This game SCREAMS for campaign!

Please note that the two most famous 4X games of all time, Civilisation and Master of Orion, didn't have capaigns and no-one thought anything of it. In a 4x game, every game is a campaign. It's long and involved, it has missions and plans and battles and so on. Write it up as a story as you go, if you like.

...but having said that, yeah, a campaign would be fun. comments from the developers show they do have a storyline in the works, and I expect a campaign will come out when they get time (ie after the upcoming tweak-patches).

nah. the game doesnt need 1.

True enough, but have you seen a real time strategy without a campaign? I mean, a reasonably successful one?
I think that since the developers seemed to regard this as a real time 4x more than a typical RTS with 4x elements (I'm not saying one or the other is correct, btw), they probably followed your same line of reasoning. Though I haven't played the game, I happen to disagree with that - I think a campaing would be great.
But what would be the harm in adding a campaign in an expansion? "Wasted development time"? Perhaps - but remember that the negatives for a lot of the reviews online were on the lack of campaign; it seems they regarded this as more of an RTS than a 4x. Granted, reviews aren't indicative of game sales or popular opinion, but I think the point stands.
What do you think?

It really, really doesn't. RTS's, contrary to the Blizzard school of thought, are actually pretty lousy story telling devices.

"Other" 4x games don't fit Sin's mold. Sins is much faster paced than any 4x game I have ever played mostly because of its real time nature. When the dust settles I consider sins an RTS more so than 4x. Really this is Supcom in space with a research tree instead of a build tree. I love the format don't get me wrong, I'm hooked 8 ways from Sunday and looking forward to the release level mod tools to play with it some more!

The pace of the game is a little much and for a new player a campaign would be awesome to ease them in and help with the learning curve. I certainly wished there was a campaign of some kind to get my teeth into, even if it only did TEC.

Player considerations aside the possibilities of the Sin's story arc are quite good as well and I would love to see the fiction more developed within the game's format.

The lore in this game is so rich and engaging that a solid story driven campaign would be amazing. I do believe I read somewhere the devs are working on it, so there's nothing to worry about.

I too would like to see a campaign added.

I disagree. I'm a big fan of the C&C stories, for example, which is mainly why I play them. It seems others are too. Some don't like them, others do. So the point stands; if some want a campaign, give it to them. If they don't, then the addition of a campaign won't matter. I think if the devs get enough votes for a campaign then they'll put one in.

Somewhere on this site was announced that there will be camapign added with the 1.04 patch. Or at least it is planned so. So i assume it is work in progress and only matter of time.

But this was partially my point. This game is different from most RTS, it is 4x and with slower pace with much longer games. And even if with "normal" RTS some excellent campaigns are possible, take for example all time classic Starcraft. Just imagine how well it could be done here!

I actually won't be buying any more stardock games that are half made. If i want a multiplayer game I'll get into WoW or something. I'll wait for the expansion and then consider getting them. While its true its a rts on a larger scale, Civilization doesn't set up this complex storysetting then blow it off as a way of getting money on the expansion. I was annoyed at Masters of Orion as well for this, and decided I wouldn't buy any more releases of it.

For Sins, I'd buy the expansion anyways, but for this type of game that should be part two of the story. Since the story was set up and nothing done with it, I might ignore the expansion and have moved on to other things by then.

*shrug*

Definately definately , please please, we need a campaign. I was disappointed when I read that the campaign would be bypassed in order to work more on the multiplayer (I hardly even play multiplayer, I have no time unfortunately).

A campaign makes you feel closer to the game, the lore, the races. You feel like you become part of the game and makes you care about what you are doing. It provides a continuity for the races, the game and your action. It can provide you a backstory for your skirmishes online (and offline) more than just the lore can provide. It is a pity that we don't know what's happening to the races and we only have static text in the manual to tell us and intrigue us even more about what's happening.

Please, please, for the sake of the game and for us the gamers, please, we need the campaign. It can provide such interesting, creative time instead of one-off games!

I think a good solution to the campaign problem (Because let's face it, we'll all get bored skirmishing against computers eventually) is to add some story-based scenario maps. More than just interesting map setups, use maps with, if not objectives, then specific setups and AI directives. (i.e. a map in which the TEC is forced to call back their veterans to defend their final solar system against the Advent).

