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
