late game you would not be doing that... also I dont waste "seasoning" on the levels I can buy.

Generally I don't either... sometimes you need the capship doing things now as opposed to later. (Holding down a planet with your capitol, while still trying to expand on other fronts comes to mind...)

I don't understand how you can have enough cash to train the crews that much. I have plenty of research to do or ships to build instead with those 2500 credits. But yes, they are a lot more powerful when trained.

Ok here is the problem with Resources.

Infinite Resource Model + Limitation Unit Model

= Desensitization of Resources = Disaster


Hurts in late game. Gameplay becomes completely broken because resources come too fast. You have nothing to spend it on because your limited. People become less sensitive to losing ships because they are easily replacable. Think - without a fleetcap , ships you lose are ships you will always miss on the battlefield. With a cap , if you lose 10 cobalts you know that with a fleet cap it doesnt matter much aslong as they are replaced. . Theres no real point in raiding resources and people just blindly research stuff just to spend their money. Sins loses alot of strategic appeal as steamrolling - the result of the inability to raid resources in an RTS game - becomes the only thing people can really do to effect the game.

p5yy thats a gross overreaction on many levels, so much so I dont feel like explaining it right now.
besides if you play correctly you should be desensitized to your resources throughout most of the game

oh trust me, you should have plenty of money for it by the time you buy one.

So you mean I should not build another capital ship until I have a couple of spare thousands of credits in addition to the capital ship cost? I think not. By the time I get my fourth capital I could start thinking about training the crew, not before. But there are always some other worthwhile things to spend that money on.

Guess I just never have played long enough to make it seem viable to me, but Ron seemed to train his caps while I instead built loads of frigates to help my green cap. It was not the direct cause of his loss, of course, but I don't think it helped; his level 3-4 ship died in exchange for my level 1 several times. Possibly he just got experience from all the pirates going his way though.

Or you focus more than me on trade posts, perhaps.

Nope. The cash is spent after the ship is finished, so you can collect it while the ship is building.



Yeah, well, let me point out that you had superior numbers in both frigates and capitols throughout most of the game -- my taking your ships on a one-for-one basis (each time doing a number on your frigate forces as well!) should speak for itself.

Okay well let me explain that when i say capital ships become less important due to their replaceabillity...

That said yes they are still important and the loss is still 'felt' but that this effect is diminished. I can say 'lessened' and not mean that the effected is 'negated'

I enjoyed the game much more when losses (any losses frankly) had a heavIER impact on the game due to the limited resources available.

P5yy is correct in describing 'TENDANCIES' he is over-exagerating them IMO.

Raiding is no longer an economic tool, more of a anhillation tool, the only effective raiding is that which either limits the enemies ability to dispense his income (shipyards and research platforms) or by destroying planets rapidly to ensure victory.

Economic raiding except for the very early period of the game is largely futile in any well sized game. In the medium to late game, losing ships hurts allot less due to the presence of the fleet cap limiting your overall quantity to a relatively small ammount compared with your vast and virtually inexhaustible resources.

Frankly I now won't be playing larger games, I am testing Aerolian Sector right now with a Single Player game... i have so many ships, planets, and structures to manage that the game is just ridicoulous and pointless. The problem isn't the comptency of the AI either... I just don't enjoy having to order my ships to constantly be built and sent forward...

Seriously, with an infinite economy we will need the ability to set factories to infinite build and to be able to que things we can't yet afford. Frankly we have an infinite economy with an interface designed for a finite economy!

If we keep a infinite economy I will need allot of the features Supreme Commander has that Sins does not.

This quote bothers me some. I think you should always be sensitive to your resources throughout the entire game. If Sins is designed in such a way that "correct" game play means you are desensitized to your resources then that would indicate a problem in my view.

I'm not sure if its 'correct' in fact... no its incorrect you care about your resources right up until the later game and you have trade stations and refineries built. But the game is now as such that you become desensitized to them inadvertantly. Late game they just might as well be falling from heaven.

I agree. Resources should be the driving force of your game. Its the driving force of almost every RTS game to date.

Sins has tried to make it different , maybe it will get good marks for originality. The driving force in Sins is Fleet Cap in the late game. The only way however to hurt Fleet Cap is to kill a planet and colonise it yourself. Because of this nature , Steamrolling is the only valid strategy to achieve this.