I think the reason most 4x games do not include a campaign is becuase they usually have 8 or more playable factions that possess an almost identical play experience. While MOO1 and MOO2 races had unique racial traits the research tree, planet management, and ship (weapons/defenses) designs were essentially the same. Also most 4x games provide the single player a huge amount of challenge, depth, and replay value with their random maps.

RTS games usually have several playable factions with each faction having unique units, buildings, and tactical abilities. RTS games normally introduce those unique differences with some form of a single player campaign. From a single player perspective, most of the RTS game's appeal and replay value depends soley on a great storyline and canned senario maps. Random skirmish maps usually do not hold a single players interest for very long becuase each map tends to have the exact same play experience. Single players rarely enjoy the competitive multiplayer scene for whatever reason.

So here comes is SOTSE which has successfully merge the 4X and RTS play elements into a fantastic game. The game introduces three unique races with unique ships, research trees, and tactical abilities. The game's opening movie sets up a very engaging senario for a single player campaign for each of the playable races. Unfortunatley since there is no campaigns avaiable the single player experience is very limited to random sandbox maps. Once the single player has defeated the HARD AI ( only three games for me ) the games offers very little in terms of replay value. Especially since each game seems to play out exactly same regardless of the size and randomness of the map.

Ironclad put together a fantastic game with huge potential but dropped the ball for people who enjoy a more story driven single player experience. What is really unfortunate is the single player 'sandbox' play experience is sort of disappointing in that the games provide little challenging and despite having random maps the each map plays out the same. I do have confidence that Ironclad will patch most of the AI problems and the modders will provide that new game feel to create a better single player experience overall.

I hope Ironclad not only introduces playable campaigns but creates a script editor that allows for player made story based senarios. These two features would go along way for prolonging the replay value for people who do not enjoy the competitve multiplayer experience.

I think this is the most cogent point on this thread.

There was an interview on February 22 with Ironclad posted on Platformers.net; use Google and search for "ironclad interview part 2" for the whole thing. Part 2 will link near the top of the page to Part 1 where Blair of Ironclad said:

BLAIR: The decision not to do a campaign... well, Sins has a lot of lore behind it - I think you can see that in the design of the ships, the technologies, the sound effects, the way the voices are - it's all in there, it's all hinted at. The decision came down to "do we want a really cool new game" or "do we want an average game with a campaign". We were trying to move in some many new directions with the way Sins played that we, Ironclad and Stardock, both agreed very early that we couldn't move in two totally different directions. We've done the first part of that with the gameplay and now we're going to move in a new direction with the campaign. We don't like how most RTS games do campaigns and so we wanted to try something new. Now we can focus our resources on it, we can do it properly. The basic rule is if it doesn't work, it doesn't make it into the game.

So something like a campaign, maybe only better, is coming. Stay tuned. The entire interview with Ironclad is worth reading.

Whilst not a single player campaign, there is a multi-player campaign in the works via player efforts.

i just posted this in the patch thread but its very much to do with this so i'll post it again

Talking of dawn of war i think if we look at DC and soul storm we have the base for a model to make a single player campaign that would be a lot of fun but would not need as much work put in to making as a typical campaign and would be repayable in a fun way.

In other words you have a risk style campaign map of the galaxy split up in to sectors. these sectors can be split up based on lore and balance between the different races and you can give each a main home sector. Each sector can be different, different sizes with 1 or more stars and so on.

You then build a "simple" meta game around the big risk map. Depending on how many sectors you own you get 'empire resources' that you can spent on either sectors you own or on attack felts. With the empire resources you can in sectors spend it on building up planets so you start out with more, or on tech that you start with along with buildings and ships. You can spend resources on attack fleets too... the major problem with this is how you keep things balanced so that an attacking player is not overwhelmed but i'm sure it could be figured out.

As it is you would then move about attacking and taking sectors until you take a races home system in which you get some more 'story' at the start and end if you finish them off maybe with special set ups just for those maps.

The major down sides with this is firstly that it would almost always be one on one, which could be changed by saying that if a sector your attacking is bordered by the 3rd player as well that you have a 3 way match (you can opt in as a human player if an AI is attacking an AI sector that your border) which could be fun and could work when attacking 'free' sectors if its set up in a way that every free sector when it can be attacked has a border with an AI. Second is simply that to make it work you have to brake the 4th wall in ways that don't make sense... you may has all taken almost every planet in a sector but when you go in to meta map you have to 'build' planets there with your empire resources.

