1Tiberius1

EA sucks in general, both for the gamer and often for developers. The gamer side has a long documented history; and they form an Axis of Evil with Activision. But for developers, they see their products rushed and released ridden with bugs and are then often times forced to follow a lame monetized DLC scheme that adds next to nothing to the game. EA is the sort that would absolutely love to introduce and enforce a pay-per-play model around the world akin to that used in diff

I would also love to see someone survive against 7 Vicious AI's all teamed up, what with their quintuple resource rate and mega build-time cheats. By the 20 minute mark you should have ~600 ships attacking you at once. On the flipside, if you start them at Easy, build up a defensive line, then save and load the game with them now set to Vicious... That would make for epic battles. Sadly you cannot always rely on replays to showcase maps like

Yeah, very expensive, but they get 4 levels of possible research into it, IIRC. If you did that on an oversize 9 star map, with 4 bases at one star... "All shall join the Unity in time." [e digicons]

I think one of the preset tiny maps features stars integrated within one board, Derelict or something like that. That would provide a simple test ground for the culture thing. E.g. you'd see culture approaching from behind enemy lines since they have a star at their main starting area. Thankfully the Advent don't have Critical Mass(or whatever the TEC ability is called that maintains more culture when jumping over a gravity well). Otherwise slapping 4 SB's with culture broad

Eh? From my experience the AI doesn't use omniscience in Sins. They do actively auto-explore though, and will use flak or carriers to do it in the later parts of the game. If they see something, they respond. So if you're spamming one ship type, and they catch a 5 second glimpse of it, they'll alter their tactics to respond. But it is possible to surprise the AI without them countering if you deny scouting information. Just expect a counter to churn out aft

[quote who="serventa" reply="242" id="2900450"]Is it just me or does that screen shot look like it came right out of Homeworld? If thats the new ship design then this is going to be even better then before[/quote] Sins is inspired in part by Homeworld. The Advent in particular share part of their lore with Homeworld, along with ship designs. The Manifest Dominion artifact is described in Homeworld terms as well. Babylon 5 is another in

Looking at your capital ship ideas again, the big ability that stuck out to me as the 'ultimate' of the TEC ship. 50 shields drained/sec, 10 antimatter drained/sec and 10% shield mitigation drained/sec for all targets within attack range. It's like a super EMP combined with shield mitigation nullification(which is absolutely huge). All for a sustainable at 15 antimatter/second. It would also be hard to ignore the Vasari ship. Having mobile repairs for a cheaper c

I was just responding to the previous post. [e digicons]:P[/e] Frankly some of your capital ship ideas sound just as overpowering, in relative terms. Titans seemed to be pitched as something to end stalemates, not a bloated capital ship. As such, it should be damned expensive, and offer a benefit to match. They're something you should see in team games, and not really appear much in 1v1 games where people will keep too muc

Advent SB's can have something like 20 squadrons already. 2 freebies, 3 levels at 4 each, and a fourth level that grants 6 squads(final level for strikecraft is always more expensive but grants more squadrons). So 24 is only 4 more squads. But perhaps 16 is a better number for the sake of balance. In team games it isn't unusual for fleets to have 30 or more squadrons in them. A single Halcyon alone can field 11 squadrons if it survives to make enough levels.&nbsp

What would you all do if the Vasari were running from a giant space monster? [e digicons]:grin:[/e] Either the Vasari are running from some sort of nano-based tech creation similar to the Replicators from Star Gate, or perhaps something that can manipulate anti-matter as a weapon, or perhaps something which can simply decompose matter seemingly at will and aborb it... So many ideas are out there, who knows...

So I was thinking about what abilities the Titan ships might have, Obviously they're going to be bristling with weapons. I'm hoping their total output might rest in the 400-600 range. This puts them a touch above fully upgraded starbases, but with the added benefit of portability. Someone already suggested from that concept pic that the TEC Titan might have a portable Novalith Cannon function. But it is possible that it has another function

I now demand that the Vasari Titan be a giant space snake!

