Vote for new expansion!

Already did.

Was the first

Heh, I was the fifth.  Of course, for the first few hours, it's likely the only people who are going to see it are Sins die-hards...

or thos that spend far too much time in the forums, like us vote 17y

harpo

Bump!!!

#22!

    Since I discovered mods its really not that important. I played vanilla only for 2 years and just recently download a few mods, they will keep me occupied for awhile. I have a feeling they have been working on one, if it were anything else we would have seen rough sketches buy now to wet our lips. 

NVM, found it. large adress aware

There is no program that does this. There is a program (LAA) that allows you to use more of the RAM overall making the Sins use its full 2 gig potential by shifting other things out of its RAM area.

There's not even an introductory post to the poll from a representative of Stardock or Ironclad?  The players have to notice it themselves?  That takes lack of communication to new depths...  And 'an expansion'?  What, just something new in general?  That's not very informative!

I'm going to assume that the question should be 'would you prefer a new expansion to the existing game or a new game based on the existing interface?' which seems to make more sense.  I'm a fan of the game's interface, its very solid.  However the gameplay mechanics are to me somewhat lacking, what we have is a very unrefined game that has accreted rather than been developed.  Some of the elements are just wrong, I'll attempt to explain briefly.

Explore.      

The fog of war element in Sins is both somewhat unique and rather bizarre.  You can see everything in a gravwell except mines and Vasari scouts- but your space empire cannot detect gas giants in the same systemas your home planet.  To know a gas giant is there you have to send a scout...  Also, the explore element is somewhat curtailed when in order to find what a planet is like you need to conquer it first.  You cannot decide to specialise in scouting in the game.  Its just wrong!

Expand.

The colonisation element of the game is also weird.  Every planet, even the unfriendly non-terran ones, is precolonised by humans- who even the TEC faction is unaware of.. these humans might rebel in favour of neutrality if influenced by an enemy.  You need your own colony to make these humans work, once you have a ground colony you then have a constructor ship.. in space.  What?  The colonies have a 'militia' and you have to destroy its siege ships, which will otherwise bomb you off the planet.  A principal expansion tactic is to run in, colonise, start building turrets in space and then destroy the siege ships as they manoeuvre to avoid these turrets as they are being completed.  Then you can move on.

Exploit.

All the planets are about the same size and have 2-4 'moons'.  There are occasional special elements which often have to be unlocked, and then one or two only.  There are mechanics that depend on the number of phase lanes leaving a planet.. this enhances mining, is bad for trade and has peculiar effects on propaganda.  A more usual set-up would be that mining would be indifferent (because mining is short ranged by nature) and that multiple available lanes would enhance trade and propaganda.  An extremely peculiar element is the limit on the number of orbital structures that can be placed around a planet.  There are far better alternatives.  Resources are infinite... a very basic decision on gameplay which has a great deal of effect, and leads to supply rules to offset it, which then begin to doom an empire trying to rebuild after a defeat.

Exterminate.

The combat system has never led to balance in any version of the game so far.  The counter system is weird and arbitrary and the weapon upgrades are either somewhat useless or devastating.  Ship speeds are not upgraded and ranges only rarely.  Empires can build huge vast complicated ships at first which then gain experience, but only very basic other types of ship which cannot become veterans.  Why do cruisers have to be researched after battleships?  Combat tactics are somewhat lacking.  There are no ground troops!  Space navies should have two essential functions:  to protect invasions and to protect trade.  Neither are relevant to Sins.  The implementation of strikecraft is miserable.  The relations system with the AI is a dungheap.

And yet...

If you leave Sins and all its problems behind and reuse the same interface, with different basic design decisions, you could make a superb game, with many factions and an inherent tendency to balance.  The interface is pretty, unlike the gameplay.  Imagine a Sins setup where you had a single unified tech tree for all the factions.  Lets have nine unique ship models per faction- escort, cruiser, battleship and slow, medium and fast.  Then we can design ships.... more modules would be available with less speed.   Every ship can gain experience.  Each faction inhabits their planets and colonies, none of the cumbersome Sins backstory with all its problems.  Enemy planets have to be invaded, or they can be glassed.  Trade ships are vital to the games economy, not the equivalent of doodads.  No more odd little mining entities around planets, if they are moons, then make them moons.  The game design could be so much easier, so much more intuitive, so much more .. fun.  So, no from me.  Not even Sins 2.  The interface is excellent, the story element- meh.                          

