Morning Discussion

I'm very much looking forward to the StarCraft II mod scene, hoping it can repeat Warcraft III's success in propelling new game types into the mainstream. WC3 wasn't the first game to have tower defense and Defense of the Ancients/Aeon of Strife-style gameplay but it certainly played a crucial role in their current success. With modding tools that allow far more, hopefully we'll see some new stars begin to rise in StarCraft II.

From The Chatty
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    May 28, 2010 5:03 AM

    No one has an excuse any longer!

    Sins of a Solar Empire is $3.99USD at impulsedriven.com

    Don't wait for this to come to Steam, because it ain't happening. Just buy the same and enjoy.

    I am looking at you, wadmaasi.

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      May 28, 2010 5:29 AM

      None of you deserve to call yourself gamers. Unless you already own the game. In that case, carry on.

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        May 28, 2010 5:33 AM

        I keep waiting for them to put the expansions on sale. Nevar. :(

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          May 28, 2010 5:35 AM

          Me too. I know little about the expansions. Are they that awesome?

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            May 28, 2010 5:39 AM

            I have no idea! I don't want to pay full price!

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              May 28, 2010 5:47 AM

              It's sad that I pretty much only buy games from Steam nowadays. (Along with the occassional GOG.)

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          May 28, 2010 6:38 AM

          They had Diplomacy + Entrenchment on sale for $10 last week.

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            May 28, 2010 6:43 AM

            Your a liar. How could I have missed it!? Why didn't you tell me!?

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              May 28, 2010 6:56 AM

              Cause there was a thread about it? Same time Steam had some other sale going on though so it probably got overlooked.

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            May 28, 2010 7:25 AM

            Argh!

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      May 28, 2010 5:34 AM

      You really gotta at least get the Entrenchment expansion though. The Diplomacy expansion wasn't as great unless you love playing single player and making the bots fight each other, oh and the ridiculous pact bonuses.

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        May 28, 2010 5:35 AM

        What makes the Entrenchment is that awesome?

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          May 28, 2010 5:49 AM

          mines.

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          May 28, 2010 5:56 AM

          The defensive capabilities they put in, namely starbases. In vanilla SoaSE, most of my game ended with mine and my enemy's large fleets never running into each other just plowing through planets at opposite ends of our empire and getting into a race of destruction and rebuilding. There was also the annoying strategy of building a dozen bombers being able to fly into a guarded system and nuke the planet before all your bombers died. Entrenchment made defense workable, at least to slow down enemy fleets til your fleet can get there.

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          May 28, 2010 2:26 PM

          You can build star bases that can hold their own rather well.

          The counter to them, torpedo ships, are quite good as well against other things (platforms).

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      May 28, 2010 5:35 AM

      I keep trying to get into this game and each time i start playing i get put off by the fact that i need to sit through a boring tutorial. I have no patience for complex games anymore.

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      May 28, 2010 5:47 AM

      I played it when it was initially released and at that time, it wasn't even worth 3.99

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      May 28, 2010 5:49 AM

      It's super fun, although I never got any of the expansions and I never played against other folks, just the AI. Good way to waste a Saturday afternoon.

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      May 28, 2010 5:57 AM

      I won't buy this just because it isn't on Steam. I'm sorry I realise this makes me a terrible human being but I am lazy.

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      May 28, 2010 6:09 AM

      Very boring, slow RTS!

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        May 28, 2010 6:23 AM

        WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFF eject this person from the chatty immediately!

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          May 28, 2010 6:24 AM

          hahaha - why did I just have a flashback to Bond using the passenger eject button in his Aston Martin

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        May 28, 2010 6:35 AM

        Go in with the wrong expectations and yea, it's boring. Think of it more as a real time Civilization game.

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      May 28, 2010 6:10 AM

      Awright, you fucker, I bought it.

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      May 28, 2010 6:16 AM

      I love this game.

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      May 28, 2010 6:39 AM

      [deleted]

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        May 28, 2010 6:47 AM

        Show it love and it will love you back.

