
I don't know if this is something that is possible or not. Or something you thought of doing but decided not to.
I think it'd make more sense if, instead of each gravity well being a planet with some asteroids. Each gravity well was a star with planets orbiting said star.
Just a random thought I've always had regarding Sin that I wanted to at least share.
I think this could be extremely interesting, but it would completely change the game. Way more than just moving celestial bodies. This would either mean no FTL except for between star travel, or manual FTL based on a line you draw or something. How could you determine where you are allowed to build also? I very much doubt this is at all possible in the way the game is built up, but a great and fun idea regardless.
You know whatAfter a few games of playtesting the Menu is grown on me... I know I'm an old B*sterd that hates change but it is a better working system once you get deeper in the late game. Other than that it is running like a breeze with no issues so far and I tend to agree with wildstar game is already turning out to be a great addition to the RTS realmother than that still looking for an answer on the collector's edition
I am enjoying the game. I have some suggestions for you. If possible, it would be nice to have edge scrolling. Also, if we could have the ability to cycle through planets and fleets. Thank you for listening and if these suggestions don't make the final version of the game, it is still a good game.
Sins 1 can become a bit of a zoom yoyo. You have to zoom in to select, zoom out to move, zoom in to target... Just lots of up and down. The problem is things rapidly become too small to select accurately well before max zoom out, even before you can have the entirety of one area on the screen at once. Could we get iconography to help out ala Supreme Commander at the farther zoom levels? I think this would be a huge improvement in controls. You can zoom in when you want to see all the pretty ships but stay at a zoom to see an entire area and still have it readable when in combat. Maybe add a third level of icons where you just see fleets rather than ships (assuming fleet formation comes back) way out at max zoom out.
The fact Sins 2 is getting made is some of the best news I've had in quite a few months!I played a tonne of the original Sins Trinity when it released back in the day before all the digital stores became so widespread. If I remember correctly, it came in a cool CD box, with a cardboard "sheeve" with some really cool artwork on, and had a fairly chunk manual as well?Anyway... nostalgia aside. I fired up Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion last night to refresh myself about what I liked (and did not like) about the original Sins. Firstly, I should mention I primarily played Sins vs AI, on large maps that would take several sessions to compete.So, I thought the core gameplay was absolutely fantastic, so I'd recommend keeping it very much the same (but with more) rather than radically changing things (the orbital paths changing phase lanes thing concerns me). Also, I liked the ability to really to configure basically every aspect of the game before starting, like game speed, research speed, pirates, allies, and various other configurable things, so I'm guessing this orbital paths will just be another option? Although my concern is it will take lots of dev time to balance it (as it's a very unique system).Secondly, the UI of the original sins had some great aspects. I loved that when you zoomed out, the systems and ship 3D graphics were replaced with 2D icons, and you could seamlessly zoom in and out too targeted icons and it would just transition beautifully, it meant panning was rarely required. I see this is still the case in the new Sins, so that's good news for me! I loved the outliner in the original Sins, and also liked how configurable it was through the options menu. Most of the time, it did what I wanted it to do without me having to do any fiddly guff. I cannot say the same so far for Sins 2's outliner. Having played Sins 2 for an hour last night, I was sttruggling to understand the outliner at all. I had ships all over the map, but the outliner simply showed planets only. I had created a couple fleets and they didn't just automagically appear in the outliner. I dunno, but it felt really janky to me compared to Sins 1 (I realize this is vague, I didn't do extensive testing and make notes, but it just felt "jank" to me).Another thing I really liked about the original Sins UI was that it was thematic (some might say "crusty" or "old school" nowadays) but it still holds up today for immersing you in the experience. I cannot say the same for this new "Sleek" modernistic UI which is in Sins II currently (I know it's pre-alpha!). But yea, this new UI is boring looking, generic and lame-o compared to Sins 