Is this game a RTS

Must be missing the edit option. Final note.... this is not uncommmon. RTS players get ruffled playing RTTs expecting RTSs.

Open for discussion/feedback.

Sounds like you lack patience a flaw more and more common.

Sadly, there's no patch for humanity. For years to come there'll be legions of people who'll expect a clone of insert name here and pick the game up without reading anything.

The game really is a true rts, yes. It's Gal Civ or MoO with a real time component, not "Homeworld Empires" or some such. I'm honestly not sure where the Homeworld references come from, sure some of the devs may have worked on the game, but this one is only similar to it in that there are space ships and colored nebula in the background. And the tiny fighters have cool contrails.

It's realtime and it's strategic... ergo it's a realtime strategy... It's a very complex one that isn't just a click fest- If that's what you *define* an RTS as, then this game is most certainly not an RTS... I've been pleased with it so far, I don't feel gypped- but I was expecting a long game

I too was a bit taken aback at how this game plays. I was expecting a much faster game experience. It's still a great game, but it is not an RTS in the traditional sense. Even on Fast setting, the game would be painfully slow to someone who is expecting "Company of Heroes in Space".

That said, I am actually really enjoying it. Sure, it's going to take me around 12 hours to play the skirmish I started on launch day, but that is ok, because there is a lot to think about. Do I focus on my military upgrades or my financial upgrades? Which planet is going to be my capital ship producer? Where should I place my trade depots for maximum profit? What about my Refineries? Etc, etc.

My only real complaint is the pirate thing. Every 12 minutes it turns into a bidding war and because the gameplay is so slow, if I let them attack me I end up just finishing them off when the next attack is about to happen. It's rather annoying and I wish I could turn them off for compstomps. (I rarely play online games as I don't have the patience required to deal with annoying people)

Don't forget that you can modify their attack times, among other things. Search the "I hate pirates!" threads if you're interested. I don't recall the file and variables off the top of my head.

I'd call it both. 4x combat tends to be rather blah. You have master of orion with the stack based tactical combat, master of magic with the real tactical combat, all the civ and civ clones(generously this would include games like galciv2 with the fleet system) with stack based combat that is utterly blah, and games that are off the 4x reservation themselves, like homm with the in depth, but still vastly limited combat. The best of the 4x games has boring combat compared to the worst of the tactical games.

Sins has good tactical combat, slower than you'd find in the click fests they're calling strategy games these days, but entirely tactical, with no boring substitution system to simulate it for you. It's more on par with a real time strategy game such as homeworld than a derivative system designed to keep the turn from taking years. It has much of the complexity of a 4x game, but surpasses the rts market in tactical quality.

Considering that its been spoken about and marketed as a game that has elements of both RTS and 4x strategy games, I can't really fathom how someone would feel tricked/misled ('gypped' is racial slur btw, not many seem to know) that it's not a typical rts game. You'd have to have literally had no idea about the game and bought it blindfolded to be surprised by this.

Gypped a racial slur?

What, is it anti-gypsy? Just curious...

wrong post.

Curious how I came off as lacking patience. Was trying to open a dialog.

And does a real time game with strategy automatically make it an RTS? Logically it would, but the RTS is a defined genre, with more then just strategy and the gameplay being real time. Obviously those are key pre-reqs.

RTT's were dubbed for a long time as RTSs. Basically any Real time game with strategy/tactical elements is automatically assumed to be a RTS. I don't know if thats true anymore.

No, this

is what I was responding to.

This game can easily be marketed as RTS title for a simple reason to appeal to more people out there since if its marketed as RT4X most would be confused and would be put off...


So here is how we should take it:


1. Sins are RTS game for "new guys" who are showing interest in it - however - when you tell them its RTS it would be fair to say that by all means its not their "classic" RTS but something more than that...

when they ask you what exactly... then you answer with true name of the genre...

2. RT4X - combination of RTS and 4X with more less equal balance between the two


simple as that...

oh yes - you can also say its freakn awesome whatever it is really eeeeeee

Well really RTS and 4X are just terms that describe characteristics of the game - we've just come to associate genres with them - ie. traditional RTS are typical fast paced, finite resource games that have rock, paper, scissor relationships between the various units etc and are generally intended for multi-player. Tradition 4X games are turn based, feature extensive technology trees and require a high level of micromanagement which often means the games are very long and slower paced.

Many games have already challenged the typical RTS models like Company of Heroes, World in Conflict or even aspects of Supreme Commander. 4X games have remained more traditional in a lot of respects but multiplayer is more standard even in those games, simultaneous turns are becoming a common feature and even RPG aspects of improving your units (typically seen more in RTS games) have been used in 4X games.

If one is looking for an iconic RTS like Starcraft or Command and Conquer you are quite right - someone that purchases SoaSE will probably be 'disappointed' if those are the only qualities they were looking for. Similarly, people who enjoy the complexity and pacing of 4X games could find SoaSE too fast paced even on slow settings since the RTS qualities means time management is always somewhat of a factor.

As I said originally though, considering how much this game has been spoken about as a merging of these styles, I think that anyone who buys it with the expectation that it should fit neatly into a traditional mold deserves their disappointment. Perhaps though they will just enjoy it for its unique qualities!



And to answer:



Yes in fact. Gypsy itself is a misnomer given around the 16th century to the "Rom" or "Romany". Europeans mistook their origins as Egyptian and called them Gypsies. Over time, the fact that they roamed led to them being labeled as thieves and cheats (people were typically afraid of strangers/foreigners after all). Hence when you say "gypped" you are invoking a slur.

Wasn't really trying to make a big deal of it I just tend to point it out when people say it because so few seem to know. It's actually even in a number of dictionaries


KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!