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      May 28, 2010 6:50 AM

      This game rocks. Buy it if you like 4x/RTS games but just be aware that there is no single player campaign.

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      May 28, 2010 6:58 AM

      I recommend the Distant Stars mod for everyone, especially if you find the game too "slow", http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/335474

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      May 28, 2010 7:04 AM

      [deleted]

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        May 28, 2010 7:06 AM

        What was your last Impulse purchase?

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          May 28, 2010 7:14 AM

          I just bought Gal Civ 2, since I never played it before.

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            May 28, 2010 7:32 AM

            Galactic Civilization 2 is my favorite turn based 4X game. Enjoy it.

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              May 28, 2010 7:56 AM

              That's what I've heard, and I love SoaSE and Civ, so the two combined should be super awesome.

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                May 28, 2010 8:00 AM

                I think the game is more similar to Civ.

                For me, the most annoying part is that every time you finish researching a new tech, you need to "build" your new ship models incorporating that tech.

                Sure, it makes what you want to build fully customizable, but it also adds to the game length unnecessarily. It would be better if there were more "pre-set" models with the option to fully customize.

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                  May 28, 2010 9:08 AM

                  I love that. Reminds me of Alpha Centauri.

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                    May 28, 2010 9:59 AM

                    I never played Alpha Centauri. I feel like I really missed out.

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              May 28, 2010 11:50 AM

              just started playing it; this is hard, damn ships with lazors rate at +218!?!? while my shit is flying with +6

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                May 28, 2010 11:57 AM

                Did you have the Dread Lords invade or something?

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            May 28, 2010 11:36 AM

            Oh man, I'm currently in the middle of an epic Immense game. This game is worse than Civ 4 at 'just one more turn'

            I started out between the Drengin and the Altarians in the corner of the map. Everything was fine until the Drengin declared war on the Altarians, so they had to go through my space to fight. Then the Drengin declared on me so I allied with the Altarians, wiped out all their ships, made them pay me for peace, and declared war on the Altarians because they were trying to take all the resources that the Drengin previously had starbases on - again, in my territory. Plus the Altarians are dicks and had colonized several worlds in the heart of my system while I focused on higher quality planets more distant.

            The Altarians surrendered all their shit to the Terrans in less than 10 turns, those fucking faggots. I didn't even have Planetary Invasion tech yet.

            The Drengin decided they hadn't had enough and declared war on me about a year later.

            One turn later and half their planets rebelled against them and formed a new faction called the Federalists.

            6 turns later, I invaded one planet and they surrendered all their shit to the Torians. Goddamnit.

            Whatever, those smug Terrans are next on the list - they look like they're trying to go for a diplomatic victory, but I'm tired of seeing their status bars barely ahead of mine in the graphs - just because they absorbed the Altarian empire who had almost twice as many planets as I and about the same population.

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          May 28, 2010 7:16 AM

          [deleted]

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        May 28, 2010 8:39 AM

        Chaos Rising is calling you on Steam...

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        May 28, 2010 11:52 AM

        I really wish Sins would come to Steam. I'd immediately re-buy it.

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          May 28, 2010 12:03 PM

          [deleted]

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          May 28, 2010 12:04 PM

          I don't get this. You don't have to have Impulse running to play and Impulse-bought game, but you can still redownload it just like Steam. It's the best of both worlds.

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            May 28, 2010 12:07 PM

            Ya, but once you have 90+ games on one system, you don't want to bother with another. I haven't launched a game from my normal desktop in a long time.

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            May 28, 2010 12:18 PM

            Just a personal preference. I don't like to have games spread across different digital distribution systems, but rather have them consolidated in one place.

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              May 28, 2010 12:21 PM

              With Impulse they aren't spread across a system though, that's what I'm trying to say. It'd be like if you bought a boxed copy and installed it on your machine. You can make a shortcut in Steam, even.

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              May 28, 2010 1:58 PM

              I'd actually rather have it that way, just in case Steam decides to fuck up.

