Sins a clickfest game?

I would say the entire game is a clickfest, but the battles are only a semi-clickfest. And most abilties don't need to be perfectly targeted. And its unusual to have 3 battles at once. And when ur fighting battles u should go all out fighting, so don't spend time on other things when getting atacked.

usually when it comes to clickfest, it is when I am building up my planets, clicking where certian buildings go, as for battles, I let the computer do it for me but who am I to say anything I don't even play mp

Single player isn't a tactical clickfest (or, at least doesn't have to be) because you can turn the speed settings all the way down, and even pause the game.

Online multiplayer is extreme tactical clickfest, degenerating the game from "realtime strategy" to "realtime tactical."  People will only play on maxed-out speed settings, crowded rush maps, etc.  I dislike this - I'd rather outsmart my opponent than outclick him or outspam him - but if I want to have any online competition at all, it is what I'm forced to do.

I all comes down to the simple fact that the person who can do more at once will have an advantage.  If you can manage one battle at a time and go up against someone who can manage 2 battles, a seperate expanding party, research and continue to build frigates you will be at a disadvantage. 

That being said you aren't going to get good at multiplayer by playing against a computer forever. 

while all real time strats require clicking... I would say that sins is rather on the low side... even at high speed settings, as far as "who ever clicks the msot wins".  I mean... if you have ever watched some koreans playing starcraft... ya... sins of a solar empire is really low on the clickclickclick side.  Learning the hotkeys is really helpfull to... cause instead of trying to hit buttons... i can click on a roid and hit qqgwqqaa and have that roid with its pop upgrade, and all its resource roids in que... or qqqgwqqqq for a volcanic... or qqqqgwaaaa for a ice... and so forth. (although, if ima short on monies i might only press the q 3 times so i dont buy that third pop upgade right away)

because key mashing hurts hands less then click mashing imho.

Yeah, Sins has a really nice hotkey assigning feature. But even if you're not into that, its not really necissary if all you play is single player against the AI. In multiplayer, it can easily turn into a clickfest. But even then, compared to all of the stuff you are controlling, Sins is a very effecient game in how easy it is to control a vast Solar Empire.

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I find its not as much of a clickfest as games like Starcraft, warcraft or AOE. Its more about multitasking. The ai can handle certain things fine, and other things not so well. Certain abilities for example, you'll want to manually cast to get the best out of them, others you can leave on auto. In battles, the guy with more knowledge of game mechanics and multitasking will generaly come out on top, as opposed ot the guy with a "winning" build order who can click mash it out faster. There actually isnt a single build order that is an automatic win. Its knowing what your opponent has, what kills it best, and when the best time to strike is. As stated above, having multiple battles you need to be involved in at the same time is rare, as most players willl keep large single fleets rather than split up their forces.

And I should tell you MP isnt all people vs people, there are lots of guys who team up and play against computers. Majority of the time though you'll find 2v2s,3v3s,4v4s, or 5v5s. A piece of advice if you decide to come on MP, you're going to lose for awhile, but thats part of the learning experience. The best way to learn is to listen to other people, and when you get beat, watch the replay through the eyes of the guy that beat you and figure out how he did it. Then adjust your strategy.

I find Sins is really no different than games like Warcraft or Starcraft, it's just slowed down and played on a larger scale.  I always find "clickfest" a rather ignorant term anyways.  Virtually anyone with fully functional hands can click blazingly fast, but they are often quite terrible at micromanagement.  I myself have relatively poor eye-hand coordination, but that doesn't stop me from routinely crushing opponents through superior micro.  It's not about physical reflexes, but rather mental ones.

The thing is, whether you're playing Starcraft or Age of Empires or Warcraft or Sins of a Solar Empire, micromanagement isn't about how many clicks you can get off: it's about how you're using them.  It's about planning and timing, the execution of strategy.  Don't mistake the clicks themselves as the definitive action in micromanagement; the act of clicking is only a small part in the overall strategic and tactical process.  In many ways you have more leeway with Sins to pace yourself and you don't have to be lightning quick with reflexes, as you might have to be in Warcraft, but you do need to keep up a solid pace and constantly multi-task.

As for multiplayer being more tactics than strategy, I don't believe that can be helped short of making RTS games fundamentally differently.  The problem is that most maps randomize with either exposed homeworlds or a strategically invaluable planet positioned between players.  The result is simple: both players are forced to go "all in".  You cannot fold because this battle is so important that it will be nearly impossible to win if you just let the enemy have it. 

