Beta 3 issues and suggestions

First of all I really like the game so far. I havn't participated in Beta 1&2 so maybe some of things were already mentioned, although I searched the formus for similar threads.

Display:

1. Star names: If you check this option the names are displayed directly below the star so the box that shows the number of buildings is gone. If you hover over it with the cursor you still get the information, though. Is this by purpose so it looks better? With the box it is really easy to see which planet is heavily fortified. With the star names on you have to hover of all the planet names.

2. Fighter & Bomber Icons: Its extremely difficult to see which of your wings is a fighter or a bomber wing. Is it possible to make the icons more distinguishable. if the gravity well is cluttered with ships they also look like a formation of ships to me.
Another way to display them might be a wedge shaped formation of several small dots (fighters) and diamonds (bombers)

3. The pop-up windows for the detailed income of a resource are too long to display in large games and at the moment the window shifts up so you can't even see the most important resource per second value.

Research:

4. Superior Research Droids: It states that gives bonus to the repair building but doesn't say somethin about the Hoshiko. That is misleading, as the tech button and the Hoshiko ability button use the same picture and the tech by itself is a bit weak.
I know that the Hoshiko is available later in the tech tree but the repair droids tech just makes the droids used better which should also affect every use of it.

Ship movement:

5. The option to let all ships jump at the same time is veray nice but with large fleets it usually lasts a looong time to phase jump. They seem to wait in formation forever. Its faster to let them move near the jump route and retrieve the fighters on the way, then jump individually. The ships jump more or less at the same time and on a sidenote it looks amazing when the arrive in a stream of ships.
Maybe the ships can jump in a more loose formation so they don't have to maneuver for minutes.

6. Another reason for delays are fighters. Some fighters still hunt down enemies on the other side of the system while others are docking for the jump. I think this happens when you select a fleet via group hotkey and some of the fighters are also selected with the group. So I press 1 give a jump order and the fighters that are selected do silly stuff.

Diplomacy:

I guess this is still in the works so I keep it short:

7. Its quite painful to give your teammate alot of resources at once at the moment. You have to click 30 times just to transfer 1000 of each which is not even much in the lategame.

8. Research Alliance: I missed something like this. As the races would have different tech trees (I guess) tech sharing isn't possible and that is good news for me.
A suggestion would be give players a tech cost discount for each research alliance.

New stuff:

9. I think a tech for faster ship movement (for all ships) would really speed up the gameplay at the end. It can be fairly high on the tech tree so its only available in the late game or in large games where it would really speed things up.
It would also add more strategy to the game. One player can tech up fast to make his ships faster so he can outrun or raid his enemies on a regular basis until they catch up.

10. I would apprenciate an "accelerated start" option for skirmish and multiplayer games. You will begin the game with more resources, ships, techs (all level 1 ones?) and planets.
If this is too difficult or time consuming an option to start with more resources would help, too.

11. With waypoints set to different planets or even systems there is a lot of jumping involved and you get many messages from the ship captains jumping. As many others I really like them but it would be cool to have a different set of messages every time a group of ships jumps together. This helps to figure out if your fleet already jumped while doing other stuff.
So whenever you select ships via a hotkey or manually and give them a simultaneous jump order you will hear something like: "Standby, fleet prepares for phase jump!" or "All ships jump on my mark! 3..2..1 JUMP!" instead of the regular messages. This would add information to the sound which has to be gathered visually otherwise.

12. Another sound information piece would be capital ship messages. When in battle or busy with something else its quite difficult to follow the message alerts. Sounds like: "We lost our shields, Sir" or "All men leave the ship" (instead of the rather dull "we lost a captal") add atmosphere to the game and emphasize the capitals even more while - again - shifting information from visual to sound.


Thats it so far. Keep the good work up!
Hope you can understand everything as english is not my mother tongue.
6,784 views 15 replies
Reply #1 Top
6. Another reason for delays are fighters


Last I checked, ships jumping out don't wait for fighters. The fighters simply have an AI that causes them to dock if their "home" ship is going to be jumping out.

7. Its quite painful to give your teammate alot of resources at once at the moment. You have to click 30 times just to transfer 1000 of each which is not even much in the lategame.


Shift key.

Reply #2 Top
Few comments:

1) If you're talking about what I think you are, the names for celestial objects don't replace that bottom 'box' that you can hover over to see structures built, it just covers it up. You can still hover over it to see.

5) I've noticed this a little, it's trying to get all the ships in formation it seems so usually the more ships you have the longer it takes to line them up, but I haven't really experienced a really long delay yet, post patch. Before the patch there was some bug if I recall that delayed jumps..

6) Like Ron said, ships never actually wait for the fighters to dock, they just jump and fighters auto-dock no matter where they are in the grav well.

11) Not sure what you mean. Fleets already say "Preparing for phase jump" when they're about to jump and "Phase jump complete" when they've finished the trip.

12) It was mentioned by the devs that more combat chatter is planned, but likely not in beta. Unless my memory is rusty..
Reply #3 Top
1. He described this accurately, he doesn't want to hover over the planet to get the box info, thats his critique he wants names and a box. I like 8-10
Reply #4 Top
11) Not sure what you mean. Fleets already say "Preparing for phase jump" when they're about to jump and "Phase jump complete" when they've finished the trip.


But are these different from individual ships jumping? If so they are hard to distinguish. At least for me.

1. He described this accurately, he doesn't want to hover over the planet to get the box info, thats his critique he wants names and a box


That is correct. It makes no sense to hide them behind the names when the star names option is on.