Its not a perfect idea but it would provide an interesting single player campaign that would last a very very very long time depending on the size of the sectors for a lot less work than you'd have thought. Since for the most part each sector fight is just a skirmish map as we know them already (bar the home sectors maybe) there's not really a lot of work that needs to be put in to them. The hardest part and the most work would have to go in to making the metamap and the risk style part of the game work and be balanced but to be honest its something they could get away with doing with out major testing and add balance in patches as we go along.

The other major advantage that could come out of this is the fact that you could tend set up the system for mulitplayer... depending on what you want to do you can set up the meta galaxy map diffrently, far fewer sectors, 2 players and so on for example and you start up the game and take turns in the meta map until you have to fight in which case you drop in to the main game. Would be tricky with more than 2 players as it would suck if 2 players got in to a fight and you couldn't join them but i think there could be ways around that like that all players get to fight in any map but if the player not directly involved wins it turns the system neutral... could lead to some interesting meta diplomacy ("team up with me and help me win and i'll help you next time")... thinking about it you may have to drop a lot of the risk style factors... it could just be that that all sectors start neutral and each fight is a FFA on what ever sector you all pick. Each sector could give a different meta bounce say or could be that when it came to fighting in a sector some one already owns they get some kind of bounce in defence of it. Either way it could be a lot of fun to have a running war over the galaxy with a few of your freinds that could go on for years hehe.

I've thrown out a hell of a lot of ideas there some of them more useful than others but it think that risk style meta map may just be the best way of adding some kind of meaningful single player campaign. Even the just the "dumbed down" mulitplayer style i was talking about would be something that gave more meaning to the single player.

Simply put its about making each skirmish fight count in some "meaningful" way... ive played a few so far and it would have been far more fun if each of those games had meant something or than "i kicked the AI ass" not that said ass kicking is not in its self enough... it is and it fun but somthing more would always be good

I think that greatly enhanced diplomacy options/behavior would go a long way towards making each game feel like a campaign.

I would say that 4X games traditionally don't have a campaign because each individual map takes so long to complete. It's true you could string together a series of smaller maps, but adding a series of progressively larger maps would just dilute the experience without really adding much in my opinion. You would take away what makes the game special, it's 4X scope and epic scale, and reduce it to a kind of crappy Homeworld mod. On the other hand, some more personality or sense of story injected into the game might improve an already great game. Random events, pre-scripted events and a little more customization for each race can give a sense of developing narrative. Right now everything is very by-the-numbers and that's great for game balance, but it isn't conducive to a sense of progression. It would also be simpler to impliment than a full on campaign.

Who said 4X Games don't have campaign in the first place?
Homeworld 1->Awesome Campaign
Cataclysm -> Even Better story
Homeworld2 -> Pretty good campaign
Haegemonia -> Thrilling Campaign
Empire at war -> Ok, standars Lucas Arts-storys
Imperium Galactica 2 -> Even three different campaigns
Nexus:The Juppiter Incident-> So much campaign, there wasn't even enough budget left for a real multiplayer :D(Not a real X4 but anyway)
Even Master of Orion 2 has some sort of higher goal with defeating the Andorrians(or however they where called). Furthermore there where different ways to win. Not only to crush as much alien scum as possible.(And when you're done continue with harassing former allies)
So on first thought i know more space-RTS with story than without one...

4x stratedgy = explore, expand, exploit, exterminate

homeworld, cataclysm, h2 are NOT 4x games. There is no real exploring or expanding to be done. They are pure RTS extermination. Heagemonia tried to be 4x. However, other than pretty graphics, its game mechanics sucked. It also had a DREADFUL campaign. BFME and then EAW did and hand waving attempt at enhancing the standard explore/expand aspect of most RTS's. For me its hard to say that games with set maps have a lot of exploring to be done.

There may be screaming, but I don't buy into the campaign hype.

I would like a campaign at least tell the story somehow! (Because I love the itty bitty lore there is now!)

Whats the point of an introduction movie withot an campaign behind it? On every map every fraction starts with its home planet as if they are all fresh warp...eehm phase-cultures.
Shouldn't the TEC occupy most of the quadrant with scattered forces and loyality-problems on its planets. Severely attacked by the Seraphim...sry, Vasari coming out of nowhere and stabbed by the suddenly appearing Advent(not that shocking if you consider the name...).
I didn't know that there's no campaign (as there are nearly no informations at all about Soase in germany) so the absence of an story was rather mocking after reading the manual and watching the intro...