Daily Feedback Roundup -- Beta 2 Edition

from Sins Forums
Note: The purpose of this thread is to round up posts of note from the past day so the developers can easily find and track feedback in the chaos of the beta forum, and concentrate their time on the game. It will not be able to be replied to by non-moderators.


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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
June 22


AI movement issues (Link)
For one thing, the AI may send squadrons to far away planets that are of no use at the time and will not be taken, wasting ships, (scouting is fine, with a scout..) This may be fine if no one is worried about the AI, but could be better..

The bug is a bit worse though:
Occassionally there would be 5 or so frigates at one of the planets constantly switching destinations between two or three nearby planets, which resulted in them moving nowhere. This happened twice in one game, I'm not sure what brought them out of it but it lasted for a good length of time.



Cruiser discussion (Link)
Cruisers need some "upgrades", I find it a little disconcerting that cruisers can have a tough time dealing with frigates. A cruiser is a notable step up from a frigate, this should be paramount.

The Cruisers firepower should be increased... Because right now cruisers feel more like a tacked on ability enabled frigates with crap firepower. Make them worth their namesake. Right now the money spent in cruiser research is better spent in missile frigates or battleships.



UI -- ship icons are not distinguishable enough (Link)
When I scroll out the little symbols for the ships group up becoming a mash of ships, perhaps they do have a distance between them but for me at least it was so bad I had to zoom in all the time to select ships.

The ship symbols are far too small, the ones I see on screen zoomed out not the ones on the left. I had to squint and put my head to the monitor half the time to see correctly what each ship was. Possibly make a slider bar in the settings menu to change the size of the symbols representing ships

This one is tied in with the other two - the symbols for the ships just aren't distinguishable enough.



General feedback thread (Link)
In general players seem to feel the logistics limits are a little too restrictive, and pirates are quite powerful.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
June 23-25


Technical

Crash -- After 30 minutes on Vista (Link)
If I play the game for longer than 30 minutes (roughly anywhere between 38 to 42 minutes, yes I timed it), it crashes to desktop with the only error message being a request to email a .dmp file.


Crash -- Shortly after saving (Link)
Anyway it crash about 2 minutes after I saved (thought me lucky, after playing for about 2 hours? ). After I load up the save it crashed again by my estimation also about after 2 minutes.


Exploit -- Exceed logistics caps by building then allowing another player to take the planet and build his own (Link)
I have noticed that once a planet is bombed and taken over; the previous owner's structures remain. Me and an AI created a rather strong chokepoint as follows;

I'd bombed and taken his planet, but left his turrets. He offered a ceasefire while I built my own turrets/tactical structires. Our alliance grew stronger and I maxed out my tactical structures while, as far as I could see, his structures were still there and working fine too; all in all giving us extra tactical points worth of structures in orbit around the planet.


Graphics -- Skybox reflection on planetary shield is rotated 90 degrees (Link)
Planet Shield flips the skybox image vertically. See Picture..


Graphics -- Skybox textures showing seams (Link)
2. I have noticed a 'seam' like effect on the backgrounds, a pair of parrelel lines from north to south where the texture appears different between them. (Graphics card Ati X1950Pro).


Player AI -- Misplaced taunts still being sent (Link)
The AI still whispers stupid things after you ally with them like "your destruction is inevitable", and "I suggest you evacuate planet (insert name) NOW! The one that gets me is when both of us are fighting another AI at the same planet i get "Why am i here, and your not?!" I think the AI taunts still need a little work

In Galciv2 if you are winning a war against an AI, they'll admit it with something like you're kicking my butt! or pushing me around is your idea of fun heh!? something to the extend of putting them below you. In Sins the AI are always bossy. I almost wiped a guy out and he keeps saying my destruction is invertible even when he has only one planet left.


Unit AI -- Flaks and fighters not prioritizing targets properly (Link)
Flak frigates no longer chase enemy fighters as they did in Beta 1. They seem to target enemy ships and structures now like other attach ships.

while we on the subject I think the fighter behavior is the same. Right now they priority installation and ship over squadron, even after I tell them to attack bomber, after they finish one group they return to attack bigger target, not chasing after other bomber.


Unit AI -- Fighters do not function when carrier is set to auto attack: weapons range (Link)
If you have a craft capable of carrying fighters or bombers, and set it to auto-attack within weapon range (not tried it for local area); the fighters and bombers don't seem to respond to commands; if you tell them to attack, they just turn to face the target but remain next to the carrier. As soon as I set the attack range to 'Gravity well' they moved in to attack.



Gameplay

Discussion -- Cruisers: are they too weak, what should their role be, and do they deserve to be called cruisers?
+ General cruiser feedback (Link)
+ Should cruisers have guns? (Link)

Discussion -- Capital ship[yard]s: how should they be handled now?
+ Require multiple shipyards to build biggest ships? (Link)
+ Should capships require research like cruisers? (Link)

Discussion -- Pirates: what should their role be, and how strong should they get?
+ Ideas on improving pirates (Link)
+ Pirates win the game for you while you sleep (Link) (Link)
+ Way too many pirates (Link)
+ Give pirates a hidden base requiring special sensors to find (Link)

Discussion -- Speed, pacing, and game length.
+ Game length is not suitable for multiplayer (Link)
+ Scale costs and build/research times based on galaxy size (Link)
+ Need option to adjust overall game speed (Link)
+ Request game pacing options ala Civ 4 (Link)

Idea -- Antimatter batteries and line of sight sensors (Link)
I know in some other posts people were talking about making more uses out of star systems and someone had mentioned something about using it for energy. I think a great way to do this is to be able to build a star base in the gravitational field that sends trade ships to a planet (user can change which planet) and ever user ship owned by the player that passes through that system gets a temporary boost to max anti-matter under the auspice of energy batteries.
Another thing I would like to see is the ability to hide ships behind a planet you own. All that would take is to give ships only line of sight sensors (maybe full sensor abilities can be researched later) on planets they do not own.


Gameplay --Allegiance penalties are a bit strong (Link)
Does the HPDP only affect income from the taxes? -85% seems kind of harsh. Is this designed to reduce the effectiveness of larger civilizations as they continue to grow?

well, taking a second look I say it is quite harsh... the penalty is kindof cool, but 5 jumps away gets you 85% penalty!?!? my ice planet hardly produced any crystal with max resourcers.


Gameplay -- Galaxy generator is leaving systems empty of players, and in some cases, nearly empty of planets too (Link) (Link)
Now i've killed all the AI's after 3-4 hours and moved on to the second star. My question is, Whats up with this? Shouldnt at least 2 AI have spawned in the other star system? Or did i just play with too few AI to pop some over there?

Well I just created one with 4 stars and 60 planets odd thig is one of the 4 stars only had one plant.


Gameplay -- Galaxies need more unbuildable dead-zones (Link)
The reason I say this is the game is kind of lacking in dead areas, which i think is particularly harmful to concepts like piracy and raiding. Also, almost all battles seem to be sieges. Dead asteroids are already in the game and adhere to this idea... sort of. You can't put logistics structures there and they have no mines. But they are virtually always built up with heavy defenses... requiring a siege, and making raiding impractical, and making empires walls of steel with no vulnerable points.


Gameplay/graphics -- Are TEC ship designs too pretty/ugly/strong/weak? (Link)
Because a race of people in a desperate situation don't design a cruiser that has no firepower. I don't care if their commanders don't like the "dirty" work (i.e. combat), if their such cowards then really why not camp a Kol Battleship? I see a great ship design in the Kol Battleship, and then the rest are kind of mehhh.
To be honest I am glad we have 233 odd days left, because the TEC ships really need a little overhaul.... I love your ship design, but weapon placement and sticking to the back story could use some help.


Request -- Enable autosaves, if saving can be sped up (Link) (Link)
This game could REALLY use an auto save feature - I was playing a game earlier and after perhaps 4 hours of play my computer hard locked on me (not beta related).

I think that autosaving is an important feature to have, but currently saving the game takes too long for this to be feasible. I have seen forums for other games where people complain about how it takes so long to save, they turn off autosaving, even though the game crashes and they lose a lot of work.


Request -- Add 'focused ship in group' cycle buttons to UI (same function as Tab/Shift-Tab) (Link)
would be nice if you go through all your ships and able to use their abilities or upgrading them or assigning a new fighter / bomber squadron, personally I would find this useful, to accomplish this, arrows should be put in beside the ship portrait, (in the UI)


UI -- Repair ability's description is confusing (Link)
1. The Repair Platform's descriptions are confusing. It's tool tips says 'Mustn't be self and have hull damage', which for a while I read as it meaning that the platform must have damage to work. Something like 'Cannot repair itself, and it's target must have hull damage' sounds better.


UI -- Need some way to better manage clumping of ship icons when zoomed out (Link)
When I scroll out the little symbols for the ships group up becoming a mash of ships, perhaps they do have a distance between them but for me at least it was so bad I had to zoom in all the time to select ships.


Unsorted -- Please try to make single-topic threads so they can be summarized, people!
+ Inert's general feedback thread (Link)
+ Danielost's general feedback thread (Link)
+ Bear Uno's general feedback thread (Link)
+ RobJ's general feedback thread (Link)
+ Lexusbeat's general feedback thread (Link)
+ Reposted feedback from Gamers with Jobs (Link)




WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
June 26

Technical

Gameplay -- Construction stops and hangs partway (Link)
a construction ship would attempt to build a metal or crystal mine and it would start constructing normally, and then just freeze its construction (animation was still present). I found this for structures at around 35-40% complete, and 65-70% complete but only happened to both mine types (crystal and metal) and hanger defense, but not for gauss emplacements


Gameplay -- Local move orders sometimes intrepreted as random jump orders (Link)
After successfully thwarting off attacks by pirates or CPU opponents, I found that sometimes if I went to manually move my remaining ships into a custom formation in the gravity well, that some ships would attempt to make a jump to a random planet in my empire (typically a nearby node, sometimes back to my capital).


Pathing AI -- Ships plot jump courses through unknown systems (Link)
ships should not be plotting a route through unknown space to join a fleet. i know that the ships are following the shortest route. but how does a captian know that the shortest route is through unknown space.


Player AI -- AIs spend too much on bounties and hurt their development (IC) (Link)
The AIs never seem to horde, not that I do, but at times I need nothing to buy. It appears the often have these times, but instead all available money seems to be spent on bounties. Not that bounties shouldn't be used, it seems the AI is overly anxious to use it.


Player AI -- AIs colonize without clearing pirates (IC) (Link)
However I would like to report something that appears to be a bug. I have noticed a problem with the AI, They seem to colonize planets, and asteroids, and leave the pirate forces behind, in tern, there colony gets destroyed.


Player AI -- Poor capship management and fleet composition (IC) (Link)
It does but it generally sucks at building fleets. AI fleets are pathetic and having cap ships in there only exacerbates problem ( he loses cap ships for nothing).
I've had a single Sova jump right into an inhibitored, gauss cannoned and hangared system. And the AI already knew these things were there (earlier scouts ran into the same thing).


