I get this mostly in the new patch. The pirates are dead inside the 3 hour mark on a 6-star "there's so many planet clusters I lost count" galaxy I whipped together. But they have all their bases, the one in my home system is too powerful to attack at the moment, even with my fleet fully assembled, I'm going to have to get a starbase in there to have any real shot at taking them out. And thats just the single base I can clearly see. I think I dotted about 8 more around the galaxy.

Their raids seem a little feeble though, the fleet I destroyed to "kill them", consisted of around 100 ships, we all know the usual mix they have too, one Advent progenitor, two halycon carriers, and the only time it got "close" was when my prog dropped to 14% shields.

As for "EVE-like graphics", no thanks, I wouldnt appreciate the lag.

Its late-game, you've got a massive fleet, they have a massive fleet, so do them over there, those there and even that one guy way back there. To keep with the seamless zooming ability to just hop around the universe at will with ya mouse, thats all going to need to stay rendered, which will put a strain on the machine. Even if you have it only in systems that are visible, well, you have 50+ planets, an ally with shared ship and planet vision, large fleets...lag.

Sure some of the graphics need touching up, but be reasonable, gameplay>>>>graphics. Why lag and affect the gameplay, just for the sake of prettiness?

Are you taking into account all the buildings you'd have to change too? What about trade drones and resource ships? You couldnt raise just one aspect to a new visual standard, you'd have to upgrade everything from planets to asteroids to previously mentioned minor ships, buildings and constructors, on top of fleet.

It just doesnt seem feasible without pushing up the system requirements, which is a bit late to do at this stage with a bit over five weeks till the expected release date.

The game has detail and quality options to control how the ships and structures look. The visuals really should be upgraded on all ships. We're paying for a full-fledged sequel here. It's not supposed to be another expansion, yet it plays and looks very much like another expansion. There's no reason why the improved looks can't be implemented without negatively affecting the system requirements at this point. They're already partially implemented as it is. We're not talking about significantly more overhead from having better quality ships and textures available. We're talking about having an artist sit down, do the work, and then the developers put it in the game. The low-level commands to use the upgraded visuals are already in place given how the new capital ships and titans look.

Personally, I would have preferred it if they had replaced all the old ships with newer models and successors.

Maybe in Sins 2 hopefully in the future?

Isn't that what Rebellion is supposed to be? I was rather surprised when I started playing the beta and found that all the same old ships, models, textures, and gameplay mechanics were still around. I had really expected Cobalts and Javelins to be replaced with newer versions, planets with moons, and, well, more changes from Trinity.

From what I'm aware of, it is just a stand-alone expansion. Though people do keep getting themselves worked up into "stand alone? must be sequel!" mode. Now, if Stardock had said "this is the sequel" instead of announcing it as the third expansion, thats stand-alone, I could understand it...but I haven't seen it called the sequel anywhere that isn't consumer sourced (aka us guys, the players, saying it).

But speculation is speculation, and people will always draw their own conclusions. I have for instance, and from the data available to me, not sequel. Dont worry though, I'm sure it wont end up like Half-Life 3 where its just waiting for episode 3 to finish HL3.

What Calloused said.

I don't remember Stardock nor Ironclad saying this was a sequal.

All I heard was stand-alone expansion.

Wasn't Entrenchment and Diplomacy both 20-30 dollars being only micro expansions. For Trinity you get Rebellion for $30 so in comparison you are paying for a bigger expansion for the same price as the micro ones at release.