BaggerX

I'm still concerned about the range of starbases. While they should be significantly more effective against fleets given the new weapon bank changes, those changes will only matter if the fleet gets within range of them. The phase destabilization helps some, but I'm not sure it helps enough. Can't wait to give the new version a shot though. Edit: And since I just noticed that the update is out now, I don't have to wait to try it :)

[quote who="knownalien" reply="9" id="2028836"]Oh, and I am allowed to make witty remarks from time to time too. Sorry that I vented in a way unassuming to your tastes.[/quote] Replace "witty" with "whiny" and you're closer to the mark. There was no value in your post. Nothing constructive at all. Why bother to write it, except to whine about the fact that the beta isn't perfect from the start? Ridiculous.

[quote who="knownalien" reply="3" id="2028650"] I would like to see mines be destroyed, but rather than get money or resources for them, they can slowly give me my $9.99 back for Entrenchment. It is on the road to being "worst expansion of 2009." Kinda sad after all of the awards the game recently won.[/quote] Seriously, it's a damn beta test, and only the first round really too. Holidays have made it take longer than usual, but that'

[quote who="ZimatDeltaHalo" reply="4" id="1995347"]I have a few thoughts regarding mines. First, I agree that mines as they are in this game just don't work as they are and need major reconsideration. I have thought long and hard about this and this is what I came up with. 1. Mines in space should not be used like today's naval minefields. It works fine for mining narrow straits and harbors in waterways on earth, but in a 3D space (even though Sins is n

[quote who="Tridus" reply="20" id="1994970"] Quoting BaggerX, reply 19Quoting Tridus, reply 17Well, 200 mines a system in 50 systems is 10,000 mines. It takes far less then that in the game to murder performance right now. I haven't seen performance suffer because there are a lot of mines in the game, but only when there are a lot of mines in a system that's currently zoomed in. Seems that if you limit the number that can be represented onscreen at once, the performance

[quote who="Tridus" reply="17" id="1994723"]Well, 200 mines a system in 50 systems is 10,000 mines. It takes far less then that in the game to murder performance right now.[/quote] I haven't seen performance suffer because there are a lot of mines in the game, but only when there are a lot of mines in a system that's currently zoomed in. Seems that if you limit the number that can be represented onscreen at once, the performance problems would be solved.

The AI seems to like them. They have a fleet of about 40 of them running around in my current game.

Why?

[quote who="wbino" reply="15" id="1994665"]Mine limits should be like fleet caps not well limits. If someone wants to put 1000 mines in one well and leave the rest of their system undefended that should be their decision.[/quote] Then we're back to not taking map size into account. That's not a step forward. The way starbases and mines are handled now scales with map size. We just need to prevent the spamming of them in a system, both for gameplay and performan

[quote who="Starhound" reply="24" id="1994056"] A hard cap would be bad because after a while every gravity well would have exactly X mines. I can already feel the tedium of microing the mandatory X mines everywhere because it's free. Well much like it is now. And I don't want a cap simply because I want it to be a choice whether to have 0 mines or 1000 mines. Not defenses + X mines everywhere.[/quote] It's not free for TEC. Mines are pretty expensive. Even

[quote who="FomarThain" reply="10" id="1994079"]Also wanted to reiterate that I am talking about having the ship either through a new one or an upgrade, as you suggest, be able to do this automatically once the ship has been built/upgraded. Going through it mine by mine is what I think should be avoided. I think it adds a layer of tedium that hampers gameplay.[/quote] I could probably support having the construction ships automatically go around and defuse enemy mines if they weren't

I don't like the idea of adding a whole new ship for mine clearing. I'd rather see upgrades added for the existing ships like the scout, flak and (TEC) Cielo cruiser that would let you have them work together. Scout spots the mines, and can be upgraded to increase detection range. Flak can be made to take out mines faster, so paired with a scout it could help clear fields quicker. Cielo is used for targetting, so giving it a new ability to let nearby fleet ships

[quote who="Starhound" reply="22" id="1993668"] As a defensive structure they need to cost tactical slots just like turrets and hangar bays. A mine field cap per grav well would be a much worse limitation. What if I wanted to have a system that looked undefended but is actually heavily mined with all tactical slots filled by mines. A flexible cap is much better than x mines / location. It's just about balancing the size/cost of the minefields.[/quote] If you want it to

