I honestly don't get the "diplomacy" expansion.

Sounds like you're having a fun game.

I can barely make a cap ship without being jumped by fuzzy pink bunnies, all desperate to be my best friend.

But yes. Spam some "Give metal" (I'm Vasari, though, gets a bonus there). Try to get trade deal and peace fire

After that, enjoy the fuzzy pink bunnies.

So far I'm not very happy with the diplomacy expansion; they didn't even really add any new diplomacy. Even look at the diplomacy screen, the only difference is pacts, which don't have anything to do with getting and manipulating relations. Other than that they just limited what you can do with other AI/players until you research some tech. Giving missions feel weak because I don't even know if anything happened and its easier and more effective to ally with them and tell them to attack anyway. Pirate missions are great, but they don't really have anything to do with diplomacy either.

I was hoping for something more along the lines of civilization or really any other 4x game, but I guess that was to much to expect.

Sorry, accidentally double clicked reply.

I'm not sold that Diplomacy is even NEEDED in this game. If this was an MMO then I can see not wanting to be at war with everyone at the same time. But why waste resources to buddy up to someone who is going to declare war on you sooner or later.

If they took a survey of Sins players...I don't think Diplomacy would have been in the top 5 of possible expansion directions to go in. And as has been said packs are little more than improving your war setting not diplomatic skills.

What I dont understand is this...I had a game with one ally( we both tec) and a vasari team I had good relations with to defeat the Advent ( forth)team. What now? Declare war on the vasari who I befriended all game? As a locked player I'm very confused......

Btw could someone explain to me how locked teams plays out in this game as opposed to Diplomacy?

Keep in mind, this is still Beta.

I think diplomacy was the biggest need for this game since day one. The problem is the way diplomacy is being done. It's not creating situations where diplomacy is needed, it's trying to create diplomacy for current situations.

Yes but the problem is that the beta is nearing the end and its still feels like its missing the mark of what it should be doing which is just what Tkins stated: creating situations where diplomacy is needed. At the very minimum it should have what others have been saying: victory condition options (i.e. only one player may win, two players, three, etc...) or something akin to Risk Mission cards where you have an objective thats hidden from the other players that you have to fulfill, creating the opportunity to go the diplomatic route or backstab to obtain those means. The developers have repeatedly mentioned that they wanted to allow for some Machiavellian tactics but there remains to be seen any reason to go that route.

The idea behind it is good, imo, but it needs a lot of work.

The fact everyone is at war to start with, just makes it a pain to play, not to mention the envoy ships are attackable by default, why aren't they permanently invulnerable?

Additionally, in the short story during the loading screen it says the Vasari are a dying race? Dying of what? They're able to breed and populate new planets, so how are they dying?

Personally I think they should've brought out a different expansion, one which focuses on the backstory and the hidden enemy of the Vasari

When I first loaded up the game I was excited to hear about this mysterious enemy chasing the Vasari, but you never hear anything about them in the game.

" victory condition options (i.e. only one player may win, two players, three, etc...) or something akin to Risk Mission cards where you have an objective thats hidden from the other players that you have to fulfill, creating the opportunity to go the diplomatic route or backstab to obtain those means."

Those were the first two things that came to mind as I wrote my previous post.

The point of Diplomacy is to allow for a way to have time to bolster your defenses and build your empire. If you decide that you want your neighbors planet that happens to have an artifact, you can ditch all of the empire bonuses you get from the dealings and do so.

You receive negatives for hostile actions, which may or may not make any real difference with things, but after that declaration, the computer is going to attack you back. Even try to take the planet. If that computer is allied with another (don't know if this really works yet) then its ally will join in the other computer's defense.

Also, Diplomacy isn't really meant for single player play--but multiplayer. In a two vs two game, the Diplomacy tree could allow one team to have increased defense, trade, research, weapons power, and so on. So if you've got two Vasari players and they've got all of the diplo tree taken care of, and you attack them, there's a chance you'll be dealing with 62,000hp worth of Orkulus starbases in a single system. Diplomacy is the next step in Entrenchment. 

I wouldn't fancy the idea of an expansion being made to cater to the Multiplayer aspect.

Not meant for single player? I would say its exactly the opposite, and your mentioning two vs two games? There already isn't any need for diplomacy when you have locked teams set up. This is exactly the problem, currently it doesn't do anything for actual diplomacy, it just adds a little to team games: the exact opposite of diplomacy. Teams should be formed and reformed during play, not before play; that is the point of diplomacy, and the ai should be able to handle this for single player games. As a matter of fact if it is done correctly people should want to have ai in their multiplayer games so the players have an opportunity to gain an advantage by having the ai on their side.

