theRetroboy

Reply to Werid Computer Strategy in Strategy Sins Forums

Heh. Sounds like an interesting game. One thing you could do is scuttle some of your ships if required to build a large number of carriers with bombers. Also, build a number of scouts, say 10 or so, and send them in, departing from the trapping gravity well at a point that will land them in a relatively open area in the planet, and have them lead the enemy on a chase to the other end of the gravwell. Then warp your carriers in. Immediately shift-select your bombers

Reply to 1.1 preview?? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Given the previously implied scope of 1.1, a timetable of days/weeks from now is actually pretty rapid turnaround. -- Retro

Reply to How is culture conflict calculated? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

[quote]+ is your culture. A++----B Allegiance at planet B immediately starts shifting in your favor.[/quote]I don't believe this is right. I could be wrong, but I believe the culture had to actually REACH your planet before it would start shifting its allegiance. Otherwise, what would happen to a frontier planet with different culture coming in on different phase lanes? -- Retro

Reply to the best caps for what they do? in Strategy Sins Forums

Your question is a little bit unfair because it relies on the gaming strategy of the player and how they use that vessel in conjunction with other ships. Is the player only looking for a one- or two-capship fleet supported by hordes of frigates? Or are you playing with five- or six-capship fleets? Answers will be a bit different in both cases (example: the accelerate-ship Vasari capability is less useful if it's accompanied by a bunch of quick frigates than if it's escorting four other capships)

Reply to 1.1 preview?? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

1. We're waiting for IronClad to tell us. 2. We're waiting for IronClad to tell us. 3. We're waiting for IronClad to tell us. Seriously, we won't know anything until they provide it. There have been a number of threads asking these things recently and the answer is always the same. -- Retro

Reply to The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Oh, I just thought of one other important thing: Trade income does not appear to be affected by allegiance levels at the trading planet. So an AI that spams trade but does not invest heavily in culture buildings should be hurt a lot more by bisecting their trade route as per Dafeaz's scenario above. Dafeaz - that could easily have been because that faction had an enemy faction on the other side of it that was bearing the brunt of its offensive - or defensive - attention. Even H

Reply to Questions in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

It's important to build broadcast centers at or near your further-out planets too. Planets that are two or more hops away from your home planet have a maximum allegiance without them - 90% next door, 80% two hops away, and so on. So if you have a high-resource planet that's four hops away, you're only getting something like 50% of the resources and taxes that it could normally provide because you're so far away from your homeworld. Note that allegiance climbs without a broadcast centre

Reply to Armor is it that big of a deal in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]The trick is waiting until you have a big enough fleet that a weapons upgrade increases your fleet's DPS more than buying ships with that money.[/quote]Largely but not always true. If you have to split your fleet to defend on two fronts, a damage upgrade helps on both of them. A new ship can only help on one of the two fronts. Plus upgrades to hangar craft defenders come with some weapon upgrades. Don't forget to lump those in. :) -- Retro

Reply to How to beat 3:1 or 4:1 Hard AIs? in Strategy Sins Forums

I'm not really qualified to advise because I've never tried 1v3 on Hard successfully. But I do have a question: how many turrets are you building? Enemy AI attacks can be repulsed extremely effectively by parking your defending fleet in a mass of turrets and a hangar (if Advent) that are covered by a regeneration building. If you survive to get a phase disruptor built, and you're playing a race that can further disrupt jumps (e.g. Vasari's colony capship Gravity Warhead), you can make t

Reply to How is culture conflict calculated? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

[quote]Say that your culture is fighting another planets culture your planet has say 10 capital ships above it 2 media hubs and heavily populated. Your enemy has 1 capital ship 1 media hub and a scarcely populated planet your culture will eventually win [/quote] Capital ships only repel enemy culture. They do not produce any of their own. You could have a dozen capital ships somewhere and they wouldn't do a thing to help take someone else over. So it would only be the two enemy med

Reply to The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

mehoo - I loaded a game in progress, started a bidding war between two enemy AI's, and then brought up an enemy tradeship's infocard where it lists the bounty value. -- Retro

Reply to Can we have this battlestar galactica mod for sins? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Okay, you need to clarify what you're asking for. If you're looking for IronClad to put out a BattleStar version of their game, the answer is likely a HUGE "no", because they're a small company and getting the intellectual property license for the arguably most successful SF TV series in recent memory would cost millions. The same would be true for anyone looking to actually make money off of game sales due to the existence of such a mod - the BSG intellectual property rights owners would simply

Reply to The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Excellent analysis. You know, I really think the game model would have been better if a trade ship creates a burp of income if and only if it docks with a trade station. The longer the route it travels, the higher the burp, so greater distance phase lanes would generate a little more income because it takes the trade ship longer to traverse it. I'm really surprised the penalty for having your trade ship blown up is so miniscule. FYI, I just checked and it looks like ba

