Sins of a Solar Empire - Diplomacy!

[TheExcimer-500]

The last micro-expansion of Sins is now available for $9.99. Though it is being called a "pre-order", what you purchase is the program in its BETA development and obtain upgrades until complete.

I've only taken a brief look and it provides a new tech tree, new ships and a new diplomacy screen with details on how the other AI feel about you. Seems interesting...

[Shadow Weaver]

I am sooo picking up this pre-order.  I can't wait to give Diplomacy a shot.  It is the one black smudge on Sins, to be honest.

[Prophet]

You get in on the BETA? Oh that's cool. I was gonna wait until its release but now I think I'm gonna buy the pre-order.

I can't wait to give Diplomacy a shot.  It is the one black smudge on Sins, to be honest.

Agree with you 100%. I have been dying for them to upgrade the diplomatic part of the game, ever since I played my first Sins map.

Finally. No more locked teams.

[GrendelsBathMat]

Are all the new ships and content diplomacy related? i.e. interacting with AIs to forge alliances etc.?

To tell the truth, I saw the February due date and haven't looked at this much recently. If there's a full beta available with the "pre-order" I should take a look. Especially if there's stuff like frigates full of roses and candy hearts that say "Be Mine"  Sweet talkin' the AIs for the win!

[TheExcimer-500]

A brief report - though there are probably better ones at their website.
As a beta and not an alpha I'm a bit concerned:
1) Diplomacy ships barely add anything to the game at this point.
    a. they are poor spies/scouts since they do not move "automatically" like the scouts can.
    b. once an opponent researches the ability to attack these ships they become useless.
    c. their special ability to incite riots/affect allegiance is useless at this point -
        i. one ship reduces one allegiance point for a very short time after which the point returns before you can even recharge.
        ii. perhaps with a combination of media/Diplomacy ships this can offer an alternate means... but for now - much quicker to destroy.

2) Diplomacy techs are few and don't add that much to the game.
    a. new trade pacts allow either research, metal, crystal to be enhanced by the alliance.
    b. takes away options we already had until these are researched 

As of now I've played maybe 5 hours on Diplomacy and have yet to even form any pact with an AI. Previously, I'd have multiple peace treaties and at least one full ally by this time.

Pros:
1) shows in detail just why a species hates/likes you -
    a. awkward screen that doesn't coexist with the treaty/mission screen
    b. also shows in detail the relations of any species towards others

2) Allows you to offer missions to other species - hence you can make any species act like "pirates".

In the end it will add in RP situations to the game, and if we're lucky they'll fix up the messy beta state soon - especially if they're really planning on a Feb. release.




Hopefully they'll resolve a lot of this before their Feb. release as I can't imagine too many players being "happy" about it.

[TheExcimer-500]

hmm...
http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/371250

Beta 2 is out... I guess they did listen.    

Guess you can expect more news from me this week!

Beta 2 Changes -

    * Embassies are no more.
    * Roadblocks to some of the basics have been removed. By default, you can now communicate with all races and form the original Sins treaties without research (Cease Fire, Peace Treaty, Trade Alliance, Planet Vision and Ship Vision).
    * Envoy Cruisers have been significantly improved:
          o Envoy's are no longer passively invulnerable. Instead they have a Diplomatic Immunity ability which will grant them invulnerability for 30 seconds with a cooldown of 120 seconds.
          o Envoy's will now (passively) improve your faction's relations when placed in the gravity well of an opposing faction. A cease fire treaty is recommended.
          o The cost of envoy's has been reduced to account for the fact that players will need more of them.
          o Each Envoy currently has between 1-2 unique abilities that can be unlocked through Diplomacy research. These are not final and each race will eventually have 3 unique abilities for their envoy cruiser. These abilities will grant some kind of bonus in exchange for improved relations (use the ability in a gravity well of whichever faction you'd like to influence). You will need to use your envoy's relationship buffs in order to reach the higher level Pacts (discussed below).
          o Envoy's are now tougher to increase their survivability.
    * Diplomacy Tech Tree:
          o These are now largely complete for each race, though some items still remain to be added.
          o Each race now has the ability to form Pacts with another player. These can be difficult to achieve, but grant big bonuses to both parties once formed. (Key point here)
          o Each race has Pacts unique to their various racial skills.
          o In order to maintain a Pact, both sides must maintain a certain relationship level (see the InfoCard in the tech tree). If this level drops below the minimum, the Pact will be lost. It can be potentially regained by improving relations again.
          o Pact bonuses do not stack (i.e., if Player A has a Research Pact with Players B and C [all Advent], Player A will only get the bonus from one Pact, not both).
          o Advanced Envoy abilities are now researchable from the tech tree. As noted above, these aren't yet complete/final.
    * More relationship modifiers have been added.
    * A Manage Pacts screen has been added to the Diplomacy section. This is going to get a bit more polish to be less confusing.
    * Players can now Reject the Missions offered to them. This will refund the reward back to the faction that issued the Mission and may result in a negative relations penalty between the parties.
    * Envoys are no longer selected when bandboxing.
    * Various AI improvements and other bug fixes. Much more AI work remains to be done.

