Played for 5 1/2 hours yesterday: a few more comments/questions

from Sins Forums
Well,

I feel like I explored pretty much everything in this game, other than playing as the Vassari (this weekend). So far, othern than a REALLY week AI, I do like this game. My few comments/questions below:

1. Do you need to capture all of the planets belonging to a player before he is finished? Do asteroids count? I played this LONG game, and captured almost all the plants from an AI player. My numerical superiority was overwhelming. It would have been nice if the AI simply calculated that it has no chance and surrendered. I've seen it done in CIV4 and it saves a lot of hassle for players to "mop up" things (I absolutely hate having to hunt for that "last" building/unit in RTS games).

2. Interesting enough, the AI did imploy a cluture attack about mid game (the first time I saw this in about 6 games I played). Maybe I was not paying attention, but my planet (one jump from my homeplanet) suddenly fliped. So here is my question: why do all of the orbital structures stay in your control, after the planet fliped to the enemy?? It's not logical at all. Also, when you flip a planet, you then have to send forces to remove all of the orbital structures as well. Any particular reason this was implemented?

3. Is it just me or the fighter/bomber hangars are the ONLY reasonable way to defend a planet? I tried the cannon, but because of the limited range I felt it completely useless.

4. The game feels very repetetive mid-game and onwards. Maybe that's because of the poor AI, but for all the diplomatic/bounty/artifacts michanics, I never felt like I had much to do other than build ships/capture planets/kill AI.

5. Will there be Beta 5? What other features will ship with the complete game (other then a 3rd race)?

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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

3. Is it just me or the fighter/bomber hangars are the ONLY reasonable way to defend a planet? I tried the cannon, but because of the limited range I felt it completely useless.
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Cannon are VERY powerful, if you use 'em right. Support with repair centers, and place them where the enemy HAS to go. Like your hangars, or PJI.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
i'll try. thanks.
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
1. Do you need to capture all of the planets belonging to a player before he is finished? Do asteroids count? I played this LONG game, and captured almost all the plants from an AI player. My numerical superiority was overwhelming. It would have been nice if the AI simply calculated that it has no chance and surrendered. I've seen it done in CIV4 and it saves a lot of hassle for players to "mop up" things (I absolutely hate having to hunt for that "last" building/unit in RTS games).
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Everything counts, even if they managed to capture the pirate base. Every single colony to wipe them out. That said, we only have one available game mode for the beta, and we can expect at least one more (without flagships to start) at release. Whether or not they'll add modes with different victory conditions, I don't remember ever getting a concrete answer, but there were discussions on it. As well as modes of surrendering to avoid the 'swat the fly' mechanic. We'll have to see

2. Interesting enough, the AI did imploy a cluture attack about mid game (the first time I saw this in about 6 games I played). Maybe I was not paying attention, but my planet (one jump from my homeplanet) suddenly fliped. So here is my question: why do all of the orbital structures stay in your control, after the planet fliped to the enemy?? It's not logical at all. Also, when you flip a planet, you then have to send forces to remove all of the orbital structures as well. Any particular reason this was implemented?
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Not everything still works. Phase inhibitors, for example, only work while the planet is in your control (because it needs to be counted as 'friendly' territory). Unfinished construction is cancelled when a planet flips, but for the rest of them, why is it not logical? The planet population isn't tied to the structures in space (especially military defenses). And just to wager a guess, I would say this mechanic was put in place specifically so that a culture player would still need a military for something. It would suck if you have your fleet in a planet's grav well and have all the defenses suddenly turn on you just because the planet flipped

3. Is it just me or the fighter/bomber hangars are the ONLY reasonable way to defend a planet? I tried the cannon, but because of the limited range I felt it completely useless.
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They are very versatile, but gauss cannons and missile platforms have uses also. It's easy to around them, but if they're defending exactly the spot the enemy wants to be in, then they have no choice but to destroy them So with their placement you just need to be very careful. They need to be in just the right place to force the opponent to engage them.