The alternative suggested is larger maps, but this solves nothing.  This replaces the hard rush with fast colonization.  The goal is simply to build the biggest economic monster machine possible, and then crush the enemy with superior numbers.  This has the same result; at the first hostilities, one player just wipes the other off the board.  In many ways, both extremes have the same problem.  If players are too close the person who can command the best tactical battle promptly stomps the enemy, if they're too far away the player who can raise an economy the fastest promptly stomps the enemy.  Either way, you have tactics or logistics completely stomping "strategy" (although strictly speaking what you're talking about isn't strategy, since logistics and tactics are strategy). 

I find the best solution is a well-built map of moderate size.  Just large enough that rushing is difficult, just small enough that you can't go on an economic boom, and no "do or die" tactical assets located between the players.  That's what I try to build with my galaxyforge creations.

This will be easier said than done, but I plan to create my own "fundamentally different" strategy game (yes I am an experienced software engineer).  I've got lots of ideas on how to make the game mostly all about strategy, and have nothing to do with clickfests.  Thing is, having no help and doing it all on my own, it will take years.

Thank you all for the excellent advice and insights! Any suggestions on what hotkeys are a must-learn? I was a bit suprised to read that people usually only have one big fleet. Why don't people attack on two planets at the same time or need a separate fleet for defense purposes? Having one fleet busy on the other side of the map could leave you very exposed.

You should definately use the hotkeys on the left side of the keyboard (qwert, asdfg) for all the things they do.  Don't just rote memorize them though.  If you take care to examine, you will see that they are intuitively laid out in a system.  Each key's position matches the position of a button on the screen you would click.

Claims that this game is a clickfest are overblown.  It is nothing compared to Starcraft and traditional RTSes, even on the fastest speeds.  During battles you will mostly be ordering various ships in your fleet to focus fire on certain enemy targets which you can queue up with the Shift key.  You'll also be activating the antimatter-based abilities on your capital ships and a couple support thips.  The time where it could become a clickfest is if you have antimatter abilities on frigates and lots of them and you want all of them to use it (steal antimatter, illusion on an illuminator, etc.).

As a general rule, you probably won't have multiple fronts in online multiplayer unless you are playing a free-for-all or a multistar map.  Also, you are better off having one strong fleet than two or three weak ones.  You will kill your opponents' ships faster and lose fewer of yours.  The exception to this is if you start out in a spot where you are sandwiched between two opponents who don't have opponents on the other side of them (allowing them to freely do a 2-v-1 on you).  This is called being in the "suicide" spot and learning how to handle this situation and to be effective and to help your team (it is a team game--you can die and your team can still win) is part of becoming a better player.  Some players will try to stand and fight with the help of a starbase and others will take their fleet and colonizer capital ship and migrate to the middle.  Recognizing the situation early on and planning for what you are going to do is key.  In fact, some players love starting out in the suicide spot.  It's actually possible to almost single-handedly win the game that way if you are good.

Really the default hotkeys are irrelevent, as you can easily reset them to any key or combination of key. As said the defaults are pretty logical, but I've sense changed mine to better match what orders I tend to give most often.

I'll add to Agent's post on hotkeys by saying that as a new arrival here, I've already repurposed the zxc zooming keys as well, as prime key real estate, as I find the caps-lock context zoom handles the majority of my zoom needs with scrollwheel picking up the rest.

If you have an advanced mouse, with many buttons, you can experiment there as well, mapping the extra sidebuttons to things like Cntl+1 and 1, to rapidly shift focus to a selection of choice near-instantaneously.  Actually, I remapped all my Cntrl+X to Alt+X as I find that a more natural one-handed invoke.

I have not yet done so, but plan presently to key map both the left side, and right side of the ergonomic keyboard here, probably for building and combat respectively, as the split layout should make it easy to shift left hand to one side or another without looking.  That probably depends on whether, once I graduate from SP to Multi, it's feasible to divide that way, vs longer battles benefitting from both some micro and some background building.

I'm too new to offer more tips that are sound, 5 days into playing single player, though I'm keen to experiment tonight with number mapping construction frigates as a way to help jump to planets rapidly.  I think that hotkeying the build commands to letter keys and invoking from the galaxy view will be quicker though.  It merely seems beneficial to experiment.  And that's probably the main thesis I hope to convey.

