Suggestion: Tactical combat that does not require too much attention


Like others, I have also been looking for more rock-scissors paper in the combat part of the game. BUT!!! I am afraid that if you really have to give a lot of attention to how you move your ships around in combat to make sure you put the right ships against each other, then I think the game comabt will not be manageable either. More often than not, I find myself getting attacked in all different areas on the map at the same time and I can really only put my attention on one battle (afterall If I zoom into one planet, I cannot see the others). This is important because most the time I just try to anticipate what sorts of forces will be coming to attack sectors when I am not attending to them and just leave various ships and defenses there that I think can deal with them. This being said, I often don't change my defence forces much and feel little need to look carefully at what I am being attacked with.

My suggestion: I think battles should largely be winable not by giving careful attention to them and not simply by having a way larger fleet. What I think should be introduced is a tactics governor (kind of like governors in largescale turnbase games). What I envision is not just building a fleet, but giving the ships and planetary defenses tactical roles. Formations in most RTS games are quite lame -don't simply use them. The formation itself is only good insofar as it lets you achieve a certain end. Let the tactical roles you assign certain classes of ships determine the formations they will take instead.

Example: Suppose I have been focusing on developing carriers and bombers. The fleet I build might then have as an overall strategy "Attack with bombers" (maybe prioritizing certain target types), the other ships in the fleet that are not carriers (or bombers) could have the tactical role of defending the carriers, or making strikes (if safely possible) on those enemey units that could easily destroy your bombers (such as flak frigates or fighters).

The tactical roles would be much more like AI scripts than formations. Perhaps more advanced scripts and commands in those scripts would have to be researched. I am not pretending that this would be easy to implement, but I have my hunches that its doable. The point is that I can have just as much enjoyment of watching the strategy I laid out for my fleet unfold automatically as I can if I controlled the fleet myself. By watching the strategies my enemy uses and the ships he has available to him I can make a pretty good strategy that allows my fleet can defeat his. The important thing is that this will not require my careful attention, but it still makes ship's diversity important and that further makes research and development along different paths (for different ships and their strengths more important. Every now and then I would take a look back at my fleet and see how it is doing and modify its strategy.

Just a sugestion for a game that looks really promising.

Are you saying that your static defenses can take care of any enemy attack? What level of AI are you playing against? In my current game, There is this one medium AI that loves to attack with fleets comprised of half Perchiriens and half Javelises. Even at my most heavily defended worlds (6 hangars, 6 gauss, 1 shield, 1 repair platform) the static defenses can hardly touch these fleets. Every one of these attacks requires my attention to send my fleet (with a large number of Gardas) to defend the planet.

This is something that's being worked on. Expect to see more improvements with each update.

This was fixed in the last hotfix. Please make sure you have the latest version of the game in Stardock Central (0.76.018). If you do then it's probably got to be looked at again.

This was also fixed somewhat in the last hotfix. Defeated factions now have their culture eliminated entirely.

This has been in the game for a long time now (and is in the tutorial). Just right-click the move button when you've got your fleet selected to set them to jump as a group.

I just pre-purchased and played my first game. Well, I haven't finished yet but it's all but over.
I set up the first game to be more of a play and learn game than a challenge of any sort. One computer player set to easy on a small map.
First, let me say...WOW! This game blew me away. I could definitely see some of the other game influences in the graphics. I was reminded heavily of Homeworld. I loved it.
It took me more than a few turns to figure out the research. I didn't read the field descriptions closely enough at first to realize that I needed more and more research stations to get the higher techs. I would suggest putting this somewhere in the tutorials.
One other thing about research. When building ships, some ships can't be built until certain techs are researched. The descriptions mention this but they don't tell you which techs you need in order to build the ship. This would be a nice feature.
So far, overall excellent job!

good point, I've taken this for granted since I've played so much, but new people would be confused their first few games...

Yeah, the first time I played the tech tree was very confusing to me also, it seemed all jumbled together and I had no idea what I needed to focus on. Now that I have played a few times I know where everything is and appreciate not having to scroll around a huge tech screen to see later research.

That being said research does not seem important to the game. Yeah I can tell research makes a difference in my battles and I need it to make new buildings, but when a tech is researched in 1 minute there is no satisfaction in having doing it. An option to slow down tech speed would be nice and it would make the game more realistic.

This.

Tech tree is not very well presented. (But you can follow it when you know where everything is.)

