First time online - is this number of active games usual?

The number of active game depends alot upon the time of day.  Fewer games in the early morning, more in the afternoon/evenings EST.

It says that I can't host either, but if I turn on Alloy, I find that I actually can!  So try it out.  Peak hours will have up to around 150 players online... but mostly in games. 

It will list the number of games available to join for both Entrenchment and the original "vanilla" Sin.  But it will only show your version of games to join.

Welcome to the online community, and good luck.  Regards, Obi 1

 

Sadly, Sins isn't a hit for online multiplayer even though it sold well.  For all sorts of reasons it just doesn't have the number of people playing it online that it deserves.  Your best bets are between 3 pm and 1 am U.S. Eastern Standard Time.  Also, most of the action, especially the 4v4 and 5v5 games, are for the Entrenchment expansion and you won't see those games in the Join Game menu unless you have Entrenchment.

The online community is small enough that you will actually get to know other people who play online at the same time as you.  However, it's large enough that you can find matches at most hours if you have patience.  The fact that most games I play are 3v3 or larger is indicative of this.

Entrenchment i can find a game sometimes LATE at night. but for vanilla its pretty much impossible. For vanilla 2v2 is like the biggest youll ever find, and you have to be lucky.

At this point, nearly everyone who A) Likes the game and has any intention of playing online multiplayer  would have purchased entrenchment months ago.

 

It is nearly imppossible to find a game online in Vanilla, which unfortunatly leads to the misconception in the "casual" sins players (the ones without ENT) that there IS no online comunity, and therefore they shouldn't buy the expansion for it.

"Community" may be a bit of a strong word to use...

That's the problem. Alloy option is turned on, yet the system says it still cannot find my IP.

Anyway, I'm running Sins v1.17 and Entrenchment v1.03. Hoping to have a good match soon

 

Did you enable Port Forwarding on your router?  You want to open up ports 6000 and 6112.

Well people stopped playing for a lot of reasons. I quit because of two reasons. Pathetic online community, too small to have a real game with. And pathetic support from Sins online support. I made a post that almost all the same people I see on here disagreed with that said the online community would die if support was not implemented people blasted me for that post. Back then there was like 100-150 people on everyday. Now its... 20? I hate that I was right. Because I know a lot of you love this game. Me though I can't stand the fact that these guys are putting out expansions and not putting out updates to the system to make the game playable. Good luck to you guys.

 

I share your sentiments about the lack of online multiplayer support and imporvements.  I'd say the player counts are about 100 during the peak times, getting up to 150 on the weekends.  There's still action for folks who want to play 5v5's on Entrenchment.

The way sins is designed it's a single player game. They would have to allow far more customization for this game to do well online. Even if they had a bunch of features changed with ICO, they'd need to make the game end much quicker. It's just how successful RTS's work. The matches can't take 2 hours plus. Hell even an average game of over an hour is too long. The average person doesn't want to spend more than 1 hour playing a single match.

campaign please!! Noww!!!!

the best thing about multiplayer is this...

people go online... see that there is not many players...

and so they dont bother with multiplayer... and so they dont add to the number of people online, and so it looks like the number of willing players is smaller

and so people go online... and see that there is not many players...

in other words... at some point the situation will get to the point where no one plays multiplayer because no one plays multiplayer...

IMHO the community is at point where there is just enough players online to keep things going, but not quite enough to get the new players into multiplayer (because they are put off by jerks/lack of players... just look at all the threads to prove it)...

maybe diplomacy will get a few more intrested again...

but if we are not carefull, ironclad online may end up abandoned... not because no one wants to play multiplayer... but becuase there are not enough players online.

 

There also is the whole thing about the general long games... its a large commitment to play online... and while games CAN be saved and contined... if you dont KNOW the people... that never happens.

 

sins of a solar empire is a summer break game.