I hate haveing to go past stars it's just a pain in the royal butt. More options for that could help.

In addition i've been asking for the longest on how to create my own custom civilization. I was able to in beta 2 but with the complications that were added to compress files i am no longer able to.

So the easiest thing to request is another civilization to play instead of tech it's getting boring.

Or you could atleast hint to us how to make the pirates selectable in single player.

More explanation for what your issue is could help.

I think he means the extreme gravity of stars.

a minor suggestion:

I like the ship overview we get when we hover over fleet supply. I would like something like that to be visible for allies in team games. it gives you a better overview of how well they are doing and what ship types they might be lacking when you decide to combine your efforts for a campaign.

Yep, exactly what I meant. Thanks

another small idea:

a garrison order by which ships in the system shut down their phasejump drive. the extra power is then diverted into shields and weapons systems giving them a slight boost on said attributes. it takes a few minutes to fire the engines up again, so its not a defensive strategy without cost, as a player bypassing your defenses can effectively ignore them.

maybe its too much turtle promoting, but it would be a nice option and if the boost isnt too insane, it shouldnt break the game into a defensive stalemate.

I like this idea quite a bit. Perhaps detailed empire info could be available when you over over the empire in the diplomacy screen. If they're your allies you would see all of their fleets, planets owned, incomes, etc. If they're your enemies, it would show what you currently have intel on (basically, compiling everything your scouts have visited, like it does now with a counter going on how long ago that was scouted).

The game is already quite fun at this stage of the game. Though it could use a little more varity in units. For being a 4x game, it seems to be using the scale of a 4x but everything else RTS. (Leveling up ships and all is part of most RTS, in fact most RTS allow all ships to level, and many allow them abilities and such). I really hope they add some design variations, like you can have this style of ships with this race or something, or at least let us color our empire/name our capital ships. (Or even name different classes)

Gameplay-wise maybe have pirates be more dynamic, some strange events that can happen to planets, more defensive ships, doctrines (so your forces will focus more one direction or another), maybe a focus ability for planets (like focus on military production, taxes, etc, etc...). Also please do something about loyalty, maybe start the losing of points two jumps away. Or allow some kind of structure/research to lessen the effects. Being far away doesn't mean the people hate the Empire by default.

I was surprised to see no engine upgrades, so ship speed is a constant. (Which is to say rather slow) I would like research to be more varied, so even when two players are the same race, they can be different (One with faster, heavier armor, the other with harder hitting armor, and better sensors).

Still an amazing game, I just hope it grows up a lot before launch.

good thinking, no reason why current intelligence collected by scouts and raiding parties shouldnt be compiled into a decent report or enemies too.

maybe apart from the items you mentioned, it could list minimum civilian and military tech level based on known research station. if you scout properly and regularly it could help keep track on what their fleet is theoretically capable of and possibly consisting of. tech level could also be infered from structures built, i.e. if a refinery is built then civ level is at least 5 and so on.

you could also start listing techs researched, based on observed ship characteristics, but that would get too complicated I would say. keep it fairly simple, an overview like a combination of the empire tree and the fleet cap composition and the bits of extra information.

I am aware this does dive a bit into espinage which was iirc not planed for the final release. but dont forget that a forgeign advisor is a typical tbs feature and very useful in a game of such proportions.

as there is a thread about the technical programming possiblities of mobile factories I should still ask

are we going to see mobile factories, like homeworld styple carriers? a cruiser or larger sized vessel that can at least produce frigates at say half the speed. it would be cool for allied games if an allied border planet is far away but you still have a force stationed and want to reinforce him. or in larger games it would be nice to have a more dynamic supply lines.

I imagine a problem that you could keep it at the grav well border and jump it out as soon as enemies appear, which would imo make it unbalanced, so you could do something like "production mode" (where production mode can only be activated in the area where buildings can be placed) and "transport mode" and take it a bit to change from one into another. hence you cant move and produce at the same time and you definately can't just run it to savety in an enemy attack.

Some feedback gathered from my last several games, mentioned in pieces in other threads but I figure combining it into one post would be good.

Phase Jump Inhibitors:

Right now, the inhibitor stops preventing jumps into friendly territory as soon as the planet it's on is destroyed. I think it should be allowed to prevent jumps as long as the structure itself is still standing, since logically regardless of the state of the planet, the next jump in is a friendly system which is exactly what it's supposed to jam Plenty of this in Multi's 4-player FFA replay from Sunday morning.

Random maps and phase lanes:

Sunday evening's replay that Multi posted as well. I'm sure this is known and I imagine we're playing with a fairly limited selection of maps now, but still, the random generator really, really messes up phase lanes when it adds planets to a random map to accommodate more players. Our 9 player game had such weird phase lanes that my homeworld had a direct route from another part of the map, and there was quite a lot of very inconvenient criss crossing.

Larger maps that don't need to add planets should be fine, but there are no large maps with 1 star that 10 people can play, so the only option is to do random medium and open up the slots. I'm guessing that more maps will be added, but at the same time maybe something can be done to improve random generation, because other than the phase lanes, I had access to 4 terran planets all along 4 jumps in one direction..

