Constructive suggestions for improving gameplay for 1.04
from 
Sins Forums
Sins Forums
I play only with friends vs computers, so maybe my suggestions are bias. The reason being should be obvious by this statement. Please do not tell me I'm stupid, instead focus on the title. Here is my list of what I think would be beneficial to Sins in the next patch. This isn't the patch changelog, so don't
1) Fix the black market. Theres plenty of threads on this issue so I won't explain what is wrong.
Proposal: Make it actually have finite resources. The black market should have a pool of each resource (say 2000, moer or less depending on map size and # of players). This pool should regenerate its resources within reason (120-200/minute, maybe less of crystal, more of others). Once the pool is empty, no more resources can be bought. Force player to player trades. Also bring back the market prices of 1.02, it should be the case that if crystal is in such high demand it hits 15.0 per crystal. People who specialize in Vasari or Advent probably could give more specific #'s in this example, but you get the idea of what I'm trying to achieve.
2) Fix capitol ship movement. For some reason capitol ships move like they are cars in space, if I want to move backwards 1 ship length (to position PBAoEs for example) my ship moves forward. For god's sake they figured out how to make phase jumps and use wormholes but they don't have reverse thrusters?
Proposal: Reverse Thrusters.
3) Improve the AI. You say you made tweaks to the AI but in the last 5v5 match (5 humans vs 5 computers) we still stomped them even with unfair difficulty. In case anyone cares, 1.03's Unfair is simply hard mode but they get 2x resources (or close to). They had a huge army, but it was still crushed. I also took the time to watch the replay to see what the computers were doing. I hate to say it but unfair AI shouldn't be researching pirate strength reduction on a map with literally no pirates (fortifier maybe?). They are also very slow at the start, they fail to build even initial extractors with in any timely matter (beleive it was aggressor, it would rather have light frigates then crystal extractors). Also note that during the game the computers decided to warp between 2 asteroid belts constantly for no apparent reason (ah of course, the "im dumb as rocks" AI setting). One AI player was bright enough to spam trade ports (1.03 ftw), but he failed at finding the black market, ending up with well over 150,000 credits by the end of the game, with no crystal or metal (I assume that is the economist in action).
Proposal: Start off by putting siege frigates's build priority to negative infinity, then proceed to at the very least give them a proper starting build order. Don't assume unfair will ever be balanced, as getting 2x resources and still losing is just complete failure.
4) Research costs are way out of whack. To improve a unit by 5%, I have to research 5% shields, 5% hull, and 5% damage. As Advent, this costs 1200 credits and 75 crystal. In order for this to pay itself off you would need 1200 credits and 75 crystal to account for 5% of your fleet. Using 3.5 credits/crystal and 3.5 credits/metal as current going rates (which are, for the most part static, but I seem to be able to just wait for 3.1-3.2 range and bulk buy), this equates to 1462.5 credits. I'll use the basic light frigate as the fleet (it matters not really, most units have relative cost effectiveness). Disciple vessels are then 390 credits each, for an average of 97.5 credits/supply. What magic number supply makes 5% more equivalent to 1462.5? Yes, 300 (1462.5 / (0.05 * 97.5). So if your fleet size is 300, then researching any of the military upgrades becomes worth it. Now to go from 5% increase to 10% increase (a 4.76% increase in power mind you, given we have already 105%) it will cost 1500 credits, 150 crystal, or 2025 credits. When is 2025 credits worth 4.76%? When our fleet supply hits 357 (3487.5 / (0.10 * 97.5)! Going from 10% to 15%: 2000/200/375, or 4013 credits for 4.5% gain, thus only becoming efficient with a supply of 512 (7500 / (0.15 * 97.5). 20% needs 633 (12337.5 / (0.20 * 97.5)) supply, 25% needs 827 (20175 / (0.25 * 97.5)) supply. 30% needs 996 (28837.5 / (0.30 * 97.5)) supply. Now granted I'm not factoring in things such as fleet upkeep (which in turn makes both upgrading AND ship building equally more expensive at that point) and of course the obvious one: This research benefits only select units! To equally improve our whole armada, one would have to also research the secondary weapon bonuses (eg plasma AND laser, i'll ignore the bomber bonuses as that is completely useless). I'm not an expert here but I'd assume most games don't get as high as 827 (maybe 820), because the upkeep becomes far too much to handle. Similar results occur in most other techs due to increasing prices and diminishing returns. The only things I research are Trade Ports, Ice/Volcanic Exploration (which are in most cases... optional), and of course the military ship types I plan to build (usually 1-3 total). Resource extration rates also suffer greatly, as 7% increase in metal vs a trade port which now gives pretty much any resource would require somewhere between 5-6 metal/sec base to break even... If you are making 10+ metal or crystal/sec then I'd say go for it.
