Just forced an update and I'm still playing the patch dated 7/12/07, 0.76[b].018

I have a small question concerning culture.

One of my dead asteriods started revolting, since there were no people though it kind of just stayed at zero pop and every few minutes it would tell me it was revolting. This eventually got annoying enough for me to send a fleet to the empire and crush it. As soon as my fleets in orbit around the dead asteriod left the asteriod became theirs.

Now do fleet garisons keep dead asteriods from revolting?

You may be right, but then, it is a question of taste. I'm much more a space-empire TBS gamer (of the GalCiv 2 type). Consequently, I do not mind if SSE does not align itself too far into the RTS genre. What you find an "off [...] feel", I find OK. I would prefer it if SSE held a middle road between GalCiv 2 and Homeworld 2. But that's my personal taste : nothing more.

I guess that the final word is with the Ironclad & Stardock management : what do THEY want to sell ? This forum is very useful to obtain marketing feedback info, but is any particular opinion (yours or mine) representative of the target-market Ironclad & Stardock which to develop & produce a game for ? The vast majority of SSE customers will not have participated in the Beta and will never have visited its forum.

More like GalCiv 2, or more like Homeworld 2 ? I don't know. I like the pacing as it is now, but that's because of my biased preference for the space-empire TBS genre. I do not know if my taste is representative of the majority of potential customers in their ideal target-market.

(Sorry if my style is so stiff & serious : I just finished a tequila shooter.)

The pacing does need to speed up a bit, its almost like the Phase lanes sorta make the game have 'turns'

If movement could be increases, or at least moddable it would really make this seem more like an RTS.

I disagree, simply because it makes fleet positioning much more important than it would otherwise be. The ability to actually attack your opponent where they are weak, and have it take time for them to reinforce it really adds to the strategic depth.

I think there also should be more real space than just outside planets. It would be awesome if someone decided to send a broken fleet (not jumping together) and then have a small fleet in the middle of a jump lane pull the enemy fleets battlecruiser out of jump, allowing you to destroy it. It would set up many more tactics to ambush and create blockades (for trade ships).

Another thing that bothers me a little (due to my space pickyness) is that planets aren't arranged in any real orbital sequence. They're spread out in a haphazard order, and it doesn't make much planetary sense. I can understand why you don't have it this way, but it just bothers me a bit.

The biggest problem in the game (as I can see) is that if your winning a war, you have unlimited resources. This problem also happens in C&C3, Zero Hour, and Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War series. The more land and places you dominate, the more credits/metal/crystals you get, letting you have nearly limitless money. By that point, the game is no fun anymore, because you always have at least 10k credits. The only game I've played that is different is WC3, where you always have less than 1000 resources, and if you do, your teching up to tier 3 units, and then massing them.

(Also, a lot of battles are conducted at a level of zoom where everything is represented by symbols. What's the point of all these gorgeous ship models if when I'm actually playing the game all I see are blue squares?)


I think this should be an option, preosnal I dont like having to be forced to look at the ships or any type of unit in RTS.

i like it as an option.

SUperem commander i still consdier the best RTS, becuase I am not froce to have a nose in the dirt view.

Most games give me eye strain and a head ach becuase i am froced to look at a max of only 3 units at a time becuase i simply can not zoom out to see the whole map area of the fight, I should be able to zoom in and out.

if i can zoom in all the way and pan cam to see one unit up close i should be able to zoom out and pan cam and be able to look at all units every where at the same time.


(The pacing does need to speed up a bit, its almost like the Phase lanes sorta make the game have 'turns'

If movement could be increases, or at least moddable it would really make this seem more like an RTS.)

I dont see this as worth while, but heres deal a great game will allow for custmization.

when u host or start a game u should be able to chose things like incressed ship speed or limited set assests so forth.

the instead of having thignsf roced apon the players a custmozization abilty to change settings befor game starts would make for a better gamming exprinces becuase then every one can get what they want.

people who want fast ships can edit and chose for ships to be 3 times fsater or 4 times faster befor game starts.

people who wants slower ships could chose slower ships.

people who want the zoom leveld locked in at a low in ur face zoom can have that people who dont want it dont have to.

id says game custmoziation for abilty to change way game plays. would be great.

preosnaly i am not in beta but what me and my frends are looking forward to is not an stirck space RTS, if this is what game is going to turn into we probly wont get it.

we want ag ame that incoprates RTS, but is more about manageing you empire. we want to play in mutil player setting for hours to days manage toying and building our empires.

and having combat also involled in it, from time to time. with AI computer oppents involled also.

abilty to save the mutil player game would always be great also.

game that could tkae 10 hours to play or longer wiht option to be able to come back and play some more at a latter time would be just awesome.

