If you could re-make Sins, how would you?

MOONS AND ORBIT
Moons- becasue thats whats in ours so why not a game plus it would add a number of new ways to defend/attack with ether a huge orbiting deathstar like moon or a massive trade/refining moon

Orbit- becasue things in space orbit a larger thing (moon orbits earth) structures can orbit the planet along with astroieds and moons and all that orbits the stars but the stars might be to much and just bog down your computer so just stick with the other stuff

I would have more realistic maps in terms of planet layout, larger gravity wells, moons, etc.

I'd make it as a First Person SHooter with Gunz.

I'd make ships move a lot more, kinda like fighters, but bigger (ever see those big space battles on DS9?).

I have a bias against the MP/wargame perspective.

I believe that the vast majority of Ironclad/Stardock customers are not MP power-players.

If I wanted to participate into a fast-furious-frantic RTS frenzy, I would play C&C 3, or SupCom, or StarCraft 2.

My bias is that Sins "should" evolve more in the direction of Master of Orion 2 and Galactic Civilizations 2 : Twilight of the Arnor.

That means :

1. A lot more planetary buildings and upgrades ;

2. A lot more research options ;

3. The introduction of Heroes with colourful personality cards (such as found in MOO 2, Europa Universalis 3, Crusader Kings : Deus Vult) ;

4. A (far) more complex and sophisticated diplomatic model.


I'll bet that most MP warriors will desert Sins as soon as SC 2 will be released.

The future of Sins lies more in the direction of Master of Orion 2 and Galactic Civilizations 2.

Sins will never be able to compete with StarCraft 2, in what concerns the RTS/MP-warrior crowd.

I hope that the Ironclad and Stardock Grand Poobahs see the writing on the wall :

Even though Sins sold more than 200 000 units, it will remain a pygmy in Blizzard's court.

Stardock has created an awesome Space-Empire franchise, with the GalCiv series :

It "should" capitalize on its original strengths, instead of trying to compete with the Blizzard Big Boys.

/frantic rant   

I would have turrets and more firing arcs that mattered.

I would add a strategic difference between ships that fire on the move and ships that have to hold still to fire.

I would have variable armor strength depending whether a ship is hit on front or back.

I would have variable AI settings for ships, usually 2 per ship.
Such as:
Fire at max range.
Flank to hit weaker side.

I would add more strike craft options.
Interceptors (long range, hi speed missile fighter).
Strike Fighters (sustained close quarters damage on weaker armor).
Corvette squad (small accurate turrets on slower ship).
Torpedo Bomber squad (the size of corvettes).
And maybe some Gundams here or there.

I would make sensor warfare important. Such as, sensor blocked ships can only be locked on to at close ranges, or you can jam enemy sensors to reduce line of sight in system.

I would make missile warfare more important. Missile interception becomes critical because an errant cruise missile can blow a frigate in half.

I would add a better stance system for fleets, and add the ability to add patrol paths Ie: say I want a fleet I create to patrol a path between three diff planets.

Apologies if this sounds fanboi-ish, but I really don't think I would have changed much. Maybe more graphical options such as shadows and a vessel damage model that beats up the skin and mesh as you pound on things, but that's about it.

I'm not saying Sins is perfect. I'm just noting that there's not a lot in it that I would change.

-- Retro

I'd outsource the job to a company called Stardock, because I definitely don't have enough experience to change this game for the better.

star to star phase link lines with solar gravity wells that contain several planets of interest each so you fly from star to star, not planet to planet. (see stellar conquest)

I tend to agree with CyberMage (although I wish the best for "the Ironclad and Stardock Grand Poobahs" to grow into a Blizzard). I was until SOSE, a RTW addict. Since SOSE's arrival I have lost MANY evening hours with it. However, of late when I get to the "tipping point" (i.e. victory is inevitable) I turn it off and going back to my RTW campaign. I too want more politics and economics. I want to be winning the war and then have my funding restricted because the government decides that too much is going into the war effort. I want more revolts if I am not smart economically. I want options to fund ground campaigns to take planets vice bomb them into submission, with the attendant less money to bring the planet back on line. I want troop carriers (more troop carriers = faster control of planet)that I have to guard cause they are vulnerable by themselves. I want ground commanders who gain experience with campaigns adding a percentage to the speed at which they take a planet. I don't want to fight the ground campaign, I just want the option to do have to make that sort of strategic decision. I want more diverse resources that might make me decide to go after a specific system rich with rare 'unobtainium' vice chase down an enemy fleet, because I have to have it to complete research to jump more efficiently. I want to be able to put funds into the pockets of the opposition party of the other races, or maybe even buy off a enemy commander to leave instead of fighting. Shoot, I might even play MP more often if I could leave the shooting to the younger crowd while I skulked around causing discontent in the enemy camp(alas assassins are my favorite RTW tool).

