Once-off even is not a pattern

Stop complaining you cheater

BTW, why do you "blank out" ships that we *see* leaving the grav well, rather than let the player watch them fly down the lane? (At the very least, PSIDAR tech should let us do that, please!)

Its really annoying to be unable to tell which lane someone is jumping down, or even (in those close call situations) if they jumped out or got destroyed while your attention was elsewhere.

Edit: Oh, and for beta purposes only a "notepad" of some kind would be really nice, so I can "jot down" on the fly all the little things that bug me. I just came up with the idea of minimizing so I can use open office to do that, but its a little bit of a chore to do that in a fast-paces multiplayer game.

(repost from RTS vs 4x Poll thread)
Thought I would throw this up for scrutiny...

I think one aspect of the solution for fleet micro managing is to have fleets divided into strike groups that will coordinate with the other strike groups of the fleet. Sort of like combining units in The Battle For Middle Earth, but combining say flaks w/ carriers or cruisers w/ destroyers. Where how you've decided to form your fleet outlines the AIs actions... a micro managing aspect without frantic clicking.

Also for in-well flanking maneuvers to be useful, perhaps have multiple firing angles on a ship hurt its shield mitigation. This would force more ordered formations too I think. I think it would be a lot more FUN to watch my fleet maintain order according to my parameters than watching it disentigrate into chaos like they do now. (I don't really know how shield mitigation works atm though so if my assumptions are wrong sorry =/)

Thoughts please?

Do you intend to forcibly limit the number of units asigned to each of these groups, or does it function similar to the promised "formations" option, which will (essentially) cause a group of vessels to act as one unit for selection purposes / manuevering?

If the former, I don't like it. If the latter, I think the devs are already on it.

I meant the latter, even though I do like smaller fleets I just wanted to have any size fleet be more organized. Thats good to know though, thanks. I had previously thought the in fleet group would be be just selection groups. Now my question is do you know(or like the idea) if we will be able to define formation shapes/arrangement? I'd also like to see formations/arangements unique to each empire(of course I dream of my own custom ones).

Also, do you know how shield mitigation works? and if shields can be made weaker in the rear to encourage flanking manuevers?(would it be too radical a change devs??)

thanks for the reply though dude

Basically you can make a cohesive fleet out of any group of ships, with the sub-selected ship (the one that appears in the selection window) being the fleet leader. Once formed, all the ships in the fleet take orders from the leader and try their best to remain in formation around it.

Shield mitigation increases with incoming damage. Basically, the more damage you're taking the higher the mitigation will be (someone posted a formula for it in another thread).

But shields won't be made weaker in the rear or sides, though flanking maneuvers are already encouraged since the vast majority of ships can't shoot backwards

It may be too late for this but it could be nice to create a special defence formation for the fleet in it ships could form a sphere and join their shields! If shields of the outer layer ship are critically dameged the ship from the core comes outside to swap with the dameged ship and so enforce the formation. The cost for this is that only outer layer ships could shoot, and speed of such formation is quiete slow because the formation itself is a very difficult maneuver.

Is it still possible to get the beta with TGN tokens? Unfortunatly I did not find this game until a few days ago, and missed the Dec 3rd pre-order deadline on their official site...

yes.








note: you might want to change your name, as on these forums all supporters of logic are ruthelesly hunted down, tortured and burned at the stake. I've been lucky to survive so long

is it worth it. heres my top 10 (no order)

Civ 4

C&C

AoE3

Heros OM&M 5

Galactic Civ

Total war series (rome)

Homeworld

Dawn of War

Warcraft 3

mostly RTS as you can see with some Turnbased.

Im hoping for a conquer the universe planet by planet type game....

Maby Ill go with "YAY BeeR" for the SN???

I think we have a lot of similar interests, but what it comes down to is: if you like multiplayer RTS games, get sins. it rocks.

i like rts games, alot. But....


I have alot of rts, I want somthing a little different. Do you conquer planets? are there resorces? does it have a world map?

thanks by the way ..

yes, you conquer planets. or rather you bomb everything there to the stonge age and then send your own coloniser in.

not resources in a civ 4 or gal civ 2 sense that give you access to units or structures, but more like resources in rts in general. I'd say something like age of empires 2 or 3 should get reasonably close to the resources model, but you have other means of obtaining them too.

there is no world map, its all one integrated map, think again of gal civ 2 or civ 4. you zoom out, world map, you zoom in, combat map, but all in one seemless world. check out multis gameplay videos, then you will understand why a worldmap is unnecessary (this style is way superior).

