Game pacing

I have to say that I'm generally in the opposite camp. In most RTS's, units move so quickly across the map that unit positioning becomes much less important. In other words, if you keep a blob of forces near the middle of the map, you can usually respond to any threat with little trouble.

Sins isn't like that. If you're blindsided by an enemy fleet and you don't have forces within a jump or two, you're going to lose the planet under attack. I love this.

I do admit that there is a lot of "hurry up and wait," and it would be very nice for overall game speed to be adjustable during the game.

The whole aspect of traveling through the gravity wells isn't settled yet. The old way of doing things (Ships could phase out through the local gravity well) was too quick. The current system of move to the point at where the phase lane hits the gravity well is too slow. We're still trying to find a healthy medium.

well yes, but theres a difference between "wee! my units got from China to the US in 2:38:52 !!! and "gah, half my force has been wipped out, but at least I have reinforcements"

in the current system it is almost impossible to get reinforcements from even a couple planets away before two equally sized forces finish up combat, let alone a sizeable force against a smaller one.

Jop, how about a clear line of sight model.
Ships can jump to a other System, if their sight isnt blockt by the grav well of their current System.
That should be the middle way ^^

That was one of the sugesstions put out there, as well as smaller (circle) angle increments like 45 degress, 30 degrees, and 15 degrees. The thought to make the circle angle adjustable via research was also suggested.

I expect this topic to heat up again after Beta 2 gets out.

still, ships on the inside of gravity wells are too slow for that to be useful. and that system is basically implemented now.

Honestly, that hasn't been my experience in the RTS genre, although you may have had a different one. With fast and varying movement speeds relative to general game speed, the factor of unit mobility becomes an important one and adds to the gameplay. In many RTS games that I've played, a weaker but quicker unit can be more useful than a slower and more powerful unit. This is because the difference in mobility that the units have causes a significant difference in reaction times to events occurring in other parts of the map. In Sins, it seemed to me like there was no such factor, as all of the units have equally slow reaction times.

I would say this is no longer the case in Beta 2 (movement speed is more pronounced).  I was playing last night and ended up turning off group movement for my main fleet because my ally's planet was under attack and I couldn't wait any longer for my Kol to traverse the gravity well (I was at the star, which seems to have a pretty strong gravity drag even if the well size isn't all that big) - the frigates had zoomed over already and were waiting to enter Phase Space.  Anyway, I ended up sending my frigates on ahead alone.  30 seconds or so later, my Kol arrived as reinforcement to a major pirate incursion at that planet, saving the day (I was outgunned rather badly).  While the tech tree does allow you to eventually upgrade the speed of capital ships, I think this helps illustrate that movement speeds can make a difference in a game at the tactical level as mizoguichi said.

"major pirate incursion"

*faints*

on the tactical level, speed is fine as-is. but in the grander scale of fleets, its way too slow.

Positioning your fleets and defenses is a key element of strategy when you're dealing with a large Empire.  You have to make choices about where you place your forces, to optimize protection and the ability to react.  It's also a danger for anyone who spreads out too far too quickly, you can only effectively protect so much space before you start to leave gaps that can be exploited.

Remember, space is big... really big.  And capital ships are big too.  It takes time to traverse any large distance, even more if you're a huge ship that requires a lot more power to get moving.  And more time again if you're moving through the very strong gravity well of a star.  Sins is a game that at the grand scale, is a lot like an empire builder, which moves at a slower pace, but at the tactical level is an RTS where you're manaing your ships in quick combat. 

Will speeds of larger ships be tweaked?  Maybe, if it's decided that they need balancing.  Will larger ships move as fast as smaller ships so you can quickly react to a battle going on  4 jumps away in time to dramatically shift the battle before it reaches its conclusion?  My guess is no. 

I defend my front line planets with medium fleets and lots of defensive buildings.  Generally speaking, my larger fleets are no more than two, maybe 3 jumps away from any border world, so I can quickly shift things around if I'm being threatened.  Sometimes you just can't get to a battle in time, maybe it's because you over-extended yourself, or maybe it's because the enemy was just that much stronger.  But if you have your main fleet on the other side of the galaxy, and your homeworld gets wiped out because you had all of your ships 10 jumps away, that's your own fault.

yes, but like I said earlier; theres a difference between getting your fleets across your empire in minutes, and being incapable of getting your units from a neighboring planet to the battlefield before the battle is well over, and the enemy long since moved on. currently we are far too far into the latter of the two modes.

its not jumps 4/5 planets away that I'm concerned about, I'm not an idiot when it comes to placing my fleets. what I'm concerned with is that two equal forces can easily resolve a battle before cap ships in the NEXT planet over (not next of the next of the next of the next of the next planet over) can arrive

to be abundantly clear (as you seem to have assumed that I'm an absolute idiot looking for a game-breaking "fix")
I'm not talking about forces that are half way across my empire, I'm talking forces in adjacent, or once-removed planets.

