GameSpy has just published an interview with Stardock’s staff about Rebellion, the new, and highly anticipated Sins of a Solar Empire stand-alone expansion pack. I condensed in this post what were, in my opinion, the juicier parts of the interview. I also added a few personal notes and bits of further information. You can read the entire interview here.
In the interview Stardock clarified that Rebellion will include all the previous titles content, so, all the features included in the Diplomacy or Entrenchment expansions (or in the Trinity pack) will be in Rebellion.
Stardock also provided some details about the 3 new Rebellion (sub)factions. As we already knew each one of the three original races gets split into Loyalists and Rebels. “The TEC Loyalists are very defensive (…) the TEC Rebels are very aggressive”. Stardock also added that each faction gets its own Titan class ship and confirmed that “there are going to be six distinct Titans (…) each has its own abilities and stats”.
Stardock also clarified that regarding more ships offered (from the original Sins’ games) apart from the new 6 different types of Titan class ships there will also be new corvette and capital class ships.
Then GameSpy staff asked the gold question (always have been a Sins debate over this topic). “Are you planning to introduce any kind of single-player campaign?”. Stardock confirmed that “there won’t be a single-player campaign.” although “we are hoping to put some scenarios in, which would be not just stand-alone maps like we’ve had in the past, but a bit more detailed, with specific objectives to accomplish”. So, at least it seems that we are gonna get a few more mission depth with these new promised scenarios.
Now, about the tech trees, and any possible major revamping Stardock clarified that there will be changes that make Rebellion feel a bit more unique regarding research but “probably more of an addition to the existing”. Stardock explained further that the new Rebellion techs were integrated into the existing tech trees (military, civilian and diplomacy).
About the pirate system (a very cool Sins feature btw), GameSpy asked about changes on that. Stardock confirmed that they’ve done some additional tweaks to the pirate system this year. They also added that there will be key differences “the TEC Rebels (…) can actually ally with the Pirates, and use Pirate ships and not have to pay for them”. Now that’s a funny twist.
Stardock then announced that there will be a research victory now. “You have to have researched X number of technologies Then, once you do that (…) a special research condition is unlocked which is really expensive and takes quite a lot of time to research, but if you can do that ahead of anyone else you’ll win”.
About the looks and sounds Stardock said that the UI is not getting significant changes. The only one worth mentioning by Stardock was that each race will have its own UI now. Regarding overall graphical improvements Stardock promised many changes on that aspect. They also added more music and a new intro movie.
About possible AI improvements Stardock replied that “there’s a bunch” of AI areas that were worked on. They add that they have updated the pathfinding for ships so that they don’t try to go over or under one another” or ending up getting stucked. They also stated that they’ve updated the AI to be more effective against exploits like ” massed missile swarms or massed bomber attacks”.
Questioned by release date Stardock replied “As cliche as it sounds: when it’s done“. There was anticipation for a Rebellion release still in 2011, with all the pre-orders and beta announcements. But after a while no more news were heard about that. There are rumors (and only that) in the Sins’ forums that Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion will (probably) be released this spring 2012.
It’s worth mentioning that Ironclad Games is helping Stardock on Rebellion’s development (or vice versa, can’t really tell). Thanks to Gamespy for putting up this nice interview. It really was informative and very well structured.
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