Darvin3

The problem with pirates goes deeper than that. Pirates originally had the opposite issue; they were so weak that getting attacked by them was often a good thing that gave you additional opportunities to rack up experience. The developers tried various different levels of pirate strength, but there was no sweet spot. Pirates were either pushovers or planet-killers with no in between. If Ironclad does do pirates again in Sins 2, I hope they go in a very different direction fro

The AI can still be a challenge for speed-running purposes even once you understand its flaws. Offensively it basically can't beat well-supported starbases, defensively it can't handle a critical mass of bombers, and economically its expansion is anemically slow. Put it together and a game plan of "grab key strategic choke points, fortify them, build up a powerful economy, then mass bombers" is pretty easy to pull off against any difficult AI in any scenario. However, if you're go

Couple of bugs I've noticed: * The Advent Rebel "Expulsion" tech appears to be triggering whenever friendly trade ships jumps away from the planet, which effectively means the bonus is always active on planets with trade ports. * Neutral extractors in Ice Fields have a refinery quota of 0 instead of the expected quota of 4 that's standard for neutral uncolonizable wells.

It's a bug with the 1.83 version that is preventing the sounds from playing correctly. The developers have acknowledged the issue, and presumably are working on a fix.

[quote who="GoaFan77" reply="2" id="3608610"]Now that we have two communities with the game, perhaps we can direct some more traffic back here. Basically a lot of the general game questions had moved to the steam forum since everyone had to be using steam, and much of the mod stuff is now squarely focused on Moddb. Quite sad really, for us old timers who spent a lot of time here.[/quote] I figured as much. I'll be cross-posting between these forums and the GOG forums any rel

Well, here's what Blair said on the GOG forums . Not exactly a hard date, but it does imply near future. Oh, and hello again everybody. It's been a while ^_^

[quote]In all these discussions, I have never heard someone suggest what alternative should be used for the features Steamworks provides.[/quote] I've got nothing against you for your decision. You have every right - and the responsibility, for that matter - to make the best business decision for your company. For me as a consumer, I tried to support the competitors to Steam. Up until recently, that was you. Now I don't really see any competitors worth

[quote]I think you all are getting a bit too paranoid with Steam... My guess is that steam is only for the multiplayer.[/quote] Keyword is Steam[i]works[/i]. That means Steam is 100% mandatory, and must be running to play the game. [quote]What's with the Steam bitchfest?[/quote] To be entirely honest, I'm too tired at this point to even have the argument again. If you like Steam, that's great, it doesn't bother me.&nbs

[quote]Great, another game becomes steam exclusive...[/quote] Well, if that's the way it's going to be, then this is where I part ways with Sins. [e digicons]:([/e] I'm gunna miss this community...

[quote]The Marza Level 6 Missile Barrage is probably the most powerful capital ship ability in the game. [/quote] It's been nerfed a few too many times, plus "Marza-first" is no longer even remotely viable as an opener, so the earliest point at which missile barrage is feasible in practice is [i]much[/i] later than it used to be. To be entirely honest, I don't think it deserves its fearsome reputation anymore, and is mostly relegated to comp stomps. That's not

First off, the Iconus Guardian has an [i]abysmally[/i] low rate of shield regeneration, to the point at which it's a single-use unit unless you have some way to restore shields. It's too expensive to be treated as a single-use unit, so you [i]need[/i] a Progenitor Mothership to use it effectively. You've also gone for drone hosts too early. The problem with carrier cruisers is two-fold; first they are the slowest unit in your fleet by a significant margin, and

For Vertigo, you more or less spam it at every opportunity against clusters or enemy units. Generally speaking, any enemy force that's worth using Vertigo on is a mortal threat to capital ships, so just use it as soon as the cooldown comes up on the biggest cluser of units within range while maneuvering the Rapture as best you can. Keep in mind that Vertigo has an exponential increase in performance as it levels up. It's somewhat lackluster at level 1, excellent at

Yup, it's a tiny little known detail to Sins achievements: anything you do after you win doesn't count. The Entrenchment expansion increased the number of artifacts from 9 to 12, so it went from being a convoluted luck-based achievement to just being implausible on any of the game's stock scenarios.