UI -- Mouse cursor is invisible (IC) (Link)
I just installed beta 2 (never had beta 1) and when I get into the beginning menu, I have no mouse. I can move it around and still select things, but cannot see the cursor.




Gameplay

Idea -- Different types of planet defense structures (Link)
It would also be great to add some sort of privateer orbital structure which creates ships around your planet that assist in planetary defense, maybe a couple of different types of privateer ships would be good (a couple of frigates and maybe a small cruiser of sorts).


Question -- Do pirates only spawn when nobody's looking, and should traders travel between stars? (Link)


Request -- Put levelup notices in the event notification panel (Link)
just as long as clicking the notification didn't change my view to that ship - but that it would bring up its ability management to pick upgrades - so you can get right back into the action without jumping between ship locations!


Request -- Identify pips on the tree by class and mark ships in transit (Link)
2) It would also be nice to have something that organizes what military ships were currently in phase jump - there were a couple of instances where I was doing a couple things at once, and forgot where my ships were headed through phase space, and I had to wait for their arrival before I could re-situate myself.
3) In the empire tree, it would be nice if there was a designated blip for capships, instead of just colored blips to indicate the amount of ships. Maybe slightly different sized blips for frigates, cruisers and capships - this would help give a better idea of force strength based on ship types...


Request -- Another vote for line of sight sensors (Link)
Now, I'm not saying that the devs should implement a fog of war here. However, I think that it would make the game much more interesting if the ships had *directional* sensors, rather than omni-sensors.


Request -- Rename light frigs to assault frigs (Link)
Light Frigates should be renamed to Assault Frigates. The problem with Light Frigates is its name relationship with Heavy frigates. If you have light..where are the heavies?. Heavy frigates ( kodiaks ) replace light frigates in late game.but I believe that the replacement from light frigate to heavy frigate is wrong.


Unsorted -- Please try to make single-topic threads so they can be summarized, people!
+ MxM111's general feedback thread (Link)
+ bootleg96's general feedback thread (Link)
+ UsariaPrime's general feedback thread (Link)

Ongoing Discussions
+ TEC Ship Design (Link)
+ should the cruisers have guns? (Link)





Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
June 27

Technical

Unit AI -- Ships chasing traders to use abilities (Link)
I would consider this a bug: ships that apply special abilities to other ships (such as the robotics cruiser or the dunov) end up chasing trade ships down phase lanes when they try to heal them, sometimes ending up on enemy planets, and they even do this when they had previous orders to go somewhere else!


Gameplay -- Black market charges full price despite discount techs (Link)
The Black Market preffered account tech doesn't work. It shows the numbers where you buy resources as being lower, but it still charges you the full amount. I found this by messing with a mod where added more levels to all the techs, but I checked it with a pristine data folder and it was still happening. Check for yourselves, get the tech, get the cost of resources high, save up some credits and then hold down shift to buy 500 at a time, buy them when you have just a bit more credits than you need for all 500, and it will still take you down to 0 credits.



Gameplay

Gameplay -- Close-range ships should ignore turrets if they're out of the turrets' range (Link)
Maybe that is the solution to my problem, however in my opinion that solution is a work around. The best solution for me would be that if the turrets are out of range, the close combat units simply ignore them until everything else in the sector is dead and buried.


Gameplay -- Ships need to look ahead and avoid obstacles altogether, using the Z axis when appropriate (Link)
1. Movement of Ships is not quite realistic, they are always moving on a plain axis so I can not have a complet 3D sense. Is there any way to make ships move verticaly? Even when two ships or more find at the same point they have to give way to the others before continuing their ways, not very real in such a hughe space.


Idea -- New things that could be researched (Link)
1) Techs that increase general fleet AI, fleet tactics and fleet coordination.
2) Techs related to scanning sweeps of nearby nodes
3) Techs related to coordinating planetary defense


Idea -- Add more 'civilian' ships to give systems additional appearance of life (Link)
Other than the occasion trade ship zipping through explored empire controlled nodes, I felt like I was guarding a collection of planets with all of its citizenry were stuck on each planet or asteroid. I would love to see NPC controlled civilian ships that go about their business throughout your empire, but also require some sort of protection at one point or another. I would love to see my empire teeming with NPC controlled ships, just doing there own thing.


Idea -- Defense shipyard that spawns local-only frigates (Link)
Now of course planet's shouldn't be able to withstand a huge warfleet without having a large fleet of its own to help defend it, but the current defenses seem a bit weak, and I'm not sure how to make them better without overpowering them.
So here's the idea. Add in as a defense structure a planetary defense shipyard


Idea -- Small 'quests' come up that can be done for rewards, to add some interaction (Link)
These are just some very basic ideas for missions that could enhance some game play aspects and make you feel like you are doing more than just razing enemy planets to expand your empire...you actually have to tend to it as well. Although they sound simple in nature - it may be the best way to include missions into game play.


Idea -- Make capshipyards only buildable at well-developed worlds (Link)
I'm of the opinion that CSY should only be built at fully developed first tier planets. This is so because they represent a considerable investment of empire resources and such projects using conventional wisdom would not be developed in many places and in out of the way and nominal areas.


Request -- Option to force fleets to stay in foxed formation (Link)
Is there going to be an option in the final release of the game that will support fleet formations? Some order in the middle of chaos.
I don't like the idea of the fleet auto attacking and splitting up in to smaller groups.


Request -- Mark insurgents as a separate faction from pirates/marauders (Link)
I think the insurgency ships should show up as "rebels" to help reduce the confusion about the pirates. Lets give the pirates a little capitalistic respect. They never do anything for political reasons.


Request -- Capships should have some AA capability besides fighters (Link)
It just does not seem right for a primary vessel not to have inherent AA defenses other then a single fighter squad. I am under the impression that combined arms is a core tenant of the game design. Therefore this situation seems like a minor oversight.


Request -- Allow queueing of ability picks on capships (Link)
Its often hard to keep track of upgrading your cap ship abilities. Often its only when I have selected the capship that I realise it has leveled up.


Request -- Easy means to tell what is selected at far zoom when the containing nodes aren't open on the tree (Link)
One of the things that I do not like is when I want to check what ships are near particular planet, the logical way is to select everything near that planet. Guess what - there is no selection window, and if the planet is minimized in the empire management strip - you will not see anything at all!


Request -- Add income rates back to the UI as a toggleable 'tray' ala Rise of Nations (Link)
If you do put the income rates back up there, I think it's important that it be an option.
The simplest solution might just be a slide-out tray with additional stats, as in Rise of Nations.


Request -- Make different types of techs more easily identifiable (Link)
The tech tree was a shock to the senses. I love having an expansive tree with many options, but it took me a long while to parse out what my different options were. What would be great is to have distinctive icon shapes for different types of upgrades.


Request -- Reduce frequency of bounty increase voiceovers (IC) (Link)
"The bounty on this empire just increased" or something like this. It is SO annoying to hear bounty messages EACH 30 SECONDS or more often. It MUST go away!


Request -- Auto-attack (defend) option for adjacent gravity wells (Link)
In a situation where one CapShip is defending three adjacent nodes, I would like to be able to set which nodes the CapShip is responsible for defending, so CapShips automatically move to defend pre-selected nodes under attack.


Request -- Tutorials on 3D movement and fleet management (Link)
I wholeheartedly agree and hope it comes to pass. The 3D element is the one area of the game I simply have not fully figured out yet. Moreover special focus needs to be given on fleet maneuvers and positioning. Because getting all my ships to show up at the same time when I launch an attach and getting different waves to arrive at precise intervals in specific formation locations has proved impossible for me at present. The fleet management system needs to be completely put through its paces in the tutorial.



Unsorted -- Please try to make single-topic threads so they can be summarized, people!
+ Aegun's general feedback thread (Link)
+ Schem's massive feedback thread (Link)
+ Wonderpug's wishlist/feedback thread (Link)


Ongoing Discussions
+ TEC Ship Design (Link)
+ should the cruisers have guns? (Link)
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
June 28

Gameplay

Discussion -- How to better prevent colony rushes than making pirates target colony ships above all else? (Link)

Discussion -- What sort of role should culture play, and how should it work?  (Link)

Discussion -- Revenge of the Realistic systems/phase lanes debate..
+ Travel and Solarsystems revamp anything? (Link)
+ Map Layout (Link)

Gameplay -- Capital ships feel too 'samey' (Link)
Can you please change the capital-ships a bit more, currently i still feel that they are too similar in size and use. For instance The Kol and the Colony -Capital ship are used much in the same way other than the ability to colonize planets, they have much the same armament and are almost exactly the same size. Please, just make them at least a bit more physicaly different.


Gameplay -- Pirate Poll: Yep, they're too strong (Link)
everyone, for the sake of knowledge!!!
tell me two things:
1) how much of an issue are the pirates (be as descriptive as possible)
2) what difficulty is the AI you play with/how many AI are you playing with?


Gameplay -- Does the Sova need beefed up at low levels? (Link)
I think the thought is that compared to the other, equally priced, capital ships you could buy instead, it doesn't seem good enough. Personally I like it for teh lookz but I have to admit i don't build them as much as i could
they become more than worth it later on, but by initial power alone they are VASTLY outclassed.


Idea -- Separate tech tree into more categories with more prerequisites (Link)
The tech tree feels a bit simplified and "disconnected". Maybe it could be expanded and divided into different areas such as : beam wepons, missile weapons, ballistic weapons, trade, diplomacy, ship hulls, manufacturing, civic development, terraforming, computers etc. Now you have for example one research button for a single type of ship and when it is researched you can build the ship. With a more granular tech tree you would need a certain collection of researched areas or components in order to build something, some components common between ships or structures and some unique.


Idea -- Planets resist colonization, and invade by landing colonists en-masse (Link)
How about planetary problems? You shouldn't be able to just send supplies down on an uninhabited planets (what are the chances) and be able to capture it. And you only ever need one colony frigate. Have a bar that shows the progress of the planet being colonized, have some "resistance" slowing down the bar, or in cases of extreme resistance (planets already owned), have it go backwards. You have to send multiple colony frigates to take down that owned planet (something of the order of 6 to 7) in a reasonable time frame (a minute). Or you could always bomb the hell out of the planet, which would create "resistance" after they have been wiped out because you just destroyed the planet you want to colonize, but is perhaps a third of the initial resistance of a populated planet.


Idea -- Give higher-level planets some weak weaponry fired from the surface (Link)
What about the possibility of a planet based defense system. I dont really mean like ships taking off (though that is a possibility), but something like missile launchers and possibly some laser cannons that are on the ground and can fire into space.


Idea -- Let capital ships earn (cosmetic) awards for various actions (Link)
Medals would be cool, and you would think it would be a really easy feature to add in. For example, a capital ship destroys another capital ship around a system it could get The Battle of Phemos award or something. Like when at the end of a goldeneye level everyone gets generic medals based on how well they did.


Idea -- Additional Destroyer class between Cruisers and Caps (Link)
I would like to see one (and only one) new ship in Sins. This ship is : The destroyer ! The destroyer would be a bridge between capital ships and cruisers and allow for less of a dependancy on capital ships and kodiaks late-game.


