However, that means you're missing a lot of the complexity of Sins. I realize Sins' diplomacy model is rather primitive, but I really like how it makes me manage my overall team as an [B]empire[/B] instead of just making it a big collection of gold mines, vespene gas and tiberium. -- Retro
Note that you can't skip items from left-to-right in those two trees - you have to research the first box, then the second, then the third... even if the second or third is coloured indicating that you have enough resources to buy it. (Ironclad should correct this.) Enjoy the game! -- Retro
I'm not sure most of those apply to Sins. There is no "stealth mode" in the game at all - once you have a ship in a gravity well, you get sensor information on everything in it. Sins defaults to "all guns blazing" unless you tell your ship using the orders panel to hold position and it's not in range of an enemy. Sins autoattacks the types of ships that your own vessel does the most damage to when different armor types are present, and I'm not sure what defensive combat is. Not trying
You need to build some turrets, essentially. They're big and tough. It's generally a pretty good idea to try and lure the enemy forces closer to the turrets with your local ships so they'll get chewed up as they attack you. If you can time it so you outbid your opponent just before the first waves launch, you'll save yourself a lot of grief. As for economy, before the first pirate wave triggers, you should have had sufficient time to build a capital ship and take over an astero
[quote]I am - but sometimes it would be nice to put something at a reasonably important planet that you know will be able to hold up an enemy advance long enough to get your fleet there to support it and beat back advance.[/quote]A hangar and regen bay in the middle of a cluster of turrets does this just fine against AI. The problem with seriously buffing defense is that it will drastically slow down the game and encourage turtling. -- Retro
Agreed. Sins is a complex game and the default setup for a two-player game throws a lot of variables at the new player. As an example, it sounds like you didn't try and outbid your opponent on the pirate screen to send their forces at the enemy instead of you. A good set-up to try is a four-player map where you have one ally AI locked and pirates are turned off. Best of luck - the game is worth the investment in learning to play, and hopefully you'll be able to come back here a
There's two ways to increase it and three ways to slow down its loss from enemy action. To increase, either purchase the homeworld infrastructure on a planet that's more central in your empire (which will "move" your homeworld status to that planet), or build propaganda buildings to maximize whatever it can be based on its homeworld distance. To prevent enemy culture from taking it over, you can either build propaganda buildings there, place capital ships in orbit (they deny a percentage of inc
Agreed. Boballen, highly recommend you play with autoplacement turned off. A hangar and regen bay in the middle of a cluster of turrets is a good AI defense (although of course that won't work well against humans). -- Retro
Don't feel too bad - it is a bit complicated. 1) Find your sins information directory (this is not the game directory). If you're running XP, it's likely here --> start at c: go to /documents and settings go to /[yourcomputerloginname] go to /Local Settings go to /Application data go to /IronClad Games (if you don't see this, you selected the wrong User directory above) go to /Sins of a Solar Empire (Yourcomputerloginname is "User" if you never crea
Did you click the camera button in the upper middle part of the screen accidentally? That's the one that removes icons so you can take nice screenshots. -- Retro
Katoran, the game is designed so that the player that is the most powerful becomes the target of attention of the AI's, causing them to ally with each other early. Because (I suspect) Sins is coded so that every player MUST HAVE at least one enemy at all times, Sins is satisfied in a 1v1v1v1 unlocked game that the human player is that enemy, so its factions will end up ganging up by default if the human player doesn't establish a ceasefire with one of them. The whole thing is solved by
I really can't answer that in detail, ke5trel, because I don't really know where IronClad's head is at with respect to 1.1 and I don't want to confuse wishful thinking with accuracy in my predictions. I would guess there will be a few interface tweaks to make the already quite-navigable interface a bit more flexible and informative, some buffs to some of the weaker capital ship powers, and some significant balance efforts to tone down the heavy cruiser/illuminator spam-path for the mult
That's more 2.0-level than 1.1. Geez. Stealth alone is a HUGE gameplay change, and balancing would take another complete beta test. Personally, I'll be happy with anything that enhances the gameplay, new textures included. -- Retro
There's also the pirate ship power-up that removes credits. You could create an ability that is always on, and permanently associated with every ship and that costs so many hundredths or tenths of a credit a second - kind of like an upkeep drain that is specifically based on fleet size. Would be a lot of work to do, though. -- Retro
That's because achievements in general are ridiculously annoying. :) The mere existence of that achievement was one of the reasons why I thought that there wouldn't be duplicate artifacts. :) -- Retro
Sorry, due to the edit button once again disappearing, I can't fix it. But the last part of #2 above should have been as follows: [font="courier new,courier,mono"] *....*---*---*---* ..../........... ..*- [/font] -- Retro
1. It boosts your economy and theirs too. Think of it this way: you're helping yourself and ONE enemy build and research stuff faster by making more money. That's good if you're in a 3-player map because generally you are better at spending your money wisely than the AI's. If on a 10-player map, it's MUCH better to give one player and yourself an edge than keep all 9 enemies on the same level. [Note: if you want to be a backstabber, dump the excess cash into bounty on your trading partner. ;) A
That's interesting. I was going by an educated guess based on the interface - it *looks* like it should support only one artifact of a kind at a time. Geez, imagine if you found three of the "stronger weapon" Kinetic Intensifier artifacts... "I take out your Sova Carrier with my Cobalt Frigate, so HA!" :D p.s. http://www.soasewiki.com/index.php/Artifacts - might need an update now. See the last paragraph in the Exploration section. -- Retro
More info: the longest-chain gives an additional .1-credit income per chain-link per second for EACH trade station in your whole map. So if you only had two trade stations, your bonus is pretty small if they're next to each other (.1 x 2 = 0.2 bonus per second) than if they're not close. But if you had eight trade stations and your longest chain is three, that's (.3 x 8) = 2.4 bonus credits per second. If your longest chain is five, it's a bonus of 4.0 per second, or [I]1.6 more free credits per
You need the trading posts in each intermediate gravity well to get the trade route length bonus. Any gravity wells in between them that have logistics slot capability but DON'T have a trade station break the chain and you don't get the longest-path bonus. Note that a "dead asteroid" counts as an interruption, and they can be a real pain in the ass to a trader economy. If your chain of planets looks like this: terran-asteroid-ice-volcanic-desert, your chain is five. But if it's like thi
Many capital ships support multiple weapons, and the Advent Carrier has beam weapons that fire simultaneously to two different sides. The Advent Illuminator can fire a frontal bank and two side banks. If you have an Illuminator in the middle of an enemy pack, it will definitely fire beams to either side. -- Retro
I don't think the game's random map generator supports placing two identical artifacts, and there wouldn't be any doubles in the maps the game comes with. I'd expect it wouldn't stack, you'd just get the bonus from one of them, if having two doesn't outright crash the game. -- Retro
Can I award a negative bajillion karma for that horrid horrid pun at the end? :) P.S. I bet such a game would [I]rock[/I]! -- Retro
Yeah, I noticed it too. It may be a similar problem, but I also noted that skins on debris are missing - you can play the capital ship explosion to see this. Dunno if it's something I configured incorrectly or not. -- Retro
What a ROCKIN' little mod tool this is! Once I figured out that I had to remap all the image location files to the storage locations on my drive, and that some of the various default filenames that come up associated with the stock effects don't actually exist and have to be renamed, it was fun to get in there and start fooling around. -- Retro