You may be right, but I have yet to have anyone berate me for using it.

You pretty much have it right there.  We set out to create an 'RT4X' game right from the start. Recognizing that most people wouldn't have a clue what 'RT4X' meant, much less '4X' on its own, we decided to use a representative tagline

Well, it worked, at least in regard to me. If you marketed this as a 4x game like SOTS, I wouldn't have been interested in it at all. I am not too big on turn based games, this game however, is probably my favorite game that i have purchased in a very long time. I am really hoping you guys make a campaign for it though, for all three races.

No big deal; remember - I asked you

Very interesting - and I thought I was good at etymology

Being a new player, and forum participant I can only assume that craig is part of the dev team or at least took part in the process. That is awesome to have that kind of feedback.

Thats basically what I was alluding to. I didn't want to say it outright as I felt it would become a debate of who is wrong or who is right, instead opting for peoples opinions. Much like Shock Force is a real time wargame (pretty much all RTT's are), this is a RT4X. It will take a few of the franchises switching to RT for that title to become standard. And since we get a 4x once every one to two years, I doubt that will happen.

Unfortunatley "Real Time Strategy" is the plastered tagline for the game....even on this website. Dubbing it a RTS was the only move you had to make, but my point was not that the people aren't getting around the fact that this isn't a RTS, as state, its that if they feel they got a raw deal, their feelings are valid. The problem is that they expect changes to be made to correct the obvious design flaws. This leads to responses by those of us who knew exactly what we were getting ourselves into, and jumped in head first tend to respond in a hostile manner to said suggestions.

I despise forum hostility. That was the motivation for this post. I felt having sins classified properly would be the first step in stemming the tide. If it was open for debate then camps would form and ....well.....lets just say it happens a lot.

IMHO from what I gather from this thread its safe to label this game as a RT4x? Dev intent trumps user perception 100% of the time imho.

And back to hostility, how was I impatient? Still waiting on that, as my intentions were simply to help get a clear concensious for future threads that are guarenteed to pop up as more people buy the game. RTS players particularly will pickup a game simply because its a RTS. More so then other genres...well....Joystick purists and Wargamers may hold the championship for that...but RTS is mainstream, and just by the numbers......

If you play a 7 planet 1v1 map with speed on fast and resources set to high it's pretty much a RTS. On slow speed on a 100 planet map it certainly plays more like 4X.

I think the problem (as mentioned by OGGleep) is that most "RTS" games in recent years don't actually have a great deal of strategy in them. CoH has some, but is largely a tactical game, WiC is entirely a tactical game, and even things like SC are largely on a tactical level rather than strategic. It is similar to how hack and slash, (particularly 3rd person) action adventures and RPGs have often been blurred in to the 'RPG' genre for marketing purposes.

Both descriptions of Sins being an "RT4X" or a "RTS" are accurate, far more so than most other games of the "RTS" genre. Considering the sheer breadth of "RTS" games today and how generic the description has become, I don't really think anyone can claim to be deceived by it, as if games like EU3, SupCom and WiC are deemed "RTS" games, this most certainly is also.

That being said, RT4X does describe the game better, though from a marketing point of view that would confused and quite possibly deter some people.

here's the values to be modded for attack times i posted in another i hate pirates thread.


goto your sins of the solar empire/gameinfo folder, open the file called gameplay.constants and search for these lines

firstWarningTime 900
normalWarningTime 720

Change values to whatever you want, but make a backup copy just incase

OGGleep & Demokade - nice posts and I agree with both of you. In fact in a prior post I suggest that the devs make a post explaining just what RT4X is and why they did what they did in establishing the genera.

In general I blame the industry for this bit of turmoil because as DemoKafe pointed almost none of the titles in recent years sabled RTS have really had any "S" factor and are in fact almost all tactical oriented. Of course if the industry would work together and not act like amped up kids on forums and try to work together maybe some clearly defined naming and classification standards could be established. But I digress again...

I've been playing strategy games since discovering the Avalon Hill board games at university in the early 1970's. The games have always required a lot of micromanagement - that's part of the fun for those of us who enjoy them - and it wasn't unusual for games to last several days. Most of the time would be spent jockeying for position - trying to achieve a decisive advantage before committing forces to battle. With a human opponent, this was challenging and a lot of fun because humans are very good at pattern recognition - they can watch your plans unfold and take steps to foil them.

When strategy games moved to the computer, the turn based nature made it difficult to structure a game between human opponents. Computer AI is very good at micromanagement, probably better than a human player - most of us lack the patience to optimize our resources each turn. The computer is not very good at pattern recognition and the brute force look-ahead algorithms that have allowed computers to excel in chess don't scale easily to the hundreds of units you'll find on the board of most strategic simulations. Instead most developers strengthen the AI by giving it an economic advantage - it wins by out producing you, not by outwitting you - not nearly as much fun.

Sins is an effort to create a multi-player strategy game. Reintroducing the human opponent that made the genre so enjoyable in the board game era. Achieving this meant getting rid of the turn button which automatically makes it "real time". Because strategy games require a lot of micromanagement the pacing becomes critical. You need enough time to manage your economy, maneuver your fleets and plan your strategy but not so much time that the game gets boring.

Sins is also the first game in a new genre so it isn't surprising that people are having trouble fitting it into the old categories. It also means the developers are trail blazing in uncharted territory with no history to guide them. I expect there will be some balance and pacing issues that need to be adjusted over the next few months.

Woah!!! AH - A moment of silence for a company that literally "wasted" more then a full year of my life growing up.

[silence please]

I always wanted those games on a PC.

Squad Leader - Hmmmm....