Culture Destruction?

And thus making the game to a race for destroying the home world.

Bad idea.

-----------

Instead they could speed up resource collection rates and tax income (very slow atm.).

Or they could include a variable time option. Hint, hint.

A capital kill game mode would be nice but it shouldn't be standard.

Well instead of just rejecting it all together, why don't you explain why it's a bad idea, Should your homeworld not be defended?

That already happens, until you build another capital. You get an 85% allegiance penalty on all planets without one, IIRC.

The reason its a bad idea, is all you'd need todo is get to the enemy's homeworld glass it, ignoring other objects in the system, and pow that player is gone. Even if the enemy has jump inhibtors prventing a fast jump, just have a ton of seige frigates and focus fire on any phase inhibtors then jump to next area. In the end, that loss method is just to cheesey for the game IMO.

Only way it could be ok is if its an option like the flagship kill option.

Siege frigates suck against everything that can't be bombarded... I can't see a ton of siege frigates making it through other systems without your knowing and then actually making it to your homeworld while it's undefended.

Regardless... There needs to be the possibility of assassination in some form because it's an RTS. What RTSs have in common is some kind of assassination possibility.

uhmmmm first off NO, RTS was never about outright assisination. Stracraft had it with the Zergling Rush but it was an oversight if nothing else. Many games now have timer issues to prevent rush strategies which equate to the assination.

Most CnC games allow for multiple buildings to produce your builder units and multiple command centers to prevent the very same assasination you describe.

Starcraft and Warcraft also include this to a lesser extent. What RTS have in common is that you do eventually kill your opponent, but to do so you have to kill every little part of him! Or at least all of his buildings! You could consider Sins too easy already because you don't have to kill all the buildings just the planets, you could have reserves of 100,000s and a whole massive fleet, and suddenly no planets and lose... but you should by all means could still win with such a scenario!

This is also not a straight up RTS, so it does not need to prescribe to the same virtues and negatives as one. Also even new RTS don't need to follow some abstract philosphy, your argument just screams alone in the dark "Please Conform!" not very appealing if you ask me!

That being said, it would be a wonderful game option, because it would be very hard to actualy do in the current Sins game... things are too slow to pull it off without destroying half of an enemy empire to do so, and that is no longer a pure assassination game... its a conquest, much more entertaining! But the value of capital kills since outright assasination is almost impossible, would be that after the bulk of the conquest is complete, you don't waste time 'wrapping up' its done quickly when you bomb the homeworld.

PS im in favor of enemy buildings sticking around after enemy anhilation, you should be able to capture or deconstruct them with construction ships! And enemy ships of a dead player could go Pirate!

If this is the case, could we get an option to start with even higher resources, pre-researched items and a "starting force" ? This would only apply for a small one hour game (I for one like the building up stage) - but for some people who just want to get into the action (or don't have time), starting with some pre-colonized planets and higher resources/techs might do the trick...

Also would be fantastic, could be better developed than Supreme Commander's quick start. Why exactly does my home system have undeveloped resources?

Apparently we have two different eyes for RTSs. CnC is a complete sham to begin with and I can't remember too much in general about how they worked but I was pretty sure if the command center was destroyed, most of the tech tree was destroyed with it. It was like nearly being assassinated. And yes, fortunate that you could build multiple ones to prevent it. Wherever you seem to get the idea I said RTSs are about outright assassination I've no clue.

I also never said the game needs to prescribe to any sort of rules. Also.. this is not an argument thread.. this is a suggestive thread.

I agree, The game does take an incredibly long time to play out a match, I don't mind that much against the computer because I can easily save and resume. but for online play i can't devote 3-5 hour time slot just top finish a game. While some people take a lot of pleasure in building it all up, I view it as a means to an end. I'd like the ability to just clear a person out, would shorten game length, your Home world is ususally in the rear of your territory and is hard to get to anyway. Hell I'd even be satisfied with the same system they have on Fighters/bombers after the host vessel is destroyed, where they decay to death. Even that would shorten the foolishness of "Clearly i am winning... why keep fighting?"