Request -- More ways to counteract Allegiance penalties (Link)
I think allegiance needs to be either nerfed, or better yet have a tech you can research that lowers it. I say this because I played on a medium galaxy yesterday, and a bunch of planets were on the other side of the star, and anywhere I put my home planet, a bunch of planets were going to have their taxes and production cut by 60%. That seems pretty harsh to me.


Idea -- Ways to diversify planets and asteroids (Link)
Every map is basically exactly the same, you have exactly the same the gravity-well with a planet smack in the middle.
This makes the game fairly repetitive in the long run, as soon as you reach a certain level of superiority against a foe it’s just basically move in with the fleet, burn planet and rinse and repeat.



Unsorted -- Please try to make single-topic threads so they can be summarized, people!
+ Lamin Blake's FEEDBACK and ideas (Link)


Ongoing Discussions
+ Schem's Feedback (Link)

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
June 29-July 2

Technical

Crash -- Corrupted savegame (IC) (Link)
the game crash each time a try to load my save game i reinstall but didn't help i didn't do much on my pc any driver or hardware update but whenever i try it crash. Can someone help!!!!!


Exploit -- Infinite money from black market buy/sell  (Link)
There's a 5 second update delay in the black markets calculations. I had been exploiting this a bit by buying a bunch of ore all at once if I needed it by holding shift and clicking like mad before the price goes up. This isn't really that big a deal, and would be perfectly OK. The problem is the price DOES go up, and when it does the selling price goes up too. So I can buy about 10,000 or so ore at 500 per or close to it. Then since I just bought a ton of ore, when the market updates, the price to buy it shoots to the max, as does the price to sell it. So I now have 10,000 ore worth 1200 per. Sell it all


Graphics -- Skybox texture corruption (video memory leak?) (Link)
I Centered my view on a frigate, and just after the wierdst glitch happened: After i minimized the game then reopened it it had disserpered


Gameplay -- Starting position distribution madness (IC)  (Link)
So I set a custom galaxy to 100 Planets spread between 4 galaxies, with 9 artifacts, and 10 Players (including myself). So I start, and I find out that all 9 AI are in the same galaxy that I am in.


Graphs -- End-game stats show negative frigate count (using mods) (Link)
Any idea how I could possibly get a result of -328 frigates on the result screen? I did some modding, yes, but I only changed things like the attack values of my ships. Perhaps it has something do to with the missile turret things that disappear after a while, (I forget which capital ship makes these....) but I am not sure.



Gameplay

Discussion -- Resouce scarcity (Link)

Discussion -- Pirates!
+ I had the worst experience with pirates i have ever had... (Link)
+ Pirate poll and discussion  (Link)

Discussion -- Late-game ideas and events (IRC chat log) (Link)
last night me and P5y got talking about ideas on improving the game, have to admit the ideas he has come up with are very good


Discussion -- How should the pacing be changed to make Sins multiplayer-friendly?  (Link)
But you are completetly right multiplayer simply can't work if it takes 6 hours to do, Saving mid-game then trying to find the same person again to play with is almost impossible.


Discussion -- Logistics and fleet supply system (IC) (Link)
The old system of upkeep per ship/structure was pretty realistic, and doable up until you hit the 75% cap from there it all went to hell in a handbasket. The freedom you had with that system is pretty much what hooked me into the game. That is not to say i don't like the current system. In fact i do, but it does need allot of work.


Gameplay -- Queued orbitals with 0% progress should be unattackable (Link)
The best option, IMHO, is to make unbuilt structures be completely invisible to enemies until construction on them begins. In addition to being invisible they should, in effect, not exist. Ships, friendly and hostile alike, should be able to fly right through them. After all, until you actually start to build it that silhouette only represents future plans to build a structure, not an actual structure that exists in the present. You should be able to see your future plans but your enemy shouldn't.


Idea -- Make planet shields act like ship shields, as an extra HP pool (Link)
Another point is about shield planetary defenses, I think they should look better if they act just the same as shields do in spaceships, I mean, when you create a planetary shield then the planet will gain a shield defensive capacity number just like ships, which will decrease with attacks


Idea -- More thoughts on planetary defenses (Link)
It is only logical that people would never leave their planet in the hands of just a few turrets out in space, something closer would be get. Maybe you could have different stages of planet defense. One could be gauss cannons, the other gauss and missiles, the other something else, like more fighter and bomber generation. It would just give the game another get dynamic. As of now, the planets are really vulnerable.


Idea -- Variable tax rates?  (Link)
At the moment its not possible to change the tax rate of planets, Salaena1000 asked on irc about being able to change the tax rate on planets, personally I think changing the tax income of planets would be a very good idea, and is coupled with culture, higher the culture the more you can tax a planet, but low culture and low alliance to your empire and you tax them hard, will make the planet revolt, I think this will add more to the gameplay, so what do others think?



Ongoing Discussions
+ Schem's Feedback (Link)
+ Travel and Solarsystems revamp anything? (Link)
+ Map Layout (Link)
+ How to better prevent colony rushes (Link)
+ Ways to diversify planets and asteroids (Link)
+ TEC Ship Design (Link)
+ Add Destroyer-class ships too? (Link)
+ RTS Battle Mechanics and Ships (Link)
+ Fleet Formations (Link)











Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
July 3

Technical

Graphics -- Extractor models not properly aligned on asteroids (Link)
yeah, noticed it to. unfortunately my computer wont take the pictures, so I cant help.
although I'll note that it does happen mostly on the really oblong asteroids, not the rounded out ones.


Performance -- Serious performance issues on a high-end machine (Link)
i'm allmost at the point of conquerring 1 entire solar system but everytime i zoom in or out or want to build something (or rather...everytime i perform an action) the game hangs for 1 or 2 seconds and then goes on.
It's driving me nuts!


Camera -- View scrolling goes out of control (Link)
Basically, the scrolling speed seems to randomly switch between reasonable and out of control-fast. It doesn't seem to matter whether I'm using the keyboard arrow keys or the mouse. There does not seem to be any particular event that triggers the switch, it seems to occur randomly.




Gameplay

Idea -- Let planets level up and become more unique as well (Link)
As far as I have seen there is really very very little thought going into your planets. They're what you're fighting for. They're where your people, who are your soldiers, scientists, civilians, pilots, come from. Why not make the planets, your homeworlds, more customizable? Allow the planets/inhabitants to gain experience like Capital Ships. Allow for the planet to grow/become unique in their own ways under your direction. Perhaps instead of having the planets "level up" they can reach certain stages independently based on time of occupation or their trade levels or growth levels in which you make 'important' yet non-time comsuming choices at their respective stages that strongly affect their future growth.


Idea -- Phase lane maniupulation (Link)
- Phaselane restrictor - Temporarily disables all phaselanes leading to that system. Logistic building 2slot. Uses antimatter. 1 minute usage. 10 minute cool-off.
- Phaselane minelayer - Minelayer phases through a lane , and drops off mines along the lane. Once mined , the enemy units using that lane can be damaged.


Idea -- Make colonize ability take time to execute, during which it can be disrupted (Link)
Maybe a way to negate the whole problem with pirates and planet colonization (ie. needing to make pirates prioritise colonisation ships) is to give a planet a sort of residual atmospheric shield (or preparing the atmosphere to allow the modules to enter or to prepare the site of landing) that would need to be overcome by a frigate (maybe all frigates or maybe just siege frigates) with a 30 second countdown ability, or something like that, that would restrict a player from killing all the pillagers only and then colonizing and running away to do it again.


Idea -- Raise tax income to accelerate early game (Link)
One way to help with the begining game doldrums (the begining does seem to be the slowest, once you get a few systems under your belt things get interesting) is to increase the amount of taxes that population pays. I make almost as much in income from metal as I do in taxes, when you figure that 1 metal = 2 credits. Almost all of it gets sold. Lower the amount of metal mines a bit, and bump the tax rate up from 0.3 to 0.5.


Request -- Let ships fire on any enemies in their weapons arcs while moving (Link)
It seems that when I issue a move order, the frigates don't fire back at all. It makes retreating a heavy loss. It would also be good, that in battle when I issue a move order ships will fire at any target within range while they move.


Request -- User-customizable targeting priorities (Link)
Just a feature request how hard would it be to make target priority either changable in game or something that is relatively easy to mod? I know that currently the fighters and flak frigates aren't set properly but that's not my only issue personally anything that is shooting at my planet takes top priority. Granted this is easy enough to do if I am watching the battle but that is not always the case.


Request -- Adjustable 'incoming enemy' warnings (Link)
Right now the game Tells you enemy Forces are approaching a planet , if it's a single scout or an entire armada of capitol ships. It's slighlty annoying to jump to this little annoying scout ship which is utterly useless thinking it could possibly be a threat.
I would like it to be scalable, or atleast measure the threat before it feels the need to tell me.


Request -- Allow camera to zoom closer in to objects (Link)
Now I see what you mean, Ironclad, when you say your textures are something in the thousands x thousands pixels! Holy crap we're missing out!
You should lessen the zoom restriction so that we can get in-close and personal with your beloved ships.



Unsorted
+ Zeroscape's gargantuan idea thread(Link)
+ Paradoxnt's Favorite Ideas & Suggestions (Link)
+ Karaoke's feedbacks and suggestions. (Link)


Ongoing Discussions
+ Travel and Solarsystems revamp anything? (Link)
+ How to better prevent colony rushes (Link)
+ Add Destroyer-class ships too? (Link)
+ RTS Battle Mechanics and Ships (Link)
+ Alternatives to current empire system. (Link)

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
July 4-5

Technical

+ Bug? -- Duplicate artifacts in one game (Link)
I don't know if this is intentional or not, but if you set artifacts to 9, the game puts duplicates in. I would think that there should only be one of each artifact. They aren't cumulative, and it's kind of annoying to see the artifact text on a planet you just cleared only to realise you already have that one so it's a waste.


+ Crash -- Update: crash no longer occurs when using a standard display (Link)
Seems to have been fixed by moving to a 19" LCD Monitor as opposed to using my 32" LCD which was using a 1320 x 768 resolution.
Now playing fine in 1280 x 1024... bit of a downgrade of screen but as long as everything works.


+ Pathing -- Fighters still flying through objects (Link)
When attacking his homeworld, I noticed the fighters went through his planet. I'm not sure if this is supposed to happen or not, but might be something to look into.


+ UI -- Autoupgrade on capships turns off on save/reload (IC) (Link)
I am not sure if it was reported, but I loaded a saved game and noticed that all my capital ships had their auto-upgrade ability's feature turned off (the ability management button).
When I last played I had them all turned on.




Gameplay

+ Gameplay -- Should pirates try to break through front lines to attack distant but undefended worlds? (Link)
the piarates fly past my def in orbit arround my planet fly past my planet and jusp 3 times b4 trying to even bomb my planet and by the time they get there they have like 1 ship left. This is just stupid. also the ai jump in then turn round and jump back then 5 seconds later they do it again and this continues till the ship is killed.


