With the beta of Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion approaching, it’s time to start talking a bit about its features.  That is, what’s new in it?

This is, by  no means, a complete list:

Six new factions

In Sins of a Solar Empire, there were 3 races – TEC, Advent, Vasari.  Hopefully by now you know something about the grand histories of each of these mighty races.

In Rebellion, as the name implies, things have kind of gone to hell. 

The start of the game is very much like Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity. You are picking one of the three races.  But during the course of the game, the player has to make some tough choices. As the civil war escalates, players can choose to become a Loyalist or a Rebel. In doing so, a whole range of new technologies open up.

I can say that these aren’t cosmetic things either. The Vasari Rebels, for example, go a very different direction than the Vasari Loyalists.

The Tech Trees

As briefly discussed above, these new factions come with their own tech trees which let players take on some very new strategies that should be quite interesting to see play out.

The Titans

The civil war can become pretty brutal as each loyalist and rebel faction now has access to its own Titan class ship. Titans are big, powerful, and rare.

The new ships

In addition, there are some new battleships with some interesting abilities coming into play. Similarly, there are new corvette class ships coming into the game.

New music

Yes, Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion has a new sound track (along with new effects).

New Multiplayer system

While Sins of a Solar Empire will continue to have a spectacular single player experience (the AI has gotten a lot of attention), the multiplayer experience has gotten a lot of attention. We’ll be talking a lot more about this in the comin gweeks.

New Graphics system

Sins of a Solar Empire’s graphics have always been on of its strengths. But Rebellion takes it to a new level. One of the things that really brings a sense of scale to the new ships is the new shadowing system.  There’s nothing quite so humbling than to see a Dreadnought become shadowed by a passing Titan.

New Modding System

A new Galaxy Forge has been developed along with a new Particle Forge. These have been heavily used to update the in game maps and really spice up the existing effects.

Optimization

While not as “sexy” as the other things on this list,  a lot of time has gone into optimizing the memory and CPU use of the Iron Engine.  Some of this was done so that the AI could be enhanced further without slowing down the game.

So this is just a glimpse of what’s going on with Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion.