So, after 10 games... (VERY LONG !!)

from Sins Forums
Ok I played about 10 games and I have already found what I like about sins, and what I dont. First of all I would like to say, that all my ideas in this topic are just my own opinions and they may be different from yours so dont flame me .Basicaly, I like diversity in RTS, possibilites and choices.

DIVERSITY:

So diversity. There is so many topics about two sides (TEC and Vasari)...So I came with a solution. Instead of giving Vasari stronger ships, with more dmg and hp but higher build cost, it might be more interesting do give them stronger(better weapon upgrades thru research) This would not only make them more advanced then trading TEC but also would make them diferent not only in units but also in tech tree...

Example: TEC and VASARI has same dmg boost from weapon research? And thats 5%, 10% etc.. Why just not make it double for vasari for each tier? This would make vasari much more advanced in weapons, and TEC should get better trading capabilites, mining etc.. Again trhu research. So vasari would have stronger ships but less money, and TEC would have more money and minerals but weaker ships. This is ideal solution to me, because at the moment tech trees are basically same, except high tier research...Easy solution to implement.


POSIBILITES:

Ok...First of all. I do not like that some frigates and cruisers in tech tree are too high... In my opinion all frigates should be tier 1 and 2...and cruisers 3 and 4. not higher, it seems to me, that game is at the moment about frigate spamming because everyone need army as soon as possible and noone is wiling to spend that much money for research to get those ships early, its just not worth money, because opponent would roll over you. This would make strategic posibilites much more open. Note: This is not that big case, in huge maps, because you will get them sooner or later. But it really hurts fast games on small maps.


CHOCIES:

And here we go.. There is many topics, that research tree is too short for long games, and useless for fast games(due to price cost...just make some math, and you will find out, that for example 5% dmg boost for 400 0 25, is roughly same price as one frigate, this would make it worth only if you would have 20+ ships, buecuse damage gain with 20 ships would be about the same as one more frigate, it sounds nice 5% but its not as good as it seems if you dont have enough units, this is not the case if you reach fleet support limit, then only way how to increase your fleet power is thru research, but that is too long in the game)

So solution to this. Very simple, its pretty hard to find perfect balance for all map sizes and player styles...So why jut dong give us choices? So... As we have game speed, there should also be Research time speed, and research cost slider. It might be really simple.
Research Speed (slow 50% of normal, normal 100%, Fast 200% of normal), Research cost same as research speed. I really feel that this is very much needed, because size of the maps matter alot !!...

But...research times would also have to be tweaked to make them overall longer, then they are now. Example (there is 8 tiers, so each tier would take 1 minute, tier 1 - 1 minute, Tier 5 - 5 minutes, so with fast research speed it would take 30 sec to research first tier tech, which would make it great for small games, but for epic games, players would be able to set this to slow, so 1 tier would take 2 minutes to research)...Those times are examples, but I hope you get it. (It can be 30 sec, for each tier and starting at 1 minute, for tier 1, so 4,5 minutes for 8th tier)

From this come another idea...and that is, to give players which would tech earlier, and faster advantage...My idea is, to give each lab, research time bonus. How this would work? Simple...Max bonus would be 50%(well 49%, 7% for one lab) if you have more then you need for researching that tech. So Example...You want to research Tier 5 technology, with normal research time it would take 5 minutes, and you need 7 labs for them...So if you have 7 of them you are able to research it, if you will have 8of them it would be 7% faster, if you would have 14of them, then you would research that tech 50%(49%) faster then your opponent if he is using only 7 labs for it. That would mean, you can have that tech in 2,5 minutes, instead in 5 minutes. Again, times and percentages are just rough examples, but if they would be set corectly with research times speeds and cost. It would make HUGE difference in big and small games.(not sure how hard this would be to implement at this stage of game)

research cost, this should also be tweaked. Early tech are about right, but tier 8 is just too cheap. At start, there is not that much money, but later on, if you have proper economy and with infinite resources, you cant spend your money(basicaly), they are just too cheap. So lower techs should be about some, there should be increase in price arround the middle and high increase at the top of the tech tree.

FEW OTHER IDEAS FOR SINS:

I would like to see some kind of space trash or anomalies like in gal civ, which ships (scout or capital) would be able to pick them for one time bonus. They can be there just once, not anything game breaking, or unbalancing, just to make games at start more interesting, till you get more planets and fleets for attacking.

Some minor races, It would be nice to find some planets to be habitated with minor races, and not being able to be captured immidiately. This would also make SINS universe more life like.

