Actually if it was real, REAL time then it would take years to travel to other planets and hundreds of years to colonise them. But that's just being silly.

I agree that it couldn't hurt to have faster settings. I mean by all means keep the normal settings but put the faster settings there for people who only have a couple of hours a night free.

Saving games is fine but it's always a hassle to have to organise times to finish off games, especially if they're random pick up games against people you don't even know. I prefer to be able to finish games in one sitting.

Actually, in games like chess, you have to plan and wait for the opponent a lot. And the wait can be excruciating.

I think there is a list of factors that determine what is the "right" speed of the game. And it's a personal thing.

1) RTS and 4X experience
2) Number of planets
3) AI or human opponent
4) Number of opponents
5) Quick pick-me-up game or multi-day save game with friends

In general, I think for a 1-on-1 vs. AI on a small map, faster speed is good. On a huge map, slower is good.

The AI isn't likely to out-think the player, so there is no need to think too long. But versus a human opponent, if the game is set too fast, it could become a click-fest.

There are more factors, but you get the idea. Personally, I hope the "I have to finish in one-hour" crowd can play it their way, but also try the multi-day saved game with friends. It's a different kind of satisfaction to win that way.

But even in chess there's many places I can go to play a 10 min a side game if I want, both online and off. Even professional chess games last for 3-4 hours max.

Wouldn't this particular annoyance be better addressed by an AI that offers to surrender when it is effectively beaten?

Maybe it would also help to be able to set different victory conditions when creating a game eg taking your opponent's homeworld or holding a certain percentage of planets for a set period of time?

And that's my point. If a "simple" (but deep) game like chess can take hours, why should a more complicated game like Sins take less time?

In fact, it should take a lot longer, especially with two experienced players. Throw a few more players into the mix, and it should take days.

That nail-biting, can't lose because I've invested too much time, back and forth play I think *is* possible in Sins. And not possible in most other games.

In an one-hour RTS game, win or lose, big whoop... next! In a 6-hour "double tie-break" marathon, the stakes are a lot higher. Not exactly a gold medal, but still.

Once players get more Sins experience and a few more patches have addressed most issues, I think it'll really be good.

I picked up Sins this week and I am having a balst playing against the computer. It never occurred to me that games take a long time until I was on a six player map and I was up to 2 am when I took out the first hard comp. Then I looke at the quote on the inside of the little flip cardoard box, and said, "Dang they weren't joking" I play Hmoeworld and homeworld 2 for fun, and I am used to a faster game, then again I also play space empires 5 and have yet to finish that game I started 3 months ago, and have spent about 20 hours on. I think Sins brings up just about the best marrige between rts and turned based strategy games I can think of to date, at least in the realm of space anyway. the only thing I don't likedue to its speed is I can never find a good place to stop.

Oh you can play a huge map in under an hour just fine.

How ? Simple:

1. Select a huge map, personally i would recommend Grindstone, it's perfect for the purpose of playing a fast game.
2. Put all the 7 AI players on hard.
3. Put all the 7 AI players on the same team.
4. Start game and enjoy your "fastest" game of Sins ever!

If you aren't finished in under an hour, you are good. /snickers

P.S. on a more serious note: Game duration per planet decreases drastically when you get some experience and become better at the game. lol.

Cant be arsed getting into fights so please ignore me.

my thoughts are,

It would be nice to customise individual games any way we chose in single player
But this will lead to to many problems setting up multiplayer games as consensus would then be almost impossible.

