Stellars vs. Sins of a Solar Empire vs. Anything else

[Cowski]

I'm eyeballing Stellaris as a "replacement" game to my Sins of a Solar Empire. Honestly I'm looking for a space "trading" game with only PvE gameplay. Not sure if that even exists.

How does Stellaris compare up to Sins of a Solar Empire (SoaSE)? What makes it different [better?] from SoaSE? Is there any other game out there like this? I've played Galactic Civilization III as well.

Hopefully I haven't angered or upset anyone posting this in here. Just looking for a new game to play along these lines.

Thanks!

 

[lwarmonger]

I'm eyeballing Stellaris as a "replacement" game to my Sins of a Solar Empire. Honestly I'm looking for a space "trading" game with only PvE gameplay. Not sure if that even exists.

How does Stellaris compare up to Sins of a Solar Empire (SoaSE)? What makes it different [better?] from SoaSE? Is there any other game out there like this? I've played Galactic Civilization III as well.

Hopefully I haven't angered or upset anyone posting this in here. Just looking for a new game to play along these lines.

Thanks!

Not really sure I could compare the two. They really are two completely different games... they both happen in space? And involve fighting between space ships? That is about where the similarities end.

If you want your focus to be trade or the economy, I would recommend something like Offworld Trading Company, or something similar. If you want control over one spaceship where you trade goods between planets, something like freelancer or elite:dangerous might be more your thing.

Stellaris is really about galactic dominance in a 4x game. Sins is on a smaller scale and real time, but a very combat focused RTS, like most RTSs (in my opinion, better executed then Stellaris is as of now... but Stellaris is much more interesting and has more potential I think).

Edit: Offworld Trading Company is an economic sim, not a trading sim, but a well executed and fun one. Worth a try.

 

[Ramiel]

SoaSE is a very tactical, combat-oriented game, where exact movements and micromanagement of ships in combat is important. Essentially it's a RTS with some planet/nation-building elements. Stellaris is much more of a 'grand picture', definitely closer to 4X's like GalCiv (though I've only played II, not III). Only control you have on combat in Stellaris is ship design, fleet composition, ship movements outside of combat, and the emergency retreat button. Combat plays more-or-less automatically with no user control.

Aside from combat - well, Stellaris is made and marketed as a '4X/Grand Strategy fusion'. Which means the primary focus of gameplay is on empire management - exploration, expansion, economy, planetary development, research, politics, diplomacy (weakest part of the game right now), warfare, etc. etc. Aside from tactical combat most everything is far more in depth and complex than in SoaSE. Stellaris is also on a larger scale than most 4X - smallest galaxy size is 250 star systems I believe, I usually play on the largest size of 1000. Do note also the game is getting a massive, half-year awaited update in about 36 hours that will completely rework the in-game economy and planetary mechanics. (And will likely need a month or so to squash most of the bugs, but that's just par for the course)

Not really sure what to go into - I don't want to just info dump all the mechanics and systems. Not quite sure what you mean by a "trading" game, something like ANNO?

 

[Sinister2202]

I'm eyeballing Stellaris as a "replacement" game to my Sins of a Solar Empire. Honestly I'm looking for a space "trading" game with only PvE gameplay. Not sure if that even exists.

Not sure I understand the term space trading game. If you literally mean trading, where you haul freights and buy low/sell high in a living economy, which is also PvE, I recommend X3 or X4 (which was just released). X series also involve in empire-building, where you build your own stations and compete in the universe. At its core, it is a space sim, not strategy.

How does Stellaris compare up to Sins of a Solar Empire (SoaSE)? What makes it different [better?] from SoaSE? Is there any other game out there like this? I've played Galactic Civilization III as well.

Sins of a Solar Empire is an RTS game. It also involves a lot of micromanagement of controlling individual ships and directing it to attack etc, while building up your economy and buildings as you would in any other RTS games.

Stellaris is a different genre and there's no "better" or "worse". It is however different in the sense that you are playing it at a greater sense of scale than Sins. Map can contain as much as 1,000 star systems. A single game can also last twice or three times longer than a usual round of Sins. There are no objectives, but there are victory goals which you can pursue as an option. That does not end the game however. It is ultimately a sandbox.

Greater scale as in no direct combat, and you are managing an empire, where Sins feel like you are managing a faction. Sins is also much faster paced because of its own smaller scale.