Play with the mappings until things hum along.

'Clickfest' RTSes are the norm (well-suited for the impatient and ADDers, perhaps) but it wasn't always that way.  If you look at, say, the Ancient Art of War, reflexes are  completely irrelevant -- it's primarily a strategic game with relatively unimportant tactical battles thrown in.   Hell, there was even a map included where you *couldn't* fight because you had merely a single Spy who'd just automatically be captured...

For more modern examples, there was the 'Dark Reign' series, which attempted to reduce the reliance on micromanagement by having somewhat constrained units (relatively few 'special' abilities per unit) with configurable unit AI settings (re:  aggressiveness and so forth).

And for more modern still, reflexes are again not especially useful for the "Combat Mission" series, where there are both the ability to give complex orders (go there, face that way, pause for x seconds, fire your machine guns at a certain building, then go on... while another unit receives a 'cover arc' command telling it to hold fire except on a certain suspect area, and so forth) and a pretty decent unit AI (that will countermand your orders in certain situations, such as an M1A1 that spots a half-dozen RPG teams 20m away around the corner it just passed should not obey your orders to merrily keep going at a slow pace... it should either reverse fast, or shred the RPGers w/ MGs or HE and then resume).  The units aren't raving morons... and there's no magical 'mana' / 'energy' problem, because different weapons actually take different kinds of ammo -- you don't need to worry about should you save up X ammo points for some big whammy or spend them more continuously on a weaker power, because it's not an option.

_Sins_ is definitely much clickier, and much gamier (no emphasis on realism, much on obeying common RTS conventions).

I have lots of ideas.  I won't divulge all of them here, but just a sampling.

One thing I will implement is that you will have a set of build instructions for the particular map you are playing on before the game even starts.  The instructions will be entered into your "build script" via a map editor sort of screen - you will be able to lay down buildings, turrets, etc.  Then you load the build script in when the game loads, and your plan starts unfolding in an automated fashion (of course you will be able to override or change things if necessary).  I could go into lots more detail here, but that's just an idea.

Other ideas include AI which is much more detailed and configurable than what is standard fare with RTS clickfest games.  I'm talking possibly hundreds of independent pluggable "AI modules" that you can select from at each and every level.  At the top level you could set some default AI for a group of units, or even all units.  At the bottom level, you could set a different custom configurable AI FOR EACH UNIT IN THE GAME if you want.  Take an AI for a tank unit, for instance.  Being able to set its behavior in a completely custom way with tens or even hundreds of settings such as "prioritize this target first, this target second, this target third, always run away back to this particular point if hit points fall below this level, etc."

There's more, but those are a few ideas.  My game will NOT be a tactical clickfest.  It will not be "skill based."  It will be completely based on thought and strategy.  You got a better plan than your opponent, you will win.  You don't, you will lose.  It's that simple.

AMP is not as important as in common RTS games. Of course good micro helps in battles and there are quite some abilities wich require careful maneuvering and correct timing to net maximum effectiveness. While good micro makes your fleets fight better its NOT what is going to win you the game. Its only a facet of the larger picture. What really makes or breakes your game are the decisions you have to do at strategic level. How much do i invest into economy? What kind of tactic am i going to use? How much do i spend in research and when and why? Am i going for colonizing and booming or do i pursue a more agressive and direct approach´?

Is it a clickfest? Yes. On a certain layer of the game it is. But there is enough depth here to make AMP less decisive than in other RTS. Usually the best strategy wins, not the fastest click.

Comparing Sins to other RTS is not possible. One major example are randomized maps. In other RTS people know the maps, they already have developed a sheme for maximum effect. In Sins you (if you choose) get thrown into the unknown. Its not a fixed progress. The other major difference is its scale. This can lead to quite long games (if you like). It also takes a lot out of the pace "normal" RTS are favouring. For that reason also the techtree is quite deep and takes time and the map can be quite gigantic.

Sins can be a 20 minute hyper-game if you choose. But that misses 90% of the game. But that is not its purpose. Its made for a longer approach. Some people think of this as a problem. I enjoy it.

Its kinda a "mature" realtime strategy game with more ephasis on "strategy" than "realtime". Also "realtime" is not equal "quick" here (but it can be if you like).

