NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO SEE IN SINS OF A SOLAR EMPIRE

Quoting leejaywu,

Prime irritation for me isn't the lack of items, per se, but the more 'gamey' aspects, as well as interface/micromanagement.

1- More refined damage model. Ships that are nearly destroyed should be acting like it, not functioning at peak efficiency. This is easier to properly model with ships that actually track individual components and locations, but having chances to afflict different systems with different levels of dysfunction would make sense.

2- More refined supply cost model. Upkeep cost shouldn't increase just because you upgraded the productivity of your planets; that's backwards, if anything. It -should- increase with more /actual/ ships and physically larger empire (larger distribution network required), and perhaps slightly with more distinct ship classes in use (more types of equipment and parts required, different training et al).

3- Option for finite resources. That is, production slows and eventually runs out.

4- Ability to set a maintenance cost for facilities.

Interface/behavior:

5- Ability to turn OFF 'join fleets by default' on ALL new ship production.

6- Mouse-over on a ship in transit should indicate estimated ETA.

7- Estimated ETA should be given when selecting destinations.

8- Ability to set a waypoint with a desired arrival time (i.e. wait if necessary, *then* execute plotted orders)

9- More standing orders; it might be useful to be able to designate a fleet as a 'response fleet' which would, if not presently engaged in combat or executing other orders, and near a friendly system under attack and without any defending warships already present, move to engage and then return to its post (if it survives). Handy if you're busy coordinating a major offensive and somebody's trying a small raid against you.

10- Damaged ships w/o existing orders, in a completely friendly system with repair facilities or ships offering same, should move to be within the radius of the nearest repairer.

Miscellaneous:

11- More variety of pirate ships. Maybe even a weird-looking model whose ships have variable capabilities -- they're kludged from parts they can steal or salvage. Perhaps they've kidnapped some more engineers and scientists.

12- TEC-sponsored rebels -- should they really be attacking any TEC faction? Judgment call.

13- More thorough documentation. Basic stuff like "you can move from star to star if you've researched Long Range Jumps", "ships work perfectly until they're destroyed", "<x> facility stacks / doesn't stack", "how do I increase my fleet limits", "your first capital ship is free" et al really should be in the manual.

14- Independent worlds immersed in nearby TEC culture, under threat (proximity) of non-TEC factions, should have a chance of flipping to the TEC culture -- seeking protection. This would fit in with the storyline -- seeking protection from the invaders.

15- Different types of starts, like 'invader' setup (no planets, but some warships, some colonizers, and resources).

16- Pirate willingess to attack a faction based on results of previous pirate raids against that faction. No use trying for a bounty if you're going to be turned into free XP instead of collecting.

17- Option for completely secret bounties -- e.g. total amounts unknown, not just who placed how much.

I totally agree with you on your first point, if a ship i just about to get destroyed it should move slower, look damaged and some on it weapons stop working. eg if the kol is just about to get destroyed on 1-2 of it frontal lasers work or something.

I was a bit disapointed with the star bases in entrenchment. yeah they looked awsome but when you upgrade them it dosent realy change to look of it at all. Like when you add new weapons and the ability to be a trade port or something, you can barly notice you have changed anything. If you upgrade it so it had a trade port it should have docking arms added or something.

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I completely agree.

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While I respect the hardcore RTSers out there... I think it would be nice to have the ability to have more... complex games (no offense). ~cough~ Master of Orion ~cough~

More diplomacy - Just getting 'missions' and giving 'gifts' to the AI oponents comes out feeling shallow to me. Trading specific resources or technology (tech trading could get interesting) for specific things and/or more unpredictable behavior might liven it up a little.

New victory conditions - Mentioned earlier to speed online play someone suggested 'domination' (75% of the planets) or 'cultural' (60% culture, his numbers I believe)... or something along those lines. I think having the option for conditions like that would eliminate the repetiion of the 'kill them all' scenario. I'd suggest an uber science discovery that would take a while for a 'science' condition along side of the others.

Governments - Also mentioned earlier, also another way to but a little more depth to managing your planets. Either a government per planet (although possibly TOO complex to manage easily) or just a faction wide govenment, each with it's own pros and cons. Governments could also add to the diplomatic factor as far as like/dislike of others.