Reply #5 Top
Last I checked, ships jumping out don't wait for fighters. The fighters simply have an AI that causes them to dock if their "home" ship is going to be jumping out.


It seems like to me at least that fighters don’t get called back until there home ship hits the end of the gravity well. When the fighters do get back to there home ships the ships are so close to each other that the fighters kind of bounce off one another keeping them from docking with there home ship. A trick that I use to get around this is to move my ships as group to jump point and when they stall out I unclick then re-click the move as group button. This gets almost all my ships to jump at the same time except the two or three ships that had docking issues with there fighters. The fighters are then able to dock and their parent ships soon jumps afterwards.
Reply #6 Top
But are these different from individual ships jumping? If so they are hard to distinguish. At least for me.


Actually I don't think individual ships jumping spam you with those messages? I haven't noticed anyway, the only time I seem to hear the messages is when my actual fleet jumps. I'll try to pay more attention

That is correct. It makes no sense to hide them behind the names when the star names option is on.


Ah, I misunderstood a bit. Yeah it's kinda strange that the names hide the box, but you still have to hover over it to see the exact breakdown of structures one way or the other. It is nice to get the general idea by the pip marks in the box, though. This bothered me too at first, suppose I just got used to it Would be nice if the position of the names could be adjusted a bit.

It seems like to me at least that fighters don’t get called back until there home ship hits the end of the gravity well. When the fighters do get back to there home ships the ships are so close to each other that the fighters kind of bounce off one another keeping them from docking with there home ship. A trick that I use to get around this is to move my ships as group to jump point and when they stall out I unclick then re-click the move as group button. This gets almost all my ships to jump at the same time except the two or three ships that had docking issues with there fighters. The fighters are then able to dock and their parent ships soon jumps afterwards.


I think what Ron meant, and this is what I see whenever I look at a jumping fleet, is that a carrier doesn't actually wait for the squadron to return to the ship. Sova is usually my flagship and I don't think I've ever seen it wait to scoop the squadrons before jump, even if they're half way across the grav well the ship'll jump, the squadrons will disappear off the map and will be in the ship's hangar when it finishes the jump. I've experienced the stalling when jumping a bit, but I don't think that has to do with fighters, I think it's trying to put each ship in a precise spot before it can jump, and it's the ships bumping each other that slow it down.

Tonight/tomorrow I'll try ordering my squads to the opposite end of the grav well and then jump the Sova out and see if it waits or no, to do a more controlled experiment rather than casual observation
Reply #7 Top
They don't wait for fighters to dock before jumping. If you pay close attention, there is usually a ship "stuck" trying to get into position. It happens frequently with capital ships in a fleet. I've been switching to single after they are already grouped and about ready, there's usually one or two laggers in a large fleet that jump shortly behind.
Reply #8 Top
If you pay close attention, there is usually a ship "stuck" trying to get into position.


Yup -- though I've also had one memorable experiance where it was trying to rotate to line up with its exit, and kept bumping into other ships in the process O.o
Reply #9 Top
to 5 and 6, the combined jump: something I would in fact like is a standby for jump command. explanation: if I am coordinating a jump with another fleet, an ally or try to take profit from pirate/ enemy attacks, I want to give a very precise jump order and not move all ships to the end of the grav well in hopes of getting a near instant jump and then wait for a minute or two for my ships to form up. those minutes can hurt, so I want a "form up for jump, but only execute at my command" order.

and yes, it does take a while for the formation, a timer could also help if that is somehow possible and not totally out of line.
Reply #10 Top
I like that idea shadow -- of telling ships to form up for, but not execute, a jump.
Reply #11 Top

And a simple way to achieve it may be that you have to press a key while giving a jump order. Then the ships will clear orbit for jump but don't jump.

You will have to order them to jump again when you're ready but that is okay for me.
Reply #12 Top
Great idea overall, few possible ways I see to implement:

1) Do it literally, include a new command that will tie more than one fleet together for phase jumps.

2) Allow selection of entire allied fleets and then allow the current toggle for solo/group jumps apply to the entire selection. Both players would have to do this to ensure it's consentual, since it can and will increase the time it takes to jump.

3) Focus less on jumping in exact formations, and just see if a ship has cleared the grav well as the only condition for the jump. In one of my first MP games I tried to coordinate a jump with a teammate, moved my fleet as far as it would move on the edge of the well. He jumped, I clicked to jump as soon as I saw his drives powering up... and all of a sudden half of the ships on one side of my capital decided to relocate to the other side before the jump.

4) To go along with 3) sort of, allow right clicking an allied ship to toggle guard mode (does guard even exist in Sins? I swear it's the smallest things you don't notice/forget), allowing your ships to jump at the same time as the target ship without needing you to time it.

There are probably more ways to do it. But either way, it'd be great if it was done *somehow*
Reply #13 Top

Great ideas.  We have a new system in place that should make these action much more intuitive.

Reply #14 Top
That would/will be awesome

I would like the abillity to time arrivals of fleets from more than one system so they arrive at the destination simultaneously

I would love the 'hold for jump' command

I would also like a 'spread out' formation which would do its best to avoid ships being so close and bumping into each other, so that jumping formations would be faster. They can converge into a tight formation during the jump itself.


Great Idea the hold for jump!
Reply #15 Top

Great ideas.  We have a new system in place that should make these action much more intuitive.




Great news!

I hope in includes that "layered" range suggestion