1.... The research system is "flat" now as well, as in, it's a flat list with no "dependencies" between techs (pre-requisites I mean) and it just looks arse compared to the original Sins. Now admittedly, some of the original Sins research techs could feel a bit cookie cutter (like +x% to laser damage 0/2), but the way it was laid out was much clearer and more thematic compared to this "flat" style in Sins 2 (pre-alpha).Erm... what else... Oh, Sins 1 UI had 1 major problem - the UI assets are rasterized and not vectorized, and are only supplied in a single size, so on anything above 1080p the UI appears eye strainingly small, so you have to scale the interface, which causes it all to go blurry as hell... I presume this won't be the case in Sins 2, however it's implemented (p.s. any chance you could provide a Sins Rebellion update that provides upscaled UI elements for modern UHD+ monitors? )Performance wise, this new engine seems to run like the dogs bollocks, very smooth, zippy and I didn't see any artifacts in my 1 hour playing (2080ti, 10700k, 32gb RAM).So for me, my feedback summed up is:- Don't go for this "metro"/"modernistic" generic UI, make it thematic (see what Starcraft 2 did)- Make the research a tree again- Make the outliner at least have functional parity with Sins 1- Make it so the outliner doesn't require lots of fiddle in game- Make the UI vectorized/3D, or provide multiple scaled rasterized assets for different screen densities- Don't "redo", instead iterate/improve (see Starcraft 2 vs Starcraft 1)Shotty
For your information Shottymonster, a research tree is coming and the research already has some prerequisites, although that could be expanded. The moving celestial bodies is already an option that can be turned off, so you can just use that!
Glad to be in on the ground floor with Sins 2, being a part of the development of Sins 1 was one of my favorite gaming experiences.
sorry for my English this is an auto translation .
I have some suggestions and ideas .
1. interface. if you can't decide which animation to use, just make a few options to choose from.everyone will choose the one they like . the interface type can be changed by mods to any I think then there will be many options. but I believe that you will come up with something cool but there are people with visual defects, so it's worth adding the ability to increase the font or change the color of the font and phono.
2. 2d photo icons. in the first part, it is convenient to manage through the icon menu in the system. when there are a lot of ships in battle, it constantly jumps and very offensively missed the skills. I want the position of the icons not to change while the mouse cursor is in the work area, in order to update the position of the icons, just move the mouse to the side.
3. I would like to see the Linux version. if it doesn't. if there is no Linux version, then it is advisable to store the mod files in a folder with an ishra where the game is there and mods. the fact is that there is no folder of my documents in linux and where to download mods and maps I have not figured out. you can make an option where mods are enabled so that the game knows that maps and mods are stored in the folder with the installed game.
4.Flexibility. A lot of new mechanics will appear in the game. not everyone may like them. it will be good if the mechanics can be turned off and on, everyone will play a game that he likes. if there are too many settings, then you need to be able to save the finished configuration. for example, add mechanics from the first part of the output field and make a DLS with a ready-made configuration of the rebellion settings many will be happy to play their favorite game on the new engine.
5 . maps. we need a preview of thumbnails with the location of planets and stars to understand how the map looks before the game. I still can't remember the names of the cards I rarely play on I want a convenient and intuitive map editor. and also that the cards are automatically downloaded to the game folder when connected to a network game. you can do the same with mods. (the download can be transferred to the launcher before the game starts. the idea can be peeped at the FAF. this is a launcher for an old game supported by the community)
if there is a new engine, then it is worth making support for different ARM, x86, mips processors. or at least leave room for expansion.
multimonitor support it would be nice to have it like supreme commander... keep a separate screen on weak points in multiplayer to watch and monitor
Good Day Devs, Not sure if these will be useful suggestions but I will add to this list as time goes on
pan with mouse movement. is irritating to have to use keyboard.
Click and hold, then swipe direction to orient your ships in a specific direction when they arrive to destination.
Bug: resource markets do not reset after a while.
