Question: How does Stellaris compare to Sins (SOSE)?

[Red Forman]

What are the pros & cons or strengths & weaknesses of Sins of Solar Empire vs Stellaris?
I enjoyed my time playing Sins, especially with some of the mods.
I'm looking for some honest (objective) responses, so I know if its worth purchasing now, or if it'd be better to wait until they have a 'gold' edition that includes all DLCs in the future.

[Arakus]

You can't really compare them as they are totally different games!

[Sitch]

you can compare any game and both of them are the same style and 4x games. Sins is really fantastic watch some lets play of it. it is something like 8 years old but still holds up well and has a lot of great mods.

[Japanese shaman girl]

SinS is 4x. That's about it with all the similarities.

[chefcook90]

I'd say Sins has much better space combat and steadier pacing. It also has a LOT more options for designing maps.

Stellaris really doesn't have anything akin to the capital ship "hero units" that Sins has, nor does it have zany superweapons like the novalith cannons or Titans (I consider those giant beastly flagships to be superweapons).

Also the space pirates in Stellaris just sort of fizzle out - you'll get a "birth of space piracy" event where 3 weakling pirate corvettes spawn - kill them and there won't be any more space pirates for the rest of the game.

Unlike sins, stellaris has no trade routes or trade stations or any kind of trade economy to speak of)


On the pro-side, Stellaris has better everything else in terms of depth, quantity, and shear scale.
And I mean pretty much everything you can think of - exploration, planet development, population management, tech development, policymaking & government forms, diplomacy, customization, diversity of alien races, story, etc

Stellaris has a very in-depth exploration phase with research ships that perform planetary surveys and study anomolies. There's also weird space-born aliens that you can study like giant flying space amoebas and sentient energy clouds. You can also ♥♥♥♥ around with younger races that haven't developed space travel yet.

Here's what I mean about the difference in sheer scale.
Stellaris:
- galactic scale, with hundreds of solar systems
- Scores of alien empires in each game - infinite possible combinations of racial traits, ethics, and government types (fully customizable).
- 20+ AI personality types

Sins
- stellar scale, a few solar systems with (possibly) hundreds of planets (I have no idea how 500 planets around a single star makes sense though)
- only up to 10 players per map and 3 preset races to choose from.
- 4 AI personality types

I could list more differences, but this is already starting to turn into a tl;dr wall of text

[NixBoxDone]

Sins:

Very much combat oriented. You get distinct races with distinct pros and cons, which mostly duke it out. You either win big and go home or lose and get thrown into the dust bin of the galaxy.

The battles and strategy are - for me - more fun than those in Stellaris (at least outside of events), because you have a much bigger impact on what happens.

The same goes for technology, as you have a clearly defined skill tree that offers technologies you need when you need them, which comes with the drawback that you tend to fall into a cookiecutter mold. You will find yourself going for the same general research track over and over again, only slightly changed by outside influence, simply because it WORKS and you know it.



Stellaris:

Much more exploration and simulation oriented. With races that are customizable to a fantastic degree, you can make every game different. What you find and which technologies you manage to luck into unlocking has a very large impact on what you end up doing for a big chunk of the game.

While these events ALSO happen to become known to you (prompting you to pick answers based on remembered rewards, rather than roleplaying or out of interest), there are so many of them that it will take you a good chunk of time until the game stops throwing new stuff at you. Since the game is also in developement still, new events get added by both developers and modders, offering the possibility of refreshing this feature as you play as well.

Battle is relatively meh, as a big part of your fleet composition is dictated by what technology you managed to unlock (no shields? That's gonna hurt you if the enemy specialises in melting armor, tough luck!), and the actual fighting part is done by your AI admiral, you as the player just decide where the battle takes place.

That said, the developers made sure to include quite a few end game events that spawn strong independent enemies, shaking the galactic power balance up a bit and giving you something exotic to murder for loot when you are otherwise stalemated.

The game is more about finding interesting stuff, playing with a radically different race and seeing how well you do, rather than that race for the finishing line.

At least for me, Stellaris rounds usually last much longer than games in Sins, because when the AI has the advantage in Sins, it just crushes you without any fanfare, while Stellaris gives you the opportunity to exist as a minor power for quite some time if you manage your empire right.