Reply to Nasty Nasty Trends in Strategy Sins Forums

Well, thanks, but now my brain hurts. ;) I wonder if this can be modded... -- Retro

Reply to On shield mitigation and focus firing.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

One way to maybe do something appropriate is have shield mitigation cap out much higher, and decline MUCH faster. So if it's a frigate versus a frigate, the shield mitigation would be all the way back to 15% before the next salvo impacted. However, if it's ten frigates firing on one simultaneously, the shield would be stuck at a very high mitigation percentage (say, 90%) and the ships would each only be doing a small amount of damage. The problem with this approach is it would encourag

Reply to Please double cap-crew max!!! :( in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

[quote]...there no need to build cap-ships at all - you can just stick to frigs and cruisers[/quote]I'd like to hear some of the better MP players' opinion of how well this strategy works. I'd suggest a couple complementary mid-to-high-levelled capital ships with a supporting fleet of frigates/cruisers is more powerful than that same fleet would be if the extra 100 supply and 600 resources went towards 14 more frigates or cruisers instead. They'll likely get creamed at level 1 if the other playe

Reply to Please double cap-crew max!!! :( in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

I'd prefer not to double the capship size, actually. At least within the single-player game. Managing a fleet of a dozen capital ships is about as complex as I'd like to see the game get. -- Retro

Reply to Nasty Nasty Trends in Strategy Sins Forums

Bump HC and Illum supply. It's hard to spam when your economy starts going in the tanker to feed your fleet. One other option (perhaps the same as reply #1's?) is to bump the supply by a "fleet count" mechanic. If you build 4 illums, that's 6 supply each for a total of 24 supply. But the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth, etc. costs SEVEN supply, reflecting that the ship requires more of the dwindling trace raw materials beyond crystal and metal that are necessary but not counted as inv

Reply to Cap:Frigate ratio; Why build small ships at all? in Strategy Sins Forums

One other point: a level 5 capital ship is easily twice as powerful as a level 1 - just have identical ones face off some time to see the difference. By building a huge capship fleet, you're really diluting any experience they're getting, and it makes it much harder to get them to those incredibly potent higher skill levels. -- Retro

Reply to Armor is it that big of a deal in Strategy Sins Forums

Armor gives your ship an EFFECTIVE regeneration rate increase. Here's an example (not real numbers). Carrier without any armor takes 100 damage of its 800 points. It regenerates one point for second, so it takes 100 seconds to completely heal. Carrier now has armor upgrade. The same salvo that did 100 points of damage now only does 95 points of damage. So now it only take 95 seconds to completely heal. -- Retro

Reply to Help me in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Completing the missions they offer you. Solving two missions from any one player gives you 50% favour; solving three gives you 75%. Offers for cease fire will start coming in after you reach a certain amount of favour. (Not completing a mission loses some favour, but you never drop below zero, so just ignore missions from enemies that you're about to conquer unless they're combat-related and you want the resource bonus they provide) Donating resources that weren't specifically asked for

Reply to Sins of a Solar Empire Post-Mortem now up! in Sins News Sins Forums

You beta tester guys might be missing a key word there. [quote]Vocal [/quote] What I interpreted the stress on this word to mean is that the "squeaky wheel" got too much of the grease that was available, and Sins' creators spent too much effort listening to some of the beta testers who were LOUD about specific features, rather than really [I]intelligent [/I]about them. In other words, it was a Sins team failing because they didn't filter out the occasional input from the beta that reall

Reply to how do you get seven fighter squadrons on a sova class? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

[quote]You can get 7 squadrons because of the Sova's special ability. [/quote]That was probably just a guess. Sova special abilities are: - Rapid Manufacturing (instantly reproduce fighters) - Heavy Fighters (gives fighters armor and damage upgrades) - Embargo (steals income from enemy planets) - Missile Batteries (creates a separate temporary structure that fires missiles, much like a turret) Nothing resembling a 7th ship squadron. Maybe the 7th port is use

Reply to WLd Mod in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Couple feedback comments - some sexy video there, paticularly the last little bit... but... - might want to shrink the impact effect radius by two-thirds and double up the spark element. There's a bit too much surface area there and it looks like it should take out the frigate entirely. Also: - Verify that this won't kill someone's poor computer if a fleet of Vasari missile frigates encroaches. KEEP GOING! This is fun watching you experiment. -- Retro

Reply to Help me in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Agreed - that would really simplify the FFA learning curve... but I wouldn't keep with it too long. :) There's something satisfying about completing a tough mission and getting an awesome resource bonus and keeping your ally against your back in the process. :) -- Retro