It's a technical beta but we are looking into ways to speed up multiplayer in a hotfix. Some of the ideas above are on the table - more suggestions are welcome. Please be sure you are choosing maps of a suitable size until we fix it up. By the time beta 4 (multiplayer gameplay focus) rolls around it will be much better

An assassination mode would be great, set it to the capital ship becoming your flagship, and if that is destroyed game over. It has to be an option though.

The other options are good too, quick start and extra resources.

Personally, I like both the building up and the fighting. I think the game needs to be balanced so that the vanilla package (default) is fun to play and doesn't take an age. You can then add all the options to speed it up further.

I am not a huge fan myself of artificial aids like no rush time limits, or double resources or quick start ups, as I feel it detracts a great deal from the strategy.

On a personal note, "rushing" was what singlehandedly killed all incentive to ever play RTS games online for me, and why I stick to LAN play entirely.
I have never been able to see what possible enjoyment could come out from finishing a game after 5 minutes, and thus skipping 90% of the content/possible interesting combat that comes with longer more drawn out battles.

However I don't foresee that being an issue in Sins fortunately. so I hope whatever "time reduction" mechanism are introduced come Beta 4, that they will preserve the core 4x gameplay of Sins.

I like the idea of this kind of game. There should be some prime world that you can't let fall. Call it the seat of your government... your capital world... THE Homeworld.


At the very least the idea of a MAJOR moral loss when hte planet is destroyed should be standard. That said, which planet is the homeworld should be something you can "move".


Much as in MOO you could move your capital world. If that world were destroyed the consequences would either be fatal or very very damaging depending on the situation.


Changing homeworlds should take some time... perhaps 2 to 3 minutes at least. During which time there might a stream of high value convoys going from your old homeworld to your new homeworld... if some of those are destroyed you might take a civilization wide moral hit.

uh... no rushing only ends the game when there's a big difference between the skill of two players.


Rushes in most games are as easy to counter as they are to execute. So if both players are just as good you will get a dead lock unless one side or the other was just unlucky.


I always rush in RTS games and it doesn't always work. The skill comes not only in being able to do it but knowing when it's a mistake to follow through with it. Thus you use the extra units you built to try and trap the enemy into a given position. Then you use that to dominate through map control.

Exactly, don't want to turn this into a mechanics of rushing argument. But the rush only works against a weaker opponent, a similar level opponent will block it and the game will move into the next tier.

I suspect this game will have some elements of the rush on tiny maps and in multiplayer. I am currently trying to look at rush builds. The biggest thing that makes it hard is the reinforcements time. This game makes it very hard to rush as if you take a good size fleet, it struggles in a home planet as it gets blasted by reinforcements.

Um, no. Maybe in some games, but in most... It doesn't matter how good I am, if the enemy rushes when I'm assuming a standard play style, I'm dead. Other than focusing on countering the rush, there is no way to survive it in most games (supcom being an exception due to the power of commander / T1 defenses).

Feel free to try a Krosov rush. By the time you've done the research and gotten a few built, the other player will have plenty of Cobalts with which to slaughter you.

It is possible, if you can get your fleet back to stop it quickly enough, and have expanded enough that some losses don't kill your economy. You can see one such example in the replay from my game vs kosc.

Without Krosov backup, a flagship alone takes a long time to bomb a planet down, especially if you've gotten an infrastructure upgrade. So if you've gotten some other bases up that the enemy isn't aware of, you can rebuild and live to fight again.

You can already do this with custom maps, though having an accelerated start option that could override map settings would be cool.

Kyro, FYI my comment was that on most games rushing is overpowered. In this game, you couldn't pull a successful rush if your opponent wanted you too.

I am not sure how to code in "pre-researched items" but more money, and a larger starting force is easy! To speed up research I know its easy to start off with 1 military and 1 civilian research center.

The only thing I don't like about starting with pre-set buildings is sometimes they aren't where I want them to be.

My last single player game , my ship yards defaulted to the side of the plant that faced my single dead end asteroid, so ships had to travel my entire gravity well...