Yea it is extremly slow passing by a star by the time you pass the gravity of a star you could of lost half your empire.

I think anomalies or mysterys could be a great addition that way you can uncover star gates (Super Gate) which i guess they call it when ships use it.

That would fix delayed time to pass a star.

I think in part that's the idea. Stars are meant to be more strategic points, not just another planet with a shinier texture. Since on a lot maps stars typically have access to the innards of empires, high gravity for them becomes more of a necessity, as it gives a player a chance to rally a defense before their homeworld is attacked, assuming they keep a close eye on the star (as everyone should).

I'm late to the Beta testing, only on my third game. I'm very impressed with Sins - It has a lot of the fun of a RTS game without the horrible, repeated clicking. There are two odd things in the gameplay that I wanted to point out. In the first two maps it seems like the other player has a small force (2 or 3 frigates) at all nodes adjacent to mine right from the start. They always smack down my poor scout ships. It just seems odd to me that the opponent would have such a presence in the system already, when we both would presumably have to explore first. And if the opponent has already explored the system, why hasn't she invaded my starting planet already, before I had the chance to build up and pose a threat? The other is maybe a non-issue, but I'll mention it anyway. If left to their own strategery, the unit AI does a cool tactical job. However, I found it really makes a battle easier if you just select all of your units and have them all fire on a single enemy capital ship, one at a time, until they are all gone. Then you can leave your guys alone to mop up the little frigates and cruisers on their own. The computer AI doesn't do this, and there isn't any sort of penalty for it (like damage from friendly fire or something) so it really seems a dirty trick to me. Or, maybe its just the wetware advantage over the AI. Very impressive game! Thanks!

I know what the idea is but it sucks lol, by the time i get out the gravity well i'm asleep. If technology was available in real life like that you probably wouldn't even go any where near the sun.

If you look closely, you'll notice those are cleverly labeled "local militia" -- they have nothing to do with your opponent, they're just the local forces of the planet, defending it from foreign invaders. Like you (Or your opponent)



What, phase lanes that connect from planet to planet, with only stars going to other stars? You bet your buttocks we'd go to the star if thats what it took for interstellar travel!



Personally I prefer if you FF on enemy frigates first, then take out capitols after they're without their friendly unit support. Its all a matter of opinion. And unit AI is going to get improved, come the beta that actually is interested in gameplay.



Shield mitigation is supposed to discourage this approach -- the more damage you do to a single target, the less damage is actually done for as long as its shields are up. The "Shield mitigation" factor is the % by which damage is reduced before being applied to shields.

I just thought of a (semi) clever Lore reason for why ships need to be next to a star to jump to another star system. Perhaps Phase Drives need the extra Antimatter boost from being next to a star in order to have the power to jump all the way to a distant star.

Another technobabble reason could be that only stars provide a deep enough gravity well to be linked up by Phase Drives over those distances.

I think the reason would be the second... the first is a tad wimpy... and if it were the case you could design very large ships that would simply store enough anti-matter to fuel a fleet for a one way trip to the smaller planetoids... which would perhaps be such a surprise as to entirely screw over an empire.

I think that was pretty much the reason decided on, once upon a time

Basically, to justify Phase Lanes, the fans came up with the idea that gravity wells of sufficient size could stress the fabric of local space between them, creating a "lane" where ships could travel using FTL drives. Stars, with their much larger gravity wells (their own, plus that of all orbiting planets) are the only objects capable of interstellar travel. Asteroids, asteroid belts, and the like, could be explained away as "remnant rifts" -- places where something else stressed the fabric of space to create the lanes. Some asteroids might have been a planet once, before getting blown up, or the plasma storms are actually an interference pattern where multiple lanes cross causing improbable and unpredictable shifts in physics.

I am hoping it will be possible to sell resources through a transaction screen to both allies and enemies. I know you can already donate now, but selling resources would be nice.

I'd love the selling of resources

Agree completely! It would also be cool to be able to have different prices for allies/normal free-for-all black market.

I guess you'd have to have an option to set a limit to resource reserves you want to have at your disposal (so that it wouldn't all be bought jsut when you need it most)...

Which is why such things are hard. I'm going to guess that any such system would either have to be a really complex to handle increasing costs of given resources as you run lower on supplies, be annoying in that you have to indicate a given "minimum reserve"... that makes you miss out on deals you might have wanted, or (most likely IMO) be more like diplomatic trades: "I want 300 crystal, will pay 1000 credits"

so i was playing yesterday when i realized that i now controlled half the galaxy.


i have 150000 crs. 20000 metals and 10000 crystals. 10 caps, 12 Kodiak's, 40 l. carriers. the three big fleets that i ran into had no chance. probable because of my fighting technique.


it was nice at the beginning of the game when that 20 ship fleet showed up in my star well. i say mine because i had just conquered my system and had put my fleet in the star well.

at that time 5 caps 20 cobalts, and 20 l. carriers. so their fleet didn't stand a chance. i don't even think my caps got to fire.


so now what do i do .

crush the pathetic dissidents?