+ Gameplay -- Complaint about opportunistic AI colonization (Link)
I finally unallied him. Whenever I cleared a planet of pirates, he would almost instantly send a colony ship to it and colonize it before my ship got there. It gets alittle annoying when he has like 10 planets, 8 of them thanks to me for making it safe =[ While I only have 2.


+ Idea -- What can we do to make fleet battles feel less like trench combat? (Link)
ASSUMPTION #3: The fleet mechanics should be logical and require no explaining
So what can differentiate different ships: 1. How fast they move. 2. Rate of fire. 3. Range. 4. Accuracy. How often the ship hits its target can be based on the accuracy of the ship.


+ Idea -- [Mega]Flagship threads (Link) (Link) (Link)
OK, as you might have noticed I am a supporter of the flagship idea among others like Capital-duty, so I figured out let's have a discussuion to make the flagship perfectly fit in the game or just discredit it if it doesn't work.


+ Idea -- Capital Ships: Defenses, Speed and Weaponry (Link)
Enable capital ships to shrug off small arms fire from un-upgraded frigates and fighters (not bombers). Company of Heroes had this inplace as you couldn't actually damage a tank without giving your infantry squads explosive or armour piercing weapons to get past armour. Granted, the whole HP system was different in that game but perhaps something similar might be used to make Capital Ships more... Capital.


+ Idea -- Increase the utility of repair yards/cruisers by eliminating natural hull regen (Link)
Why not remove the automatic repairs and instead just use the shields. Once the shield has depleted the ship starts to take damage. The shield will constantly regenerate but damage will not, forcing you to use more repair docks as well as create forward operations outpost.


+ Idea -- Thoughts on how gas giants could be implemented (Link)
I would make Gas giants neutral . They would be similar to stars in that they have phaselanes to and from but cannot be owned by anyone.


+ Request -- More options at game creation (Link)
Two things I'd like to see. First of all, another developer I like, MadDoc software (they did Star Trek Armada 2, and empire earth 1 and 2) always adds a TON of options at the begining. For example, you can change the amount of damage weapons do, increase or decrease cost, move speed etc. It's sort of like a pre built mod system. Also, I'd really like an option to allow everyone to see everything, not saying it should be default, but I have a God complex, I like being omniscient




Ongoing Discussions
+ Open Phase Travel vs. Laned Phase Travel (Link)
+ Various strategical phaselane ideas (Link)
+ Schem's Feedback (Link)
+ How to prevent colony rushes (Let's chase the colony ship) (Link)
+ Cap ships should have aa guns (Link)
+ Census about the pirates... (Link)

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
July 6

Technical

+ Targeting -- Away-facing weapons arcs remain idle when manually attacking a specific target (IC) (Link)
Ships will fire if they have anything in their firing arc whether they are moving or not. This is most apparent with capitalships because they have weapons in many banks (often even in the rear so as they retreat you will see them firing back). You don't see this as often with frigates because most of them only have front firing weapons with narrow cones.
In my experience this works if ships are moving, but doesn't work if the ship's current orders are "Attack X." Any weapons that can't fire at X won't fire at all.




Gameplay

+ Request -- Patrol loop orders (Link)
It would be nice if you could order your ships to protect multiple planets.
In combination with this building that prevents enemy ships from leaving the system it would be a good line of defense.


+ Request -- Flashier weapon effects (Link)
The rave gun is fluff, plain and simple. Its there too look cool, kinda like spinnaz or under-car lights these guns would be added on to whatever and wherever the devs would want to put them. They do no (or next to no) damage, have a VERY small cool-down, fire medium distances, come in a variety of preety colours for different races/ships.


+ Request -- Clarify the use and function of auto-attack range settings in the tutorials (Link)
Yeah this needs adding to the tutorial. It was mentioned, but because the terminology is different to our normal 'stances' it gets a little confusing.
Keep the new phrases just make it a little bit more clear when we go through tuts.


+ Idea -- Give ships idle animations (Link)
I would like to see ships doing something in their free time, at least shake from side to side slightly or bob up and down, right now they act like statues !
Kind of a waste of a thread i know, but hey someone needs to ask.




Ongoing Discussions
+ Census about the pirates... (Link)
+ Open Phase Travel vs. Laned Phase Travel (Link)
+ Cap ships should have aa guns (Link)
+ A ship idea. (destroyers) (Link)
+ The Flagship (Link)
+ Moons, radiations storms, asteroid belts and asteroid fortresses, etc. (Link)



Unsorted
+ MacGhriogair's ideas thread (Link)

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
July 7-9

Technical

+ Saves -- Strange save corruption? (Link)
Last night I played a game and saved it about 2 hours in. This morning when I loaded the game up my ships and structures had all shifted to different planets/asteroids or two different positions around the planets that the originally were at.


+ UI -- Empire tree scrolling issues (Link)
One is that the empire tree keeps moving up and down on it's own making it difficult at times to give the orders you want. This has been quite frustrating at times. Also when using the slide bar it sometimes doesn't stay were I slide it to goes back to the original position.




Gameplay

+ Idea -- Drop construction frigs and have planets build directly (Link)
I really would prefer if they simply got rid of the construction ship and used swarms of those tiny planet ships to complete construction projects. They would be like civilian contractors who fly up into orbit with the construction crews and materials when you select the build order. They would swarm around the project until it is completed.


+ Idea -- Use tabs on the empire tree in place of star nodes (IC) (Link)
Sponge means to have a "Tabbed" view, solar systems each have their own tab, seperate window, so that you can only see the planets in the empire window for the solar system you selected. That would make the list of planets shorter and will give us a better overview.


+ Request -- Grouped ships behave as a unit (Link)
If one would really go deep into making a smarter AI, it would be to include knowledge of the own group, as well as knowledge of what's in the planet area.
As an example, if many hangers are in the system, and the group is low on anti-fighter/bomber capabilities, they would focus on killing the hangers first. And so on...
As this would be a group AI behaviour, in my mind, it wouldn't affect the AI of the units in the group in any major way. Once the group AI decides to go kill a hanger, it send the group there and direct the fire of the units that does best damage versus the target to attack it, while letting the other units do what they do. And all along staying within the area of operations decided by the group AI.


+ Request -- Add more variety in voiceovers (and other voiceover ideas) (Link)
You need many more voices in the game! A great game can look lame in some respects because of this weakness (i.e. The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion). Not only add more voices but add more variety to the responses when ships are clicked.


+ Request -- Loopable waypoints to set up patrols (Link)
Yeah , lets re-specify, we want LOOPING way points
Example, I'd love to set 3 points in the same gravity well for my ships to travel around the planet protecting the 3 space lanes...




Ongoing Discussions

+ A ship idea. (Destroyers) (Link)
+ Let's chase the colony ship! (Link)
+ The Flagship (Link)
+ Cap ships should have aa guns (Link)
+ census about the pirates... (Link)



Unsorted

+ Total Entropy's Obsevations and Nitpicks (Link)
+ Acreo's Beta 2 Impressions and Feedback (Link)

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
July 10

Gameplay

+ Gameplay -- AI expands very poorly without a flagship (Link)
I tried a game without flagship (by mistake actually) and marauders but once i had started it, i decided to continue anyway.
.....The CPU in my solar system was unable to expand his empire beyond 2 or 3 planets and by the time he was ready, i had cornered him into a space less the 5 planets (for 2 CPU).


+ Idea -- Espionage options (Link)
We should have access to spies that can give us certain information such as where they're planning to attack. What the defense is like in a system we're planning to attack. I'm sure people can come up with some more ideas to this. A spy could get caught, killed and lost. If he's caught he might rat you out, or not. If successful at a mission he could get better at what he does.


+ Request -- Make Kol's beams fire separately (Link)
while we're on such a very interesting point: DE-ALIAS the KOL'S FORWARD BEAMs.
only a slight mod, but its effects were beautiful. the way the beams came down to a point and almost always fired in sync drove me nuts, then I changed that ugly little "TRUE" to a beautiful little "FALSE" and all was well. it looks a lot Koler (not a typo) when the beams fire in succesion and hit different parts of the ship.




Ongoing Discussions

+ Automatic repairs (Link)
+ Cap ships should have aa guns (Link)
+ The Flagship (Link)

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
July 11

Technical

+ Sins process stays in memory after exit (Link)
Well the problem still exists that the game is running in the background. When ever i open notepad or any other program after i quit sins, and then close them, they require 100% of each core.
In the screenshot, task manager says 25% thats because its telling from one core. This happens every time i play sins. Only way to correct this, is a total reboot


+ Culture -- Planets with culture instantly flip back to the previous owner when invaded (IC) (Link)
As it is they just have to make a broadcast centre at a planet to make it impossible to capture once it's spread it's culture a bit.
I doesn't matter at all if they have built any other broadcast centres at any other nearby planets or not, the planet in question is uncapturable due to the culture it produced its self before being decimated.


+ Planets -- Planets regenerate from complete destruction before they can be recolonized (Link)
Have reduced one planet to zero several times before I can occupy it the logistics return to around 1400 and the population starts growing again, using the 7/10 patch. Definite problem. First planet I have tried to take and populate.


+ Empire tree -- unintended scrolling makes issuing orders harder (Link)
Here is one situation, you get an alert to incoming marauders so I bring up that planet on the empire tree and select my bombers now while waiting for the pirates to arrive I have my mouse ready to click on the pillagers I'm not zooming in or out in fact I'm not moving the mouse or using the buttons just waiting to attack the pillagers and the tree will move up and down one or two icons. I believe it has to do with ships arriving at planets but it interferes with issuing orders.
---
say for example: my fleet is at this portion of an asteroid belt. the planet i'm looking at is my homeworld. my grouped fleet is on that asteroid sector. when i select group1 fleet, the empirescroll auto scrolls down to where your fleet is. depending on how many planets you have i tend to loose track of wich asteroid or wich planet i was just on.


+ UI -- Ship Communication infocard has crystal icon (IC) (Link)
Wrong image displayed..... Ship Communication Menu
I am guessing something other than a crystal icon should be showing up here....


+ Autocast AI -- Casting priority too high, prevents phase jumps (IC) (Link)
The problem is; that ships with auto cast abilities will try to use these abilities too much over move orders you give them. I've noticed it a bit when trying to move within gravity wells but it's most apparent when trying to jump out of a gravity well when there's a target for the ship's ability in the area.
For example, after destroying the defences around a planet I wanted my main fleet to move on and not bombard the planet but there was a Dreadnought in my fleet. It kept using its ability to bombard the planet and then moving to jump out only for the ability to recharge before it reached the rest of the fleet at the edge of the gravity well. It would turn around again and move back into range of the planet to use the ability again. It would keep doing this indefinitely and so my fleet wouldn't ever jump out because they were set to jump together. I had to intervene and turn off the auto-cast until they had jumped out.


+ Unit AI -- Fighter/bomber target autoselection needs more intelligence (Link)
While this patch did the job, they now fight appropriate targets. But, let's say you have a carrier with 1 fighter squad and 3 bombers and has been in a fight for a little while in a system. The fighter seems to forget to kill the bombers that is doing damage to their mothership and just shoot at whatever target is closest. The bombers are doing better, but should in some cases leave their target to come protect the mothership or any other capital ship in danger from another capital ship.