SOSE is a brilliant start, but what I am trying to say is that for this 40+ year Grognard, the "shiny" is wearing off. The diversity of my benchmark keeps me coming back, I would like to see SOSE grow into a rival for my time. Perhaps a SOSE PRO version as an optionally purchased download for those of us looking for more depth. I realize the way forward is liquidity driven and one must go with what sells, but there is so much potential for a long term community with what you have started.

  i would make tha capital ships MUCH more hard core. I love every part of the game, exept when it takes a Kol several minutes to destory a flak frigate. It should take [I]seconds[I]not minutes for goodness sake   !

Company of Heroes styled critical hit system

&

More pew, pew.

And I agree, Yasotay, with everything you have stated in your reply #11. Instead of overloading the thread with a full quote, I recommend that people read that post #11.

Presuming I couldn't whip out a magically bigger budget from thin air to simply add things outright, I wouldn't really change anything.

(You did say re-make, after all, not add next)

1. First, I would increase the X4 elements of the game. I like have each of the victory types are tied together in one way or other. But other then the military victory, the others seem to be some what weak.

Culture is too easy to stop, the Pirates, become non-useable at some point, and the super weapons are in there own little world.

Here what I would of done.

For culture, I would leave it as it is, but add a rebel units that attack the other faction for all factions. I would link this to culture, in which the time to each attack is reduced with each increase in amount of culture you produce. There for there will be more attack against other factions with less culture then you. It is much like the TEC Insurgency but you do not need to be tec, and your culture has more of an effect. Which adds an offensive part to the more defensive culture.

To counter the loss of Insurgency, I would add that under the TEC tree, that the TEC, can sell them some of there own ship, including capital ship. Each time the TEC sell one of there ships, the bounty on there head, is reduced, by 2 times the value of those ships sold. There for keeping the TEC econ. edge, even during late game, were the Pirate force, can be easy to stop.

For the super weapons I would remove the Kostura cannon and the RA, and in it place, put the Rebuild Armada, in which every fleet, gets a bounes just, for being a fleet. This would remove a lot of the problems, that RA, seems to all ways have. I would keep the Advent deliverance engine, as the way it is, but also add, that when it hits a planet, there is a rebel attack at the moment. The fleet of rebel ships, will not attak you for 5 mins, after that, they will attack you too. For the TEC, I would replaced the Novalith Cannon with a the super fighter upgrade.

2. I would make it so that the strike craft problem was fixede in advance, as well as to produce a real diffence between the strike craft of one faction, to that of the other, but make it easy to learn.

Here what I would of done.

Make it so that the closer that a strike craft group is to there carriers, the faster, that they rebuild. There for, you half to risk your carrier, in order to save your strile craft, or risk your strike craft, to save your carrier.

I would change the strike craft in these ways.

For the Vasari
I would of gave them "Phase mines", which attck like fighter, that ram into there targets and explode. The Phase mines can sit in wait like fighter, but can also jump to other systems, but do are destoryed, when they hit there target. On top of that they take twice as long to build, an there for do less damage over time, the long it takes, for them to reach there targets. They do as much damage, as the first run of any fighter group.

For the Advent
For the advent, I would keep them the way that they are, but make them harder to hit, but would add special abilities, like splash damage, and other passive abilities.

For the TEC
I would give them super strong fighters, much like the Vasari are now, but allow for them to reach the numbers of the advent, after there super fighter super weapon comes online.

For more details, just post and I will add more info.

This is an interesting question, actually.

I think I would have done away with space aliens. Just have three human factions. That's what it boils down to anyways, post-modern spacecraft with people voices coming out of them. And then I would have paid much more attention to the voice direction and other sounds in the game.

I wouldn't have called the game "Sins Of A Solar Empire", at least unless I was to include more varieties of sins. Adultery comes to mind, strangely enough. Besides, the use of the word "sin" would imply that there's a state of holiness that one could strive towards, but the only holiness in this game is in the hulls of the destroyed spacecraft.

Coming from Stardock, I would have made the game easier for the casual user to mod, as in a race generator and a ship generator like in Gal Civ 2.

I would have added more options for users with powerful computers.

I would have immediately fired the person in Ironclad that's everybody's favourite best friend. That tends to get the rest of the troops motivated to do more better work in less time. That's what Wally Buono does, and the folks at Ironclad should know who Wally Buono is. The firing would be nothing personal, just business. Just, BLAM! pull the trigger, and Smilin' Bob is out on the sidewalk looking for a job. Man, I would so do that in a heartbeat.

Then again, I would not have made a real-time 4X strategy game in the first place. If someone had come to my desk with this idea, I would have the join Smilin' Bob in the unemployment line. I would have made a combat simulator game like Lock-On or Falcon or Il-2 Sturmovik, only it would be in Viet Nam and have stuff based off of carriers in Yankee Station (and/or MiGs from Hanoi). It would have tanked on the store shelves, but I would have loved it.

And that's why all of us are stuck on this side of the forum, writing our endless picky threads.

Seige frigates should all have the embargo ability. I mean, it makes sense, right?

Sorry for replying to my own post.