I prever to play Sins for blowing stuff up in a couple of hours, but for playing a sweet space sim I go with Stellaris. Currently playing an android faction settling exclusively on ring worlds, trying to see if I can expand despite of that or get relegated to a small box in space and crushed.

[Japanese shaman girl]

That's accurate.

Stellaris streches less gameplay over a larger map.
Also, while both AIs are bad I consider Sins' superior for some reason. Mainly because of the cheats it's using.

[NixBoxDone]

Originally posted by El Psy Congroo:

That's accurate.

Stellaris streches less gameplay over a larger map.
Also, while both AIs are bad I consider Sins' superior for some reason. Mainly because of the cheats it's using.

I think that comes from the AI ruthlessly pressing the advantage in Sins.

Often enough in Stellaris I have a bigger empire nearby and they're just happy to let me derp around and annex systems - in Sins, they'd have made me their ♥♥♥♥♥ in a heart beat, lol.

[Leyline]

Sins is a Real Time Strategy game, hiding behind a very thin layer of 4x elements.

The gamepaly is fundamentally different.
You need to go and take map control, gather ressoruces and build a good rts fleet to stomp the opfor.
Your capital ships and titan act as Heroes: they level up and can cast ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ superpowers.

(marza dread fleet delete button.... XD).



Stellaris is more like a civ game. But better. XD


In any case: you shoudl ow nSins + all dlc's ,for the mods alone.
There is Armada 3, the best star trek RTS you will play, ever.
And Thrawns revenge, Star wars Mod.
Also Halo Mod. And Many more.



Btw the Advent have large space Girls they put into iron maiden coffins so they can go and evangelize others to extinction.

The Terran Rebels have built a large gun and put smaller guns on it while some poor bastards stands oputside and has to shove the thign forwards...


Terran Loyalists have built a large space Castle ship that will make your fleet nigh immorotal.


Vasari Eat fleets and planets and have space beholders that can move to murder things.




Not playing sins is a sin.

[Japanese shaman girl]

Sins AI after Unfair (It's vicious I believe) just cheats so much that you need to come up with a somewhat decent strategy if you don't want to exploit the bad AI's pathfinding system.

Sins team games that reach a later stage are really interesting strategywise. Unfortunately the balancing is a double edged sword.

[:WTF: Grendel]

Having played Sins well before Steam released... I can say as mentioned above Sins is more combat driven for a 4xSpace game. Sure, you get a well planned research tree, you can bolster your economy through trade and gathering resources and such. But overall, it's all about combat because diplomacy in Sins was always kinda lackluster. You can easily play one AI against the other through diplomacy or through hiring pirate raids. The combat is kinda cat & mouse with the AI in Sins... lots of playing tag-your-it lol, I so often used a strategy to lure their main fleet away with a sizable force as bait while my main fleet flanked to smash the AI's.

As for Stellaris... diplomacy plays a much larger role and managing resources is more in-depth I think. The overall combat system I wish had more flexibility, but overall seems decent. It's really a numbers/tech game when facing another enemy fleet for Stellaris.

I think PonySlaystation (nice name btw lol) explained it best overall... both are great games and both required completely different play styles. In Sins... you can turtle up and explode outward with force... in Stellaris, you can really set yourself back by staying small... because the AI simply won't wait around and if they sense you're weak and smell blood in the water, they come knocking lol

[Red Forman]

Thanks all for the comments!
So from to sum up what I've learned from the comments, it sounds that if you're all about the combat and maps, then SINS is your game. However, if you value planet development, exploration, tech, diplomacy (politics), etc... then Stellaris has more depth and scope.
Sounds like I'll be investing in Stellaris the next time it goes on sale. Thanks :)

[Khsar]

There is one huge bonus to Stellaris. It has steam workshop, and I looked at Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion (their newest game judging by that its more expensive than trinity) and no workshop. Means limited mod support.

Stellaris has epic mods. I got one mod (thats system intensive for weak PCs), that adds civilian ships that travel around like civilian ships in Distant Worlds. That one mod makes the game for me. Granted in DW, the civilian ships have a purpose and the mod its just for looks. Still just as good to me.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=741194923

Best mod for Stellaris :D

There is tons of other awesome mods too.