Build queues, should be done a little bit differently. We should actualy pay only for units in production, not for all which are in queue, this would make it much easier to macro manage. Right now I have to check my resources all the time when I want to build something. Why just not place it in queve, and build it for me when I will have money for it?

Be able to set, at each factory, what stance units will have when they are produced and into which group they belong.

There should be some indicator, of how many free tactical and logistic slots each planet has. I know that I can find it in the tooltip of planet. But I would like to see it on the star map, where we can see what units and how many of them are arround that planet.

I would also like to see overall amount of labs I have got. At the moment I just know how many I need to be able research that tech, but I do not know how much more I need to be able research it.

Buying and selling resources, we should be able to turn on some mini window on the main screen, so I do not have to press one button and then another one to do that. And cannot see anything on the map. I use it alot, so it would be nice to be able do it faster.

Reports, I would like to be able center last report with pressing some key(bindable)...instead of cliking on that event which pick target or item, And then pressing space.

Amount of money gain from trading is very unclear, there should be also money/s instead of whole amount.

I would like to be able to zoom in with double click(middle mouse button). It now center view on selected item.

Also for random maps, why just not make only one random? Not small, not medium and big. Give us choices !! I want to pick random and set how many suns it will have and how many planets it will have, I do not want to play with what I have to

For many of those thing should be some kind of setting in the menu because, many of them are really alot of matter of preference. And I like to be able to play as I want, and not as someone else me want to. I like choices .



TWEAKS AND ISSUES:

Pirates should not be able to be taken by culture !!

Pathfinding is crapy sometimes, especialy when ships try to tourn arround asteroid, it just do not fly above or below it, it just hit it and stuck there for a little bit of time. It also look pretty strange, when we are in space...

AI is poor(not need to saying anything more, overhaul is coming, known issue)

Sometimes it takes ages when you want to jump with fleet if you have group jumping stance, its pretty anoying.

Artefacts are pretty rare, and there is not too many of them.

IMPRESSIONS.

Overall the game is pretty good as is now. I played many betas in my life, and this one is one of the best, in term of stability. We still have alot of things to come, from what I have heard and read, and iam really pleased with what I saw. Graphic is nice, not best, but also not bad. Its perfect for this kind of game and scale of battles, noone want to lag all the time. Sounds are normal, Cant say anything more about them, cant remember any great or really bad. Voices are pretty , and music is also great. I wrote my ideas, solutions, and problems which I see with the game, so do not forget that they are just MY OPINIONS .

And sorry for my english, hope you will understand, if there will be anything unclear just ask, and I will reply...

Oh and its too long text, so I do not bother with gramar correcting Sorry











4,511 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Some minor races, It would be nice to find some planets to be habitated with minor races, and not being able to be captured immidiately. This would also make SINS universe more life like.
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sadly that one was in, but got scraped because they didnt have time to add it so maybe in an expansion or Sins 2

Buying and selling resources, we should be able to turn on some mini window on the main screen, so I do not have to press one button and then another one to do that. And cannot see anything on the map. I use it alot, so it would be nice to be able do it faster.
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Theres a new trade system comming, if we will see it in Beta 4 is unknown. That also goes for diplomacy and the fleet manager.


Also for random maps, why just not make only one random? Not small, not medium and big. Give us choices !! I want to pick random and set how many suns it will have and how many planets it will have, I do not want to play with what I have to
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We did have a galaxy generator but was removed in beta 3 and 4 for some compatible reasons with stuff we havent seen yet

Pirates should not be able to be taken by culture !!
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Agreed.


Pathfinding is crapy sometimes, especialy when ships try to tourn arround asteroid, it just do not fly above or below it, it just hit it and stuck there for a little bit of time. It also look pretty strange, when we are in space...
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Yeah, but im sure they are working on something to correct this.

AI is poor(not need to saying anything more, overhaul is coming, known issue)
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Ive heard rumors that the new AI (which is in development) to be much better

Sometimes it takes ages when you want to jump with fleet if you have group jumping stance, its pretty anoying.
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Yeah, that is caused by the path finding issue.

Artefacts are pretty rare, and there is not too many of them.
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I think the way it is, is good. They are artifacts after all, and needs to be rare


The dev's only have about a month left to finish what they are doing, so adding new stuff will not be possible. Except from what they are hiding internaly
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Wrapping up what Multi didn't!

I would like to see some kind of space trash or anomalies like in gal civ, which ships (scout or capital) would be able to pick them for one time bonus. They can be there just once, not anything game breaking, or unbalancing, just to make games at start more interesting, till you get more planets and fleets for attacking.
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The devs have said they are working on making exploration a bit more fun and useful other than charting out the map.

