lbgsloan

I find pirates are really only useful early game and in FFAs. Early on, having to deal with pirates can slow your expansion and force you to spend some resources on a few extras frigates or turrets. In a FFA, sending a large pirate raid after someone can buy you time to attack someone else. Beyond that, they are easily repelled and free XP for your cap ships as everyone says. Instead of just getting more ships at higher threat levels, they need to get BETTER ships.&nbs

To those saying upgrades need to be cheaper, keep in the mind the current prices are clearly 'placeholders'. I'm sure the devs realize the hanger and trade upgrades are not worth the same as the weapon and defence upgrades. Though in general I agree the base cost/build time needs to go up while the upgrades all need to go down significantly. For something that can be built at 3 labs (TEC version at least), it is far too expensive to be seriously used until you've got a lot o

The asteriod gun is the greatest bug I've ever seen in game. It's too awesome to be accidential; it had to have been an intentional joke by the designers. Can't comment on Vasari; I should really play them once in a while.

I use XP at home and have the sole Vista machine at work (test subject). Vista isn't quite the abomination some people say, but I still just don't see the benefits of upgrading. For work purposes, I don't see any difference in major applications. Some of my utilities don't work quite right in Vista though. For gaming, pretty much all game boxes I've seen list 20% more CPU speed and double the RAM requirements for Vista. For what? DX10? Sure, it's a li

I wish other companies were even 1/10 as efficient as you guys. Major bug -> fixed in under a week. Other companies, you're sometimes lucky to see a patch to fix crippling issues once every 6 months. PurplePaladin, sorry to hear Firaxis has gone done the t

Relic solved this problem with Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. Having built-in victory conditions beyond annihilate easily eliminates the whole 'hide the farm' nonsense. Controlling ~75% of the galaxy should result in a 10 minute count-down timer for the other team. If they can't take some territory back in time, they lose. Fair, sensible solution.

Combined arms seems to be much more important than before. You can counter carrier spam with flak spam (though you need 2:1 numbers now), so the carriers need support to beat the flak. The flak needs support to beat the carrier support, etc. Result is far less mindless spam than before; no more sending 50 LRMs to attack and going to the washroom during the battle. And no more countering 10 carriers with 4 flak. Anti strike craft abiltiies are less of the joke n

A fear of playing online? No, I've played many other games competitively. Sins just doesn't feel like a competitive RTS. In a 1v1 2/3 of the tech trees do not come into play, and above that games will take over an hour to finish. That's totally fine when I'm playing single player at my own pace, or a co-op game with friends. But with strangers I will likely not be able to save and continue later with? No deal. While selfish, I concur

[quote who="Haree78" reply="22" id="1920260"] I keep reading customers being treated like criminals but how? Pretty sure EA wouldn't allow criminals to install their game on 5 different PCs and then give them more activations when the criminals ring them up. Customers are being 'punished', well how? The people being punished are those who buy 1 game and share with all their friends, which I'm sorry but is not legitimate use.[/quote] Why is there a limit at

[quote who="Coelocanth" reply="2" id="1913114"]Yep, I passed on FC2 as well and am getting FO3 instead. Funny thing is, apparently there's already a working PC crack of Far Cry 2, so I'd love to ask the Ubi brass how their DRM is working out for them.[/quote] I know, it's sad and hilarious at the same time. Sad that DRM continues to cause problems for paying customers, and hilarious that companies still think it stops piracy in any way. Though it's not feasible, I'd love t

My friend and I tried played a couple 2v2 games with the new beta. Good stuff! Hard AI is actually somewhat hard now, new graphics look nice, games ran and play smoothly without crashes or noticable bugs, LRM spam can be stopped now. The new quick-market bar is fantastic as well. Great work, and fantastic support for the game Ironclad! Looking forward to being able to play on ICO, and the the first expansion!

