Latest gameplay feedback.

-The AIs new building placement is neat. However it has some problems. The AI diverts all its gauss guns to perimeter defense, meaning their hangars are totally exposed. On the other hand that does encourage players to use tactics.

-Also, the AI seems to build too many defenses. There's no cenceivable reason to have 10 gauss guns in one place an hour into the game, no conceivable swarm of light frigates is gonna take that out. And it's not any more resistant to bombers.

-Although the AI seems a lot smarter in many respects, it doesn't seem to ever attack me. I think this may in part be due to scurrying about its empire dealing with pirates. Also, the attack AI simply can't seem to deal effectively with the gauss swarms the AI favors. Although I did note the AI using groups of Perchirons in carrier raids.

-Suggestion: Add a massively imba cheating AI for kicks.

-I had to flip a couple mental switches but the new research system seems more manageable now. Rather than progressing your way up the tree (as previously) the current system encourages you to pick and choose topics you need. I am still of the opinion that many techs simply arn't worth it, but it's nice that i dont have to research 4 level 2 combat topics if I just want to fast tech to Perchirons.

WRT most researched / least researched. My most researched - not just in terms of they're at the bottom, but in terms of i want to upgrade them - techs would have to be laser upgrades and hp upgrades, followed by Trade Ports and terran popcap upgrades. My least researched techs would have to be build speed upgrades (Why, when for a fraction of the cost you could just build more shipyards?), mining upgrades, and the uber high end techs which i have never gotten.

I find the cultural starting tech to be worth it but the upgrade techs don't make a lot of sense in terms of price. 5%? Pfft. (the same problem i have with the mining techs really...) Also, cultural loss rate decrease should be easier to acquire - it stands to reason that if you need it, you can't afford it. Maybe this is wild and crazy, but the cultural research benefits should be much higher - so that if, say, you had 4 Broadcast Centers (which is alot!), researching a upgrade tech makes equal sense to building a 5th, and more sense considering logistical constraints. So something like a 15-20% increase.

That is in the game with Beta 2. There's even a button for it in the top bar.

The AI seem to have a big need to revenge. I was fighting one AI over an asteriod, because it had a broadcast center and I didn't want their culture in my space, and I had taken some heavy losses due to all their Gauss Cannons (Is it normal for the AI to have 6 or 7 of them at most of their planets?) and they offered my a ceasefire accord. I agreed and left the system to rebuild what I had lost. As soon as I had replaced my losses I went back to that asteriod and broke the treaty. Now I have an 18,000 credit boundy on my head! Since I saved and quit I found out it was that one faction that I took the asteriod from (it had to be them, the other two I hadn't fought with all that much, so the majority of it had to be them. They had spent 19,000 credits on placing bounties!). Luckily mauraders were off!

That AI had almost no ships but had Gauss Cannons everywhere (6 to 7 max on a planet, and they were all close to each other) and, as I stated above, was placing huge amounts credits on people's head! Is this a normal AI behavior?

hmmm well it doesn't seem to work for me

Damn it, I won't be able to play the Beta 2 until my new system is set up in my new office. All the changes so far sound pretty impressive though. I can hardly wait.

Beta 2 [0.70[b].013] is quite a leap from Beta 1. I played on HIGH Quality (In Beta 1 I had to play on Low Quality) with a measly 1.7GHz Centrino Duo HPTC4400 with 512MB RAM and an Intel integrated graphics card (Intel 945GM)!!!

Anyway... What I really like compared to Beta 1, so far:
1) Much expanded planet development
2) Reports notification section on the bottom left
3) Graphics engine - with my specs I was running High quality settings quite smoothly
4) Load times between menu to games is phenomenal (i.e. instantaneous) sometimes. Whatever optimizations have been done have been ingenious

Gameplay Feedback:
1) It would be nice if the infocards could be 'fixed' when a unit is selected (maybe with a windows-style "X" close button if I want to close it - possibly allowing for multiple infocards at the same time?. This way I don't have to keep the mouse hovered over the unit when I want to both do something and see a specific unit.
2) Indicators of where LEVs are prior to setting building structures would be nice as it takes LEVs a long time to go to its destination. Sometimes I want to build stuff as fast as possible. Right now I can hover over the LEV icons in the empire window to see where they are prior to want to build something but this wastes some time doing so
3) Separating the 'unarmed' (i.e. LEV units) from the rest of the units on the Empire Window (in both the expanded and minimized formats) would be helpful as right now, (1)It can give the player an incorrect idea of how well defended a planet may be, (2)If I want a specific LEV to do a specific task it can be hard finding the LEV icon with so many other icons together.
4) AI responses to alliance proposals when already allied in three of four categories is as if I was not allied with them (I recall reading that this was pointed out in Beta 1, not sure if it was assumed to be fixed for Beta 2 or not)...

I hope the Pirates remain super tough for those of us who like the 'Hard' setting.

