General notes

Summary from Beta-3 experience (mostly vasari-centric)

from Sins Forums

Alright, so I have finally got a really good, long game in without mini-dumps or any crashes at all with Beta 3. It ended up being a long 2v2v2 medium-large map with 4 unfair and one hard computer (all TEC, hence the lack of crashes). I was Vasari, which was a rarity for me. So I have piled up a number of notes from this game that I hope will be useful, most just small things, and should be able to be addressed before wednesday (nothing real big, and from my game experience everything seems very nearly in order for release). In no particular order (sorry), and I appologize if there are some redundancies with other posts -- though I have tried to read through most of them lately:

The Empire Tree/UI Stuff

  • all wells that you put starbases into seem permanently pinned and non-removable (both those you control and those that are neutral/foreign). this causes for quite a mess in the late game.
  • in combat in particular (when units are moving from well to well also), the tree moves around too much for proper control, to the point where I feel it necessary to pause during some battles to adequately lay out orders without fear of it jumping up/down and me having ordered the attack of the wrong unit. 
  • Underneath the quick-buy/sell pannel on the HUD, there is the quick-bet pirate pannel. When pirates are eliminated from the map this pannel disapears (nice.), but when you mouse over its former location you still receive a tooltip infobox telling you about bounty stuff. This can become irritating in battle when you go to select a unit in this part of the screen, but get blocked by this strange invisible box. 
  • One other small thing with the interface: it would be nice, if it isn't too big a problem, to be able to right-click backwards through the engagement ranges rather than just the unidirectional navigation.

Vasari-specific issues

  • I twice caught the Kortul Class Devastater's disruptive strikes ability (at level one, near begining of game) inflicting 60% cooldown rates on an enemy Aken cap ship (the ability was supposed to be doing 30%). I couldn't determine if this is a bug or just a typo.
  • The Kostura Cannon is meant to disable all 'orbital structures' upon hit, but neglects to do anything to starbases. Is this intentional or an oversight?
  • This is a long-time query of mine I have never remembered to ask: What is the point of leveling-up the carrier cap ship's 'microphasing aura' ability? The description states no advantage given to higher levels, and I can't seem to find the effects of it displayed in the info-cards of strike craft in range.
  • Phaze stabilizers' recall fleet (or zombie fleet, or whatever it was called..) ability used to be rediculously overpowered, and in an effort to balance it has been made to cost money per-fleet summoned. I like this change (not new, I know), but at present it requires quite some micromanagement of each phaze stabilizer once you get close to the supply cap, unless you want to spend the pretty high amount of money and only get 1 subverter. Either the auto-cast should not operate unless you can get the most of it (kinda lame), or the extra forces are simply delayed until the supply is freed-up. Any thoughts on this?
  • The Evacuator's nano-disassembler doesn't auto-target starbases like it does other ships. I don't know if this also applies to turrets/hangers, or civilian structures, or if this is intentional, but regardless it seems bizarre not to really prioritize the negation of SB's armor by whatever means necessary (this being one of the best). Not only should the auto-cast target SB's, but when they are in range they should be the top priority.

Misc

  • Why do shield generators have antimatter? The pool is never tapped, nor do they have an ability to utilize it. I can't recall if the shield ever was an ability, but is this simply a hang-over from an alteration to how the shield is bestowed? Moreover, why is there no concrete indication of the shield being bestowed by the generator? From what I can tell, there is no way of determining the exact utility of getting the generator, or its upgrades. I am sure it helps, and have noticed that it does WORK, but how much it works, and whether the upgrades for it are worthwhile is entirely undecipherable.
  • Navigators still appear somewhat weak (though much improved) with mine clearing. I got lots of exposure to the things, and am coming to really appreciate them. One specific instance of scout-folly was when I had brought several up to do some clearing, had them set to attack, with the mine-ability on, but they went to auto-attack an orbital refinery rather than the 100+mines that were waiting to be exposed and desposed of. 

Hopefully I got mostly untackled things and this small list was somewhat helpful. Game is looking great so far, best of luck in what should be the last week of Beta-toil! Thanks for all the hard work! :thumbsup:

 

11,731 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top



in combat in particular (when units are moving from well to well also), the tree moves around too much for proper control, to the point where I feel it necessary to pause during some battles to adequately lay out orders without fear of it jumping up/down and me having ordered the attack of the wrong unit. 