Unless I'm wrong the whole expansion is pointless once you get down to the last two remaining teams. (1x1)

Why should it have to get down to 1x1? Why not stay with your ally and make it 2x1 instead of betraying him? If you really feel the need to fight without an ally then thats just another sign that diplomacy isn't working.

I've always enjoyed large 1x1 games. So diplomacy is pointless in those. And 2x1 really? Is that fair or enjoyable?

It really is made to cater for both single and multi, with a bit more emphasis on single player, but that is beside the point.

The diplomacy resource right plays like a watered down version of the religion aspect of Civilization IV: You send out missionaries to foreign countries to spread your religion, thus making it easier to form alliances, harder to go to war and sow dissent with other empires and give morale bonuses to your own cities. However, in Civilization IV the results from this are with the assumption that you have this timer going of which race will be the first to complete their starship to alpha centauri (or be conquered), which gives diplomacy in Civilization IV a rich context in whether or not you want to keep allied with the guy and sabotage his work, or go to war after a long standing alliance to make sure you are the first one to go to alpha centauri. All of this, being mitigated by the religion aspect, enriches the aspect of diplomacy a lot and makes negotiations and makes resource trading very decisive.

Right now the diplomacy options in game do not provide a means to an end, but are rather treated like a harvestable resource in a game that you have to send out a harvester towards in order to get enough resources to upgrade your economy/weapons/armour/etc... While I don't expect Sins to have this level of detail of diplomacy at all (it would be insanely complicated in real-time), the fact that it feels more like a tacked-on element than a gameplay mechanic makes this expansion have an insignificant impact on the main game than what Entrenchment gave us. Even though it's priced at a cheap $9.99, I feel that there is a lot of potential that is being horribly neglected that can still be inserted into the game within that budget.

I don't think you're understanding. I didn't mean that you should start a game locked into a 2x1 team, I meant that during the course of the game you should work your way through the diplomacy system to the goal of gaining the upper hand by having a larger alliance than the opposing team, which I see as being very fun. This would be for an unlocked game (which is the only time of game that employs diplomacy anyway) with anywhere from 3 - 8 players. Unfortunately, so far the diplomacy expansion has failed to deliver this type of gameplay, which employs alliances, trades, gaining the favor of select empires, and eventually forming a large enough and strong enough alliance to hopefully ensure victory.

If you're only interested in 1x1 games then you really don't have any reason to buy the diplomacy expansion, and you shouldn't expect to get anything out of it; I don't mean that in a mean way, its just not your style of play and this expansion isn't for that style of play. However, if the expansion succeeds (which so far it isn't) then you might find a fun new style of play.

Currently there actually isn't even such thing as an alliance, there is "peace", which is not the same as military cooperation. An alliance should be a bond that can be shared mutually between multiple empires for the goal of forming a single combined force. By mutually shared I mean that every member of the alliance should be in an alliance with every other member; if you want to add a member it should require the vote of the other alliance members. The ai should also understand this and try to form their own alliances either with you included or with other groups; currently the ai don't seem to understand the concept of working together, at least without a human telling them to.

There should also be trading. Something as simple as x credits for y crystals and z metal would be a nice start; this would be a way to form relationships without the current simplistic method of bribing, which isn't much of a mutual relationship anyway. That is only the simplest form of trading though. Players (both human and ai) should be able to trade ships, planets, research cooperation to boost research (either one way or both ways), logistics (one way, as in one party loosing logistics while the other gains), and tribune (a continual flow of a resource). Any combination of these should be able to be traded for any other combination of these.

 To the people saying races shouldn't be able to use the ships or planets of another race: why not trade the crew with them? Maybe the humans can't control a vasari ship, but the vasari working for the humans can. As for planets, the other races logistics could be transfered while shipyards could be unusable to the receiving race (for obvious reasons), but they could be disassembled and replaced. Why shouldn't the receiving race be able to have another races buildings and ships so long as members of that other race come with the trade to man them; nothing special would even need to be done about it, just change the color and hand it over. I understand not wanting to give the receiving race shipyards or other constructors but all you have to do to remedy that is make them unusable. One race controlling owning the assets of another race would add another layer of strategy and depth to the game; in starcraft there is a unit that can permanently mind control units from any other race, and if you mind control a constructor from another race you can even start a base of that race under your control with all of their unique units under your control. If you think thats unbalanced remember that its not limited to one player or another; if you think that will give someone the advantage then get on working towards that advantage yourself. Whole strategies could even be formed around one empire controlling ships from multiple races, which is a good thing.

