This is something that the producers are looking at in the next update, but they keep pushing back the date for some reason. For now, deal with it. And if you want something to keep you entertained for a while, hit an astriod near thier home so they bring the fleet back, immediatly head over to the homeworld afterwards, shoot one volley of bombs and watch the battle.

Right now, I just hit the + key to speed it up. Game over in seconds.

I'm really hoping for a more aggressive in general. I understand that most people just say "well, now I get to bomb the planet", but it just turns the game from a grand space battle to a game of wuss tag.

The thing is, there is no way to see how many games someone has won right? There is no ranking system right? No top leaderboard? So whats the point of staying and wiping someone completely out? You know you've won and you don't want to waste the time to mop him up, so just leave. It doesn't hurt anything, and if you've won you've won. That and if you're the game host you can end it manually

Incentives to stay in the game late is where Sins seems to fall a little flat now. If you're on the losing side, it's nearly impossible to recover if your fleet was decimated. If you're on the winning side, you have to play tag to make the win "official" (not that it's ranked anywhere). I imagine most of this has to do with game balancing, which is on-going and will be addressed in future patches, but since there hasn't been as much official word about this yet we're still speculating right now.

Make the end of the game official to whom? And even though the devs say "it's a slow game;'real time' strategy" doesn't excuse poor game mechanics and little to no incentive for playing the game. At this point I'll do a fun game a week and use it at LAN's, no more, unless some form of ranking and tracking system comes later. They need to get this stuff fixed and implemented, alot of the multiplayer gripes I have could have easily been implemented before launch. SupCom is popular for a reason, not all of it has to do with the game itself, alot to do with the mulitplayer aspect.

You assume an online ranking system is desireable.  I don't agree with that at all.  I highly doubt there will be a ranking system any time soon. It certainly won't be with my blessing anyway. Not unless said games are purely optional.

As someone who has played a lot of such games, ranking systems tend to ruin the online experience as it becomes just about using whatever is the path of least resistance to victory. Getting the win becomes the "fun" element rather than playing the game.

Well, what I have found very helpful, is if you've already decimated their fleet, and you have a fairly large fleet yourself, send a few ship into each surrounding planet, OR even a scout to each planet, and see where hes running to next! By surrounding planets I mean somewhere near where he was settled around. Or if you're Vasari, the final phase detection research is quite helpful too.

As I said we don't need to argue about ranking so I don't see the point of you throwing you're apparent greatness in RTS games around? I meant it as a jest bud The option would be nice, and again fix the late game problems.

Not really. If you're losing as TEC, you could throw a few thousand cash into building a scout fleet and sending them deep into the enemy empire(thanks to the scouts' speed) with Timed Explosives to bomb the heck out of them, then scuttle the scouts to avoid cool-down and repeat the process, playing guerrilla until you're dead. Unless the enemy has a Level 6 Jarrasul Evacuator, they won't be able to kill planets TOO fast and they could end up with their economic infrastructure severely ravaged.

If you're Advent, Seeker Vessels could be used with their Martyrdom attacks to crunch enemy siege frigates, but the 250-damage attack isn't really strong enough to do much harm to larger ships/structures without racking up huge costs(for yourself).



The enemy can just declare a new home world somewhere else.

I think he means instead of automatching automatically being ranked, there would be a seperate ranked automatching system.

Automatching systems take alot of time and energy to replace and they can really break a game if poorly implemented. Stardock is trying for a deliberate strike against the current RTS culture trying to move it away from the cutthroat do or die of the infamous "scrub article". Such a culture is only viable if the publisher supports it, and quite frankly doesn't really impact the bottom line of sales. Stardock has already made it's claim to fame without neccessarily imitating blizzard, COH or any other such game by falling into the 'balance trap' you see so often.

It'd be interesting if the game's lifespan runs on content patches and mods and *not* competitive play. I'm sure it would piss plenty of competitive people off but refreshing to those RTS players not looking to wade around a community of sharks.

The competitive RTS community has really gotten rather spoiled developing some kind of narcissistic ego complex when referencing new players who have no desire to compete. They typically denigrate such people to be the bottom genepool game purchasers, when quite frankly they're the ones who more than likely make the bulk of purchases and make the money. I mean, if you look at the 'loyal and competetive' RTS fanbase, they really have the potential to make a great deal of trouble while giving little back. They don't buy new games and they set on the forums whining about this and that, forum venom which can really build up and kill a game, Ala Titan Quest.

By completely ignoring them, you can greatly reduce the impact they have on the game. Look at Big Huge Games.
The last game, Age of Legends was great, but failed to attract a competitive audience because of numerous bugs in the networking and ranking systems that had little to do with code. It certainly didn't kill the game- they made plenty of sales.

But it was truely an example of how nasty forum wars can get, and how trying to cater to the competitive crowd is really dangerous if you don't have the expertise to do it.

Frogboy is a TA veteran and I think he's familiar with what really extended TA until now, an established and loyal community of /modders/ that increased the longevity of the game long past it's competetive relevance. TA really went a different path from Blizzard in that while it is no longer relevant economically, it really had a -huge- impact on the development of the RTS genre as a whole.

Blizzard has real expertise in maintaining a community and creating a competitive structure. Their QA testing is also top notch, which contributes to the 'polished' feel of the games. These are different types of skillsets that an established monolith like blizzard might have, but a smaller game development company would be hardpressed to find.

I mean seriously, they have devs doing community rep service. This is refreshing and an intelligent choice, but it also means they don't have the spin doctors (or the inclination to hire them) that Blizzard and other competetive companies use to whip player communities into a frenzy.

It's clear the devs are trying to make a strategy game that has a different dynamic from the typical 4X or RTS. Once they threw a few of the tried and true game dynamics out the door, they soon realized they have to figure out good alternatives and balancing becomes a whole new problem.

We just need to be patient. The devs did a great job so far and I have faith it'll work out in the end.

Even if that's true, which I doubt, everyone (online) wishes there was a way to speed up the end-game.

I've played maybe 5 or 6 games online and have yet to see an actual 'victory' screen (and I won all of them). Instead, everyone just disconnects. That's not fun.

I'm not sure how it could really even be fixed, beside some kind of bonus to siege frigates proportionate to percentage how many planets you control in the star system.

But you're probably against that.