SpaceDebris

Sins is both a slow game and it encourages rushing. People assume slow game = deep strategy game. Wrong. Playing rush RTS in slow motion, and it is still a rushing game. Sins is slow because you spend most of the opening game staring at the screen to wait for resources to trickle in and ships to move, before you can do anything interesting. Sins is a rushing game because early military build up + attack works. Most research options are bad, and players paying resources on b

Repulsion can be microed to push ships way out of the grav well range. Under a player with good micro repulsion is broken.

Sins feels like a slow game because it takes a long time to move units across the map, and resource pace is slow. Otherwise it is a very fast game. Max early military/econ and attack as soon as possible is what works in this game. Playing around with research is a bad idea when 80%+ of the research options are poor choices. They are there to fill the tech tree.

I'm up for a game. If you belive TEC/Adv is better in a 10 minute game, I'd like to hear the reason why. The resource difference between 1 lab + lv1 research and 2 labs + lv2 research is very large in the early game. How do you expect Tec/Adv to make up that diff in the first 10 min?

On a small map 1v1, a properly played Vas is the strongest race, not the weakest. Lv1 LRM research means Vas LRM spam has a serious resource advantage in an all out early rush game.

As vas: use Kol, 1 Mil lab then mass LRM. A sova with cobalt support can't match the LRM blob. It takes TEC 1 more Mil lab than vas for LRM so you've a temporary advantage, plus local frig factory has a huge advantage over a factory 2-3 jumps away. Scouting is key. Hanger defense, not so much. Some players refuse to scout first so they lose to bum rushed 10 different ways, but that's their own fault.

Sideshow you have good tactics theories, but the Sins game mechanics does not reward the tactics you mentioned. You need to try your theories in the game against massed LRMs and see why they don't work. When LRMs are in a blob formation, all of them can fire on the same target at once and achieve optimal DPS. If you split your group of 10 into 5/5, you basically gives the blob 2 to 1 advantage if you try maneuver while the blob heads directly to you. Trying to hit and run with half

[quote]- Defense Vessel: -Reduced cooldown by 45%, damage reduced proportionally to maintain DPS. [/quote] This may turn out to be a nerf for defense vessels. Since strike crafts go in/out of range often, high cooldown's drawback is less than what the #s suggest.

LRMs turn much faster all cruisers and cap ships. As I have said before, only scouts can turn faster. If you played the game you would have noticed this. If you think flanking is a counter against LRM that's even more of a stretch.

[quote]Uhuh[/quote] Very insightful.

[quote]They turn SLOWLY[/quote] Slowly? LRMs have the fastest turn rate in game except scouts. They also have longest range. By the time your "flanking" ships get in range, LRMs have already turned around and fired first.

[quote]No, flanking means to attack from the side(s). Since LRMs can only shoot directly in front of them, it applies utterly to them.[/quote] They can TURN.

Good changes. I think the min buy price in market should be even higher, 300 or 400. Buying crystals at 200 is a no brainer for most maps. Double LRM jump time may also make sense, in addition to the in grav speed nerf. Siege is still really bad. I never build them in 1.03 and probably wont in 1.04 either.

[quote]There are reasons to flank. LRMs for one.[/quote] No. Flanking means attacking a unit or a formation's weak sides, where armor or firepower is the weakest. None of this applies to LRM.

There is a lot of combat micro management in the game but I find it lacking real combat tactics. As other people said, there is no reason to flank, or to protect your archer equivalents from melee equivalents. Instead, it is all about focus fire and kiting. I run my ships around and kite because it works amazing well at messing up opponent DPS, and it's one of the few useful things to do in combat.

[quote]I think people are just mad because their Javelis LRM Frigate spam isn't working as well as it did before the patch.The game is perfect![/quote] I guess I must be playing a different game. My LRM spam works as well as ever, and TEC Jav spam is even more effective thanks to the new black market change.

[quote]I'm quoting Carbon016 from another thread: I think it was Frogboy that posted on the IGN blog that "A counter strategy should never be more complicated than the original strategy". He also said that "For those people who think building 10 of the same unit and swarming a player’s base in the first 10 minutes of the game is a strategy, Sins of a Solar Empire is going to be a rude awakening."[/quote] That is quite the irony. Due to the black market change, the only viable strat

It looks funny when ships can block each other then try to move around as if in a 2D maze. They mastered space travel but somehow can't grasp the concept of going above or below.

[quote]..If the TEC is spamming trade ports, that gives Vasari and Advent time to do the same. Hello? It's only 1/2 extra science, you'll be behind by a single trade port once things roll around, and then late game is affected by a much greater variety of factors. Once you have enough money to start pumping out frigates nonstop, you run into all sorts of things like fleet cap and other issues. TEC certainly has an advantage with cargoship technologies, but they don't have the best combat ships.

[quote]Try pinging them maybe?[/quote] Do you mean manual targeting? That worked. If you meant pinging for ally, the game was me vs 3 AI teamed plus pirates so that didn't apply there

I saw the same bug in 1.03. I played 1v3 hard AI locked team on a med map. Fought AI and got bored so I went to the Pirates HQ. The auto engage would not target pirate defense/planet, this was for all ships not just fighters.

You are right timing is important. I posted an early game guide a while ago and it talked about when to expect battles. Bascially from #planets/#people ratio + scouting, you can guess pretty well how your opponents will expand, and when and where the first battles will be, and time step 4 accordingly.

You can scout then go to step 4 at any point a battle is coming. In the mean time you also have much higher income to make cobalts.

1. Play TEC 2. Build trade ports: 2 civ labs + 1 research, then build only trade ports. Max logistics then build more. Trash cap yard to make room for more trade ports even if you love caps dearly. 3. Ignore all the research options and funnel all resources into trade ports, except for ice/fire colony. Once 2nd or 3rd planet is trade port maxed: buy 500 crystal/metal at a time. No need for more labs/cap yards/culture/res

[quote]Where were you guys during the beta? A day and half, and already the patch has made the game unbalanced.....Seems people cry "unbalanced!" whenever a patch is released, particularly during the initial stages. Interesting phenomena. No offense to the disgruntled people, just my observations.[/quote] There's unbalanced and there's throwing balance out of the window. This one became pretty obvious about 30 minutes into the first 1.03 game.