At least the icons for the different techs are somewhat representative of their respective techs. The techs for new ship prototypes actually show ships, laser upgrades are laser "blasts", etc. I have played some games where you couldn't even get a rough idea of what a tech was by looking at the icons. Devs did a good job with this aspect.

Another gameplay observation: I sent a move command to a fleet to move to a lane that was on the other side of a planet from their current position. Most of the ships traveled to the location with no problem but the capital ship that was in the group appeared to try to go through the planet before attempting to turn to go around it. Since cap ships already move relatively slowly this caused me to have to wait until I gave the order to make the jump down the lane. I know that fleets can be groupd to All Move Together but even with this on the rest of the fleet would have needed to wait for the bungling cap ship in order to jump.

Welcome Amalric! Pleased to hear you are having fun already.
We will be taking a careful look at the research tree. There is a lot of room for improvement, and your comments are valued.

Okay, I've been playing a LOT of hours on the beta since the 76.018 patch came out. I've experimented/recorded battles and observed AI behavior. I've played with all capital ship fleets, mixed fleets, and fleets consisting of only frigates and cruisers. Here are my thoughts on all the problems I've seen (Warning!, this will likely be a long post).


1. Focus Fire is still the ultimate battle tactic. The shield damage mitigation effect just doesn't do enough to encourage different tactics.

Even worse, the AI doesn't seem to have been told that Focus Fire is the only viable tactic = underpowered AI competition.

**Possible Solution: Introduce a weapon accuracy effect in the game. Ships that are taking damage should get a penalty to their weapon accuracy (simulating ship vibrations from hits and explosions). This, combined with the present shield damage mitigation, should encourage somewhat more spread out firepower during combat without totally nullifying focus fire.

If this Weapon Accuracy Effect ISN'T included in the game, then the AI really needs to be taught to use Focus Fire Tactics.


2. When you finish off an opponents planet and land colonists, strong enemy culture can immediately take the planet away from you. I mean, your colonists just saw you laugh while wiping out billions of people. Would they really step out onto the ground and say "Screw You! What are you going to do about it?" to your massive fleet in orbit?

Hehe, kind of reminds me of that old game Star Wars Rebellion, where if you used the Death Star to blow up a planet, other planets become MORE likely to rebel on you....yeah, right!

**Possible Solution: When enemy culture reaches the point it can take over your planet, give the player a notification and start a 5 minute timer. If at the end of the 5 minutes, if the player hasn't built up enough Broadcast centers, give the planet to the opponent.

ALSO, planets with a friendly fleet of a certain size/power in orbit should be immune to being taken over by culture.


3. Robotic Cruiser sound effect needs to be seriously shortened. I found I didn't use this Cruiser because of the constant noise they create.

**Possible Solution: Only use the sound effect for the moment when the Cruiser activates its special ability.


4. IF I don't assign targets, sometimes bombers will 'attack' fighter craft (basically they just follow the enemy fighters around until killed). My fighters will also strafe enemy ships in spite of the enemy bombers killing my fleet. This isn't simply a matter of me assigning targets to the wrong groups. I've triple checked my orders, and sometimes wouldn't even assign targeting orders just to see who attacked who.

**Possible Solution: Fighters and Flak Frigates need to be set to attack enemy Fighters/Bombers exclusively UNLESS manually ordered to attack another target. Bombers should not even be given the choice to attack fighters since they can't even fire at them.


5. The collision mechanics need to be seriously worked on. Right now, my ships sometimes collide with other ships and have parts sink into each other until they move back into position (Is that how new Capital Ships are born Mommy?)

ALSO, weapon fire sometimes passes through friendly ships to hit enemies...this really needs to be fixed. If friendly fire hits your ships, there should either be no damage done or (my favorite) your ships take the damage instead.

**Possible Solution: Collision mechanics need to take better account of ship collisions and weapon friendly fire pass through.


6. I really would like the choice of what kind of Flag Ship I start with (without modding the game so all TEC players get the same alternative capital ship).

**Possible Solution: Give players at the start up screen a choice of Flagship for their faction. AI players can be assigned a random capital ship.

Another way might be to make the 'Flagship' an entirely different ship then what you can make in game. This special Flagship would also have different ability choices for upgrades.

What would be even cooler is if this Flagship had far more ability choices then it could ever get even at max level. This would make everybody's Flagship a truly unique vessel, as players would choose different ability paths.