Sins just isn't a game I get an urge to play competitively. I've played lots of RTS', and played several I really liked at a serious competitive level (as in pretty decently ranked on ladder), but Sins...just doesn't do it for me. It's a fun game to play leisurely with some comps, alone or with a friend. But I have trouble taking it too competitively when a 2v2 takes over 90 minutes to play. The second problem is that Sins lacks tactical depth. M

For single player games, I like the Stardock system. You can install and play the game out of the box with no keys, DVD, or online connection. If you want updates for that game, then you need to register it online. Fair enough. Patches require time and effort from the developers; time and effort they don't want pirates taking advantage of. It's resonable that they ask for proof of purchase for updates. The only problem with this system is that most games (e

>specify variety, there are bonuses. I made a different suggestion too. you might also check out some mods. as for the non-colonisables: pretty much every one has an effect, just check it out. I think only the junk yard doesnt. the dead roids don't have effects, but can support military structures. I should have been more clear. My gripe is that that effects have no impact on the game, because there is no reason to ever fight at non-planet sectors. You ca

What I'd like to see from the expansion: 1. Better defence options. Fortunately Ironclad heard the community on this one and is doing this in part 1. 2. More interesting pirates. I'd like to see them come with a capital ship late game, and possibility just steal resources instead of bombing planets (you know, like pirates should). Also, an ability to 'direct' the pirates to some degree if you win the bounty. 3. Better AI

Just play with locked teams if you want a 2v2 or FFA. Otherwise you have to make an ally ASAP or the AIs will triple team you. Fortunately, Ironclad said part 2 or 3 of the upcoming expansion will be revamping this part of the game. Hopefully the pirates will be made more interesting as well. I would like to play this online, but I'm waiting for 1.1. I want to have some actual unit choice instead of spamming LRMs. </p

[quote who="psychoak" reply="2" id="1855431"]Yeah, being able to download it any time you want is going a little far.[/quote] Actually, no. In the era of digital downloads, this is important. If I don't have a hard copy of something I pair for, then I better be able to redownload it two years down the road if I decide to play it again. Other than that, yeah this is sad that it actually has to be laid out for some companies. Far too many games fail point #2 thes

Outside of an expansion or mod, I can't see anything really progressing here. There really just needs to be more advanced defences. Expensive so they couldn't be massed, but powerful enough to give even HCs a fight. Starbases and heavy defence platforms. For what we actually have to work with, I would really just like to see defences scale better throughout the game. A turret works fine on a basic frigate, but once LRMS and carriers show up at tier 2/3 they're now useless forever un

The current system of fleet upkeep seems to flawed. Once you buy the supply limit increase, your upkeep will always be at a set rate regardless of how much supply you are actually using. This does not make tons of sense, and makes the later supply limit increases a penalty more than a bonus. Those 'upgrades' aren't free, you're paying a fair chunk of resources to increase your supply limit. Personally I think it should be handled like Warcraft 3 did it. If my curren

Are the graphical updates compatible to bailknight's mod? His mod improves 1.05 so much; it would be nice to have it as a 'standard' game feature everyone has instead of a mod.

Part of the reason online is dead is due to the glaring imbalances in the current patch. Nobody wants to play a game where everyone's just going to the same thing every match. Hopefully the major buff to strike craft and change to repulsion will open up some actual strategy once again. [quote]This beta update will be available only through Stardock's new Impulse platform sometime in mid-July. We will no longer be providing standalone patches for future versions of the game[/quote]<br/

This is spectacular work. It greatly enhances the game experience by beefing up the default 'meh' effects. Seriously, Ironclad should make this an official add-on or something; it just improves the game so much.

To bad this isn't going to matter. There are lots of people hyped about Spore thanks to the trial, who will no doubt run out and buy it day 1. It really saddens me that companies continue to increasingly screw the user with their 'protections' that DON'T STOP PIRACY. I stopped buying from Valve after the Half Life 2 protections (can't play or even install a SINGLE PLAYER GAME unless you're connected to Steam), and I have since added EA and Bioware to this list for severe Spore and Mas

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Sins just isn't really built for online matches. It's hard to find time to play anything longer than a 1v1, and everything I've heard from mp complaints says that 1v1 Sins lacks any sort of strategic or tactical depth. When I hear people talk about rigid build orders and numerous 'builds' that all end in 'spam', I know it's not the sort of game I want to play against other people. I mean, what's the point of 3/4 of the tech tree if no one even buil

Nope. I'd rather have lots of skirmish/multiplayer maps over a campaign. Company of Heroes has long suffered due to a lack of maps, while people played through the campaigns once and never looked at them again. If I wanted a story, I'd read a book. I buy RTS's because I want a game to play.