Its a higly adaptable, full grown strategy game wich is very well using realtime mechanics in an unmatched blend of classical turnbased games with modern RTS (not a turn/RTS hybrid like SOTS as an example).

There is nothing comperable on the market. Nothing even close.

If you like classical strategy games this is for you. If you looking for another C&C clone it isn't.

Some will disagree, but, in online multiplayer, I find this to be false.  When I lose, I almost always lose because the dude either has better clickfest abilities, or he is better at something else that is NOT related to strategy, but I rarely lose to strategy.  In fact, often in an objective analysis, my strategy was much better, and this is born out through certain measures such as having many more planets, a better eco, etc. (I know those things don't necessarily always mean I had a better strategy, but they frequently mean it).

I used to be a rather avid chess enthusiast, along with a friend of mine.  We played quite a many games over the years, and studied the game to some degree.  Similarly, I almost always lost chess games due to tactical mistakes, almost never strategic mistakes.  In fact, what me and my friend found was that quite often, surprisingly enough the people who beat us didn't even PLAY with a strategy in mind, by their own admission!  They just played by the seat of their pants, looked for opportunities to capitalize on TACTICALLY, and won that way (wow, if I do this, and he does that, and I do this, I can fork his king and queen and take his queen!).

My strategy was almost always better than my opponent's in chess.  My tactics were not always better.  My friend and I discovered that, at least at the level of chess we were playing at (and I strongly suspect it is true of ALL levels of chess), "tactics dominates strategy."  In other words, if you have better tactics than your opponent, but he has better strategy, you will win and he will lose.

My game improved the most, the fastest, the best, when I finally chucked strategic play and concentrated and boned up on tactics.

I think Sins, the way it is played online multiplayer, is like this.  However, I will grant you that SP can play out however you like.

Kharma - if you ever make it - it's sufficient, imho, simply to make a stable API of the AI, and accept code submissions for this method or that module to a repository.  Structure a few rules around testbedding and code structure, and publishing metrics on them and there you go.  Programmer players will send in implementations and do the rest.

There are almost uncountable games at which I sigh or writhe or both, doubtless in the company of other professional dayjob programmer-players, and we could have lobbed in anything from waypoint logic to better A* pathing to agent based AI intentionality to a genetic algorithm module for AI strats, but the games are always stupidly closed.

Imho, one often wants a mini-arena for scripting mini AI fights both for automatic regression testcases and opening books and to build ply depth unit matchup tables for the AI as tactical guideance, or to eval unit stat changes for balance and impact.  Synergies great with letting players submit AI, or swappable / combinatoric AI strat modules.

Anyway, will start to ramble.  Just wanted to say you dont' have to build it all yourself.  Make it moddable or submissionable, get an alpha out there, and it will attract a couple coders and start to gradually take off.

Lastly, for the love of chocolate, strongly consider seperating the graphics engine from the game engine up front.  When the core game engine can run with the grahpics wholly off, you can do ridiculous beneficial things with regression suites and testcases and speedy AI matches or unit-vs-unit mini-matches to build data tables.  It's so much better / maintainable.  Voice of experience on that one, highly recommend it now.

Best wishes / good luck.

-evoke

Misc: Higher elo chess is more strat than tactics.  Each side makes fewer raw tactical blunder mistakes for one, and have fundamentally better structural defense / coverage vs what we might call the lower hanging fruit of forks and pins.  Imho, high elo level, the tactical moves that surprise are at least as often piece sacrifices to carry through an attack, or subtler exchanges that result in unfavorable relative pawn structures.  I'm not saying peeps won't fianchette a bishop (I love queens indian defense as black especially for that!) against a currently pawn-engaged center and angle towards a deadly pin when the center unlocks, or snatch pieces with forks, just the tactically dangerous stuff that gives you that sinking feeling is often sacrificials or poisoned pawns that are inviting but a bad idea to take, or so forth.

Keep playing!

-evoke

Oh, believe me, that decision has already been made.  I would never entwine the two.

Yes, but that's because both chessmasters are already tactical geniuses, and they cancel each other out on that level.  You won't find a grandmaster who is sucky at tactics.

Still, despite what you say, even at the highest levels the game is extremely tactical (the "game of the year" a few years back between Kasparov and that Indian-sounding name was extremely tactical).  I'm sure you are right that underlying strategies dictate the flow of the game, but it is still played "upfront" with tactics.