7. Enemy AI still occasionally ignoring/fleeing from my forces, even when it can win easily.

For example, I took a key junction planet away from the Yellow player at some cost to my fleet. I started building up the planet infrastructure and had just assigned hangar build orders when the Yellow player showed up. He had 2 capital ships, some light carriers and a load of frigates...basically enough to kill my fleet and wreck the entire planet.

What does the Yellow player do? He continues on to the next jump point, happily ignoring the golden opportunity afforded to him. I guess he really had an important appointment elsewhere.

Another example I have is of an AI fleet and mine pounding away at each other. It was going to be a close fight, but I was likely to win but at the cost of most of my fleet. I wasn't about to try and flee though because I would lose almost as many ships to opportunity fire and leave my opponent strong enough to come after my other planets.

What does the AI do? IT decides to flee and give me its fine Volcano planet without a fight. Not only do I get the planet, the AI fleet is mostly wiped out trying to flee...at no cost to me. Because of this bonehead move, the AI couldn't rebuild its fleet fast enough to prevent me from taking the rest of its planets in a mad rush offensive.

**Possible Solution: The AI needs to stand and fight. It is better to lose and leave your opponent seriously weakened, then to lose and leave your opponent at full strength.

The AI also needs to learn to take advantage of good fortune. If it has a mission in a gravity well several jumps away, but encounters a lush barely defended planet along the way, it should stop and take out the planet.


8. There have been times I wanted to assign a guard function to some of my ships.

**Possible Solution: Guard Target command function should be included in the game. This function should do 3 things; 1. move to and attack any targets attacking the ship it is guarding, 2. fire at any enemy target in weapon range and 3. follow the ship it is guarding (both guard and guarded ships need to jump in group formation through Phase Lanes).


9. Having some trouble assigning CTRL and ALT groups. It just seems like the game doesn't acknowledge my pressing the CTRL or ALT key sometimes.

**Possible Solution: I notice that other have complained about this problem, so I imagine it is being looked into.


10. Screen Shake effect can mess with your targeting orders.

**Possible Solution: Well, I simply turned it off. Maybe it can be toned down a bit so it doesn't interfere as much with orders during battle.


11. Ships (especially Capital Ships) travel in these long looping arcs to turn 180 degrees. They usually endure huge amounts of punishment going through Gauss Gun concentrations or incoming fleets.

**Possible Solution: Ships should be able to simply turn 180 without forward motion (maneuvering thrusters only). These are suppose to be spaceships, not cars. Not only does the forward arc motion turning not make ANY sense, it also makes retreating from battle an even more suicidal option than it already is.

Actually, the AI suffers more from the long forward motion turning than a human player. Allowing turning in place would help the AI during retreats (keeping in mind that retreating is the AI's favorite tactic anyway).


12. The present system of needing more Research Facilities to achieve higher levels of tech needs some work. It really feels too forced and one dimensional.

**Possible Solution: Here is an idea that I had. ONE Research Facility can research ALL technologies. However, each additional Research Facility lowers the cost of research by a percentage amount.

So, if you decide to use only 1 research facility and rush your research, you will get an early boost to your tech at the expense of more resources wasted over the medium/long term. You will also be able to use your Logistical slots for other things.

The player that builds a few research facilities before starting research will go further on the same amount of resources though.


13. Gravity Wells still seem too small for the present ship speeds and weapon ranges.

**Possible Solution: The present size gravity wells should only apply to asteroids. Planets should have a considerably larger gravity well. Stars should have a considerable larger gravity well then planets.


14. It would be nice to force the enemy to stay and fight when you jump to his planet or to the Star's gravity well.

**Possible Solution: There should be a Phase Inhibitor Ship in the game (I've been asking for this for a while). This cruiser or capital ship should be fairly frail for balance reasons.

It should also require an antimatter cost to power the ability PLUS the ability should have a finite range. The antimatter cost and finite range would also be for balance reasons.


15. Lastly, if you need to send ships to a star several 'star jumps' away, this can take WAY too much time.

**Possible Solution: Be careful here, I personally love the present amount of time it takes to travel between 2 stars. So please don't simply reduce the travel time...that would suck.

What would work better is if ALL Stars (and only Stars) are fully/open connected in the game. That means you can travel from any star to any other star.

This would solve the length of time problem it takes to travel from star to star to star to star (and so on). It will also allow all the phase lanes between stars to be made invisible and no longer a source of confusion for players (sometimes they get visually mixed up with the inner star system Phase Lanes).

