First, congrats to Ironclad and Stardock for the huge success Sins seems to be!

Seems they are making a lot of people happy, but the more I read on this forum the more I get convinced that Stardock’s strategy on this one involves risks and that it is short-changing me.

I am looking for a game with Galcivs complexity, but Sins graphics, interface and tactical battles. In theory that could be pulled of by making most of the complexity optional, streamlining the interface to make it very accessible and adding the option to change game pace and pause in-game. In praxis it probably won’t happen, because the more optional complexity Sins get, the more of a competition it becomes to GalCiv.

This danger is already apparent: Some people looking for space strategy and not a click fest without wanting maximal complexity might previously have bought GalCiv. Now I’d say the majority of those "casual" space strategy players will probably go with the graphics and buy Sins instead, leaving GalCivs only with the die-hard-gimme-more-options crowd. And with every new option Sins gets in the updates, more potential GalCivs buyers will desert it and turn to Sins.

Stardock is thus between a rock and a hard place: Of course it wants Sins to be a success and it would have the knowledge how to increase its popularity with hardcore strategy players, but of course it also wants its own franchise GalCiv to survive and thus it has a vested interest to dumb down Sins.

So for me at least that means I get two good games instead of one great one. Makes sense from the developers point of view, since – if I buy both – they get more money, but it doesn’t make sense for me.