My complaint about the game
from 
Sins Forums
Sins Forums
Maybe I should have said complaints? I am not sure. It basically comes down to this - you go on for x amount of time and you have a fleet that should be able to dominate the galaxy and more planets than anyone else. Then suddenly you get hit by 80 ships. No problem, except instead of fighting you, they run right past you to bomb your planets into oblivion and then repeat the process for the next planet. Even though you have maxed out planetary defenses they make no difference whatsoever. The game advertises having an epic scale, but it doesn't feel like
running a star empire so much as a gang of thugs with spaceships on a small scale.
It's stupid. No other way to put it. Having been on the internet before I know a whole bunch of idiots are bound to come forward and say "Well, here's how you compensate for these bad aspects of the game by doing even stupider things than the AI!", but I think it's better to think of why this happens and since stardock releases patches, try to fix it, instead of coming up with stupid exploits for a stupid aspect of the game.
First off, even if you unloaded every single nuke on earth today it would not kill everyone on earth, in spite of what most people think. Not even everyone in the US, probably the most heavily targeted area. According tot he US government, more like 30% of the populations. Wiping out a plant is going to be pretty tough, and it's not something that should take two seconds. It would be much better if the most common way to take out a planet was to have to actually send in ground forces to occupy it and have it so that close battles could rage on for a very long time if not enough troops were sent to take the planet and no invasion would go completely smoothly. As it plays now, they can blow up my planet in less time than it takes to destroy 1-2 of my defense platforms. That's just ridiculous. It's like having it take a week to sink the bismark, but the planet it's on can be destroyed in a day or two.
So to fix this part I would suggest a couple things.
1. Unless the player has some super powered endgame weapon, taking planets should require either a ground invasion or a LONG period of bombardment.
2. Have noncapital ships have only a tiny effect when it comes to bombardment - helpful for ground invasions but not huge by any means.
3. have some defense types that simply have to be destroyed to even approach the planet, and beef up the damage defense platforms give out by a factor of maybe five.After I build up these big defenses I always wonder what the point was. The AI runs right past them, blows up my planet in about two seconds, and moves on without engaging my fleet or defenses, and my fleet should be able to take them out in a heartbeat...if they would fight me directly.
Another big annoyance is the range of things. What? So these ships are all completely selfcontained and can just roam the stars at will, then? Just building 2-3 scout ships means you can have the whole map scouted out in hardly any time at all. What's to stop you from just spamming enemies' capitals constantly? Nothing. The problem is, that's not really very strategic gameplay. It's broken gameplay. It's a feature that makes no sense, breaks gameplay, and missings a good opportunity for interesting game features.
Building in a maximum range for your empire would have more benefits that stopping the odd gameplay breaks, though. It also gives a cool dynamic - range can become a serious advantage. If you can threaten stars behind the enemies' front lines in the endgame that could, well, end the game. It makes for an interesting research area, and if certain stars are simply unreachable if you don't plan ahead or if you blinly raze every planet imaginable then it puts some actual strategy into this strategy game, which is what it lacks.
The game has a lot of potential and I find myself strangely compelled by it, but after a few hours the same things happen every time and I just end up quitting the game in disgust. And like I said, this is not a thread where I am asking for game help. I can see how to work around these flaws, but they ARE flaws. Huge ones which ruin an otherwise very good game.
It's stupid. No other way to put it. Having been on the internet before I know a whole bunch of idiots are bound to come forward and say "Well, here's how you compensate for these bad aspects of the game by doing even stupider things than the AI!", but I think it's better to think of why this happens and since stardock releases patches, try to fix it, instead of coming up with stupid exploits for a stupid aspect of the game.
First off, even if you unloaded every single nuke on earth today it would not kill everyone on earth, in spite of what most people think. Not even everyone in the US, probably the most heavily targeted area. According tot he US government, more like 30% of the populations. Wiping out a plant is going to be pretty tough, and it's not something that should take two seconds. It would be much better if the most common way to take out a planet was to have to actually send in ground forces to occupy it and have it so that close battles could rage on for a very long time if not enough troops were sent to take the planet and no invasion would go completely smoothly. As it plays now, they can blow up my planet in less time than it takes to destroy 1-2 of my defense platforms. That's just ridiculous. It's like having it take a week to sink the bismark, but the planet it's on can be destroyed in a day or two.
So to fix this part I would suggest a couple things.
1. Unless the player has some super powered endgame weapon, taking planets should require either a ground invasion or a LONG period of bombardment.
2. Have noncapital ships have only a tiny effect when it comes to bombardment - helpful for ground invasions but not huge by any means.
3. have some defense types that simply have to be destroyed to even approach the planet, and beef up the damage defense platforms give out by a factor of maybe five.After I build up these big defenses I always wonder what the point was. The AI runs right past them, blows up my planet in about two seconds, and moves on without engaging my fleet or defenses, and my fleet should be able to take them out in a heartbeat...if they would fight me directly.
Another big annoyance is the range of things. What? So these ships are all completely selfcontained and can just roam the stars at will, then? Just building 2-3 scout ships means you can have the whole map scouted out in hardly any time at all. What's to stop you from just spamming enemies' capitals constantly? Nothing. The problem is, that's not really very strategic gameplay. It's broken gameplay. It's a feature that makes no sense, breaks gameplay, and missings a good opportunity for interesting game features.
Building in a maximum range for your empire would have more benefits that stopping the odd gameplay breaks, though. It also gives a cool dynamic - range can become a serious advantage. If you can threaten stars behind the enemies' front lines in the endgame that could, well, end the game. It makes for an interesting research area, and if certain stars are simply unreachable if you don't plan ahead or if you blinly raze every planet imaginable then it puts some actual strategy into this strategy game, which is what it lacks.
The game has a lot of potential and I find myself strangely compelled by it, but after a few hours the same things happen every time and I just end up quitting the game in disgust. And like I said, this is not a thread where I am asking for game help. I can see how to work around these flaws, but they ARE flaws. Huge ones which ruin an otherwise very good game.
Stardock Forums
