Orbiting the sun...

Would pretty much eliminate the whole "chokepoint" ideology... Not to mention would be crazy hard to implement on multiple star systems.

I agree with that plus we just finnished up the solar system at my school and i relised that their are no moons in this game

Moons could add another potential to the game Military moon creats a base with auto turets a hanger for strike craft and a factory to create some ships(only frigiats. ecomice moon creates a trade port refinory and a bigger pop size for your moon

pluse they could add a orbit function like you said and make the moons orbit the planets

 

All of these suggestions were tried, pretty sure, by the devs. They chose agaisnt them due to the micromanagement they would create.

i think this would just make things too complicated. yes, it would be cool at first, but then it would just get in the way, and would become frustrating that you may have to wait 20 minutes until the planets aline to move forward or back, etc. sometimes simple is better. i consider Sins a prime example of such a thing.

I can't agree with this. The OPs idea is in fact intriguing, but I doubt the devs opted against it for UI simplicity. I doubt they never thought of adding the options, either.

My guess would be that it was programming-wise not feasible or after playtesting was found to just not work to an ideal state (even if it was toggleable).

For these reasons I also believe that the gravity wells do not operate in geosyncronous fashion (with orbital platforms rotating with the planet). It would be TECHNICALLY difficult to implement, and doing it on a world basis would probably also add to the technical confusion.

From a gameplay standpoint, I believe it would be an interesting challange to have proper orbits and the such, and would indeed invoke more micromanagement and timing skill, but also should be an option, not a pure feature. Unfortunately, I wonder if it is technically feasible, and that might be why the devs opted out of the option at all.

This is why an option to enable or leave it off would be nice, just like turning off Pirate Raids. Not sure how it would change Multi-Star System's really; you would phase jump to/from the star, so it would be the same method except for the movement of the plants.



I agree! Moons could be just like astroids except you can use them to increase pop caps or super-weapons... one thing this game lacks is a real fixed defense system that puts the fear of God in anyone other than the Pirates...



How would add to micromanagement? It would only effect phase lanes, in some way it would be a welcome to those players getting a stream of ships coming to their base, a change in orbit may even give you a needed break from an invasions reenforcement fleet (or at least buy you time). Worm-hole tech would become the reliable travel method of choice.

Evil not all of us wish for a large amount of thinking with our games, thats the reason for an EASY mode in the AI. While it would be awesome for YOU to synchronise your fleet movements with the movements of planets most of us do not want that level of deepness. It WOULD add to micromanagement because of the variables that would be added. Especially on large maps with multiple orbits. (more than one star).

I think this would work really well (as well as being insanely cool and pretty to look at as well :p) if we made one more "realism" enhancement:

Each solar system should have at most, 3-4 habitable bodies, that is, 1 or 2 terran or desert, 1 or 2 ice, volcanic, or asteroid, plus moons. Moons obviously wouldn't be a problem, since their proximity means that phase jumping to them (if necessary) would not change.

If there were only a small handful of planets per solar system, it wouldn't be overwhelming at all if some of the phase lanes were changing. Basically, imagine if maps were more like our present solar system. It wouldn't be unmanageable at all.


*speaking of, I'd love if someone made a "reality mod", which rescales the sun waaaaay up, gas giants waay up, planets way up, and ships/buildings waaay down, as well as making maps which are more reasonable, as in the majority of systems having very few planets, and most planets being very large gas giants, and systems requiring gas giant "shield" planets in order to have life sustaining terran or desert planets, realistic distances between planets and realistic orientation (sweet spot for terran/desert, closer to sun volcanic, further from sun ice), etc, etc, etc.
It's pretty much all flavor, but I'd love to see more reasonable maps/scaling to match my beloved sins gameplay.

So you are saying that you feel than an OPTION would negate your enjoyment of the game? I am sorry, but this idea was never intended to be a fixed aspect of the game, rather another tactical improvement for those of us who look for cool strategic differences in our games, adding to our personal enjoyment.

Options are great, especially in 4x games, and even better when they are applied to a game like Sins (pretty much alone in that regard but I digress). So while you may want to play a simpler, static map, the option to turn on solar orbits that shift the phase lines would be pretty sweet to people like the OP and myself.

