I must admit that I have talked some smack from time to time.  Im not sure if I am considered the huge smacktalker or one of my clanmates.  Its usually when someone has failed miserably to 2v1 me or someone else talked a little crap first.  I mostly do it as my own entertainment and if I have offended someone then I am sorry although i don't remember playing you particularly by name Mr_blunted.  Don't take me too seriously about it if I do it to you.  I really wouldn't take anyone seriously about it to be honest.  Its a game and the worst that can happen is they berate your skills in a computer game as they have no way of commenting on you otherwise even if they make idiotic remarks anyways.  Roll your eyes and go on or talk some smack of your own.  Maybe it will spur you on to be better to make them swallow their words.  People certainly shouldn't let it stop them from playing online.  There is always the /ignore command to not have to hear it after all.

[_]-Greyfox

Carnston, you don't have to play the game out to the last planet and the last ship.  In fact, players on the winning team don't really want you to do that anyway.  Once a Sins game has been decided--once the outcome of the game is known and especially if your teammates agree--you can just say "gg" and quit.  There's no reason to feel obligated to keep playing once the game is basically over.

Allot of point here pretty much hit allot on the head for my reasons, for me it's the crunch micro managment. In a single player game I can build up and take my time (sort of) and not worry out of all the players out there I am going to be aimed instantly upon by a zerging ship army.  Also I am into HUGE maps which takes days to play , not small scrims so in a way allot of people would get board. So like many here, the only true people I play online are my friends and that's it because they play like I do.

If this game went into (what was talked to about sometime ago) a persistant huge galaxy online I would be on that for sure, because knowing these devs they would make game play possible so when your not there, at least you can cue and or do other things that will take your place when your gone etc,, allot of things they could do to balance such issues. Then there would be a reason to play online.

I play one rts publicly online and it's not a full born rts thou, it's a card/rts game called saga. adress is something like playsaga.com  , but anyways it's a fun game, nothing graphically fancy but the mechanics are fun. Another indi company with a great idea and I support them as well. If these guys did an online version "WOW!" would they get allot of players for sure.

My 2 cents.

Sebasnadilo, note that most online multiplayer games only take about two hours to play.  Also, if you're close to U.S. Eastern Standard time or Western time, you'll find plenty of people to play with online during North American (or rather, Western Hemisphere) prime time--in the evenings.

Play Saturday/Sunday during the day - that is their Friday/Saturday night...

You keep speaking of this rush and stuff. I don't believe it. I play online and it is not a straight out spam fest. Sometimes it is, but things change it. e.g. someone is hitting you with LRM, but your ally rocks up with fighters, or you are losing LRM to fighters and your ally comes in with flak/fighters etc...

Many of the players I play with are NICE. Some trash talk some. Some are dicks. But most are nice, well mannered people. This maybe because it seems Sins has an older audience then other games (i.e. no teenages who play FPS etc...).

Here is a few off the top of my head I can think of: Flip, Scrum, Whip, Tyr, How, Cykur.

Now there are people like Siddy who will trash talk you some, but hey - its the internet and it can even be entertaining sometimes...

You got to take your cuts/licks before you are part of the "in" crowd

PUGs have definitely been the epitome of fun in Sins of a Solar Empire

Thank you for the kind words, Readyman.  We played against each other at some point over the weekend.

I love playing the PUG matches too.  Incidentally...they were introduced to the Sins community by [DT]WHIPperSNAPper/DirtySanchez (that's-a me!).  A PUG stands for "PickUp Game".  I first learned about them in 2003 when I became a member of the Unreal Tournament (1999) capture-the-flag clan community.  Of course, every online multiplayer game that isn't a formal clan match is a pickup game in the literal sense, more or less.  So, the actual meaning of the term is "Organized pickup game" or "pickup game amongst clanners and serious players".  They were called "pickup games" to distinguish them from formal 5v5 clan matches with the idea being to have games that felt like clan matches but with teams of mixed players and without any schedules or obligations as opposed to playing with disorganized teams on public servers.