Build queues, should be done a little bit differently. We should actualy pay only for units in production, not for all which are in queue, this would make it much easier to macro manage. Right now I have to check my resources all the time when I want to build something. Why just not place it in queve, and build it for me when I will have money for it?
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We had a long long thread on this a while back, and that system you propose has a bunch of its own issues. I really doubt we'll see a change in the way building is now.

Be able to set, at each factory, what stance units will have when they are produced and into which group they belong.
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You can set which group they belong to by setting the factory's waypoint to a ship in a specific group. For example, if you have a capital ship in group 1, setting a factory's waypoint to that capital ship will a) fly all built ships to it and b) add them all to group 1. You can't modify stances on production (don't know what fleet manager and such will do), but creating a waypoint on a ship also puts them in 'guard' mode (until given another move order) so they won't stray far from the waypointed ship (paraphrasing Blair).

I would also like to see overall amount of labs I have got. At the moment I just know how many I need to be able research that tech, but I do not know how much more I need to be able research it.
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In the top left corners of the civ/military research screens is the number of labs you currently have built/building. In-construction labs will add to that count and will allow you to queue research before the lab is finished, but the research itself won't start until the last necessary lab is done building.

Amount of money gain from trading is very unclear, there should be also money/s instead of whole amount.
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If you hover your mouse over your credit income, it will tell you exactly how much credits all of your trade ships are ferrying. Making it money/s makes little sense, since the trade goods are in their cargo holds and you get credits per ship when it docks.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Wrapping up what Multi didn't!

I would like to see some kind of space trash or anomalies like in gal civ, which ships (scout or capital) would be able to pick them for one time bonus. They can be there just once, not anything game breaking, or unbalancing, just to make games at start more interesting, till you get more planets and fleets for attacking.


The devs have said they are working on making exploration a bit more fun and useful other than charting out the map.
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Nice, havent heard about it.


Build queues, should be done a little bit differently. We should actualy pay only for units in production, not for all which are in queue, this would make it much easier to macro manage. Right now I have to check my resources all the time when I want to build something. Why just not place it in queve, and build it for me when I will have money for it?


We had a long long thread on this a while back, and that system you propose has a bunch of its own issues. I really doubt we'll see a change in the way building is now.
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Well I read about it on the forums, but it was about making it same as in SUPCOM. I do not like it the way its in supcom. I mean, when it takes resources constantly, its very hard to manage that way. I would like to just not pay for ships in queues. Nothing more.


Be able to set, at each factory, what stance units will have when they are produced and into which group they belong.


You can set which group they belong to by setting the factory's waypoint to a ship in a specific group. For example, if you have a capital ship in group 1, setting a factory's waypoint to that capital ship will a) fly all built ships to it and b) add them all to group 1. You can't modify stances on production (don't know what fleet manager and such will do), but creating a waypoint on a ship also puts them in 'guard' mode (until given another move order) so they won't stray far from the waypointed ship (paraphrasing Blair).
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Did not know about the possibiliy to do that, thank you for info . But still default stance would also be nice.


I would also like to see overall amount of labs I have got. At the moment I just know how many I need to be able research that tech, but I do not know how much more I need to be able research it.


In the top left corners of the civ/military research screens is the number of labs you currently have built/building. In-construction labs will add to that count and will allow you to queue research before the lab is finished, but the research itself won't start until the last necessary lab is done building.
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Ohh, just checked it ingame, dont know how is that possible but I have never noticed that ...my bad


Amount of money gain from trading is very unclear, there should be also money/s instead of whole amount.


If you hover your mouse over your credit income, it will tell you exactly how much credits all of your trade ships are ferrying. Making it money/s makes little sense, since the trade goods are in their cargo holds and you get credits per ship when it docks.
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Still I have no idea, how much Iam earning from trading overall, lets say per minute. Maybe I dont understant it properly, all the time when I look at it, there is some amount, And I have no idea what it means.


Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
two sides (TEC and Vasari)
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There is another side...
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

two sides (TEC and Vasari)


There is another side...
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I know that there will be also advent, but how can I talk about them, when they are not playable in the beta? Iam talking about my experience with the game I cant comment anything that I have not played yet
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top


two sides (TEC and Vasari)


There is another side...


I know that there will be also advent, but how can I talk about them, when they are not playable in the beta? Iam talking about my experience with the game I cant comment anything that I have not played yet
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Yes, but the smell of an expansion is in the air... (Schem's ego is chasing the Vasari, after all...)
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Well I read about it on the forums, but it was about making it same as in SUPCOM. I do not like it the way its in supcom. I mean, when it takes resources constantly, its very hard to manage that way. I would like to just not pay for ships in queues. Nothing more.
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I know what you meant, and it was mentioned also (before the larger discussion about SupCom started) We never got an official answer to it from the dev team, but still I imagine the current system will stay.