While Pirate improvements are in this build, the ability to offer Missions to the Pirates is not yet present. This will be in the next beta update along with the various related tech research.

[TheExcimer-500]

Ok.. loaded it up and took a gander at the tech for diplomacy screen...

UM... WOW!

---edit: played for about two hours ... damn... if it does what the research claims it does this is going to be freaking awesome. What a difference!

You can now use the "diplomacy" ships to enhance each others empires - they can play a pivotal role now rather than being useless. They basically erased everything from Beta1 and just started from scratch with beta2... OK. worth $10 now!

--Edit: played another 3 hours... finally got to the stage where I'm about to send a fleet of envoy ships to attempt a peace treaty with an AI that just doesn't stop attacking... Accompanying the "peace envoy" will be an appropriately sized um... "defense" force, just in case negotiations fail.

From the "looks" of things it seems more profitable now to make peaceful gestures and treaties than it is to just clobber your opponents. There's uber benefits involved.

One CON: seems a lot slower now even with a small fleet.

[TheExcimer-500]

Very brief update:
I'm gonna need a lot more diplomacy ships...
Fantastic: the notion that we can send in an envoy of peacemakers into enemy territory and protect them whilst they attempt to negotiate a mutually beneficial treaty. Here my envoy (and protectors) remained in a system set to only defend if their vessels attacked, minute by minute my adversary was being swayed... Perhaps eventually we can reach an accord, then form a trading alliance.... who knows?

Ok - two thumbs up for the beta2 diplomacy update! Hurry up and download this one!

[TheExcimer-500]

Well... my diplomatic mission has failed. My adversary sent a very large task force... well several waves of very large task forces and eventually my peaceful fleet had to withdraw. In the end military actions in defending ourselves outweighed whatever discussions our ambassadors held. I suppose sending flaming chunks of debris and countless bodies of their military into the atmosphere of their planet may tend to spoil such a mission. I think they're really pissed at me now...

--A minor update is available to Beta2 that apparently fixed the crashing issue I had while using these new ships. --

[GrendelsBathMat]

Sounds promising, but also like there's a lot of tweaking needed still. I wonder if they're going to make the Feb final launch date.

I'm thinking about holding off getting this until the next beta release. By the way are the beta updates full installs or just patch updates?

[TheExcimer-500]

FYI: Update for all Sins versions is available & Diplomacy v1 (non-beta is available)

[Prophet]

FYI, I got Diplomacy. Finally, my #1 gripe has been answered! I can see what my enemies think of each other. Hooray!

As a side note, I convinced my bro to get Diplomacy as well. Maybe one day in the distant future we can wrangle him into one of our games.

[TheExcimer-500]

Great!

Wait until you come against the pirates!

They're "overpowered" now. In my current ongoing game I'm allied with every AI, and have a darn strong fleet. However, it's nothing against the pirate homeworld. Heck, with my allies we've sent a untied fleet against them...and ran away, twice. Their current base has over 300 ships! I suppose I'm to blame slightly for giving them lots of bounty throughout the game. 

[GrendelsBathMat]

I read on a game news site that they've already patched the release with some extra game balance tweaks.

I haven't picked this up yet. I've run into an issue with my Impulse app: browsing the store is impossible because the catalogue doesn't render correctly i.e. the game list pane is blank. Has anyone else run into this? It may be related to my new Win7 install, although it worked fine before on my beta copy. Strange. I'd like to get this fixed up before I pick up Diplomacy and I'll keep looking into it...

[TheExcimer-500]

I had to change the internet explorer's trust zones to allow it to work...
http://store.stardock.com
http://www.stardock.com

There were probably some other safety settings that need to be checked, but start there & hope that does it.

[GrendelsBathMat]

It looks like the Internet Security settings were the issue. Changing them back to the defaults in the Control Panel did the trick and fixed the Impulse client's store. I must have tweaked them when I decided not to use Internet Explorer not realizing that it could futz up other apps - who'd-a-thunk-it? Oh well, hitting the reset to defaults was all that was needed, I didn't even have to set the Trusted Sites exceptions as mentioned above.

In any event, everything's working now and I did grab the Diplomacy expansion. I haven't played with it much, just enough to see that it works and enjoy the new Imperial Logos 

[TheExcimer-500]

Cool... I made it trusted so that I could keep the ramped up security for everything else.
Beware of the new pirates...they're not a joke - I still haven't been able to take down their damn base - and that's with two other allies sending in fleets as well! - Heck even their simple attacks have me scrambling my fleet to counter!

[GrendelsBathMat]

I've been playing a SoaSE Diplomacy game single player to get a feel for it. Not really grokking it much so far, although I noticed that my "ally" npc turned on me a bit quicker in this version than I'd expected, probably due to my flubbed use of the new Dip rules, ships, etc.

If SD can't make it this weekend (4/17) for our NWN game (I think I missed this conversation - was it pre-game?) I'd be up for playing a Dip game.