Sakhari

Personally, I can't get on board with tier 8 abilities that have a random chance of actually being useful (as opposed to simply handing your opponent a $!#%-ton of experience on a silver platter if the attack goes awry). I'm all for making some changes to this ability and a few other aspects of the Vasari, especially if people really feel that this ability is the 'only' reason to play Vasari, but I'd rather not turn it into a completely random element. That's just me, though.

Unless this ship is uncontrollable by the player, has no utilities whatsoever, and can't give the player information about the zones in which it's traveling (meaning, it's a useless lump akin to the rocks in the background), then making it invincible is both a strange and generally bad idea.

Yes there is. Each one gives you a static amount plus the longest route bonus. 5 trade ports = roughly 5 more credits per second (plus bonuses) regardless of where you put them. If you have the Logistics slots to spare, pile them on.

I think this game does scream for some degree of espionage but I have to wonder how cross-race technology theft would work. I suppose I could see it for the basics like weapon and health upgrades but I don't think they should be able to swipe superweapons and things of that nature. Personally, my vision of spy ships involves essentially 'attaching' them to enemy worlds and selecting one of a variety of more subtle tasks for them to perform. For example: - Credit/Resource si

I'm not sure I follow... If you right-click on the gravity well that you'd like to travel to, your ships should go there using the fastest route (wormholes excluded) provided you have the ncessary research. What exactly isn't working? What do you mean by plotting a course 'through' the star?

As far as the learning curve goes, Sins isn't really 'that' complex. The biggest reason that it takes people so long to figure out what they're doing is that many of the options are poorly documented and ability tooltips are frequently less than helpful. I think it's an excellent buy, mind you but playing it certainly isn't rocket science.

[quote]All this being said, what suprirses me the msot is the people trying to justify the lack of campaign beside the budget...[/quote] People around here don't mind trying to justify it because honestly, many of us really don't care. For my part, I've played a grand total of maybe three RTS campaigns over the course of my gaming 'career' that didn't come off as a complete half-assed waste of time and for the effort that it takes to make a good one, there really isn't much of a payoff

Needs more information... Are we talking about spamming a pile of varied cheap-ships or are you concerned about a single type of unit that's performing too well on its own? What other games generally involve unit spam that didn't have the community listing it as a problem? Personally, I do think runaway resources can be a problem in the late-game but I also think there are several other much more important factors that lead to the spamming of units.

Did you select a ship type that you're currently researching? If the research is queued but you haven't finished it yet, you'll be allowed to queue up build orders but they won't actually start until the research is complete. If that's not the problem, then... *shrug*

Each shot treats the target world as though you had several culture centers in that gravity well. From there, you simply get all of the benefits that you'd normally get from culture. Those include: - A slow penalty per-second to the allegiance of affected worlds. This reduces the income and resources generated by those worlds and will 'destroy' the world if the allegiance score reaches 0. - A bonus to the shield mitigation of your ships in affected gravity wells. Each race

The last sentence says that he doesn't want to hear 'download the demo' as a suggestion to avoid future disappointments. This sentence... [quote]This game, although fun to play for bits at a time, is not what I was expecting and in a way I am dissapointed.[/quote] suggests that he has played Sins.

I imagine loose formation would help to avoid getting ravaged too badly by things like Malice/Brilliance but in reality, no. I for one have never touched it.

[quote]You should direct your anger to the thieves who enjoy the medium, but don't want to pay for it.[/quote] Why? They're still getting what they want with ease while the rest of us have to deal with annoying copy-protection issues. Pirates didn't decide to plant wholly ineffective protection schemes on these games. Not to say that I respect pirates doing what they do but punishing legitimate customers without actually solving the problem wasn't their idea.

Until they come up with an AI that is capable of using all of the tools available to it without being cheap, I won't be buying a single-player RTS. I think development could probably benefit from a decision of what kind of multiplayer crowd is going to be catered to (rather than trying to cater to everyone who shows up on the forums to complain). Are you going to support the more casual LAN players friendly online gamers by adding more features with a limited regard for balance-relat

Agreed on both counts. I was beginning to think I was the only one who saw the merits of espionage in a game like this. Info-gathering, credit diversion, sabotage, added cultural subversion effects... there are many options that agents like that could add to the game.

I'm not saying they're inconsequential. I'm just saying that, while the civilian branches have useful abilities, military is what wins the game. Against a competent player, if they choose to go heavy military and head your way with a balanced fleet (or a pile of heavy cruisers), choosing to focus on civilian techs and fielding nothing but low-level ships is just going to get you killed. Unless you're abusing Deliverance Engines or RA, you 'need' a military and the civilian side supports it.<b

You can right-click on the ability icon to turn off the autocast and select your targets manually. That's your only option if you want to call the targets yourself.

I agree but only on the condition that the civilian branches (beyond Returning Armada and the Deliverance Engine) actually become effective avenues of winning a game. I supsect one reason that this was changed is because the civilian trees are just a supplement to your military rather than a 'choice' in the sense of winning strategies. If, down the road, economic, cultural, and diplomatic factors play a larger role in games beyond those played against the wholly ineffective AI, then

Well, yes... occasional threads are less than civilized but by and large, this place is pretty damned tame compared to my usual haunts. Of course, maybe I just hang out in the wrong circles. Who knows.

[quote]nearly all boards allow such edits and there is never a problem with it so i cant understand this argument.[/quote] Well, the quality of the community and the level of active moderation are also factors. If a place like GameFAQ's, for example, was allowed to edit, the myriad arguments about nothing would probably devolve even further into a grand mess of 'Liar! I never said that!' But, in a place like this where the moderators seem to be fairly active and the community

[quote]STRONG AGASINT BUILDINGS AND CAPSHIPS.[/quote] Which means that the unit will do the highest damage that it's capable of to buildings and cap. ships. It does 'not' mean that a handful of them guarantees you a victory in the scenario you're describing. How many bombers did you lose in the original fight? If a lone Progenitor was the only thing in the area, I'm going to guess 'none'. Did you simply park the two carriers in front of the mothership or did you

[quote]a single hangar bay can keep the pirates spinning in circles, sure... but the seige frigates will still go straight for your planet.[/quote] Which is why I'd suggest using turrets instead of a hangar bay. Sure, your planet will take a couple of hits but the siege frigates will be gone in short order. As I've said before, 4 turrets at a given planet with, say, two repair bays will repel a pirate raid at any stage of the game, especially since their movements within a gravity wel

[quote]Why to discourage micromanagement. Explain the intelligence required in force firing on single targets to destroy them faster.[/quote] I understand that this was the intent but I don't see how focusing fire is any less 'intelligent' than the alternative. Letting the ships do their own thing requires no intelligence on the part of the player at all. If the system actually worked as intended, having to micro your ships to ensure that they 'don't' focus fire (which, in my experien

[quote]But everything else is just too well designed for me to believe this... i must be missing something.[/quote] Heh, well... the framework is there for a number of interesting mechanics in this game (not just the trade ships) but the actual functions haven't been fully realized yet. Trust me, this feature isn't exactly isolated in its near-uselessness.

[quote]as it stands - there no need to build cap-ships at all[/quote] I'd say that this is more a function of how bloody expensive they can be (including the pricey higher-tier logistics upgrades) rather than their cap of 16. 16 cap ships, especially on the Advent side, will mow through pretty much anything. They just don't come out in force in multiplayer games because it's tough to amass 3000 + resources when you're trying to keep the pressure on an opponent. This strikes m