Probably in here, but a few hours into the game, the marauders can get ROUGH! I have about 8 planets that are *mine*, and I average 2 of them leveled at any time due to marauders. I haven't lost a single planet to enemy player attack! In fact, I haven't even SEEN a major enemy player attack (AI's on normal). I have a massive fleet running around, and just took out an opponent, but this fleet can't respond to the marauders. However, if I split the fleet up, the individual; units will have a very hard time against the 20-30-ship marauder fleets I've seen blasting my worlds.

yeah, I was able to divert pirates away from me by upping the bounty on any people who were passing through the system (even allies)
always fun to see them divert (although it rarely stops bombardment)

4 most- (generally equal in importance)
crystal and metal speed enhancements
population increase of all sorts
shielding tech/antimatter tech
weapons upgrades (lasers, then bullets, then missiles)
3 most used wierd ones-
crisis recovery
rapid growth
PSIDAR

3 least-
probe
fortified civilian ships
(allows scouts to bypass phase-blocks)

is there pirate base implemented?
please PLEASE say yes!

its saved my ass more than once, allows me to do some impromptu-base building.

you know, just a malenki bit.

already done, look at the mouse picture top-left

yeah, I think they're fun
they should be on a seperate difficulty switch

ok, here's some more feedback after 6 hours spent putting out fires...

1. AI on fighters/bombers assigned to the defence hangars - they really should prioritise targets a bit better - when pirate fleets attack the system bombers run all over the place attacking hostiles targeting the stuctures and COMPLETLY ignoring the siege frigs pounding the world into dust. It also would immencly help if they would concentrate fire instead of spreading out to cover as many targets as they can.

2. Planet placement - in a normal difficulty game on a map with 3 clusters i started in a cluster with 30 worlds and not a single one of them was Ice, so the crystal flow was pretty rough... I ended up driving the black market price on it to over 2,5K.

3. Pirates. I know they are being fixed, but... by the time I conquered the first cluster the game deteriorated into a frantic "whack the mole" race against multipple 20-30 rat fleets poping out of nowhere, not to mention the uncountable incursions by a small rat groups. Initially I assumed that the rats would be spawning by the star, however it would apper that they can appear anywhere, without following any discernable pattern.

4. Logistics - barren rocks with 0 logistics slots must go - while their high number of phase termini makes a desiable choke points, the inability to place a shipyard along with defence structures makes them almost useless.

5. Star grav wells - don't know if it's intentional or not, but it takes cap ships forever to traverse the grav well of the star.

This concludes the rant for tonight.

had the same difficulty
its very frustrating when in a 30-planet universe there is ONE Ice planet (crystal is so rare its rediculous)

Heh, in my two games it's the complete opposite. The whole star system doesn't have a single Volcanic or Desert planet, the first two planets I colonized were Ice, and later it seems every other ones were Terrain. Although I think it works in my case because the asteroid belt is metal heavy anyway.


But yeah, on my first game I didn't have any Ice planet to start with and things went really slow. So I guess it's just luck, adding a little random flavor into the game.




I don't think they need a ship yard. The good thing about these Death Rocks is that you don't have anything except that rock in the middle, and it's small too. So it make the perfect formation for Guass platform. In a normal planet you'll have to spread out the platform, but with these sector just make a ring around the main rock and pretty much all the gun is in the range of each others. Need a phase inhebirtor though, or else the enemy will just ignore it. But if you force them to take on this kind of defense, not many survive this ring of death, not even a group of capital ships. Although right now their placement kinda make them useless, since they're usually only one jump from the main planet and you'll probably expand further anyway, it would be nice if it's some place in the middle of the system.

Maximus,

The button is called "zoom to mouse", I believe.

To me pirates equal "easy" experience.

I do hope there will be a veteran system implemented for the pirate units however. The one could go against say a "Black Beard" or other such character of lore. Then maybe if a pirate reaches level 10 they get a home world somewhere. The possibilities are endless.

that I completely agree on, Logistics has to be increased, I am finding it near impossible to build stuff like trade ports, light factories and refineries, I seem to keep getting asteroids, quite a few times, overall asteroids need to have a Logistics cap of at least 1, planets need to be doubled, what is the point of trade ports when I can't build them hardly at all, let alone anything else like broadcast towers, this cap is the second most used, (probably the fist is ship cap?) and this is the most critical to having a successful empire, especially keeping your planets loyal, and the capital planet needs a double if triple cap as that will help a lot especailly early game and would allow to setup more stuff,

battle ships should have at least 1 gun to att fighters with insted of flack ability cos if i was going to design a ship it would have a number of point defs on it

You do know that you can upgrade the logistic and tactical slots of planets with the planet development thingy? It's really handy and forces you to pay extra for that perfect strategical placement. If you can live with an imperfect one, you get it cheaper. Nice trade-off in my eyes.

FYI: Some of the barren rocks can't be upgraded in areas other then tactical.

I'm going to put my list of used/nonused tech's later, but in the meantime I have one suggestion: When you open up the tech trees and go to the artifact section, it seems very open and not really interesting. So I was thinking, why not put them into a few columns with their descriptions next to them? That would make it easier for a player to understand what each artifact was about and would fill up the empty space.