I don't see why we need anything more than a simple cap on mines per grav well, and some improvements to mine-clearing abilities and AI mine avoidance. Seems like that would solve all of the issues aside from the use of minelayers as offensive suicide weapons, which probably needs more balancing as well. I do think that improvements in the mine patterns are needed too. They need to be much more precise. This would also mean we'd need fewer mines overall to create eff

[quote who="Tridus" reply="15" id="1993445"] Well, you could use the four remaining slots to specialize with millitary or civilian abilities. But a Starbase without the upgraded weapons/armor is a joke. Do you ever leave one without those upgrades in order to give it the ability to be a trade port?[/quote] Currently I would if it was in an uninhabited system that was protected. Once the 1.12 update makes it into Entrenchment, then that won't be necessary since the uninhabit

[quote who="Starhound" reply="20" id="1992917"]Another really annoying thing about mines is that when you give your fleet a move order, the ships make huge freaking arcs left and right to turn around, driving right into visible minefields. You simply can't take your fleet close to a minefield and move away without half the fleet happily suiciding. Other than that, the simplest solution to the mine spamming is limiting them to one minefield per ship or squadron. And making TEC minef

[quote who="Starhound" reply="3" id="1991538"] This is precisely why they need to be increasingly expensive = cost a capital ship crew.[/quote] Nothing you've said really supports the notion that starbases should cost a cap crew. You're totally ignoring the problems that cap crew limitations already cause with medium and large maps. The very same problems that starbases are meant to help alleviate. You're going to put us right back where we started with too few

I agree that the TEC SB hangars just aren't useful right now. The only real reason I even get them at all now is because Docking Booms upgrade is bugged so that buying it is a death sentence for your SB. SBs need a flak upgrade (or even make it standard), and I think that doubling the squadrons to 4 per hangar would make them worth buying.

Mines don't need to be removed from the game, nor do they need to be abstracted. The current implementation has serious issues, but most of those issues can be fixed pretty easily by a simple cap on mines per grav well. The other major issues are the lack of z-axis consideration in mine placement and behavior, the AI not dealing with mines intelligently, and the methods of clearing them either being bugged or simply too cumbersome. All of these things can be solved.

I'm not liking this chain of thought. Fleets rule the game and we need our fleet supply to handle them. If we have to start diverting significant fleet supply or cap ship crews to starbases, then we're right back where we started with too little resources to handle larger maps. This is why games so often turn into a situation where there are too many ways to get around your opponents' fleets and rape their worlds, while they do the same to yours. You can't cove

I think they need to act smarter. You don't want to have 6 of them all fire on one trade port if it only takes 2 or 3 to kill it. You should be able to queue up targets for them, but right now it seems like they can't actually target structures, you can only use the ability, but you can't use the ability for the fleet when it's grayed out, even if one or two of them are ready to fire. You have to go hunt for the ones that are ready and then tell them to use their ability to

Sounds different than the issue I ran into where the base wouldn't fire if you had added the Docking Booms upgrade and the Resupply ability was active. Oh, also, does anyone know what the red/violet "explosions" from the top of the TEC Starbase are? Makes it look kinda like a volcano. Grottenolm85: Screenshots should

[quote who="Tkins" reply="4" id="1988619"]It's less cluttered it allows for more research to be added in later. Allows three reseach abilities to be done at the same time It helps to focus strategies so that if someone wishes to be defensive, it's easier to do that For mod purposes it opens a few doors (very nice!)[/quote] [e digicons]:thumbsup:[/e]

[quote who="Tkins" reply="25" id="1988683"]Remember though, the online community is highly based on shorter (2hr avg) games that are high intensity aggressive games. It don't think it would be a good idea to alienate those folks that want to play online.[/quote] I think it would be fantastic to alienate them if the alternative is to turn Sins into some kind of RA3 rushfest. Err on the side of strategic and tactical depth, not quick games. They can crank the speed up and pl

[quote who="Arisal" reply="3" id="1987616"] One thing that bothers me alot is that ALL mines are visible. Nothing sneaky or tacticle about it. Just send a scout in see a boat load of mines and think ah well thats sucks. It would be cool if the mines were invisible and you needed scouts to umm .... scout them out. To me it just seems weird that they are just locked down until a scount comes along just so you can shoot them down. I think the concept