Talking of dawn of war i think if we look at DC and soul storm we have the base for a model to make a single player campaign that would be a lot of fun but would not need as much work put in to making as a typical campaign and would be repayable in a fun way.

In other words you have a risk style campaign map of the galaxy split up in to sectors. these sectors can be split up based on lore and balance between the different races and you can give each a main home sector. Each sector can be different, different sizes with 1 or more stars and so on.

You then build a "simple" meta game around the big risk map. Depending on how many sectors you own you get 'empire resources' that you can spent on either sectors you own or on attack felts. With the empire resources you can in sectors spend it on building up planets so you start out with more, or on tech that you start with along with buildings and ships. You can spend resources on attack fleets too... the major problem with this is how you keep things balanced so that an attacking player is not overwhelmed but i'm sure it could be figured out.

As it is you would then move about attacking and taking sectors until you take a races home system in which you get some more 'story' at the start and end if you finish them off maybe with special set ups just for those maps.

The major down sides with this is firstly that it would almost always be one on one, which could be changed by saying that if a sector your attacking is bordered by the 3rd player as well that you have a 3 way match (you can opt in as a human player if an AI is attacking an AI sector that your border) which could be fun and could work when attacking 'free' sectors if its set up in a way that every free sector when it can be attacked has a border with an AI. Second is simply that to make it work you have to brake the 4th wall in ways that don't make sense... you may has all taken almost every planet in a sector but when you go in to meta map you have to 'build' planets there with your empire resources.

Its not a perfect idea but it would provide an interesting single player campaign that would last a very very very long time depending on the size of the sectors for a lot less work than you'd have thought. Since for the most part each sector fight is just a skirmish map as we know them already (bar the home sectors maybe) there's not really a lot of work that needs to be put in to them. The hardest part and the most work would have to go in to making the metamap and the risk style part of the game work and be balanced but to be honest its something they could get away with doing with out major testing and add balance in patches as we go along.

The other major advantage that could come out of this is the fact that you could tend set up the system for mulitplayer... depending on what you want to do you can set up the meta galaxy map diffrently, far fewer sectors, 2 players and so on for example and you start up the game and take turns in the meta map until you have to fight in which case you drop in to the main game. Would be tricky with more than 2 players as it would suck if 2 players got in to a fight and you couldn't join them but i think there could be ways around that like that all players get to fight in any map but if the player not directly involved wins it turns the system neutral... could lead to some interesting meta diplomacy ("team up with me and help me win and i'll help you next time")... thinking about it you may have to drop a lot of the risk style factors... it could just be that that all sectors start neutral and each fight is a FFA on what ever sector you all pick. Each sector could give a different meta bounce say or could be that when it came to fighting in a sector some one already owns they get some kind of bounce in defence of it. Either way it could be a lot of fun to have a running war over the galaxy with a few of your freinds that could go on for years hehe.

I've thrown out a hell of a lot of ideas there some of them more useful than others but it think that risk style meta map may just be the best way of adding some kind of meaningful single player campaign. Even the just the "dumbed down" mulitplayer style i was talking about would be something that gave more meaning to the single player.

Simply put its about making each skirmish fight count in some "meaningful" way... ive played a few so far and it would have been far more fun if each of those games had meant something or than "i kicked the AI ass" not that said ass kicking is not in its self enough... it is and it fun but somthing more would always be good

Looks good

Please tell me you fixed the flagship designation issues!!!!!!!!!!!

What issues?

Do we have an ETA on V1.03?? 

The Flagship issue is it makes your highest lvl capital ship your flagship. If they are the same level then you don't have a falgship. They really just have to make a designate flagship button and that ship stays your flagship until it blows up or you designate a new one. (And if they really want to be awesome then they can make it cost money and the flagship gives bonuses because of its flagship status!!)

It does? I've had fleets lead by a Cobalt, and it looked really strange for my Caps following this little dinky frigate.

He's talking about something else When you build your first capital, its infocard will read "Flagship", he's saying when it gets destroyed, your next highest level is labeled a 'Flagship', but when your next highest shares it with several ships, none of them will be assigned the title.

This is just paraphrasing Kiernyc, since I never noticed

Well either way, I know it isn't an extremely important issue but, it bugs me because flagships make me happy and make me feel special lol!   

would be nice if a flagship got minor bonus (+5%/+10% hp, shields, damage, AM).

looks good to me, will you be changeing the AI Aliiance problem, i think it would be better if they started out Neutral, also would it be possible to add in player requests to the game instead of having to do just AI jobs?

Same !

Looks like a pretty nice update overall.

Reading through the thread, it does look like there are some people (myself included) who would like the option to refuse the AI's surrender - not sure that a 'Continue' option is an adequate substitute here if it means the AI is no longer really active (not building etc).

Even better would be the option to choose between AI types: a rational AI that surrenders when beaten and a die-hard AI that doesn't know the meaning of 'surrender'...

Hi all,

I know that many of you probably aren't familiar with Stardock's way of doing things, so let me start by saying we are not like other publishers.   We reward our customers by supporting our products as a way to discourage piracy (since only those who pay for the game can get the updates).