Ahh.,... ouch. 

I don't agree. What you are explaining is pretty much a perfect game. That doesn't happen very often.  

You have to remember these guys were making an indy title, they had some awesome ideas and they took a risk. Its pretty difficult to achieve perfection in those conditions. As a science-fiction writer, I know the first book in a series or your first novel for any writer is always going to be the hardest as you are still working out your style and don't have a lot of experience yet. You aren't certain of what works and what doesn't. Also, in such conditions you are pushed due to time/money constraints to produce something that you might not have time to make perfect.

However, the people who made Sins took all that risk and did produce the game. Perhaps its rough around the edges but so many of its elements make it a diamond. Not least the radically different style of gameplay and feel that sins has (try finding something similar) and the pretty groundbreaking empire tree.

I would love to see perfection as well, but these guys won plenty of awards with what they did do and have created something ill play for years to come.  

Voted yes, I wonder what i would be... thoughts? 

More lag perhaps? I think they need a total rewrite before they add anything else. I was quite disappointed when I bought Diplomacy only to have it run worse in a huge multi 10 player game.

I will wait for Sins 2 if ever there is one.

Yeah, I think we can all agree that they need to improve the game on a technical side before they can add much else. Diplomacy is making the game run at the edge of the 2GB limit, and as a modder I don't want to do much with it for fear of pushing it over the edge. That said I would be happy for any news about what IronClad has been up to lately, and I'm sure they are aware of the technical limitations if they were to merely add new content.

I would be happy to hear from Ironclad too, then we might discover whether an expansion was a real possibility or the whim of the site.  The technical limitations are another reason for a new Sins-based game rather than a fourth expansion.  Also, the two micro-expansions produced so far have been fraught and delayed and have fractured the online community.  As more versions have had to be kept updated the number of patches has droped off dramatically.  A standard game-and-expansion-model would have been an improvement.

While I already stated that the Sins interface- the zoom levels as well as the empire tree- was very solid and would make an excellent basis for a new game, if you consider the second expansion you can understand part of why the game went wrong.  Instead of reorganising the relations so that they could be dealt with without going to another screen, going further along the groundbreaking path, the designers began to nest screens, so that the pacts screen is two screens away from the main game.  There is so little information on the relations screen that it is very poor design compared to the original game, even if the relations system worked in any meaningful fashion, which it does not.

Also, financial constraints needn't mean poor gameplay.  The research screens also take the player away from the game.  With four tech trees needed for each new faction they make the game more difficult to mod as well as more costly to expand.  Does each +1 relations tech for each faction need its own small picture?  Its not 'perfect' games that have a single unified tech tree, space empire games have had them for ages- the individualised tech tree concept is from RTS, where the trees are often much smaller.

Also, stuff like ground battles and variation in gravwells or trade take hardly any extra resources either- what, a bar above a planet indicating the course of a struggle and some text, or a slightly larger than standard planet..?  Weapons effects are in the game already.  Its nonsense to imagine that incredibly alien technology like phase inhibitors can be copied but not less advanced stuff like weaponry, it's a real failure of the conceptualisation of the game.  All the Sins factions need a lab in space just to invent a telescope...

So lets have a new game, with more emphasis on the empires and far less on the RTS element that Sins isn't very good at anyway, and which is heavily reliant on a thriving online community to be able to balance very different factions, which and indie game will never have, for obvious reasons.  The hybrid offspring of Sins and Master of Orion 2 would be far more appealing to me than another botched micro-expansion.  Masters of Empire.  And it would sell... 

The game is overbuilt, unless they free up limitations with a rather major engine rewrite, it's just too old to be adding more shit to.

I could do a campaign or something, but it's more supporting a developer I like than something the game could really use.  I'd much rather they make another RTS with the same tactical depth that this one has in a more versatile engine to match the excellent modding platform they provided us with.

If it will be multiplayer expansion -yes

if singleplayer like diplomacy-no

and if another lobby split-hell no

Another micro-expansion?  No point, engine has too many limitations.  Efforts would be better spent on a new game.

A full blown expansion that overhauls the engine, adds a new race, and adds content to every area of the game?  I'd certainly consider it.

I voted yes... but i really want a sins 2 with rotating turrets/accurate weapon arcs, solid strike craft, and multithreading, and destructible ships.