New Stardock Hiring for project Tachyon

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/456534/page/1/#3484581

propagating information is key

So this is the "big" announcement that Frogboy promised? How disappointing.

Well if you read carefully he said that the result will be that many sins games will be sold this year as a result.

So, I wasn't really expecting a big change, this is just maintaining the cash flow from the franchise while they work on other projects.

Have they said anywhere than Sins will be getting any updates due to this?

they said sins was done with updates.

It said this won't go live until next year though, so i can't imagine it impacting Sins sales, especially since Sins was stated to be done with updates.  Since that makes it not really affect Sins too much, I'm holding out for maybe another announcement.

EDIT: after rereading...

There's going to be a big announcement next month that I think will make Sins players happy.

More copies of Sins of a Solar Empire will likely be sold this year than last year.  The biggest challenge Ironclad/Stardock have had is how to fit "more" stuff.  But I think there's a lot of Meta related stuff that could expand the Sins experience a great deal

so unless the real "big announcement" will be Sins II using this, I think this was our announcement.  The fact that he goes out of his way to mention "meta related stuff" definitely makes it sound like Tachyon.

My guess is that he's saying that this should improve multiplayer through matchmaking, but honestly, I can't imagine that ICO will be too common by the time this rolls out next year, so I don't know what good matchmaking'll do.  Further, it could be used to enhance the AI and for balance changes which would be great...  If this were 2012...  But we're now in the discontinued support zone, so making adaptive AI is most certainly out of the question.  I honestly have no idea what good this'll do Sins unless there's a sequel coming.

EDIT 2: or I guess he could just be assuming that as loyal Stardock customers we'd inherently like what they're doing which while I'll admit is cool, I'm not going to say it makes me happy.  I mean, sure, good for Stardock for doing this.  It is cool and will be great for balancing strategy games since it can give way more detailed breakdowns on things than Steam can.

I think it's safe to say that Nitrous's debut game will be a space-based RTS of some sort.  Maybe not Sins II, but something probably similar given that they've been trumpeting it as built for epic-scale RTS games and single-planet RTS games don't hit the same unit caps that space-based ones do unless you wanted to do something like simulate all of D-Day or something.

If that's not sins 2, i'll be dissapointed...but really they have a good IP with sins, stick with that...new, good IP's are not easy to make.  The business fits, so, my prediction is that it WILL be sins 2.

I hope so. But I doubt it.

Nitrous is a Stardock product, but Sins 2 is going to have to be made by Ironclad. It's possible Sins 2 could use Nitrous but I wouldn't necessarily count on it. It could well be Stardock's new Star Control game for example that is the first to use it.

Not a snowball's chance in hell.  Ironclad is busy with SoaDA.  Even if they have the inclination to use Nitrous and get the ball rolling successfully, it wont be Nitrous' debut game.  A project like that could be five years out, easy.  There are, per Nitrous' faq, three games already in production, two of which have been announced.

*snaps fingers* That's the name of the game I was trying to remember... a while ago... in that other thread....

Project Tachyon sounds like a good idea, but since it wasn't really announced in this forum, I suspect that it isn't the big announcement Brad hinted at.

He stated "Meta related stuff" which is exactly what Tachyon is for.  It may not be Sins specific, but it fits his teaser.

I've forgotten what thread he originally said it in. Perhaps mentioning us specifically meant something in context?

Reply #31 of this thread (Where will the game be in 6 months?)

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/455436/page/2/#3482805

EDIT: And you know what? Rereading the OP of that thread, he was talking about multiplayer.  So yeah... Tachyon is it.

Hmm that might not be a bad idea, get the kinks in the new engine worked out with star control so that Sins gets the best shot as a new mmo. 

I'm not interested in a star control game, unless they copy most of the basic design elements of sins.

I'm still not really sure how Tachyon helps Sins in any way.  If we're done getting updates, what difference does it make if Stardock starts using new software to help them make informed decisions when updating their games?

Also, it Star Control is just an RPG is space to my knowledge, nothing like the RT4X of Sins or the 4X of GS3.  Also, strategy and MMO don't belong together.  Fundamentally, they rely on contradictory principles.  MMO revolves around player identity that persists no matter what happens.  In a strategy game (at least most RTS and 4X games), you are your empire/zone of influence.  There is no commander other than you, the physical human being sitting at the keyboard.  To merge them together requires defying the primary axiom of one of them.  Now, one could try to argue "but what if you just gave them a homeworld they can't lose."  That doesn't help anything because imagine getting surrounded by someone who had that game's equivalent of late-game Vasari completely surrounding your homeworld.  You can't do anything.  "What if you can respawn your homeworld somewhere else?"  You mean have planets pop into existence between each other at will and arbitrarily?  That just sounds like a terrible idea for a strategy game for long-standing players.

Sins will never be an MMO because MMORTS is a terrible crossover idea.  Sins will never be an esport either because it is too slow.  You need games <2 hours for that and the only way you'll get that in Sins is with very small maps or if someone surrenders (assuming here a new engine that doesn't arbitrarily crash).  The best you can hope for a is a competitive MP scene which will hopefully draw more attention to the game and keep the community more active.  There's tons of players that play it that no one has ever talked to before because they just sit alone and play by themselves.  Only a small minority are forumites or actively on ICO.  If we could bring those dungeon dwellers into the light with Sins II, the community would be much more vibrant.

I mean, in all honesty, the forums as they stand at this point have more or less stagnated to the same two dozen people posting everything.

Nitrous would presumably be useful in any genre where you have to render lots of ships, regardless of genre, and Star Control certainly qualifies here.

And who knows, perhaps they'll use Sins as a testing game for Tachyon?

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/452993

Looks like we fell for it once again.

I was just explaining to Serath that SC won't be anything like Sins or GS3.

They might, but what good would it do anyone?  If they're not updating us and ICO has strategically stagnated, what use is it?  It's like using growth hormone on someone on their death bed thinking they'll grow taller.  It's a stupid and pointless exercise in futility.

I would say volt, that the idea of an mmorts with today's understanding of gaming is not going to work.  A complete innovation on all fronts of what makes an rts and an mmo work, especially by someone with a military/history background can yield something new (well at least I hope).

The company that gets it right first will make billions, the market is primed and ready for it.  Now game companies just need to get their heads out of their collective asses and deliver.

 Nitrous <---- looks like one company is trying.

I've already had this discussion with a friend of mine when we considered trying to make one.  I don't hold my cynical stance that it's a stupid waste of time and money arbitrarily.  We debated it for quite a while.  The only way you could make it work would be by resetting the universe periodically or allowing the universe to periodically spawn new bubbles of conflict.  It's simply not reasonable.

Nitrous is not meant to be an MMORTS engine.  It's a next-gen RTS engine.  I'm sure it'll have multiplayer support and will probably have decent netcode, but that in no way makes it an MMO engine.  If someone magically pulled an MMORTS off, yes, they'd make absurd amounts of money.  But they won't because it's contradictory.

Also, before someone mentions it, I am aware of Novus Aeterna.  In it, you have an invincible homeworld which is problematic for reasons mentioned previously.

Hmm, but then why do i have a concept that is not contradictory and would work?  I'm not saying it's been easy, 6 years of concept work rethinking everything under the sun, yet there is a way to pull it off.  

Yet, I don't have a team so it'll never see the light of day.  That is, unless you were even slightly interested.

you're welcome to PM me about it if you wish.