jugglingjon

[quote](1) Single player campaign (2) Random events (giant space worms, plagues, stock market booms, ancient ships located, etc.) (3) More varied planet types. (4) Super-capital class starships. (5) starbases that can be placed in neutral territory (grav wells with no hostile planet or starbase). (7) larger explosions (8) Multiple Victory conditions - such as controlling 2/3 of the planets, etc. (9) Ground assault ships that let you land ground troops to takeover a co

Vasari, their technologies suit my play style best.

Am I totally on the wrong track, does it have something to do with resources recovered from scuttling your own stuff?

There isn't a very good explanation anywhere in the game for how Vasari Salvage technology works. I understand it has something to do with recovering resources from destroyed capital ships and orbital structures, but I can't tell when it's doing it, or see any influx of resources when my capital ship is near destroyed orbital structures or capital ships. Also, the first technology is "improved" salvaging; is that to say that you start out with some sort of salvaging to begin with?&n

I came up against this last night, carriers took care of it pretty well. The problem is that you have to tech up one level beyond LRM to get the carrier, but once you do, because of their mobility, the carriers can destroy a disproportionate number of LRM frigates. This is especially true if they don't go after the carriers themselves. I also had the sova carrier as my capital ship, so that added another 5 fighters to my fleet as well.

I do this sometimes too, it's absolutely devastating to the enemy economy to have an embargo equipped carrier in a home planet's orbit. In the beginning of the game, you're effectively doubling your credit income; it even makes killing the enemy's home planet counter productive. Does embargo steal metal/crystal income too? It doesn't seem like it does, but I can't tell.

I also think a campaign would be nice. The campaign is normally a good way for people to learn the game, by introducing new units gradually and extending more features to the player over time. It was really valuable to me in a game like C&C3, and it's more fun than the trial and error of figuring things out in a skirmish. Plus, it would be neat to experience the stories of the factions a bit, as of now it's just kind of sitting in the manual and seems like an afterthought. To

One time the AI sent about 15 of those planet destructor ships on a suicide mission through my defenses to kill my planet's population. That was pretty surprising. Then it happened every 5 minutes in every game I've played ever since, so the novelty wore off.

One thing I like to do to at least cause as much damage as I can to an enemy fleet is jump into their planets in two halves. You use the first half to start the fight and draw their presumably bigger fleet to the very edge of your side of the gravity well. Then the second half (presumably making your total fleet bigger) jumps in, and if they run, they have to run all the way across their own gravity well to their own side; and you can shoot some of them down as they run. You won't get

I try to grow my fleets as much as possibly by rallying ships to them directly from the factory. But if want to change them at all, you're right funny things can happen if you just create a fleet again on top of the current one. It seems safer to un-fleet and re-fleet with the new ship, it's a hassle though.

The AI surrender feature is a great idea. Love the game, looking forward to the patch's new AI.

You could disable the black market for a random period in the first few minutes of the game. That way it would be unpredictable, and harder for people to be sitting there waiting for the crystal market to open up. While that wouldn't negate the effect of the initial crystal purchase, it may discourage people from trying early in the game because of the hassle.

I feel what Vilgan is saying, I played a particularly long multiplayer game the other night, and it took at least 45 minutes to nail down the last player who was on the run and just started planting new colonies everywhere. It was excruciating.

What about positioning? If I attack a capital ship from a certain angle, like the rear, is there any sort of damage bonus? In many games that's the case.

If you build a lot of hangar defenses, it's very hard to build up diplomacy with a faction. What seems to keep happening is that the AI's scouts just wander throughout the map, and eventually they all cross through your territory. The hangar defenses are very good at taking out those scout ships, and that constantly knocks down your diplomacy rating. It's not really something that you can prevent, unless you sit at your base watching for scout ships the whole time. Or tell them not to attack

So how many of those people that you wrote a guide for have been creating online games? Last time I checked there were 6 games running and a total of 280 people sitting around. Now I'm not begrudging you for trying to help people, that's great and I'm glad that people like you are stepping up; but no matter how eloquently you write a port forwarding guide, the vast majority of gamers will either never read it or still not understand it. I'm also sure you don't intend to defend a status quo, w

I am listening, I understand that it's a peer to peer multiplayer system. And that it's not working because the people hosting the game, because despite still being a "regular player", they have additional port requirements. You ignored my point, that Ironclad could set up some peers (exactly the term I used), that have port forwarding set up correctly to host the games. That's not changing a thing about the network coding. That's just acting like the players are expected to. <

You say that the game would have to be completely rewritten for Ironclad to keep a compliment of accessible, hosted games available? I could buy 10 copies of the game myself, and host 10 games of Sins without rewriting a thing. That would triple the activity of Ironclad Online alone. Hosting is the weak link in the chain of this game, why can't Ironclad set up some dedicated peers that host the games? If I can do it, so can they, and the cost wouldn't be prohibitive. It seems to me

Sins of a Solar Empire is a great game, and the multiplayer is really fun too (I have never in my life played a 4.5 hour match of anything with anyone until a game of Sins last night); but this multiplayer port problem is crippling, and it needs to be fixed soon or people will give up on ICO and the game won't build up any multiplayer following while it's fresh. The port problem isn't new, I have had the same problem on systems like battle.net in the past. However, these days it's b