pndrev

Yep, I can confirm this. Happening to me as well.

Yeah, but a single line or character limited would be nice to have.

1. This game isn't Starcraft. 2. Different maps have different ressources, additionally, asteroids are randomised, IIRC. I played games where everything was balanced, games where I had crystal coming out of my nostrils and games where I had metal in abundance. 3. You might try to jump them ungrouped and only have the last jump perform as a fleet. To be honest, I haven't had that problem yet, my fleets mostly moved cohesively and spent very little time charging up for a jump.<br

Use cinematic mode (in addition to ctrl-shift-y which disables the empire tree, the UI and the remaining icons). There are also values for icon distances somewhere in the gameplay.constants or the individual ship (planet, building, ...) entities, but I haven't had time to play around with them yet.

I never leave these settings on application control. You just have to remember that some games are having problems with adaptive AA (ATI users and SupCom), or that the higher quality AA filters (controllable through the ATI CCC) may degrade the performance.

While I do love the occasional eye-candy the games I play most aren't visually stunning. - GalCiv2 - Sins - Il-2 (hell, that one's six or seven years old!) - Dominions 3 - Steel Panthers (MBT, WW2, WAW) On the other hand, I have a couple of games that I played for a few hours and then lost interested because they were repetitve, shallow, boring or not running properly on my system (Core Duo E6600, 2Gig RAM, HD2900XT - 'no slouch') - Supreme Command

I'd include it, just to be on the safe side. You never know who may want to cause you trouble (needn't be Stardock themselves). A friend of mine once got sued by Games Workshop (Warhammer) because he used the nickname 'Khorne' in online gaming.* The typical 'screenshots taken from the game, models, game etc. property of Ironclad / Stardock, no profit intended' should be enough. I'm sure a mod could help you write something if you PM them and ask nicely. *The whole thi

An excellent idea. Blogspot is the perfect place for this, so I'll be watching your progress. As a shameless plug, I did the exact same thing for Oblivion with it's open-ended gameplay. Sadly I lost interest after several months, but the blog is still there if you want some ideas for your own. [link="http://daysofoblivion.blogspot.com"]Days of Oblivion[/link]

[quote]10 times turn rate for all ships Ships move ~3 times faster, and accelerate much faster Research and resource collection ~50% faster[/quote] [quote] if this game is to ever become competitive the upcoming patch needs to be something like this.[/quote] If the upcoming patch is anything like this, I know that I and quite a lot of people will stop playing or just mod the speed back down... At least if changes like those are made for all speeds. If would be

AFAIK there is no real technical limit to stars and planets. With the (unmodded) fleet cap however, it may become impractical after a certain size.

The default mapped key of 'print screen' doesn't work on Vista. Simply go to the controls tab and assign a different key. (I used F12, which is unused and located quite conveniently for easy access.) After that, there will be a screenshot folder in the Sins directory (user/appdata/sins... where replays and mods are stored)

Random no pirates. ;)

You can actually load a map with no AI enemies (just click on the symbol left to the AI settings). You instantly win, but get the chance to keep playing. This way you can find your way around the UI and basic empire management without being attacked.

[quote]I was going to post on the possibility of a Wing Commander mod, but I wasn't sure if there were enough gamers around who remembered those glory days! Good to see there are a few left...[/quote] Oh, we're around. I always thought the series went downhill after or during WC4, so I'd prefer the mod to be about WC1 and 2, mostly. I still have a complete mission and ship guide lying around somewhere...

It'll probably take some more time until mods of that scope are released. At the least until we have the full modding tools.

Since I'm currently starting on my own gameplay mod (mostly for my own taste), I have a question about how mods and game updates are handled. I suppose when IC changes the entity data, we would have to update all our modded files. So how do we get the 'templates'? The modding tools come with a clean set of the GameInfo, will this be updated with each patch as well, or do we have to hunt down the changes ourselves?

Hm. Seems like a short attention span to me, if you loose interest in a game after just two months. I'm active in a Steel Panthers PBEM league, and usually a single match will take that long to play...

There are a couple of very good ideas in there. Since I'm planning my own mod (basically what I always do is look through several gameplay mods and mix'n'match for my private mod), I have to ask: What files did you edit to change the default focus fire? Is it entity based or is it a global constant?

I'm still playing Dom3 and it's much older than two months (published 2006, IIRC). So, yes, SoaSE will last more than those two months, especially since I don't even have the time to play except on weekends. Take into account the patches and updates Ironclad / Stardock will doubtlessly publish and you're looking at a reasonably longer lifespan than your average game. And two months I would consider a terrible short life for a game anyway. Take a look at one of the best simulato

Did you get the research speed modifiers to work via the gameplay constants, or did you edit each research directly?

If you spend several hours playing the game, I'm sure a few seconds of skippable video footage won't hurt you. It doesn't even have to be a video, it could equally be a scripted camera sequence ingame, flying past your victorious fleet around the last enemy planet. That alone would be better than the rather anticlimatic screen right now.

Excellent table, deserves a sticky!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was looking at exactly the same values. I think the problem may be that research / build speed already is set to 0.0, with normal and fast games at 1.0 and 2.0 (or something similar). Thus, slowing down would mean negative values, which probably isn't handled by the engine. On the other hand, I've seen negative modifiers in other areas of the gameplay.constants, so in theory it should be possible.

Low - it's also colour coded. The value is your rank, e.g. you're first in economy, third in research etc.

I see. So basically, while the gun / missile platforms are weak (and too static), hangars and carriers should do a better job at defending planets? Of course the best defence is a strong offence, but I'm a turtler and builder by nature. Guess I'll just have to adapt my defensive strategies a bit. ;)