Archonsod

[quote quoting="post"] I suppose SoaSE could never be as involved as a turn-based 4X game; it offers precious little in return for this cost in depth though. [/quote] On the contrary, I'd say it simply shifts it. Rather than looking at the economy or industrial complexity you're looking at ship fire arcs and turning speeds. The races are quite different, but it's subtle rather than being obvious (for the most part anyway). Special abilities available to capital shi

GG and GOG are client free, so assuming they haven't snuck any .net into the account page somewhere you shouldn't have that problem any longer; the GG games I've downloaded since they dropped the client last month were both zip archives. I'd assume more distributors will probably follow suit too.

[quote who="mickeko" reply="9" id="2110705"] That's just a tiny fraction of the amount of pirated copies. It's really negligible. Even though every single sale is important, I doubt any developer would prefer the small amount of sales through piracy over a world without piracy. Also, I would think that most of those who bought after trying a pirated copy probably would have bought the game if they couldn't get a pirated copy of any games at all.[/quote] The p

You can generally cover one path into the system with a Starbase. They're not really supposed to single handedly defend systems though. The key is forcing the opponent to tackle the Starbase. Strike craft help, or you can always focus on the hangar upgrades rather than the weapons. Try minefields to channel them towards the base too.

Automatic switching is a silly idea. If I'm launching Entrenchment, it's because I want to play Entrenchment, not vanilla. If I wanted to play vanilla I'd be launching vanilla. I don't need the game to downgrade me, if I was willing to accept a game of vanilla instead I'm more than capable of dropping out and re-launching it myself. Showing the version being played in the server browser would be convenient in letting me see if it's worth dropping back to another version in the f

It depends on whether we're talking a pure capital duel or not. The Marza certainly has the edge early game thanks to higher damage output and the benefit of incendiary shells / radiation bomb. The limitation being that all that damage is pointed straight ahead. The Kol can't quite match in pure damage output, but it does have a much wider coverage of fire, making it pretty good at taking out swarms of cruisers or frigates. Late game they both round off nicely; the Kol getting Finest Hour and

And thanks to those frontlines, chokepoint planets become a lot more valuable as areas to prevent incursion into your Empire. The addition of mines, plus the boosts to defensive structures, means it takes a lot more planning to grab a system than previously.

[quote who="patkhoo" reply="3" id="1977427"] It would also be nice if the game designers gives me a (strategic?) target to achieve. [/quote] What, galactic domination not enough for you? :P There's plenty of targets already furnished, check out the achievement screen. Or of course you can elect to win by influence, military or even (to an extent anyway) economically. I don't think developer furnished targets work so well in these situations; it's impossible

I'd steer away from the rock-paper-scissors balance and go for more unique factions. A TEC player shouldn't be able to win the game with the Advent by using similar (or in cases, the exact same) strategies. You know you get it right when players who do well with one race find the other races horribly confusing. Makes for much better balance arguments too ;)

[quote]We are talking blizzard here.... They will do an impressive game[/quote] That would be a first :P The problem I've always had with Blizzard's RTS's is that they're too much like going back to the early nineties and playing Dune 2 again. The basic gameplay has been pretty much unaltered since then. I was disappointed with Warcraft III because playing games like Kohan and Warrior Kings had led me to expect a little more complexity from an RTS title. Starcraft II will be u

Always get this problem in multiplayer games :lol: I think a lot of the problem stems because players focus on their 'pet' race to the exclusion of all others. One thing that can help is to add a house rule either preventing a player from picking the same race twice in a row, or else forcing random empire selection. Once they've 'played the field' a couple of times these kind of arguments tend to disappear, or at least have a more sound reasoning behind them.

[quote]Depriving them of resources (credits) slowly but surely will guarantee your dominance in the area. Combine this with hit and run attacks on resource extractors and they'll be lucky if they can build a couple scout frigates [/quote] Not the only benefit to cultural spread. All races get little boosts for fighting in their culture, plus of course you can make a buffer zone of uncolonisable planets for your enemies. Since the Advent can start upping culture right off the bat, you c

It would be a neat idea to have the pirates send multiple fleets proportionate to the bounty on each player (or just one fleet which is then divided up according to bounty). Getting them often has never been a problem for me though. In fact, without pirate attacks I doubt I'd ever be able to field a level 10 capital ship, let alone fleets of them.

[quote] i'm sorry but if u give up after playing 5 hours then the problem is with you and not with the game. [/quote] The "Runtime requested termination in an abnormal manner" after I play for about 1.5 hours, generally just when my Siege Frigates are preparing to turn the enemy capital into space dust. If the AI gives up after an hour and a half it's only fair he's allowed to quit when getting thrashed too :P

I had the same problems, but there's a couple of things which can help: Build a capital shipyard ASAP. The first capital ship is free, and it's more than a match for anything the AI can throw at you for some time. It'll take most neutrals (especially the ones around neutral/unclaimed gravity wells) alone, and doing so helps boost it's experience. Economy wise it's usually a shortage of a single resource that's the problem. Most of the time I end up with barely any metal, but an ov

I've not had a problem with the siege frigates myself. Saw around 10 attack my capital last night, they flew past the turrets but two regular frigates and two bomber squads managed to wipe them out, though not before my capital was down to double figure health points. I do think the AI has too much dependency on the frigates though. I had a carrier Capital Ship in his capital system using bomber squads to harass his facilities (just waiting for my own siege frigate fleet to arrive) an