advertising budget: $0
as to why it doesnt beat starcraft?
Not even the pre-made maps are balanced. No ladder. No ranking system.
If you are comparing it as a multiplayer balanced game to starcraft2 I would agree with the above Pbhead. Though if you are comparing it just in general, the overall scope of the game is a bit bigger and slower paced which from my experience isn't as desirable for the SC2, WC3, C&C etc style of players. Sins helps remedy this for those style of players with the Faster settings and smaller maps but to truly attract that crowd it needs to have truly symmetrical maps (resources etc), a ladder system and a ranking system as you stated. Heck, I'd use the ladder and ranking systems for the slower more epic games that I personally like. We just need to have those things implemented first.