We do make major gameplay changing updates to our games in patches - we don't wait for expansion packs.   As an example, if you were to go back and look at Galactic Civilizations II update history, you would see that we provided a full expansion pack's worth of content as free patches. Our first GC2 expansion - Dark Avatar - broke the mold for expansions by improving nearly everything in it, including the graphics engine. (Our next expansion, Twilight of the Arnor, overhauls all the graphics again with our new graphics engine.)

The v1.03 update makes some nice changes to the game - it's not just bug fixes. The next major update to Sins will include a LOT of significant changes to the game (1.03 is a minor update for us). While we can't reply to every post, we are looking at the feedback everyone's been providing. Something we want to do in the future is to release an HD texture pack for the game.

Many of the problems people have reported are with NVIDIA cards. NVIDIA has QA teams working on Sins' fixes for their drivers and we hope that later this month a new driver release will take care of issues with their cards. The vast majority (>95%) of the multiplayer crash bugs we've received have been caused by one of the players using a mod while the others weren't. Version 1.03 includes deep-checking routines to help warn players of issues with this.

i just bought the game yesturday and am looking forward to this patch. woot

Oh, perfect. I didn't notice that. Thanks.

Wow! This is a neat element of strategy, and will really add a game within the game. It will be like being a Day Trader on Wall Street LOL! Keeping a constant eye on the black market seems like it can really pay off BIG!

Looking forward to the update... This is a very adictive game. Is there any chance that you can add a section on ship info telling you how many kills a ship has had?

I actually found a nice little way around this...
If you designate the ship you want to be the flag ship and put it in a fleet all by itself, then select all other ships you want to be in a fleet and make a fleet out of them as well...
Then select the flag ship(fleet) and then shift select the second fleet and hit the create fleet button.
When joining thwo fleets like this, the flagship of the first selected fleet always remains as flagship for the combined fleet.
For some reason, if I just selected the flag ship and then all the other ships not in a fleet, there is a good chance that one of the non capital ships would be a flag ship lol...
Not sure why it works out that way, but this little trick lets you designate which ship is the flag ship until they make some kind of fix...
Hope it works for you guys...
-Dampiel-

Another thing that needs TEC Insurgency which gives you 6 ships that attack even you, after you gain culture control over an enemy planet(for a faction not know for there culture powers), during a time when most fleet are around 100 ships.

The AI need more then just being told to not run away so much(I do it is a problem myself). After a 2 battles with AI,I now know why it runs away so much. If any of us build a fleet like it did, we would run away too.

The main problem with the AI is that it doen't use comb arms well. This leads to a very weak fleet, even when It out numbers you 3:1. In some case this can lead to a large losses, even when the AI plays the cat and mouse game well. Here is my case.

In one of my games, I was play TEC and the AI was playing Advent. I had just destroyed one of the AI planets and was moving on to the next. When fleet came out of phase jump, I found that there was an AI advent fleet with 3 times the number of ships RIGHT ON TOP of where my fleet came out of phase space. And with not all of my ships there at the same time, my fleet was not formed up for the fight( A good cat and mouse move by the AI). But with all of this, I came out on top?!(yes I was loss to). Another time as Vasari(and the AI as Advent), I attacked the same fleet twice near one of its worlds with nothing more then cpatial ships. In a battle where I thougth that my capital ships wher done for, I came out with no lose and destoryed four enemy capital ships and 15-30 other ships in the fleet. Going back to one of my older games, I sent in 16 Kortul Devastator to destory an Pirate base, and lose all the ships, while doing little damage.

That when it unit me, that you can't spam ships in this game and win. The fleet that normal whens in this game is that under the control of the player(AI maybe) with the best comb arms fleet, and who plays the cat and mouse game well.

I found that just having a better comb arms fleet allowed you to take on fleets 3 times the size of the fleets under your command. This means that even if we made it so the AI fleet would not run away all the time, it would still lose.

Right now as it stands, the Advent AI on hard seems to be the best, as at least it trys to use comb arms. The TEC one only spams light frigates(and captial ships), and the Vasari one will on use frigate of any type(and captial ships). The Advent one will use Aeria Drone Host, Iconus Guardian, Defense vessel, Illuminator vessel, and Disciples. With would be good on the easy AI, but not on hard(which it was at the time)

The problem with the Advent AI's fleet, is that it had no able to win in a close fight with batltle ships and heavy cruisers. It seems to me that the AI does not like to build heavy cruisers and offensive cruisers.

After playing sins I found that all the frigates and Cruisers have a place in a battle group, and should be in the battle group. The only thing that changes is the ratio of them, which depends on with faction you play as, and what capital ships you have with them.

DarkPriest667 i agree with you... I have spent countless hours and evenings playing MOO2 before i got married.

I still fondly think of the DeathRay and how uber the Auto Gaus Cannons are.


I think the next step the developers needs to make are some more random events in the game, which makes the games a bit more memorable. Galactic wide events or calamaties.. or have it limited to one player or star system.

Space dragons and space amoebas FTW!

Are you guys confused or am I? The flagship issue is related to the 'flagship' title cap-ships receive on their infocard. It sounds like you two are talking about the leader of any given fleet. Dampiel - your roundbout way of designating a fleet leader can be accomplished a bit easier by sub-selecting the ship you want to lead the fleet you're about to create. Check your manual out to see how to sub-select.

Yes people are getting confused...when I "complained" it was about the flagship title on cap ships (nothing to do with fleets!)

Any idea on an estimated release date for the patch?