Sounds pretty cool. I went to YouTube and watched a few vids, planets and starts look amazing. Seems like you guys know what your talking about. So yeah if the beta is still avalible through this site then Im gona get it (noticed they also deal with space rangers and Gal civ2)

What is the beta lacking as far as the real game goes. So far seems like a few races right? anything else?

over all you say its fun though??

There is one race, and a lot of features, currently missing. We've been promised the Advent as one of the three races, and currently our "highly anticipated" features include a new, more 4X'ish, diplomacy model, and a kind of formations / fleet control which allows you to "lock" certain ships to another, functionally allowing you to control that one ship while the others support it. (Think flak ships flying escort on the capitol...)

ah.. but yarlen, isn't this the system that is currently in the game? I was under the impression this was going to be revamped. I'm really hoping it will be because I want to influence how the AI will manage a fleet by creating task groups in my fleet that allow more dynamic manuvers than form wall then aim/shoot. I mean I'd like to see fleets be composed of several formations of ships; where you defined how each formation is shaped and where it will be in relation to an anchoring formation(perhaps a central capital phalanx). Also I want to see the ability to click and drag to define how tight a formation is and what direction it faces. For instance even positioning your fleet to face up and be below the planet's plane to set up an ambush(probably goin too far though). but anyways, what do you mean orders?

Thanks, and thanks too annatar11

So how close is this game to homeworld 2?

eh... its has space ships but most of the game play mechanics are completely different. You would do well to read the game features.

While homeworld takes place in a single active environment at a time, SINS takes place in multiple environments at once.  Picture a giant battle around a detailed volcanic planet you are seiging.  A blazing starscape pierces the sky and subtle dustclouds blur your view.  Then zoom out to see the entire solar system map from deep space. Locate your newly colonized frontline ice planet and zoom back into build a capital ship factory and set your fresh fleet to hyperspace in to assist the ranging battle.  Then zoom really far out to follow up on your scout who just landed in an entirely different solar system - a calming blue starscape littered with rich terran planets and protective local militias.  There is no level loading or wait time between these scenes.  You could be building bases, fighting battles, and scouting the universe in a number of locations at once.  You could think of Homeworld as one of those battles. Throw in asteroid belts, wormholes, plasma storms, gas giants, and more and you can experience a very diverse environment.  One of the most notable differences would be the depth more typical of the 4X genre - research, diplomacy, NPC features, trade, and so on.  So, if you liked Homeworld 2, but wondered what was happening behind the scenes and across the galaxy, this is the game for you!

No, it isn't.

Edit: Anyway, some stuff from a recent game:

We need more audio feedback on whats going on in hostile / neutral systems that we have a presence in -- I lost a colony ship because I never got any warning about enemy ships jumping in, or attacking it.

Also, mines on captured planets might need a minor overhaul -- they start showing a rate (rather than 0.0) after its colonized again, but the hostile mines aren't sending out to either player -- or at least, we couldn't figure out if they were. Needs looking at, IMO.

Wow, nice. Looks like its pre-order worthy, going to DL then play a few days, Ill post again after i know my way around the game a little better.

Welcome Craig's description pretty much hits the spot!

However, it's also fair to warn you that our beta client doesn't have a lot of the features that the final release (or the current internal builds have). To give you an idea, the Beta 4 client became available on November 1st, and it has received a bugfix update since then but no content updates (though we're due for another patch soon).
You should enjoy the current beta in its current state (especially online play!) but keep in mind that more toys are yet to come

Stardock/Ironclad is different from most developer groups I've tested for in that while most put out the betas with all the fluff as a sort of "game demo", SD/IC puts out the betas with specific intent to find and fix bugs and issues, and the best way to do that is to limit the feature set so that when something gets reported they can find the core of the issue quicker This is why all over the boards you'll find people saying that the Sins beta in its current state is a lot more stable than most final releases! Of course, they also want to keep some things as a surprise for release

In other words, you should have fun playing, just be aware that the beta is still fairly barebones

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure that any other modern game has been as stable as our current Sins upon release -- I think Sins is taking the crown for stability!