Alas, I've never been one to use flashy sigs/avatars. I follow KISS fairly diligently

Admittedly I have yet to play the game, I only heard about it a week ago (I just preordered the box for the goodies so no token-beta for me), but the more I read the more impressed I am. Some of the things which are drawing me to the game:

- I love scifi RTS, but haven't found any in recent years that could compare with Homeworld. Supcom came close, it had the scale, but it lacked the giant ships in space element (and didn't have very appealing unit design in my eyes). So hearing that the devs were big fans of HW is exciting news.

- I have always wanted to get into 4x games, but the slow pace and extreme game times have been daunting. By mixing in some RTS and good AI it seems like Sins is reintroducing the massive empire management concepts in a more easily approachable package. The scalability of the game size is a huge plus too, I cannot think of many other games where you could switch between just a few or dozens (hundreds?) of resources/planets like Sins is allowing us.

- I love games with some lore behind them, which makes the strange single player campaign-less style a little saddening, but it seems like you guys have thought the story through and have future plans for Sins. All this helps me empathize with my faction better and generally have more fun wiping out my enemies.

- Nothing is worse than when a seemingly great game is stuck being mediocre due to poor interface or controls, but that does not appear to be the case here. The empire tree and easy zoom seems genius. When I first read that you guys considered minimaps and outdated concept I was almost turned off right then (thinking it was going to be way too weird to play), but after reading more and watching some videos I can see what you mean. Now I can't wait to try it.

- Also the amount of polish I keep reading about impresses me. In going over all the videos and screenshots I can get my hands on (really wish you guys had a unit guide on the website with individual ship pics/history) one thing that has irked me was how similar all planets of a given type looked. Yet just today I read about how there are new textures in the final release to keep them looking varied. The little things like this really help show some thought was given to all aspects of the game.

- And Sins also seems to address many issues other RTS have lacked in multiplayer concepts. The ability to save games and return later is huge. Having the AI take over for dropped players is appreciated too. I am a little uncertain about some build concepts, in other RTS games it was nice to stick a structure or two in your allies' zones in case you got wiped out yet that does not seem possible here, but that is a minor issue in the scale of Sins (if you are down to 1 planet I guess you are toast anyway). The recent announcement of changes to how fleet size is determined has me curious as the planet based fleet size made sense, but you guys really seem to be on the ball so I am sure the change is something well designed.

To be blunt there is not much about the game which doesn't impress me at this point. You say that come release the unit sounds are being fixed up and a few of the ships are more detailed which address my only initial drawbacks.

I guess am not totally sold on the missile frigate designs for either the TEC or Vasari, both just look kind of out of place (the angled hull of the TEC one looks more Advent to me, and the Vasari ship just looks so frail compared to the chitinous look of their other ships). But that is soooo minor an issue that I had to dig to come up with something at this point.

I can't wait for the 4th. I really wish I had found out about the game sooner and made it into beta back when feedback was needed (I love to give input in betas), but at least this way I won't be burned out by launch.

Hmm... I thought I addressed it in the second post with the comment:

5. Interactive environment

I guess that is why no one has mentioned it. This is a major key point not to be underplayed despite the random number. It is a major selling point. One which I have been using when promoting this game to others directly or on-line. Essentially I let people know you guys are here everyday interacting with the community getting "down and dirty" so to speak and have been since the project started.

In every other forum I belong to the devs are "protected" like rare animals and almost never post and all interaction takes place in private hand picked groups and forums. 99% of the general community are just there for fodder purposes. I feel like lemming on most of the forums.

Ask me this after I`ve played it...

Now that my upgrade is complete (Quad core, 2 gig 800 mhz ram, 8800GT SC - yay!) I am prepared.

well................ i have both supreme commander games and i have a feeling that sins will be 10X better than supreme commander because it is a larger scale game with more small scale battles and more large scale battles with bigger and better equipment and even though the maps in supreme commander are huge the maps in sins will be at least 20X bigger

Gorgeous space sim (sim as in: it tries to simulate how it would look if you were there).
I'd go as far as to dub it as homeworld successor (graphics wise).

Sins, unlike many games these days, is original, it doesn't feel like you played it before like more conventional games. Still it doesn't achieve originality through complexity which makes it a game playable by pretty much anyone without feeling dumbed down.

There are some problems with the game, at least in the beta: it's a bit slow (anti-twitchers will like it though) in the beginning and finishing off an opponent takes a loooong time - unless he concedes - defeat.

Those issues will likely keep it from being a game of the year (lol), but i have no doubts it will be a success for it's market (RTS/4x)

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Mainly, IMO if i had to sell sins to someone (with only the beta) it's biggest selling point would be the graphics. I cannot really praise the gameplay without fighting a real AI because no matter how many possibilities the game opens up, if there's no challenge, it's no fun - online multiplayer will always feel a lot more towards RTS than 4X and i think it achieves to be an RTS with a depth like none before it (at least like none i've seen/played)