Comassion

You've got to have randomness - otherwise, you're playing space chess. It might still be a good game, but once one side gets an advantage, the battle becomes predictable. To keep a battle - and indeed, an entire game - interesting, the losing side still has to have a chance to turn the fight around for most of the game. Randomness helps grant that chance, as does the inclusion of other strategic elements. Chess is a good example of a game where that is still possible for the losing side, but

I'm a happy veteran of Close Combat II, III and IV. Those were all great games superceded only by Combat Mission. And since we got on the subject, it looks like they're developing a different Combat Mission games since I last checked. We should probably continue this in PM if you're interested in learning more.

This is a radical suggestion, but I've got to make it in light of Van's excellent post. To make your battles exciting, go with fewer ships and lots more detail. You can implement something desperately lacking in many, many RTS games, an element absent from the genre since the days of Dune and Command and Conquer: Unpredictability. The excitement of an RTS game currently lies in not knowing whether you will win or lose, and each player strives to marshal his resources and unit

You could think of current in-game bombers this way - since a carrier has the manufacturing capabilities to build their own aircraft while in space, perhaps a bomber has the manufacturing capability to build their own bombs in space. As part of making the process cheap and efficient, the bombs are very volatile, never lasting more than tens of seconds. Only one can be constructed at a time, and when launched bombers are not armed - they construct their bombs en route to the target, and

Why don't we use the heavy cannon on a main battle tank to destroy unarmored soldiers? It is certaintly accurate enough, and it virtually guarantees a kill. A minor point - we do use the main cannon on a tank against soldiers, we just load it with a different kind of ammo (High Explosives, for example) that's better suited to killing soldiers. With a straight anti-tank round (say you had it loaded thinking you'd see tanks), a hit =

The space shuttle hull is (I believe) 5 inches thick in some places, and that can shrug off a hit from space debris up to detectable sizes. Anyway, let's get back on topic: We're trying to work out game battle mechanics here. Mass/thrust ratios and armor thicknesses take a backseat in this conversation. Any concievable ship is on the table, but the essential questions is 'is it fun?' Secondary to that is 'is it balanced?' (so as not to ruin the fun of other players or ships)

That would be cool, even just scorch mark decals or maybe some glowing core material (those nukes hit deep man).

Thank you Ch0Arrim. I believe that one day many games of every genre will use much more interesting damage models than the current model of hitpoints, and that given current processing power it's about time we harnessed the power of computers to have units and characters hurt in various interesting ways. IL-2 is a wonderful example if you want to see it done well in an air combat game. Anyway, last night I went on about some combat features I'd like to see implemented. Today I'll add

I think part of what would make a battle really interesting in Sins would be introducing concepts such as combat fatigue and battle damage. I must confess that I'm a little bit tired with the old hitpoint model of damage. For this game however I can see that with the potential number of ships involved in a combat, it may be difficult to implement anything more complex than that. But with regards to capital ships at least, there seems to be an effort to make them more than simp

Sounds good to me. I suggest you start the thread, since it's your idea. For these results to be consistent, you need to set up consistent situations. Here's how: 1. Tell everyone which specs they should post - graphics card, processor, RAM, operating system, driver versions, and anything else important. 2. Provide a link to the same FPS counter program for everyone (Fraps will do). 3. Most important of all, create standardized situations for the game to

We can do better- how about Kaiten or Ohka?

Also, regarding the need to destroy many units at once, Total Anhilliation and Supreme Commander do this well by allowing you to destroy everything you have selected, but with a very deliberate key command of ctrl+shift+k, so you (should) never hit it by accident.

That's cool by me. The only change I would suggest here is to modify the UI graphics slightly so it doesn't appear as though they should be together when you're in widescreen mode. For normal screens, leaving it the way it is looks good.

Ah - the simple solution there is to not get resources back from scuttling a ship. Perhaps the best thing to do is to force the ship to return to a shipyard for deconstruction if it needs to be reclaimed for resources. So your options are 'scuttle' and 'recycle'.

Why? Is there something wrong with destroying a ship that's about to be destroyed anyway?

Ooh, good eye. I'm running in widescreen as well and never quite noticed that the box and the bar were supposed to be connected.

Take your pick of what you want to do on your vacation first - that can dictate the area you want to go to. America is vast, and you can have just about any kind of vacation you want. Scuba dive in Florida, ski in the rockies or New England - if you want to drive, I've heard California has a magnificent drive down Route 1 there.

Thanks, awesome! I do hope something like this makes it in, but even if it doesn't I can rest assured that it was considered and not included for a good reason.

I have a feature request for something that I feel is long overdue in RTS games. I had high hopes that Supreme Commander would be the first to implement it, but I was disappointed (With the lack of said feature, not with the game. Great game.) What I want is the ability to assemble groups of buildings or units and order them all to be built with a single click of a button. It's sort of like customizing a ship in a standard 4x game, but instead you're customizing a fleet or a planetar

Okay, bit of beta-testing to report here: First, system specs: Video card: Dual NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT's, running in SLI mode. Sound: Realtek 97 Audio. System: Windows XP Home edition Version 2002, Service Pack 2. CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ 2.01 GHz, 2.00 GB of RAM. First, a bunch of alt-tabbing to see how well the game handled it. Alt-tabbing while the ironclad company intro was playing caused loopi

BSD = Blue Screen of Death. Quite a serious error, as errors go.

Here here! I'd like to chime in with my support as well - any company that gives this much attention to their customers is worthy of my loyalty.

Thank you Botha - so as of now it's possible, and we have a suggested counter that sounds like it could work. So now (as Yarlen says) we wait and try it in multiplayer and against the AI once the various factions are fleshed out. If it's a tactic that the AI can't or won't beat, we can examine ways that humans can beat it and get the AI to do the same.

Hold on now - all these arguments are premature. First, the comments regarding the beta phase: I realize that this beta is for system compatability, and I'm happy to report that everything runs smoothly and I've had no sound problems. If I encounter them during play, I'll be right here reporting it. In the meantime, I and other interested people can test other things, like this possible exploit. A minor point - this isn't something everyone needs to be testing. This is one

We have a claim in a different thread that Armistice can be made permanent with as few as three Akkans recycling the ability. Furthermore, the theory goes, doing this can effectively make you invincible. However, right now that claim is theoretical. We have had only one attempt mentioned, and that failed. Deadlyshoe has seen a potential problem with an in-game ability. Since we have access to that ability, we do not need to wait until the other races come out to look at it i