Bottom line is, unless the tech gives some active ability, its almost always not worth upgrading unless you are on a huge 8 star 200 planet game.
Proposal: Make initial tier 1 techs more influential, like instead of 5/10% bonuses to something, give 9/17%, they should be on par with a 150-200 fleet army. Make tier 2 techs a little more beneficial, instead of 15/20 make them 20%/25%, they should be on par with a 450-550 fleet army. The rest I have no idea about because I fail to play huge overwhelming 83 hour games. Similar modifications could be made to economic techs, since trade ports are without a doubt the #1 economic tech in the game for obvious reasons.
5) Carriers are kind of designed by 2nd graders. They are the most versatile unit in the game (switch from fighters or bombers, anti-light or anti-heavy), which makes them great. Unfortunately they are all designed with some major flaws. Each carrier carries one squadron, which deals nothing spectacular damage wise. Their two main features are changable damage types and infinite range (since squadrons fly anywhere, lets not get into the fact that they have 2 seperate damage increasing techs though). The problem with carriers are that they have no weapons and no armor. If I were to design a ship that did nothing but field little ships that fly out of a tiny hole in the side, i would focus all my attention to defense. The carriers are expensive for their supply, deal minimal damage for their supply, and on top of that have no impressive damage for their supply. The worst part is that a carrier's damage can be completely halted by the use of fighters or flak frigates. They just don't have justification for their investment (research and per unit cost). Now for whatever reason, advent's carrier has 0 armor, lots of hull, and basically no shields, which is the opposite of every other advent unit. TEC and Vasari seem to be closer to their racial characteristics, but still lack serious tanking capabilities given their pathetic offense. With no guns, you'd think they would have defense similar to that of a heavy cruiser. Sure they are attainable earlier, but the sole purpose of building them has become "to counter one specific unit".
Proposal: Give them more survivability.
6) Your random map generator sucks, it never fails at making a giant bicycle wheel. Every game its the same thing, all players on the outside with 'spokes' going from the star to the outside. I'd rather see results like this (created in minutes with the galaxy editor): link.
Proposal: More options, "galaxy type" for instance. And gives us the option of having the manditory ice/volcanic + asteroid or not, infact make it so we can put anything in there. Make it so we can also change home planet types, I a random map where everyone starts on an ice planet. Why? Because I feel like it, and it spices things up a bit.
7) Capitol ship abilities seem highly imbalanced. But I'll mention that alot of people feel this imbalance helps balance. Take each race and compare capitol ships. The advent mothership has colonize (20/40/60% cheaper upgrade rates for 5 minutes), an AOE shield restore (whose effectiveness is tripled with guardians), and malice, which is a crazy awesome offensive ability (especially with illuminators, who deal dmg to 3 targets). Now look at TEC's equivalent. 0/1/2 free extractors? Sorry but they already have a 40% discount (if tech researched), so even at level 3 thats a whopping 300-450 credits saved, absolute crap. Their Ion Cannon is OK but it was nerfed, even at level 3 it only effectively immobilizes for a short time, not exactly a battle-changing skill here, unlike the 62.5 shield/sec aoe restore. Passive weapon range and tohit, i'm fairly certain the skill point is better off unspent. Vasari doesn't compare either, it seems Advent have dominating capitol ships which offsets their "supposed" crappy fleet. I'd like to see things more even capitol ship wise, as having 4 motherships using shield restore can keep a fleet at 62.5 shields/sec restoration nearly indefinately (at 63% mitigation, it would effectively reduce dps by 169 to all attacked units, 253 if under the effects of a guardian, 25 LRMS focus firing on a unit would yield no result). Other examples include Advent's attack speed aura increase, Vengeance/Taunt combo, or disabling an enemy capitol for what, 30 seconds while you decimate his fleet.
