A Tale of Three 4X-RTS Universes: Sins of a Solar Empire Trinity

4X-RTS:

In this iteration of space voyager, piloting the flagship 4X-RTS, Awkward Mixture has spied the galaxy of Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity, which is not to be confused with its neighboring Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion (a stand alone expansion). The original game, released in 2008, is the oldest of the three games being investigated (Star Ruler 2 and Stellaris), the most conventional RTS of the three, and therefore the least like a 4X game.

While our craft approaches, the captain has fallen into musing about past RTS games. Perhaps, like you, fellow voyager, I worshiped WarCraft 2, adored StarCraft, and praised WarCraft 3, but the magic of the RTS genre has diminished in recent years. I couldn't summon the force to enjoy Supreme Commander 2, and can't bother to download StarCraft 2, even though Blizzard released it for free in late 2017.

Age might be the source of my aversion to the RTS genre, in which case the majority of this critique of Sins springs not from any fault of the game, but my dislike for the direction of its development. Or maybe, it is an inferior product of a overly accepting age.

Like Star Ruler 2, Sins: Trinity contains no campaign, no plot, but a massive collection of prepared galaxies. In each, the player begins with a single planet. Each galaxy, whether tiny, massive or somewhere in between, is comprised of nodes, connected by predetermined pathways. Nodes can contain a planet, an asteroid field, a pirate base, or empty space, and the house the various byproducts of homicidal empires (ships and orbital platforms). The pathways which connect nodes are not space, in that they have no space, and can contain no fleets, but merely allow passage between to locations. They are not empty space, but vacuum, like tunnels connecting rooms. This contrasts sharply with Star Ruler 2 which did delineate connections between systems, but whose ships traveled through deep space anyway they desired, and combat, though increadibly unlikely, could happen in the empty areas, light-years distant from a sun. In Sins, these paths are the only means of travel, and while technically deep space, are incapable of containing combat.

Like other conventional RTS games Sins uses a common resource strategy: construct buildings which produce resources. Planets produce credits, with a more developed planet generating more cash, and unlike Star Ruler, development requires spending credits instead of creating a trading web. The other two resources: metal and crystal, are collected by constructing mines on asteroids. While Sins mercifully reduces the need to micromanage resource collecting with the type of drones popularized in StarCraft and WarCraft, resource collection remains a more involved task than Star Ruler 2's three minute budget.

With these three resources the player's empire can produce ships, after a shipyard has been built, with the aid of a construction drone. These little helpers build all the orbital platforms, from the mining structures on asteroids, to the defense platforms, the research facilities, and the broadcast centers.

But it's not the perpetual mining and resource collection which disgusts me, but the relentless production necessary for victory.

Like WarCraft 3, one shipyard is insufficient even early in the game. A winning strategy requires an OCD like attention to every aspect of the empire, from building orbital platforms, to the unending production of ships, and the ceaseless technological development. Every gear of the war machine needs to be turning continually, and planets must be surrounded by a mass of shipyards research centers, and interstellar markets, all of which need to be constantly reminded to produce a near infinite amount of ships and technologies.

At the same time, to conduct research the player needs enough research laboratories to unlock more elaborate advancements. But though there are many different options, each feels insignificant, with no technology offering a transformation of tactics. Each technology unlocks a ship, or provides a minor numerical bonus to combat or the economy, but none allow for a redesign to make something new.

Unlike Star Ruler 2 ships are not composed, but produced. They are not designed out of blocks, or even a frame, with the player able to assign systems. They're massed produced, predesigned hulks. The player can produce supply swallowing, credit consuming behemoths called capital ships, which can level up and gain both activated and passive abilities, but these are few and far between.

With a fleet assembled, combat is still a slogging mess. Unlike Star Ruler 2, and more like StarCraft, each ship is its own unique unit, capable of solo movement (though ships can be assigned to maneuver together). When ships are in a node with enemy forces they'll automatically move to engage. They line up, and shoot at each other. Movement and inflicting damage are clear but incredibly slow, making these state of the art ships appear more like the model T than the Enterprise. Though ships automatically engage the closest enemy, it is possible to tell them to focus on any particular target, but with even with a half dozen frigates targeting an enemy, it takes a minute or two before they succeed in blowing to it bits.

Though the enemy will flee when outnumbered, the AI will refuse to surrender the map, and will only lose when they have not a single fleet remaining. Even when they have no fleets remaining, they continued to recolonize planets which I'd already turned to ashes. While, it may be possible to capture enemy help planets, it seemed easier to bombard them from space, and then recolonize the forsaken, empty cities.

Though clear, combat isn't aided by a dazzling graphic display. The combat, slow and lifeless as it is, isn't assisted by a display which has the ships remain stationary, while the attacks they make against each other are without flash, even if as they use lasers. Missiles and ships don't explode with the resounding bang required, and in all the whole system seems dated.

In conclusion, this seems to be the issue with Sins of Solar Empire: Trinity compressed into a wormhole. While it must have captured the zeitgeist of the 2000's, (receiving the glowing reviews) when the RTS genre was particularly prominent, today its design seems prehistoric, like when one reads a book which predicted the future, and yet the era it hypothesized has already passed, without the exciting technology it described coming to fruition.

Sins has no grand tactical element, just the relentless, exhausting attention required to perpetually produce more ships, and engage them in endless, endurance defying battles.

I'm not saying you won't enjoy Sins of a Solar Empire. After playing only the shortest map, with still took five hours to beat, I had no further interest in the two other races, and the many unexplored regions of space left, but I'm willing to believe it received popular approval a decade ago because it did something well, which I just can't see.

Next week Awkward Mixture begins its examination of Stellaris.

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