I think that giving the ability to players to toggle things like these on and off would allow people to define what style of game they'd like to play. So those who want they fast paced 'kill them all' games can continue on while having a bit more depth for those looking for a longer game... or very likely a meeting in the middle.

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I think the thing you are asking for, will come out in the second Micro expansion, volney81.

But what would be easy to do, is different victory backgrounds like what TKaz84 said on page one of this post.

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@ callum 99: actually, you CAN see the improvements at starbases, at least some of them. f.ex. the tec starbase, you can see the beam weapons installed at the corner after the update. likewise, for the trade upgrade, you get little nodes protuding at the lower sections. for the vasari, you can see an effect when the phase stabeliser goes up. did not watch all of it extremely closely, but there definately are some visual updates as well.

@ volney: yeah, sounds good.

my take on victory conditions:

domination: % of colonisible systems + % of current galatic population

economic/ scienfitic: you research some high tech and need to build a few components of some gadget. when all is completed, you win. components could be comprised of the highest prerequisites of each tech tree.

economic 2: collect a set number of resources. straight and simple

economic 3: build a set of wonders. basically much like econ 1, except for the research

cultural: tempting, but advent could be too biased here. still, a % culture could do, but we'd need a better display/ feedback of how widespread you culture is.

'strategic': a number of victory emplacements are scattered across the map.hold enough of them long enough to accumulate points and win. think DoW or I think cal civ II had something like it.

governments: now that I think of it, a system like in call to power ( a sort of civ) would also be interesting. a handful of different government forms that score differently in a handful of parameters.

parameters:

corruption: manipulates allegiance loss

military: manipulates build rate/ cost for military (ships and maybe tactical structures)

research: manipulates research time/ costs

public favour: manipulates maximum population/ population growth

economy: manipulates logistic building build time/ cost

culture: manipulates culture rate

if anyone finds better ones, go ahead, but I'd say keep it to max. around 5. and about 3 - 4 different forms of governments that are all a bit stronger or weaker in some of those parameters. I'd say that would be great element of 4x in there and it would not be horribly complex, would it?

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I like the civ4 system of government better where there are 4 main aspects of government and each one has 4 options that you pick from and this defines your type of government. but that might be copying too much from another game.

Having a victory condition where you research a bunch of components and then build each of them and combine them to form something sounds just like the alpha centauri space ship from the civ games too. But you could make it so that the gadget is some kind of super super weapon that would significantly assist in one of the other victory conditions.

Building wonders would also be cool but i like the Empire Earth version of wonders where they dont make you win the game but they provide unique and very helpful bonuses. Like building the walls of jericho increased the hp of all your walls and building the lighthouse of alexandria granted you vision of all the water on the map and only one of each wonder can exist at a time. Having similar structures that could be built that would provide appropriate bonuses would be pretty cool.

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Quoting Shadowhal,

reply 6

@ callum 99: actually, you CAN see the improvements at starbases, at least some of them. f.ex. the tec starbase, you can see the beam weapons installed at the corner after the update. likewise, for the trade upgrade, you get little nodes protuding at the lower sections. for the vasari, you can see an effect when the phase stabeliser goes up. did not watch all of it extremely closely, but there definately are some visual updates as well.

@ volney: yeah, sounds good.

my take on victory conditions:

domination: % of colonisible systems + % of current galatic population

economic/ scienfitic: you research some high tech and need to build a few components of some gadget. when all is completed, you win. components could be comprised of the highest prerequisites of each tech tree.

economic 2: collect a set number of resources. straight and simple

economic 3: build a set of wonders. basically much like econ 1, except for the research

cultural: tempting, but advent could be too biased here. still, a % culture could do, but we'd need a better display/ feedback of how widespread you culture is.