8) Planetary exploration is hopeless. Most of the benefits of finding per planet bonuses (eg 50% crystal mining bonus) is only worth it if you can hold it for a long period of time, which means exploring early. During the early game, resources are always better spent elsewhere (except for 60% discounted advent mothership, but even then its a huge gamble). Even if you are lucky enough to find a expert metal miners on a volanic or crystal miners on an ice, which is very rare, its still only for 1 planet. Artifacts being random and useless to imbalanced in strength make it even worse. You can get a 50% bonus speed when jumping between stars in a single star map OR a 25% discount on all research.
Proposal: Make bonuses much more abundant (possible at the moment via map editing) or reduce exploration cost significantly.
9) Consider revising pirate colonies, as at the moment they are an easy source of about 2.2k experience. If done rgiht, the defense platforms can be taken out without them even firing a shot at you. You can take a level 1 capitol ship in there and it comes out level 5. You can take a level 2 in and come out level 6 or very near. The losses (if any) can easily be justified by the capitol ship's new abilities. To be extra safe you can put multiple high level capitol ships in to help vs the heavy cruiser types then have them take off and let the low level kill all the defense platforms (which is over 1k).
Proposal: Hangar bays mixed in with defense platforms could work, but in the end not having shields/shield mitigation makes them fodder.
10) The new game options are very non-descriptive. Does setting all options to "fast" make the entire game fast? OR does it imbalance certain things. If ship speeds are faster, then wouldn't fighters/bombers make more attacks? Do any of these increase the rate of fire of all ships? Fast income rates seem to just decrease the interval of which your resources/sec are given, but how does that become justified if infact the cooldown of Returning Armada is unaffected? TEC players will have more income = more ships, built faster (and plenty of credits to keep this up) will give a huge advantage since the antimatter regeneration and/or cooldown of returning armada stays constant. Playing an all-slow game would do the opposite, making returning armada even more useful (obviously getting to that point is changed too).
Proposal: Add detailed descriptions.
And they lived happily ever after.... THE END.
1) Fix the black market. Theres plenty of threads on this issue so I won't explain what is wrong.
Proposal: Make it actually have finite resources. The black market should have a pool of each resource (say 2000, moer or less depending on map size and # of players). This pool should regenerate its resources within reason (120-200/minute, maybe less of crystal, more of others). Once the pool is empty, no more resources can be bought. Force player to player trades. Also bring back the market prices of 1.02, it should be the case that if crystal is in such high demand it hits 15.0 per crystal. People who specialize in Vasari or Advent probably could give more specific #'s in this example, but you get the idea of what I'm trying to achieve.
2) Fix capitol ship movement. For some reason capitol ships move like they are cars in space, if I want to move backwards 1 ship length (to position PBAoEs for example) my ship moves forward. For god's sake they figured out how to make phase jumps and use wormholes but they don't have reverse thrusters?
Proposal: Reverse Thrusters.
3) Improve the AI. You say you made tweaks to the AI but in the last 5v5 match (5 humans vs 5 computers) we still stomped them even with unfair difficulty. In case anyone cares, 1.03's Unfair is simply hard mode but they get 2x resources (or close to). They had a huge army, but it was still crushed. I also took the time to watch the replay to see what the computers were doing. I hate to say it but unfair AI shouldn't be researching pirate strength reduction on a map with literally no pirates (fortifier maybe?). They are also very slow at the start, they fail to build even initial extractors with in any timely matter (beleive it was aggressor, it would rather have light frigates then crystal extractors). Also note that during the game the computers decided to warp between 2 asteroid belts constantly for no apparent reason (ah of course, the "im dumb as rocks" AI setting). One AI player was bright enough to spam trade ports (1.03 ftw), but he failed at finding the black market, ending up with well over 150,000 credits by the end of the game, with no crystal or metal (I assume that is the economist in action).
