Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment Tips & Tricks

from JoeUser Forums

Today Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment BETA 1 goes up and this article will give you a quick run through of some of the features and what we're hoping to get out of it.

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First thing to be aware of: Installing the BETA of Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment overwrites your existing Sins install. So you'll want to back up Sins if you want to switch back and forth.

 

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Now, for people who play on-line, we're still working on some of the issues with the ICO server locking up. It's a top priority to nail these down.

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We are still working on costs and pacing for BETA 1.  A lot of the costs for star bases and other things are largely placeholders to get feedback on.

One big suggestion we have is to set the rates to Fast otherwise the game pacing is very slow.

In the final version, we'll probably make Normal speed what is currently Fast and Fast will be made even faster.

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At first glance, one might think Entrenchment is very much like the original game. But it won't take long to notice some big differences...

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First, military research labs get a big boost with the new defensive tech tree which lets players construct starbases and upgrade their weapons in lots of interesting ways.

One of the things you'll probably notice is how much better the AI is, particularly the unit AI.  Ironclad's AI team did a great job on making units a lot more intelligent. You should notice that pretty quickly in battle.

158,299 views 43 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

wow. cool. thanks for the teaser. hope it won't be much longer.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Karma for Frog for this great post!

:frogboy:   k1  

WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Holy shit! This looks insane!

Just the loading screen makes me drool for more! I really find out what that singleplayer campaign is...get my hands on its files, and make my own campaign!! :D

I'm gonna be VERY busy this afternoon...CONGRATS STARDOCK! Never has a game made me sooo impatient before (except Dungeons & Dragons RPG but thats not on pc ;) )! THANK YOU!!!

Keep it coming

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

IMPATIENCE! :D

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Stop making me drool, I don't think I can explain to our IT guys at work why the keyboard is all fried :(

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Ok - one IMPORTANT question to Frog or anyone at SD...

 

As far as I understood, when we install Entrenchment it WILL overwrite original Sins meaning ONLY Beta will be playable.

Ok this is clear.

 

Frog also mentioned above something about backing up vanilla Sins so you can switch between the two!

Ok, perfect, I want this just in case Beta farts into my face so to speak...

 

Now, how EXACTLY do I go about "backing it up" and making both versions playable?

Any chance of some plain English step by step guide?

 

I think this is very important and should be posted ASAP!

 

Please :)

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Purple is my new obsession,

Purple is not even a question,

Purple on the lips of your lover, 'cause

Purple is the love you discover

 

Purple as the bing on your cherry

Purple 'cause you are so very

Purple it's the colour of ENTRENCHMENT

'cause today it just goes with the beta-ment!

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

Now, how EXACTLY do I go about "backing it up" and making both versions playable?

Any chance of some plain English step by step guide?

That I don't know.  Probably the easiest way is to just do a copy and paste.  That is, go to your Sins folder, copy it and paste it as a copy.

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Draginol, reply 8

Now, how EXACTLY do I go about "backing it up" and making both versions playable?

Any chance of some plain English step by step guide?


That I don't know.  Probably the easiest way is to just do a copy and paste.  That is, go to your Sins folder, copy it and paste it as a copy.

Yeah...

Thanks for reply but we defo need official post to cover this one :)

IMHO it is way too important just to leave it to guess work...

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Now, how EXACTLY do I go about "backing it up" and making both versions playable?

Any chance of some plain English step by step guide?

Step 1: Open Windows Explorer.

Step 2: Navigate to your Sins installation.

Step 3: Click the Sins of a Solar Empire folder.

Step 4: Hit CTRL+C

Step 5: Navigate to where you want your backup to be.

Step 6: Hit CTRL+V

You're done :P The original will be over-written, but you should easily be able to launch Sins from the copied folder. Unless, of course, you don't take my word as official! *gasp*.

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Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

Tkins soft and sensitive side! How sweet :) lol!!!

One more history work to go and Ill be all set!

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Annatar11, reply 10

Now, how EXACTLY do I go about "backing it up" and making both versions playable?

Any chance of some plain English step by step guide?