+ Unit AI -- Ships do not respond to enemy fire (IC) (Link)
Enemy ships don't always attack - patch Version 0.75.016 - July 10, 2007:
Anyone else have this happen ? The just stood there and got blow to pieces...... I sent a save game to IC for review.




Gameplay

+ Discussion -- Should there be a way to reduce your own bounty? (IC) (Link)
So, it struck me. Why not have the bounty reduced as you kill off the incoming attackers. This way you can manage bounties and pirates "think twice" about attacking you as they're just sent to the grinder.
It's very important to separate the pirates attacking you and those doing other things so killing someone elses pirates doesn't lower your own bounty, but those that was the target of the pirates.


+ Gameplay -- Opponents don't have any obvious reason for breaking diplomatic agreements (Link)
I started playing a 10 vs all and started getting diplomacy offers, and I went for some. After a while they simply cancel the deal for no apparant reason. Then another faction offers something, and take it back after a while. Tis goes on throughout the game. I was allied with pretty much all of them, just at different times.
What's the point of trying to hold a relationship with the AI if they just keep breaking it for no reason?


+ Gameplay -- Thoughts on frigate movement  Link)
Imo , there are two schools of thought as to how "small" frigates should move... There is the lumbering way ala freespace/starwars... Theres fast and mobile with good meanuvrablity ala startrek... Atm , The frigate doesnt follow either template. rather it just moves-turn-stays static and fires..which makes it more of a glorified mobile Gun platform then anything.


+ Idea -- Add escape pods in ship debris (for aesthetics) (IC) (Link)
The escape pods looked cool in the ship battle scenes I remeber because everyhing's being blown to hell and ships are exploding and crashing into each other, there's debris everywhere, and amongst all this you see these little escape pods (holding I imagine some totally wired crew members) ejecting from the ships and into the unknowns of space (for the unlucky people) or ejecting toward other ship's docks (for rescue) or toward a planet's surface.


+ Request -- Add an intermediate period before culture-flipping so players can react and try to stop it (Link)
I think a planet should go through a phase of neutrality if they are about to flip cultures. This way a player can get his own culture counter up to stop the flip. The bigger the culture difference the faster the flip from neutrality to the player




Ongoing Dicsussions

+ Possible additions to game 'personality' (Link)
+ Cap ships should have aa guns (Link)



Unsorted

+ Christian Gingras's patch feedback (Link)

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
July 12

Technical

Graphics -- Strange half-screen blur issue (IC) (Link)
OK. Weird anomaly here. I have beta 2 running, runs smooth and great. No problems there. But i noticed that on my LCD monitor that a diagonal line was running across from the bottom left corner to the top right corner. Now, on the top section of the triangle being created, the graphics remain crisp and sharp. but on the lower triangle the graphics are all blurry and washed out. im running an ATI radeon 1950 gt and its maxed out and runs fine. So, esentially, the rectangular monitor is being dissected into two triangles...right through the center of the screen and its crisp and blurry, depending on what side of this imaginary line you look at.


Graphics -- nVidia SLI on Vista64 not working properly or at all (Link)
Just something I wanted to touch base with Im running a Vista 64bit system with SLI Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS 640 and DX10, I tried to play Sins in verious SLI modes and none of them worked Spilt Frame Rendering or Alternate Frame Rendering. In spilt frame rendering the game would start up and the graphics would like great except for a band of nothing across the middle of the screen as for alternate frame rendering It seems to start up fine but it never gets to the first screen just reminds black.


Galaxy Gen -- Still getting close starts and strange arrangements in custom galaxies (Link)
5 games were with the Customize galaxy: 7-9 players, 35-40 planets, 8-10 systems. The game still pretty much put most of us together. I still started out with 2-4 other players, in fact, I think it put us even closer then before the patch. In all 5 games I started out with 2 other AI's capital with only 2 jump from my capital, and in some game another AI's capital 1 more jump away. And I notice another thing, it seems it put all of us on one side of the system and leave the other side of the system empty.


Misc -- Game won't launch (IC) (Link)
Just downloaded and installed Sins. Running Vista Ultimate on DELL 9400 Dual Core 2GHz with 2GB RAM, nVidia GeForce GO 7900 GS 256MB Dedicated Video Memory and 256 MB Shared Video Memory....
I get a black screen that minimises and dumps me back to the desktop. When I alt-tab back to Sins I get the same black screen and it dumps me back to the desktop again. I have to kill the app via Task Manager.


Pathing -- Ships going straight up to an unknown objective (Link)
No, it was just by the entrance to the gravity well. It was weird as hell, and in fact, the repair ships had a plan to go even higher, once I clicked them, I saw the green movement line straight up and I couldn't even see where they had plannet to go. They may have been the reason for the fact that everyone's moved up.


Research -- Loss of a research station with no-longer-available tiers queued silently blocks the entire queue (Link)
So the final result of my tests are that any event which prevents a queued tech from being completed halts all research at that point until that block is manually removed by the player. This all unaffected techs proceed normally until another block is reached which again causes all research to halt again.


Unit AI -- Ships still failing to attack under hotfix  (Link 1) (Link 2)
I just got the beta and was wondering if anyone else was having a problem with your ships not fireing on pirates and them not fireing back?




Gameplay

Discussion -- Thoughts on the AI's current state post-hotfix
+ The skirmish for Rigil Kent (some pictures) (Link)
+ The new AI tactics (Link)



Ongoing Discussions

+ Killing Pirates should reduce your bounty (Link)



Notes for Future Reference

+ Game dumped on start, directinput error in dxdiag (Link)
here is how this one was fixed. Make sure you can run dxdiag. If dxdiag complains about a directinput problem you likely have some weird USB device plugged in or you recently changed keyboard/mouse/webcam or any of their drivers. If directx can't provide Sins with access to directinput, it will crash. In this case, and I kid you not, the culprit was a USB Missile Launcher. LOL


Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
July 13

Technical

+ Opponent AI -- AI still going nuts with bounty spending... (IC) (Link)
It is ridiculous that I have a 215k bounty on my head, and i am only halfway through a 4 player ffa with pirates game. The AI in the beginning was putting up some decent fights, but now it seems to have ceased building ships, and is now spamming bounty's like its giving away candy. How the hell do you top 215000, and RISING?!




Gameplay

+ Feedback -- Thoughts to improve tutorials (Link)
Here are a few suggestions I'd like to offer since playing the tutorial.
- Implement the use of arrows/indicators as an overlay to point out UI features. - Voice overs for the dialog - Confine the playing space until necessary to move forward in the introduction (i.e. can't move one to planet 2 until objectives are met at planet 1. - Clearer instructions on "scouting" new planets


+ Feedback -- Thoughts on scaling static defenses through the game (Link)
Guass cannon weapons platforms are too overpowered in the early game and too underpowered in the late game. They need to scale better. They need to start with a smaller amount of damage in the early game. Then, through research, they should be able to gain more damage and a faster rate of fire. They should also gain the ability to use shields and improved armor.


+ Request -- Options for more variety at galaxy creation (Link)
I think the current system of map creation would be nice for balanced multiplayer games, so it should stay for that, but imho it gets a bit boring for single player. I would love some more options in the map creation screen which would allow us to create very random maps, or maps with an abundance of volcanic planets, for example, etc.


+ Request -- Add a main-UI progress indicator for current research (IC) (Link)
My apologies if this is possible, or I missed it, but it would be nice if you could see the status of research without going to the research tab, IE somewhere on the main UI have either the icon or name of the currently researched item as well as %.


+ Request -- Some way to find out what the AI's opinion of you is (Link)
What I would like as well is some sort of indication as to how much they like you. Or something, perhaps it's too soon to jump on the diplomacy options yet, it's still early on.


+ Modding -- Request for comment option in data files (Link)
Would it be possible to add a comment function to the files in the GameInfo folder? Something like:
ChanceToHitTargetType:CAPITALSHIP #weapons type of all capitalships


+ Idea -- Persistent 'galactic war' type multiplayer option (Link)
In a mulitplayer browser you have a starmap thats is proportionally split up amongst the 3 races.
At the borders between the 3 races , stars become contested. People can host a galactic war game by selecting a contested star. If the star is contested between the Advent and Vasari , then only an Advent vs Vasari match can ensue. When there is a star that is contested by 3 races , then a 3way FFA can occur if someone hosts on it. The Aim of Galactic war , is to make your race dominate and the more wins you get the higher your rank. It doesnt use ELO !. The higher your rank the higher % of the contestment you gain when you win.




Ongoing Discussions

+ Killing Pirates should reduce your bounty (Link)
+ Conquering planet in enemy area gives it back to the enemy. (Link)



Unsorted

+ Red Asphalt's first impressions (IC) (Link)
+ Stress Test and first impression (IC) (Link)
+ radicaldude1234's feedback and suggestions (IC) (Link)

Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
July 14-16
Oddly busy weekend edition

Technical

+ Camera -- Strange zoom issues after returning from alt-tab (Link)
after leaving the game (paused all the while) on in background for a while, i switched back in to check something, and then i couldn't zoom into most planets anymore.
that means, trying to zoom down on a planet resulted in a stop before or right at the point where the grav well was displayed instead of just the planet icon, some planets stayed iconised while for some i could get as far as seeing the structures as little icons.


+ Fleet Supply -- Displayed max supply does not truly represent the amount available (rounding-display issue?) (Link)
I am flustered by a rather annoying math error in the game. I currently have 158 fleet points with which to play, I have used up 156 of these points. I should be able to build another Arcova scout ship, however the game has decided that the 2 fleet points needed for an arcova do not fit into the two excess fleet points that i have available.
Edit:This happens whenever the ship being built would precisely fill the maximum fleet units


+ Opponent AI -- AI stops expanding early on (pics) (Link)
The AI really need to be more aggressive in colonizing. It perhaps should build a second Kol early on in large maps to colonize much faster.
To me it looked like the AI just stopped colonizing, after it's scouts have detected me.


+ Refinery -- Refiner ships inexplicably fail to do anything (IC) (Link)
In my current game, the refinery ships built do not do anything. After they are built they cluster around the refinery and never move. I exited the game and reloaded and they are still not moving.
When I built the orbital refineries, there were extractors on all asteroids. No enemy ships or structures in my territory. The refinery ships also had a clear path to about 5 of my other planets with no enemy between planets.
About 2 hours after I built the orbital refiners the ships started working


+ Tutorial -- Limitations in tutorials persist to regular games in same session (Link)
I was doing the first tutorial and I missed some key point in it somewhere - end result was that I was in a state that the ships were locked out from firing at each other. That was fine, I exited the tutorial. When I started up a real game, the lock out was still in effect. I had to exit the whole game and restart before it cleared up.


