Sins of a Solar Empire Message Board  

Hi everyone. I need some help, but this might take some time to explain--I hope you'll stay with me and set me straight. So I just bought this game, brought it home, threw it in, and...nothing. My comp reads absolutely nothing on the disk (even after registering with Stardock and everything). But I went ahead and downloaded in through Stardock, and the game works, well, okay, since my system is just barely able to handle it. Anyway, I wanted to make sure I had either cheats or a trainer ready so I could play around, learn the game, and help me through those tough points. And then I hit problems.

First, I found a trainer from Brewers(?) or something, and that doesn't work. Then I found the Promo mod for version 1.03 from you guys (though on a different site) and that didn't work either. Yes, I shut off the in-game commands for the relevant keys, and it doesn't work. I then saw another thread here that gave me the idea to try and down-date my game to version 1.01; the game completely stopped working all together, even before I tried using the trainer for that version. And the SoaSE message board, as well as the Gamefaqs message board, have both been of little help in this manner.

So, there's a couple different solutions I can think of that I don't know how to do, and any one of them is good enough for me. If anyone knows why my disk is unreadable (and it IS a DVD drive), and can help me with that, I can see if installing it that way will help. Or if anyone can tell me how to lower my online-installed version to a lower version without crashing my game, I could just use an earlier trainer. Or even the Promo trainer is fine with me (all I really want are some spare resources and crystals will work for me) if someone could tell me a way to make that work.

As a side-note, I saw a couple of debates over the decision of this site to charge for trainers for a period of time. If I might throw in my two cents as a new guy, I fully support paying for a good piece of software. However, since I buy like one NEW PC game in a year, if that, I can see how the membership route of payment is a bad investment; for me, it wouldn't be .04 bucks for trainer, it's the full 20 dollars, which is more than I paid for Fallout and Fallout 2 combined. So, since I don't already see the option to do this (though I may just be blind), I'd say that a good compromise would be to allow direct purchase of a trainer; I'd pay a buck or two to get it and be done with it.

Anyway, I hope someone can help me in one manner or another. I'd be glad to give any more info I have as well. Thanks much.

You'll have to provide more information as to what exactly didn't work when you tried our promo trainer.

1. You disabled any and all antivirus/antispyware.
2. You right clicked and Run as Administrator on the trainer.
3. You made sure game was at 1.03 and using 1.03 promo.
4. You ran the game.
5. You made sure F-lock key is turned on.
6. You pressed F1 at main menu (hear Activated).
7. You started the game.
8. You made sure numlock is on.
9. You pressed numpad 3 and numpad - (on the actual numpad and not at the top of the keyboard) and heard Activated.
10. Options worked? Game crashed? What?

Fair enough;

1) No virus software
2) I must have missed the "Run as Admin" thing; I don't know if it matters because the only account IS the admin account.
3) Yes, matching versions.
4) Yup.
5) No such key on my keyboard
6) Yeah, it told me it was activated
7) Yup.
8) I don't have Numlock either
9) That would be a problem; I don't have a seperate number pad. I only have a laptop, hence the missing keys.
10) Well, nothing happened, at all.

I DID try to Customize the trainer to use different keys (that I DO have) and that did nothing. But I don't know if there are different versions of that, er, whatever it's called. So, maybe that could just fix it. I don't know if I still have the promo trainer. Is it on this site somewhere?

Oh, and of course, thanks a bunch for the help.

I don't know that our customizer will work with the promo trainers or not. You will definitely need it since you're using a laptop. The full trainers can be customized to use any keys you'd like.

Understand. Is it possible for me to download this game (which is automatically version 1.03) and then "downgrade" it to a lower version (so I could use the relevant trainer)? I realize that this is outside the scope of the site, but if you (or anyone else) has any idea on doing that, I'd appreciate it.

I don't think you can downgrade the game if it starts at v1.03.

So, it appears my options are to either pay to upgrade to get the relevant patch or to wait 2 weeks, as it stands. I suppose I'll go ahead and try to find a working disk, so I can patch up to version 1.02 and use THAT trainer. Thanks alot for the help.