Sins of a Solar Empire Achievements

I've been playing some more Solar Empire and just plain loving it. I've been checking out the Vasari, they're a ton of fun. Although everything is pretty advanced, their units just feel high tech and alien, as they should. The research trees are very different. It's a different style than TEC.

I built my own little map. I much prefer hand-built maps to the ones in the game. I always feel like the phase lanes are way to long, and I spend too much time jumping ships around. I love to have things up close and personal. The stock maps also have way too much empty space. I don't think there's much compelling about space jump, gas giants, or asteroid belts you can't colonize. So I typically configure my space to contain solely colonizable worlds.

The most fun I've had with Solar Empire relates to achievements. Within the game, there are all sorts of little mini-quests it seems, by trying to do some basic or outlandish tasks. One achievement is to simply build a custom map and preview it. Another goes so far as to require the player to win the game without building any capital ships. Or vice-versa, only build capital ships! The achievements make you think about different ways of playing the game, and how taking one element out, such as never building planetary defenses, changes the game in a big way.