Sins of a Solar Empire Beta Diary Five: Beta 4 build is finally here!

 I’m glad to announce to everyone that the latest build for Stardock‘s and Ironclad Games‘ upcoming 4X (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) RTS game Sins of a Solar Empire has finally hit Beta 4. This latest iteration packs in a lot of new changes, many of which came from the feedback players have been contributing through the SOSE official forums.

More information in the full article!

  

I’m glad to announce to everyone that the latest build for Stardock‘s and Ironclad Games‘ upcoming 4X (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) RTS game Sins of a Solar Empire has finally hit Beta 4. This latest iteration packs in a lot of new changes, many of which came from the feedback players have been contributing through the SOSE official forums.

The most notable of these changes is the new playable faction previously announced by the developers. The Vasari empire pretty much sums up the token “evil alien race”, a must in every Sci-Fi game. They take up the second slot out of the four playable races when the game was first advertised by Stardock.

On the technical side, the developers haven’t bumped up the specs needed to play the game. While a lot of the changes included fixes that players who plowed their way through the previous Beta versions wanted to see, this latest update reflected this keenly on both on the cosmetic and gameplay side of SOSE.

Gamers might have noticed the increased pace the game now runs itself at, as well as some of the new interface changes to help beginners to the genre not get too overwhelmed with the hefty information that fills up the screen at times.

 

All in all, Beta 4 is a nice change of pace for those fans who thought they’ve explored the entirety of the game from its previous version. The Vasari faction diverges greatly from the structured and economically stable humans from the TEC in terms of colonization tactics and war strategy.

Speaking of which, I looked back on my fellow blogger Sally’s previous post and noticed the jam she left herself in when trying to compose a proper “strike package”. Seeing her style as a relatively new player to the genre, it might actually help her more to focus on a more specialized kind of fleet composition – something I do regularly in my own games.

This is especially relevant with the new torpedo boat the Vasari employs. I normally use a shield wall of LRM ships the TEC faction uses. However, seeing the sheer power the Vasari counterpart has (dude, it bypasses shields for heck’s sake!), it makes the perfect home guard for any planet you own.

What’s more they refine my already existing strategy I employed in Beta 3, where I line up a literal shield wall of LRM units to decimate the opponent. My only gripe about this is that the Vasari’s Kanrak Assailant lacks any sort of contingency plan should the going get rough.

I know this kind of strategy might not be applicable against most human players, but one of the X’s in the term 4X didn’t include Exploit for nothing. This kind of strategy mostly relies on knowing when to micromanage your troops well enough to concentrate on the biggest threat and when to pull out when your shield wall starts to buckle.

While a more balanced “strike package” may seem more sound overall, unless Stardock makes any significant changes to the way concentrated missile fire affects the game I’m personally sticking to this strategy to beat the game. Spamming missile fleets are definitely the way to go!

To tell you the truth, if there was such a thing as the equivalent of the Death Star in this game, I’d probably be spamming that too.