In my previous post (reply #28), I wrote that :

I would prefer it if SSE held a middle road between GalCiv 2 and Homeworld 2.

I stated that before having read Blair Fraser's very recent IGN interview. It seems that his basic design philosophy for SSE favours my own preference.

I quote Blair Fraser :

We slowed the pace of the real-time play down from what people are used to in twitch RTS games -- even with our user interface advancements and automation options, which both help you to manage your empire, we wanted to ensure you had time to manage both strategy and tactics without feeling overwhelmed. [...]

Above all, it's the psychological impact the game has on you, more than the specific features, that suggests that the two genres are blended -- being able to switch from playing as emperor of a massive interstellar power to a battle commander is a powerful feeling. [...]

[P]erhaps the most common take our beta testers have is that Sins is Gal Civ meets Homeworld. I think that is a good description because Sins does take a lot of the empire-building elements of Gal Civ, like economic development, planet development, research, diplomacy, culture and trade, and combines them with the very visceral, tactical real-time space combat of Homeworld.

I agree 100% with Blair's hybrid model, and I disagree with the previous poster (who would prefer that SSE became a "strict space RTS").

No Tequila this morning : strong, black coffee.

I am definitely against Sins becoming a fast-paced RTS. This would kill the strategy.

I second your motion!

Well this would definetly add some value to the game, but you can also be risking the fact that the game might also get very, very annoying. The small fleets would constantly ravage your empire and would probably jump away when you send a fleet to destroy them. Now yes, it coud be stopped with phase space inhibetors, but what if the enemy fleets never have to jump out of phase space into an actual gravity well.

And what is allowing them to jump out in between phase lanes to begin with.

[quote]and if you do, your teching up to tier 3 units, and then massing them. [/quote

Something we really want to avoind in this game. One thing I have found very impressive is how through the entire game small ships always remained in superiority. And that each ship no matter what its job was would be able to greatly help out in battle. Also it adds to a great variance factor when you do actually decide what you want in your fleet since having only one ship of a certain type is near to useless(unless its a capital ship)

And you are in a way wrong. Money is always of abundance yes, but money doesnt necessarily build fleets. After a while resource wear away and with my fleet production I usually find myself nervously eyeing the resource gauges because of the fact that they are going down and never up. That is where the black market comes in I suppose, and kind of offsets things. Though I did get one game where crystals cost almost 5k for 100 and that was just ridiculous.

Now a simple way to solve large resource build up would be some form of upkeep, or(and I like this one more) corruption. Think about it, as your empire grows and becomes more wealthy the honest politicians and beurocrats and generals will beging to be tempted to take resources for their own. And in that form, as your empire grows the precentage or 'wasted' or 'stolen' resources increases and you earn less and less. A few other factors could also be factored in such as size of fleets, both commercial and military.



This I disagree with, though many people consider this revolutionary I do not. This goes backwards in my opinion, to the pixelicious ages of the early 90s. I mean with all the graphics improvements we have today Supreme Commande makes you watch dots fight dots, symbols shoot symbols. Not only is it anti-climactic it is also unexciting and the only way to play the game well online and against the computer. Sure you are able to zoom in once in a while but otherwise you have to watch dots fighting dots.



The thing is that everything moves too slow for tactics, its best to just let the computer handle it then actually move your ships around and try to get better positions. Sure you can still pick your targets(Which I always do), but thats about it.

So? The clarity of the icons more than makes up for the graphics loss, especially since if your busy fighting a battle, you aren't watching the graphics.

I felt that the allegiance penalty accomplished this. Planets outside of your home system suffer a high penalty. Even with max culture, you still only getting 25% of tax income and 25% of the ship cap increase. That to me stinks of corruption.

I whole-heartedly disagree. In fact, I have written about how to use a smaller fleet to beat a larger one. I think using battle tactics, especially against this iteration of the AI, are completely possible.

Tactics in aiming and prioritizing targets yes. But usually fleet movements are completely useless, albeit they do sometimes allow you to safe a ship or two.

There is just no huge value from moving ships, its a lot more efficient to let them duke it out under your direction.

Again I disagree. I can beat a fleet double my fleet's size with proper movement. It is MUCH more efficient to maneuver and not lose my ships than let them duke it out. Aiming and targeting helps as well, but it is very useful to constantly have my fleets out of the attack range of my enemy's fleet and still able to attack him.

Thanks for the reply, I also read Blair's interview and have a slightly better feel for the objective of the game now. I play GalCiv 2 (that is how I stumbled into this beta) but I am also an active Dawn of War, Age of Empires (and even and old school Starcraft player) so I can relate to the different preferences of both genres and can completely relate to the appeal that a game like GalCiv 2 would have to you.