+ UI -- Infocard scaling issues in very large games (pics) (Link)
while playing a game on max size setting (100 stars, 10 suns, though i actually got 108 planets) i noticed some errors in the display of summary screens when you have alot of planets:


+ UI -- Player assignments can be changed at load, but it has no effect on the game (Link)
if you load up a game, you will see the player screen...
in that screen you can change the ais etc. (i.e. turn all ais off) though it doesn't seem to effect the game (i.e. all ais are still there)
the only thing it did seem to affect was the statistics when finishing the game though (i ended up with only my statistics displayed instead of all statistics)




Gameplay

+ Discussion -- Ship differentiation, balancing, and counters (Link)
I have finally gotten XP installed again so i can play som sins. So now ive tried out beta2. I really think SINS needs a whole lot more rock/paper/siccor when it comes to combat. Right now all the different ships just dont seem all that different. Sure when you get to know em you will see they do have differencies but these are to small.


+ Gameplay -- AI makes illogical requests (Link)
Just wondering if the AI could be improved so that it doesn't ask me as an ally to go bomb an uninhabited planet or defend a planet that is not in fact under attack.


+ Gameplay -- Phase pathing needs to determine shortest paths better (Link)
Note in the bottom pic they are trying to go through 3 jumps when if they went down one, they could go directly to the planet they are tryin to reach.


+ Gameplay -- Autoexplore needs to search 'deeper' (Link)
I find the scout ships auto explore feature to not work the way I would like.
Currently, the scout ships (collectively, if you have more than one) make a very shallow pass around the galaxy. ie only going 1-2 planets away from the star. This works fine if I want a general layout of the star system, or if the star system is small.


+ Gameplay -- AI falls prey to insta-flipping of newly conquered worlds as well (Link)
So anyway, my issue? the planet was obviously well inside the enemies cultural influence, in fact, their influence was only just beginning to be pushed back from the planet next in line. So why did my ally colonise this planet that was so far into their cultural territory? Or do they not think that an important factor in their deliberations?


+ Gameplay -- Shouldn't ships be able to rotate in place? (Link)
The LRM's went to chase said ship, but to do so they had to turn around as the ship was almost behind them. To do this they had to move forward right into the gauss cannons range, and they got chewed up pretty bad (didn't lose any but a couple were close to dead).
Don't space ships have side thrusters so they can turn standing still?


+ Request -- Notify that remaining enemy structures at a just-captured planet still use up logistics slots (Link)
I was just noticing that after capturing a planet that players structures continue to take up logistics points from the planet, This is fine, but I would just like the logistics info (either from hovering over the logistics button or the planet) to tell me that x amount of logistics points is being used by another player's structures.


+ Request -- Some means of accelerating research (Link)
Research really needs to be speeded up a bit, or to have an option to speed it up a lot. Something to research, or maybe even have each research station reduce research times a bit. If I want to build ships faster, I can build more shipyards, but I can't do a thing to speed up research, and I've had so many techs in line to be researched that I can't see them all on the list (I like to research everything, so sue me).


+ Request -- Adjustable scroll speed and/or drag scrolling (Link)
Agree 100 percent, adjustable scroll definitely and possibly dragging scroll option, but I think at the very least you have to have the ability to speed up scrolling when the mouse is placed at the edge of the screen.


+ Request -- Vary resource deposits among planets of the same type (Link)
but still, I would like to see some asteroids with 2 metal, 2 crystal sometimes, or ice planets with 5 crystals, or maybe desert planets with nothing. point being that if I know the planet type, that doesnt nescessarily mean I should instantly know how many/what RuAs are there.


+ Request -- Need an overview indicator of which planets can be upgraded (Link)
One thing that has struck me when playing this game (particularly in my current large game) is the annoyance of having to go around each planet individually to find which ones you havn't yet upgraded the fleet capacity, or the population capacity on etc. I for one, found the galciv 2 colonies window very useful for managing my planet, and I think some sort of similar system allowing you to view one window listing all your planets and say numbers of the different structures, but I think, most importantly for me, the planetary improvement levels.


+ Request -- Add black market buy/sell hotkeys to save constant toggling of diplomacy screen (Link)
I think blackmarket controls need to be accessible from the main screen , or have instant keyboard shortcuts to buy and sell crystals and metal in any screen view.
Ive been playing a tough game...3 hard ai vs me on small galaxy, where im pretty much squeezing every penny and trying to get out cobalt ships asap and thus im literally back and forth from the diplomacy screen every 15 seconds to redirect crystals into funds and that is very micro intensive.


+ Request -- Add a countdown before recolonized worlds in strong culture flip back to the prior owner (Link)
I don't have a problem if you conquer a planet/asteroid and after colonizing it, it reverts back to its old owner. I do have a problem where it instantly reverts back to the old owner. Make it more realistic...like it yours, but the allegiance slowly falls to 20% and an uprising occurs and the planet reverts back to the more powerful culture, unless during that time you manage to destroy broadcasting stations in adjacent systems or build more broadcasting stations of your own.


+ Request -- Prune old autosaves to avoid wasting disk space (Link)
An option for the game to only keep a certain number of autosaves would also be nice. I just finished playing my first games today and came back to nearly 3GB of saves (I know you said you haven't bothered with compressing the saves yet, but even taking that into account, I certainly don't need my past 50 saves lying around. 2-5 are plenty, imo. )


+ Idea -- Add a 'contested planets' filter to the empire tree (Link)
Yes! That idea crossed my mind as I was playing my latest 100 planets game. I would love to have a filter, or something in the options/UI menu which would allow me to only have contested planets in the empire window.
Planets which have battles ongoing on the top, then planets which had battles in the last 5 minutes (allows me to repair/reinforce their defenses), planets in danger of being culture flipped, and enemy planets which will be culture flipped to my side.


+ Idea -- Give all remaining bounty on a faction to the player who lands the final blow (Link)
But one issue that I have found is that when you wipe out a player their bounty is still there and can still be increased. I think that the player who conquers the last planet of a race the conquerer should get the remaining balance of the bounty and reset to zero and blocked out.


+ Idea -- More depth in planet management (Link)
I know you cant make the game too micro intensive, but i think it would be nice to be able to direct what was being built on the planet, not too intensive, just maybe resource extractors from the planet or something like that, make them take a while to build, just something that makes planets less like eye candy and more like, well, planets.


+ Idea -- Ship scale adjustments (Link)
Just a few suggestions. I think the game should overall get scaled up. Frigates seem a little to small. Carriers seem small for carrying fighters and bombers. The capitals are way to small they need to be sized up a lot. Anyone else think so?


+ Idea -- Auto-build option to replace losses in defensive battles (IC) (Link)
One thing that would have helped was knowing that my ships were being replaced if lost in the battle. For example right-clicking on the build button for each ship turns on 'automatic replacement' or something - when a ship of that type is destroyed in the system a new one is added to the build Q.




Ongoing Discussions
+ New empire tree mode to reduce clutter (Link)
+ Killing Pirates should reduce your bounty (Link)
+ 3 dimensional star maps (Link)
+ Conquering planet in enemy area gives it back to the enemy. (Link)
+ The new AI tactics (Link)



Unsorted
+ Yet another first impression thread (IC) (Link)
+ Thoughts after playing 1 game (Link)
+ First 4 hours (Link)
+ Interface and Gameplay Suggestions (Link)
+ Beta 2--10 suggestions! (IC) (Link)
+ My thoughts on the game so far. (Link)
+ Some comments after my first game with the latest patch (Link)
+ Some ideas/suggestions (Link)
+ Finished first few games (Link)

Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
July 17

Technical

+ Bounty -- AI still able to place bounties on dead players? (Link)
The OP didn't specifically mention how, or that the player could. But I'm fairly certain I've seen the AI increase it after an empire has been vanquished.


+ Pathing -- Trade ships pile up against obstacles (Link)
Possibly a silly move to build a Defense Hanger right next to a Trade Port but these things happen.
Trouble is, this has got the pilots in the trade ships VERY confused and although they eventually manage to free themselves there is some serious traffic build up of the jammed variety slowing trade enormously!


+ Movement -- Move order issuing bug with reproduction steps (Link)
I found a reprduceble bug that sends ships to another star system when you are trying to move them within a gravity well. If you scroll out from your ships a bit, till they are not dirrectly visible but marked by symbols and lower your viewing angle a bit you can reproduce it easily. You have to be lined up with a fase lane pointing behind you. It takes a little TLC to get it right but once you do it is easy to reproduce.


+ Graphics -- Not all ships showing phase trails? (Link)
when ships jump only a few of them show the jump particles..i can get them to show up if i mouse over them..it would look alot better if they all showed them...or if it was an option to set the number of tails that are able to be shown at any one time




Gameplay

+ Gameplay -- Galaxy generator picks/places artifacts poorly (Link)
I have an asteroid planet two jumps from my homeworld, and the next jump beyond that is also an asteroid planet. Both planets have the artifact Kinetic Intensifier on them. Since having two of the same artifact does not benefit me in the slightest, I was just wondering why the game would place the duplicate artifact so closely to the original.


+ Discussions -- Tech tree depth and diversity (Link) (Link)
From the looks of it the two TEC research trees are completed too quickly, in the way that there isn't sufficient research items available.
Something else I saw mentioned was that some feel research is too fast, while others feels it takes too long a time to research any given research item.


+ Request -- Scaling options for UI and text  (Link)
Scaling sliders for fonts, and the interface in general, would be a nice UI improvement. Try the game at 2560 x 1600 on a 30" screen. I probably see 1 in 5 of the messages.


+ Idea -- Distiguishing interstellar phase lanes from interplanetary lanes (Link)
How about intersystem jumps are a dashed line or something like that?
Or we could go with the 'All stars are fully interconnected' and the attached phase lanes are totally invisible.


+ Idea -- Give small ships some form of XP as well (Link)
It's a great idea that a ship and crew that have been to hell and back become pretty bad-ass. However, what I thought about was all the other ships.
I had a fleet that included as few frigates and cruisers that lasted through most of the game, undefeated. It would be great if they could get some sort of "veteran" status. No need for unlocked special abilities or anything, but simply some sort of combat modifier to signify the fact that they've fought a bunch of battles.


+ Idea -- Make queued research pay-as-you-go (Link)
It’s at the early stages when I am grabbing the first five planets in my system, fighting off opposing empires, pirates, and marauders, and trying to get a stable economy in place, that I have trouble listening for the research complete notifications and remembering which tech is the next on my priority list. Having the research objectives in a queue during this period would be immensely helpful for me.


+ Idea -- Default end-graph display to a more useful stat (Link)
Ok, I always like those statistic screens. But I was really bummed out the first time to see, that I was the lowest of the low when I ended my game for the first time until I realized on the second time, that the selection was Bounty (first in an alphabetical list). It would be nice to have it on something more telling. Population or Income - Taxes seamed to be the two graph that tells you what happened. I would go for Population personally since it's easier to tell the story of your race with it.




Ongoing Discussions

+ The new AI tactics (Link)
+ Why do ships need to be moving to turn? (Link)
+ Capital Ships: Should they be researched? (Link)
+ Interface and Gameplay Suggestions (Link)
+ Killing Pirates should reduce your bounty (Link)
+ Conquering planet in enemy area gives it back to the enemy. (Link)



Unsorted

+ Post mortem of my recent game (Link)
+ Game Play Summary (Link)
+ Game Summary - Medium Teams (Link)
+ Comments After One Game (IC) (Link)
+ Observations after my first game.... with beta 2 (IC) (Link)

Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
July 18

Technical

+ Targeting -- Strike craft don't break and attack new high-priotiy targets (Link)
I have seen this as well with the July 12 fix... and I am current as of last night. I have had to pull my fighters many times to intercept enemy fighters and bombers instead of the hard targets.

