Darvin3

You've basically hit on the main problems with the fleet system; keeping units with very different combat roles (particularly speed and range) in the same fleet leads to highly suboptimal behavior as they reform. Carriers especially should never be fleeted with combat units, since they should avoid getting into weapons range of enemies if at all possible. However, trying to keep them separated into different fleets based on unit type/role is a micromanagement hassle due to auto-join. This def

[quote who="phooper" reply="2" id="3675371"]I should point out this is with quick start turned off, they do much better with it on.[/quote] I'm not surprised. I've experimented with the AI and have figured out a few of its "death spirals" that doom it. On low difficulties they can easily get into an upkeep rut. Due to the fact that they don't budget for newly acquired planets the low-difficulty AI's can suffer a fairly notable drop in income for a prolonged period of time after acquir

One thing I love about Sins that I feel other RTS's need to pay attention to is how low-management the economy is. Structures and planetary upgrades require no further oversight once constructed, workers are automated and replaced automatically so you only need to manage them when it's relevant, and unit construction is automatically balanced between factories in a gravity well. This sheds a lot of micromanagement inherent in the genre while losing practically no strategic depth in th

[quote who="Blair Fraser" reply="4" id="3665532"] What are the problems with the GOG version? As far as I know there were only minor issues when it first launched over a year ago but I'm pretty sure they are long since fixed. [/quote] Most people don't bother to update their reviews when the patches finally come out. I have the GOG version and all the issues in the initial release have been resolved.

I sympathize. I've been trying to get back in after being absent from the community for years, and even with a handful of people remembering me and good performance in the few games I have gotten I've largely given up at this point. I need to set aside an entire day to have any reasonable chance of getting into even one 5's game, since it takes quite a while for lobbies to fill and I'm very likely to get booted a few times before I actually get to stay. Even then it's no g

Congrats, glad you overcome your struggles. However... [quote]So screw u to whoever was tryin to make fun of me before. I AM THE GRATEST! [e digicons]XD[/e] [e digicons]XD[/e] [e digicons]XD[/e] [/quote] You do realize a statement like that is inviting people to make fun of you, right? No one was making fun of you in the other thread, they were disagreeing with you.

[quote who="Aaron1138" reply="27" id="3642154"]I too have peaked at the surrendering AI but have found more often that their situation isn't terrible; they just need to hunker down and play defense for a bit. But then again ,I play for fun and not for competition or speed. [/quote] Problem is that hunkering down doesn't actually help all that much in these situations, and in some ways actually makes things worse. Spending large sums on starbases and other defenses leaves you with

The extraction bonus provided by the Akkan is only temporary, and disappears after a few minutes. This appears to be working normally.

[quote who="Aaron1138" reply="23" id="3641846"]ON a similar note, I still see that AIs give up too soon. Is there a way we can toggle the conditions somewhat? Sometimes I just don't get why an AI just surrenders when they still have a large available fleet and several active planets....[/quote] [b](edit)[/b]: sorry for the wall of text. That ended up way longer than I thought it would when I started hammering away at my keyboard ;-) I did a lot of experimentation

[quote who="Sheltom" reply="14" id="3641125"]OK well what about the phasic barrier mechanic? It doesn't work like advertised either because what you can do is take manual control of your ships and tell them to keep bombing a structure even though PB has supposedly 'phased it out' and it just keeps on taking damage. What the mechanic does is simply invalidate the structure as a target for a split second which annoyingly makes your ships stop targeting it. They should just replace i

[quote who="Sheltom" reply="12" id="3641059"]Well I see they made an update for the game but there's still no button to toggle off annoying superweapons and the pirate nonsense is still the same where they attack you every 5 minutes and putting money on another bot player doesn't work to get pirates off your back because the bid is instantly outbid by the bot players and it just goes back on you. It's garbage. It shouldn't even exist.[/quote] Well, most people do turn

Patch 1.85 is available for download on GOG as of this morning, but no sign of the DLC as of yet.