Proposal: Start off by putting siege frigates's build priority to negative infinity, then proceed to at the very least give them a proper starting build order. Don't assume unfair will ever be balanced, as getting 2x resources and still losing is just complete failure.
4) Research costs are way out of whack. To improve a unit by 5%, I have to research 5% shields, 5% hull, and 5% damage. As Advent, this costs 1200 credits and 75 crystal. In order for this to pay itself off you would need 1200 credits and 75 crystal to account for 5% of your fleet. Using 3.5 credits/crystal and 3.5 credits/metal as current going rates (which are, for the most part static, but I seem to be able to just wait for 3.1-3.2 range and bulk buy), this equates to 1462.5 credits. I'll use the basic light frigate as the fleet (it matters not really, most units have relative cost effectiveness). Disciple vessels are then 390 credits each, for an average of 97.5 credits/supply. What magic number supply makes 5% more equivalent to 1462.5? Yes, 300 (1462.5 / (0.05 * 97.5). So if your fleet size is 300, then researching any of the military upgrades becomes worth it. Now to go from 5% increase to 10% increase (a 4.76% increase in power mind you, given we have already 105%) it will cost 1500 credits, 150 crystal, or 2025 credits. When is 2025 credits worth 4.76%? When our fleet supply hits 357 (3487.5 / (0.10 * 97.5)! Going from 10% to 15%: 2000/200/375, or 4013 credits for 4.5% gain, thus only becoming efficient with a supply of 512 (7500 / (0.15 * 97.5). 20% needs 633 (12337.5 / (0.20 * 97.5)) supply, 25% needs 827 (20175 / (0.25 * 97.5)) supply. 30% needs 996 (28837.5 / (0.30 * 97.5)) supply. Now granted I'm not factoring in things such as fleet upkeep (which in turn makes both upgrading AND ship building equally more expensive at that point) and of course the obvious one: This research benefits only select units! To equally improve our whole armada, one would have to also research the secondary weapon bonuses (eg plasma AND laser, i'll ignore the bomber bonuses as that is completely useless). I'm not an expert here but I'd assume most games don't get as high as 827 (maybe 820), because the upkeep becomes far too much to handle. Similar results occur in most other techs due to increasing prices and diminishing returns. The only things I research are Trade Ports, Ice/Volcanic Exploration (which are in most cases... optional), and of course the military ship types I plan to build (usually 1-3 total). Resource extration rates also suffer greatly, as 7% increase in metal vs a trade port which now gives pretty much any resource would require somewhere between 5-6 metal/sec base to break even... If you are making 10+ metal or crystal/sec then I'd say go for it.
Bottom line is, unless the tech gives some active ability, its almost always not worth upgrading unless you are on a huge 8 star 200 planet game.
Proposal: Make initial tier 1 techs more influential, like instead of 5/10% bonuses to something, give 9/17%, they should be on par with a 150-200 fleet army. Make tier 2 techs a little more beneficial, instead of 15/20 make them 20%/25%, they should be on par with a 450-550 fleet army. The rest I have no idea about because I fail to play huge overwhelming 83 hour games. Similar modifications could be made to economic techs, since trade ports are without a doubt the #1 economic tech in the game for obvious reasons.
5) Carriers are kind of designed by 2nd graders. They are the most versatile unit in the game (switch from fighters or bombers, anti-light or anti-heavy), which makes them great. Unfortunately they are all designed with some major flaws. Each carrier carries one squadron, which deals nothing spectacular damage wise. Their two main features are changable damage types and infinite range (since squadrons fly anywhere, lets not get into the fact that they have 2 seperate damage increasing techs though). The problem with carriers are that they have no weapons and no armor. If I were to design a ship that did nothing but field little ships that fly out of a tiny hole in the side, i would focus all my attention to defense. The carriers are expensive for their supply, deal minimal damage for their supply, and on top of that have no impressive damage for their supply. The worst part is that a carrier's damage can be completely halted by the use of fighters or flak frigates. They just don't have justification for their investment (research and per unit cost). Now for whatever reason, advent's carrier has 0 armor, lots of hull, and basically no shields, which is the opposite of every other advent unit. TEC and Vasari seem to be closer to their racial characteristics, but still lack serious tanking capabilities given their pathetic offense. With no guns, you'd think they would have defense similar to that of a heavy cruiser. Sure they are attainable earlier, but the sole purpose of building them has become "to counter one specific unit".
