read the word "small" it is there and it is blazingly obvious.

I still agree, they tried to correct it but did it in a completely useless way, sieging a planet (albeit not one with a zillion ships at it) is still possible, even if you go "blast the torpedos" and ignore defenses.

the fix should have been something that is utilitable by the defense. this isnt.

in the old system it was based on planetary upgrades, more upgrades meant more ships. as a result games were scaled to systems meaning that games in huge maps were actually possible (unlike now).

the strategy *never* created the issue of a rolling stone game, even if someone did spend the resources to grab a planet the amount of money it costs to fortify it against counter attack *and* to buy the planetary upgrade massively exceeds the military investment that the assaulted player could use to refortify his army.

if they wanted to tweak it they should have *supplemented* the system with a research based alternative like they have, in which you can sacrifice a portion of your economy to gain a relatively huge boost to your military power. sure the other player could do it as well, but as long as it takes away from his eco he really shouldnt want to.

that sort of fix would have worked far better than the current one which utterly annihilates larger games. its something I'm still fairly pissed off about.

to say the system does not need tweaks, though, is naive.

15 siege frigates are EXPENSIVE. They are not building 15 of them in the first 10 minutes of the game. First of all, you need to scout, so that hopefully you can see what they're doing. When you know they're spamming frigates, upgrade your fleet and get ready to counter. Scare them off, and attack back- your fleet WILL be larger than theirs, and you should be able to do some damage.

I know I'm sure as hell not that good at scouting yet. It's an ideal I'm working for. But for under 1/3 the cost of their 15 siege frigates, you should be able to afford 4-5 frigates to sit at your frontier world and scare them off, and your main fleet will still be substantially larger than theirs.

It's all about knowledge. To counter something, you need to have more than them. You shouldn't be able to counter a strategy without knowing that they're using it.

Schod, I think that the current fleet cap system is way better than any based on planets. All it needs is a boost. Maybe the number of fleet points per level researched should simply depend on the number of planets in the system. More planets to conquer = more fleet points for the same cost. Sounds pretty straightforward to me, and you KNOW the Devs have acknowledged this in an issue and are working out a fix. Give them a break. Games, especially RTS games, don't launch perfect.

I scare them off... unto another planet i own... I chase then and chase them and chase them... And while I do that I can't focus on anything else... The AI can control all his ships at once, I can only control one ship at once... Sure they are expensive, but they are each individually controlled. When I get in there they all do a retreat command, they all SUCCESSFULLY retreat because they fly so fast. and often times, they retreat to random surrounding systems... And 3 of them on a lightly defended asteroid can decimate it...

Unless those systems have full garrisons (which cost MORE then 15 seige frigates) then there is absolutely no way to kill even ONE of them before it escapes. For one to die it has to hit a full garrison of planet, take hits from the bombers and fighters as it runs away, and happen to run away into another planet that also has a full garrison where they will finish it off.

I spend a ton of time just chasing those buddies around the map...

The ONLY way I have managed to deal with them is choke points (where they cannot do an L jump to another planet I own but must fly THROUGH my system, and turrets, to reach the next system) and by having more frigates along with my capital ship fleets... I can send the frigates to chase between systems while the capitals stay...

However! I am not sure this needs real changing. This is a harassment issue. Sure it harassess the hell out of me. But that doesn't cause me to loose. The one who looses is the AI who spent all his money on those while I purchased two more capital ships then him and purchased upgraded them to level 3 immidiately. His level 1 and 2 caps and a lesser number of standard frigates can't stand against me... and then all those bombers are doing are prolonging his end (As I need to stop bombarding his home planet to chase a few around...

Game balance I was thinking... make them slower, or jump slower, etc... but those make absolutely NO sense in regards to immersion... I mean... they are frigates with nukes... why the hell would they be SLOWER or less armored then the frigate with guns? They have the same engines... the same hull tech.. heck they cost several times the amount so they are probably larger and more heavily armored... (and cap ships show that larger ships don't need to be slower.

That was exactly my point. While your opponent is spending tons of cash on siege, you're getting a real fleet and beating the crap out of them.

I don't think that their speed should be nerfed. Harassing with siege frigates IS a valid strategy, and should be supported. The fact that you can chase them around and scare them off proves that it can be beaten.

You know what... change the AI to use them differently... the AI should not be raising and throwing away fleets of those... it achives two things.
1. It is incredibly annoying to me to fight that.
2. It guarantees that I will win because I spend the money on real fleets.