If however , the nature of Sins was that your Fleet size was dependant and limited by your resources throughout the game and that you rarely ever reached the Fleet cap , this means your power is sensitized to resources. If the enemy hurts your resources , you will see noticable effects on your fleet + other stuff.

Now why is having Resources as the driving force great in RTS. - Its the very nature of the distribution of resources across a map . RTS games can distribute resources across the map in vulnerable contested positions to make players fight over them , raid them , protect them - use map control and organise multi-fleet movements.In Sins, although extractors are in vulnerable positions , the emphasis is on killing the planet , and we all know that strategy-wise this leads to steamrolling as the most efficient way.

Now compare to Homeworld 2. It had unit caps , but very often or not you will not reach the limit of your cap for every unit in a 1 hour-2hour game. This means that throughout the game , the ability to use small fleets round the back to hurt resources has a direct effect on the enemies overall fleet size. Because you raided that resource patch , his fleet is a few frigs smaller, It may be 1-2 techs lighter. Your fleet is sensitive to your economy.

Gauntlet makes some excellent points. In particular:



I would go a step farther and say that not only is the interface designed for finite resources but the way the game itself is designed is for finite resources. Not having a res storage cap and having a unit cap both lend themselves to a finite resource model. If Ironclad did as Gauntlet suggests and added an infinitely repeatable build queue, you would quickly hit your unit cap making the use of a repeatable queue questionable.

Yes, of course. I definitely had to pound those battleships for a long time to breach them, and using the ion bolt repeatedly as well during it, no quarrel there. You had few other forces though. That was what I meant by spending the extra cash on frigates and/or research instead of pumping the capitals, it naturally translates to more ships. If funneled only into frigates it's about 6-7 cobalts, counting the extra metal which could be translated into credits for training. I think the extra frigates are not something to dismiss out of hand (I gather from other threads that Multianna also likes many small ships).

If you have unlimited funds and nothing interesting to spend it on, or lack of fleet support, I heartily endorse crew training. I just haven't been there yet. I may be convinced by later games, as I only have two battles under my belt yet.

agree with gauntlet's long and p5vy' recent post. I liked it better when even in large games resources were still limited, because raids were more effective and keeping ships alive was more important. having fleet caps as the only limits is not good. in fact, fleet caps should work more to restrict a stronger player to extract the full value of his holdings rather than being the restrictor in balanced games.

this does not mean however that we need a finite model. its also possible to reduce income, for example by changing allegiance levels, lowering initial return of trade posts/ refineries, etc. what essentially changed from beta 3 to 4 was that allegiance was increased AND the model was switched to infinite, both of which turned to scarity of beta 3 to abundance.

As some of the criticism against the previous limited resources was that it suddenly snapped from full steam to a snail's pace: How about reducing the rate of harvesting over time? It's even realistic, like in mines or oil wells on Earth; you'd first get the resources that were easy to mine, sometimes even lying on the ground, requiring little to no digging. Then more and more effort is needed to extract the remainders.

If it is not desirable to stop all production at the end (sounds like it's not), you could halt the diminishing at any given efficiency.

Indeed even in beta 3 it wasn't infinite, but the infinite return value was so meager that you had to constantly hoard it and choose wisely what you spent it on...

now in the late game (aside from the waste of fleet points) I could spend it on 50 flak frigates and not really care... not to mention the research game becomes silly... it may take me forever to finish researching it all, but I can easily have all the research qued up now with a developed empire of about 12 planets. Thats kind of silly. Its also exactly the opposite of the original statements from the Devs who claimed that they wanted you not to be able to complete the entire tree so that you would have to face hard choices.

The allegiance modifier could be harsher on income but remain at the same overall loyalty, that would help a little bit, but I think if we went back to the old system and then had expended resource asteroids produce 1 per tick instead of .1 you would have a much better system.

That or they need to develop the infinite economy boundaries with storage facilities and a plethora of new features that we've already mentioned above.

I have only read some of the things on here and to me the answer is simple, give an option for finite and infinite resources and isf so desired an advanced option for specifying which resource in particular will be finitie or infinite.

