Spatzimaus

"The idea is to have a secondary way to win the game other through sheer conquest" This sounds nice, but it immediately makes me think of similar systems in other games. The "Diplomatic Victory" in Civilization and its kin was really just a different way of phrasing the "conquest" victory; you'd almost never win it through actual diplomacy, you'd win it by conquering more than half the world and being a majority voter by yourself. So all it really did was eliminate that "m

[quote who="LikeTheWhirlwind" reply="78" id="2368944"]Envoy Cruisers have diplomatic immunity during their normal travels between embassies and cannot be attacked.[/quote] Like the others, I also hope there's a way for Envoy Cruisers to be attacked. NOT a way to suddenly get hostile on a single empire's envoys, I mean a sort of declared "Closed Borders" option where you flat out refuse to give diplomatic immunity to any other empires; diplomats don't get immunity just becau

[quote who="CenturionJixra" reply="11" id="2358917"] (2) They just can't think of anything to add in for a third expansion, but I doubt that that's the case since it seems like they'd think of something as long as there were still money to be made. [/quote] Just because they can think of things to put into a third expansion doesn't mean that they SHOULD make that third expansion. There's a point at which a game feels complete, and any new major systems begin to feel tacked on.&n

[quote]Spatzimaus, what are your reasons for not wanting to play it in online multiplayer? It sounds like you're ready for the online game, so if you're seeking a greater challenge, Ironclad Online is something you might want to explore.[/quote] That depends how you define "greater challenge". Is a 1-on-1 against a smart opponent more or less challenging than a 9-on-1 match against relatively dumb opponents? It's an entirely different set of skills, which in turn mak

It's amazing that someone would continue to rant for three pages after a developer came out and flat-out told them they were wrong. But hey, that's half the fun of the Internet. I almost never play multiplayer, for a variety of reasons. I, like 99% of the other Sins players, play single-player games. And I'm GLAD we don't have a campaign to play; those tend to be really boring, with almost half of the missions acting as "tutorial" levels to introduce you to a new uni

It's not as hard as it sounds, once you get the hang of the game. For instance, whenever I play now, I almost always play the same custom map: a single-star, 115-planet (5 pirates), 10-way free-for-all. No locked teams, and I play Vasari. Basically, a typical game will have 3-4 "front-line" systems where, if you put starbases in them, you'll be safe; while the AIs have a resource advantage on Hard, the player will be able to claim more systems before you hit that inevitable

[quote who="Vitamin J" reply="8" id="2127635"]You might also try playing against more than one opponent. This assures that you'll have at least a couple full fleets to deal with.[/quote] Doesn't help. I play 10-way FFAs against Hard AIs, or 6-way FFA against Unfair AI, and win constantly. They produce huge numbers of fleets (so that their upkeep is clearly up in the higher techs, which makes sense since those are CHEAP techs), but only make small numbers of capita

I play only Vasari now, after I realized that they were the best race by far for the type of game I like to play (10-player FFA against Hard AIs on a 115-planet map). They're definitely NOT underpowered, by any means. Here are the high points, as I see them: 1> DEFENSIVE MOBILITY. Phase stabilizers allow the Vasari player to quickly shift his fleets to where they're needed, making them far more able to react to attacking enemies. On a large map, it's nearly

[quote quoting="post"] How the hell do you create Vasari Orkulus Starbases I haven't found a single ship type in the Vasari ship types that can do it?[/quote] As the poster above said, Vasari colony frigates do it, instead of needing a dedicated ship like the other races. This is very handy for we Vasari players, as you'll have a couple colony ships roaming around in the early game, they become obsolete once you have a couple Space Eggs (because unlike the o

You can do this already, by editing the .galaxy file you're using. In there it has starting resources; on my favorite custom map, for instance, I start the players with 200 extra crystal, so that you're not obligated to immediately purchase crystal with your starting cash. Obviously not as convenient as a UI toggle, but it's there.

> The Vasari get a tech that reduces their ships' masses, which I'm assuming improves their acceleration. It's bundled with the third set of armor upgrades, tier 6 I think? Basically, the first armor upgrade (T3) is +1 per rank, the second (T4) is another +1 per rank (so +4 by this point), while the third is +0.5 armor and -4% mass per rank IIRC. > "Faster star jumps" and "faster wormhole jumps" may not be in, explicitly, but since you start the game not being able t

[quote who="gotyaoi" reply="24" id="2080605"]I know what you mean. In the earlier betas, I'd focus on starbases at my chokepoints. With the new AI behaviour being a bit more aggressive, this becomes completely impossible, as no matter how nice an early game starbase is, two AI fleets teaming up on it will take it down. Makes early game fleets more of a priority.[/quote] Actually, no, I found out over the weekend that this isn't completely true. I'll give the details of the games

If you mean your custom maps, you'll need to fix them to be compatible with Entrenchment. To do this, do the following steps: 1> Go to the Galaxy folder. In XP, this is usually C:\Documents and Settings\(you)\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Galaxy\ 2> Open each .galaxy file in Notepad 3> The second line of each file will say "VersionNumber 2". Change the 2 to a 3. 4> Save it. 5> ???<

Also, make sure you're running the right executable. I made that mistake once, running the vanilla Sins client, and I wondered why the ship-building icons were in the wrong places... it took me a minute to realize I hadn't started Entrenchment. (They re-odered the icons to Capital/Frigate/Cruiser for starbase reasons.) The one you want is "Sins of a Solar Empire Entrenchment.exe", with a different icon than the original one.

