Nightraid3r

Sins desperately needs a overhaul in its lobby system more so than it needs clan support in my opinion. Lobby rooms should display the names of all the players in the lobby even when you are in a match setting up teams, having to press tab to cycle through to see who is in the lobby is painful as hell!

The lobby room should also be moved to the starting screen of sins right when you launch the game and it should continuously stay there as you cycle through the menus until you eventually start up a game and play (though I wouldn't be against it if you could also access it ingame too). Sins is a great game but the user interface is by far its worst feature, it severely needs an overhaul!

It would also be nice to see a feature to set the maximum number of teams allowed, this would make setting up matches so much easier.

I'm afraid there's no plans to update the UI for the multiplayer section.

I suppose selling same game 3 times (Sins, Trinity, Rebellion) explains a bit why there's no decent MP support. There, I said it.

And no, adding starbase does not make it new game.

to clarify, you dont want a whole new ui, just more buttons added, yes?

I could care less about the UI looks. The buttons and UI are fine. We just want more features with that UI that is actually tangible for multiplayer play.

and just what is an api?

It's chicken and egg - they don't want to add more MP features/functionality/ladder play because they don't think there will be enough players to warrant it but without those basic features, you're hamstringing yourself from attracting and retaining a larger MP pool.

I know for  Ironclad's next title, Sins of a Dark Age, they are definitely going to be focusing more on MP as in this from their Q&A:

Will I be able to create a team with my friends and be automatically placed into a match?

Yes, we have a sophisticated matchmaking system and player/team ranking system.

So by not bothering with this for Rebellion at all, and ignoring the potential of using Steamworks and selling though Steam, they seem to really be indicating a lack of confidence in Rebellion having any kind of MP community.

I wouldn't mind starting a drive.  I will personally put in (at least) $100 dollars to this effort.  Before we start throwing money around, I would suggest compiling a list of what people would donate corresponding with their name to start a collection effort.

Then the tricky part is finding out how we can make sure Stardock takes the money and works on it as opposed to just take the money.  I think this could require some form of contract and that would be a pain.

heh, i sent yarlen a pm regarding this proposed bribe.

They have different vision now, called Sins of a Dark Age.

An API (application programming interface) is a way for programs to exchange information in a very scripted (hopefully well documented) fashion.  So if you had a program like Blizzards Battle.net outside of Sins that program could pass Sins a request to start a 5 v 5 match and these are the id's that identify those players.  When the match was over this program could communicate the results giving you the basics of a ladder (when integrated with a database).

Then you would write programs that manipulated the database for the community.  (and there would be cake  )

Yes cake