NWcityguy2

Join Date 09/2008

A few ideas for improving Sins

Some of these ideas are mine, some are not but I agree with them anyway. Just thought I'd open up a discussion on them to see what other people think. Also let me preface this with I'm not a developer and have no clue if incorporating any of this stuff is in the least way practical. This is just me thinking out loud on what I think are some good ideas and holes within the game. In my defense I constantly have to deal with people like myself at my job.

1. Fix the problem associated with "Ship blocking". In Sins, whichever ships gets to a plot of land first owns it, and all other ships have to maneuver around if they wish to go by. Now this seems like a decent enough idea until you start playing online and other people begin to exploit this to kill capital ships and vasari starbases. I primarily play Vasari and can't think of how many SB's I've lost because a fleet of scouts or light frigates were purposely moved into my path and I could get to repair bays or attacking torpedo cruisers in time to save my SB. The same thing is being done with capital ships as well, though not quite as common. My thought is whichever ship (or SB) is larger, gets the right of way. Other ships would simply be pushed aside.

2. Ships should lose their preference to jump at angles going from gravity well to gravity well. Rather they should just move to the quickest point they can jump from and go. Often times this can lead to a traffic jam trying to get out of a fight and the slower (more expensive) ships get there last and have to wait for the traffic to clear before the can jump out.

3. Starbase improvements. In my mind the SB is a "stand alone" defense and should be able to survive without a supporting fleet. Far be it from online players to accept that though . I think a few simple upgrade and research options would bring these back to their original purpose, rather then just creating a fleet "safe zone" with their weapons range. For starters they need to have the option of some sort of anti-fighter/bomber type weapon, more then hanger capabilities. Not ridiculously effective to counter a large SB killing force, but certainly better then watching your SB die to a smaller swarm of SC over several minutes. The work around for this is some flak frigates with engagement range set to local area or hold position, but I think this could be integrated into the SB to give it better survivability.

Another thing would be to rethink the idea of the "Super long range" weapon. Instead of it being its own weapon requiring anti matter I think it would be more effective as simple increasing the range of the third weapon to encompass the whole of the gravity well. In my mind it could apply to all 3 races SB's because even though a Vasari SB can move around it still isn't going to catch a fleet trying to avoid it while it perishes to SC.

And obviously giving TEC and Advent SB's the ability to fire in all directions to deal with Z axis threats. https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/370503 Which brings me to...

4. Giving hosts the option of disabling the Z axis just like they can disable pirates or change the game speed. It is poorly implemented and is usually only used by those trying to exploit bugs within the game.

5. A new defense structure something along the lines of a hanger bay for constructors. It would let you stockpile and rapidly deploy constructors to replenish ones destroyed by the enemy. Another idea is to give them researchable upgrade options to let a gravity well temporarily have more constructors then the level of infrastructure allows. This would be similar to the Scramble bombers ability the Vasari carrier cap has. Another option would be to research a "combat constructor" prototype which would have much better survivability.

6. Reworking the auto-explore on a scout ship. Perhaps giving it options like "avoid the pirates base" or being able to set a priority to explore enemy space rather then friendly. Also lowering the ability to disregard phase inhibitors on the tech tree as it is rarely if ever utilized.

7. Save the Kol battleship from utter obscurity. Flak burst doesn't cover enough real estate and the Rail gun is a waste of anti matter because it has to go through mitigation before it deals damage.

8. Make weapons, armor, hull and shield research more worthwhile. Right now they will give you an edge but a smaller upgraded fleet will still fall victim to a larger unupgraded one. I think this game would benefit from both increasing the upgradable levels from 30% to more along the lines of 60-75%, but also making it more cost prohibitive. Just like in real life governments chose between a highly trained and equipped military (USA, UK) or one based more on the concept of a human wave (China, Iran, North Korea) and various levels in between. Also hull repair rate? I'm glad it is included with hull points because even fully upgraded it is still too slow to be of any combat importance.

9. Fixing both the silliness of strike craft and the exploit that has become common to avoid it. Right now SC will attack something then do a absurdly long loop before starting another attack run. In response to this people have begun to set their fighters/bombers to hold position in tactics management and simply park them above the action. This way there is no fly by they simply sit there and shoot shoot shoot. Instead of doing a long slow loop, make it shorter and more efficient (perhaps research upgradable). At the same time still give people the option of using hold position for greater damage output but make SC take additional damage from enemy fire while doing so.

10. Give players the option of being able to set engagement range for a ship through the frigate factory. That way all ships produced at that factory don't automatically start with gravity well engagement range unless the player wants them to. It is all to common in long drawn out SB battles to lose lots of new ships because directly after they are built they head straight for the enemy (rally point or not). The two alternatives are to either have to constantly stick with a battle and change engagement range on every new ship, or have the rally point in another gravity well and then change them over in batches and send them back to the battle.

