Sins of a Solar Empire is a game by Stardock that I had not heard much about that came out a few years ago originally. My own personal take on it is that it's kind of like a combination of Civilization and Starcraft. It's a spacegame where you colonize planets and create fleets of ships to take over your enemies. Or you could use diplomacy to win, but where's the fun in that! Generally the other civilizations won't be very friendly anyway.
You've got things like tech trees, where you can research in Empire (things like optimizing your planets, trade and income, etc.), Warfare (self explanitory), and Manipulation (allowing you to trade with players and intimidate or improve your relationship with other civilizations).
Fleet logistics allows you to increase the size of your fleet step by step. There are two separate trees, one for Capital ships, and one for general fleet supply. All ships use a certain amount of fleet supply; scouts cost only 3 or so, smaller frigates around 6-8, cruisers (a little powerful than frigates but still fairly small) somewhere around 14, and Capital ships (the big guns) each cost 50 fleet supply. There's credits (money), as well as crystal and metal (think gas and minerals in Starcraft). Almost everything in the game costs a combination of these. Planets usually come with a few asteroids of either metal or crystal or a combination, and you have an income of a certain amount per second in all three. Increased fleet supply uses a percentage of this as well. The more you increase your maximum supply, the greater the percentage becomes, you you have to keep an eye on how you run everything. I try to keep it small at first and use my income to research upgrades so that my ships are the best they can be before creating a huge fleet.
An added, random element to the game is pirates. You could perhaps compare them to the barbarians of Civilization, as they are a neutral force that hates everyone. However, unlike the barbarians they do not merely roam.
No, the pirates can be bought. Every 15 minutes or so they leave for one player on a raid from their base. You can put a bounty on other players to give them a hard time and yourself an edge, or just to keep the brunt off of yourself if you've got a bounty as well. It's a nasty trick to use if you're intending to attack someone, thereby splitting their efforts as they're forced to defend themselves from two forces. You can take the pirates out of the game completely by destroying their base, but that's not easy. Every time there is a raid, a new group of pirates is generated to go on the raid, and they return to their base if they are not destroyed. This means that the base gets fuller and fuller as the game goes on until it is a terrifying force to overcome. You can just deal with them as well however, as it isn't a requirement to get rid of them to win, merely a convenience.
It's a bit like a game of hot potato when you're initially exploring the star system. When will you find the pirate base? That's a lot of pirates, and that's only the start! Not good! I know one scout who's not coming home, may he rest in peace.
One of the other cool features of the game is how detailed visually it is, and the scope. Just using your mouse wheel you can zoom in or out.
From looking at the separate solar systems at a distance..
To seeing each planet of a single star system at a glance...
To viewing one planet and it's structures..
You can even see the planet and it's structures up close and cinematic.
Here's what a small fleet looks like at a distance inside one planet's gravity well. At a distance they are displayed as orange (or whatever colour you've chosen for your empire) symbols of representation as they are too small still to see clearly otherwise.
Zooming a little further in, you can see the frigates themselves.
And here's a frigate (the smallest, remember?) up close and personal. It looks like it's big enough still to be holding quite a crew however!
That's pretty radical wouldn't you say? Remember, we started here!
So there's a lot going on, a lot of different views you can take. Generally you don't spend a lot of time zoomed all the way in to look at your ships, unless you're in a really good battle and want to watch the other ships pop. I apologize I didn't get a good screenshot of that... my enemies were shy this particular game, but perhaps I'll remedy that in the future!
It feels good to win! (That's my friend's star system, completely taken over while I was still trying to fish out my sheepish star-mates!)