Also, Whack a Mole effect wouldn't be an issue for a 'Star to Star fully/open connection map' since stars aren't owned anyway. Also, I believe level 2 Radar would allow you to see any ships en route to your star. So there would be no complaint of surprise fleets suddenly appearing out of nowhere.


That is it. Hope this helps the developers in some way. Thanks for reading guys

Guarding is already present (pretty sure it's in the tutorial too). Just select a ship and right-click on the one you want it to guard. That's how I use my flak frigates to defend areas of my fleet against fighters/bombers.

Whoa!!! Excellent

BTW, I played the tutorial but did NOT notice this, so... I'm pretty sure it's not in the tutorial but I'll check again the next time I play

I wanted something like this and it was already there... What other secrets you hiding, Yarlen?

I play the game on hard. I find that hard isn't necessarily harder, it just takes longer. Once I have 7 tightly packed gauss turrets with 7 hangers (or 5 and 5 in systems with only 25 logistics points), the system is basically locked down. Granted, this usually also means that I have done some teching up, but this formation chews up frigates for breakfast.

Also, once I've started building defenses I'm usually already on the offensive with 6-8 cap ships wiping out the enemy. Granted, it's tough to mount a counter assault when I'm hounding them, but I never have to worry about pirate incursions with the above set-up and the other factions don't frighten me at all .

Topic: Why do I have so much metal resource?

Topic: What are cruisers for?

Topic: What is the significance of the different weapons?

I have enjoyed the game thus far, though I can tell that the balancing and the like needs work. As indicated above, I have three questions. These are not necessarily criticisms or suggestions of corrections quite yet. Perhaps I am just playing the game weird or missed out on some important aspect of the game or strategy in it.

First of all, I find that I am almost never short on metal reousources. As others have likewise said, it is primarily crystal that I am short on. As far as I am concerned metal is not even part of the game. Am I not building enough ships or something else that takes a lot more metal than credits? I am sure that if I did not build mines or the like then I would run into problems, but I never feel the need to research improved metal mining or to buy metal from the black market (usually I sell it instead). If metal were absent from the game it would not make much difference to me.

Second: What function are cruisers supposed to play in the game? It is so easy to research all the capital ships at once that I find no need to research cruisers. Is there some advantage of cruisers that I am missing out on by primarily focusing on capital ships? I don't really see it. Why have cruisers class ships if they don't play a special function in the game?

Thirdly: Is there a difference between the weapon types (missile, laser, autocannon)? Are certain weapon types better against certain types of targets? I haven't really noticed a big difference (maybe because capital ships often use all of them). Is the difference just for research purposes that allow you focus attention on one type of attack? I think I am missing something.

I find the sorts of issues I raise here to be the biggest detractors from the beta in its present form. There seem to be various details that don't really make a difference in the game (or for which there seems to be no strategic benefit to using them). As I implicitly claim in a post above, the rock-scissors-paper component is rather lacking at present. And again, my fear is that if these details do begin to matter, multiple battles will become unmanageable.

Still having fun though

Yeah, I realized just after my post was permanent that I did not have the most current version. I still stand by my first point, in that the game generally plays too slow (which is a combination of overall speed and the fact that the AI rarely does anything). Oh and for the record, my system specs are:

3.2 Ghz P4
2 Gig RAM
256 MB GeForce 6800

Which is well above spec. Anyway, I do enjoy it, I'll just put it down a bit until a patch or two comes out.

One thing I noticed the last time I played (and I thought I took screenshots, which I can't find ATM), was that the AI did some funky things when it came to placing defensive structures, and more importantly, they don't seem to reposition once they are placed.

Here was the set-up (sorry in advance if this confusing):

My World----------------AI World faction #1-------------------AI World Faction #1 (dead end system)
-------------~4 turrets--------------------------~8 turrets

I have no idea why the AI would position their defenses in such a way. It is impossible for anything to come from the direction of the 8 turrets. It's possible that they were initially placed there to defend both systems, but once it was determined that there was no threat from that direction, they should have been scuttled and repositioned.

It's not something you get to do in the tutorial, but I'm pretty sure it's in the text.

Which is imho bad. Everything that is said in the text should also be showed, or being done by the player. If something is just said, it wont stick and the player will forget it very likely.

nah, you should read every part of it. and memorize it completely. your every waking moment should be dedicated to SINS and the devs arent really spending much time on the tuts until the game is finished.