Step 1: Open Windows Explorer.

Step 2: Navigate to your Sins installation.

Step 3: Click the Sins of a Solar Empire folder.

Step 4: Hit CTRL+C

Step 5: Navigate to where you want your backup to be.

Step 6: Hit CTRL+V

You're done The original will be over-written, but you should easily be able to launch Sins from the copied folder.

 

Not exactly official but close enough :p

If you are right about this one you will get a Karma!

Thanks man :)

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Annatar11, reply 10

Now, how EXACTLY do I go about "backing it up" and making both versions playable?

Any chance of some plain English step by step guide?
Step 1: Open Windows Explorer.

Step 2: Navigate to your Sins installation.

Step 3: Click the Sins of a Solar Empire folder.

Step 4: Hit CTRL+C

Step 5: Navigate to where you want your backup to be.

Step 6: Hit CTRL+V

You're done The original will be over-written, but you should easily be able to launch Sins from the copied folder. Unless, of course, you don't take my word as official! *gasp*.

Probably wanna back up your settings folder on top of that.

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

And how about registry and all other Windows related bullshit!?!?!

I hope Annatar is right but his way sounds way too much MacLike and as we know Sins runs on Windouz where nothing is simple... :s

Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top

I'm honestly not sure about Settings. It never needed backing up when doing backups for patches, and I really doubt Entrenchment makes any changes to it.

You'll be fine on the registry. I've had 1.05 and 1.1 beta during that testing and both ran just fine with a simple folder copy. They even changed the user.setting file, which I never backed up, and it still worked fine.

Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top

Cool :)

I really hope it is as simple as that...

Anyway, waiting to get charged so I can start with DL

Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top

Take my money!   PLEASE!!!

Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top

I think that the costs for the starbases should be way more than what they are now...both credit wise and resource wise.  Not for sure on the other 2 races...but when I built my first one for the vasari last night, it cost about 1/2 the total cost of a cap ship.  These are supposed to be much stronger and better than a cap ship...shouldn't the cost be proportionate to that?

Also, you should have a upper cap limit on the amount of mines that you can place and there should be a resource cost to place mines.  I literally placed about 100 mines all over one grav well in about 5 minutes time.  There was no way an enemy ship was gonna fly anywhere in that grav well without blowing itself to pieces.

Just some thoughts, and I will post this in the beta forum as well.

Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top

Game seems to run faster. Good job.

Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top

Awesome  job stardock look forward to testing and breaking stuff :D

Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah I noticed the game seems to be much smoother. Nice!

Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top

But seriously, where are the tips and tricks? lol

Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah... doesn't look like there are many 'tips' or 'tricks' there... just a bit of info.

Also I noticed my game didn't crash once last night until just as I quit the game when I won.

One last thing, the link to the "tips and tricks" on the sins front page is a broken link.

Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting TheSpydyr, reply 18
I think that the costs for the starbases should be way more than what they are now...both credit wise and resource wise.  Not for sure on the other 2 races...but when I built my first one for the vasari last night, it cost about 1/2 the total cost of a cap ship.  These are supposed to be much stronger and better than a cap ship...shouldn't the cost be proportionate to that?

Also, you should have a upper cap limit on the amount of mines that you can place and there should be a resource cost to place mines.  I literally placed about 100 mines all over one grav well in about 5 minutes time.  There was no way an enemy ship was gonna fly anywhere in that grav well without blowing itself to pieces.

Just some thoughts, and I will post this in the beta forum as well.

 

I'm not totally sure... a fully upgraded star base is powerful, but I dont know if you noticed how crappy the initial, unupgraded one was... the subsequent upgrades (what you need to make it worth something) are around 1800/250/250 per upgrade, making the needed upgrades to a starbase so that it can at least hold it's own agaainst 2+ capital ships an extra 4 upgrades 7200/1000/1000.  Around then it can actually destroy something instead of just having a bunch of armor and very little firepower.  (I had a vasari starbase with only 1 offensive+defensive mod on it, and it couldn't hold off half of a remaining fleet of 5-10 pirate ships.

Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top

Rangent, very good numbers. I agree completely.