Hmm. When you said Sins of a Solar Empire 2, did you mean Sword of the Stars 2? That's what's confusing me in your opening post. To address your point though, while I haven't played Sword of the Stars, I have played Sins of a Solar Empire, and as no one else has responded I'll give it a go.

I would reccomend Sins of a Solar Empire to anyone who enjoys RTS's and games involving space ships in general. There isn't a campaign mode, unless one has been added since I last played, but the skirmish mode is tremendously engaging by itself, and the sheer size of some of the random maps that can be generated can easily result in games that last upwards of 10 hours if you're willing to take your time. The gameplay is just the right side of complicated to be easily accessible, while providing enough depth that it isn't easily exhausted.

Plus I've not encountered much in all my experiences with games that can beat two max sized fleets clashing around a well fortified planet. The scale alone is impressive. Dammit now I want to get hold of another copy (haven't been able to find my original since I got a new pc) and go wreck some Vasari face.

Hopefully someone who has played both games will show up to provide higher quality enlightenment. It is a great game though.

Sins of A Solar Empire is a great 4X RTS, but I would also recommend Stardock's better space strategy game, Galactic Civilizations II, a 4X turn based space strategy game. Trust me. I cannot reccommend GCII enough. Just be sure your play on the most recent expansion (Twilight of The Arnor), as the expansion packs really flesh out the game and make it, say, 5000x better. That means getting the Supreme Edition Triple Pack of the game (if your in America), or the Endless Universe standalone ( if your in the UK or Europe, like me).

Plenty of customization for the rules of single player sandbox ( the only real part of the game), create your own races at will, both to play as or against, very mod friendly, funny, witty, fun, and some of the best AI in gaming EVER.

Now go out there and get SiNS and GCII!

Sins is an excellent title. Very engaging RTS with an epic scope. The slower pace gives it a turn-based feel, for example if a (small) fleet attacks one of your worlds you have 10-15 minutes to whip up a response instead of 3 seconds like StarCraft. Either I didn't understand the diplomacy stuff or it's a waste of time, not sure which. Other than that, though, it's awesome.

TsunamiWombat:

Lear'sFool:
Sins of A Solar Empire is a great 4X RTS, but I would also recommend Stardock's better space strategy game, Galactic Civilizations II, a 4X turn based space strategy game. Trust me. I cannot reccommend GCII enough. Just be sure your play on the most recent expansion (Twilight of The Arnor), as the expansion packs really flesh out the game and make it, say, 5000x better. That means getting the Supreme Edition Triple Pack of the game (if your in America), or the Endless Universe standalone ( if your in the UK or Europe, like me).

Plenty of customization for the rules of single player sandbox ( the only real part of the game), create your own races at will, both to play as or against, very mod friendly, funny, witty, fun, and some of the best AI in gaming EVER.

Now go out there and get SiNS and GCII!

I'm mostly interested in SINS because of the RTS elements and the quasi modern graphics, from what I saw of Galactic Civ it was mostly spreadsheets. I'm probably mistaken

Get Sins.
Galciv2 is very dumbed down. The Sins devs managed to put more complexity in a realtime (if slow paced) game, than GC2 does turn-based.
Sins features ships with special abilities and carriers that launch smaller fighters and has a much better game balance overal.
GC2 is a boring, safe colony rush, followed by an even more boring economic recovery phase, before the real game starts and then it's always just aim for psionic beams, which are rediculously overpowered weapons that come early and cheap. The game is pretty much decided after a succesful/lucky colony rush.
Sins is good though.

I feel that Sword of the Stars is much deeper than Sins.

Grouchy Imp:
I couldn't help you with a comparison OP, as I've not played SotS. But I can say from reading your post that Sins is probably a good shout for one simple reason - Sins is a f*cking time sink. If you leave the time acceleration feature alone a game in a small system against one opponent can easily chew up three hours of your afternoon, even longer than that if you spend time turtling up your planets and upgrading your tech trees before going for the killer blow. As for a game set over four large systems against three or more opponents? You'd better have a clear schedule for the day and still be prepared to save your game halfway through and finish it tomorrow.