No crashes so far at all, enjoying the new engine and it's feel. It feels like an upgraded sins, which I love.Pacing wise the game is too slow, multiplayer games shouldn't require such a boring first 10-15 minutes. I know some people have complained about it being too fast, really?Balance and things like that really can't be discussed and we know titans, starbases are to come. I am a little concerned that some ships are relegated to only one role, korsov, colony ships used to have weaker weapons but still weapons. This really needs to return. No spacefaring race would have 0 weapons on a colony or bombing ship. Point defence for example.Why are the tec forgoing lasers now? Anywho, see ya soon
I noticed that the squadrons are selected together with the ships, this distracts them from their tasks. In the first part, pirates seem to be dying of culture. Can they be immune to culture? Without pirates, it's not so interesting) well, or the option of the pirates' immunity to culture
after trying out the early access im excited for what could come ive enjoyed the style and improvement on the visuals truth be told as long as they stay true to the Sins Of the Solar Empire ill support whatever they do
Hello there,
Put a few hours in, super exited to see the final game!
Love:
Neutral:
Not a fan of:
My screen is bright red and magnification of units is next to impossible
It's very well optimised, I can tell you that. It's not Sins 1.
It is also very hard for me to say what could be improved, the first sins is really a classic and very good. my thoughts on the second sins (I have spent about 500h in sins 1 and play mainly against the AI):
A better AI would be great, so more intelligent or a better choice of tactics of the AI, eg that this attacks in shock waves and you know what it does by a description of tactics in the menu before the game starts).
Maybe one or more mods, such as one in which you start with a planet and defend against already a strong opponent who attacks in waves and you slowly expand or a time against this AI must hold.
What I would find good would also be skins, a fourth race.
The new planet overview of all planets is very good, the ships can equip new mods is also very good.
Maybe you can also increase the units generally 10% so you can enjoy the space battles more
The interface is too uniform, difficult to make quick decisions, the icons were better in the first part.
That the researches can't take place on 2 or 3 levels per research and I think, in general too little to research.
If you have an army of ships then I miss an overview of the fleet, as the top left is usually present. Maybe I am too stupid to create a fleet and that is already possible.
It would be cool if the fleet builds up a huge common light blue, tiled or otherwise matching shield and the more ships you have the bigger and more stable the shield becomes, with explosion effects etc.
The Advent Titan could then have an ability that completely drains the energy from the shield of its own units and shoots one or more destructive beams at the enemy.
If I would let my creativity play then it would be cool to be able to choose one of three ship trees per selected race in the military tree, for example the tech could choose between an attack tree, defense tree and a general or matter tree and depending on the explored tree then the ships are more aggressive, defensive, balanced or on matter/skills designed and then have their own look, shoot for example at the attack faction many red laser beams, the defense faction has many blue shields or green healing abilities etc.
But probably it would make the game much more complex. Personally, I would look around in other games and invest a few creative hours, just let what comes to mind and playfully deal with it in thought, maybe find a few ideas, skills, ships, planets, mods, etc..
A few issues come to mind.
1. Carriers do not stay distant in Sins2. My carriers are entering the fray with the rest of the combat ships.
2. Late game the ships lose transit. They will sit indefinitely waiting to warp to the next planet.
3. Research - for high resolution screens please contract the research to the center or side of the screen. There is way too much space between research options with the entire width of the display being taken up. Also clear notifiers for Research Level required and a line delineating this on the research icon screen. It is not obvious when you have enough research to get to the next tier, the options are still greyed out the same whether you can research the next tier or not.
The carriers have guns that can shoot down fighters and bombers. But you are correct, after that the tend to run into a fight. Hold position for this unit by default would fix it. Not sure if the recent patch fixes this as I have not tested it.
I thought the same thing then realized it was due to a ship(s) getting "stuck" behind either A - Starbase or B - Space Port
No other objects seemed to block their pathing from what I noticed. If you individually guide that lost ship the rest of the fleet will leave on their own. The recent patch may have fixed this as well but I have not tested it yet.
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