It's tough. Unless you want to place a new starbase in every single planet's well, the Vasari have to use a lot of little tools that all add up against a starbase, instead of the single designated anti-starbase tool of the other races. The nice part is that many of our ships have offensive abilities that are good against a single target (the subverter, or the Skirmisher's researched Interference ability, or the Kortul's Disruptive Strikes passive), especially if that target depend

Generally speaking I tend to go with Deflector shield, especially against the AI, but it really depends on the situation. Starbases have a hard time regenerating health, especially a starbase in a key chokepoint system under continuous attack; even if the amount of healing isn't too huge, a defensive starbase gets great use out of the debris cloud. While the deflectors are great on defense against the AI, a human opponent (or an AI who gets lucky) will surround the starbase and hi

Also, I should point out: while this patch invalidated old custom galaxy map files, there was no actual change to the file's format (unlike the previous time this happened). Go into the .galaxy file with Notepad, change "VERSION_INDEX 2" to a 3, and save the file. It'll still work.

Wasn't it said a long time ago that the second expansion would be diplomacy-related? [quote quoting="post"]I think the next expansion should include espionage, getting planets without having to use a fleet. Piracy will no longer pay as the areas thicken with defenses and they will probably hire out as mecenaries to support fleet operations.[/quote] Personally, I think it should go the opposite direction. Make pirates a real, persistent military threa

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="14" id="2074929"]Yeah.. they reduced deployment time in hostile wells a bit for beta 3, but it's still a little long when you factor in upgrade time for them to not be paper-thin.[/quote] Last night I played my first game of the fully-released Entrenchment, and they actually addressed this! There's now a tech upgrade at tier 7, I think, that reduces build times in enemy wells by 20%/40%. There are also a couple new tier 8 upgrad

While I'd like to see pirates have capships and torpedoes (or capships that have torpedoes?), what I REALLY want to see is the Pirate Base wells buffed up. Minefields. Their base should act like a buffed-up starbase with lots of hangars. That sort of thing. Right now, they're just far too weak; once I get to the late-game, it's trivial to send one of my 4-cap fleets in to clear the whole place out with no risk. And that brings us to another issue: tech. P

It's not a bug. Number of jumps isn't as important to travel time as total distance; if you were to look at exactly how many seconds it'd take to travel the two routes, you'd see that the route it did take was clearly superior to the one you thought. In the first case, the key is where you hit the grav well on that asteroid belt at the bottom; you enter it, and then turn and leave from almost the same spot, so very little in-well travel needed. If it'd taken the upper rout

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="10" id="2074852"]They changed its first weapon upgrade (that unlocks the anti-structure weapon) to build in 25 seconds instead of 60 [/quote] Which is great and all, but it takes two minutes to build the starbase in the first place, if it's in an enemy well, so losing 35 seconds on the first upgrade isn't enough to really help. That change, back from beta 2 I think, was in effect a huge stealth nerf to the Vasari. I said it before, but

Benjist, he didn't misunderstand you; you were clear, but you were just wrong about how the game works. Extractors in neutral wells have ALWAYS been invulnerable, whether their owner was an ally or an enemy. You could never blow them up with ships, you've always had to capture them using colony ships (TEC/Advent) or scouts (Vasari), although you could only do this to enemy extractors (can't capture an ally's extractor this way). It didn't matter whether the extractor was cla

[quote who="Noa12390" reply="5" id="2073696"]at least 7 to 9 stars and 300 to 800 planets[/quote] And how many weeks does it take to play a map of that size? Seriously, I get exhausted on a 100-planet map, which is why my typical game is done on the 69-planet map I mentioned. (I've reached the point where I almost never play any other maps in offline games. Large enough to make rushing not viable, small enough to still be playable.) Anyway, do the math.

It's random, but that 15% is one of the first things I change on my custom maps. I usually set it up to 25%, which on a decent-sized map is enough to guarantee all artifacts by the late game. (My most commonly-played map is a custom 69-planet 6-way FFA against Hard opponents. I also modify the starting planet cluster and starting resources.) Likewise, the default chance of a planet bonus is 40%, and I usually up that to 60%. Planets are just more interesting wh