Alexboculon

Even at peak hours there are generally around 100 or so players online, and between 0 - 3 games getting started. If it takes 5 minutes to find a game that you want, it will take 10 more to fill it up, then maybe 10 more after that to choose teams using the super-slow pug method. I've had days when I spend 45 minutes or an hour trying to join games that end up not starting, and ultimately fail. In short, it takes a LOT of patience to play online. My general strategy is t

I just made a huge realization regarding why Diplomacy doesn't make much sense: YOU CAN'T USE MOST OF THE GAME'S FEATURES ONLINE SINCE 99% OF GAMES ARE PLAYED WITH LOCKED TEAMS. That seems pretty simple... All the intricate relationships you are supposed to work on are totally irrelevant, since almost nobody plays FFA online. Diplomacy is just Entrenchment with the added complexity of using pacts now... </p

I really think the idea of buying it just to support the company is ridiculous. How about I buy things based on whether or not they are worth money? I already paid full price for both Sins and Entrenchment, and I don't feel any obligation to donate extra. If the game isn't worth it, I won't buy it out of pity. Just like DirtySanchez, I have done my part talking up Sins to other people, encouraging them to buy. I only do that for games I like. I'd be happy to pay $10 for

THe problem is just that there were already barely any people online. If any significant split happens, with some choosing to get the expansion and some choosing to stay with Ent., there would be so few in either group that online play would essentially be impossible. I'm certainly not buying it just to play against comps all day...

I've been playing Entrenchment online, and I'm worried that if half of the people switch over there won't ever be available games in either. I'd buy it if I honestly thought everyone was playing Diplomacy, but I don't get that impression. If only a few people do it, and it just draws people away from Entrenchment, I am more likely to just stop playing Sins entirely. This whole micro-expansion thing was a terrible idea.

People have been saying this from day one. The caps are not impressive enough, and it sucks that huge battleships can be destroyed so quickly by a handful of frigs. It sucks even more that a level 10 battleship needs like a full minute to destroy a single light frig fighting 1:1. I totally agree, but this is just never going to change.

same problem. ICO = lame

I just wanted to add my opinion on this: Your problem was your fighter/bomber balance. I know people have said it before and you said you wouldn't use bombers when they have fighters, but the bottom line is that you are wrong, and that's why you lost. You could have easily wiped out all his fighters even if you were balanced ~half and half, since as his fighters chase your bombers, your fighters would be cutting his down while taking no losses themselves. Before long, h

I think the answer to starbases is almost always strike craft. For that reason, Advent have a huge advantage against starbases. It's evened out by the fact that Vasari have the mobile starbase, and TEC have the ogrovs

Unfortunately, Sins has been a particularly NOT user-friendly online gamec from the start. Where warcraft and starcraft are basically idiot-proof for getting online games to work, in Sins you need to have a pretty advanced understanding of port forwarding to make it work. This is slightly better now that they introduced alloy (too little too late), but most of those 500,000 people you mentioned already made up their minds. Add to this problem the frequent mini-dumps that used to occur

It's pretty obvious that anyone can create as many accounts as they want (this is a bad idea anyway), but I'm guessing there are really very few (1 or 2) people out there who have the time to troll Sins. Some common names I've seen are Ban King and "Ignore Now Bitch" and "Ignore Now Bitch"0 and Sins 101 or "Sins 101" Probably all the same person. Remove that one person's license to play, and the pro

ignore helps, but we need BAN. Simple as that.

This is a serious problem with trolls eaxily being able to sabotage games, but it's also a problem for general people who get upset (but otherwise wouldn't be trolls). E.G. you kick someone because they are not a good fit for the bakance of the game, and they get mad and keep joining. It is impossible to stop them from re-joining. A simple ban feature would fix this. The ease of making multiple online accounts makes it worse. Bans s

It is pretty frustrating when someone joins a game online just to spam it with 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ... There is no way to stop them. If you kick, they can just re-join. We need a simple ban feature. It's not asking for much!

[quote who="Ur-Quan" reply="12" id="2064583"]All I gotta say is: LAUNCH FIGHTERS.[/quote] haha, awesome. Star Control II was the greatest game ever made.

I'll just add that for all you guys who are too scared to play online, you shouldn't be. Compared to most other games I've played online, Sins has a much lower general level of average skill --probably because it's still a new game and there aren't many players out there yet. Obviously if you are new you are gonna get clobbered, but I'm saying that you will be on par with average players faster than you think. I'd say 10 games or so online and you will have learne

now!

Cap ships are currently very important for two reasons: A single cap ship can go a long way to kill strike craft if it's the right one. and While cap ships are very weak for the money, they are a much better value than siege frigs. Therefore, if you plan to do any bombardment at all (obviously you do!), you'll need caps for the simple reason that Siege frigs are a horrible horrible waste of resources. For the record, I wish caps we

I noticed. I still think that having multiple expansions options will cause fracturing, not prevent it.

$10 is about what I expect for new content at this point (although why anyone would volunteer to pay that money months and months ahead of time makes no sense to me at all; also, it's kind of BS that an online-only release that obviously cuts costs does not pass along any savings to the customer...). The point of business is to make profit after all. But... I'm not clear on how these 3 expansions will prevent fracturing i

I agree too. However, there have already been many many threads on this topic, and it is fairly obvious by now that this issue is never going to be addressed. The upcoming 1.1 update will certainly not make any changes in this area (since the 1.09 beta does not), and it is unlikely that there will be any significant balance changes after that in a free update --the next one will cost money and be labeled as either an expansion pack or Sins II.

On one hand this obviously makes some sense, since explosions generally do more than zero damage when they happen right next to a ship. On the other hand, consider the way damage is handled in this game: even highly advanced energy weapons with a direct hit only do a very small amount of damage to ships' shields. With that in mind, the random bits of shrapnel and non-focused explosions of a ship blowing up nearby seem like they would do even less damage. What's the point of ev

[quote]Ouch....I stand corrected. Thanks for the tip 5i1. Guess it's been a while since I played as the TEC. [/quote] Regardless of the Marza's ability, it's still important to think about caps because you get one for free! Also, although you are generally right about the idea that frigs are a better value, and caps are easy to focus-fire, they are still important for one big reason: Caps can siege. If you are afraid of wasting money on a ship that is a bad valu

I definitely agree there should be some way for "flipping" to work. In my experience even getting enemies' planets to zero allegiance at all is very hard, and can easily be stopped if the enemy gets even a small fraction of culture stations compared to what I'm using. In situation where they don't do even that (i.e. fairly often for unimportant planets...) I think it makes perfect sense the planet should change sides --with a percentage of the orbital structures. It just doesn't make s

You know, I have an Nvidia 8800 too, and I've noticed a bit more flickering on the beta too. Nothing really bad for me, it just went from perfect no flickering, to now I notice the screen flash white once every few minutes. Like you said, I have no idea how to take a screen shot of this issue.