The reaction times for reinforcements were significantly impacted by the "have to be at the lane to jump" change in version 66. It now has a great dependency on where in the neighboring grav well you station reinforcements and their composition. A force heavy with cap ships is pretty slow to get anywhere unless you make sure they are near the jump lane and have all of their fighters docked ahead of time.

Group Jumping (particularly across more than 1 grav well) also takes a lot longer than just sending the ships, so a decision needs to made whether the risk of defeat in detail outweighs the need for quick arrivals.

I personally haven't played the beta, but something that might work for skirmish mode (it might unbalance campaigns, so probably not usefull in them) would be the ability to change speeds on just certain aspects of the game. A great example of this is a game that came out a few years ago called Empire Earth 2, (I didn't really like the game much myself due to gameplay) in skirmish mode you could change the speed certain things such as movement, construction time of units and/or buildings.

These kind of controls could appease people who would like gameplay to be faster in some areas, and slower in others. As long as the AI was also affected by the changes it would not unbalance the gameplay in favor of the player to much. For example, you could be able to change hyperspace travel speed, speed in the gravity well, unit build times and structure build times, as well as rescource gather rates. To accomidate the increased or decreased speed, players could also have the option to change firing rates of weapons, or damage done by them.

... or you could start at the other end and make battles last a bit longer. if two rougly equal fleets meet one another I am think it should take at least a few minutes for the battle to actually resolve itself. I'm not sure what it is like now and if prolonging battles for example by increasing general unit health wouldn't break the game at a tactical level. I mean don't forget that in the past battles did often last a long time. land based battles could go on even for weeks (ok, bad example to compare to space combat), but I believe larger sea battles which are somewhat comparable did also last some time (up to a few days iirc).

battles seem to last plenty long in my opinion. I supposed it greatly depends on your ship and ability mix. Utility units like Akkans and Dunovs will extend battle length through their support and debuff abilities.

And destroying significant orbital infrastructure can take ages.

it would also depend on how many and what kind of frigates you are using... they are much more efficient damage sponges for cost than capital ships are.

Personally I have not found slow speed in a gravity well to be much of a deterrent to rapid response times. My system guard fleets were always positioned on the edge of grav well sitting right on top of the phase lane leading towards the nearest "theater of operations". That way home fleets were on standby to reinforce the fronteer worlds if needed ,as well as being right on the spot if an enemy managed to break through the front lines.
Overall, the pace of the game seemed to be pretty well balanced - it gave you enough time to attend to building/manuvering/combat in multipple systems without turning it into a hectic mess.

I find the game to be too slow, if I'm feeling lazy I can spend 7 hours on a single galaxy, thats not going to get much better with a tougher AI.



so you're telling me that you dont have those boredom spells where you're doing nothing but waiting for more money to flow in? god how I wish...

Technically although sea battles may have lasted several days the actual damage done was inflicted in several minutes (or an hour at most). Take the Battle of Midway. Yes, it took place over several days. But, in terms of ships sunk the Japanese lost 4 carriers in less than 30 minutes of fighting.

Midway is also an excellent example of how the pace of modern warfare has exceeded the ability of fleets to reinforce each other. The Japanese battleship force was 300 miles behind the carrier force. That meant they could reinforce each other in about 12 hours if both task forces decided to head directly towards each other.

However, dive bomber planes travel at 185 mph and the time from start of the dive to releasing the bomb to flying away is a matter of minutes. Which means a carrier strike can hit and fly away before any reinforcements could even arrive.

What does this mean for the gameplay concept of reinforcement using fleets 1 planet away? If you use real life as an example I'd say you can't reinforce in time. If anything you have to emulate real-life doctrine and station small groups of ships as a "picket line" and keep a large reserve that will probably arrive after the "picket line" is destroyed.

Its basically the same function that destroyers serve now in large carrier task forces. They patrol far away from the carrier to look for incoming threats. But its also so that THEY get hit first. Thus, they sacrifice their ship to protect the carrier and let the task force know that danger is approaching.

I guess game speed is a matter of personal preference. One of the ways to deal with that would be to add time compression option to the game.



Only during the jumps between galaxies. If I'm running low on cash, I go loooking for more, usually to my neighbor’s system

we still need to improve pathing for the ships. they are still bumper cars.

also if a large ship is sitting still wouldn't it just use it's thrusters to turn toward the direction of travel instead of moving to turn. I hope that made sense.

turning around would be faster than moving 100,000 miles to do the same job at least i think it would be



and this is just a stupid question but where in the grav well would the moon be at the blue line. or the yellow line ie where you can build things inside of

Moons are usually located deep within the planetary gravity well, so it would be relatively safe to assume that it could be situated anywhere between 2 yellow borders.

I want moons.....

You already got windows. No moons for you.

ok that is it lets string him up

anyone got a rope