While on the Resource note, I remember there being talk that each faction would rely more heavily on one resource then another. Has this changed?

Take Care and God Bless,

Lharrs

Both current factions rely equally on the resources. I have seen no indication that this will change to having different focuses.

In REPLY #91 I meant to say in the first sentence that resources WERE infinite in Beta 3, not 'weren't'

Sorry but I cannot seem to edit the post right now.

I suggested that we have this be an option already Lharrs, but its good to bring that up again! The problem is having to balance both systems, the easiest way is to balance one system and let the other method of playing being not neccessarily balanced and for those who don't neccessarily care so much about that.

But which one eh?

lol I tried to make sense of it by reading it as

Even if beta 3 wasnt infinite

yeah... sorry    haha

I went through all the posts and 'tried' (its hard) to determine how many were for something closer to the old system and how many were for the current system and how many were on the fence...

seemed to be about 10 for the old system or something closer, only about 3 that were definitely sold on the new system and they had caveats concerning fleet supply. Maybe another 5 that were completely on the fence... a Poll for this would be very useful.


Notably infinite resources reduces micromanagement of battles because losses are easier to replace. However it increases macro-management of resources because you have so damn much now that if you are not constantly ordering new upgrades, techs, and ships you are not being very efficient, its a trade off.

Why is it a bad trade?

Because micro managing fleets of ships shooting special effects at each other is more fun than micro managing the production of ships, rally points, new planet upgrades, exploration upgrades, and technologies and buildings.

I used to spend more 'management' time in battles making sure I won because it was so crucial. Now I spend more time managing my spending and filling my fleet supply because it is so crucial, and losing a few ships isn't when you can build 20 Cobalts at a time.

Regardless of Realism here, wouldn't you rather win because you were better at commanding ships as opposed to being better at requisitioning and filling out paper work for new labs?

Is it really the income?

Your fleet points proportionally shrink as your empire gets bigger, your income does as well, but to a lesser degree. Logistics slots don't suffer from the distance modifiers. In a huge galaxy, there is no difference between mines that run dry and mines that don't. You have more resources than you can shake a stick at either way. Research is even worse, it doesn't have a soft cap.

In a small map things make sense because it's usually over before anyone comes close to maxing out the research, and maybe even before all the planets are finished expanding. In a medium, I usually get what I'm after before things start moving much, and have a flood of unused resources by the time I win or lose. Anything bigger and the tech tree is simply insufficient. All your planets are max pop with full upgrades and your tech trees finished long before you'll win a 100 planet map across 10 stars. It's not the income, it's the lack of anything to spend it on. The tech tree, planetary improvements, and even the fleet cap are all far surpassed by income as the maps get bigger.

Mines aren't even your primary intake on a big enough map. Assuming you bother to build a decent number of refineries(and you wont really need them) you can far surpass the mine income with just one a planet.

Open ended research(with scaled research times to the number of labs) and planetary improvements with exponential costs would go a long ways towards the economy issue. The mines themselves aren't a problem, just the most obvious cause in a fairly small map.

how did this thread get so damn huge when I wasnt looking!?!?!?!


perhaps its because I expand and micro well, but while most people are agonizing over whether or not to buy a cap or frigates I can afford both in a fraction of a minute...

the actual good thing about this game is that focus (while it does have a little focus on growth) is mostly about combat, taking ground and movement, like real wars. I like as is, personally.

...
no, the money should flow into your coffers well before your ship gets to battle, even if it means selling resources (gasp!) train your cap before it gets to battle.

ow ron, off your game?
I've seen PoC plenty with this, low level caps against a well coordinated attack

or at least, they do

ok, looks like I'm going to need a post on build order. t'is sad, as the only real master of economy I've seen in game (sans moi, of course) would be multi.

this isnt meant as an insult, but people are freaking out over the economy when frankly, it flows rather quickly. its not to say there arent decisions, just that it isnt "this or the other, not both" its "both, but which first?" this isnt Supcom...
ok, I want to hear people's initial build "orders", just give me a general description of how you begin. far as I've seen the - income numbers have been rampant in beta 4 and thats a HUGE no no, so if you have issues maybe I can help.