So I suggest,

for single player,

loads of extra user controlled settings (the possibility of changing as many aspects of game dynamic as possible, at game start) so that games can be played the way any individual player could like.

for multiplayer,

an extra two settings one slower and one faster both still generic for all,
online games can still be easily arranged without needless arguments.


just because some ppl like the status quo , doesnt mean that change is a bad thing.

we all need to keep this in mind before getting overheated about choice,

Both the Dawn of War series and Supreme Commander FA have customisable setups for multiplayer games as well as for single player skirmishes, offering a selection of victory conditions among other things. Both seem to have been fairly successful as multiplayer games.

dont mention these games, the fanbois will have your hide.

never mention how other rts games work online with more settings, your just spoiling to be ridiculed, lol

i agree with you, why cant we get enough ppl online to be able to decide the settings, i recon another two speed settings for the time, see how it goes and if it works well maybe more,

I agree with a lot of the people (Dhaeman is one that i happened to see in this huge thread) that say using the 4X term to explain why it has to take a long time is not the right way to look at it.

I'm a person who's based more in Civilization than Starcraft, but for me, certain game types end up having "hang time" more than others. Less players and less map size create a game where you are entirely limited by your resources.

So if your resources are coming in a certain rate, you can only spend money on ships, culture, research as fast as that rate. When I'm sitting playing the game making strategic decisions (hm, i need to build two more temple of harmonies to really create that buffer I need in this star system). But I've been spending most all my available resources (as your should be in the start to mid game - there's no interest rate, people), and I'm colonizing and taking out enemy fleets, and then I'm sitting there waiting for the resources to come in, that's when I get bored. The usefulness of micro in this game is somewhat "mitigated" due to certain factors. You can micro all three of your battles, and if that's your thing, I can see playing on normal or fast (which I consider very slow, and slow).

But for people like myself who only really micro cap ships and largish squadrons, there is significant down-time (waiting for resources, waiting for ships to travel, etc) in the beginning and middle of small and large maps alike.

Luckily it's really easy to mod the speeds. So I play 75% of my games where everything is double rate (all regens, speeds, turning, building, resources, culture, firing rates, missile speeds, jump speeds and delay). And then the remaining 25% is on the unmodded "Fast" option, for more epic battles.

What bothers me is that it can feel like your victory is assured by the 1.5-2h mark, yet it takes you another 2h-3h of crushing the opposing fleets repeatedly to get to the victory screen. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it feels like it takes a very long time for victory to crystallize unless the opponent concedes defeat.

My problem with this game isn't necessarily the time it takes, it's what happens in that time...

You either slowly win, or slowly lose; comebacks in this game seem very rare.

That is what I hate about this game, why make us wait 3 hours for a loss when you can pretty much predict who is going to win in the first hour?

I don't agree entirely with the OP, but here's my take on it: The game doesn't take too long, but it could go faster. Is it that much harder to add in a "faster" speed mode for the people that want it? People that want to have the epic feel of the game can play it at their pace, and people that want to play it at a quicker pace can do it that way as well.

I think that something great about this game is its playability at different levels. It gives you choices. You can place all your structures yourself, or you can have it automatically done. You can micro all of your capital ship and support ship abilities, or you can leave it on automatic if you want to focus on macro.

Faster modes cater better for casual players. There's threads about people hating on noobs that quit matches as soon as they see themselves barely losing. Faster play would alleviate some of this. There's a reason why people in chess will resign if they're down two pawns without a gambit, while most people in Starcraft will play even disadvantaged until their base finally gets completely overrun. Also, faster play means that you're not going to feel as bad when people quit mid-game, since you're not watching that "beautiful strat" you implemented over the past two hours go to waste.

Anyways, my two cents. Not everyone plays the same, and some people just like it fast. It's not like adding in a "faster" speed setting is going to prohibit players that like it slow from ever playing the game on normal again.

Hell, i am used to playing games that are quicker like age of empires, star craft, c&c generals, battle for middle earth, some red alert now nad then, as well as other 4x like rome total war and it's medieval counterpart. I never enjoyed long games either, but then this game came out. I have been playing the same damn game for days now. I have had the game on about 10 hours a day for the past 3 days, playing on a custom map that is simply freaking massive with about 20 some stars and a couple thousand planets. Some of the phase jumps take half an hour to cross and i have everything on slow. I don't know why i do this to myself, but it is just fun to go eat dinner, come back to the computer and see that my ships reached and conquered a planet, cool, go to bed, wake up at 3 in the morning by explosions and find out some dumbass tried to attack my defensive asteroid connected to the star and got butchered. Its just unique, you know? no other game lets you do this and that is just amazing. Of course, i often fail missions from the AI because i don't pay attention, but hey, you can't win em all.