'strategic': a number of victory emplacements are scattered across the map.hold enough of them long enough to accumulate points and win. think DoW or I think cal civ II had something like it.

governments: now that I think of it, a system like in call to power ( a sort of civ) would also be interesting. a handful of different government forms that score differently in a handful of parameters.

parameters:

corruption: manipulates allegiance loss

military: manipulates build rate/ cost for military (ships and maybe tactical structures)

research: manipulates research time/ costs

public favour: manipulates maximum population/ population growth

economy: manipulates logistic building build time/ cost

culture: manipulates culture rate

if anyone finds better ones, go ahead, but I'd say keep it to max. around 5. and about 3 - 4 different forms of governments that are all a bit stronger or weaker in some of those parameters. I'd say that would be great element of 4x in there and it would not be horribly complex, would it?

I did realise that, i just dont thing its enough, its only barley noticable to some things.

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@ onicrom: I think you answered you own point. sure, the civ4 style was quite nice, but it amounted to five separate decisions, each of which had to be pondered carefully. that would probably be too much for this game. what I proposed is a single decision at a time, though with several options, but then you had those several options in civ IV too though rarely at the same time, since they became available at various stages in the game - could be the same with the governments here, have 2 or 3 basic options and 1 or 2 more available in the tech tree.

@ callum99: ok, just wanted to set things straight. sure, wouldn't be a bad thing, but I'd have other priorities for scarce dev time.

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i think the races should each have there own type of point defemse to stop incoming missles

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I'm not too keen on this whole "pick a form of government" thing. Sins is different from Civ or Galciv in that you are not so much an emperor managing his empire over the course of many years, but more of a grand admiral directing the military effort to conquer a particular solar system or two. I think adding political options to the game removes the war-focus and takes the game in a very different direction.

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I think adding RPG components, like Captain Names, Crew experience/bonuses, Fire-and-forget fleet orders (Capture X system, defend wormhole net, etc...).

You know how you just love to go around with your level 10 Capital Ship and massive armies?

Now add a Captain you've trained...perhaps started in a frigate as fire control, worked his way up to Captain. A crew that has a given loyalty, a given morale, strong points and weak points...

Any of these would make the game better imho

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A feature I would like to see is the abilaty to donate/gift units to your allies. It's somehting i find is missing in this game and would be quit usefull.

+1

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Quoting CrusaderScott,

reply 11

I'm not too keen on this whole "pick a form of government" thing. Sins is different from Civ or Galciv in that you are not so much an emperor managing his empire over the course of many years, but more of a grand admiral directing the military effort to conquer a particular solar system or two. I think adding political options to the game removes the war-focus and takes the game in a very different direction.

Before Sins came out I saw it on gamespot and I thought it looked cool so I read all the previews and watched all the developer videos and unless my memory fails me they all said that Sins was a game that invented its own genre because it was supposed to be a real time representation of the epic turn based strategies like Civ and Call to Power. But they said that it would be impractical to try to encapsulate the incredibly vast number of "ages" that those games have into an RTS since it would be too much work and development time, which I agree with to an extent, so they decided to hone in on one specific age. So trying to make the game less like typical RTS, where your city is really just a unit factory and all you do is throw units at the other factions, and more like a Turn Based strategy like the CIV series would actually be taking the game towards the direction its meant to go in. If you dont believe me then why is the next expansion all about diplomacy and a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with combat or military units.

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Quoting CrusaderScott,

reply 11

I'm not too keen on this whole "pick a form of government" thing. Sins is different from Civ or Galciv in that you are not so much an emperor managing his empire over the course of many years, but more of a grand admiral directing the military effort to conquer a particular solar system or two. I think adding political options to the game removes the war-focus and takes the game in a very different direction.

you see? that's the difficult part for the devs. different people want different things. I have just the opposite opinion and think the game should be less or rather not only about war. the game was meant to be a rts/ tbs hybrid and it has achieved to a degree, but in parts it does play as a rts with a huge scope and tbs elements, but I think it is much closer to the one side than to the other.

but as I said, your opinion is just as valid as mine, just because we want different things does not mean either of us is 'right'. we can just argue why our ideas have merit.

