14 DAY TRIAL // Sins of a Solar Empire was a surprise hit and one of the best strategy titles of 2008. It managed to blend the familiar mechanics of exploration, expansion and extermination with a 3D engine capable of nicely rendering space battles that involved hundreds of fighters and dozens of capital ships.
The game also offered a strong tech tree, some interesting piracy-oriented concepts and a small role playing element. And now, Ironclad, the developer, is announcing that it is preparing to release a new update for the game, which aims to fully rebalance it by making all the units interesting again, usable by the player in at least one tactical or strategic situation.
As part of the process of balancing the videogame, the developers again went into multiplayer matches against as many players as possible to get a sense of the strategies used and of the way various units are employed. Their stated aim was to “make sure every unit is brought back into the pool of viable tools. In some cases this was as simple as modifying some data but in some cases we completely redesigned elements of them.”
Ironclad says that this coming update is the 22nd it is offering for Sins of a Solar Empire and that it will not be the last. A new expansion for the game, called Diplomacy, set to be delivered only via digital download, is now in development. It should arrive in the early months of 2010, adding more techs and units to the game while also offering more possibilities to create alliances, share resources and a new system related to dealing with the pirates that can be found on all Sins of a Solar Empire maps. Pre-ordering Diplomacy means that players can take part in the beta for the expansion, expected before winter.