Colony and economy management is not available in Sins, because of its own scale as a space strategy combat / territory building concepts. Your sole goal is supremacy in Sins which almost always is gained through combat. In Stellaris, that doesn't have to be. You don't have to aggressively expand as that's not your sole purpose. You can decide it to be, though. You also delve into what the game calls "ethics" and that plays a huge role in what your empire's characteristic is to be, and how your people and your colonies operate.

You can also create and customize your own empire. Name it whatever you want. There are many mods out there to further expand your customization horizons.

There are so many more but others would point them out.

 

[stumason]

As an owner of almost all Space 4x's ever released (including Sins, Gal Civ 1,2 and 3, Distant Worlds etc), Stellaris is hands down my favourite game. It's not, however, a "trading game" but a "grand strategy".

The scale in the vanilla version is much bigger than Sins or Gal Civ, plus the empires are much more varied and customizable, wheres Sins comes with just a few pre-made ones. Honestly, you can't go wrong with stellaris and with the new patch dropping tomorrow, it's going to get better.

Then there's all the mods... so many good mods which only make a good game even better.

Yeah, I'm a fanboy, but there's a good reason for that.

 

[WhapXI]

Stellaris is far larger in scope. A game of Stellaris will almost definitely take multiple days to complete. Sins of a Solar Empire games feel more like "matches" in comparison.

For something more like Sins, maybe check out Endless Space 2?

 

[Foefaller]

Stellaris is far larger in scope. A game of Stellaris will almost definitely take multiple days to complete. Sins of a Solar Empire games feel more like "matches" in comparison.

For something more like Sins, maybe check out Endless Space 2?

ES2 is simultaneous turned based though, not real time like Sins or Stellaris.

It would be my recommendation is someone wanted a more 4X focused take on Stellaria though. Especially if "You can (techically) beat your warlike neighbor by crashing the galactic economy and attacking when they can no longer afford their fleet upkeep," Being a thing excites you.

 

[Ezumiyr]

Honestly Stellaris is a good pick if you're looking for a slower game with more emphasis on empire management. Stellaris is a 4X though, even if it features some RTS elements and feelings (much more than Grand Strategy anyway). If you want a more peaceful game it's probably what you're looking for. However I'd wait til 2.2 is properly working before trying it. Currently it seems that the AI doesn't use the galactic market for instance, which is a problem if you want to enjoy the trading game.

f you want your focus to be trade or the economy, I would recommend something like Offworld Trading Company, or something similar.

OTC is a fast-paced RTS with an economic theme.
When someone tell me they want to play a PVE trading game I assume they want a slower paced game with more strategy involved, which is not what OTC is, since you're in a constant state of war (even if it's an economic war). It's not an economic simulator either. It's really an RTS where you need to act fast, manage your ressources and micro.
It's also more multiplayer-focused. While this is a good game I feel like it's not what OP is looking for.

 

[Bouchart]

You might want to take a look at Aurora 4x, but the learning curve is absurd.

http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

 

[Black_Shade]

Stellaris and Sins are both good but also not similar games. Sins is an RTS, while Stellaris is a much slower paced game. Stellaris also not all that focused on trading, it's about empire building.

If you want a pure space trade simulation, the best game by far is X3:AP (https://store.steampowered.com/app/201310/X3_Albion_Prelude/). There's a lot of combat if you want that (think elite dangerous style space combat), but it's entirely possible to play the game without really firing more than a few shots and focus purely on building a trade empire of truly epic proportions. By the end you can have thousands of ships tasked with various things like trading or keeping factories running, you can easily drop 500-1000 hours into a single playthrough. There's something fun about starting out in a single ship completely broke and ending up the richest person in the universe. The game has a steep learning curve but it's great once you get into it... it has a 92% approval rating for a reason. If you're looking for a space trading game... this is it. You're not going to find better.

There's a new game in the series, X4 Foundations, but it just launched this week and needs about a year of patching to get up to the quality level set by X3. X4 is actually surprisingly functional for an egosoft release and doesn't suffer from many show stopping bugs, but the game is pretty bare bones right now and needs some content updates.

 

[Juromaro]

Well I like Stellaris more than Sins in terms of gameplay and mod options. I like Sins more in terms of overall faction backstories. Both have great ship designs, Stellaris has better maps, but Sins has better map creation in terms of being able to add planet groups to stars vs entire galaxy. Both game bog down for me after about 10 hours of play, Sins bogged due to amount of trade/mining ships going back an forth between hundreds of thousands of planet groups, Stellaris bogs for me once the galaxy reaches 1000+ pops with the animated pictures and the AI fleets stacking hundreds of corvettes between their 40 fleets.

Overall I'd choose Stellaris over anything else simply for the mods and empire creation.