Don't think I would still be playing if campaign was included........

I prefer games that have both a campaign and skirmish.

I think that it was a good idea for Ironclad to not have a campaign for Sins launch, but I am glad that the expansion will have one. I think that in this way players focused on the Mulyiplayer and could play the game without having objectives that would restrict them. In my opinion, Sins feels like a game that needs a campaign. Each race has so much lore and backstory that I think Ironclad would have cheated us if they didn't make a campaign for it (besides it would suck never knowing who is after the Vasari).

There is a semi old game (it came out around 2003 or 4ish) called Universal Combat, and it didn't have a campaign. I HATE that game. You got to pick a class, Commander, Fighter Pilot, Marine, a few others and a race then the game set you up on a planet or in your star ship and you then had free reign. No direction what so ever. The manual said you could make up your own story, but all I got out of commanding a star ship was blowing up enemy ships. I dont even know why they were my enemies! I got boarded by hostiles every time a ship appeared on my radar for a second even when I was in warp. The whole point of my rant was that the game didn't have an actual campaign, you pretty much had to create it yourself and it sucked.

Now on to Galactic Civilizations 2, I LOVE this game and I've never played its' campaign mode. Gal Civ doesn't need a campaign for you to love it (that may be because it is like the Civilizations series, empire builder). Lets say you start out in the center of a Huge Galaxy map with 8 other civilizations, you could decide that your empire is going to be evil with the idea that it is the center of the galaxy and you want to expand and conquer the other races. Wha La! Your personal story is set and it will be different every time you play, but it doesn't get boring.

Another game I like is Supreme Commander, it has both campaign and skirmish. Once I finish the campaigns I will probably play a freak load of skirmish maps with AIs and kinda make up a story as I go along.

Some games need a campaign and some games shouldn't have one, other's are perfect with both. I am glad Sins is getting one, but for now I'll make up my own story.

I was disapointed and quite surprised that Sins didnt have a campaign.

The build up in the manual from the race descriptions and the start of game movie, leads one to want some story, and there wasnt any.

Having said that, I intensely dislike campaigns that have specific objectives and only 1 way of achieving them, and this changes every mission. Homeworld(s) was a classic example, where each mission is very different (good), but each mission has only 1 real way of achieving it through specific strategy or having a specific mix of ships (bad). I'm really bad at figuring these things out, and much prefer mission objectives where many strategies will achieve the objective (like ST Armada 2). I also intensely dislike the missions where you need to fail them 5 times (or 20) before you can figure out what has to be done when from hindsite. Homeworld was just like that, I only progressed each mission through hindsite information, and I hate that !

I've binned a good many games over time because I was unable to complete the campaigns, sometimes unable to even with a walkthrough. The games that survive for me long term are the ones where missions are strategic, not tactical, in nature, and those that also have mission generators, although I usually quickly bore with these types as well. (Still too early with Sims to get bored with it yet, but its got a limited time frame and the clock is ticking, just because it hasnt got a decent campaign.)

I don't know how I feel about it.

I don't really play campaigns - I didn't play any of the StarCraft or Warcraft Campaigns. I went straight for the multiplayer.

And yet, in SINS, I really wanted some kind of... organization. Not just map after map of random battles.

The storyline/mythos is interesting and I'd love to see the story.


Alright, I guess I do have to say that after all this, it was better for ME not to have a restrictive campaign.

I fear that if there was a campaign available initially, I would have just skipped it. Now that I'm enamoured with the MP, I really DO want to play a campaign!

You may have a point, Wbino . People might not try random maps. But then again, they might.

I think the real value of a campaign is so that new players can learn the game in a controlled environment, adding units a few at a time ( a la Warcraft ). IE: Capture X, or kill so many enemy ships, or make two cap ships. Lets face it, the tutorial doesn't really help. I went through all of them, and still had no idea how to play the game other then a few basics. Civ didn't have campaigns, but it also had much much better documentation. Sorry Ironclad/Stardock, this is an awesome game, but your doc's pretty much suck out loud.

Theres no reason you can't have a campaign built into the tutorials. It doesn't have to be 200 missions long. But something of an 'academy' for beginners That might take them through 4 to 6 missions, adding more and more complex scenarios. Then you could have downloadable 'campaigns' for experts.

Although, I think everyone here assumes that a 1 human VS 8 AI's on hard is about the ultimate 'campaign' you can acheive.

To be fair, that's probably because without an AI mod, the COH AI is horribad. I think Sins is actually pretty good on the AI side as far as RTSes go.

still ,I never understood why people don't play with others. Play with friends, or go online and meet someone and play with them. Tis much better than playing against the AI

Online is not always a valid option.

Here, we regularly get 2 minute "breaks" in the bandwidth, where nothing happens.

I can think of nothing worse than a battle starting, you start giving orders, no bandwidth for 2 minutes, and by the time you get an update and can give orders you find you've already lost because the ships had no guidance. Or worse, the request times out and hangs the game on your computer.

One of the disadvantages of being in Australia, the link to the US is cr*p at times.

Ooo! Australia! I agree with apricotslice. When playing a game online, especially an RTS, it is best to have a VERY good connection. You can deal with lag in an FPS if you know how to play with lag (having dial up for a year actually helped my gaming!) But lag in an RTS where every second is needed to continue to give orders is a death sentence. Again you might be able to deal with it with little lag, but any more I would think would probably doom your end of the battle.