Questions/Impressions

My first impressions are quite good. The game is fun, graphics and sound are good (except the 12 year old girl voice of the Advent) but the Empire tree isn't quite as intuitive as you guys made it sound. Figuring out what should/shouldn't be pinned is quite a pain, all the various unit options don't seemt to do anything (I wish there were more auto expanding options instead, like "only expand the grav well you are in").

Also Fleet tactics seem more trouble than they are worth if you have any interest in micro. When more units start autofollowing them around and they drag units from gravwells I wanted them to stay in and any sense of order feels lost.

And after playing for most of the afternoon/evening I can really see the need some of those Gamma people mentioned for buy/sell resources and some form of bounty monitoring on the main screen. I find myself opening those screens at least a dozen times a minute.

I am not as big a fan of siege/colonizing units as I was expecting. Both are nearly useless in battle and must be babysitted constantly, and since they both are only used on planets (and one after another) it feels like a one unit split into two.

There are very few bugs, most of my problems seem to be just due to hard to understand systems than errors. But my Vulkoras keeps dropping Siege turrets too far from attackable targets, and they just sit there doing nothing. Maybe 1/3 will be dropped close enough to a planet to work.

I have a few questions about systems that are confusing me too. My asteroids, even when fully infrastructured, still look barren. Shouldn't there be some little buildings or something to show a colony is there?

It is very hard to keep track of upgrades and research queued up too. Say I want to build a ship, well that needs a new ressearch, which needs a new lab, which needs a planet upgrade first. I tend to have a half dozen things in queue at once and can never tell which is up next/ how many are left (which just makes me add more onto the end until the queue gets ridiculously sized). With all the buttons for us to track things it seems like there should be a way to see our research queues.

Also are resource asteroids considered planets or structures? Becasue I can't seem to get my ships to attack them. Even when the well is empty of all enemy fighters and buildings my ships just sit there and ignore the enemy controlled resource asteroids.

And while everything runs super smooth on highest settings on my 8600gt any AA settings are giving me some stray white pixels around objects. Luckily I can run it on a high enough res to tun AA off, but still kind of irksome.

So good work overall. I'm highly critical of games, and most of these are minor gripes (just snags that kept hanging me up on more than one occasion so far). Perhpas the Empire Tree will grow on me, but I might have to just turn most of it off until a better guide is put up.
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Reply #1 Top

My first impressions are quite good. The game is fun, graphics and sound are good (except the 12 year old girl voice of the Advent) but the Empire tree isn't quite as intuitive as you guys made it sound. Figuring out what should/shouldn't be pinned is quite a pain, all the various unit options don't seemt to do anything (I wish there were more auto expanding options instead, like "only expand the grav well you are in").
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Also Fleet tactics seem more trouble than they are worth if you have any interest in micro. When more units start autofollowing them around and they drag units from gravwells I wanted them to stay in and any sense of order feels lost.
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Try turning off autojoin fleet or don't create fleets with ships in multiple gravity wells.


And after playing for most of the afternoon/evening I can really see the need some of those Gamma people mentioned for buy/sell resources and some form of bounty monitoring on the main screen. I find myself opening those screens at least a dozen times a minute.
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There are now hotkeys to do these operations. We are reviewing new UI elements as well.


I am not as big a fan of siege/colonizing units as I was expecting. Both are nearly useless in battle and must be babysitted constantly, and since they both are only used on planets (and one after another) it feels like a one unit split into two.
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Can you elaborate on what behavior needs babysitting? I might be able to suggest a better way to do whatever it is you are trying to do.


There are very few bugs, most of my problems seem to be just due to hard to understand systems than errors. But my Vulkoras keeps dropping Siege turrets too far from attackable targets, and they just sit there doing nothing. Maybe 1/3 will be dropped close enough to a planet to work.
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Sounds bugged.



I have a few questions about systems that are confusing me too. My asteroids, even when fully infrastructured, still look barren. Shouldn't there be some little buildings or something to show a colony is there?
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There should be space elevators around it.

It is very hard to keep track of upgrades and research queued up too. Say I want to build a ship, well that needs a new ressearch, which needs a new lab, which needs a planet upgrade first. I tend to have a half dozen things in queue at once and can never tell which is up next/ how many are left (which just makes me add more onto the end until the queue gets ridiculously sized). With all the buttons for us to track things it seems like there should be a way to see our research queues.
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Need to think on this one more. It hasn't really been a common issue but I can see how what you described could be overwhelming.

Also are resource asteroids considered planets or structures? Becasue I can't seem to get my ships to attack them. Even when the well is empty of all enemy fighters and buildings my ships just sit there and ignore the enemy controlled resource asteroids.
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Structures. If there are threat enemies around they will ignore the asteroids until the threat is removed unless the threats are outside their auto-engagement range.


And while everything runs super smooth on highest settings on my 8600gt any AA settings are giving me some stray white pixels around objects. Luckily I can run it on a high enough res to tun AA off, but still kind of irksome..
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Known Nvidia driver bug we've reported to them (among others :()

So good work overall. I'm highly critical of games, and most of these are minor gripes (just snags that kept hanging me up on more than one occasion so far). Perhpas the Empire Tree will grow on me, but I might have to just turn most of it off until a better guide is put up.
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Thanks for the detailed report. Even though the beta process is over, we are still very interested in improving Sins :)

Reply #2 Top
OK, after playing for a few more hours I think I understand more of the game, and I can see what was confusing me. Perhaps this will help others:

I have discovered the reason Fleet grouping was confusing for someone like myself (who has had more RTS exposure) is becasue there does not seem to be any way to see Ctrl groups. No little numbers, no pinning of groups, just a bunch of random little ship boxes that get highlighted when the group is selected. The Fleet system uses what would -seem- the intuitive Ctrl grouping placement, being pinned up at the top of the Empire Tree as a special group. Now knowing the difference here I can see how each can be controlled differently, but you have no idea how many times I hit "1" in the past few hours to try and grab that top fleet.

I think the fleet system, with it's autodecisionmaking, will actually be superior to ctrl groups as more people used to it, but it would be a lot easier for RTSers to adapt if we could rebind the keys for selecting our 1st fleet, 2nd fleet, 3rd fleet, etc to the keys 1, 2, 3, etc. But I have been looking through the bindings and unfortunately see no mention of bindings for fleets :(


And I take back what I said about not being able to see research queues, it seems that hovering the mouse over the research button gives a list of everything you have queued up. There are so many different ways to find info ingame I must have missed that, sorry.

But I am still very fuzzy on the UI options for all the Auto-pin things. No matter which UI options I toggle on and off (planet/cap ship/frigate) all it ever shows are planets and their child branches of everythig in the well. I am getting kind of used to it, but the branches are all over the place, so if there is a way to unpin unimportant info like fabricators, labs, etc, while keeping ships please let me know.