Sins of a Solar Empire II - Paths to Power DLC Pack and Major v1.4 Update Now Available
New DLC pack for acclaimed strategy title features 10+ scenario maps with objective-based gameplay and Free v1.4 update introduces Population Mechanic

Players will have their strategic knowledge and skill tested like never before as Sins of a Solar Empire II has officially released its first paid DLC, “Paths to Power,” today. This DLC debuts 10 new scenario maps that will test players with unique, objective-based challenge missions each with their own victory conditions. Whether you are defending your home planet from relentless invaders as the Pranast United faction, or assimilating the human population of the galaxy as the Advent; Paths to Power will push even the most seasoned of Sins players.

“With Paths to Power, we set out to create wholly unique gameplay scenarios where players will create strategies they’ve never used before in Sins II,” said Brian Clair, Executive Producer at Stardock. “In addition to this great new DLC pack, we get to bring a free new update to all players with Update v1.4 featuring the return of Population, as well as new units and planet types!”

Conversion
The Unity must grow if it’s to continue the wars against the despised TEC and obnoxious Vasari. The Advent have suffered many losses of late and fresh blood is needed. It’s time to assimilate the populations of the galaxy to the Unity’s cause using new culture and population gameplay mechanics.

Seek & Destroy
The Vasari Exodus are attempting to summon the feared ‘mad’ Vorastra titan from deep space as a means to destroy their enemies once and for all. Played from the perspective of either the Vasari Exodus or the TEC, you must capture special Phase Resonators and hold them against your foe. Which side will you fight for?

Clash of the Titans
The Aluxian Resurgence is proving to be a major thorn for the greater powers of the region. You must eliminate their homeworld using only a titan that’s been equipped with the ability to summon reinforcements. Be careful - you don’t have a homeworld to fall back to!

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/3195270/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire_II__Paths_to_Power/

This update re-introduces the Population mechanic from the original Sins of a Solar Empire. This time in Sins II, the culture of your Empire will determine your population’s allegiance; giving players bonus resources or debuffs based on the loyalty of their citizens!

View the full changelog here
Population Mechanics: Population is a new mechanic for Sins II and is heavily lore-based. Culture now affects the populations of the galaxy, creating diverging allegiances. The player who dominates culture on a planet will gain bonuses to resource and research generation; while other cultures present debuff those bonuses.

New Units: Three new units have been added in the v1.40 update to help fill gaps in battle rosters:

• TEC Stilat Missile Corvette
  
• Vasari Heavy Fighter Strikecraft
  
• Vasari Junsurak Warden Frigate

New Planet Types: Three new gravity wells have been added in this update: Ice Moon, Volcanic Moon and Barren Planet.

Huge Rebalance: This update contains a massive rebalance of the game on everything from research costs, to unit durability and more.

Having been a part of the Sins of a Solar Empire franchise for more than 15 years, I’ve often been asked how we make decisions on new features or DLC. Why did we choose to do Paths of Power versus something else? After all, there’s no shortage of ideas and requests from players, and we have our own things we’d like to implement as well. This is a question that all developers, especially those with smaller teams, grapple with and there’s no single answer. Let’s look into how the Sins team came to our answer.



The first thing we had to determine was where we want Sins II to be in 2.5 years. What features did we want to implement? What features were players asking for? We brainstormed on this quite a bit and came up with an initial wish list of ideas. (I know some of you are saying, “Post it!” right now. I would… but we’ll probably use them in the future, so you’ll have to wait.) So now that we have a list, how practical is it to actually make?

Here we introduce the Dark side of the equation - business. There are a couple of major questions that we need to answer next: First, how much time and investment do we estimate each DLC idea will require to make? Do we think an idea will be of enough interest to players that they’ll want to buy it (so we can recover our expenses)? This part is always a bit of a gamble because you can only make your best guess as to what fans will think is worth their money. Success will help keep the team employed and propel work on the next update; failure can have equally dire results.

In the case of Sins II, we decided on ideas that we felt players would enjoy (because it’s stuff you’ve all been telling us you want), while at the same time spreading out the risk a bit. This is the DLC lineup we’ve announced:

• Paths to Power - a collection of mission-based scenarios with custom conditions.
  
• Reinforcements - a collection of six new units (1 per faction).
  
• Times of War - a story-driven campaign mode.
  
• Harbinger - a new, playable faction.

Looking at this, the last 3 appear to be slam dunks - they’re all things that players have been telling us they want. They’re also all progressively more expensive to make and thus have increasing levels of business risk! So, why Paths to Power? Nobody was asking us to explicitly make custom scenarios, though many had asked for more victory conditions, random events, etc. The answer is simple: the campaign expansion, the victory conditions, random events, and more all required an underlying system of automations, triggers and scripting that did not yet exist. By front loading the foundation of our future DLC and features, we were able to spread out the engineering time and cost, thus reducing our risk over time.

The vast majority of what we’re planning to add for free to Sins II this year will only be possible thanks to the humble, Paths to Power DLC. This also greatly empowers modders who have long desired the ability to add custom gameplay elements and even campaigns.