4. The game feels very repetetive mid-game and onwards. Maybe that's because of the poor AI, but for all the diplomatic/bounty/artifacts michanics, I never felt like I had much to do other than build ships/capture planets/kill AI.
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This ties into various other game modes that we may or may not see. In general, MP games are far from boring, especially in FFAs there tend to be a lot of diplomatic twists to keep everything interesting. The AI is hardly a challenge now, either, so that's a big contributing factor to the boredom of fighting it.

5. Will there be Beta 5? What other features will ship with the complete game (other then a 3rd race)?
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Beta 4 is the last announced beta before release. The devs have deliberately kept a bunch of stuff under wraps so we'd all get a surprise at release. The stuff we know to be in the works (or were told would be and for now haven't heard otherwise): improved diplomacy, improved market functions, some UI tweaks for market/research/diplomacy, superweapons, possibly a few more features for the races (we were told they would not be 100% complete in beta, so could be more than just superweapons), tweaked exploration making it more fun, random space stuff/events, fleet manager, AI upgrades, random galaxy creation, more game modes (at least 1 more). I may have missed something Some of this stuff we may or may not still see patched in beta 4.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks for the reply. i guess it makes sense in the game michanics kind of a way, not to lose the space structures when a planet flips.

Are there any visual/sound indicators (other then culture lines and % penalty) to alert players that a planet is about to flip?

I would love to see what the final product will look like. I hope they will add a few more features, like you mentioned.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks for the reply.
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Pleasure

Are there any visual/sound indicators (other then culture lines and % penalty) to alert players that a planet is about to flip?
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There's a bug (fixed internally, but we don't have the patch yet) where planets about to flip give some errors. Generally, a planet in danger of flipping starts flashing on the galaxy map, you get some sort of audio warning (but I do forget what exactly is said), and you also get an event for it (the diplomacy button I think, in the lower-left of the UI where you have the 4 event buttons).

I hope they will add a few more features, like you mentioned.
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A bunch of things on that list have been talked about previously, but we don't really have current updates for (mainly exploration tweaks, fleet manager, and random space junk/events). Market/research/UI stuff, superweapons, AI, galaxy generator, etc are solid
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
5. Will there be Beta 5?
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Yes. Sadly enough its a private beta and SD has a list of whos going to get it and whos not...

Heard that from Yarlen.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Thank you for displaying an amazing lack of tact It's up to SD/IC to post about things like that.

Spreading rumors = bad.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
well apparently its not a rumor.
Yes. Sadly enough its a private beta and SD has a list of whos going to get it and whos not...
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as in, a selection from us? or just from friends/family of them? private game players?
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
A 2-tier beta outside the developers? Surely not thats outrageous you cant start splitting the community like that. They must have meant family and friends they can trust without the agro of an NDA.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
hey, i'll sign an NDA if it means the AI is fixed ;0
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
I seriously doubt there would be an NDA. what a huge pain.

although granted, give me anything from Beta 5 and I'll sign any (excluding marriage/civil union) legal document.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
2. Interesting enough, the AI did imploy a cluture attack about mid game (the first time I saw this in about 6 games I played). Maybe I was not paying attention, but my planet (one jump from my homeplanet) suddenly fliped. So here is my question: why do all of the orbital structures stay in your control, after the planet fliped to the enemy?? It's not logical at all. Also, when you flip a planet, you then have to send forces to remove all of the orbital structures as well. Any particular reason this was implemented?
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Yeah i think thats pretty bad aswell.
But even worse is that the planet looses all advantages, suddenly 300 billion people die and everything has to be rebuilt from scratch.
If you do it the hard way and win a planet by culture there should be a reward than going the easy way and bombing it to the stoneage.
Personally i would be fine with keeping the planets improvements and the structures decaying over time (like fightercraft without carrier do now)
but getting all the structs a bonus would be very nice, too
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
as in, a selection from us? or just from friends/family of them? private game players?
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He didn't say... And when I bugged him about who was on it he said he hadn't taken a look at it yet...

