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Captivating
Story and Extensive Lore
The independent Trader Worlds must unite and form the Trader
Emergency Coalition to defend themselves against the return
of their exiled brethren, "The Advent" and the arrival
of the desperate remnants of the ancient Vasari Empire.
The intention of Sins of a Solar Empire
is to be as much the beginning of an epic science fiction
saga as it is an evolutionary real time strategy game. This
concept is strongly supported by both online and in-game artwork,
sound and music, and a plot that extends well beyond the arc
exposed in this title.
 Choose
from Three Unique Races
Take command of one of three unique races, each with
their own style, story, ships, structures, weapons, technologies,
and strategies.
- The industrious Trader Emergency Coalition
(TEC) strives to advance its antiquated war technology
in order to defend its worlds.
- Exiled for deviancy, The
Advent are a Psitech empowered race bent on retribution
and the acquisition of rare resources.
- The technologically
superior Vasari seek new worlds to repopulate their devastated
numbers and fuel the next phase of their unending exodus.
Explore
the Epic Scale of a Dynamic Galaxy
Explore and conquer neighboring planets and distant solar
systems in a massively scaled, fully 3D galaxy featuring orbiting
planets, clusters of asteroids, rare comets and radiant stars.
The Iron Engine is specially designed with
new technologies that allow it to handle extraordinarily large
differences in size, scale, and distance and does so without
compromising graphical detail or destroying the seamless nature
of the 3D environment.
Conquer
and Colonize Vast Worlds
Fuel an expanding empire with the valuable resources discovered
on planets. Develop each world by building ground-based and
orbital structures including cities and defense platforms.
Each class of planet has a distribution
of appropriate terrain that ranges from ice-fields to molten-rock,
and deserts to oceans. Each type of terrain provides players
with unique bonuses and strategic opportunities.
Interact with planets in diverse ways such
as conquering enemy worlds by peacefully shifting allegiance
or forcefully raining death from orbit.
Planets exert gravity on nearby ships and
structures and orbit about their stars for an evolving battlefield.
Customize
and Improve Powerful Units As battle hardened capital
ships advance in level, their core offensive and defensive
systems are improved and their unique abilities are unlocked.
Try out the devastating Raze Planet, the tactical Clairvoyance,
and the hull ravaging Phase Missile Swarm.
Ability
to Manage
an Empire with Ease
- Learn the game as you play with smart
tool-tips, detailed information cards, and verbal audio
alerts.
- Play with just a mouse or even a console
style controller! (Keyboard hotkeys also available.)
- A simplified 3D camera that allows you
to play in true 3D without ever worrying about getting lost
or dealing with the confusing 3rd dimension.
- An abundance of intelligently triggered
visual and verbal audio alerts will always help you keep
track of your empire's status.
- Use the picture-in-picture HoverCam to
check up on distant areas without losing your current focus.
- Record your matches so you can learn from the enemy.
Take
on Multiple Roles
Transition between the roles of emperor and fleet commander
as you zoom-in seamlessly to direct a crucial battle while
managing the rest of your empire effortlessly on the same
screen.
Extensive
Diplomatic and Economic Strategies
Diplomatic and economic strategists can exercise a variety
of options including forging and breaking alliances, trading
resources, placing bounties on backstabbing ex-allies and
over-powered tyrants, blockading enemy planets, establishing
trade routes, and manipulating the commodities market.
Fully
Adaptive Artificial Intelligence with Advanced Tactics
Test your mettle against fully adaptive, unscripted and non-cheating
AI players who will pull every trick in the book to try and
subdue your empire's advances and surprise you at every turn
with rushes, ambushes, diversionary tactics, and secret alliances.
Intelligent
Units and Reduced Micromanagement
High-level empire strategists have the option to automate
various capital ship combat actions so they can focus on the
larger picture. They can trust that their AI battle commanders
will assign appropriate targets and use the most effective
weapons and abilities to take them out.
Focus on strategy. At all levels of the
game, great strides were taken to minimize micromanagement.
Units were made smarter, user interface options were improved,
game features redesigned, and entire game systems eliminated.
Spectacular
3D Graphics with Unparalleled Sense of Scale
Powered by the Iron Engine, the galaxy will come alive. From
the smallest solo manned fighter to the largest glowing star,
not a single detail has been missed.
- The Iron Engine features new size and
scale technologies that deliver convincingly large stars
and planets next to comparably small orbital structures,
capital ships and fighters with equal levels of rendering
detail at each scale.
- Extensive Bumpmapping flushes out the
depth and detail of almost every surface, including the
plated hulls of ships and the rugged mountains, craters
and coastlines of planets.
- Per-Pixel Specular Lighting from each
star shines and glints off the various metals of each ship
and orbital structure, while the same light forms authentic
day/night cycles on each planet.
- Dynamic Fractal Generation finds a number
of uses but most impressively with the animation and creation
of realistic planetary cloud covers, and the coronas and
molten surfaces of stars.
- Post Process Bloom Filtering infuses
all forms of light and energy with the appropriate amount
of life, glow, and intensity, from stellar phenomena to
weapons fire and more.
Highlights
- Full DirectX 9c support to make
the most of the latest graphics cards but also scales to
support older cards.
- Bumpmapping.
- Per-Pixel Specular Lighting.
- Dynamic Fractal Generation.
- Post Process Bloom Filtering.
- High Resolution Compressed Textures.
- Environment Mapping.
- Full Shader Model 2.0 support.
- Custom Pixel and Vertex Shaders for all
meshes and effects.
- Multiple resolution support.
- Advanced Particle System.
- Self-Illumination.
- Multisampling.
- Antialiasing.
Cinematic
Musical Experience
Experience a wide-range of emotions and variety as the audio
engine dynamically shifts the musical score to suit the game's
ebb and flow.
The story, races and lore are brought to
life with over 3 CD's worth of original music, from themes
of complacent peace to hopeless despair and more.
Immersive
3D Sound Effects
From the deep rumble of planetary bomb detonations to the
Doppler Effect of screaming fighters, hear all the action
in both hardware accelerated and software driven 3D positional
sound.
Intense
Worldwide Multiplayer Action with IroncladOnline
Engage opponents on IroncladOnline, our new Internet matchmaking,
player ranking, and statistic tracking service. (Free subscription
is included.)
Up to 10 players can battle simultaneously
for galactic supremacy.
Multiple
Ways to Express your own Creativity
Ironclad fully endorses the modding of its games for non-profit
purposes. The Iron Engine is completely data-driven, has an
embedded Lua Scripting Engine with console access, and is
supported by the Forge Tool Suite. Modding instructions and
the Forge Tool Suite will be provided.
Fan Artwork and Fiction will be spotlighted
on the game's website with awards and prizes offered in regular
contests.
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