Hello. On a whim, I decided to spend a few TG tokens yesterday on Sins. I knew nothing about the game prior to this, except some very generic stuff from Stardock emails and stuff. Since I didn't manage to stop playing until my wife became angry at 5 in the morning, I decided to post my feedback here the same way I played the game: with no reading of old threads, no knowledge of the history of prior patches, etc. That way the devs can get an accurate picture of what I thought about the experience.
1) Tutorials - well made in terms of explaining the game interface and such, but very light on the mechanics behind the game. Understandable due to early beta, but it made me start the game with no real idea on how to develop my economy and such.
2) Visual/Audio/First Impressions - Nice. Very little of it was "jawdropping", but nevertheless a clean, professional presentation with nice audio, and a few nice touches (planetary traffic)
3) The game itself - Well, as you can imagine, I liked it overall, since I did stay up until 5.
However, it didn't *grip* me like, say, GCII did. I'll try listing the different sections of the game, what I thought of them, and some suggestions. Maybe a picture of what that was the game will appear.
Logistical development: The way you can queue everything was very well done, I thought. The separation of Crystal and Metal asteroids I felt was underdeveloped. As I conquered planets, the asteroids were just there, with only crystal or only metal, and the progression was enough that I never had to worry about it. Never during the game I experienced a lack of minerals. All in all I felt like the asteroids didn't add a meaningful layer to the game. You conquer a planet, you get its asteroids, you never worry about it again. Planets have the same concentration of rocks in general as the "asteroid" systems do, making it a meaningless difference. As for the rest of the logistical improvements, the sparse information about them hurts. I built a few research centers, hoping it would speed up research, but no idea if it did. Culture I have no idea what it's for, I assume it works like Galciv? Trade posts are OK, though I was puzzled on what they were supposed to do until I built my second one on a hunch. Refineries are a mystery, and planet development itself is straightforward. All in all, it seemed like a system that brought little to the game. I didn't see a reason to agonize over which structures to build, so all in all it was just "going through the motions".
Suggestions - Make Asteroids have some quantity of crystal and metal, some more of one some of the other. Make Survey ships, and allow a choice on which ore to extract. Make it more scarce, so it becomes an issue. Make asteroid belts have much larger amounts of rocks, allow trade posts only on planets, refineries only on belts. Separate resources so people have to make choices on HOW to expand, instead of just doing it. As for the whole culture thing, I hope something comes of it, from my first game I'd say just drop it. It doesn't make much sense in a military game anyway.
Economical Development: A bit tied to Logistics, but more concerned with credits and how to spend and get them. All in all, I didn't much way of controlling the progression of my economy. I upgraded my planets every time I could, I built trade posts and refineries in all my systems, and that was about it. Was there anything more to it? As far as I can see, the upkeep just keeps going up and up and the ways to make your planets more profitable are few, so at a certain point you just eat the upkeep and go on.
Suggestions - Not sure how to improve this. The selling of minerals for money is nice, but I don't feel the diplomacy screen is the right place for it. Maybe it should be an option for trade posts, or something else like a dedicated economy screen. Make tax percentages dependent on culture? Tax trade posts? I honestly don't have many ideas here.
Research: This was strange. I was playing normal (not easy) AI in a small map with few resources, but still I managed to max the combat tree and almost max out the empire tree before I made any dent in the other civilizations. I'm currently at war with one of them and have a cease fire with another, but at this point there's really nothing more to look forward to except waiting for the money to make more ships and attacking. I don't know if I was too slow in attacking, but in any case the AI also didn't attack me in any serious way until now. The tech tree itself is OK, nothing awesome, but serviceable. In any case, I'll hold off on major suggestions, as this is the aspect most likely to improve in Beta 2 I'd imagine. In any case, I thought it had too many gradual changes and not that many breakthroughs. Needs more ships, better turrets, etc.
Tactical Combat: The meat and potatoes of this game, and the reason I liked it so much in spite of the (temporary I'm sure)shallowness of the other aspects. The different styles of capital ships are nice, the fighters and bombers are cool, the existing frigates have distinct roles like they should, etc. More could be done of course, but what's there is promising. I must say I love the gravity well idea, as a major fan of a series of novels called "Honor Harrington" that uses that idea. I thought the scale for the game itself was strange, though. Gravity wells, jump points, etc usually make more sense applied to stars themselves rather than planets. But the game is what it is, I'm not expecting this to change. The "ideal" movement pattern for me would be a gravity well around stars that encompass the closest planets to it, and much smaller gravity wells around the furthest planets in the system. Star nations fighting over star systems, not sharing them like now, free and slow movement inside the gravity wells AND outside them until the "hyper limit" where movement would still be free but faster between stars, and the jump points establishing intestellar routes that GREATLY reduce interplanetary speeds. That way they'd remain tactical and the most likely approaches to the systems, but sneakyness would still be possible. But like I said, the game is what it is.
Besides the strangeness of the scale, the low points of the combat were the autoattack settings, and the fact that ships stop on the attack (except for the awesome fighters and bombers). On one invasion, the fleet that I had poised to defend against the counterinvasion force the AI was sending kept buggering off the designated standby point to attack trade ships. On another, the fact that I didn't realize that I needed to bomb a dead asteroid meant my fleet kept attacking the construction frigate that the asteroid was producing nonstop. When I selected weapons range autoattack, the ships stopped responding to attack commands. As for the static combat, I'd like it if moving ships were harder to hit, so that no frigate would think of standing still while pounding a capital ship.
Hmm. I guess I'll stop here. Let me know if any of the complaints are wrong, already addressed, or simply counter to the design philosophy behind the game. But from what I saw, you're on the right track. Keep up the great work.