Not a rumor. I think they were just thinking about it but Yarlen did say that.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
6 cannons , 2 repair bays, and 2 bomber bays are all you need to hold off anything the pirates will throw at you, plop them in a clump, and make sure the bombers take out any pirate ships bombing the planet.

Also make sure to do the 3x research upgrade for the gauss cannons on the military research tree.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top

Yes. Sadly enough its a private beta and SD has a list of whos going to get it and whos not...

Heard that from Yarlen.
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I'd love a source -- was that from IRC, or did I miss something on the forums?

That said, I have no objection to the idea of a private beta (in fact, I've mentioned the idea a few times...).

Fact: Its pretty clear that their in-house testing just isn't up to the job. (Most devs don't have the kind of massive in house testing ability required to thoroughly play test something).

Fact: They want to keep at least a few things as a surprise for release, so they can't do an open "release candidate" beta.

Conclusion: These two are incompatable, one has to change. So...

Fact 2 (revised: They want to keep at least a few things as a surprise to the community as a whole, etc etc.

Conclusion: Private Beta 5.

(Obviously, that particular beta was meant to be private and secret until the cat was let out of the bag by accident... )

Either that, or they're planning on giving us a surprise holiday gift in the form of beta 5 instead of the next patch...
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
Fact 3 We paid to be part of the SoaSE beta process.

Conclusion: As the beta is not free there is an onus on the developers to show 'fairplay' in this regard which they have to date and I'm sure will continue to do so.

I think Thrawn & Yarlen is due our thanks for speaking up with some honesty and openess and I look forward to the next beta/patch should one be released before Feb2008 as would 99% of other public beta testers.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
Well, i think its a surprice for the guys that were in the beta´s. I mean you paid for the right to beta the game. They cant release a beta 5 an not include the ones that adquired the right to beta test.

Also the more "eyes" in the game, is better for finding errors.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
Fact 3 We paid to be part of the SoaSE beta process.

Conclusion: As the beta is not free there is an onus on the developers to show 'fairplay' in this regard which they have to date and I'm sure will continue to do so.

I think Thrawn & Yarlen is due our thanks for speaking up with some honesty and openess and I look forward to the next beta/patch should one be released before Feb2008 as would 99% of other public beta testers.
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Just because you paid for it doesnt mean you can go there or do that. Look at your tax dollars at work, "public" property. What if Sins hadn't had an open beta and it was only open to the first beta people? How do you know that beta 5 wasn't already released? To me it doesn't matter if I get in or not, because I still will be one of the First people to get the game on release. Thats good enough for me.
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
Fact 3 We paid to be part of the SoaSE beta process.
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I don't know about you but I paid to pre order the game and the invite to the beta is a "courtesy" invite that I paid nothing to receive.


Also the more "eyes" in the game, is better for finding errors.
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Single biggest argument against private beta 5 (And one I do hope they take...)
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
It was on IRC.

Just because you preordered the game and are a beta tester doesn't mean they need to give you beta 5! Get over it

After all, the devs have their own "betas" with all the secrets
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
I don't know about you but I paid to pre order the game and the invite to the beta is a "courtesy" invite that I paid nothing to receive.
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exactly, though being in the open/courtesy beta did convince me to buy the game.

Edit: It was a deciding factor but not the only one.
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
As much as I would love to play beta 5, I feel that the developers are not obligated at all to share it with the rest of us. I mean, nobody forced us to pre-order the game and play the beta, it was completely our own choice. Hence, we'll get what they are giving us, and in another few month the entire game. overall, not a bad deal
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
bloody hell... stop with the beta 5 crap already. If it exist great for those that to view it, if it does not, shut the hell up and wait for something that can actually be proven. Rumors aint facts and anybody that lives on rumors needs to be shot and hanged with a sticker on their forhead "Here hangs a retard, he believed in rumors."