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Quoting JuleTron,

reply 7

i think it would be interesting to see a way in which you could choose a government form such as dictatorial, theocratic (mostlikely for the advent) republic, etc. And witht that the constant threat that there might be a civil war of some kind or other political consiquences. Adding politics to the batch of things to do would be interesting.
I like this idea. If advent get theocracy bonus, then I reckon Vasari would get dictatorial bonus and TEC would get republican bonus..

But whoever said that the TEC were a democracy? They are a coalition of many different planets and factions with different systems of government. While I'm sure the main structure of the Coalition is a democracy (because every part of the coalition wants to have a say) the individual planets need not.

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[quote who="TKaz84" reply="16" id="2033187"]
Quoting JuleTron, reply 7
i think it would be interesting to see a way in which you could choose a government form such as dictatorial, theocratic (mostlikely for the advent) republic, etc. And witht that the constant threat that there might be a civil war of some kind or other political consiquences. Adding politics to the batch of things to do would be interesting.
I like this idea. If advent get theocracy bonus, then I reckon Vasari would get dictatorial bonus and TEC would get republican bonus..
But whoever said that the TEC were a democracy? They are a coalition of many different planets and factions with different systems of government. While I'm sure the main structure of the Coalition is a democracy (because every part of the coalition wants to have a say) the individual planets need not.[/quote]

the word you look for is federation, where a central government splits its autonomy with federal entities, in this case the individual planets ( and which could be contrasted to something like centralised government or hegemony or whatever). true, we don't know whether TEC is a real democracy or whatever, the description makes it sound so, but as long as the background story plays so marginal a role, why bother?

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If you've ever noticed: the advent conolizers, (cant remeber their name), are like engines but sideways. the hangars are also like wings, this basically and idea for a super capital, making it out of other ships but having a main body for which these ships can attach to. So basically you have a super ship, and when you make capitals, they can join with it, or break from it.

With TEC they have the bombardment capital, wich could be mounted at the back of it and the battle capital could go in the middle of the front. you could put the guss cannons on the sides of the main body and it would be powerful by itself, but it would be even more powerful with the ships attached, rather than having them in a fleet with it. You can only have one of these ships and it takes up twice as much of everything.

BUT to make it balacned, you could make it the slowest ship ever, and have pressure points form where the other capitals are joined, to make it more of a target. You could also make it have powerful abilities, not ones like heal a bit of health for OTHER SHIPS but full health for them and not for the super ship. Just an idea. any other thoughts on this add them or PM me. gametester, proud writer of EXPERIMENT 442

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and having a campain in the game would be nice too.

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another thing i would like to see is having a ship type like a superdreadnought that moves very slow but has the largest and most powerful weapons each race can mount on a ship. or different types of superdreadnoughts, one that goes in and pounds away at the enemy fleet, one that is only a carrier and can hold like 30 fighter squadrons.

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or a cap ship that can hold multiple cruiser carriers

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The moon idea is an excellent one.

Here are some ideas on how to tweak the map. It is currently time consumming to create a large multi star system (i.e. 100 or more stars). This also creates a ring galaxy with one star in the middle instead of stars spread out more evenly. Further, why should we see all the stars immediately when, in our own system, we only see the next planet after we jump to a planet adjacent to it? I would also like to have phase jumps restricted between stars in larger galactic systems so that choke points can be created in a galaxy just like in a planetary system.

Regarding pirates. Pirates can't phase jump to neighboring stars and, after destroying my own stystem's base, I will have a bounty on my head but no pirates? At least that is what seems to happen. Further Pirates should grow in power with each bounty to make them a threat later in the game.

I know this has been extensively discussed, and is likely in the next update for entrenchment, but add mine sweepers!!!!!

Thanks for the game guys!

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How's about more research. First off, there should be more avenues of research, ie: better engines, jump drives, antimatter techs, weaponry, defensive techs, fleet & supply mechanics, etc. Second, one should also be able to keep researching technologies throughout the game, even small tech increases would add up over time. Each race could have specific "high" technology trees that they could research, giving them advantages in certain areas which the other races would have to scramble to counteract. Also, the limits on fleet production need to be fixed. If an Advent enemy with three planets left, all of which are getting nailed by my Novalith cannon, can still field a full fleet there is something wrong. Fleet strength should be tied more to population and resources, not just having a set number of research stations.