 

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that bugs me too. maybe the ships in transit should be displayed at the very end of the list. that way, it's still easy to find them, but their entrance into or exit out of phase space won't shift around the whole tree and lead to issue wrong orders/ orders on wrong targets.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

This is a long-time query of mine I have never remembered to ask: What is the point of leveling-up the carrier cap ship's 'microphasing aura' ability? The description states no advantage given to higher levels, and I can't seem to find the effects of it displayed in the info-cards of strike craft in range.
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From memory, the first rank has a 20% chance every 4 seconds, second has a 30% chance every 4 seconds, and third rank has 30% chance every 3 seconds to micro-phase. It's something like that, anyway.

The Evacuator's nano-disassembler doesn't auto-target starbases like it does other ships. I don't know if this also applies to turrets/hangers, or civilian structures, or if this is intentional, but regardless it seems bizarre not to really prioritize the negation of SB's armor by whatever means necessary (this being one of the best). Not only should the auto-cast target SB's, but when they are in range they should be the top priority.
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Auto-targetting is data driven by the ship's damage type and the target's armor type. Basically, the ship will pick a target it's best against first. It doesn't try to analyze "threat" or importance. And the abilities also tend to auto-cast on the ship's primary target. I have seen the eggy auto-cast on the starbase when it was attacking it, but this was also pre-beta 3 (playing a game with no capitals in 3).

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

One more thing I thought would be a really neat option for the sins start-up at the beginning, really just for kicks and not a particular beta-improvement (though it would allow me to employ some vasari AI right now without fear of minidumps...): "Capital Ships On", "Capital Ships Off". I know that I for one would rarely use this, as I am a cap ship fiend, but once it a while it may be nice to have only MASSIVE fleets with no leadership presence to speak of. Just a thought -- don't know if it is too much of a pain to implement at this point. (moreover, a frigates+cruisers on/off button - excluding colony ships and SB constructors) may be equally as interesting).

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top


Vasari-specific issues

The Kostura Cannon is meant to disable all 'orbital structures' upon hit, but neglects to do anything to starbases. Is this intentional or an oversight?
End of quote

 

I noticed this aswell but I don't think you have it accurately recorded from that game. When I usually play I make like 4 or 5 kostura cannons if possible (usually easily possible).

Anyways I noticed what you speak of happen when I nuked a Vasari SB, The thing is it did disable the starbase, it just ended the EMP after about 5 seconds. I fired a second Kostura, and this time it lasted full duration. I also fired it upon an Advent AI (Before they crashed me LoL) and it knocked out their SB in 1 shot.

 

There seems to be some nasty irregularities with SBes and the Kostura cannon though thats for sure.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Phaze stabilizers' recall fleet (or zombie fleet, or whatever it was called..) ability used to be rediculously overpowered, and in an effort to balance it has been made to cost money per-fleet summoned. I like this change (not new, I know), but at present it requires quite some micromanagement of each phaze stabilizer once you get close to the supply cap, unless you want to spend the pretty high amount of money and only get 1 subverter. Either the auto-cast should not operate unless you can get the most of it (kinda lame), or the extra forces are simply delayed until the supply is freed-up. Any thoughts on this?

I like the suggestion about auto cast not working until you have enough fleet supply free.


Navigators still appear somewhat weak (though much improved) with mine clearing. I got lots of exposure to the things, and am coming to really appreciate them. One specific instance of scout-folly was when I had brought several up to do some clearing, had them set to attack, with the mine-ability on, but they went to auto-attack an orbital refinery rather than the 100+mines that were waiting to be exposed and desposed of.

To get Scouts to be mine clearers don't set them to auto attack, instead just have the mine detection skill set to auto cast.  The Scouts will then detect and then automatically attempt to kill the mines and ignore all other targets.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top




all wells that you put starbases into seem permanently pinned and non-removable (both those you control and those that are neutral/foreign). this causes for quite a mess in the late game.

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Starbases are auto-pinned. If you would like to remove the planet/grav well from the tree, manually un-pin the starbase located there.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

To get Scouts to be mine clearers don't set them to auto attack, instead just have the mine detection skill set to auto cast. The Scouts will then detect and then automatically attempt to kill the mines and ignore all other targets.
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Ahhh. Thanks. I think that must be a change for Beta 3, as it used to be necessary to have auto-attack on as well.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Starbases are auto-pinned. If you would like to remove the planet/grav well from the tree, manually un-pin the starbase located there.
End of quote

Ah. Thanks for the tip.

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

The scouts mine clearing doesn't work nearly as fast as micro-managing. When the scout gets close enough to a mine the fleet sees it without using the ability. The mine simply has to be within the range of detection (that purple circle around the ship). This appears to be some sort of mine detection aura instead of an ability that uses antimatter. I find with microing the scout I can clear mine fields very fast. Not sure if this was intended but the scout should try to reveal as many mines as possible instead of one at a time.