I doubt it would do much to increase activity on ICO since the types of people who would be interested in playing in a tournament against human opponents are probably already playing on ICO.

I do agree with the sentiment that it would be good if we could convince more members of the 95% of all Sins purchasers who never thought to come online to give it a try.  The question is, how the hell do we reach out to them?  The people who read these forums either play online already or are fully aware of it an uninterested.  So how do we reach those tens of thousands of single-player only people who never read the Sins forums?  That's the real challenge.

The problem with something would be rules....or lack thereof. As such one of the inherent problems of strategy games is that there wil always be an inherent lack of strategy (irony at its finest). Actual stacked fleets are a rarity on ICO and I can bet most players will be using either Vasari or Advent. Not to say that there are some people who can easily counter that (I did such a thing many times, once with only light frigates of all things)

Another problem are the maps themselves. Even the smallest of maps can take hours to play through and map size is a double edged sword. Too large and they end up taking days. Too small and they leave little room to maneuver. You trade epic fleets (which sells Sins BTW) and granting a more typical RTS playtime with tactical battle groups.

Mr. Blunt has it completely correct.  1.5 to 2 hours is about three to four times longer than a game of any traditional RTS, and many people simply do not have the time to sit through an entire 2 hour game in one sitting.  Especially with more ridged tournament scheduling.  Also, what format shall we play?  4v4 or 5v5?  Regulars like that, non-regulars not so much.  1v1 or 2v2?  Now you've lost the interest of the regulars.

By 'stacked fleets' I'm pretty sure he's talking about unit diversity.  Most people on ICO just spam the imbalance unit of the month.  People will be playing to win in a tournament even more so than usual, not have fun.  Do you really want a tournament where people rush each other with carriers every match?  And don't pretend otherwise, I've played enough online games every patch to see how ICO regulars play.  Balance needs to be somewhat stable for a tournament to showcase a game, and get the community more interested.  Sins does not have that stable balance right now, and frankly never has.  There's ALWAYS been one unit you can spam without thinking to win.

1v1 and 2v2 isn't quite as bad as 4v4 and up as feeding doesn't work there, and committing 100% to 'rock' is much riskier as there's no recovering if you opponent goes 'paper'.  But will the regulars want a 1v1 or 2v2 tournament?  Not a snowballs chance in hell.

Mr. Blunt was claiming that it could take hours to play, not 1.5 or 2 hours, but more along the lines of 4 or 6 hours (which is what most people assume people mean when they say "takes hours").

I more or less figured that that is what he meant.  However, even if people are making fleets where 90% of the ships are composed of one single unit, that doesn't mean that the game lacks strategy.  Far from it, at least at the pro level.  It's funny that most of the people who complain about unit spam and how that ruins the strategy of the game are mostly online noobs and not pro players.  It suggests that they have not played hundreds of 4v4s and 5v5s and thus don't know what they're talking about.

If u guys wanna arranging an 1v1 to 5s sins diplomacy game, please join our hamachi channel: Sins Diplomacy 2, password: 123

Now we've got 60+ players already joined to our channel... including many are from team china players, we still have plenty of empty slots, maxed to 256 slot.

Join now, and keep online on the channel, so we can pm one another for arranging a game.

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Well for one I disagree that the duration of a match would be the issue. It can be just a one match tournament and thats it. A whole series could be based off of one match. I for one would be down for sitting back in my chair, eat some popcorn, and watch some guys go at it in sins for a long period of time. Also alot of tournaments last typically a couple of hours so I dont see why it cant be a tournament based game. Its got the replay options also! Thats all people need but I dont hardly see anyone posting any good matches they recently had on youtube on a daily basis.

 First of all, what could help is if they decided to release rebellion with a league and ladder but something like that would have been announced the first time rebellion was even heard of so I dont think tournaments are going to happen. Secondly, many people have not heard of this game before. Like you said, we need to get alot of people's attention so I would propose that someone post a commercial advertisement on tv saying waht sins is like and how cool a game it is.

If there ever will be tournaments coming on Im definitely going to be onboard with this game but I dont know if even I will be staying on much longer. There's just too low a number of players online playing this game than it should be. At the very least, this game atleast should be standing next to starcraft yet its not...and I never understood why...