SINs of a Galactic Empire is a full conversion mod. The current version as of 1/10/2020 is 4.11.1. This mod replaces the stock Sins factions with six factions of its own. This is a very good mod that gives a new look to a familiar game and places you in the Star Wars universe.

I’ve been a Star Wars fan ever since it hit the big screens in 1977, which is the biggest reason I chose to review this one. This mod puts a “new skin” on the interface and changes a lot of the research options. If you’re looking for something that’s not a total change but still offers a lot of new stuff, and like the familiarity of stock SINs, then you’ll definitely like this mod.

Entertainment Value

When I first started this mod I noticed I had a lot resource income, resource rich planets nearby, and almost all of my ships were available without needing to do any research. I figured this would be an easy walk in the park. Not so! As the game progresses you need those additional resources. For one thing, pirate raids are a lot more powerful, and by the time you fend off one attack another one is right behind it. If you’re unlucky enough to be a target again the Pirates can not only inflict significant damage on you, but tie up resources defending planets rather than expanding your fleets and doing research. Sometimes sacrificing a planet it the best option, just so you don’t incur those heavy losses in ships and resources.

I played all of the factions and enjoyed them all equally, but in keeping with my Star Wars tradition of rooting for the underdog I found myself playing the Alliance the most, one of the rebel factions. While you’re still building up a space empire it still feels like you’re overthrowing the dark and evil empire led by the Emperor and Darth Vader, which makes it more fun for me. The new voice overs were terrific, and the soundtrack made the game more immersive.

As I said previously this mod already has most of the ships ready for deployment with the super capitals being one notable exception, along with a few others. The super capitals are the equivalents to the Titans in the vanilla SINs game. When playing you’ll find that the research options for ships h have been pared but that has been made up for with new military research options, such as Advanced Fighter Designs and Secondary Weapons. Surrounding planets are more resource rich also. This gives the game what amounts to a “quick start,” so if you want to build a powerful fleet up quickly and extend your empire’s reach, then this mod will enable you to do that in a short time if all goes well. As a matter of fact, that’s a good idea, so you can be prepared for the incoming storm.

Replay Value

This mod adds considerable replay value to the base SINs game and is one I would play again. The factions are diverse enough to interest me, plus it has add-on features that give it even more replayability:

• 200% health boost to ships.
• Two more levels of difficult AI settings, “Tougher AI” & “Nightmare AI.”
• Holonet Offline: No one can use culture stations as jump points except the Yuuzhan Vong.
• Hyperspace Anywhere: If a planet is visible you can jump to it.
• Hyperspace Interdiction Modification: gravity well generators slow the hyperspace charge up of ships rather than stopping them from going into hyperspace.
• Reduced / extremely reduced weapons range: Reduces weapon range by either 50% or 75%.
• Imperial VSD-I and Venato: Gives the Empire access to Victory I and Venator class Star destroyers.
• Invulnerable Supercap factories: all Supercap Factories are indestructible.

A Spreadsheet?

I noticed something pretty neat about this mod that’s not directly related to gameplay and that’s the spreadsheet that comes with it. This spreadsheet gives a pretty good breakdown of each ship’s weapons strength. Interesting if you’re a spreadsheet nerd like me.

Some of the capital ships in the game cannot have their skills upgraded. That was intentional in order to maintain game balance. At first I thought this was a mod glitch but it isn’t.

The add-ons for this mod can be activated in-game using the game mod option, there is no need to edit the EnabledMods.txt file. It’s a good idea to exit the game and restart it or the game might crash after enabling those add-ons.

This game mod is worth adding to your mod collection. This transports you to a galaxy far, far away with six unique faction to choose from. Since this is not a major departure from most of the game’s basic layouts, this makes any learning curve minimal. This mod is different and diverse enough to keep you interested for many games to come.

Check out the difference between SINs factions at this page on our website.