In an extensive interview with Gamespot, a developer involved with Sins of a Solar Empire explained the gameplay mechanics, ambitions, storyline and development of the PC strategy game.
Brian Fraser, developer with Ironclad Games, depicted the title as an epic and massive-scale, slower-paced, real-time strategy game inspired by Master of Orion and Homeworld, among other predecessors.
Imagine conquering multiple star systems, each filled with giant planets, by commanding massive fleets of warships and establishing a sprawling interstellar trade empire. Picture being able to zoom in on a single fighter in one of your fleets and then seamlessly zooming out to see the entire fleet, its position around a planet, the whole solar system containing that planet, and then an entire galaxy full of many such solar systems. To put it in perspective, a fighter’s length is 25 million times smaller than the distance between two solar systems.
The game has been pushed back to a February 2008 release, but it has been several years since enthusiasts saw anything similar, e.g. Homeworld 2.
In comparison, the planned title aims to allow the player a much wider reign, tactically and strategically – sort of akin to Supreme Commander in outer space.
A distinct feature worth noting was also brought up by Fraser during the course of the interview:
One of the most frustrating things in any free-for-all multiplayer game is when it is clear there is a dominant powerhouse, but you can’t convince anyone to help you take it down and reestablish the balance of power. In response to that, we’ve come up with the bounty system. Players can direct credits to increase a pool of bounty against another player. If you destroy any of that player’s structures or ships, you earn credits out of the pool proportional to the value of the thing you destroyed.