11. This one is really far out there, but I might as well mention it anyway . As ships start to take hull damage they could start to lose combat effectiveness. They would do less damage, shoot slower and have less engine power. Being in the military myself I fully understand the concept that stuff works great until it has been blown up a couple times. http://www.pbase.com/adam_and_misti/image/93986355/original

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I like #11. These ideas are pretty good, but let's face it: Advent is a lot better than Vassari, or even the TEC. The Vassari have lots of mobility, but a capped, Upgraded, well-balanced Advent Fleet will usually beat a capped, Upgraded, well balanced Vassari fleet. But besides faction awesomeness, these are all good ideas and should be taken into consideration.

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Hmm... you've got some very interesting ideas here.

1. I, too, play Vasari, and I've never met with "ship blocking," even with my excessive use of Star Bases as offensive weapons. I do understand the frustration of losing a Star Base to a few bomber squadrons as the opposing fleet kites the base, with my Giant Moving Bastion of Destruction utterly helpless to fight off a few tiny ships until my flak arrives.

2. This is a perfect example of why we need the Z-axis. The issue you seem to be referring to is not a problem with the angle preferences, but rather with the slow nature of Capital Ships and other cruisers. They move slower in-gravity well, why not jumping out? It sucks to JUST lose a high leveled capital ship, charging its jump as the last bomber lands its last shot, and BOOM. There goes 3000 credits. But this is the nature of the game.

3. Already addressed

4. This is a bad idea. The Z-axis is used more than you might expect -- just zoom in to a large fleet attacking the same target and it soon becomes clear that without liberal use of their Z coordinates they'd literally be crashing into each other. What would be nice to see is more effort on Stardock's part in making Z a viable command option.

5. The ability for an opponent to build repair structures in the middle of a battle is perhaps one of my greatest peeves when laying siege to a planet occupied by a large enemy armada. Countless times I've lost a clash to one well placed healer. For this reason, when I jump into an enemy well, I command my fighters to destroy their constructors before anything else. It helps a lot. This structure or ship that may keep a constructor in regardless of the attention of my fighters (which is large enough an advantage) would make siege of a planet even harder than it already is.

6. I totally agree -- this is very critical, as babysitting my scouts regardless of the auto-scout ability is absurd.

7. I can't really address this, as I do not play TEC often, and when I do I almost always use the Marza as my primary battleship.

8. This I think is not needed. I'll take the Advent Destra Crusader as an example. Un-researched, they are fragile and rather weak. With full offensive and defensive research, nothing stands in their way. Note than increasing shield and hull are both integrity upgrades, so really the survivability of a ship is increased by 60% at max. 150% would be absurd -- a single upgraded ship could tear through hordes of other ships before its shields dropped, and the research level of a ship has no bearing on its individual production cost.

9. I cannot address this as I've never used it, nor seen it used.

10. This is a very good idea, though personally I've never wanted to set an engagement range -- the fleet function keeps them together well enough for my purposes. Still, your idea is realistic, easy, and simple.

11. This is valid, for sure, but at this point not something that should be changed. It's an impressively important thing that ships fight 'til the end. If they didn't, one could scuttle them the moment they lost use and replace them, which is stupid and pathetic... this is a larger change than one might expect at first glance, and wouldn't likely be a good one. Besides, the basic idea of fighting in space is that you're in good condition until you're not; that is, if there's even a minor puncture in the hull, the ship will quickly lose use and, if not implode, at least result in the possibility of continuing the fight. Therefor, it makes sense that shields are a measurement of, obviously, shielding, while hull is a measurement of how much more of a beating the ship can take before a critical point at which the vacuum of space replaces the pleasant conditions of the interior. Even technology to prevent this would be too expensive on the ship's resources to keep the guns firing, and may already be included in the "hull" score anyway.

Thanks!

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1) Actually, that would be nice. Ship blocking would still work, but you'd have to block caps with caps.

2) Actually those angles are closer most of the time, the problem is ships take forever and a day just to turn a few degrees, so it's much faster to move in a straight line even if the distance is further. In general, group cohesion is annoying with regards to jumps and needs to be tossed out the window. I don't care about lining up with battleships ahead of my LRF, I just want them to line up and jump as quickly as possible.

3) Disagreed, a starbase should be a sitting duck without a supporting fleet. Starbases are really strong as it is, and virtually impossible to kill if the enemy fleet is camping the location, leaving you with few options. If they got even stronger, they'd be overpowered. I've managed to hold off three players attacking a starbased planet with little more than a few repair bays, hangers, a capital ship and a dozen or so frigates. My main fleet (easily five times larger than that small defensive force) was free to go on the offensive as a result and actually won the game. Starbases are strong enough, and would be overpowered if they got even stronger.

4) No comment; this really needs its on thread for discussion.

5) I'd like the ability to replace construction frigates from a frigate factory. There would be a small cost, and the frigate factory would have to take some time to build it, but if the enemy wants to keep construction frigates out of play they'd have to continually kill them.

6) Auto-explore could certainly stand to be more intelligent. It's extremely bad currently. Try playing on a big map (say the 8 player single-star random) and explore it manually and compare your performance with the AI. You'll probably have the system completely explored ten minutes before it.

7) The Kol, Dunov, Antorak, Revelation, and to a lesser degree the Vulkoras have really suffered since the last patch. Part of the problem is that everything else got buffed heavily, while their buffs were moderate at best. So relatively speaking they actually got even worse. The other ten capital ships are in the target range, but these five need work.

