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Published on August 29, 2008 By Zoomba In Sins News

Today Stardock & Ironclad Games are proud to announce the first of several micro-expansion packs, for the award-winning Sins of a Solar Empire.  The first micro-expansion Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment is currently in development and will be released late 2008 for $9.95 via Stardock’s Impulse digital distribution platform (www.impulsedriven.com).

Developed by Ironclad Games, Sins of a Solar Empire is a real-time strategy game that adds an extreme amount of depth normally only seen in turn-based releases. One of the highest ranking real-time strategy games of 2008, the title has sold over half a million copies and won several Editor’s Choice awards.

Specifically, Entrenchment promises to bring fans a Starbase defense platform for each race (extremely powerful and armored bases housing a variety of weapons and other upgrades capable of defending an entire planet), turret upgrades for each race to make them more powerful (not only stronger than the current versions, but also upgradable with long-range weapons), mine fields and a Subspace Inhibitor platform that will slow enemy ships within its range.

Ironclad has two additional micro-expansions in development as well. One of which adds new diplomacy features to the game and another that will add new technologies and ships.

The expansions are being developed to prevent fracturing of the multiplayer community. If both players have a given expansion pack installed, the features are available, but if one does not, the expansion pack features are disabled for that particular game.

You can pre-order the micro-expansion now for $9.95 directly from the Impulse Store.  Entrenchment is only available through Impulse.


Comments (Page 8)
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on Sep 09, 2008

Sins has always been a predominantly single player game As for Blizzard adding neutral heroes, well, they didn't need to do much for them. The models, etc were in the game already. Aside from the fact that a complete feature list for Entrenchment hasn't been announced, the starbases are already known to be a big gameplay mechanic change, something which the WC3 extra heroes were far from

on Sep 09, 2008

It's amazing in Lan games. Get a friend round and install it on a second computer! Soo much fun.

on Sep 09, 2008

For me, Sins is a multi-player game. Single player and I wouldn't even look at it!

on Sep 10, 2008

For me, it's a Single-Player game, no interest in MP at all !

Do hope the add-ons will be available threw retail though, not going to buy it threw Impulse !

on Sep 10, 2008

Do hope the add-ons will be available threw retail though, not going to buy it threw Impulse !

Probably, but not until the triple-pack.

on Sep 10, 2008

Once we have enough of the micro expansions, we plan to put them together and release it as a traditional retail expansion pack.

The expansion packs are designed to aid in both the single player and multiplayer experience.

on Sep 10, 2008

Frogboy

The expansion packs are designed to aid in both the single player and multiplayer experience.

 

That is sensible, but I still don't see how it adresses the online player fragmentation. Lowest common denominator certainly wont work. People will just advertise requrements and boot anyone that doesn't meet them.

on Sep 10, 2008

What else can they do, though, short of not offering anything? MP fragmentation will be decided by the community. They're doing the only thing they can do by not making a hard requirement that only people with expansions can play with each other, and instead making it so that expansions disable themselves when playing with people who don't have them.

Beyond that, how can they control it?

on Sep 10, 2008

Annatar11
What else can they do, though, short of not offering anything? MP fragmentation will be decided by the community. They're doing the only thing they can do by not making a hard requirement that only people with expansions can play with each other, and instead making it so that expansions disable themselves when playing with people who don't have them.

Beyond that, how can they control it?

the COH and DOW expansion model comes to mind. Everyone gets the assets, but only the purchasers of the expansion can play with the new sides

That's a great way to prevent fragmentation and also encourage people to pick up the new release...

on Sep 10, 2008

I'm afraid in the case of Sins this would be rather bad. Imagine one guy having space stations, and the other not - it will create a bad imbalance.

on Sep 11, 2008

So, Just double-checking, After you do all three micro-expansions are done. You will put them into 1 expansions pack and sell it in retail store? Is that right?

on Sep 11, 2008

Frogboy
Once we have enough of the micro expansions, we plan to put them together and release it as a traditional retail expansion pack.

The expansion packs are designed to aid in both the single player and multiplayer experience.

 

There's your answer.

on Sep 11, 2008

Annatar11
What else can they do, though, short of not offering anything?

 

Release them all in one go as an expansion, like every other game. Micro fragmentation will utterly destry the multi-player game, which is pretty flakey as it is. Etiher that or, if the bulk sales are in single play. release it free for multi-play and use that to encourage both sales and multi-play involvement. Killing off the online game isn't going to help anyone.

on Sep 14, 2008

 

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Well, well well....

 

It’s been a while since I could bring myself to read the sins forums again. So, what happened to the so called ‘great modding tools’ you said you would release, and that would allow us to more easily generate content such as that alluded to in these expansions?

 

As I said a while back…is it an intentional act to make such modding projects more difficult by not releasing promised tools, in order for you to make profit from expansion packs that would traditionally be made by players using decent mod tools?

 

Depending on your answer I suppose one could view the ‘the Gamer's bill of rights’ as……..

 

…I’ll leave it at that

on Sep 14, 2008

Sorry about the strange formatting text...can't edit my post to remove.

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