Of course these are only the ramblings of a dreamer *sigh*. So far all the dev team have worked on are a few bonuses to an empire in the form of pacts and time is drawing to a close. I personally feel ripped off; I was expecting some depth out of this expansion but all I get are a few bonuses, 10% to beams... woo hoo.... The pirate missions are nice but not 10$ worth of nice.

I didn't really feel the expansion either at first, or the first time I fired it up. After playing it tonight with a 5 AI, unlocked teams, it suddenly clicked.

My gameplay suddenly became less Starcraft. I no longer used the same pattern of ignoring the AIs/pirates beyond my neighboring gravwells, slowly taking over. Instead, my gameplay became more MOO2. I can now build a relationship with my neighbor in a more logical and interactive way, nuking the rest of the system. Or, perhaps, I will play neutral and manipulate everyone into destroying each other, sweeping up the debris.

In Entrenchment, I simply get innundated with missions that felt empty, and well, not fun. Enough not fun that I only played with locked teams. Now, leaving teams unlocked is suddenly much more fun.

Besides, isn't that why I'm playing it in the first place?

I just feel that there isn't enough substance. The only reason you can do that now is because you start at a higher relation, have simple techs to make everyone like you more, and can increase your relations by parking a ship in their system. It's too easy and too simple; your not even giving them any reason to like you, they just like you because the game tells them to.

Maybe we do start too high, and it's too easy to park a ship - it was too easy in beta 1, too hard in beta 2, and now it could very well be too easy. I'm sure they'll find the right balance, the core concept is sound.

I don't disagree that other mechanisms would be an improvement. Maybe mission offering needs to be tier 1 tech and ambassadors tier 2, provided with more low-level missions:

• Give me this much of resource x and I'll give you this much of resource y.
• Reduce your research speed by 30%, increase theirs by 15% over X minutes.
• Same with structure build speed (perhaps only valid for the first N minutes of the game to prevent late-game abuse)
• Bounty transference - take ownership of the bounty on my head and I'll like you more. Also could mean be interesting in multiplayer
• Halt your culture production, boost theirs by M% (or 100-M% of your production transfers evenly to their production stations).
• Scoutship non-aggression pact for D minutes

I have been playing 4 player FFA with teams unlocked, and Diplomacy makes sense.  The only problem is that I cannot make a pact.  AIs offer and I accept, and it is immediately canceled.  I believe I read elsewhere that other have this problem, so something to look forward to with the release version.

Those kinds of "missions" would definitely add a great deal, but I don't think they should be missions. We need a treaty system for things like that.

Another thing,  the ai only likes you because the game tells them to. How do you think it would go down with a human player?: "why are you attacking me? I researched the tech so you will like me more! and that envoy is in your system! you should love! it doesn't matter that I'm completely undefended and this world has an artifact.". That is essentially how the ai acts. The general rule is that any methods you employ to make the ai like you more should also work to make a human player like you more; currently there is no method to make a human player like you more other than throwing cash at them, but that is a one way street and really isn't enough to forge an alliance over.

I also just thought of one thing that bugs me about the pact system, they are the ends, the result, of the relationship, which is the opposite of what it should be. Making deals like that should be the method of forming a mutual relationship and establishing trust. Of course just shifting it straight over wouldn't work too well but the point is that the system is backwards. The devs are only focusing on the result of the relationship without putting any thought into the means of forming a relationship, which is what diplomacy is all about.

This is true....

I think that's largely what missions are all about.  Do their bidding, give them lots of Christmas presents, they'll trust you. 
But also there needs to be degrees of cease fire, and degrees of war.  It's like, I trust you to send scouts through my system, but I won't let you plant a starbase right next to all my planets.  Or, if you get that fleet anywhere near me I'll break your neck, but don't attack me and I won't attack you.

It seems to be aimed primarily at making unlocked FFA games interesting again, which IMO was the way they intended the game to be played.  A long drawn out game of chess where late game civilian techs actually come in to play.  Not this C&C rushy mcspamfest that people seem to have turned multiplayer in to.  Is it going to have an impact on locked team games or 1v1 beyond some late game bonuses and making pirates relavant again?  No.  It's aimed at single player and FFA, which is actually what the majority of Sins owners outside the forums play.

I do agree though that another unit should probably have been added to throw locked team players a bone.  A spy unit that does various things based on your race would have been in-theme and useful to all players.

^ YES! BEcause SPAMMY ZERGRUSH games SUCK.