We can fix both of those 'alive' and 'kicking' things.

Happy belated b-day, kosc!

Can somebody explain the line "no plans for a signle-player campaign"???  Does that mean there is only multiplayer play?  If so, you have lost a customer, I have little desire to play against anyone.  I don't do it now.

No single player campaign. You must make up your own in your own mind. I do. Its quite enjoyable.

Ok, I was thinking no single player mode.

I just hope the ai builds titans...it still doesn't build superweapons.

Yep.

Playing the Game more RPG Like is very enjoyable and makes more fun for me than "RushTheEnemyToDeath" Style Games.

I also feel this way....If Sins had a campaign, I would have "cleared" it...and put the game away.

It also still doesn't use level 6 capital ship ultimates, or really use star base abilities at all. Atleast not on "Hard" or lower. I've never seen those things happen on the mode following "hard" as well... do you have to turn the game to the highest difficulty to fully enable the AI or something? The game vs AI would be a LOT more interesting if the AI actually used its best abilities...

My God. There will be MOONS.

*a single tear of joy rolls down cheek* Now I must celebrate with much drinking, dancing, and joyous yelling.

Uh, I think you might be reading too much into it. :P 

YES! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESS!

Stardock you are effing awesome. THANK YOU.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That, and also it needs to be fixed so that planets cannot appear stacked on top of one another.

Could there be a smurf-free online with this ??????????????

Another potential customer expressed a similar sentiment in a thread I posted about the expansion in another gaming forum.  The lack of a single player campaign isn't helping boost the sales.  (What this game really needs for the single player crowd is the ability to have custom-made campaigns that people could download, then let the modders and mappers have at it.)

Here's what I wrote in that other forum:

In terms of game play, what do you hope to get out of a campaign?  Sins really isn't too different in principle from Civilization or Alpha Centauri, neither of which had campaigns. If you want, you could just make your own "campaign" by playing through all of the different maps one-by-one, first as one race, then again and again as the other two.

Derek if they do this as i hope they do there will be no smurfing for you as well

HOLY SHIT YESSSS!!!!!!! NOW WHERE IS THE PREORDER OPTION!!!!!!!

That's why we have online multiplayer--because the AI will never be capable of strategic thought.  It's always going to let you focus fire its capital ships to death or suicide on starbases.  Even if that's improved, it will still make lots of other sily decisions.  When you play against AI, you're playing against an opponent that has one hand tied behind its back.  So, once players can easily whip the AI and crave smarter opponents, it's time to move up to playing against human players (what some call "the real Sins game").

I know, broken record.  But when 99% of all purchasers never contemplated going online or in some cases are completely unaware of the existence of Ironclad Online, it's necessary to get the message out there, especially when many of those people mention that they play Starcraft online but not Sins.

Just yesterday I talked to a guy who said he's been playing for two years and didn't know that there was an Ironclad Online lobby until just the other day.  Early on in his Sins gaming days he clicked the "Multiplayer" button and concluded that the game only had LAN and Connect to IP support.  He never visited these forums much.  He probably figured that the Ironclad Online button was a broken feature or something that wasn't implemented.  Then while browsing the forums he came across one of the replays I posted and investigated further.

Let's suppose they create a "smurf-free" online and then it devolves into high school where some players start getting harrassed by other players?  What if you don't want to hear smack talk about how you cost your team the game that you guys played last week and how badly you suck?  What if you get constantly teased online for some reason?  What if someone is harrassing you?  What if you do something to make a fool out of yourself and you want to start over with a completely new identity?  What if you started the game with a record of 12-88 in your first 100 games but now you feel you're a much better player and want to wipe the slate clean and start over since you feel that your losses in your first 80 games don't reflect your current abilities?

I have a proposal:

Maybe what Ironclad/Stardock should do is allow players to change their names and icons at will while ICO privately keeps track of numerical player records which wouldn't be available to anyone else.  (Players could privately view their own records and see stats for things like lifetime career record, last month record, etc.)  Then they could come up with some sort of an algorithm for determining player skill based on win-loss ratios against human players and the records of opponents.  What players wouldn't be able to smurf about is their "Skill Rating" which would be visible to everyone.  Perhaps there could be 10 types of skill ratings, going from "Cadet" for noobies to "Grand Admiral" for elite players.  Then they could allow game hosts to select minimum and maximum skill allowances for their games.

i play starcraft 2, supreme commander, and some command and conquer games online

there are no smurfing there

DT will fight for smurfing rights always i guess

Sanchez u are forgeting that sins comunity for multi payer counts about 70 pple at the moment maximum.

And while claiming that you always tell people if asked who you are we both know it is not so. Latest example is W____ (just fill lines with smurf of yours). You know what im talking about. Sometimes you are advocating for NO smurfing and sometimes it's OK. 

Yes i know. Peoples mood change and so does their opinion but lately it sems to me you are like pendulum and that is not meant as attack on you or anyone else. 

Fact is SMURFS are problem and ICO should probably count and show all games played on selected account and w/l for it with current name and stats for name as well. But the problem is that we all know how to get 100 wins in 5 min if we want to and even if you are not manipulating your stats it alll depends how skilled were people you played against. So stats dont really mean s*.... 

In sins it's the name that gives you good or bad reputation.

And why would people get bulied over a bad match.

Yes sometimes it gets frustrating but in NO SMURF comunity if you get someone with 5 games played you know what you are getting (90% chance that he's not very skilled)

With smurfing and stats manipulating its like box of chocolate you newer know what you gonna get.

I like Sanchez's idea about keeping track of games and not names of an account. Just the number of games played and not even the win/lose ratio would solve most of the smurfing problem I think. You probably aren't a bad player if you've played 100s or 1000s of games.

No plans for moons. I was just wishing Kosc a happy bday.

Pre-order options will be available tomorrow morning (if not sooner).  We're just getting the discount stuff in place for existing Trinity/Diplomacy folks.

Oooh, this honestly keeps on getting better. Any ballpark idea about the System Requirements yet? Same as Sins or slightly higher?