My comment on pacing still stands after another week of play. I love Dark Avatar and don't mind playing playing a large galaxy with 5 AI opponents over a few days, but that is because it is a single player turn based game that I can save and then easily return to. But Sins is a much more complicated situation in that it is attempting a groundbreaking merger of previously unrelated scales. This isn't an RTS within a TBS like the Total War series. Things are going on in the background at all times and as a result I believe that action at the tactical level needs to be receptive to player commands and capable of being brought to a decisive resolution quickly.

Let me soften that comment by reiterating what I said in my previous post. I am not asking for the type of blinding fast fleet movement that would turn this game into just another APM contest. This RTS should not be light on the "S", but it should keep the pacing at a level that rewards the use of hotkeys and micromanagement of forces.

One other aspect of the pacing issue is its effect on the multiplayer community. I am sure that many of us remember epic 3v3's with clanmates that dragged on to the wee hours of the morning. But those contests are generally the exception and not the rule. I have been playing with custom maps some this past week and have managed to set up games that can be resolved in an hour (if I rush hard from the start), but once we start human vs human games with 4-6 players any even matchup on any type of map is going to be of such duration that it will be nearly unplayable.

The fact that the galaxy map has a limited number of nodes and pathways in the network lends itself to deliberate advances and long stalemates. This community is going to need access to game options that will allow for team games that can be finished in an hour. I would suggest that the developers consider either slight tweaks to the speed of ship movement (especially in the gravity well), or look at implementing an adjustable game speed and that would allow multiplayer games to adopt a faster pace while preserving the pacing that single player TBS players feel comfortable with. They may also want to consider options that would allow players to increase the number of pathways to open up the map and thereby shorten the game length indirectly.

One final note. I have been reluctant to post because I am so ignorant of what the game developers at Ironclad are trying to accomplish and as result lack the proper perspective to give constructive feedback. The only things that I am certain of at this point is that this Beta is exceedingly stable on both my laptop and desktop and that it is dangerously close to unplayable in a single sitting because of game length. The first comment is a credit to the developers, then second comment is a warning about the playability of this game for a multiplayer community.

In the end, my friends and I may love the game but not be able to play because we can't dedicate a 3 hour bloc of time for an evening match.

Nix,
Thanks for your comments. I agree with your comments on pacing. This area will become a priority for us, hopefully after balancing. Multiplayer gameplay is very important to us, so be rest assured you and your friends will be able to pick up and play within a reasonable timeframe.

I think one of the problems with finding a good pacing is that in a way there is two different games. On the one hand you want a RTS/4X game that has an epic feel and not overly twitch driven while maintaining that large scale feel and often long drawn out gameplay of 4x where you slowly build a massive empire, engage in long term R&D, and wage may wars over time. This being great for single player as many will want to play games that take several long hours or more. Then on the other hand you want a game that plays quick and fairly face paced for multiplier. Where the tech tree doesn't take long to go through and players can have skirmishes in about an hour. This means quickly expanding, short term R&D, and more of a constant state of warfare.

Each side of the debate prefers it a curtain way but one of the problems is ultimately I think you'll almost have to have two different settings for SP and MP. Like some kind of accelerated R&D, or deployed setup, or prehaps conditions like whoever control 75% of the planets first wins. Because right now I already think the game is stuck at a middle ground. On the one hand the R&D finishes way to fast for 4X type game. The research doesn't peak my interest at all like most 4X games do because other then accessing some key buildings there isn't much on there I need so I simply ignore it and upgrade my units R&D when i got extra resources laying around.

Personally I wish it had more of a 4X feel to it. Right now it's still a good game but it just feels a lot like a typical RTS. Most RTS have the limited diplomacy opinions that SOSE has so that's not really ground breaking. The Tech Tree is also very similar to other RTS. Granted not all have them one a single page like that many have special buildings you need but some are fairly similar like Age of Empires. In fact that game has a lot of similarities to Conquest: Frontier Wars. It was on a much smaller scale though but it's "Gravity Wells" had a lot more interesting terrain that lended it self to being used tacticly.

And yes while I know this is a beta and the game has a lot of work left it's best to put forth these concerns during early beta with months left to go instead of later when there is less time to change things.

ROFLCOPTER! Thanks for the laugh Pyro, I needed that.



Pretty true.

That said, smaller maps would probably make pretty fun for 1-on-1 play even now, once we get human players in.

I think what will happen in the end is that each player will start off with a fixed starting setup. Lets say 1 home planet and 3 asteroids. There will be very little room for expansion, maybe 2 or 3 asteroids between the main territories. This will result in some, but very little expansion, and more on ship building/controlling and attacking the enemy fleet. This will make the games alot shorter as well.