Your argument of simplicity doesn't provide enough reasonable support behind the dissmisal of the mechanic. What I fear is that the creation of such a feature was most likely attempted/thought of, but the logistics of CREATING it and having it work fluidly in the engine were probably the death of its implementation. For the same reason I am sure the orbital platforms we construct are NOT geo-syncronous, or non-static moons. Maybe when Sins 2 comes out .

But of course, maybe it is possible, and it would be a great additional feature.

By the way, in the course of a week or so, I have become hopelessly addicted to this game. I can not wait to see what the mod community comes up with, not only reskins but total conversions and mechanics.

Where's the option to activate Call of Duty 4 in this game again?

Sorry guys, but what you're talking about goes beyond the bounds of mods or even heavy coding. You're talking about probably making a whole new game with a new engine designed for the specific changes mentioned.

I'm pretty sure that, if you look hard enough, there are beta threads on THIS EXACT ISSUE wherein it is explained that the engine is incapable of these kinds of things (planets moving around stars etc.). Also, it'd basically be totally different game from a gameplay standpoint, so merely calling it an 'option' somehow understates the effect it would have. At the very least, something like that would qualify as a different game 'mode'.

This old thread from one of the beta's pretty much sums up my opinion on the above quote and perhaps gives you guys some insight into the problem with more options:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/158527


In regards to orbits, I remember an official response saying it took too much processing power to make it feasible, or maybe just feasible for low end pcs (although there are too many posts about this topic already so I'm not going to bother going hunting for the exact one I saw this in).

As far as choke points go, although convienent, I'm not a fan of them. We are fighting in space after, you cant get much more open of an arena than that to fight in. I don't see how choke points would exist in space combat. I'd go so far as to want to see an option turning off "Phase Lanes" altogether and allowing direct jumps from any one planet to another. That would really change that tactics needed to play a game.

The problem with space being open is that it's REALLY, REALLY open. Without chokepoints, players can attack from any direction at any time they want - the only logistical issue becomes timing the arrival of your ships to maximize the impact of your attacks.

In a gaming model where a player has a very large number of individual planets that can be reached and assaulted by easily bypassing all the forces that are in between (like, say, by using the Z-axis to fly up and over enemy forces), playing becomes a micromanagement nightmare. At any time, an enemy player can simply send twenty small fleets off to way behind your lines, and there's no way you can effectively respond to so many individual threats, and you have to spend enormous amounts on defense everywhere to prevent getting steamrollered from behind. Putting in some mechanic like a large-area travel inhibitor is one way to get around that, but that's just a fancier kind of chokepoint.

A compromise that might work is that players automatically exit "hyperspace" and engage in "zoom-in" combat whenever their ships get within a certain range of each other - but that still leaves a huge frontier to cover.

====================================

On-topic: When people are talking about orbits, do they mean that every planet stays the same distance from each other all the time, or do they mean that inner planets orbit faster and thus would be on the other side of the sun from distant planets half the time and closer the other half (like our own real solar system does)?

This distinction is really really important, because the latter model means phase lanes have to break and un-break to avoid becoming incredibly long and taking a huge amount of travel time.

Say you have two planets,

I don't think movement would be needed, but some realism would be nice.

Tunabreath's idea of adding volcanic planets closer to the sun and icy planets farther away is a good idea. At the very least, it would be nice to fix the default maps so the orbit paths were realistic.. not sure how the paths would work though. As it is, they'd hit eachother if they were moving (not saying they should be moving, but seeing the path intersect other planets drives me nutz).

"Moons" could be added as really small planets placed really close to the planet and only connected to the planet.

Anybody ever play "Starships Unlimited"? You start in a galaxy and travel between solar systems. The ships travel somewhat freely between planets within each system. Has a few feature in common with this game, fun to play IMO and doesn't even have good graphics.

Ahh I was hoping, seriously hoping, that none of you would force me to do this. The fact is that you assume that I care about the option at all. I was merely pointing out that the developers are trying to make a game that is fun for MOST of the target audience. So far I dont see this being lobbied for by the majority. That does not mean that I am arrogant enough to feel that even the option would negate the game from my "perfect" view.

Maybe we should have an option to play the game in a WW2 theme.

Maybe we should have an option to make capital ships free.

Maybe we should have an option to fly fighters in first person to hit an "Achilles Vent" on a capital ship which can destroy it instantly.

Maybe we should have an option to combine all the races into one, so you can use all techs and build any ship.