Sometimes they'll initiate a bidding war if you put bounties on two AI who are set to oppose one another. Of course with locked teams you cannot do that, so expect a thousand raids heading your way(Diplomacy note: until you unlock pirate missions and send a death raid to their homeworld). If you're playing vanilla or Entrenchment, the pirates can be fun to have around. If you have Diplomacy their imbalanced nature means they should remain off unless you're just fooling aroun

Huh... according to that test Cruel gets some sort of small bonus as well. I knew Vicious had build and research time cheats, because if you set them to Fortifier they'll have 150 mines and maxed starbases in all of their gravity wells by the 20 minute mark, if I recall my time indexes correctly. Guess I never paid much heed to Cruel research times. Cruel is fairly fun for vs AI stuff though because it still allows some flexibility in tactics.

Spy ships, eh? I once proposed that Pirate Rogues have an ability like that as part of a pirate overhaul. Basically it would be a channeling ability where a strike team plants explosives on a facility. If the ship is destroyed during that time, or interrupted via the usual interrupt abillities, the sabotage is canceled. Otherwise the structure would go up 10 minutes later.

Did I have a brain fart on that? [e digicons]:O[/e] I got caught up with the Age of Mythology comparison. But yeah... yeah... I'll just be hiding in the corner. [e digicons]:-"[/e]

When someone mentioned a sort of regicide mode with the idea of a command ship, it reminded me of an idea I once had for Sins. Fleet Admirals. Basically each faction would be able to select one Fleet Admiral from a list of 3-5 choices. The Admiral would be assigned to a capital ship and provide a special bonus for all of your applicable units within that gravity well. Think of them as localized artifacts if you like. Their presence influenc

You want to steal planetary population? There are multiple ways to manipulate populations, ships, and planets in Sins, but nothing that lets you steal population. You have to settle for stealing income (e.g. Embargo) or stealing ships(e.g. Domination).

The way pirates are now, they become the strongest faction in the game. And, their stat scaling accrues too fast for players to keep up realistically without compromising their game and inviting defeat from anything else. I hear the next patch will weaken them a bit, which would be nice. I'd like to turn them back on to add a bit of uncertainty to games, but it just doesn't work out that way in standard Diplomacy. Once I saw a standard raid obliterate a fully upgraded

Well, if they're anything like the Titans found in Age of Mythology, they will be game enders. Even as final tier tech, you can expect to see pocket players attempting to boom labs to build one early to coordinate with the fleets of their teammates. I hope all players get a warning when one is built, similar to the announcement of someone else finding an artifact. E.g. "Another empire has begun building a titan." Then accompany that by a special planetary ma

[quote who="SithLordAJ" reply="12" id="2898721"] with the beta?[/quote] I didn't get the feeling TC was referring to the beta. I haven't had the chance to try the beta yet, as I have a saved 2v2 to finish first before loading it (and thus invalidating all my saves). I hear they are weaker in the beta, though some think the initial raids are still a bit strong and that 250 credit bounty might swing the entire game. I hope so, as it would be fun to

Pirates weren't balanced for veteran players, they were 'balanced' to outperform everything in the game. E.g. instead of that epic game containing each other with starbases you could have just paid a pirate mission to smash through their home world while you make a simulataneous assault on their other resource-heavy worlds. Pirates pose more challenge than Cruel AI opponents, who are outperforming players by a 4:1 ratio when it comes to resources. Really only Advent late gam

As Advent I've had raids break through fully upgraded Starbases that had full tactical slot support, including Augmented Defense Grid. Each one of their ships becomes stronger than a fully upgraded capital ship. As for their base, only a TEC's Novalith stands a chance in a game. Otherwise you need a serious Advent ball to clear the defenders, and even then you'll take casualties, and will want to wait outside the visible gravity well while bombers suicide against the super f

I think changing flak accuracy against fighters and bombers would go a fair way toward rebalancing the two types of strikecraft. It might be the only other balancing change Ironclad would consider. In terms of siege frigates, they are indeed overshadowed. I can understand not wanting to make them dominant. But considering how fragile they are compared to cost, and what their role is, they should probably move faster and be even better than they a

Just randomly popping in about the turning thing. If I am understanding the sentiment correctly, people want to see fleets turn on a dime instead of propelling themselves in wide arc? But if I understand the developer's sentiment, they want the ships to maneuver for combat purposes. So would a happy medium be to use a trigger similar to the one for the strikecrift build rate on carrier cruisers to determine whether ships use 'normal maneuvering' or 'combat maneuvering'?&nbsp