I'm glad IC guys don't suffer from some strange superiority complex that some posters here do.
Other than speed what will help speed up the games are maps with several planets colonised at the beggining to remove the very slow early game.
Considering speed settings I would love a "faster" and "fastest" game speeds the latter of which 3 times as fast as the current "fast" speed. Even if I decide not to play at fastest I will certainly set the culture spread rate to "fastest", so it's no longer just a 30 long minute warning for the opponent to build his own culture buildings.

Hell, in a 1v1 versus a hard AI on a small map, you can get by with the 8x time acceleration modifier on

Why is this thread still going on? Weeks ago the developers said that the next patch would provide a very fast speed.

You might not like starcraft but I think you might want to reconsider refering to the best selling game of all time as crappy without any kind of backing..

Glad to hear that. Hope they make it really fast, because current "fast" option is for retarded turtles.

Sounds like people want a + - option for gamespeed in multiplayer too (for those that don't know, the + - hotkeys increase gamespeed in singleplayer up to 8x what the speed you selected was, and trust me 8x of 'fast' is FAST, REALLY REALLY FAST.)

hey i play all im fuine with the game just cause i want ship battles to not last 5 hours and i like starcraft doesn't mean i didnt pay my money too. I paid its a great game now adding a bit doesnt hurt anything this game cant go anywhere then up.

I agree with the OP that games take too long. I typically play 2v2 games because anything more is an enormous time commitment if the game is good. But mostly the game ends early because all the players drop when they don't see things going their way.

I'd like to see the starting system be more developed when games start. Your "empire" is suddenly trying to take over the galaxy and expand and they have not even used the crystal and metal in their own system yet?

The starter system should have the Cap ship facility built as well and all the resouces should have mineral extractors on this. I think everyone does this at the beginning anyway so why are we making it a choice for players? New or Old everyone should build those things first and if that is the case just have the game do it and save us those 5 - 10 min of getting the game moving in the beginning. I think games would get interesting much faster if this was the case.

You could also argue that having the planets fully upgraded in the beginning with max pop is something each player or all players should do so why not just do that for us...? This one is questionable because those crystals and metal you spend upgrading your planet can make a big difference if htey are invested elsewhere.

I, for one, am thrilled that there is finally a game that rivals Civ in terms of scale and length but is in real time. I've been playing CnC3 since release and I just cant stand playing it compared to SoaSE. CnC3, match is decided in the first 2 minutes of play, the rest is just cleanup and wait to get destroyed. If you arent a rusher, there's no point in playing. It comes down to, if I absolutely have nothing better to do, I'll play CnC3. But if I have an hour or two (which is the usual time I have to play anyway) I can get in a few planets and researches. Then I can go back to it later and add a little more to my empire. I lose a fleet here or there, it's not the deciding factor of the match. I F-up royally, and I am doomed as I should be. This game gives ya time to think and plan, not just "button mash" the most amount of a single unit until your enemy is dead.

Now dont get me wrong, I enjoy CnC3 when I go back to it after a month of inactivity, but after 3 matches, meh, back to Sins.

Anyway, there are sliders and settings to make this game as long or short as you like it. Make a custom map with 3 planets, fast ship/research/econ/etc, and you are good to go. 15 minutes, boom, you're done. If you want it to last days, even weeks, crank that map up and slow that speed down. Finally a range to be proud of. CnC3 is limited to fast and faster unless both sides are completely goofing around. 15 min is a "long" match.

in this game it is all about who gets the most territory at the start and then booms and ship spams. I like games that turtling works and you can tech up and eco boom but, at the same time dont take forever and dont crash