Still I have no idea, how much Iam earning from trading overall, lets say per minute. Maybe I dont understant it properly, all the time when I look at it, there is some amount, And I have no idea what it means.
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The amount is for how much all of your trade ships are currently carrying. There is no per minute income because it doesn't quite work like that. Trade ships get multipliers to the amount of credits based on how many jumps they fly, and the time to fly jumps varies and ships constantly dock to unload/reload. So it would be pretty difficult to translate it to credits/minute because it's just constantly changing. You might have a gain of 500 credits very quickly because most of your ships happen to dock at the same time, then have to wait another 2-3 minutes until they redock elsewhere.

But going back to that number, that is what you are earning overall from all your trade stations.. You have x number of ships, and they carry x amount of credits, and as far as I know that summary screen also takes the jump distance multiplier into account to give you a total

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
when u said that TEC and the vasari should have different tech tree bonuses i dissagree. i like the World in conflict set... everything does the same so its about skill not which race u are
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Example: TEC and VASARI has same dmg boost from weapon research? And thats 5%, 10% etc.. Why just not make it double for vasari for each tier? This would make vasari much more advanced in weapons, and TEC should get better trading capabilites, mining etc.. Again trhu research. So vasari would have stronger ships but less money, and TEC would have more money and minerals but weaker ships. This is ideal solution to me, because at the moment tech trees are basically same, except high tier research...Easy solution to implement.
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Because the Vasari are (ATM) underpowered in early game, not late
.just make some math, and you will find out, that for example 5% dmg boost for 400 0 25, is roughly same price as one frigate, this would make it worth only if you would have 20+ ships, buecuse damage gain with 20 ships would be about the same as one more frigate, it sounds nice 5% but its not as good as it seems if you dont have enough units
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Gah, run-on sentences make quoting a pain... anyway, trust me: empirical research has disproven the math in previous betas: for whatever reason, those upgrades are more powerful than they sound.

There is many topics, that research tree is too short for long games, and useless for fast games
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Anyway, much of the tree may be "unavailable" in shorter games, but in longer games we want more!

So solution to this. Very simple, its pretty hard to find perfect balance for all map sizes and player styles...So why jut dong give us choices? So... As we have game speed, there should also be Research time speed, and research cost slider. It might be really simple.
Research Speed (slow 50% of normal, normal 100%, Fast 200% of normal), Research cost same as research speed. I really feel that this is very much needed, because size of the maps matter alot !!...
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They have to balance all options, ergo they don't add most options -- adding options isn't a way to balance.


You can set which group they belong to by setting the factory's waypoint to a ship in a specific group. For example, if you have a capital ship in group 1, setting a factory's waypoint to that capital ship will a) fly all built ships to it and b) add them all to group 1. You can't modify stances on production (don't know what fleet manager and such will do), but creating a waypoint on a ship also puts them in 'guard' mode (until given another move order) so they won't stray far from the waypointed ship (paraphrasing Blair).
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Alas, it doesn't work well. For example, if I assign ships to group one (entire "primary" fleet...) and they assigned up to group one and group five (my capitol ship control fleet).
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
.just make some math, and you will find out, that for example 5% dmg boost for 400 0 25, is roughly same price as one frigate, this would make it worth only if you would have 20+ ships, buecuse damage gain with 20 ships would be about the same as one more frigate, it sounds nice 5% but its not as good as it seems if you dont have enough units
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not to mention that having 20+ ships in the course of the game isnt that big of a stretch

and if you micro extensively you'll see that even a couple of low level hull and weapon upgrades can swing a battle on an epic scale. I could fish out a replay showing you what I mean.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Part of it is shield and hull regen. Two cobalts going at it chew through an awful lot of regenerated shielding and hull. Even if it is just 5%, it works out to significantly more when you reduce the dps by the regeneration rate.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
On the issue of an expansion, if I may add. There might be some sort of uprising, cause neither the vasari nor the TEC seem to be all together benevolent rulers. The Advent I don't know, and the whole "Shocking acts of deviancy, at every level of society, violated the venerable taboos common to all the Trader Worlds" seems unclear to me as of yet.

Now just spamming an idea hehe.

On your points "Omnax" i do agree on most issues.

Too lazy to go in on the detalis, hope u can forgive me. hehe
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
I've found with the Vasari that its best to research larger fleet upgrades asap (at each plant you control) it allows for more ships, which really helps in the early game.