Rebellion is 75% off on GoG right now!

Many thanks GoaFan77.

Got it! Looks good and seems to run fine on my ageing computer.

Any tips, tricks, or hints for a guy that usually gets his butt kicked in original Sins?

Scartch

Well, going from the original Sins to Rebellion means you also not only get the new stuff from Rebellion, but the earlier Entrenchment and Diplomacy expansions as well.

One of the big problems with the original Sins was that defenses quickly became inadequate in the late game, where large fleets could easily take out a planet even with maxed tactical slots. Entrenchment largely fixes this by adding a new defense tree, with upgrade for existing defenses and a powerful new unit type called a Starbase. These are customizeable space stations that when fully upgraded can be a major pain for even late game fleets to take out, especially when supported by other defenses like repair platforms. Basically, you can now fortify a line against one enemy and be reasonable confident it will hold while your main fleet goes on the offensive in the other direction.

Diplomacy as you might guess adds more diplomatic options. It also adds a new diplomatic related research tree, as well as a new means of building up relations with an ally, the envoy cruiser. The envoy cruiser will slowly increase relations with the player who owns whatever planet it is orbiting, and you can get useful abilities for it to help improve your ally's planets. With higher relationship scores you can use a new feature called "pacts", which lets too players work together on technology to give powerful benefits to both players. There was also a fair amount of miscellaneous improvements in this patch, like a few new artifacts, off the top of my head.

But Rebellion is by far the largest of the three expansions. Major features from their include.

• The three races have been split up into a pair of subfactions, each with its own unique specialized play style, new techs and...
• Their own unique titan, an extremely powerful new unit type which serves as a one of a kind flagship for your fleet.
• A new capitalship for each of the three races.
• A new smaller unit type, the Corvette, which is fast, powerful against long range frigates, siege frigates and titans, and can passively debuff certain attributes of enemy ships it attacks.
• Toggleable victory modes!
• New maps!

I believe the GoG version also comes with the two smaller DLC for Rebellion, which adds.

• A bunch of new planet types and bonuses (Forbidden Worlds).
• Planet Specialization into social or industrial worlds (Forbidden Worlds).
• New Stars and other uncolonizeable planet types (Stellar Phenomena)
• Random Events (Stellar Phenomena)

I know that's more about what is new for you versus tips, but knowing it exists is always the first step.

Many thanks GoaFan77, always a big help.

Presently playing with standard races as in original Sins. Will try "Rebel" factions once I get to feel comfortable with all the improvements.

I do think the diplomatic functions are a great improvement.

Question, if I may:

Along with the GOG download came an item called a "bin file". Its about 1.38 gigs.

Any idea what this might be?

Can't seem to access it.

Thanks

Scartch

Good choice, getting Rebellion. I am sure you wont regret it.

BTW the Loyalist factions are not quite the "standard" races from original Sins. They are as much different from the vanilla factions as the Rebel subfactions. Neither is vastly different though, its more like refinement or addition, rather than complete overhaul, so you should not worry about getting overwhelmed by the new stuff, regardless of playing as Loyalists or Rebels.

Not sure which of the factions in original game you liked the most (for whatever reason), but be sure to give a try to Vasari Loyalists in Rebellion. They have an ability to function completely without planets, as a fully mobile empire - its really unique and interesting twist to the gameplay. To me personally, the awesomeness of this faction by itself was good enough reason to buy Rebellion, but ofc the others have their own perks and are lot of fun to play too.

I believe the GOG download is split into two parts. The installer is a small download, and the bin contains all the game data that will be used by the installer. If you've successfully installed and can play the game, then you've done everything correctly.

I have the GOG version, myself. If you feel like you need a little more help, we can meet up online and play a 2v2 against the AI's and I can give you some pointers. My time zone is GMT -8 (Pacific time) and I am available most evenings. Currently the Steam and GOG versions are incompatible for multiplayer, but that should hopefully get fixed soon.

Thanks very much for your generous offer.

Actually I never played online. Be a new experience for me.

Lets hope they get the online portion working.

I'm on the east coast so there would have to be some time juggling.

Also not sure if it would work with my server. I'm rural, so I have to use a satellite server. Bandwidth is pretty limited. Which is the reason that I had to get Rebellion from GOG. Steam doesn't work for me.

Anyway I'd sure like to try it if the stars lineup.

The good news is, that they are laying in optical cable some miles down the road from me. Hope they make it all the way to my house.

As far as game play goes, I seem to be doing a little better with Rebellion then original Sins. Sure is a lot to it.

Cheers

Scartch

You're probably getting better