A lot of things depend on fleet composition, but support cruisers are [i]incredibly powerful[/i], and the Stilakus Subverter, Hoshiko Robotics Cruiser, and Iconus Guardian are in particular quite deadly. These can disrupt the enemy's ability to attack or retreat and leave them sitting ducks to your forces. Casualties are normal and you should expect expensive support cruisers to die first, but their abilities are almost always worthwhile (the Domina Subjugator is the only real

[quote]It's not true turtling in the sense you build up defenses around your planet and sit there. I would call it more aggressive turtling, in that you push out and colonize a planet close to their home system, preferrably at a choke point system and then backfill the other colonies while building that planet, as your fortress world.[/quote] So passive-aggressive pressure game? Yeah, that's totally different. Novaliths can definitely be used as a

The Kol is a very potent ship for dealing with large forces of strike craft, but it suffers from tyree key flaws. First, it's a one-trick pony so if the enemy fleet doesn't have a substantial strike craft contingent ([i]at least[/i] 20 squadrons) that's not going to add up to a whole lot. Second, the Kol is a late-bloomer, it needs lots of XP points to gain levels and become a substantial military contributor. Third, the Kol is a [i]major[/i] antimatter hog and i

[quote]I was curious, is there much turtling in this game to build up for an ultimate weapon, such as the Novalith? [/quote] Not really; the problem is that turtling tends to result in your economy being smaller than the enemy's, so they will probably reach superweapons first if you do this. The most deadly way to use Novaliths on large scenarios is actually to spend [i]everything[/i] on economy and rely on allies for defense. Build up to a safe income (say 150 credi

[quote]1. How many ships are affected by a single Hoshiko? And do Hoshiko repairs stack? I thought I read somewhere that it didn't but I was just checking.[/quote] The effect lasts 15 seconds, and the Hoshiko can activate it once every 3 seconds, so it can affect a total of five ships at a time. Hoshikos do not stack for effect on a single ship. The biggest reason you have multiples of hoshikos is so that you don't run into antimatter issues, and they can't s

[quote]Personal guess, if advent culture takes over an enemy planet, you should colonise it at the same time, converting all current structures into yours, like a domination on a planetary level[/quote] That's no improvement at all; overtaking a planet by culture basically never happens because it's so slow and there are so many ways to stop it.

Given the huge size of this scenario, I'd recommend using a fleet of bombers. Against the AI, this is largely foolproof if you have enough of them ([i]at least[/i] 50 squadrons). A large force of bombers can usually torch anything in their path, and requires some advanced tactics to counter that the AI just won't pull off. The fact that you lost to pirates indicates to me that your fleet is probably [i]much[/i] too small. It can be tricky to balance fleet and e

If there are 80 colonizable planets, and you capture one planet every 5 minutes on average, that's 400 minutes to capture everything (almost 7 hours) even if you have [i]no setbacks[/i] whatsoever. A scenario this large is going to take a long time, end of story. In any case, your best approach on such scenarios is always [i]lots[/i] of bombers. If you can get about 100 squadrons, you can vapourize most fleets before they even get close. This will torch pretty mu

[quote]but the harmony tree needs a lot of improvement regardless of whether those techs are there or not, and if the harmony tree is already modded (in theory at least) to be pretty good in its own right, then I don't have a problem moving those techs to the security tree...[/quote] But the harmony tree [i]has not[/i] received new content to make it more appealing. The amount of content it would need to receive to overcome this issue would actually be quite substantial.&nbs

The reason Advent hardened defenses, phase jump inhibitors, and augmented defense grid were not moved to the defense tree is because they require Harmony labs instead of Hostility labs. The Advent harmony tree is [i]notoriously[/i] sparse, with very few worthwhile techs. There simply isn't a good case to transfer things out of the Harmony tech tree, which is why these techs remained where they were. I don't know why this wasn't done for Vasari PJIs, though.

[quote]What do you guys think? Suppose im playing against three casual players on a big map and i want to smoke them but want to defend my flank positions effectively and quickly enough with a star-base. Is that viable in this current game?[/quote] No; this is too expensive and will leave you unable to make the aggressive offensive moves you need to be making. Your best approach is to purchase planetary HP upgrades to slow down enemies. They will be forced

I wouldn't actually mind a unit like this. It's easy enough to say that flak can counter LRF, but often times (especially if your Advent or your opponent is Vasari) your capital ship is already dead. Some sort of interception option would be nice, but I doubt we'll see something like that.