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now we're off the friggin deep end. user mods are not a good way to organize a multiplayer community, only the official developer can maintain and distribute a [mostly] bug free standard version of the game. for the love of God, lets try to actually talk about Sins of a Solar Empire. the game that we all paid Ironclad some money for. the version i play is Entrenchment 1.02. and the concern in single player (where mods can be used) is h

thank you very much Ryat, i'm glad all of my argumentation has not been lost on everyone. as i've said before, i have no issue with Missile Barrage being VERY GOOD. vaporizing 25 or 30 of your opponents frigates in 25 seconds is friggin awesome. if that level of power is too low for you, then i think you need to reconsider your idea of what game balance should be. personally i'd go with a target cap of 24, which is slightly more consistent w

well, at high levels capital ships tend to outperform a similar quantity in Fleet Logistics worth of regular frigates/cruisers, so in that regard they impact your income less than frigates. i'm not counting the cost of researching more capital ship crews mind you, which is a high cost in its own right but it is a fixed cost, it doesn't take a bite out of your future income in the same way that upgrading your fleet logistics does. the most straightforward example i

regardless of what you would like cap ships to be, in a game made to your exact specifications, that is not the situation we have. the only reason i bothered to participate in this discussion is because i would like it to focus on real practical ideas. things that actually can be done by Ironclad in an upcoming patch. they are not going to totally overhaul what Capital Ships are. what they can however do is make some incremental adjust

buff everything is a much worse solution than nerf one thing. additionally, the case is that cap ships in this game are like "super cruisers" rather than "giant flying death machines of doom". thats just how it is. that was the vision of the game developers. in the past, when capital ships have accidentally become "giant flying death machines of doom" they have been nerfed. see Cleansing Brilliance and Malice (Malice was completely changed). see Volatile Nan

if you're commiting to an Econ rush the colonizers are the best. thats a different style of rush than a pure Military rush. if thats what you're doing you build the Battleship and go hunt down the enemy cap ship right away, just accepting that you're sacrificing your own economic development to go harass the enemy. again, since Econ rush is generally speaking the most powerful and versatile opening strategy in most games its totally natural to feel a strong draw t

nice post Bobucles. thanks for elaborating on some of my comments.

cap ships make frigates good. frigates make fleets good. cap ships offer strategic weight to a fleet in a way that frigates are almost incapable of. you'd have to bring a wrecking crew of like 10 siege frigs and 1 or 2 colony frigs with a fleet to simulate the strategic effects of bringing some cap ships along. still, you reach a limit on the usefulness of caps pretty quickly. there's rarely much of a point to having more than 3 or 4 c

clicky the thing in the empire tree you wont to zoom to. or use a hotkey if its a fleet or planet you've already made a control group for. then hit the space bar to auto-center it. sometimes it even brings you to the right zoom level. then hit z, x, or c to get to the right zoom level. the whole process takes about 3 seconds. probably half the time it takes to do it entirely with the mouse.

eh, i think i disagree that Advent and Vasari use the colony cap ships as crutches. they're the best choice as first cap most of the time for a very natural reason, which is that at the beginning of the game the thing you are most interested in doing efficiently is colonizing new planets. there's nothing wrong with that. if the Mothership and Evacuator were ALWAYS the best choice for cap ships it would be an issue. but the fact is its very rare for a player to eve

i have 3 points 1) it is not a true statement that the TEC faction is somehow deeply flawed and the only thing keeping it viable is Missile Barrage. the TEC faction has a better economy and a comparable military to the other factions. the only noteworthy point of difference is that the TEC Colony capital ship is not as strong as the Advent or Vasari colony capital ships. 2) any of the changes we are proposing to Missile Barrage are relativel

oh wait, you expected a serious response to a post that consisted primarily of "die complaining vermin. the gamings gods shall smite you complaining demons." care to say something that the rest of us might actually be able to discuss or would you like to draw your flaming sword again?

Advent fleets can absorb alot of damage if you're set up for it. i don't doubt the ability of an Advent fleet to keep the Radiance alive long enough to benefit from the combo. my issue is more that Animosity doesn't seem to work very well. not only is the radius fairly small but it doesn't seem to hold their attention for very long. im pretty sure that they can choose new targets just a few seconds after an Animosity. it also seems to miss ships that aren't curren

in competitive play its common to talk about different "levels" of thinking. 0th level thinking is a novice who doesn't understand the basic strategies. 1st level thinking is a rookie who has learned the basic strategies and is competent at executing his strategy of choice. 2nd level thinking is an experienced player who is able to anticipate or discover which strategy their opponent has selected and then counter it wi

welcome to Sins. its a great game, i hope you come to enjoy it as much as i do. i highly recommend playing through the tutorials to learn the basic game mechanics and interface. the best way to keep your capital ships alive is to send them in slightly after your frigates so the AI will acquire the frigates as targets first. alternatively you can let the cap ship tank the damage, since they are pretty durable. just make sure you're using focu

alphabet soup? care to type out what all those abreviations stand for? SOASE is the only one i recognize.

they tend to build starbases at the jump point where the constructor entered the system rather than where a human player might deem a "good tactical position" would be, such as near his other structures. its a pretty egregious flaw to be perfectly honest. combine that with the fact that they don't seem to actually research very many (if any) upgrades from the Fortifications research path and you have a pretty bad AI implementation of the new stuff in Entrenchment.

[quote who="AvatarCenturion" reply="12" id="2126023"] I know what I am talking about. Do you?[/quote] i didn't ask if you understand what YOU are talking about. i asked if you understand what THE REST OF US are talking about. i wasn't just asking you, by the way, there are alot of posts in here with people just talking right past each other and not even taking heed of the ideas presented by others. a conversation requi

this conversation would be alot better if people actually tried to understand each other. go back and read, then think. then post again when you know what we're talking about.

the AI doesn't ever use the good upgrades on their starbases or the good abilities on their cap ships. they won't Missile Barrage you ever. in fact, its very rare to ever see an AI use a level 6 cap ability. they also never use Self Destruct for TEC starbases, never use mass disorient or meteor control for Advent starbases. never use Frontal Shield or Debris Vortex for VAsari starbases. they seem to be pretty strictly limited and restricted from using the most pow

garv, no, its not that it won't contribute ANY damage to the Malice. it will still send in 30% of what it actually suffered. the issue is that you won't get 100% of the effect of Cleansing Brilliance. if you only get 4 seconds of CB out of 8 then you're not getting the full effect and your result won't be that great.

your argument doesn't make any sense Vespucci. you've just restated the issue using synonymous language. "losing 250 fleet supply from building chaff/filler to eat MB" is the exact same thing as "MB is brutal and kills a huge fleet of frigates every time its activated." i mean, if a target capped MB still deals brutal damage and destroys a huge fleet, how can you even say that thats too severe of a nerf? to be honest i have

important detail from Astax, you have to pick a target that will take all 8 seconds of CB. cap ships, carriers, possibly heavy cruisers if they're already at high enough mitigation, also Starbases and almost every orbital structure. don't pick small ships like LRMs or support cruisers. they'll die after like 5 seconds of CB.

free structures is way too powerful. i think we should just keep the current bonus of free extractors on the resource rocks but instead of having it level up 0/1/2 it should be 1/2/3.

the reason Assailants do so much more damage than Skirmishers is because of their damage type. Assailants do anti-medium type damage, which has good performance against almost everything. it does alot of extra damage to Light frigates and either 75% or 100% damage to almost everything else. Skirmishers do anti-heavy type damage, which is somewhat less potent. it does pretty good damage to heavy armor (the armor type of most cruisers, and als