That's my suggestion for the day .
Namnug

they do bog down the other AI, but they arent really pushovers themselves
their ability to poof up in the worst of places is a PAIN!!!

the max is still far too low.
I find myself choosing between two research stations or a trade port, a capital ship factory or a broadcast station. while thats all nice, the thing is I can hardly ever get more than one thing to be on my planet! its either a research hub or a trade port extravaganza, or it has 4 different factories on it. thats out of necessity, not want.

I was going to suggest having an interwoven tree that gets smaller as you go up.
for instance getting kinetic intensifiers and durable alloys would give you access to elite armor piercing technology, relatavistic factories and construction would give access to a relativistic bubble ability for a special ship (think the final stargate episode), relativistic bubble and elite AP bullets would give access to relativistically accelerated bullets. they would get successively more interwoven until you reach a really powerful elite technology.
of course, this would have to be paired with the creation of uber-powerful, 3x uber-expensive frigs and cruisers (at least the cost of cap ships). maybe a cap ship (of rediculous price) who knows?

of course, these would have to be limited in their scope and be SUPER expensive to be balanced, but I kind of like the idea of it. makes artifacts and artifact trade agreements far more valuable.

Logistics ARE supposed to limit you, after all. Not just be cosmetic.

I find upgrading my tax base to be a better source of income than trade ports anyway, and it doesnt attractor marauders *g*

I actually wound up playing Sins for about four hours last night. When you consider that I don't typically play games for more than about 90-minutes before I start getting restless, that's pretty impressive!

As betas go, this game seems really mature. The tech tree has a lot of technologies and takes a lot of time and resources to climb, the existing units seem clearly defined and perform well in their intended roles, and the AI seems capable of launching attacks, retreating in the face of overwhelming odds, and honoring diplomatic agreements. For example, if an AI ally requests assistance to defend one of its worlds, it's more likely to break the alliance if I ignore it.

If Sins were released right now in its current form for $10-$15, I think it would become one of those subtle niche hits like Defcon. With more than six months left in its development and soooo much left to come, I can't wait to see how the game develops from here!

I'm having a lot of trouble with pirates who jump large fleets into orbit around one of my planets and pound the colony into smithereens regardless of how many defenses I have present. Gauss cannons and bomber squadrons are good against individual targets where they can concentrate their fire, but in the face of 10-15 Siege Frigates charging a planet, they simply can't dish out enough damage to save the colony.

I'd like to see fighters gain a role as point defense, tracking down and destroying warheads before they strike their targets. This could help boost planetary defense by cutting the effectiveness of Siege Frigates until the fighter squadrons are destroyed, extending the length of the attack to allow reinforcements time to arrive and forcing the attacker to engage with planetary defenses rather than just charging past them. It would also make fighters a more appealing tactical option -- they currently exist only to attack bombers, and since bombers only exist to attack ships, fighters seem to be a poor choice for Hanger Defense structures.

I love the way this game is open to constructive feedback! This is a fantastic community!   

-Autistic Angel

I just want to say this. According to the Lore: The TEC have been hit pretty hard by the Vasari and now the Advent. They seem to be a people between a rock and a hard place. So why would they design a Cruiser that doesn't have necessary firepower? I mean according to your back story the TEC are in a desperate situation, so why the hell are they wasting resources on Cruisers that are less effective then 3 Cobalt Frigates?

So its worth while to waste resources on a command cruiser that doesn't command? The Embolden ability is nice, but because it targets a single unit at a time not effective. And to be honest the Akkan's targeting ability is more effective then the Command Cruisers .

I am not saying that you can't make your game your way. But if the ships are supposed to represent the race. Why the hell would the TEC make cruisers that suck. I am not saying you have to make cruisers a front line unit, but give them some firepower. Even the Kodiak right now is not that effective and its supposed to be a combat cruiser. Oh and why do the TEC use a lot of Lasers? I thought they were supposed to be low tech? The only ships I really see use Autocannons are: Akkan, Kol, and Gardia.

Don't be afraid to put weapons on your cruisers, because it just doesn't make sense to equip them with pop guns. I understand you said the cruiser commanders don't like the "dirty" work. But if they were such cowards why not camp on a Kol Battleship?

Also why does the Kol Battleship have a railgun ability, when the incendiary shells ability from the Marza would be more effective? Seeing as how the Dreadnought now is more of a Battlecruiser then a Dread. And the Kol is more of a Dread then a Battleship. To be honest I thought the original Marza from Beta 1 was more of Dread then this new Marza ever could be. And seriously why does it have incendiary shells ability anymore when it doesn't even have autocannons? Are the TEC dumb when designing warships? Because right now their are only a few effective ships. Gardia, Cobalt, Carrier Cruiser, Akkan, Kol, and the Capital Carrier (Sorya?).

The AI's bounty system seems a bit ...odd. In my last game, one AI player ended up with over 40,000 in bounty - but he lost all his planets early on. I don't know why everyone dumped bounty on him, but...

not sure if this is the correct forum but, whenever I load a save game, it keeps resetting my camera to the capital starting planet, it would be really nice if the game remembers where you were when you last saved,