[quote] Added Smuggling Specialization planet development ( Outlaw Sectors DLC Only ): Steal up to 4.5% (1.5% * 3 stages) of global trade income (all players trade income combined) per planet. The maximum amount of global trade profit that can be stolen is 40% across all players. Each stage of Smuggling adds a 25% tax penalty for that planet up to a max of 75%. -This is mutually exclusive with Social and Industry sp

Again, that hasn't been been my experience. Titans are powerful, but starbases still hold their own against them and with proper support will beat the poorly-commanded AI fleets quite easily. Moreover, if the AI's are allied with each other they have no way of getting experience for their titan other than fighting my forces... and I'm not going to let them kill much of anything. It's rare for me to allow the AI titans to get higher than level 2, if they can

My experience has been very different than your's. I recently returned after a relatively long absence, and while I've noticed differences in the AI I haven't found it any harder. It still struggles to handle well-defended choke points, while spending copious amounts of money on highly ineffective defenses of its own, and is terrible about committing to losing battles and feeding capital ships and titans with huge amounts of XP. It still can't handle large swarms of bombers an

Doesn't seem to be live yet for GOG users, but great to hear it's finally coming!

[quote who="Scartch" reply="32" id="3631895"]As far as game play goes, I seem to be doing a little better with Rebellion then original Sins. Sure is a lot to it.[/quote] You're probably getting better ;-)

[quote who="Scartch" reply="29" id="3631695"] Question, if I may: Along with the GOG download came an item called a "bin file". Its about 1.38 gigs. Any idea what this might be? [/quote] I believe the GOG download is split into two parts. The installer is a small download, and the bin contains all the game data that will be used by the installer. If you've successfully installed and can play the game, then you've done everything corre

Loyalty drops when you're under the effect of hostile culture. The easiest way to fight culture is with your own culture. You need 3 civic labs (2 if you're Advent) to research the appropriate structure, and it will produce culture that spreads to nearby planets. You will see that phase lanes become colored with your faction color, indicating your culture dominates. Capital ships can also repel enemy culture, but you want them to be leading your forces so don't rely on them. Cultu

[quote who="ZombiesRus5" reply="11" id="3629456"]When it comes to weapons tech upgrades it's really not worth the research cost for the 5% bump unless you've built a substantial amount of units to support that upgrade. For example research tier 1 lasers when you only have 10 Light Frigates may not be worth the initial investment compared to building another Light Frigate.[/quote] Indeed, and it should be noted that the laser upgrades are by far the cheapest damage upg

[quote who="Scartch" reply="9" id="3629421"] Thank you, but I don't understand.[/quote] What he means is that the normal AI difficulty does not cheat and has no special advantage over a human player. It starts with one homeworld just like you do and has to earn all its money normally. [quote]Actually got to colonize one planet and enjoying myself. Then the enemy ai hit like a swarm of red locusts. Left me thinking what "small fleet" actually meant.[/quote] Sma

Personally, I find leaving planets unspecialized is the best option most of the time. The cost of specialization is pretty high, and as an economic investment it's passable. Industrial specialization is a superb late-game option on a planet that you've completely filled with trade ports, but it only really starts to shine once you're getting close to saturating your logistics capacity. Logistics upgrades are expensive, and you can get way more trade ports in tota

It does sound like you didn't have a whole lot of advanced warning when the Marza arrived. The entire point of the Marza is being able to quickly devastate enemy planets, and it sounds like - even ignoring the Y axis abuse - your opponent was in a position to leverage it very effectively against you. Not having seen the game, I'm not going to comment any further than that. As I said before, I'm not up to speed on the current multiplayer community so I can't speak for e

It's been a long time since I've been in the multiplayer scene, but back then the only Y Axis abuse was mostly considered something in bad taste and not outright cheating. The only thing that was a huge problem was people who exploited the starbase blindspots, which was considered cheating. That said, I think putting turrets around a planet was a misplay anyways. It takes 4 turrets to cover the perimeter of a full-sized planet and that cost you 1000 credits, 300

[quote who="GoaFan77" reply="5" id="3624154"] Rebellion pirates are just a bit stronger than they were in Entrenchment, certainly no where near Diplomacy 1.0 values. I don't remember how they were changed in later diplomacy patches. [/quote] The key learning point was that there was no sweet spot. Even at their insane Diplomacy 1.0 stats they could potentially be stopped on the 15 minute raid by an experienced player. Locking themselves into a head-on assault meant they