Honestly, you "MAKE IT AN OPTION" people can go straight to hell.

Theres a space RTS coming out plans to do the whole orbiting planets thing , I think its called Shattered Suns (might be wrong though). However its an integral part of their game and its on a much smaller scale (just single solar systems) so it may well work for them.

I cannot see it working with Sins. Theres always a temptation to add realistic features to games, but unfortunately more realism is not equal to more fun. I dont need to repeat whats already been said but you'd fundamentally change the way the game had to be played in my opinion. And its not like Sins is broken strategy-wise that it needs such a influential change to the game.

THANK YOU URANIUM! My point in words that I wish I had the stones to say!

I think what would be nice is if the "orbiting planets around a star" feature was only graphical, and had not other combat/economy impact on the game, that would be sufficient to make Sins an even better game to play.

Of course, it will have a small impact on gameplay: players might get a little disoriented when searching for a particular planet

From a sheer coolness factor, this is a valuable suggestion. Maybe difficult to implement, but still very interesting.

Yeah, but that would be completely moot because you can spin the map around the sun and always view it from the angle you choose. The way most people play, you'd never even notice the planets were orbiting - and if they spun fast enough to make a difference it would just drive the players nuts.

-- Retro

The planets that orbit our sun tend to have exponentially larger orbits. Lets take for example Earth, Mars and Jupiter. Earth is 1AU from the sun. Mars is 1.5AU and Jupiter is 5.2AU. Earth is always closer to Mars no matter what orbit scenario you create. For example, if Earth was on the opposite side of the sun from Mars but on the closest orbit to Jupiter, Mars would still be 1.7AU closer to Earth than Jupiter ((5.2 - 1) - (1 + 1.5)).

The point is, it is probably better to model these sort of distances and relationships by the current static game board than to try and introduce orbits.

Say, this is off-topic, but are you really interested in astronomy?

I'm always a bit hesitant to inject realism into these types of discussions because the game is a real-time strategy, and in the 6 hours it takes to complete a fairly long game, the "real" Earth only moves about a quarter of a degree around the sun.

The point about ice planets being further away generally and molten planets being closer generally might be a basis for some interesting maps, though. Consider:
- Close to the sun, the phase lanes are generally shorter and more strategically important from a defense/chokepoint perspective, even if the molten planets there don't generate many taxes.
- The best crystal sources are further out and more difficult to reach quickly.

So the player would have to decide what direction to expand in - inward to grab the metal, outward to grab the crystal, or along the orbit to grab the taxable population.

-- Retro

Good idea! Many different playing styles could develop from that.

The problem with that example is that time in any RTS is always significantly compressed. Just as an example, look at the Kol. Imagine it takes as long to build in reality, as a Nimitz Carrier. The Nimitz took 8 years, from conception to commission. A Kol is built in 45 seconds. That means that the Earth would actually orbit the sun (in game terms) once every 5.6 seconds!

Now this is obviously unreasonable. I'd propose that game time is actually super compressed for the game's sake, so that things actually end up getting done on a reasonable time frame. If we were to say, triple all build times then shrink "real time" equivalents (I'd justify it as a technological advance, shortening both communication as well as construction time), it may play out more reasonably. I would actually be in favor of this in general, since it certainly makes the game play more ala turn based strategy, where infrastructure is king (that second, third, or fourth frigate factory will be REALLY important now...), and small combat elements must be used to full effect simply because it takes way too long to amass the typical endgame fleet seen in vanilla sins.

In any event, like Das123 points out, the actual phase connections wouldn't change much, except between bodies very close to the sun. The only real difference on the whole would be the occasional "cutoff" from a gravity well intersecting a phase line.

More on realism in games, I really enjoy sins the way it is. It's fun, it's absorbing, it's engaging. But I always long for an option or mod that allows me to perform a "what if" in my games. I like being able to simulate reality as closely as possible just to get a glimpse at what possibilities exist, out of reach. This is why I love really hardcore tactical shooters (OFP, upcoming Ground Branch) as well. I love to try to get as close as possible to how it works, how it feels, without actually having to be there (or have a medic pull 5.56 fragments from my sucking chest wound from an unfortunate blue on blue incident...).
I'm looking at getting Falcon 4.0 now... I've only played one really good flight sim, but it was a chopper one.