I certainly hope espionage fits the 'non-military' description. I still think spies and and such would be an excellent fit for this game. There are plenty of stats available to be manipulated under the radar.
Perhaps I'm just missing something but I'm a little surprised to see how many calls for 'moons' pop up in the suggestion-box. What exactly are they going to add to the game that we don't already have in some capacity? Nearly every description I've seen for this feature makes them sound like either just another small planettype with a gravity well or a bonus to tactical/logistic slots for existing planets. What is it (gameplay-wise) that people want from this feat
Yeah, I'd suggest you try the demo. Since you're aware this doesn't have a campaign, you don't care for multiplayer, and it doesn't meet any of your other requirements, it's hard to say whether or not you'd like it at all. Personally, I think it's rather dull in single-player as the AI (as in most RTS's) is a predictable dolt that generally won't have a chance unless you stack the deck heavily against yourself (meaning, you versus several opponents on Hard/Unfair).&nbs
Whenever I use the Kostura cannon, the damage from multiple shots never seems to stack properly. If I fire ten shots at a single planet and all ten connect at roughly the same time, only the first shot actually seems to do any damage. In theory, ten shots should ravage everything in the area. It's been a while so perhaps this has been 'fixed' (if, indeed a 10% hit to everything in a grav. well is how it's intended to work) but yeah... I've never had much luck actually dest
[quote]...but they dont seem to be cost affective. Any thoughts on this?[/quote] You're comparing the cost-effectiveness to units that have a completely different role in combat. Yes, cap-ships and subverters are cheaper but cap ships and subverters can't irritate your opponent's back line from the other side of the map. Superweapons are there to force an entrenched opponent's hand in a drawn out stalemate. It's a mechanic that says "if you don't stop tur
[quote]It's true that in terms of pure content value, pirates are far from the most important part of the game. [/quote] Well, thinking back to the newbie uproar about pirates being entirely too strong at release, the stated reasons for their being was to have both a late-game money sink and an alternative avenue of attack for those who preferred a more economy-based approach. At present, neither of these are the case as they're far too easy to stop at any threat level and thus,
[quote]If you feel Entrenchment doesn't warrant your dollars, don't buy it.[/quote] That would require a certain degree of self control which doesn't seem to be very common anymore. If you're the sort that must obsessively buy everything a game company puts in front of you, then yes. You're going to get the farm-animal treatment (as well you should). Such is life.
[quote]I am beginning to thing I am the only chap on the internet with an imagination.[/quote] It's more likely that there's a disconnect between what you're imagining and what the OP seems to be asking for (which is a feature that's more or less already available in this game). The thread is going in two different directions so naturally there's going to be some cross-traffic.
[quote]There is currently no reason to save resources. If there were to be a modest interest applied to the resources you had, then there would be a reason to save. [/quote] Before going any further with this train of thought, I have to ask: why is this a problem? If there were some kind of economic victory condition, maybe I could see a reason to save but in a game where the object essentially boils down (in all cases) to "Destroy the other guy(s)," if you're not spending mon
[quote]...but on the other hand it wouldn't be very much fun if it stood to fight when it had very little chance of winning. Once you lose an entire fleet in this game, you are effectively out of action for 10-20 minutes, unable to make an effective attack or defense.[/quote] If you lose every planet in your empire by running from every fight, you're effectively out of action already. I suppose your mileage may vary but for my part, having at least one decent fight would be bett
Since 4x is such a vague term that can apply to pretty much any strategy game, it's easy to get away with saying a game is in that category. At the end of the day, it's still an RTS (just like Spellforce with the RPG elements).