The AI should send 2 or 3 of those with a combat fleet, not 20 of those by themselves to bomb a planet real quick while my fleet is "preoccupied" by destroying the economic structures around his homeworld (and his capital ships).
"harass annoy and frustrate the real player while committing suicide" is not a valid strategy for an AI...

Unupgraded, each one does 20 damage every 10 seconds, which gives them 2 damage per second.

15 sieges to kill a 6000 hp planet takes exactly 200 seconds. In my games against the AI, I rarely ever bother to build them, because their cost far exceeds their usefulness. I could build 3 capital ships for the same cost, and they would, of course, take longer to bomb the planet (unless they use abilities), but are far harder to kill, have excellent anti ship attacks, etc etc.



If you have multiple things selected, everything moves at the speed of your slowest ship. Light frigates are more than 50% faster than siege frigates in a group of their own, as are missile frigates. I don't think people realize this.

Generally, I've found if you have more than a few turrets, the AI won't even bother to send in siege frigates at all, he generally only sends them if he knows they will be effective.

I just watched two advant bombers doing 20 damage each every 3 seconds... Every time I counted volly was shot and another 40 damage came off the planet.
And those WERE unupgraded.

I don't know what to say, I ran the test earlier with TEC sieges and I'm 100% positive they were hitting once every 10 seconds, for 20 points of damage.

Normal Game speed set, at 1x multiplier.

Edit : looks like game speed doesn't affect fire rate, my only guess is that there's a bug somewhere, or you were playing on 4x time acceleration.

Ok I measured with a stop watch how long it took to destroy a planet with 8 bombers bombing it and calculated and it turned out to be 2.something per second... It was 8 computer advent seigers bombing my planet.. I guess I am not as accurate as a stop watch... Interesting to note that this figure includes the fact that planet healed while it was being bombed. There is a chance that the first time I measured I had time acceleration on and didn't notice...

Amusingly enough I found I can deal with enemy siege frigates better with a PJI... despite people saying its useless, it gives me another 15 seconds before each one jumps away... with a large enough fleet that is enough to shred them to pieces...

Biggest gripe is how the AI uses them... it is self destructive and annoying to counter.

I am now over 50% done with achivements! woo!
I learn more about the game every time I attempt one... things like "never build any ship other then a capital ship" or "never build a capital ship" or "research every single harmony tech without researching even one hostility tech" really put you to the test... And they teach so much about tactics.. Before the frigates only game I had no appreciation to how powerful frigates can be... my capital ships are now SUPPORT for the frigates, rather then having a fleet of only capital ships while trying to maximize their level and power through military research.

There is not the concept of choke points in this game. PJIs are worthless - you cannot stop enemy fleets at a choke point. Choke points cannot be "choked." Visually, you can see what appear to be "choke points" on the map, but it's just eye candy.

This is fairly hard to code this late in the game but it would be a great fix for seige spam.

Make a warmup before they start bombing, immobalized while bombing, and a warmup before they can start moving again. Many seige weapons in other RTS use this type of mechanic.

Bombing damage should actually be increased, the total time to destroy planet should equal about the same time, the kicker is they are at risk a bit longer before the attack (allowing static defenses to remove some) and also limit the ability for them to pack up and jump out of system with minimal losses (even with PJI I've had bomber fleets pop out with little/no losses).

Since base bombing damage is increased you could change techs to alter stopping/starting time making them more efficient / less time spent vulnerable.

AI deterring choke points are VERY easy to make...
And a human player, just like you, can only do one thing at once.
So while he is carefully maneuvering his bombers around your choke point, you are doing something else...

A true choke point is one with no L shaped jumps. That means ships have to jump in, fly across to the other side, and THEN jump out... that takes several minutes vs a few seconds to spin and jump.
Where a well fortified position will put the hurt on them... if they are flying around it then they fighters will do lots of attrion damage while they are doing so, AND they will take a long long time to fly in such a big circle... Time for your fleet to either intercept them, or to do some more damge elsewhere.

In cases of L shaped you need to put defenses both on that system, and the one it reaches... so you are correct in saying its not an effective choke point. And its REALLY expensive to put double or triple defense layers.
IF PJI's prevented travel from a planet with PJI to another with PJI then you would have had a perfect choke point mechanism... just put PJI on BOTH sides... the enemy can escape just fine, but they can just flyby, they have to actually kill the defenses to progress to the next system.

in my humbled opinion, justified in my playing Sins 16 hours a day since it came out, the only legitimate (and thats a stretch) question in the game play is PJI.

and even then, they're pretty dope. i like em. the guy who had the idea about needing a tech to get past 2 PJI linked enemy planets is probably the most feasible and practical "request" i've heard since release.

this is a good discussion, lets keep it going!

