Dawn of the Reapers (Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion mod) v.0.2

Zach Goodier

In honor of n7 Day, I wanted to share a fun public alpha mod for one of my favorite space empire-building real-time strategy games, Sins of a Solar Empire.  You can play as Cerberus, who use strictly Alliance technology, the Council races, who use a mix of Alliance, Turian, and Asari vessels, or the Reapers, who use… well, themselves, mostly.  Each race has their own “rebel” classes that allow some subdivision based on how you want to play that race, usually between offense/defense, or maybe military/civil specialties.

Time to live out some more of my nerdy dreams.

One major difference (aside from the reskins) is the use of kinetic barriers.  Instead of functioning as a “shield,” these deduct a certain percentage (70% seems the norm) from the base damage applied when a ship is hit by enemy fire.  This is an interesting mechanic, but it can seem rather counter to lore, which does have kinetic barriers intended to completely block incoming attacks. 

New load screens are always a nice extra touch.

Many of the vanilla units have been redone, but not all.  I found a few dead research items that did not give me the ships specified (likely because they were vanilla ships not meant to be included in the mod at all), and some items still use vanilla textures because of a lack of lore-friendly replacements at this time.  There is also a lack of abilities for capital ships and titans to spend points on, so those are presently useless to improve your lead ships.  However, it is important to remember that this is still in alpha, and is not yet any sort of final product.

Reaper models don't quite capture that same feeling that they do in the series, but they're still a force to be feared.

Cerberus and Council races are fairly straight-forward, with their own frigates and cruisers taken from the ME universe.  The most interesting race to play as is presently the Reapers.  Both the strength and weakness of the Reapers is their size.  I say this, because other than unarmed Collector ships used as scouts, there are only a few varieties of Reapers to choose from, and all of them are expensive.  Building up fleets with the Reapers is not at all impossible, but once you start using them in combat, you quickly realize that they don’t usually need fleet support due to high survivability and potent firepower.  As a started out fighting local pirates and militia, I quickly realized that a lone Reaper was more than adequate to sweep aside regional resistance groups.  Once you start facing rival empires, then you might have to form a wolf pack to get the job done, but the Reapers trade in quantity for quality, that’s for sure.  Still, I would rather see the Reapers themselves as capital ships, and use the Geth as the frigates/cruisers in the Reaper fleet.

Many structures have been redone to fit the universe.

There is still a ways to go before this mod is ready to be considered a full, complete package, but it’s off to a great start.  I do wish that Cerberus was reserved for the rebel side of an Alliance race, but then I suppose we would want to see every race independent, but I like the idea of the Alliance being separate, since I always liked their ship designs, but never really felt like a Cerberus fan. 

Markings all fit the factions, so even Alliance style ships will have Cerberus markings if that's the faction you're playing as.

In terms of the Reapers, despite what initially appears to be a balance issue on the part of the Reapers, they’re not at all unbeatable.  That may seem like a grievous sin in terms of ME lore, but for the sake of keeping this game fair, it seems to work for now.  There are several areas where I would like to see more of what’s in store, but as it stands, this is a good starting point.  There’s a lot of detail work to do, and those details could make or break this in terms of depth and immersion.  The Normandy doesn’t itself appear as far as I’ve seen, but there is a class modeled after the first version that is fairly weak and feels disappointing.  With the inclusion of ship abilities and additional content, as well as the one ship we all want to command, this can be the Mass Effect game I never knew I wanted.

Good:

-Cerberus, Council, and Reapers all appear faithfully and well-balanced.

-Units look good for the most part, just don't zoom in too close.

-A Mass Effect-themed RTS, ‘nuff said.

Bad:

-Reapers could use some support ships, maybe Geth or something, and keep the Reapers themselves as capital ships/titans.  This one is very debatable so I won’t really take off for it.

-Some dead research items and missing/vanilla unit icons in the menu, and the expected bug here and there.

-No Normandy, there is a class modeled after the first one, but they’re weak corvettes/scouts, and a bitter disappointment to watch get shot out of the sky.

Scully Rating: 7.0 out of 10