If you do buy Sins, be prepared for it to eat up large chunks of your spare time.

What this guy said.
Sins is a great game, very deep and varied in terms of building your tech trees, armadas and planets/orbital stations. But it takes a heck of a long time to play. Me and a couple of friends all teamed up and went online in a 3v3 match and found 5 hours of a thursday's afternoon had gone by and the game was nowhere near finishing. At least 3 hours later though it was close to the end. Though thinking now I don't know what state MP is in as the last time I played Sins was when it was still hooked up to Impulse so I don't know how active it's community is now it's moved to Steam. If someone could tell me if there is a thriving community I might hop back onto Sins myself.

I'd certainly reccomend Sins as a good alternative to most 4x games due to its RTS elements making for a faster pace overall then turn based strategy games and having some pleasing battles.
Haven't played Sword of the Stars 2 so can't give a fair comparison though.

It's also worth noting there are a ton of great mods for sins to compensate for lack of campaign (all the story you will get is in the manual).

You've also been reccomended Gal Civ 2 I see, it's a reccomendation I can only half agree with. Galactic Civs 2 is more like a traditional turn based 4x game with great AI and a fantastic ship designer, but is a different beast to Sins which is more rts like and is more immersive imo (battles and music and overall feel is just fantastic in sins, but functional at best in gal civ 2).

TsunamiWombat:

Lear'sFool:
Sins of A Solar Empire is a great 4X RTS, but I would also recommend Stardock's better space strategy game, Galactic Civilizations II, a 4X turn based space strategy game. Trust me. I cannot reccommend GCII enough. Just be sure your play on the most recent expansion (Twilight of The Arnor), as the expansion packs really flesh out the game and make it, say, 5000x better. That means getting the Supreme Edition Triple Pack of the game (if your in America), or the Endless Universe standalone ( if your in the UK or Europe, like me).

Plenty of customization for the rules of single player sandbox ( the only real part of the game), create your own races at will, both to play as or against, very mod friendly, funny, witty, fun, and some of the best AI in gaming EVER.

Now go out there and get SiNS and GCII!

I'm mostly interested in SINS because of the RTS elements and the quasi modern graphics, from what I saw of Galactic Civ it was mostly spreadsheets. I'm probably mistaken

GCII is like any standard turn based strategy game. You do get to micromanage starships, colonies, etc. like you would troops and cities in Civilization. Unlike the classic Master of Orion II or GCI, all the planets in a solar system are shown on the map around that star, rather than being "tucked in" to the star and leaving the entire system only colonizable by a single empire. The spreadsheets you have seen are likely the info sheets used to manage the empire from a single location (lists of colonies, monetary policy screen, etc.) that most any strategy game has (SiNS has some, to a lesser degree). If you know what Civilization is like, image it IN SPACE, and you'll get GCII.

Of course, you should check both SiNS and GCII out, their both really great games by awesome developer Stardock. Hell, neither of them have any DRM, not even the need to put the game disk in the CD drive to play once it's been installed, and the product key is used to access updates as you see fit.

I would hesitantly put Sins above GalCiv2. The latter is as it's been described here: colony rush followed by recovery. If you like war it's fairly boring (I've conquered the galaxy without firing a shot the entire game), as you don't get to participate tactically. There's none of that moving ships on a grid and calling shots as in Master of Orion.

Sins is like a slower paced RTS. I wouldn't rate it as particularly deep or engaging - I'd push AI War over it - but it's not bad. The AI is weak, but then I complain about that with most strategy games. It really felt like it was missing a tier or dimension somewhere that it needed to truly be great.

Seeing that you like space combat apparently i can't recommend Starfarer enough.
Still in alpha, but i'd give it a go.

Pretty good, but the diplomacy is a little too abuseable. I tend to end up making an ally and directing them to attack the same place as me.

Since theres a cap to fleet size, theres not a huge amount one enemy can do vs two max cap fleets tearing through their systems. The enemy AI can only counter with half as many ships.

Although I dont play multiplayer so thats probably less of an issue.

Sins is an amazing game. The scale is, at times, mind-boggling. Definitely worth picking up.