"Playing with one of the Advent Titans, you have an opportunity to mind-control enemy ships, or take over enemy planets simply with your psionic power."

"A level 10 Titan will pretty much wipe the floor with anything that comes across it."

"After almost half a century of war, this is where everyone's at, and it's not a good place."

"A little teaser: They're not leaving planets behind them."

"The TEC Rebels can actually ally with the Pirates, and use Pirate ships."

With its immense, interstellar-scale warfare and integration of 4X empire-building gameplay, 2008's Sins of a Solar Empire is one of the most unique real-time strategy games of the past several years. In 2012 (probably) Sins is coming back strong, with a new stand-alone expansion that adds new ships, new sub-factions, new gameplay modes, and a graphical upgrade among other features. I had a long chat with Stardock Producer Brian Clair about the many tweaks and improvements Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion will bring to our fleets.Yup. It will include all the previous content and more.Well, it depends on which race you play. The TEC Loyalists are very defensive. If you're a gamer who likes to turtle, they're probably the best suited for you. They've been designed with that in mind. The TEC Rebels are very aggressive, so if you're a player who likes to go out, doesn't turtle at all, moves very quickly from one target to the next, they would fit you the best.No, it varies by race. The Vasari Loyalists... I don't want to give too much away, but they're offensive. They've gone back to their original roots, if you will, whereas the Vasari Rebels have decided to go down that diplomatic route. I don't want to say they're more of a peacenik faction, because that's not true of any Vasari, but they want to get along as much as they can.One of the things that defines each faction is their Titan, which is a super capital ship, for lack of a better way to put it. Their Titan is very defensively oriented, in terms of giving defensive buffs to surrounding fleets so they survive longer. The TEC Loyalists' research gives them bonuses when they're in their own territory. Basically, the player is rewarded for slowly progressing and not rampaging, destroying everything in sight.It basically goes down to their factional view and their racial view. The TEC, of all three races, are probably the least technologically developed overall. Their Titans tend to be utilitarian, they're very militaristic-looking, they're not very elegant to look at. But they're powerful, they get the job done, based on whether you're a Rebel or a Loyalist. The Advent are very culture-based, so their Titans have nice curves, not sharp angles, and they use their psionic abilities to the utmost. So for instance, if you were playing with one of the Advent Titans, you have an opportunity to mind-control enemy ships, or take over enemy planets simply with your psionic power. And then there's the typical weapon differences, where the Advent are into beam weapons and the TEC are into autocannons and that sort of more mundane stuff. As a broad overview, that's the high-level difference.Yes.Yes, they do. A little bit differently. A capital ship has three regular abilities, and then its ultimate ability that you can unlock at level six. Titans are pretty much the same way, but they also have a set of unlockable passive abilities that can make certain areas of the ship stronger as compared to one without. You can make your Titan tougher, more offensively powerful, something like that.Well, if it's a low-level Titan, bring a fleet, or try to get your upgraded starbase. If it's a Titan that's already gone up a few levels, you're probably going to want to bring your own Titan to the party.Oooh. Fully upgraded starbase?Right now I would say a fully upgraded starbase would beat a level 1 Titan.It can be. It depends. The Vasari phase missiles are pretty nasty. But the thing to remember is that Titans gain levels like capital ships do. A starbase starts out pretty weak and then gets more powerful as you buy more additions to it, but as a Titan goes up in levels it gets vastly more powerful. A level 1 Titan is pretty nasty, but not against a fully upgraded starbase. A level 10 Titan will pretty much wipe the floor with anything that comes across it.We've gone back and forth on that. We've tried it both ways. Where we're at right now is, players will be able to get the Titans fairly early on. It takes a lot of research to bring one out, and they're very expensive because they're so powerful. But we wanted to be able to give players this pretty hardcore ship sooner rather than later. We're trying to balance it in that way. Early on it's still very, very good, but the longer you can keep it around, level it up and improve it, the nastier it gets.No, not right now, we're not planning on anything different with that, but we are adding three new capital ships.Nothing is being taken out. We're not planning to do any major tweaks to the existing ships, outside of some visual stuff.We're actually working on the corvettes' design still. They're meant to be harassment ships. They're quick, they're meant to be used flexibly against a wide variety of targets. They're there to harass the enemy, not to specifically counter any one type of craft.Yeah, you could say that. They're much larger than a fighter, they have shields and armor and all that good stuff.That's a good question. For a fourth race, we didn't really want to go there until we get around to a Sins 2, whenever that is. There are certain things, storyline elements, that we want to introduce in a full-blown sequel, instead of something like Rebellion, which is kind of an in-between point.For this title, we want to continue along the established lore timeline. It began about 35 years ago when the Vasari arrived in TEC space, and then the Advent showed up 10 years after that. Then we go through the Entrenchment period, the Diplomacy period. After almost half a century of war, this is where everyone's at, and it's not a good place. We wanted to keep going that established route, without introducing something radically different.There won't be a single-player campaign. We are hoping to put some scenarios in, which would be not just stand-alone maps like we've had in the past, but a bit more detailed, with specific objectives to accomplish.Little bit of both. Probably more of an addition to the existing. Instead of adding in a new research tab in the tech tree screen, which we felt that was getting too cluttered, what we've done is we've gone back and integrated new techs into the existing military, civilian, diplomacy trees. Everything flows more organically from the existing content. You're not just trying to sort through a whole 'nother thing. As a side benefit, that's allowed us to integrate the new stuff more, so it makes more logical sense in where you research, what the dependencies are, that sort of thing.Sure. Going back to the Vasari -- I like to play the Vasari myself -- the Vasari Loyalists play very differently from probably any other faction in Rebellion. They almost go and do this Battlestar Galactica-style thing, where they decided they're going to basically pull up stakes and leave. In doing so, they go and decide to fight a war of attrition. A little teaser: They're not leaving planets behind them....maybe?There will be a few. It's mainly a visual thing. Some of it's gameplay. There won't be a huge number of new planet types.Yeah. The Pirate system, we updated that with Trinity earlier last year. We've done some additional tweaks to it this year. Getting back to differences between the factions, one of the key differences that the TEC Rebels get is they can actually ally with the Pirates, and use Pirate ships and not have to pay for them. Not dealing with the existing bounty system or Pirate missions or something like that -- they actually ally with them.