maintained by a player at any one time. Each titan possesses unique, upgradeable abilities that can reinforce friendly fleets or weaken enemies. In addition, titan levels are persistent—if a level 10 titan is destroyed in battle, it can be rebuilt (at a significant cost) at level 10, without requiring it to repeat the leveling process. Multiplayer Players can engage in online multiplayer against either a single opponent or as part of a team through the game's Ironclad Online system or by setting up a LAN game. Players can set up 5-versus-5 matches where two captains draft the other eight players. Although the game does not automatically download custom maps made with the Galaxy Forge mode, players can manually choose to download maps as needed. Development Sins of a Solar Empire was released without any form of copy protection, but a product key registered to an Impulse account was required for updates and multiplayer in the original game. The game had a development budget below one million dollars. On November 16, 2011, Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity was made available for purchase on Steam. Game engine Sins of a Solar Empires Iron Engine offers size and scale technologies that deliver large stars and planets next to comparably small orbital structures, starships and strike craft. The engine features bump mapping on planets and ships, specular lighting, dynamic fractal generation for stars and clouds, and bloom. Customization Sins of a Solar Empire includes various customization features, among them a level editor that allows players to generate maps for both single and multiplayer use by setting their general properties. Matches can also be recorded and watched, and the game supports custom modifications. Ironclad Games maintains a collection of user-created works of all three kinds. The developer has also released the editor used to create the game's scenarios and a set of the development tools. Through the use of this editor, the player can dictate the number of star systems in their game, the number of planets orbiting each star system, and various other options. Lastly, the game keeps track of a variety of achievements, some of which are triggered by ordinary gameplay actions (such as winning as a specific race or collecting enough resources), or by winning with voluntary restrictions (such as without building capital ships, frigates, cruisers, or strike craft). Expansions Ironclad has released three main expansions, which are available on Ironclad's