Proposal: Give them more survivability.
6) Your random map generator sucks, it never fails at making a giant bicycle wheel. Every game its the same thing, all players on the outside with 'spokes' going from the star to the outside. I'd rather see results like this (created in minutes with the galaxy editor): link.
Proposal: More options, "galaxy type" for instance. And gives us the option of having the manditory ice/volcanic + asteroid or not, infact make it so we can put anything in there. Make it so we can also change home planet types, I a random map where everyone starts on an ice planet. Why? Because I feel like it, and it spices things up a bit.
7) Capitol ship abilities seem highly imbalanced. But I'll mention that alot of people feel this imbalance helps balance. Take each race and compare capitol ships. The advent mothership has colonize (20/40/60% cheaper upgrade rates for 5 minutes), an AOE shield restore (whose effectiveness is tripled with guardians), and malice, which is a crazy awesome offensive ability (especially with illuminators, who deal dmg to 3 targets). Now look at TEC's equivalent. 0/1/2 free extractors? Sorry but they already have a 40% discount (if tech researched), so even at level 3 thats a whopping 300-450 credits saved, absolute crap. Their Ion Cannon is OK but it was nerfed, even at level 3 it only effectively immobilizes for a short time, not exactly a battle-changing skill here, unlike the 62.5 shield/sec aoe restore. Passive weapon range and tohit, i'm fairly certain the skill point is better off unspent. Vasari doesn't compare either, it seems Advent have dominating capitol ships which offsets their "supposed" crappy fleet. I'd like to see things more even capitol ship wise, as having 4 motherships using shield restore can keep a fleet at 62.5 shields/sec restoration nearly indefinately (at 63% mitigation, it would effectively reduce dps by 169 to all attacked units, 253 if under the effects of a guardian, 25 LRMS focus firing on a unit would yield no result). Other examples include Advent's attack speed aura increase, Vengeance/Taunt combo, or disabling an enemy capitol for what, 30 seconds while you decimate his fleet.
8) Planetary exploration is hopeless. Most of the benefits of finding per planet bonuses (eg 50% crystal mining bonus) is only worth it if you can hold it for a long period of time, which means exploring early. During the early game, resources are always better spent elsewhere (except for 60% discounted advent mothership, but even then its a huge gamble). Even if you are lucky enough to find a expert metal miners on a volanic or crystal miners on an ice, which is very rare, its still only for 1 planet. Artifacts being random and useless to imbalanced in strength make it even worse. You can get a 50% bonus speed when jumping between stars in a single star map OR a 25% discount on all research.
Proposal: Make bonuses much more abundant (possible at the moment via map editing) or reduce exploration cost significantly.
9) Consider revising pirate colonies, as at the moment they are an easy source of about 2.2k experience. If done rgiht, the defense platforms can be taken out without them even firing a shot at you. You can take a level 1 capitol ship in there and it comes out level 5. You can take a level 2 in and come out level 6 or very near. The losses (if any) can easily be justified by the capitol ship's new abilities. To be extra safe you can put multiple high level capitol ships in to help vs the heavy cruiser types then have them take off and let the low level kill all the defense platforms (which is over 1k).
Proposal: Hangar bays mixed in with defense platforms could work, but in the end not having shields/shield mitigation makes them fodder.
10) The new game options are very non-descriptive. Does setting all options to "fast" make the entire game fast? OR does it imbalance certain things. If ship speeds are faster, then wouldn't fighters/bombers make more attacks? Do any of these increase the rate of fire of all ships? Fast income rates seem to just decrease the interval of which your resources/sec are given, but how does that become justified if infact the cooldown of Returning Armada is unaffected? TEC players will have more income = more ships, built faster (and plenty of credits to keep this up) will give a huge advantage since the antimatter regeneration and/or cooldown of returning armada stays constant. Playing an all-slow game would do the opposite, making returning armada even more useful (obviously getting to that point is changed too).
Proposal: Add detailed descriptions.
And they lived happily ever after.... THE END.