The pugs I was familiar with were organized in IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channels which is where all of the UT99 clanners congregated and hung out.  (A sizeable but dwindling community of UT99 CTF players is still on IRC, playing pug matches today.)  A program called a pugbot would keep track of who had signed up to play and then help with the draft by announcing who's turn it is to pick and listing who has been picked so far, the current teams, and who's still available.  (There's no reason why we couldn't do all of this on IRC other than that most people have no idea what it is nowadays since it's old school.)  They also use Teamspeak2 voice comm and once the teams are picked, everyone is expected to join their team on a channel at a certain Teamspeak server (which will have a number of Red Team and Blue Team rooms).  It would be nice if our community could begin doing that but I'm guessing that most Sins players don't have headsets (headphones with a microphone).

I'm glad that everyone is enjoying the PUG games.  They really are a great addition to the Sins online multiplayer community.  Playing pugs is also a great way to get know people who are in clans and to perhaps make a name for yourself and get invited to join one.  Here's what they look like in IRC when they are being set up:

PUGs definitely help getting high quality games up, i.e. balanced teams and the minimum amount of anger due to stacking. The only thing that annoys me is that it takes ages for people to agree who is captain, who picks first, pick order (1-1-...-1 or 1-2-2...2-1) etc. Still, they help guaranteeing fair matches, so thumbs up

Edit: Ckotchey, the quick start only builds cap ship factory, extractors and max. population upgrade on the planet. So it's simply sparing you the useless stuff that <really> every player does, regardless of strategy, race or personal favorites. That's when the real fun starts: get econ or mil. labs? Try to expand real fast or rather head for your enemy right away? Getting carriers, LRMs or (yes, I'm talking about you, Raging Amish!!) scouts? Or maybe get some quick trade and wager that the enemy won't attack in the first minutes - that's still all up to you. It's not like there's the perfect strategy that everyone does and it's just a matter of who's clicking faster or memorized the hotkeys for each and every unit, ability and building...

Actually Ckotchey, if you're a victim of a hard rush, or whatever strategy, that's where the fun really starts.  Not only in the game (cause you have to think fast and make the most of a bad situation--Kobiashi Maru anyone   --, but especially after the game.  Watch the replay and see what your opponent did. Not that you can copy the strategy (tho that can be fun), but to see how you can better defend against that.  I havent been rushed in exactly the same way with the same strategy yet.

Now that replays are fixed, it really adds to the game.  A cold beer and a few minutes watching the replay before the next game is great.  I think you're missing out.  You may lose a few games to some of those strategies, but you wont be losing for long when you see how to counter them.

on pick up games, yes, picking the captains is the longest portion of the process.  The hard part is that the captains need to be fairly equal in skill level, or the match starts out a bit unbalanced (thus a newer player saying "I'll captain", along with JJ being the other captain = disaster).

What WAS Amish doing with all those scouts?  I didnt rewatch that game, but saw it briefly while it was going on... heh!

I think your concern about asshats is overblown.  There are a couple jerkwads out there, but are you going to allow them to keep you from enjoying the game to the fullest?

What you say may have been true back in Sins v1.05 (spam out Illuminators), but that is definitely no longer the case today, especially with Entrenchment.  There are all sorts of different ways you could build your fleet.  That's what I love about this game--it's always a challenge to figure out what you need to do because what you need to do is often unclear.  Also, if you start out in a pocket without an enemy flank, then the game really opens up to you.  You could go military or eco or some of both.

Not so much the fear of being matched against a better player.  If they beat me, then they are the better tactician and I have no problem admiting that.  I still have yet to bet my grandfather at chess, each time I get a little better.  Think of it as a goal to eventally be good enough to win, rather than a discouragement when you lose.

Now let me talk out of the other side of my mouth...

I avoid online play in any setting: X-Box Live (and related consol-nets), Sins, Age of Empires, even Microsoft Flight Simulator.  Don't take offense, but I find online gaming to be very cliquey, and difficult for new players or otherwise outsiders to get started in (unless you already have friends in the community).  X-Box live is the worst for this; Sins doesn't seem to be particulary bad, but the element is still there.

To statisfy my urge to play human opponents I either set up a LAN party with friends (or yes online), or I will challenge my wife (who also plays Sins*) to a battle over our home network (I tend to be a stronger player in Sins, but she keeps the edge in Age of Empires; go figure).  But I never join/host a game with people I haven't met.  As yes, I recognize that my methods, in a sense, contribute to the cliquey-ness of online play.  No one is perfect.

And as far as human contact, I find the forums are more than enough of an outlet.  This thread case-in-point.