I played my first game of Sins yesterday, and while it was generally enjoyable, there were a quite a few things I thought could use some improvement. I was using version 0.76[b].018.

There were a few things during the game that struck me as blatantly wrong (I imagine some or all of these have been mentioned before, so my apologies for any duplication):

- The "Zoom to Cursor" mode doesn't work well with the Follow camera. Whenever you have your view centered on a moving object, like a ship, and try to zoom in on it, the camera ceases to focus on the object - even if the cursor was right over the object when you zoomed in (it switches the focus to the static point behind/beneath the object instead).

- When you're zoomed out enough that an object appears as an icon, it is impossible to select it if it's in front of a planet. The icon shows up clearly, but trying to click on it results in selecting the planet in the background.

- While its possible to give commands when the game is paused, it would be helpful if the screen reflected those orders before unpausing the game. For instance, if I gave a Phase Jump order to a ship with the game paused, the blue line indicating its flight path wouldn't appear until I unpaused the game. Likewise, the fleet icons in the empire tree don't update until while paused, so its hard to tell if adding a ship to a fleet "took" until you unpause.

- The AI placed a Bounty on me, despite the facts that it was a one-on-one game, and that I was playing with Marauders off (i.e., there was no one to collect the bounty). Since there were no one else that could be encouraged to attack me, this seemed like a pretty obvious waste of money.

- The info cards that display through the shipyards (when you're trying to decide what kind of ship to build) don't display weapon type/average damage information. That would be extremely useful information to have there.

- When traveling by/invading an enemy's planet, the planet's info card shows the number of jumps the planet is from *my* home world, but the Allegiance Modifier is relative to the *AI*'s home world - since the Allegiance Modifiers are pretty straightforward and linear, this is a bit of an exploit in that I can figure out how close I am to the AI's home planet, even if I've yet to scout it.

- (Trivial) The three listboxes on the Graphics Options screen are missing headers (Resolution, Refresh Rate, and Anti-aliasing).

In the category of things that aren't wrong, but probably could be better, here's what I noticed:

- Combat seems too static. The only ships that move significantly in combat are fighters/bombers; everyone else does an intergalactic version of an 18th/19th century firing line. I can understand Capital ships being pretty stationary, but I'd like to see a lot more movement out of Frigates and Cruisers during combat.

- The targeting AI during combat is sub-optimal. Most of the time my ships seem to prefer to spread their fire around (for example, a fleet of nine Cobalt frigates would target 4-5 enemies simultaneously). Unless you implement a system where ships' effectiveness is reduced as they take damage, the more efficient approach is to concentrate fire on one ship and destroy it before moving on to the next. I found myself repeatedly pausing and reassigning targets during combat because the AI didn't seem to understand this.

- The Auto-attack options (Gravity Well, Weapons Range, Local Area) need expanding. I'd really like options for "only if fired upon" and "never without orders" so that I can more easily control my trigger-happy pilots.

- To go with the Auto-attack options, I'd like a similar set for movement behaviour: Pursue Anywhere, Pursue Within Gravity Well, and Hold Position. For instance, sometimes I want a few of my ships to guard the terminal point of a phase lane without running off after the first light frigate that waltzes into the system.

- Ship pathfinding, especially for capital ships in fleets, could use some work. Specifically, I found that fleets of capital ships with the All Grouped phase jump option engaged spent too long "waiting for formation" at the edge of a gravity well because one or two ships (usually the long, bulky Sova-class carriers) were having a hard time lining up with the rest.

- Fleets need Formations. I didn't play a lot of Homeworld, but I seem to recall those games did formations pretty well - lines, echelons, and more. The probably complicate pathfinding, but they're pretty much an expected part of the genre at this point - plus, they look cool. (Of course, if formations are added, control options will be needed to tell the ships under what circumstances its OK to break formation)

- The mop-up stage of the game, even in a small, one-on-one situation, seemed too prolonged. AIs should surrender when they're beaten, not force me to trapse my uber-fleet of capital ships through every backwater resource asteroid (defended by nothing remotely threatening) in the system before the game ends. This would be less of an issue if travel was faster all around, but as it stands having to wait for my ships to clean up an effectively defenseless AI made for a tedious 15-20 minutes at the end of the game.

All of that said, I don't want to give the impression that I didn't enjoy the game - I did. For balance, here are some of the things I liked:

- Graphics: very pretty and very clean. One of the least important gameplay elements, IMHO, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be praised.

- The Pirates concept. I think the implementation still needs some work - I'll try to share more thoughts about them once I've played a few more games - but I really like the basic idea. They also act as a very effective way of slowing the Expansion phase of the game, which is appreciated.

- Ship durability. Other than fighters (appropriately), nothing seemed too easy to destroy. Concentrated fire from an entire fleet can take ships down quickly, but that's to be expected. In more balanced fights, my spaceships felt like the sturdy, expensive things they are.

- The core concept of the game itself. A Civilization/GalCiv game that looks as pretty as Homeworld is tremendously appealing. I think you're going to have to walk a very fine line to please the fans of both genres, but its a noble thing to attempt. I hope the increasing pressure as the release date approaches doesn't lead to an abandonment of either aspect of the game.

- Not a game component itself, but I have to mention the responsiveness and customer service I've observed over the last couple days on this forum. I've come to expect it with any project associated with Stardock, and it's greatly appreciated. FWIW, my decision to pre-order the game and try the beta was based more on a desire to support this kind of development than on the game itself.

Anyway, I think that's quite enough for now. Best of luck to whoever gets the job of trying to digest all that. I promise I'm not always this longwinded. Just most of the time.

- Ash