Entrenchment Expansion Preview!

Neoseeker swung by the fine offices of Ironclad the other day had a chat, to see what we could see about Entrenchment.

Haha, I'll be editing up a link in a sec. Awesome article kspiess, this is amazingly excellent news, I'm incredibly jealous that you got to visit the head offices of Ironclad! Sins of a Solar Empire was amazing, no one seems to be talking about it except on their site it seems though. XD

First off, it's great to see the starbases entering the fray. Ironclad created a thing of beauty with Sins, but the sort of lack of really major orbital emplacements was a bit of a surprise. Especially since no matter how many times you totally loaded up your tact slots all that was needed to make it a waste of time was 20 siege ships flying a suicide run and making a jump once they were done. It's also really good to be able to create something of this sort of power to actually move around yourself -- while moving your capital planet and ships always had some reverberations around the empire and with culture, this looks like it will create a real effect everywhere to a massive degree.

Mines look sort of interesting, good to see that scouts will get an improved role in this. I sort of hope that with the rise of scouts, mines and starbases that those bloody siege suicide runs are downplayed with the expansion (not that they are hard to repulse or handle, they just make me angst).

... and yus on diplomatic stuff coming down the road, sounds GREAT! These guys did wonderful work with battles, I really want to see where they take diplomacy -- it's something that's often underpowered or oversimplified in games and I'd love to see this sort of thing come to the Sins universe.

More upgrades = massive fun, especially in the big games. =D

Can't wait to hear where the story goes. The Vasari have this awesome mysterious back story I want to see built on, and I sorta wanna see what happened to the Advent during those years as outcasts. =D

Thanks for the article, guys!

After having a chance to talk to the brothers Fraser about the Sins story and how the diplomacy expansion is going to dig into it, I'm really looking forward to it myself.

We actually had a spectacularly vague conversation about the story of Sins, some of the things that inspired it, different approaches to storytelling and the like. I don't have any details (the Advent Starbase thing was their only slip-up) but the concepts being tossed around really lend themselves to the epic scope of the game. It's 13 years of conflict before Entrenchment arrives after all.

Cheers,
Adrian

This really will be truly awesome to see, and so cheap as well. When they released the game I was really disappointed with a lack of a campaign but looks like that'll be fixed, which is great. The starbases really will be awesome to check out as well. I know I'm going to have fun with those since I'm typically one to expand everywhere I can and fortify myself massively afterwards. Also it'll make having a forward base a jump away from a sun so useful.

One thing I didn't get is the mention of a heavy construction ship. What's with that? I noticed them mentioning that they can be used around gas giants, so that peeked my interest!

Chances are it's a standalone construction ship we can build and send to places to build things. It's probably slow and very vulnerable considering what it sounds like it can build.

Those three people are Craig, Blair and Josie of the Ironclad team, who have the hats they got sent to them by the Space Ponies.

Looking good, Might pick this game up. I'm into RTS an all, as well as space. So its a win win.

Yeah, battles in Sins are awesome. If anyone ever watched Babylon 5, they are sort of reminiscent of that except on a much larger scale and much cooler, imo.