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      May 28, 2010 8:46 AM

      pity. I'd get it if it were on steam

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        May 28, 2010 8:48 AM

        I do have dreams that one day Valve will buy gog.com and Stardock, only to combine all my digital video games in one place.

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          May 28, 2010 8:59 AM

          maybe someday there will be a custom client that combines all of them into one.

          kinda like a trillian for digtal download systems. :)

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            May 28, 2010 9:01 AM

            it's less about that and more about knowing all my games can be redownloaded at the same place and never go away

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          May 28, 2010 9:09 AM

          I like Impulse because you can play your games without running the client.

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        May 28, 2010 9:09 AM

        It's zero effort adding a shortcut to Steam for non Steam games.

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          May 28, 2010 10:00 AM

          As someone said above, it isn't about the convenience of Steam and more about knowing that all my games can be redownloaded from one place.

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            May 28, 2010 12:16 PM

            Yeah but the game is never going to be on Steam anyway since it's Stardock. Not playing a game because it's too much of a hassle to remember one other place seems really silly.

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        May 28, 2010 12:14 PM

        It's only $4. Is it really that hard for you to remember another log-in?

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      May 28, 2010 11:21 AM

      Does Impulse work like Steam? Or do they just give you an exe that you can install wherever? (like GoG)

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        May 28, 2010 11:25 AM

        In the middle of the two. It's like Steam to start, but it's like GoG once installed

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          May 28, 2010 11:26 AM

          Ok, is there a problem with installing more than once?

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            May 28, 2010 11:30 AM

            I have had games installed on both my desktop and laptop at the same time. I never tried running both at the same time.

            Personally, I think the system is more like Steam than GoG. The only difference is the client does not need to run to start the game.

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              May 28, 2010 11:32 AM

              Ok that is what I wanted to know, I don't need to play on two machines at once, but I wanted to make sure I could get it up and running pretty quick on whatever machine I wanted.

              Thanks fellas, I'm gonna snag SINS and see what all the hubbub is about.

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      May 28, 2010 11:32 AM

      FYI, there is only a skirmish style mode... This game is not even close to homeworld quality.

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        May 28, 2010 11:56 AM

        What do you mean by 'Homeworld quality'?

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        May 28, 2010 12:06 PM

        This game is not even close to homeworld quality.

        Fixed your sentence for ya!

        SoaSE has issues, and yeah it doesn't have an explicit single player, but it's vastly different than what Homeworld tries to be. Homeworld is actually 3D, but is much more a traditional RTS. SoaSE is a RTS whose parent bumped uglies with a 4X game and is very much a-typical for RTS'. Stuff like the gravity well, the durability of cap ships, the scale of the game. They're two fairly different things.

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        May 28, 2010 1:47 PM

        Homeworld = 3D Starcraft in SPACE.

        Sins of a Solar Empire = 3D CIV in SPACE.

        They're different games.

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          May 28, 2010 1:51 PM

          3D Realtime CIV in SPACE.

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          May 28, 2010 2:26 PM

          Sword of the Stars = 3D Civ Rev in SPACE (with realtime battles).

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          May 28, 2010 2:46 PM

          Not at all. Sins is too lightweight to be compared to Civ. Its combat is not significantly deeper than Homeworld, so it ends up being kind of a lightweight thing throughout.

          Longevity of capitol ships? Gravity? Gravity doesn't do much strategically, and it sounds like you haven't played Homeworld in a while if you think those capitol ships are easy to take down.

          Anyway, at this price you can't go wrong, but Sins is really not a great game. I didn't go back for another skirmish, and I felt like I should have just stuck with the demo. And I love space 4x/rts.

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      May 28, 2010 2:48 PM

      ShackGaming

      Would there be interest in a Monday (Memorial day here in the states) game of Sins of a Solar Empire?
      If so, would you be interested in vanilla, entrenchment, or entrenchment and diplomacy? And would an 11am start time work for you?

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