OK
1) As has been said, siege frigates have been nerfed, which make defending against them and killing them much easier.
2) ship solid cap: Agreed it sucks
3)swarms, oh the type of swarms: It really depends on the swarms that you are faceing. Fighters beat LRMs which best Frigs, ETC. I always aim for combined fleets, with an emphasis on strike craft to catch runners.
4) PJI oh come now, seriously? 2.5x increase is something to sneaze at.: Argeed that sucks... though it still lets me kill most of the running siege frigates. So it's better then nothing.
5) super weapons: a little overboard to make them unlimited in range *and* non-unique *and* doing massive ammounts of damage in one strike.: there has been numerious threads about this. If you look at it, when taken as a whole they do balence out. TEC gets economy + planet kill. Vasari get free ships + ship kill, and the Advent get the killer leveled Caps, with kick @$$ Skills, and thrive on the culture they get from thier super.
Over all this is a new type of RTS and people need to come at it that way.

There is the concept of choke points - places that enemy ships will have to pass through in order to reach the rest of your planets.

There isn't the ability to automatically stop a fleet dead in a single system.

It's one of the things that makes Sins different to traditional ground-based RTS games.

I was playing a large map 4vs4 single player game and was on the winning hand (most planets colonized and killed a good number of enemy capital ships) when one of the AI races changed strategy. The AI launched a fleet of 20+ siege frigates at my planets and astroids (good thinking btw ). Problem was that my empire was in a stage where it was a bit streched out and running low on resources due to building defensive caps around my colonies. Attacks from 2 out of 3 AI enemies and pirates kept my strike forces busy all around the map. The siege frigates would just bomb the crap out of my colonies and move on to the next. At times I was ready for intercept, but even with a large fleet with lots of fighter & bomber squads, they managed to escape (they are quickly to retreat). So the game turned to a cat and mouse play, which stopped me in my track to domination. At the time, I had allready reached my fleet cap. My feeling is that with a larger fleet cap, I could have managed against those sieges and continue my offensive against the other AI's in a more fun way.
Perhaps I'm doing something wrong here, if so please feel free to make suggestions.

20 damage every 3 seconds, that would allow a single unupgraded planetary bomber to kill a 1000hp asteroid in less than 3 minutes. That's 6 bombers to kill a 6000hp planet in the same time frame.

If you want to prove that planetary bomber frigates does more damage to you, than it does for others, then replay or it didn't happen.

Uhh, why did you quote that? He already corrected himself in a later post.

And that was AI? All you have to do was put 3/4 turrets around each border star. Either the comp will escape, or it will charge in and loose half the siege frigates killing your astroid (and thay will cost him much more then what YOU loose...)

Also... are you playing with capital ships as the main assult? There is an accolate called "fear of iceburgs". It challenges you to play the whole game without ever building a single capital ship... not even the first free one!

Play a small scenario like that (10 planets or so) and see how it is. I learned a lot about using frigates from it. Frigates are underrated... they are more expensive then capital ships and die easily... but 50 logistics buys one capital ship... or 12.5 frontline frigates, or 5 combat cruisers... The 10 frontline frigates deal twice as much damage per second then a capital ship (unless its very high level) and the cruisers deal even more then that... upgrades also mean a lot more there (since each one has about a 1/5 of the capital ship's health and shields... 1/3 for cruisers).
They also sometimes have special abilities...

I have since then relegated capital ships to a support role instead of my only combat.
PS. you can split your forces much more easily with frigates.. enemy jumps into your front line system? rather then just jumping in on him, jump 10 frigates to each neighboring system,and then the bulk into the system he is bombing... he will immidiately attempt to escape... Watch where he is escaping and position your fleets in surrounding systems to be exactly where he is expected to come out... and as soon as they come out tell them to focus fire...

Also if your front lines have a PJI and 3 hanger bays then the PJI will delay the jump long enough for a single bomber to be taken out by your fighters before it jumps. (make 50/50 fighters and bombers). Or if multiple ones came in then it will give enough time for your fleet to pop them.

I haven't had time to read all 95 replies to your post, but i wanted to respond about fleet points being bad on big maps. Maybe each planet you have could add a percent or two to the fleet cap?