Random brain farts on tech, games and gunpla: Sins of a solar empire Entrenchment review

Overall-8/10
Moving starbase ftw

Gameplay-9/10
Pro
-retain all the fun from the original
-adds tons of defense options to spice things up
-entirely different starbase for different race
-crazily addictive
Fugly
-some imbalance needs to be sort out
-still no story campaign??

Visuals-7/10
Pro
-Still looks pretty good after a year
-star base looks majestic
Fugly
-Antialiasing cause massive performance hit
-No major improvement over the predeccesor
-overkill animation on starbase weaponary

The first expansion to the immensely popular 4X space simulation last year finally arrive.Dont let the price and little additional content fool you, those small little additions actually change the gameplay radically.
The first additions is space mines.Deploying space mine on your defending planet can create a disaster for attacking enemies without mine sensors.Mine sensors are bulit into scout frigates making them more useful and crucial then before.However reckless spamming of them still able to overwhelm the sensors and cause a complete wipe of incoming assault forces.So some tweaking and balancing needs to sort out here.
The next major addition which is the star attraction for this expansion is the starbase.They are huge fortification that takes huge amount of resource and time to construct.Even then, its pretty weak unless fully upgraded which takes even longer than the initial construction.However once fully upgraded, its a force to be recon with and without the new structure assault cruisers, taking these behemoth down is almost impossible.Although all of them have general upgrades like weapons and hit points, they have other upgrades that are race specific and needs to be researched before given access to them.With other factors bringing in to the equation, all 3 starbase play out differently for the 3 classes just like supreme commanders experimental unit.Fortunately , without the dreaded up to an hour built time that is...
Research tree have been tweaked and a defense research tree have been created mainly for static defense upgrades which includes the starbase of course.Something that lacks for this awesome game is an enagaging storyline.Guess what is their sad excuss of all the 3 major superpower in the universe wasting all their resources building starbases.Because the war is getting too long and they are playing defensive.OMG thats it?Although its understandable its hard to create a campaign for a 4x game of this scale, but whats promised by its developer 1 year ago during the interview have yet to materialise.And check out their website lore for sins of solar empire, its shorter than those no brainer fighting game from capcom and bandai...
Ultimately this is still a great game and you can see the developers putting in lots of effort.With its low price, it looks more like a DLC than a expansion but it doesnt matter.What does is the game that force you spending hours into the night leaving your girlfriend out in the cold just got more addictive than ever.
Oops...

Its melting...