Rush, Boom, Turtle: Sins of a Sins Developer

Blair Fraser confesses that Sins of a Solar Empire could have been a very different game.
3/10/2009 7:51 PM | 1 Comments | Page 2 of 8

Chick: Also, to counter the star bases, each side gets a new -- what are you calling them? Anti-base cruisers?

Fraser: Assault cruisers, but the forums seem to be favoring "anti-structure."

Chick: Everybody gets one of these? Is that correct?

Fraser: The Vasari don't. They're a bit asymmetric in their design. Actually, all the sides are asymmetric. The Vasari don't get a special unit, though. It's tied into some special upgrades in their star base, and the fact that it's mobile. So they can use their star base to clear out structures. The Advent get the Adjudicator, which is more about clearing out large clusters of defense guns. It's a pattern we saw in the first version of Sins, so they can engage five or six targets at once, and take them all down at the same time.

Chick: The Adjudicators can do this?

Fraser: Oh yeah.

Chick: I've seen them drop the plasma balls that line up on a target, but those can track multiple targets?

Fraser: Yes. Anywhere from five to 10, depending on your upgrade levels.

Chick: Ah, so that's why they're great against clusters of weapon emplacements?

Fraser: Exactly. We saw that a lot of people were entrenching that way in the original Sins. We wanted to have a counter to that, so clearing out a gravity well didn't take half an hour.

Chick: And the TEC, they get a cruiser?

Fraser: The Ogrov. Basically, it's a mobile ICBM launcher. It's probably got the single largest damage per shot. But it's only really useful against structures.

Chick: So you've got already in Sins of a Solar Empire an intricate system of balance and counterbalance. What is it like when you guys first sit down to do something like Entrenchment? Does it feel like breaking it and rebuilding it, or is it more a matter of adding a new dimension onto the side?

Fraser: It's probably a bit of both. We have this huge whiteboard that I'm staring at now. We constantly have lines erased and little boxes, and we're rejiggering the entire Tetris field of how it all works. It's probably gotten too complicated for its own good, but that's the path we're stuck on for right now. We do have to break it and piece it back together, and add in a new dimension. You'll notice, if you're into modding, we added some new damage types and armor types in order to try to clean it up. Certainly, the modders really appreciate it, and anyone who looks at it in more detail will see it is cleaner.

Chick: One of the new dimensions you added is the interplay between mines and scout ships. That seems like a no-brainer in terms of adding new space stuff. Was that one of the early decisions for Entrenchment?

Fraser: That was the most popular request -- minefields -- and probably the most complicated thing to do. We started off with the basic proximity mines the TEC get. They're basically built like structures. The problem was, how do you counter these things? Originally, we wanted them invisible, and then that turned out to be an absolute nightmare. It was just a micro-fest, trying to detect them and make sure your ships are in the right place and moving correctly and predicting where they were. You had to manage all that. So we changed them to being phased-out, so you know where they are but you can't shoot them. And also we were, like, "Wow, the scouts are really obsolete toward the end of the game, so we can add this new functionality to them, and it makes sense with the lore -- so they can detect mines." Then we started looking at how we could differentiate the mines for the other two races. We knew the Vasari are always very mobile and can get around easily, so we allow them to place mines anywhere they want in the entire galaxy. And we gave them another type since they're the masters of gravity manipulation; so they get gravity mines. Then, for Advent, we always wanted to give them a new fighter type. So we allowed them to build fighter mines from their carriers. They all work completely differently. If you were there for the first beta, it was an absolute nightmare trying to make it all work. It took us three or four iterations with a lot of people bitching. We're happy with the results, but it was a nightmare.