There's my two credits.

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i agree with Dpeity that fleet strength should be tied in proportion to the number of planets that you own. another thing is if a certain number of research stations are destroyed the technologies that we get from them shouldn't disappear. i.e. if i build 2 temples of harmony as the advent and research arctic and volcanic colonization, i shouldn't lose them if someone comes and trashes those temples of harmony.

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Quoting CrusaderScott,

reply 11

I'm not too keen on this whole "pick a form of government" thing. Sins is different from Civ or Galciv in that you are not so much an emperor managing his empire over the course of many years, but more of a grand admiral directing the military effort to conquer a particular solar system or two. I think adding political options to the game removes the war-focus and takes the game in a very different direction.

I agree with you there 100%.

If we could set sins up so that we could have multiple wars over multiple maps that would be great.

What I would like is that players on the same teams shouldn't be on separate factions.

When a game starts up I think it would be interesting for there to be multiple leaders on the same team and faction, Allowing for the pooling of resources (which would speed the game up considerably) Which would in turn need an expanded tech tree.

I would call that a coalition gametype, where people who are of the same factions/races are on the same team.

The following would be a MASSIVE gametype similar to an MMO but not quite:

Another idea is a REAL multiplay with galaxies, starsystems etc with stuff you can choose to invade.

Like A person starts in their own system and as their little civilization gets bigger, the map (in real time) expands.

So if we were TEC we would start in an earth-like system and expand. When we expand that map as far as we go, we can 'launch' to, say alphacentauri, on another solar system. We first meet enemies in that system, (mostly neutrals) and are 'forced' to eliminate them or ally with them. Who we ally with will determine either our culture potency, military potency, or econ potency later in the game. (You are only allowed to ally one of those neutrals)

From that point you can choose to jump to 3 different star systems. One of them super active with military activity, another Econ and Diplo activity or Culture activity. (You get small pics of those systems from astronomers) Depending on which system you choose changes what enemy you will face at the very end. When you jump you only have small amounts of research allowed, but as you reach the next system you are allowed to research deeper into the tech tree. Bonuses applied based on which neutrals you had allied with in the previous system.

At this point, halfway through the map you picked, if you picked the one with the least info on it you're just colonizing and exploring, you find (as TEC) a planet of 'freaks' who had left humanity about 20 years before you left the original starsystem. Your job is to excise them from the system any means necessary. They were here first and therefore have outposts on nearby planets. Well you defeat them and they leave. One of your officers sends reports of the victory to the humans in the last system.

If you picked the one with military activity, you jump into a system just in time to see a rather large battle commencing, a... black... thing... Is eating away at one of the ships and proceeds to try and eat your ships but you manage to jump out of there before the black thing eats your small fleet. the other player that was getting eaten by the things. Proceed from there.

There's my idea. The game only gets bigger until the SP ends at which point they can choose to take it online, adding their system to the server's list which allows that player to leave and attack another Galaxy/Solar system. Then you can choose an option to allow another player to play as your civilization while gone - if so you can tell the required rep a person would need to play for you - Honour system. The +rep system would work as follows: A person plays, and if they do a good job, they get not only points for bringing fruition to your empire but if you liked their job you personally add a +1 rep.

The better score YOU have online, the more rep power you have. This not only stops smurfs but encourages people to try to play.

If you choose not to allow coalitions, as i call that then you play online guiding your empire to victory, if no enemy is in your solar system (other than an ai/neutral) when you log off people can't phase jump to your system unless you choose to. If people are in mid-phase jump to your system and you log off it replaces your system with another player's whom is online. To necessitate it such that people won't abuse that power there would be a (long range) cloaking ability in a heavily expanded tech tree that makes it so that person cannot see who is coming into their star system.

I have tons of other ideas that could take advantage of this but for now i'll leave it at that.

If you choose not to play online then you get to expand locally forever.

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The distance between plantes and star systems should be much larger. i never got the feeling of size when playing sins, it always felt very cramped and knowing the enemy where only about 5 second jump away.

Planets should be much larger, they tiny and d not any feeling of scale to the game.

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