I ask wtf is going on, are we ever going to start the game- and they say that it is a PUG game. Okay- so what. Unless SOASE has a different definition of what a PUG is, I had every right to be there. I get booted after waiting for the game for twenty minutes.
I hope this was an isolated incident, because if this is a normal occurrence, then online play is simply not going to work for me.
That suxxors. My rule for hosting games is "first come, first served" because I think it's rotten that someone who sat and waited patiently gets kicked. It isn't good for the Sins community either because we need all the people who want to play online multiplayer PvP that we can get.
You sound like you're a veteran of online multiplayer, so I'm sure you'll give it another chance and persevere while you take your nooby lumps. It's an awesome game once you get up to speed.
I'm not sure what your definition of a PUG is. I introduced pugging to the Sins community having learned about it in the Unreal Tournament capture-the-flag community. There it stands for (P)ick-(U)p clan match style (G)ames and the games are organized on IRC with the use of a pugbot program. In Sins, everyone starts out on Team 10. After a little consternation, two people become team captains (and pick a team number) and then draft-pick the others in an A-BB-AA-BB-A order (for 5v5 aka 5s) so that the first captain has first and last pick. (The captains pick numbers from 1-10 for the right to decide who gets to choose whether to go first or second.) For a 4v4 (4s) the order is A-BB-A-B-A. When you are picked you join your captain's team.
Sins has low player counts, but there are still 4s and 5s PvP games every day. The best times to play seems to be from about 4 pm to Midnight U.S. Eastern Time and there's more activity on the weekends.
To chat in game, you press ENTER to bring up the chat window. Chat commands (which also apply in the game lobbies except for /a):
/a -- team/ally chat
/w "name" (in quotes) -- whisper to a player
/r -- whisper back to the last person who whispered to you.
/f -- send message to all friends
/wf -- whisper to friend
Also, you can use <TAB> to scroll through those options in-game. In the Lobby you can type /w or /wf and then TAB to scroll through available names to whisper to.
I'm guessing that it won't take you too long to get up to speed. Just focus on trying to survive and on being as big of a pain-in-the-ass as possible. Also, watch replays of the games and study what the pro players do. Also, visit the Strategy forum and through some of the threads, especially the Raging Amish sticky post where he compares all of the different units (read that over a couple times).
