Will Skyfall

[quote]Anyone building temple of harmony early on a small 1v1/2v2 map really fights the wrong opponents.[/quote] What about the smaller maps where the only readily-accessible non-asteroid worlds are Ice or Volcanic? If you don't build up to Harmony 2, are you supposed to field a game-winning fleet with nothing but your homeworld and 1 asteroid? (Or does that strategy involve taking [i]their[/i] asteroid by force as soon as you possibly can?)

The Empire Tree is your friend. :) You can select any of the units in the gravity well from its icon in the Empire Tree, and then right-click on an enemy unit's icon (also in the Empire Tree). I don't try to select units in the actual display if I can help it. You can also SHIFT+click or ALT+click icons in the empire tree to select additional units, or all units of a specific type, respectively. (Also; if the fleets take up too much space in the empire tree, try cli

[quote]How many of the 9 Cobalts would survive if they had focussed rather than spread? 5? 6? Maybe more?[/quote] If you go with Alacer's tool for results: * 4 Cobalts survive when spread-firing, with one badly damaged (1/8 health) * 5 Cobalts survive when focus-firing, one badly damaged (1/8 health) and one at 1/3 health. I don't believe it's a convincing argument in favor of spread; as a friend of mine points out, however, it's a convincing argument in favor of shiel

[quote]* 8v9 Cobalts, where the superior force is spread-firing: the larger force (SG) wins, with about 4 ships surviving. [/quote] It looks like focus-firing, at least with nothing but Cobalts, gives you something around a 6-7% effectiveness boost. 11 SG Cobalts will beat 10 FG Cobalts, but 16 FG Cobalts will beat 17 SG Cobalts. Numbers, of course, will vary based on the units being considered (health, damage, regen.)

[quote]I have 10 . . . I dunno. Let's say "Flak Frigates." Or fighter squadrons. My opponent has 10 LRMs. I've enabled stacking in my empire tree, so both my force and my opponent's force take up one icon each. I click my "10 Flak Frigates" icon on the empire tree, and right-click on my opponent's "10 LRM" icon. Do my 10 flak frigates split their fire among the closest available LRMs? Or do all 10 flak frigates focus-fire one of the LRMs, and then do something else when it e

[quote]wow that's going to take a long time. And what do i do if there's no planets where I can put media centers?[/quote] I believe that capital ships reduce the presence of hostile culture in a gravity well; so you could park one over the colony in question until enough culture was gone for you to colonize. (Does that work, beta veterans? Or do capships only push back culture on worlds you control?)

1) Do uninhabitable gravity wells (gas giant, asteroid belt, plasma storm) count as wild cards for the purpose of developing your longest trade route? Or does the fact that you can't built a trade port there restrict the length of your trade route? If the latter is the case, does this mean that if you and an ally have a trade pact, but you have an uninhabitable planet or a buffer zone between you, neither of you benefits from the trade pact? 2) Someone said elsewhere on the f

Signs point to [b]no[/b]; I noticed that while my ships has a 19% shield mitigation bonus in my core worlds, one of my partner's ships in her core worlds (under my culture) still had a shield mitigation of 15%. So, barring subtleties that I missed, allies don't get benefits from your culture besides an allegiance boost. (However . . . I've never played Culture with Vasari, so I don't know how I'd read the damage boost on their info card; maybe my partner got her damage boost in my cult

[quote]The best thing you can do is create more positive/constructive posts...and the let the trolls sink into the depths of the forum, unanswered and alone.[/quote] This is the best thing I've read all morning. :) *toasts* I'm wondering if the mix between RTS and 4X gamers here on the forums is contributing to the toxicity; you've got two very different player bases with different tastes in playstyle, from pacing to scope, and [I]Sins[/I], as a genre-bender, tries to compromis

[quote]If you're dealing so little damage that the extremely slow decay even has an effect, natural regeneration is going to overcome the puny excuse for damage you're doing anyway.[/quote] That doesn't make sense; .0125 /s is non-trivial decay, 1.25% a second. In the exercises this thread was running earlier, we were hypothesizing 12.5 DPS as the break-even point: if you're doing more than 12.5 DPS to a ship, you're pushing its shield mitigation up. Most frigates (exce

[quote]I checked application calculations 4 or 5 times and seems its all fine.In case of similar size groups the best tactic is...SPREAD FIRE.Check Yourself[/quote] Brilliant work, Alacer! To check your results against my much-less-sexy Excel spreadsheet, I set your program to 4 ships v 4 ships, 1600 health, 2.75 damage regen. All the numbers checked out completely, up to the moment the first SG ship was destroyed; to the second, with the same amount of health remaining on all

[quote]Using those numbers I find the focus fire group to win, even though this test is biased towards the spread fire a fair amount.[/quote] Durikkan, I think you're right. I adjusted my spreadsheet to assume that each ship heals 2.75 HPs a second (is that what you meant by 2.75 of hull regen?) when actively attacked; this adds about a dozen seconds to the life of the ship being focus-fired, which in turn gives the entire SG fleet more time doing damage. Even so, when every FG ship i