8 ) They're fine. Not everything has to be a high priority item, some things can be second rate. The only weapons upgrades that needs help are the Vasari wave cannon and pulse wave weapons. The others are perfectly acceptable at current price levels.

9) Put some flak next to these masses of fighters and watch them melt away. Seriously, it only works if the opponent is LRF or scout spamming and doesn't get the right counters on the field. Or bring out a Halcyon, Kortul or Kol and watch them scatter!

10) Agreed

11) Realistic as it may be, these types of systems don't work out in practice. Games with these types of mechanics tend to lend themselves to extremely decisive outcomes where one side just gets crushed and the other comes out without a scratch.

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9. Why not just eliminate the need for micro'ing the damn strikecraft altogether? Make it impossible to micro, and then adjust the damage for whatever scheme the devs want the strikecraft to conform to (short attacking runs or long). If damage is too low for long attacking runs, and if long attacking runs are what the strikecraft will do, then just adjust the damage up. I'm for anything which reduces micro, not increases it.

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Make it impossible to micro, and then adjust the damage for whatever scheme the devs want the strikecraft to conform to (short attacking runs or long)

Whoa! If you took away the ability to micro strike craft they'd become positively useless. Being able to maneuver them around enemy forces and harass them, not to mention the critical nature of picking your targets, is what makes strike craft so great. If they automatically engaged the nearest target and there was nothing you could do about it, strike craft wouldn't be worth using.

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I think it's meant to just remove the Hold Position option, which I'm all for.

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I came across ship blocking last night for the first time (i'm a newbie) playing against the AI. it was the AI cruiser-size ship (just a cruiser) that was unintentionally blocked and eventually destroyed by my fleet. I did think it was quite odd considering that it is supposed to be a 3D environment.

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I think this game needs reverse movement for ships. They only know how to move forward as far as i know.

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I think it's meant to just remove the Hold Position option, which I'm all for.

You can still micro them with move orders into a "hold position" behavior. A little less convenient, perhaps, but it won't solve the problem.

The only solution I can see is somehow coding fighters and bombers so that their weapons are disabled if they're not moving at a certain minimum speed.

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Ive only played the original, not yet played the addons. I like this game but It was also a massive disapointment! Zooming in and out of battles and everything is real time etc is excellent but thats the only big improvement when it comes to camparing this game with other space rts games.

- I hate the fact that when your fleet comes into contact with an enemy fleet, they get in range and then just sit there firing a few rounds at a time at one ship per ship. They should get in amongst each other firing at ships all around them and manouvering.

- Another things is the visuals and sound effects. To hear anything you need to get in really close and you dont see much when you do. Wheres the explosions and lasers and missles flying by and the sound of combat chat? If you've play the homeworld 2 battlestar galactica mod then you have an idea of what i mean.

- This doesnt bother me too much but instead of building one ship at a time why cant you build a shipyard that supplies one fleet and one fleet only. For example build a shipyard, build a fleet of 15 frigates. Research a cruiser and then it builds 5 cruisers and adds that to the 15 frigates in the fleet. Then research logistics and itll build another 7 frigates and 4 cruisers etc. Then after a fleet returns from combat to a friendly planet the yard builds ships and reinforces the fleet automatically. This way your not bouncing around your map thinking right theres not enough missle frigates here, but we need a command cruiser here and so on. Also i think its little funner than having one massive fleet or two against one enemy massive fleet.

- Theres alot of other ideas i have but for i think this will do.

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WHIPperSNAPper2008

Join Date 03/2008

+126

Quoting AWD_AJ,

reply 10

If you play Advent you can run your illuminators around in a circle. I think the downside of having the ships move around, aside from whatever computer demands it might impose, is that it would just make the battles harder to micromanage. In a battle I'm constantly telling my ships which enemy ships to focus fire on and then clicking my capitals' and other ships' abilities. I'm not sure it would be good for the game play if the ships were darting all around the gravity well and it might impose a large CPU cost, possibly resulting in lag.

I think you might like the Bailknights graphics enhancement mod. It looks really good. Also check out the Distant Stars mod, which incorporates Bailknights.

This game really isn't about the graphics, though. It's all about the overall macro-game strategy and tactical fleet micromanagement. Note that if you're playing against computer opponents, you're missing out on 50% or more of the strategic elements of this game. (If you're concerned about the graphics and whether the ships dart around during combat, then you need more strategic issues to contemplate.) The AI game is not a very suitable opponent once you are good at beating it because it is too forgiving, lacks creativity and the ability to formulate a macro-strategy, and it commits a horde of silly tactical errors which means that you don't have to dig very deep to win your battles against it or to outsmart it. AI opponents don't really have a strategy, per se. Also, playing it as part of a team against an opposing team adds numerous more strategic considerations to the game. So once you can consistently and easily beat the AI, click on the Ironclad Online button to discover what Sins really has to offer. You might find it more compelling and be less disappointed with the things you mentioned simply because you will no longer feel the need to pay much attention to them.

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