And its almost guaranteed, a moddable game heavily extends the games life and play time...which equals far greater worth the money to buy the game :) I still play Skyrim after all these years, because the mods make it great. And that game has been out for ages.

[Khsar]

Also, like EU4 and CK2. They'll keep releasing DLC and updating the game for Stellaris. Which adds even more content, playtime and fun :) Granted they'll be paid for...but still will add a lot of content to the game and playtime.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by chefcook90:

On the pro-side, Stellaris has better everything else in terms of depth, quantity, and shear scale.
And I mean pretty much everything you can think of - exploration, planet development, population management, tech development, policymaking & government forms, diplomacy, customization, diversity of alien races, story, etc

Eh.

I don't think the exploration is any better in Stellaris. Sins has more meaningful things to find, you don't have to micro it as much and there's no flavorful popups, but there's a lot of really good stuff to find and exploring quickly is much more important.

Customization/diversity. Not really. Stellaris has a ton of portaits, but that's about as far as the diversity goes, and customization is very limited. Sins has 3 very distinct races with very different gameplay, and several meaningful choices to make while advancing that makes even playing the same race over and over worthwhile.

Diplomacy, not even remotely. I honestly feel like Sins diplomacy is the best in the 4x genre. It might be very dialog light, but it makes a lot of sense, is very interactive, gives meaningful bonuses to both sides, and you have a lot of control over your allies. Stellaris is just the same generic diplo options found in so many other 4x games.

The one crippling flaw of Sins that prevents it from being way up there on the best 4x lists IMO is the way it uses memory and the fact that it's 32bit. It's very easy to crash the game or have a save become unplayable, especially with mods. Even a map with like 100 nodes becomes unstable late game IIRC. If it was 64bit and you could push maps to like 300-500+ nodes it would be so amazing. As is though you have to play the game like a brawler on small tight maps, which is still fun, but that's not how I like my 4x.

[chefcook90]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by chefcook90:

On the pro-side, Stellaris has better everything else in terms of depth, quantity, and shear scale.
And I mean pretty much everything you can think of - exploration, planet development, population management, tech development, policymaking & government forms, diplomacy, customization, diversity of alien races, story, etc

Eh.

I don't think the exploration is any better in Stellaris. Sins has more meaningful things to find, you don't have to micro it as much and there's no flavorful popups, but there's a lot of really good stuff to find and exploring quickly is much more important.

Customization/diversity. Not really. Stellaris has a ton of portaits, but that's about as far as the diversity goes, and customization is very limited. Sins has 3 very distinct races with very different gameplay, and several meaningful choices to make while advancing that makes even playing the same race over and over worthwhile.

Diplomacy, not even remotely. I honestly feel like Sins diplomacy is the best in the 4x genre. It might be very dialog light, but it makes a lot of sense, is very interactive, gives meaningful bonuses to both sides, and you have a lot of control over your allies. Stellaris is just the same generic diplo options found in so many other 4x games.

I'm... not entirely sure how to respond to that.
We are still talking about the same two games, right? Sins of a Solar Empire, and Paradox Interactive's Stellaris?

It's been a while since I played Sins, but I don't remember ever encountering anything stranger than space pirates and neutral colonies. Or were they neutral space pirate colonies?
Whatever it was, it wasn't meaningful enough to leave much of an impression :P

And what are these meaningful choices you're talking about?
I'm pretty sure the 3 sins factions (6 if you're playing Rebellion) each have static tech trees that lack mutually exclusive techs, so there aren't really any hard choices to make there - like the other posters stated aboove, you're likely to find a tech order that works and just stick with it.

I guess if you want to try out different Capital ships and Capital ship builds, that's something to do in the early game , but by the late game you're going to end up with at least one of each anyways.

From the way you're describing Stellaris... it almost sounds like you're talking about the game back when it was first released in early May, before any of the patches and hotfixes were introduced to fix the glaring 'obvious-beta' issues.
I hear it was pretty awful in terms of bugs and missing content- almost like a 4x equivilent of No Man's Sky.

When was the last time you played Stellaris? They added a lot of content, including a lot more diplomacy options.They also overhauled traits, ethics and government policies, to the point that there's no way you can claim that the current build lacks customization options and radically different play styles.