[quote]It does not seem to be affected at all by any currently existing shield mitigation, as far as I can tell, all the way up to the cap, it was increasing at the same rate per shot.[/quote] Fair enough. Aside from the fact that mysoltyspl's calculations ignored the effects of hull/shield regeneration, I agree with his conclusions; the SG group destroys the FG group after losing only two ships; a third is nearly killed. If people want me to infodump my numbers I can do so.<b

[quote]I'm checking your numbers, and they look good. When you factor in the base shield mitigation of 15%, each ship in SG hits its 60% mitigation cap after only 12 seconds of focused fire, and after it has taken 476 damage.[/quote] ARGH! Make that [b]386[/b] damage after 12 seconds. Sorry, Excel formula booch.

[quote]Focusing group (let's call them FG) will be doing 50dmg/s, upping shield mitigation significantly. It's simple series - when you sum it you fill find, that you need: 16 seconds to cap mitigation doing ~545 damage during that time.[/quote] I'm checking your numbers, and they look good. When you factor in the base shield mitigation of 15%, each ship in SG hits its 60% mitigation cap after only 12 seconds of focused fire, and after it has taken 476 damage. . . . but I have

I started a 2v2 comp-stomp last night with my roommate. I'm playing Advent, she's playing Vasari, and we have a Peace Treaty. Since I'm generally fond of the subtle benefits of culture, I throw up a couple Broadcast Centers and watch with glee as my influence begins to creep down the phase lines. Then I notice that when my culture starts creeping into my ally's territory, the allegiance ratings on her planets begin to rise. My roommate's not playing with culture--all of her allegiance

[quote]The First time I tried, they went semi- intelligently, and all decided to spread out their fire (somewhat unevenly, 2 of their 4 targets were maxed at shield mitigation, 2 of the others at 15%, and several other ships not being fired at.I tried issuing the order again, to try to see if they would spread out more, but instead, all of them began focusing fire on a single ship, and continued to fire and destroy one ship at a time, so it looks like trying to use the stacked icons to macro doe

I've been trying to figure out how best to marshal my forces in the Battles That Matter--i.e. the battles where [i]some[/i] degree of micromanagement might be crucial. Most recently, I've been trying to focus-fire on capships, or target the enemy's LRMs to seriously cut down on the enemy fleet's damage potential. I understand, however, that shield mitigation is designed to minimize the effectiveness of focus firing. So it may be counter-productive, for example, to tell my entire fleet t

[quote] More precise damage stats: TEC 44.4 dmg / 13.5s Vasari 76.9 dmg / 13.5s Wait... is there something wrong with the in-game infocards? How can '76.9' translate into a vague '6'? How can '44.4' suddenly turn into a '3'? [/quote] It looks like the in-game infocards list the damage as DPS, or "damage per second." Dividing the amount of damage by (the amount of seconds it t

[quote] Just install and patch it on the other machine the same way you did on yours. No special rigamarole required. [/quote] Nice! Thank you very much. (I'm starting to understand why Stardock's copy protection policy is such a beautiful thing . . .)

[quote]LAN play does not require registration, and you can have two players in the same LAN game with the same serial.[/quote] On a side note; I'd like to use my purchased copy of [I]Sins[/I] to set up a 2-player LAN game on my local network, as part of a devious plan to get my roommate to buy a copy. I've already patched to 1.02; is it possible to use my CD-key to download 1.02 for my roommate's computer, so that we have compatible versions for LAN play? Or do I have to uninstall [I]

[quote] So in a fleet of two capital ships, 30-40 assault frigates, a handful of cruisers, and 25-30 LRM launchers, it's completely balanced that I can completely stomp the Advent Drone Carrier spam - a race that is HEAVILY FOCUSED ON FIGHTERS - with just four or five flak frigates? [/quote] I'll admit that I'm still new to [I]Sins[/I] (have played only one game as Advent); but it seems to me like your hypothetical Advent Drone Carrier fleet could really benefit from a half-doze

[quote]Turtling has always struck me as bad game design. This isn't Stronghold. You win by killing your opponent, not an economic or point victory.[/quote] If this were a straight-up RTS, I would be inclined to agree with you; but in a 4X game, there [I]is[/i] such a thing as a "economic or point victory". Sometimes multiple such paths to victory: technological research, an overwhelming economy, or enough diplomatic clout to get you (or your culture) declared Supreme Leader. M

Awesome. What constitutes "strong enough"? Is there any quantitative measurement of the amount of culture in any given point of space? I really, really love the look of the phase lines turning your faction's color, but I don't know how to translate that into "strong" culture. Any suggestions?

Tangent question: A friend of mine told me that you can't colonize worlds inside someone else's culture. Is that true? If so, can I use culture as area-denial, by flooding my enemy's space with my culture and then destroying his colonies?