What gets me is that once a unit (any unit) begins an auto attack sequence, it won't stop attacking that unit unless I tell it to or the target is destroyed. This is a bit annoying when you've cleared all the hostiles (defensive structures and enemy ships) from a system and everything is attacking a logistics structure when a new enemy fleet phases in. My bombers remain attacking the logistics structures as do my frigates, cap ships, cruisers and fighters. It would be nice if the units would realize that their is a new target in the zone that they are better able to deal with or that is actively hostile.




Gameplay

+ Gameplay -- Fortified civ ships should get +100 HP immediately (Link)
Instead of going from say 500/500 to 600/600, you only get 500/600. Now the AI thinks these ships have been damaged and needs repair. The Robots Crusiers will chase these ships all over the map trying to 'repair' them up to full health. The ship do not stop at a repair dock to repair themselves either. A simple code fix would be after the upgrade research, make sure the ships are at the new full ship hull strength.


+ Request -- Indicator on planets to tell if shipyards are present there (Link)
The UI is very user friendly and intuitive but I would like to see something, a symbol or mark of some kind to indicate if a planet has a shipyard. It can be on the left side display or over the planet itself, preferably both.


+ Request -- Make fighters dock periodically/when not actively fighting (Link)
Id love to see an auto-dock feature for the carriers so the whole area doesnt get cluttered with fighters, and it adds a little more plausibility to carriers...not to mention how its kinda not right how i see them kinda teleport out with the carriers when they jump out during a fight...they should start the docking a lot earlier


+ Idea -- Espionage system to use end-game cash reserves on (Link)
Okay I have seen on a number of threads the complaint that after you have researched your teck tree and built your fleet there is nothing to do with your money but place bounty. I have a few sugestions.





Ongoing Discussions

+ Can we make the action a bit more.. interesting? (Link)
+ Research - Thoughts and Ideas (Link)
+ Conquering planet in enemy area gives it back to the enemy. (Link)
+ Interstellar Travel Idea (Link)
+ Killing Pirates should reduce your bounty (Link)
+ Interface and Gameplay Suggestions (Link)
+ Reasearch needs "meaning." (Link)


Unsorted

+ A few things that I have noticed.. (IC) (Link)

Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
July 19

Technical

+ Camera -- Edge-scrolling difficulties in windowed mode (Link)
I started this game in a windowed game, at 1600x1200, and find that the scroll areas are quite small, and inconsistant. If you go too far, you are out of the window, and no movement. If you are about 1/4 to 3/8's of an inch away from the edge, the window scrolls, but this can be erratic, and if you move a little bit, changes speed very quickly.


+ Opponent AI -- AI tries to colonize worlds it doesn't have tech for (Link)
I took a look at one and my ally had a Akan battlecruiser there colonizing a Volcanic planet, I watched for a moment and soon realized that he had not researched Volcanic planets yet (not a big deal I've done that myself)but he continued to try and colonize.




Gameplay

+ Feedback -- Does Sins need more of a 'tech race'? (Link)
I believe there is something amissed in Research and I pinpoint it as - you dont feel like your competing in a technological race with other players.
One thing I know about 4x games especially ones like Civ or Sots is that researching technologies feels like a race. You really feel it if people have tech you dont , and you feel happy when you are one of the leading technological powers even if your army isnt that great.


+ Feedback -- It's impossible to establish a 'cultural beachhead' in a new system by cultural force alone (Link)
Culture seems to project from stars when someone has all phaselines to the star covered. However, you cannot project culture into a star system using a single phaseline, no matter what your cultural power vs. the other person's is. This creates a deadlock as explained above.


+ Request -- Allow the stats list at end-game be navigated with arrow keys (Link)
Just a quick question. Is it possible to allow the use of the cursor keys to navigate the list of statistics displayed at the end of the game?


+ Idea -- Thoughts on overhauling planetary defenses (Link)
the turrets are way too underpowered for what they do. Their range is severely limited, which means that a group of seige ships can fly into an area, dodge the turrets, use a couple of fighter squadrons to take out the bombers headed towards them, and then assault the planet with absolutely no trouble.
To this point, I suggest two things. Either, possibly, make the turrets missile based and change the damage output based on the range between the turret and the target... or take the turrets, shields, hangers, phase jump limiters and pretty much all the other defenses and place them on-planet.




Ongoing Discussions

+ A few things that I have noticed.. (Link)
+ The Battle of Kasuga (image heavy) (Link)
+ Interface and Gameplay Suggestions (Link)
+ Sins needs more rock/paper/scissors in combat (IC) (Link)
+ Kol as too... sissy. (Link)
+ Cap Ships as Milestones (Link)

Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
July 20

Technical

+ Formation/Movement -- Some ships jump early/alone even when set to all grouped (Link)
I can't edit the original post, but I nearly forgot. You also have a problem with large groups having singletons not waiting for the group, causing them to jump in ahead of the "main fleet"... with unfortunate results.

Yeah, that happens to me too. They are all grouped and like 2 or 3 of them jump ahead, I've even had several groups of 2-3 wait for the others in their little group before jumping ahead of the rest. It usually isn't too bad for me though.


+ Culture Bug? -- Invaded planet flips back for player, but not for another AI (Link)
I tried twice to colonise the planet in the picture before the blue AI player. Each time the planet immediately switched to the purple AI player due to the culture.
On the third time that I'd bombed out the colony the blue colony ship had arrived and they colonised it and the planet didn't switch sides/ What gives?


+ Construction -- Construction frigs stop mid-build or inexplicably fail to start construction (Link)
Tried it throughout the rest of the game tonight. I was definitely able to reproduce it. I even had a constructor stop building something 34% of the way in. I had cleared them entirely of enemy structures. Also occurred for both logistics and tactical structures. And yes I had the repair station researched.




Gameplay

+ AI -- Various examples of poor AI descisions and fleet management (Link)
I was attacking an AIs home planet, medium, and a huge fleet jumped in, but they weren't there to attack me, instead they all made a b line to the next planet then they turn around and went back to where they came from, had they attacked I think I would have been in serious trouble, as it was, the planet was a push over


+ Discussion -- Thoughts on culturally recapturing lost planets (Link)
This imo is a less slippery slope and better for gameplay especially in muliplayer where it is important to offer a losing player opportunities for a comeback . Player B can try to re-fight off Player A fleet and doesnt need to have to go and siege the planet he just lost. He can just recolonise because the culture there favours him.
I just hope that even tho alot of people dont like the culture blocking colonising that it wont be taken out of the game.


+ Discussion -- Thoughts on giving pirates more personality (Link)
Pirates should have lone roaming capital ships with special emblems on them, and select a random AI strategy, for example, rather than directly assaulting the planet, some may choose to stay at the edge of the system and destroy trade ships leaving, and jump out at the first sign of resistance. This is much more annoying and more pirate like!


+ Feedback -- Thoughts on Sova's Embargo ability (Link)
The sova is easily my favorite cap ship it looks cool, it hurts things BUT...i cant find any real justification for the embargo ability... When leveling up id much rather spend the points on normal combat abilities and to steal income from a single planet isn't overly useful imho


+ Request -- Make cease fire the default relation with newly met factions (Link)
YES. Factions should be at a ceasefire when they first encounter one another, and from the beginning of the game. It's up to the player (or the AI in this case) to determine which factions they should be engaging.


+ Request -- Give some feedback about local culture on planets (Link)
Part of the problem is that culture is too transparent. We need to be able to click on a planet and see if we have any chance of colonizing it. Maybe at 90% + culture it cannot be taken.

Whatever the case may be, there is no way to see the culture rating of planets you don't own. I think this needs to change.


+ Idea -- Vary sizes of planets and gravity wells (Link)
I think a good idea to incorperate into the game would to have different sized planets. The only thing affected with this change would be the size of the gravity wells, ie. smaller planets smaller wells, larger planets larger wells. Also I think that asteroids need to have a reduced gravity well to make them harder to deffend.





Ongoing Discussions

+ Cap Ships as Milestones (Link)
+ Sins needs more rock/paper/scissors in combat (Link)
+ census about the pirates... (Link)
+ Planetary Defense Rethink (Link)
+ Cruisers: The Missing Link (Link)
+ Interface and Gameplay Suggestions (Link)
+ Kol as too... sissy. (Link)



Unsorted

+ things I would like to see (Link)
+ First thoughts (IC) (Link)
+ First Impressions (IC) (Link)
+ Algol Star Campaign AAR (Link)

Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
July 21-23

Technical

+ Galaxy Generator -- Wrong number of planets and other map oddities (Link)
My first game I created a 10 planet per star with 2 star systems (and only one other AI). The result I expected was two more-or-less equal systems, with the AI in one and myself in another. What I go, was one system with 10 planets, both me and the AI, and a second system with 4 planets (planets being any grav well, asteroid or planet).
This next one, I made one star with 100 planets (I didn't count to see if I got all of them) but the placement of one of them was... odd. It was a Terran planet, just about touching the local star. Not the star's grave well; the star itself.




Gameplay

+ Discussion -- Does the game need to have less (or more) ships in play at any time? (Link)
There are simply some things I can do with 100 ships I just can't do with 10 or 20 or even 50. Currently, 100 ships is about two solid fleets. I like having 2 or 3 main fleets of 50-ish. There is more than just the feeling of commanding a space armada, having so many ship I can manually move, I can better position my fleet for advantages. Some need more ships under my control than just the handful you seem to recommend.


+ Request -- Provide more info/feedback about queued ship construction (Link)
Could me make it so when you put the cursor over the build button.. it lists somewhere the ships that in the list.. and how far along they are?.. kind of like how fleet lists appear when you but the cursor over the fleet tab?
It could even have how long till each ship is done..


+ Request -- Restrict capship firing arcs to narrower cones (Link)
We really need more flexibility in setting weapon arcs for both weapons and abilities.
Visually, we've all seen how the Kol's beams can emerge at practically a 90 degree angle to the barrels of the guns. This reduces their feeling of power, because they no longer seem like massive, spinal-mounted cannon (like Homeworld's Ion Cannon), but merely "turrets on poles."


+ Request -- Slightly randomize weapon cooldowns for better visual effect (Link)
Right now all weapons fire based on a fixed cooldown delay. What this means visually it that if several ships start firing simultaneously, for example if an enemy fleet jumps into the gravwell, that group of ships will *always* fire simultaneously for the duration of the engagement.
I think adding a random component to weapon cooldowns on a shot by shot basis would help both the visuals and gameplay by breaking up these massed salvos in large engagements. Of course, the random factor should be ship-specific (and moddable) so that massed salvos can be maintained if desired.


