Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion Preview Interview
Recently we gave our community the opportunity to ask their questions of the developers behind the upcoming space RTS Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion. Today we have the answers back, still hot from the developers and they cover topics ranging from System Requirements, Turrets, Titans, Planets and more!
Q: Will there will be any more planet types and planet effects that affect the gravity well? Maybe a possibility of random events on planets that affect your gameplay?
This will be dependent on time, but right now we’re not looking to make any major changes to the types of planets or gravity wells present. It is interesting though, it’s just a matter of being able to implement it in the way that is best for gameplay. I’m not ruling it out, but it’s something we'll have to revisit.
Q: Will there be new particle effects for weapons with distinct explosions/lasers/etc for each faction like the Distant Stars mod?
Yes, we’re adding in a bunch of race-specific particles to better bring out the differences between the TEC, Advent and Vasari. This includes everything from phase jumps to weapons. We’ll be showing examples of these in some new videos coming out soon.
Q: Will ships/structures finally get working turrets that spin and turn like a normal turret would ala Homeworld 2?
No, it’s hard to justify spending the CPU cycles on a purely cosmetic feature that you’d only see when fully zoomed in. 
Q: Will projectiles finally do damage on contact and shields be more visible?
We are hoping to make some visual improvements to the shield shader, but there won’t be semi-destructible objects.
Q: Will the game feature multicore and 64 bit support?
No, this would require a new game engine and would take way too long. Rebellion is being built on a modified version of the existing Iron Engine.
Q: What about balancing? Spamming a few types of ships seems to be the most popular thing to do in combat, will there be any balance changes towards combat that will address these issues and make battles flow better?
Rebellion will feature quite a lot of balance work to further encourage the idea of composed fleets. One of the things we’re working on now is making changes to strikecraft to make the use of mass bomber swarms less desirable.
Q: Will you be able to destroy planets?
I’m purposefully not going to answer that yet J
Q: Can Titans move from planet to planet?
Absolutely! While slow, titans are fully capable of moving around gravity wells and phase jumping between them. We think this is a really cool feature that fans will get a lot out of – plus, it’s pretty sweet to see these massive behemoths capable of utter destruction coming right at you.
Q: Are there any improvements to starbases in Rebellion?
There are some balance changes to starbases, depending on which race and faction you opt to play. We’ll be going into more detail on that but for now we want to avoid spoilers J
Q: Will the fact that AI give up prematurely be fixed in Rebellion?
We’re working on a number of AI improvements for Rebellion, including on when the AI decides to call it quits.