Yeah, I know I just finished writing a huge post here just yesterday, but here are a few more gameplay thoughts.

1. Presently, the AI likes to build Frigates and Cruisers almost exclusively. Reducing AI resources going into Capital Ships probably works to their advantage. I mean, human players will always be better than the AI at taking out Capital Ships. Human players will also always be better at defending their own Capital Ships.

2. In my last Gameplay Post, I mentioned that ships should suffer a weapon accuracy decrease while taking hits (simulating vibrations from hits and explosions). An additional benefit of this added game mechanic would be to discourage Capital Ship ONLY fleets. If a player only goes out with a few Capital Ships, an opponent could use a more numerous frigate/cruiser fleet to simultaneously keep all your Cap Ships at a lower weapon accuracy status during battle (by always have a couple of ships firing on any 1 ship).

3. Do not allow any Tactical or Logistical Slots around stars. The game can last a long enough time with back and forth fighting. No need to further increase stalemate likelihood.

Even kind of makes sense to not allow structures around stars. It would be prohibitively costly to transport the building materials to stars. It would also be expensive to maintain these structures. Also, the Star's gravity well is so much bigger than a planet/asteroid (even if it isn't really shown in the game), Tactical Structures shouldn't hold the same level of effectiveness.

4. I also notice now that Stars are becoming more important. I've found attacking star-traversing enemy trader ships with a weak, but fast moving force nets me a lot of bounty. I don't know if this will be enough to encourage huge fleet battles for control of stars, but every bit helps (hmmm, that Frigate? that has the acceleration special ability would do extremely well patrolling stars). I still dream of multiple players duking it out with their fleets around stars.

5. Radar Tech research results need to be explained a bit better.

6. A Capital Ship that has a Culture Ability upgrade would be nice for taking over planets within enemy culture zones. Maybe make it one of the Arkan abilities so it goes hand in hand with its Colonize ability.

7. Players that hold entire Star Systems should get a 'System Lord' status (as well as a cool icon next to their in-game name. The 'System Lord' status should reduce pirate/insurgency occurrences (within all fully owned star systems). Systems that the 'System Lord' only has a partial foothold on would experience normal pirates/insurgency occurrences.

*This idea really isn't mine. I read it a while ago by one of the other members, but I can't find out who came up with it.

8. Thinner beam effect for beam weapons. Might want to change the color to blue or green, as red doesn't look as...pretty. Also make the KOL fire its beams so they hit anywhere on the target, and not always all 4 beams focused on the same spot.

9. Separate Logistic and Tactical slots are a bit silly. I mean, both consist of space platforms in orbit around a planet/asteroid. Why should you be able to build only some of the Tactical type and some of the Logistic type?

Maybe both Logistic and Tactical slots should be combined into a single category. This way, the player can choose whether he wants more logistical type platforms in or orbit, or more military type platforms.

That's it!

They aren't supposed to look pretty, it's the TEC, it's supposed to look like the bare minimum that can still fight. Besides, I've seen Advent ships with blue beams.

Hmmm, okay, so maybe ugly works for the TEC.

heyas been playing alot of sins and liking it alot, game is very stable, iv found no problems.. just afew ideas to share for things i would like to see implemented;)once u control all the planets in a system how about the ability to put afew tactical slots on the star itself. 2. a much larger research tree is needed imo, i go thru the current one easily on all games but small.. some ideas for the tree.. research faster movement for ships in gravity wells. Also faster lane transit times as on a large games it takes a long time to travel between star systems. Also, with the current tree I have a hard time identifying which items have been researched already, could these be tinted when researched as well as the little number on the icon to show theyre researched please. 3. Maybe some kind of star gate that you can build on your home system planet and one on one or two other planets you own to transit immediately between them, would help on the transit times. The other thing Id like to see has to do with defenses for planets, I think a more advanced research tree for the turrets and options for them would be nice, such as increased range, increased damage, shielding on the turrets, types of weapons the turrets have, would be nice to have cannons, lasers, missles at very least to choose from. Also, on a side note I am liking the pirates and think they work much better now. Also, for game balance Im finding that once you have researched everything you have all this extra crystal and ore piling up...what about using that crystal and ore for ship fuel and for maintaining planatary defenses?

They tried something like that for beta 1, it was horrible (no offence devs <3)