Voice acting for the pirates!

Just two or three different sound bytes for when they set out or attack. It would make me smile even as they blow me out of orbit. Appropriately pirate-ish, of course.

Some more character portraits. (Female TEC officer would be really cool.)

Improve the ICO interface a bit. (We really don't need to know whenever someone joins and leaves the channel, at least at the lobbies, and keep it from reseting the scroll-box on the side when people enter or leave.) Maybe make it so that when you right-click a person's name, it brings up the option to send them a whisper, or add them to your friend's list?

Don't know if there's already a stats board up somewhere, showing the top players and whatnot, but that'd be neat. Player profiles showing their performance and achievements. Foster an active community when you can, I suppose.

Oh, I also noticed that after a few hours, the sound-based notifications would stop entirely. When you're managing an empire across multiple star systems, those become pretty important, so when the sounds cut out late game, it can be a hassle. (I'm running Vista with realtek onboard sound).

Ships stop autoattacking late-game when in large fleets. I noticed this the other night. I sent my fleet into an enemy system and they just sort of sat there in rather impressive formation while getting picked at by a few enemy frigates.

Ok, that's all I can think of.

I think there are really 3 viable ways to fix the current population cap.

1) Pop Cap scales with the size of the map
2) Pop Cap is based on the number of plants controlled. HOWEVER, this should not be 1 for 1. I would suggest that it is only ~50% scaled by planets so that there is a disadvantage for growing to big. The idea is that if a players power is ~= pop cap, then power ~= planets owned. So there is little disadvantage to growing. However, if it is only partially scaled by planets than growing an empire to fast will leave you with a relatively weaker fleet than the size of your empire which would keep the current dynamic. E.G. In a 5 player game if each player has a base of 250 pop cap + 25 per planet. A player who control 50% of the map will neither have 50% of pop cap, nor only a 5th. Having only a 5th places that player at too major of a disadvantage
3) Some combination of 1 and 2

^

Obviously larger galaxies should have bigger fleets, but

The problem really is the 'slippery slope', which 'scaling with planets' may induce. That is, once a player starts losing, they simply cannot actually fight back, as the balance was tipped and it's inevitable.

totally agree with camomilk about being able to reduce your fleet logistics research. It stinks to own half of a huge map, then suddenly, you can't rebuild even a tiny fleet if you get wiped out.

Simple solution for fleet cap: keep current system, but add (empire total population) / 4 (or whatever) to the cap.

If you make factions in this context too different, you risk making a group far-fetched. In the Babylon 5 series, the factions were quite similar too... beam weapons and missiles of various types being exchanged on a regular basis, yet the battles were thoroughly entertaining and engrossing.

Certain strategic abilities and capital ship special abilities serve to distinguish the factions from one another mechanically.

As for defense, the point in Sins is to slow down an attacker until a friendly fleet can arrive to either destroy or drive them away. Perfect as is, to this gamer.

1. add a copy options for stars and planet groups to the map creator
2. tweak defensive structures so that they are useful vs human players.
3. add the options to make the game speed adjustable after the game has started so a player can play it on slow when there is a lot to do and speed it up when they are just waiting for their fleets to fly across the map.
4. add the option for no pirates outside of the map selection, where you set the game speed and locked teams, so someone can override a map to add or remove pirates if they want.
5. make the other 2 superweapons worth building, as it stands the superweapon choices are either TECs total devastation, or be a minor annoyance at best using the other two.

[possible bug that may need fixed] when I declared war on an ally AI a few seconds before the only remaining hostile AI died (the timer was still running) my forces would not auto attack their structures after the time expired.

I would like to see something like smuggler bases that are weaker then priates and when you destroy them you get a small resource boost(such as like +100 cyrstal).

Seems 2 be enough ideas here to keep the developers busy for centeries to come,n tho this is likely to be ignored how bout ppl start off small.

besides the obvious balance fixes etc, how bout getting a better way to watch the replayes. blasting thru on 8x speed is stupid n i often miss the epic battle i wanted to watch in the 1st place. y not just add a duration bar like when watching a movie on windows media player

speaking of watching battles isnt that part of what real time stragy is about. with the current "no movement" battles i might as well role dice cuz its just as boring to watch. yes the explosions n effects r sweet but adding ship movement would go along way. besides what kind of intelligent being would sit there as his ship gets blasted by a slowing moving capital ship that he could easily flank

last point... y am i seeing fighters n bombers flyig thru other SHIPS and PLANETS???
... n fantastic game by the way

Pirates need to double check their target on system arrivial. Last game a planet changed hands while they were in route and they killed the new owner instead of moving on to the next system containing the proper target.

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet or not (and I really don't care to read 8 pages for it ). But could you add the ability to disable the bounty system yet still have pirates active? Or even to make a roaming pirate fleet that used what it plundered to enhance itself? The pirate system as is does its job, but I really don't like the bounty system and would like other options as I do like the idea of pirates being out and about.

Another option that should be added...
When the map is chosen, there should be an option that allows you to choose the maximum amount of players in each system. For example, if one wanted to play a map with 5 stars, and there were 5 players, one could theoretically set the max to 1 so that each player began the game with their own solar system.

I really think that there should be more logistics slots for every planet especially your home planet. I never have enough logistics slots.