Wish there was more info on Single Player

single player has no STORY campaign, its a open ended sandbox , and its pretty much all I've played in the BETA's.

For what it is worth, I'm a big time single player person due to my lifestyle. With that said, even in beta with a cheese whiz AI with highly crippled functionality I found the game entertaining and fun and still love to play it after about a year. Multiplayer is like icing on the cake in my opinion.

Simply put you cant wrong with this title if you are even remotely interested in refined strategy games and like real time game play as well.

Additionally you cant beat the price and the support you will get will be be unmatched within the industry. This is all information you can bank on.

Thanks....that is what I was hoping to hear. Quick additional question.

Is there anything that you can do in the multiplayer version that you can't do in the single player version, except the obvious stuff? Just trying to understand if there are any limitations or things that won't be available to me.

You have me pretty close in pulling the trigger:)

The only thing multiplayer has , is the ability to connect to ICO and play online via ICO. No content is missing from it.

In single player you will likely have more time to explore the galaxy, scour planets for artifacts and bonuses, and build a giant trade empire.  In single player you have all the diplomatic options as you would in multiplayer, plus more AI mission to fulfill.  I recommend placing a lot of AI in the mix - then diplomacy gets really interesting.  They will make and break alliances, put bounty on your head, team up against you, work for you...it can be a real challenge when you put them on hard!

Thanks for the additional info. Just curious, how many AI players can a single player game play against at one time?

9 AI players.  Keep in mind there are NPC factions and pirates as well.

So with the NPC factions and pirates, are you also able to go to war and have diplomacy with them as well? If so, that is pretty cool and sounds like the options will be endless with those numbers.

Maybe a stupid question, but in a single player game, what is the difference between an AI player versus NPC? Both are controlled by the CPU so what does one do versus the other?

Thanks again for the info.

its 10 player game, so 9 ai. In beta I could beat 4 AI teamed together alone. But Im sure they fixed it to make em harder

NPCs populate everything , and are always considered your enemy.

So technically your always at war with NPC, no chance for diplomacy with them?

When you use the word 'teamed' does that imply when you setup the 9 AI players, you can make each one an individual team and/or group some of the AI players together? I would more be interested if at the start all 9 players were by themselves, but of course through diplomacy thru the game they could always team up later.

I'm also assuming diploacy just doesn't happen between human player and ai, but AI and AI as well.

nope

so can you have ai withn multiplayer games??

That's too bad...but I guess diplomacy with the other 9 AI players will be good enough anyways.

yep

yeah u can arrange the AIs in a team. Youc an even team with AI, but they are abusive. They always yell at you like you don't know what you are doing

Sounds pretty cool...can you also confirm if the AI players will conduct diplomacy amongst themselves or can it only be done with human player?

Other NPC's than pirates, what could that be? The GRey's? (after seing the ones in Laser Squad Nemesis I cant think of any space villian that would look cuter ;p).

There is also another big huge element to consider when thinking about purchasing this game and it is the serious support for modding. The devs have gone out of their way to make the game as open as possible and will be releasing a full set tools to the community. Just that element alone should be enough to get any "real gamer" to pick up a copy. On top of that there is a developing clan community forming to boot.

Yes, the AI will team up with one another if it suits their best interests.  We play with several AI in multiplayer all the time...in a recent game the light blue AI won!  You can set up locked teams however you like.  Any combination of AI or human players can be teamed up.  If you are not the competitive type, you might want to team up with a friend and go up against a team of AI   

Developer double post! Screenshot for posterity!!!