My feedback on the latest patch (8/30)

from Sins Forums
Just thought i'd make a thread here with some of my latest feedback.

Positives:

-Pirate raids and pirate planet are great ideas, love being able to influence where they go even after the raid has been announced
-AI seems to be building fleets better, they attacked me about 1.25 hours into the game with 3 capital ships and a mixture of frigates and cruisers (totalling around 25-30 ships). It was a very exciting battle! At the same time the pirates launched a raid on me on another planet because I had ticked that AI player off enough to keep adding bounty to my head - awesome!
-Ships seem to move a bit more when fighting? at least the pirates were circling my capital ships with their frigates some
-Starting with flagship you can choose is nice
-New capital ship research definitely helps slow down the "I have tons of capital ships"
-Dynamic black market, AI using it and also seeing the sell prices adjust based on what people are buying was great
-New metal / crystal research upgrades are much more useful now (the amounts they increase production speed by are much more rewarding)!
-being able to set arbitrary rally points is great!
-like being able to get to some cruisers via research easier than before
-autosaving seems much quicker (suspect this is the smaller file sizes)

Things that might need more looking at:
-Crystals still seem to be in super short supply! I find i'm spending 75% or more of my tax income on just buying crystals because I can't seem to find enough crystal mines early on in the game even though I took 5 planets/asteroids in the first 15 minutes or so. I know crystals seem to be the resource chokepoint of choice, but being so restricted by logistic points on my planets means that i'm constantly struggling to get refineries up vs. research stations (which is now harder due to having 2 types) so that I can have consistent unlimited crystal income. Is the starting resources setting what adjusts how much you have in the crystal/metal asteroids? I think maybe there needs to be some random events later of new asteroid somehow getting captured by the planets gravity well or something so that late game you can get a shot in the arm of more resources to mine.
-Having two labs is interesting, but with each costing 2 logistics points i'm now being choked even worse on lack of logistic points - if I don't start near any desert planets (I didnt) I can't build squat between 2 research lab types, refineries, trade ports, and culture generators to fight off AI culture (they seem to use it a lot more now too) Perhaps make the military ones cost 1 logistics point and the civvy ones 2? that way we can at least defend ourselves more easily or something
-Minor bug with the mouse scrolling that seemed to have been resolved by deleting the uimappings file, initially wouldn't let me mouse scroll at all
-Zoom to cursor seems to break when you lock the camera to the ship, but perhaps that is intended behavior? Once I found the setting to turn it off all was well again - not sure if this should be toggled on by default or not (it was defaulted to on when I first loaded up)
-The patch notes claim music changes more with what is going on in the game but it often didn't seem to change at all when battles occurred (even large ones) even if I zoomed in to the battle to watch it play out - might be a bug or intended behavior?
-Having the LRM frigates gated by missile improvements seems a bit odd to me..I have to research improved missiles before I can research the frigate that is being improved by the research? Might need to be flopped. I think switch the LRM frigate to be the initial item you can get and THEN the missile upgrade that helps the frigate and the cap ships / misc cruisers..
-You can zoom inside of planets now, not sure if that is intended..It does allow for an almost first person view of the universe though which is kind of fun (if this is intended can move this possibly to my positives table)
-Ship models seem to disappear slightly before the explosion animation fully "explodes". What I mean is you can see the game deleting the ship model object before the explosion obscures the view..Might want to tweak the timing some so we see the big explosion and when the explosion effect disappears the model is gone - is more believable that way
-Got into a massive battle where I jumped in on an AI player that was annoying my ally AI player and my ally then jumped in his 30 ship fleet to assist me.. We had a battle with 100+ ships and at least 10 capital ships involved. The lag was pretty bad..Maybe if you can implement an effects scaling system such that it reduces the amount of weapon effects or even degrades the ship models some when involved in such a large battle? This might be an optimization you could do later on toward release i'm sure..
-Diplomacy still seems strange, I dont have any way to really tell their opinion of me and they still do silly things like make an alliance with me (their offer), break it later then 5 minutes later ask for the same thing back? AI's at the moment do NOT make stable allies, even if I gift them lots of resources they seem to change their mind too often. I also need a way to "ping" the map and ask my ally for "attack here" "defend here" etc to give the AI some feedback on where I need help. This would also be great for multiplayer with human players.

I'll add more as I think of it / play some more. I will say I am having more fun with this build and can't wait to try out the other factions etc!

Keep up the good work!

8,131 views 20 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
nice 1 thats all the good points and bad i could think of   
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah thats all the things i encountered. The mouse scrolling bothers the crap out of me, though. It needs to be fixed.