Yes. This has been a pretty common problem with the AI since the game released. Some will argue that this is 'realistic' behavior and that it makes sense for the AI to leave a fight that it supposedly knows it'll lose but I maintain that there's nothing realistic about falling back to the last remaining asteroid in ones empire and not bothering to retaliate until ones homeworld is being bombarded. The patches have improved the frequency of this happening slightly but last
[quote]Micromanagement won't win you battles, APM won't will you battles[/quote] Going to have to disagree, there. The guy who digs in and micromanages his units (calling focus-fire targets, setting appropriate targets for abilities at appropriate times, managing scouts and such without the automatic features, and a myriad of other activities) is going to get a 'lot' more bang for his buck out of nearly anything he makes than the guy who doesn't. Good micro may not be 'as'
[quote]Sadly, Sins has some online multiplayer issues that may have driven some people away such as the minidumps problem and most importantly, the inability for people to host games unless they have configured their router properly. [/quote] I suspect this is a far more crucial component of the issue than people simply being 'wussies'. There's no shortage of games worth playing online at any given time and if it's a tossup between a game that works with no added effort and a ga
More of a nitpick than anything really but World in Conflict 'did' have a single-player skirmish available. It was just one of those awkward "set up a LAN game with nobody else involved" sorts like Warhammer: Mark of Chaos. Not exactly intuitive but it was an option. Anyway, I'm of the mind that scripted campaigns tend to do more harm than good for people who want to learn the game for the long-term as they tend to do a ridiculous amount of rule-bending, making you
[quote]For me, there is a BIG difference between panically hitting the pause hotkey when something goes wrong and having an automatic stop as in TBS[/quote] Yes but unless this timed automatic stop just happens to coincide with your emergency that needs fixing (which is going to be a longshot unless the game is pausing something like every 5-10 seconds), how is this going to solve your problem? Perhaps it would help to simply allow the existing Pause to be mapped to a mouse bu
[quote]As for mechanics, combat, etc, there is NO DIFFERENCE.[/quote] So... if nothing changes, what you're suggesting is that the game simply grind to a halt every X minutes during a single-player game regardless of the context. Why? Why would this be better than simply hitting Pause Break and issuing orders (which you can already do) when you actually need to? To pose a scenario: What if I'm at a stage in the early-game where I'm satisfied with the orders I've gi
[quote]Nobody is suggesting we make SINS into RISK. I would just go play RISK.[/quote] I think that's more or less the heart of the counterargument here but anyway...
For those not in the beta, there really hasn't been much public news around here (that I've seen at least) about where the patch stands. I've been checking around here fairly regularly for months and it's not hard to get the impression that it's been shelved. Granted, I know better but still... It's taking quite a while.
[quote who="Rojonia" reply="4" id="1887927"]I should have explained that I am talking about a single player game, not multiplayer. Your objections do not apply here. I cannot see any problems. [/quote] Unless you're playing a bugged version of the game that doesn't allow combat in the single-player modes, I fail to see how the situation is any different (beyond the computer opponent not caring what the arbitrary timer has done to the game). I suppose we could argue
[quote]It beats me why RTS developers have not figured this option out out long ago.[/quote] Because RTS developers don't balance their games around the notion that only one player will be able to act at any given time. RTS's are built on the real-time action/reaction model. Adding a little to the above, basically, your suggestion would completely bork combat in any but the most simplistic RTS's. In a TBS, the combat works because the players themselves have
The gamble isn't so much whether the pirates attack your allies or enemies. It's in whether or not they actually do anything worthwhile for the investment that you made. More often than not, the pirates simply go to their deaths offering free experience for any local caps on a platter. And that comeback still doesn't address the reliability concern. Again, I know that an AI is capable of doing things on its own and that those things can be potentially beneficial.&nbs
[quote]Now that I think about it, Sins itself validates my idea - we *already* deal with autonomous factions interfering with our play: pirates. [/quote] I count it as a major difference that pirates require no cost from the player to do what they do and even if the player chooses to pay a cost, it's clear up-front that it's a gamble (given the relative weakness of pirates beyond anything but the first wave, it's usually a losing bet). That an AI can do stuff isn't under
Seems kind of redundant to me... A fighter-ish unit that's meant to counter the counter to fighters? Why? I enjoyed Homeworld as much as the next guy but I just don't see a ship like this filling any gaps that really need filling. Or are we just going for the 'variety for the sake of variety' objective?
[quote]The whole idea of a scout on auto is for it to not need to be micromanaged.[/quote] As I understood it, the idea was to 'limit' micromanagement. Not remove player skill entirely from the equation. If the health of your scouts and information-gathering in general is of value to you, then dig in and micro the scouts. If you're tied up in combat, then park the scouts in strategic sectors (meaning, sectors where you genuinely need to be aware of enemy movement) and deal wi