We don't really want to give out too much information on specifics yet, but there's some general stuff I'll cover.
Actually it is correct; it is set as 2 different sub-faction for every race, which have just different titans and different technological upgrades and so on. Calling them entirely different factions would be going very far. Even in the faction selection menu they are called the same faction. But maybe it could be modified in such a way to make them feel more different and much more unique.
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Sins rebellion has a system of rebels and loyals as I am sure you are aware of it, so using this system you could easily make the empire in to two distinct factions as loyal as the Imperial Remnant and rebel as the Pentastar Alignment. Due to the fact that they use mainly the same ships and units and defenses. Was wondering was this really what you plan to do with it or do you have some other amazing idea for the rebel and loyal system and going to surprise us with it?
Lavo is talking about how it is set up in the backend; in the coding they are distinct factions, just given the same assets and put on the same side of the menu, which is meaningless. There's no degree of similarity that has to be kept between those factions, the difference in structure, only in substance. In any case, we're only doing the three main factions to begin with. We might add more but we want each faction to have a more unique playstyle, so having Remnant and then Warlords and PA would kind of be redundant. The way the mod build is setup now, we have it so you're essentially scrolling through and the "pages" that had the loyalist and rebel versions of a faction before now have the EotH on the left, IR on the right and then you go to the next page and it's like a cycle with EotH-NR, etc. The ships and everything shown on those pages that the faction share in the original game are actually put into the window not as some hardcoded pooled asset thing, but it's directly coded into the GUI.
It's important to remember this is a total conversion, not just a reskinning. So saying "how are you doing pirates" or "how are you doing loyalists vs rebels" really aren't the right questions. We're using the tools the game gives us to make Star Wars.
Also would you try to add heroes to sins of a solar empire?
If you're familiar with flagship victory, the current plan is to do those with an important military figure from each faction. We may implement other heroes if we find a satisfactory way to do it without hurting gameplay.
Many many questions ahead. So since sins handles them better could we expect more SSD (number and type wise) or same as the ICW?
There will be SSDs but in general our plans for unit lists in Sins is to make them more robust for several reasons. Where the era system in ICW allowed/made us put in multiple ships for the same role, in Ascendancy we're being a lot more stringent with that. There are both performance and gameplay reasons for this, however the basic structure of the Remnant faction in the mod is planned to be centered on the Palpatine way of doing things, pending balance tests.
And lastly which faction will became the pirates? Would it be the hutts or warlords or some other faction?
We really don't want to have pirates in the traditonal Sins sense. It wouldn't make sense in Star Wars. You don't pay off the Hapans to go attack another faction. We'd like to implement more factions in various capacities in the future, but the plan for the first release is to focus on the three main factions.
I am curious how you guys are going to handle SSDs as well, I am hoping they will not be as important as Titans are in Rebellion, them having tons of firepower is fine.. but I really don't want to see this turn into an AoE fest like Rebellion is.
The weapons systems we're using are fairly similar to balancing in ICW, but again, we're trying to emphasize factional differences. For some factions an SSD is going to be the backbone of your fleet, and a major strategic asset. For others (Empire of the Hand), they're still not going to be present. We want an IR player to have to think differently from an NR player, from an EotH player, etc.
Also, another question, in regards to Strike Craft. I'm assuming we'll probably have to unlock various types of Strike Craft via research, since it wouldn't really make sense to have TIE Defenders be available right off the bat. Is it possible to create Strike Craft that can phase jump, or Strike Craft that have fleet supply/ resource costs? Or perhaps will we only be able to build certain types of Strike Craft on certain types of ships?
This isn't something we've decided or put much research into yet, since it'll depend a lot on how the engine handles things. There are some nuances here that get back to the factional differences thing, as well. Some aspects of this I'll cover in my next answer as well.
Sweet! Grin what about choosing what fighters spawn from your carrier
This is basically how Sins functions in general, and it's not something we really want to change or could change I don't think, but either way I'm pretty sure there's a hardcoded limit of 4 possible strike craft for each carrier. Essentially on older or lower tech ships, you'll have access to the lower-end fighters (Y-Wings, X-Wings) whereas on newer ships you'd have the better fighters (K and E wings)
I'm hoping that its possible to attach costs to strike craft squadrons, to make them less easy to just mindlessly spam, since in Sins bomber spam is basically the only viable late game strategy, and I'd like to see it at the very least be harder to achieve a massive swarm of single ship squads.
The hyperspecialization that's inherent in the Sins universe isn't realy a problem in Star Wars. Each ship still has a role, obviously, but it's not the same degree of "only build this" or "if you don't have this you're screwed".