Your right on the crystal thing. I'm trying to build tons of trade ports so i can buy crystals. Right now its about the beginning with 5 planets and Im defending with 1 capitol and 3 light frigates because I can't afford my kodiak cruiser  I seem to be ok though, I'm getting good at flanking and using bait.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah thats all the things i encountered. The mouse scrolling bothers the crap out of me, though. It needs to be fixed.

Your right on the crystal thing. I'm trying to build tons of trade ports so i can buy crystals. Right now its about the beginning with 5 planets and Im defending with 1 capitol and 3 light frigates because I can't afford my kodiak cruiser I seem to be ok though, I'm getting good at flanking and using bait.


Here is what I put in another post re: fixing the mouse scrolling issue (from Blair Fraser's advice):

Got it working by deleting the UIMapping file like Blair had suggested in another thread!

If anyone else is having that issue just go to your Application Data folder for this game and delete the uimapping.settings file and it should fix it!

Default location is here: C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\settings (not sure if its called settings on the last folder but you can find it from there).


As far as defending with a small force, yeah that's me too I have 3 capital ships but really just a bunch of frigates and a few Perseon(sp?) light carriers because I can't get enough military labs built to research the Kodiak - back to that pesky 2 labs and not nearly enough logistic points to go around.

Something else i'd also like to see is a way of higher up research to improve tax income on my planets globally by 5% -> 10% -> 15% and this could be a 9+ civvy lab gated research with a pretty high crystal/metal cost to it. I know you can get some improvement through culture now (hadn't noticed it in previous builds) but would like to see a general research topic in that area too.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
You didn't find that the music changed? I played, and the music was changing every few seconds when I started watching the battle. This definitely needs to be changed.

Shib, if you need crystals why are you building trade ports? Build refineries, they give you resources.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
OK Updated some more with stuff from 3 hour play session last night (same save game of course):

The music does seem to be changing more than I thought now that I give it a second listen, maybe it is working like its supposed to..

Bug/Problem:

-I was at a planet the AI ganked from me when we were working together to take out an opponent so I broke my alliance and owned the AI because they stole planets I wanted Anyway, as I was fighting the AI he decided he would retreat, however he didn't use the phase jump, he just started flying to his closest planet (2 phase jumps away through my planets) via just REGULAR PROPULSION! He kept flying and flying and flying across the expanse of space waaay outside my gravity well to try to get to his other planet. All my ships were totally confused as well because they thought he was still in the gravity well and kept trying to fly way out there. Are ships supposed to be allowed to normal space hoof it to other planets far away or should there be a boundary a ways outside the gravity well to stop you from doing that? It definitely caused some AI issues for both my units and the fact that he couldnt use about 20 ships b/c they were hoofing it across the galaxy the slow way!
-Need to take a look at the AI where they jump in a large fleet (~ 35 ships including 4 capitals) and then just instantly turn around and jump back. Then they jump in again (rinse, wash, repeat). They basically seem to get scared by my 30 gauss cannon wall - yet they keep sending a forward scout, getting him owned, then sending their main fleet and turning around and running. They refuse to actually engage me at that location, ever. I've seen most of the AI players do this multiple times. The only ones who don't run are the Pirate faction.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Strateggi, reifneries only work if your mining structure is depleted. Or at least thats what happens when I play....

Yeah that happens sometimes iron, but think of it differently: Maybe their luring your fleet TO them and then once you start the chase they have their MAIN main force chillin 1 jump away. Your fleet gets decimated and high fives are exchanged from AI to AI
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
OK updating some more impressions from last night's play session. I'm up to 8 hours of play time on this one medium galaxy game now! Ok, so maybe i'm slow and like to build up I do have every civilian research topic done now and most of the military ones too. Finally got Kodiak heavy cruisers.

Fun things:

-Right as I started taking over the last couple of planets in my galaxy (still 2 others to conquer!) the AI player who had taken over one of the other galaxies sent in a massive fleet to my star. I noticed it when I went after the Pirate faction planet and had to go through the star to get there. He demonstrated to me the folly of a mostly capital ship fleet through his usage of like 25 Perchien Light Carriers and tons of bombers. He tore through 8 of my capital ships before I could retreat. I've got a nice fleet being build nearby though!
-Auto-saves still take < 1 second and i'm 8 hours into game now on Medium Galaxy game! This is a phenomenal improvement from the last version I was playing, great job!

