Last week Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion entered its final round of beta, introduced the Vasari as a playable race, and gave gamers another early look at the development of this promising 4x space-strategy game. As Rebellion gears up for a retail release in just a few weeks, we talked with Producer Chris Bray about the challenges of Rebellion's development, and how much the community has helped define what makes a Sins of a Solar Empire game.: We're lucky in that the Sins community is absolutely AMAZING about providing helpful feedback, bug reports, etc. It's so good you almost forget you're on the internet. One thing we've gotten plenty of feedback on are the new corvette units. They started off cheap to produce, but not very effective. We've updated them over the course of the beta to pack a better punch, but also to carry a bit more cost to balance things out. We're continuing to keep an eye on when and how players are using them over the course of a game.: The Vasari Rebel and Loyalist factions were just introduced in Beta 3, so we've definitely uncovered some balance issues with a few of their abilities. One of the new capabilities of the Vasari Rebels allows them to phase jump their starbases between planets. This gives their starbases excellent strategic flexibility, but is admittedly a bit over-powered in competitive multiplayer. It's something we're definitely addressing.: It's entirely dependent on the type of player you are. When we do betas we don't set out to make glorified demos. Our goal is to get player feedback and make the final game that ships an incredible experience. That said, we've been thrilled to get feedback from fans and previews on how polished even early versions the beta experience have been.: We've done a ton of balancing to make sure that their huge scale of firepower plays well with the varied strategies that Sins is known for. Some have changed more than others. The Vasari Loyalist Titan specifically has undergone a number of changes in it's base abilities to support the 'nomadic' play style that the faction is capable of. We've added the ability for it to spawn structures that enhance the fleet's mobility and allow forces to be replenished without colonizing worlds.: As a bit of a space junkie, it would have been great to add more variations to the display of star systems when fully zoomed out. That said, I think it was an easy call to spend that time upgrading the lighting and special effects that show off during the 'meat and potatoes' fleet v. fleet battle segments of Sins gameplay.: We love seeing such a strong interest in the genre! I wouldn't say there is any one thing they've inspired us to do, but competition always pushes us to do our best work. It's also a bit flattering when they call us out as the title to beat ;): Thanks for your time.: I love me some Sins and am really looking forward to Rebellion's release. Have you been playing in the betas recently? What is your favorite race to play as? Or are you planning to try out one of Sins competitors instead?