stein220

i always scout the system so I don't come in near the mines and typically have my main fleet hold position away from the planet's defenses. take care of the defenders, then have a separate group of scouts jump in and either let them go on their own or manually direct them to minesweep. if i don't have enough fighters, i'll split off some flak frigates to follow them. if there are mines all over the place, have a bunch of scouts and flak frigates jump in a l

one thing I've seen other games do is have a "handicap" setting on top of the base AI difficulty level consisting of various percentages (80%, 90% 100%, 110% etc). If Sins difficulty primarily affects income and some tech cheats, a handicap modifier could affect base weapon damage. Or you could have different modifiers for income, damage, healing/restore rates, etc., and the Easy - Vicious levels could consist of base combinations of modifiers that can be changed in the g

[quote who="Pbhead" reply="8" id="3108757"]I agree. It should. wethere or not it does or not... It prolly shouldnt be castable when the enemie's shields are online too. but.[/quote] that might make it more likely to capture target ships instead of just damaging them. depending on how fast shields are regenerating, shield strength below a very low number might be acceptable.

i'm wondering if pirates get credits for doing planet damage similar to Pillaged War Chest. if so, there might be a a reason to keep bombing since, as pbhead stated, the planet hp will try to come back up. instead of bombs, think of them as very noisy looters.

boarding parties should ignore armor and shield mitigation because they are inside the ship. I don't know if that's how it actually works. i suppose the bulkheads could have internal armor and shields but that's not really what we're thinking of.

If you can't bomb these neutral colonies because of Truce Among Rogues but want to use the in-game map designer (NOT galaxy forge), make sure the militia strength slider all the way to the left so they are as weak as possible and don't have their planets colonized. you have to do this for every planet group. i believe this is the setting that regular random maps use so you should still see terran and desert planets guarded by kodiaks. having neutral colonies

you need scouts to make mines target-able, whether by strike craft or anything else.

This actually does bring up some interesting issues with the classification of objects in the solar system; issues that are still being worked out. There are many dwarf planets that are rounded by their own gravity but are actually smaller than our moon like Pluto, Eris, and Ceres. While there are differences between these bodies in terms of composition and location, the main difference between them in terms of classification is some orbit other bodies and some directly orbit

i really like the advent music (listening to it now actually. yeah, the TEC and Advent corvette voices need some work or I'll have to see if i can replace them with the scout voices (and maybe their creation sound with the static from the TEC broadcast center). just because the ship is small doesn't mean the crew has to be.

maybe phase missiles will get a cooler animation?

ok, here's something out of left field and it's a little involved so bear with me (or not). light frigates die horribly mid-late game so include with their special ability (sabotage reactor, steal anti-matter, and interference) an ECM package that significantly reduces their chance of being hit by any weapon. This would increase their survivability and allow them to retake their hunter-killer role against support cruisers. Give corvettes a stackable "tagging" abi

There is room to krosovs over in the tree so they only need 1 lab.

I think you can just hit the "keep playing" button to get the satisfaction of destroying it's structures and bombing its planets if you're so inclined.

I'm starting to wonder if the AI thinks all of its capitals are "flagships", even if that victory condition is not enabled, and letting them hang back to protect them. I actually did have an unfair AI attack me during one game with some decent sized fleets (killed my level 1 ankylon when it caught me off-guard) but no enemy capital ships were present.

at the very least, there is room in the policy sub-tree to move the new policy techs to tiers 1 and 2 instead of 3 and 4. I'm referring to Pillaged war chest and Savage Fury for the rebels and the fast shipbuilding and Field promotions for the loyalists. I don't think they are so overpowering that they can't be researched right away.

the ice/volcanic colonization techs. but obviously that's for balance purposes and the different races do get different upper level planetary development techs.

my ankylon was fighting my enemy's ankylon and while he was definitely wearing me down, im not sure either of our titans got below 10,000 hp before i surrendered (his ally destroyed my homeworld about 5 minutes prior). Our supporting fleets merely served to level each other's titan rather than do any appreciable damage. I was able to destroy his relatively un-upgraded starbase when my ankylon was maybe 4 or 5 but it seemed to take a while. I can't speak

[quote who="wbino" reply="20" id="3101400"]It is kind of flat. [/quote] Agreed. I don't mind it being a re-purposed transport (why reinvent the wheel if it works?) but it would look better if it had more depth to it. Maybe add a boarding pod launcher bolted on top to give it a distinct look (or something).

a stealth ability would be cool for a scout. yes, there are a lot of standard stat-buff techs but most units have a unique researchable special ability. light frigates have different anti-matter affecting abilities. The Javelis can get splash damage cluster missiles and Illuminators can get an illusion/decoy ability. Vasari have phase missiles on various units and their Assailant can discharge missiles at the expense of turning fast. The support cruisers are actuall

I know I've mentioned this before but Pirates should be a separate AI player and should have a toggle-able difficulty setting with the lowest being "Inactive" and a few more on top of that. Personally, I would like pirates to start out somewhat annoying (a step down from where they are now, even though they are manageable) as opposed to becoming giant fleets of intermittent death when leveled up. However, some people like unreasonable corsair hordes so they should be

I know a Nigerian prince who might be interested in this.

maybe there should be some corvette-specific research to increase their survivability in some way?

if you shift click, you can queue up 5 of any ship. However they will still build one at a time so you will hear the pilots when they're built. 2 at a time from a single factory might be preferable. If you only have a 100 credits and desperately need just one corvette, well, I'm sorry for your troubles. While the rebel corvette's ability of disabling hull regen sounds good, the loyalists "small chance" of increasing phase jump time by 10% seems very sit

[quote who="Mecha-Lenin" reply="3" id="3099072"]Not going to happen since Vasa don't have anti-structure.[/quote] maybe in later beta's we will see how titans fair against orkuluses (orkuli?). If it's a fair match, the Vasari might still be ok if ogrovs and solonus adjudicators (soloni adjudicatore?) can target titans. Also, phase missiles?

The "honor among rogues" tech is a double-edged sword for the rebels. You can expand quickly but your ships won't level as much. It may be the only thing giving other factions a chance. If the rebel titan leveled up quicker, their rush might be too powerful. If you'd prefer to level your ships against neutrals, I'd say play loyalist. If you'd rather eco rush and build a huge fleet early, the rebels are the way to go; you just have to know when t