A few new issues/comments i've found:

-When you have lots of Robotics cruisers, I had trouble getting them to auto-cast their repair droids on my nearby capital ships, I kept having to manually do it.
-AI still does the phase jump in, phase jump out bit instead of fighting (except pirates they are suicidal!). Really starting to wish phase jump inhibitors could force them to stay put better. I'm wondering if the removal of that ability is what messed up their AI some on retreating or something.
-It would be nice to see pirates utilizing capital ships of their own designs later in the game.
-AI isn't spending any money on upgrading their capital ships as someone else mentioned, this being 8 hours into the game you'd think they would have at least spent some on it. They also aren't spending as much on research or developing planets as I do, of course they are on "Normal" difficulty.
-Would like to see more intelligence from the Dukan (sp?) Capital ships repair shields ability where they target the ship who is worst off or under heavy fire at the time. Also capital ship ability usage in general needs to be tweaked, Kol Battleships using their shield absorption ability even though they aren't being shot at at all is a silly waste of anti-matter so I usually have to turn off auto-cast on it.
-Some sound issues when in large battles where weapon sounds etc will sometimes clash and/or start making clicking noises like too many sounds at once are going off.
-Would like to see a capital ship with some sort of Tier 6 ability that can do a massive flak burst or something to combat players who are utilizing massive carrier fleets (like the AI player was and was completely owning my capital ships with them because cap ships have little fighter defense - even the flak ability on the Kol doesn't seem to work that well nor does the magnetize ability)
-Stationary defenses (gauss cannons and/or hangar defense) need to work better vs. fighters. 2 fighter squadrons were able to fly around my planet with impunity for over an hour because my gauss cannons couldn't shoot them, and my 2 hangar defenses (each had 1 squadron of fighters + bombers) also couldn't seem to do squat to them.
-Crystals are still a bit of a crunch but not as bad this late in the game because i'm making 40+ tax income a second I just buy them. On that note though, the Black Market capped out at 2147 to buy crystal, is this an intended cap because i know the supply/demand should have forced it to go even higher. Might be nice to have the cap though as it does keep it slightly reasonable to get more crystal late in the game. I still think crystal prices on a lot of items, especially research and planetary upgrades should be lowered. There just isn't enough crystal in the starting nodes and it ends up slowing the game waaaay down.
-I noticed that I do have a "ping" button but the AI doesn't seem to care if I ping a target I want attacked or noticed. See my earlier comments about "Attack Here" or "Defend Here" priority based pinging needed.

Thats all the stuff I can think of now, maybe i'll finish a game in Sins eventually!
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
the ai's worse nightmare is when you show up with a large fleet around 100 ships including 6 caps. and your ally shows up with 50 ships including 4 capships.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top

Bug/Problem:

-I was at a planet the AI ganked from me when we were working together to take out an opponent so I broke my alliance and owned the AI because they stole planets I wanted Anyway, as I was fighting the AI he decided he would retreat, however he didn't use the phase jump, he just started flying to his closest planet (2 phase jumps away through my planets) via just REGULAR PROPULSION! He kept flying and flying and flying across the expanse of space waaay outside my gravity well to try to get to his other planet. All my ships were totally confused as well because they thought he was still in the gravity well and kept trying to fly way out there. Are ships supposed to be allowed to normal space hoof it to other planets far away or should there be a boundary a ways outside the gravity well to stop you from doing that? It definitely caused some AI issues for both my units and the fact that he couldnt use about 20 ships b/c they were hoofing it across the galaxy the slow way!


I've seen this as well. Unfortunately for me, the AI retreated a mess of carriers the slow way. This resulted in bombers being sent constantly back to the planet they retreated from. Nothing I had was fast enough to catch and kill the carriers. I used hangar bays to build fighters, but they acted really confused and would try to kill the carriers while ignoring the bombers.

The fix was to wipe all of his planets from the map. Problem solved.   
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
e demonstrated to me the folly of a mostly capital ship fleet through his usage of like 25 Perchien Light Carriers and tons of bombers. He tore through 8 of my capital ships before I could retreat.


Your own fault. About 5-10 flak frigates would have killed all those bombers in no time.

-Would like to see more intelligence from the Dukan (sp?) Capital ships repair shields ability where they target the ship who is worst off or under heavy fire at the time. Also capital ship ability usage in general needs to be tweaked, Kol Battleships using their shield absorption ability even though they aren't being shot at at all is a silly waste of anti-matter so I usually have to turn off auto-cast on it.


Agree. The autocast AI needs to be upgraded extensive. It's especially silly that the Kol uses the shield ability while bombarding a planet with no enemy ship/gauss in sight.

-Would like to see a capital ship with some sort of Tier 6 ability that can do a massive flak burst or something to combat players who are utilizing massive carrier fleets (like the AI player was and was completely owning my capital ships with them because cap ships have little fighter defense - even the flak ability on the Kol doesn't seem to work that well nor does the magnetize ability)


Strongly disagree. Use flak frigates for that.