One last thing: I would not have Roy Scheider wearing his latex battlesuit hugging the top of my forum page. That's what Nastassia Kinski is for. Or Aishwarya Rai. Or Diana Rigg (1960's: yummm). Or Halle Berry, if you must. Those ladies know something about wearing latex battlesuits that the late Mr. Scheider just never had.

Seems like most people are interested in 4x more than rts. They crave more options!

I would remove phase lanes. Ships should be able to enter phase space at any time and be able to jump to any planet they wish and move anywhere within the galaxy. Phase jump inhibitors would be used to pull ships out of phase space and I would also add an inhibitor cruiser or an inhibitor ability to one of the cruisers.

i wolud like to have more options on how to conquer planets like some ground forces that have seperate logistical resources like empire at war.
Also I would like the star systems to be like actual star system (3 colonizeble planets, 4 gas giants, 1 or 2 asteriod belts that actualy loop entirely around the star. Phase lanes that actualy change due to the postition of the planet. Multiple galaxies, one galaxy has 5 stars, the center star the core star is the one to travel to another galaxy.

I would add in black hole or asteroid belts that would dump you to a different planet [other than the one you think you are going to.] This would be a random event and random planet dump. [asteroid belts give you the choice to proceed or divert, if you proceed some ships could be lost due to damage... black holes suck you in with no choice etc.]

rather than a pirate planet the pirates would dwell around or near the black holes / asteroid belts. There would be no centralized planet for pirates. This could span into more than 1 faction of pirates so that threat is never eliminated... if one faction of pirate is eliminated then another pirate faction would become more powerful.

I think I would break away from the constant research selection and possibly create a random scenario that does this autmatically. To me it's kinda boring to have to select research icons all the time to advance. I would rather be more concerned with strategy... [control of key planets.]

What would it matter if the research points were chosen automatically? I usually select them all anyway so not having to do this mundane task would lead to more battles and faster game play I think.

This part of the game has been taken from other titles such as AOE and certainly many other games, and it's probably the most annoying feature of the game and the worst part about starting a new game.

My pet peeve about most popular science fiction is the obscenely unrealistic depiction of physics. I am firmly of the opinion that people are not inherently imbeciles and that treating them as though they might actually be capable of grasping a little bit of reality is not a recipe for certain failure.

Therefore, if I could have designed the game I wanted to design and play, whatever that entailed (but without going off the deep end by, say, accurately simulating all the physics in the game), I would have had more realistic space warfare.

In the case of Sins, this would mean that the third dimension would not just be cosmetic in nature, but that it would actually be strategically important. It would have, as such, meant relative frames of reference (no flat gravity well disc that defines up and down, left and right no matter how arbitrarily you rotate the camera). It would have meant line of sight, and it would have meant inertia. I'm not going to be too hair-splitting about the invented "physics" like Phase Space and stuff like that, since it enables the game, and I know people really get a kick out of sound behaving like light, but one thing that really wears my molars down is when ships in the game stand toe-to-toe with each other and shoot back and forth until one of them or the other explodes. Something like that doesn't ever happen, EVER, on Earth where mechanics does behave as we instinctively expect it to!

In my game, ships would have realistically have had infinite range for all weapons, and the usage thereof would have been restricted, much more challengingly, by the actual dynamics of the weapons fired - so you don't fire at someone from across a planet's "gravity well" unless you expect that they won't realise they're being shot at quick enough to get out of the way. LASERS and directed energy weapons (except plasma) would have been hitscan beam weapons and would have worked like ship-to-ship sniper rifles, at the cost of chewing through a lot of antimatter during usage. Antimatter would have been a precious commodity stored in large quantities that required conserving and resupplying at planets (and certain ships would have been able to handwavingly absorb energy weapons through shields and things in order to replenish antimatter, as in the game as it stands). Line of sight would have enabled this sort of physics based ship movement and weapon behaviour, by allowing things like stealth, and forcing players to actually think about the deployment of their forces (remember how fun Rome: Total War was? Do you think that was despite, or because of the fact that it made you consider what the heckfire you were doing?) There were a lot of other good suggestions that I won't bother echoing, to save time.

Any of these features being implemented would have, obviously, radically altered the underlying gameplay dynamics, and they would have required a large amount of playtesting to perfect, but I think computer/video gaming needs, seriously, to be shaken out of it's table-top, boardgame mentality where everything possible occurs within an arbitrary range of built-in experiences defined by the particular sets of rules that the game designers thought up.

This is such an underappreciated medium for entertainment and education (YES, EDUCATION! That's what play is supposed to be about, in theory), because it is locked into a mentality that evolved over a period in which any thought of simulating anything interesting on the PC was patently absurd. We no longer live in such a time, and while we can't yet do real engineering calculations on our mobiles, we can start to think of ways to make games mentally challenging AND fun. I'm sick of playing a thousand and one digital variations on Battleship.

That's what would have made Sins truly extraordinary for me, and that's how I would have made it (commercial inertia aside, obviously).

@CyberMage
I couldn't agree less.

Generally, I'd like more important capital ships, ship design mode and heroes.
Other than that, I'm good, really good