-Stationary defenses (gauss cannons and/or hangar defense) need to work better vs. fighters. 2 fighter squadrons were able to fly around my planet with impunity for over an hour because my gauss cannons couldn't shoot them, and my 2 hangar defenses (each had 1 squadron of fighters + bombers) also couldn't seem to do squat to them.


Station some flak frigates behind the gauss cannons.

Really, flak frigates are your friends. They're the only frigates you'll ever need in the later game.

-Crystals are still a bit of a crunch but not as bad this late in the game because i'm making 40+ tax income a second I just buy them. On that note though, the Black Market capped out at 2147 to buy crystal, is this an intended cap because i know the supply/demand should have forced it to go even higher. Might be nice to have the cap though as it does keep it slightly reasonable to get more crystal late in the game. I still think crystal prices on a lot of items, especially research and planetary upgrades should be lowered. There just isn't enough crystal in the starting nodes and it ends up slowing the game waaaay down.


Imho the galaxy creator needs to be tweaked, as it places too few ice planets while it places too many earth like planets.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Re: flak frigates, yes I have a whole bunch of the in the fleet i'm going to use to counter-attack the AI player, I had somehow overlooked researching them on my military tech tree even though they're at the bottom! So yeah once I use those i'm sure i'll be fine.


Re: the retreating AI through normal space, in my case too it was also a bunch of carriers so I had fighters flying across the galaxy back to my gravity well to hound me until I too found the solution: wipe out the offending player completely from the map
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
Re: flak frigates, yes I have a whole bunch of the in the fleet i'm going to use to counter-attack the AI player, I had somehow overlooked researching them on my military tech tree even though they're at the bottom! So yeah once I use those i'm sure i'll be fine.


Oh, ok. Happened to me too once. I had like a hundred Cobalts in my fleet but nothing else. I got killed by a large fleet of enemy light carriers.

Since that, one of the first things I'll always research are the flaks.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Oh, ok. Happened to me too once. I had like a hundred Cobalts in my fleet but nothing else. I got killed by a large fleet of enemy light carriers.




this is why my caps only field fighters.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
this is why my caps only field fighters.


This is not very efficient. It's better to field some flaks and only build bombers with your caps, then vica versa.

Bombers do great damage to enemy ships and especially gauss cannons, while fighters are only good against bombers (which are easily dealt with flaks) and scouts (which are no threat at all).
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
This is not very efficient. It's better to field some flaks and only build bombers with your caps, then vica versa.
Bombers do great damage to enemy ships and especially gauss cannons, while fighters are only good against bombers (which are easily dealt with flaks) and scouts (which are no threat at all).




the biggest problem i have is when i only have 10 or so cobalts after i get to 40 cobalts cannons are no problems. flak are good against fighters/bombers but nothing else. i do use them. and i use the light carriers for bombers they more or less stay out of the fight.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
in the current game that i am playing

my akkai cruiser has stopped colonizing. is this a bug or am i supposed to return to home space to reload colonists.


i am two systems from home. i control all but three grav wells in the middle system.


i have just built a group of colony frigates to see if they will colonize.


ok some reason it is working now. but the auto colony was turned off.

and before you say anything i checked it twice yesterday in the first two grav wells where it wouldn't colonize. i even tried to order it to colonize both and all it would do was click. as in it couldn't do that order.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
It might have been due to the planet still having too much enemy culture? It will block you from colonizing planets now that have too much enemy culture influence and you have to look real fast to the see the error text for it.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
ok
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top

-When you have lots of Robotics cruisers, I had trouble getting them to auto-cast their repair droids on my nearby capital ships, I kept having to manually do it.


I don't think you can have multiple ships repairing the same target -- is that the problem?

-Stationary defenses (gauss cannons and/or hangar defense) need to work better vs. fighters. 2 fighter squadrons were able to fly around my planet with impunity for over an hour because my gauss cannons couldn't shoot them, and my 2 hangar defenses (each had 1 squadron of fighters + bombers) also couldn't seem to do squat to them.


IMO, they need to massively retrofit defenses (Just give me a flak cannon, please...) or the AI: even now once I have the defenses solidly in place the AI can't seem to take them out. Though they can just flood me with so many fighters that my hangars can't take out their carriers with bombers or their fighters with fighters. And of course, the carriers stay way out of gauss cannon range. ("Magic Mix" of 2 repair centers, phase jump blocker, as many hangars as I can have and still have at least 2 or 4 gauss cannons, all of them clumped together).
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top


-When you have lots of Robotics cruisers, I had trouble getting them to auto-cast their repair droids on my nearby capital ships, I kept having to manually do it.


I don't think you can have multiple ships repairing the same target -- is that the problem?


I'm fairly certain you can't. You'll notice at times that all your Hoshiko for instance may target the same ship for repair, but only one of them will use up it's charge.