+ Idea -- Thoughts on adding random events (Link)
I think that a great thing to incorporate into Sins would be that of random events happening throughout the galaxy. Things like 'x' number of planets rebel and join pirates, 'x' civilization is experiencing a great economic period and revenue is increase 50% for them, or space experiences a warp around 'x' star system drastically rearranging phase lanes.




Ongoing Discussions

+ Planetary Defense Rethink (Link)
+ census about the pirates... (Link)
+ Kol as too... sissy. (Link)
+ Culture preventing colonising is Good. Dont change it pls! (Link)
+ Why do ships need to be moving to turn? (Link)



Unsorted

+ first impressions playing the beta (Link)
+ On a large size scale... what I'd like to see expanded (Link)

Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
July 24

Technical

+ Research -- Researched capship construction without all prereqs (Link)
I don't know if this is a documented issue, but tonight I noticed that I was able to research "Capital Ship Construction" without the prerequisite of a point in "Enhanced damage control" . I did have a point or two in "Improved Superstructure".


+ Movement -- Maximum jump formation time-out not working properly (Link)
Ships will only wait 30 seconds for fleet formation before jumping ahead. I think Blair posted that elsewhere on the forums.
Except... they don't. I've had fleets stick around for several minutes at a time.
Edit: I just had it happen: My entire fleet was waiting to jump from star to planet for about 2 minutes before I gave up, and repeated the order. A bunch of the ships then changes from "waiting for formation" to "clearing orbit", and re-arranged themselves closer to the grav-limit and then jumped. I hope this helps.




Gameplay

+ Request -- Make fighter meshes visible a bit further out (Link)
Imho the current size of the fighters/bombers is ok. Looks about right for me. They're easily observable thanks to their trail.
What imho should be changed, is the distance at which they turn into icons.
I dunno about good values here, but imho an increase of visibility of 50% perhaps?


+ Request -- Slightly randomize jump coordination for group jumps (Link)
anyhow I think there should be a +/- 1 second interval for the whole group jump, 1) it would make things look cooler for them not to all arrive at the same exact time, 2) its unnatural for the coordination to be that good.
I agree, it would look much better if ships had a random jump delay "built in", but it shouldn't be too big.


+ Idea -- Allow players to cycle through all planets/capships via the counters on the main panel (Link)
There are three context-sensitive values to the left-hand side of the central image at the bottom. When a ship is selected, it shows things to do with that ship etc.
An easier way of doing something along these lines would be to make those into clickable buttons that cycle through said objects. So, for instance, clicking on the planet one would cycle through your colonised planets, cap ships, your cap ships etc.
And if it is possible to do this whilst keeping the action pane on the same page (ie planetary upgrades) when you cycle through the planets, then it would be a next best thing.


+ Idea -- Allow players to set the default auto-options on factories, to apply to all produced ships (Link)
Set default group and weapon styles for factories for all ships they produce.
I.E. Set factory so all ships it produces are "Attack: Weapons Range" and "Move: All Grouped". Click on an icon to change to "Move: Not grouped" or whatever.




Ongoing Discussions

+ Why do ships need to be moving to turn? (Link)
+ Suggestion: fewer ships, so that each is more valuable and empire is more manageable (Link)
+ Interface and Gameplay Suggestions (Link)
+ first impressions playing the beta (Link)



Unsorted

+ Good, Bad, and "Its beta, I forgive you" (IC) (Link)
+ Learn from past space game mistakes!!! (IC) (Link)
+ Environment thoughts... and ramblings... (Link)

Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
July 25

Technical

+ Sova Missile Battery travelling between planets (pic) (Link)



Gameplay

+ Balance -- Decimating AI fleets with much smaller ones (IC) (Link 1) (Link 2)
I was testing fleet designs to determine if I could build an invulnerable fleet. I succeeded quite well. Just 5 Kols and 5 Dunovs can basically whip any AI fleet in the game, no matter how large. On a large map, I was walking around with 4 such fleets devastating everything in my path.

Using 2 cobalts, one Kol, and 6 light carriers I decimated a fleet of 45 cobalts without incurring one lost ship. The battle took place on a dead asteroid I owned. The enemy slowly built up his fleet after a larger battle in which I sustained many lost ships but took his Kol.


+ Request -- Make production progress bars more visible (Link)
This might seems like a nitpick but the progress bar color is yellow....when building a ship the icon is yellow....a lot of the research is yellow...seeing the yellow progress bar on top of the yellow ship icons is kinda tough, for me at least. What about the rest of you?


+ Request -- Keep construction hilight on the cursor and just warn of bad locations (Link)
When placing an item that overlaps another structure, instead of canceling the item construction and playing the message, just play the message (leave the item selected for construction) so that we can just click another location.


+ Idea -- Additional capship abilities based on accomplishments (IC) (Link)
Playing the beta (and needless to say really liking it) I've come up with a couple of things I think would make capital ships even neater. Or one fairly big thing, but with subpoints:
Event-based leveling! My thought here is that in addition to the normal xp-based advancement, it would be really neat if capital ships could gain abilities based on what they've done in the game


+ Idea -- More static defenses  (Link)
I'd like to see: a long-range missile platform that deals less damage than the guass cannon but has twice the range (you can't run around it!); a flak cannon that shoots bombers (and may or may not target ships, but isn't good for that). Both would cost 1 tactical point, increasing the variety and strategy of static defenses.




Ongoing Discussions

+ first impressions playing the beta (Link)
+ Gas Giants and Moons (Link)
+ Environment thoughts... and ramblings... (Link)
+ Good, Bad, and "Its beta, I forgive you" (Link)



Unsorted
+ Additional Bugs (Link)

Reply #23 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
July 26

Gameplay

+ Discussion -- How much advantage should intense tactical micro give? (Link)
I believe that using superior tactics should confer some advantage. I am aware that with the ever evolving AI, this advantage will continue to diminish. My question to you is, do you want this advantage to diminish? Or, do you think that micro-managing battle tactics should confer this advantage?


+ Idea -- Pre-set formations combined with attack settings and behaviors (Link)
We all know the scenario, we've all micro'ed it hundreds of times in this game and many before, attacking a fortified position with siege weapons, creeping up one structure at a time...
In current game terms, this means all ships on weapon range, just behind the missile frigates to protect them from incoming fighters meanwhile the missile frigates slowly advance, taking out one static defense after another. It's quite easy to micro and it's (relatively) easy to program as a hard-coded option.


+ Idea -- Make pirates behave more like pirates (IC) (Link)
Think about it for a second. Imagine yourself as a pirate. Would you attack a highly defended planet losing most of your ships in order to get a bounty, or would you look for ships that are isolated. If I was a pirate, I would look for an area where there's only a few scattered ships, attack, collect the bounties, and leave at the first sign of back up arriving.


+ Idea -- Sell merc ships on the black market (Link)
I like an idea of ship black market... Since there already is a black market in the game. Perhaps it wouldn't even be a market as such but hiring mercenaries. A guy with good economy would be able to quickly raise a second-hand fleet.


+ Idea -- General radio chatter to add life (Link)
I would like to see an increase in radio chatter, think "locking on target", "requesting docking permission". Not only when clicking on or ordering a unit.
Naturally you cant have all your units radio but, I was thinking when zooming in on units, that on a certain zoom level, you would hear more radio chatter, not only the usual but maybe also more mundane things like hmm... i dont know flag orders to units around it, and trade ships/fighters/bombers docking etc.




Ongoing Discussions

+ Gas Giants and Moons (Link)
+ Who wants more single point static defenses? (Link)
+ Good, Bad, and "Its beta, I forgive you" (Link)



Unsorted

+ Feedback for the day (IC) (Link)
+ My BETA Feedback (IC) (Link)

Reply #24 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
July 27

Technical

+ Empire Tree -- Empire tree hotkey group issues (Link)
I expanded the empire tree panel for fleet 2, and noticed that it said it only had a Sova Carrier and two flak frigates. The pips were still there for the rest of the fleet, and hovering my mouse over it said the rest of the ships were still part of the fleet. I then went to count up the ships in the larger fleet 1, and realized that the icons in the expanded view (stacking enabled) didn't add up either. In fact, it seems as if the rest of fleet 2 is being displayed alongside fleet 1.




Gameplay

+ Discussion -- What role should stars play in the game? (Link)
I'd like to start a discussion about the suns in SOASE. While they are an awesome centerpeice to the various solar systems, gateways to other parts of the galaxy, and make your capital ships feel all warm and fuzzy with an antimatter boost...somehow they feel..."short-changed" at the moment.


+ Request -- Option to have pursuing ships lead targets, to better intercept them (Link)
I think the terms you are looking for are "pure pursuit" (pointing your nose directly at the target), "lead pursuit" (flying towards where you expect the target to be in the future)... With this background, all ships currently use pure pursuit against their targets, where in many cases lead pursuit would be more effective.


+ Idea -- Display names/faction icons on the ships themselves (Link)
To bad the Dev's didn't incorporate some kind of build in "seal" system, where the race's icon would automatically get appended to each ship... in place of the way most (all?) ships have their names / numbers printed on them.
Yeah I agree, a default skin spot that pulls name/images from a file onto the skin would have been awesome!




Ongoing Discussions

+ Who wants more single point static defenses? (Link)
+ Good, Bad, and "Its beta, I forgive you" (Link)
+ Jump Formations (Link)
+ Corpses (Link)
+ Grand Theft Empire (Link)
+ Should micromanagement of battles be more advantageous? (Link)
+ What is this community's opinion of competitive multiplayer? (Link)



Unsorted

+ BETA EXCELLENT BUT VERY EASY (IC) (Link)

Reply #25 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
July 28-30

Technical

+ Capital planets -- Capital moving to new system without being intentionally moved by player (Link)
I had this same issue in my game. For me it was that the first planet I conquered in the second system became my new capital planet. It didn't happen when I moved on to the third system for whatever reason.


+ Crash -- Dump on resume after leaving game minimized overnight (Link)
This has happened twice now. Steps as follows:
1. Start a game in full screen at 1600x1200
2. When it gets close to midnight put game in pause and Alt-Tab to background.
3. Next morning Alt-Tab game back to foreground -> crash.




Gameplay

+ Discussion -- Practical superweapon systems (Link)
Superweapons. They're a mixed bag of opinion,s on one side being far too overpowered and ruining gameplay, but on the other being a key strategic element to turn the tide of an everlasting stalemate.
Superweapons need to be extremely powerful; how powerful I'm unsure as of yet, perhaps capable of taking out several planets at once, and need to cost an exorbitant amount of resources, and be stationary. Perhaps there can be an option to allow or disallow them at the start of the game.


+ Request -- A means to find specific [classes of] ships quickly when their location is unknown (Link)
Also is there a way to bring up a list of ships and select one? For example, I know I have siege frigates and colony ships "somewhere". I don't want to build more (resources, fleet size restrictions) and would like to just pull up a list and select them and have them move to where I need them. Even when I know which system they're in, if there's 20+ other ships it's difficult to find and select just that ship.


+ Request -- More details in the interface to better deal with culture (Link)
One is some indicator of how deep a planet is in another's culture (and how long it would take to flip if colonized). Another is an indicator on my own planet on how long its going to take to flip. Also, change the constant flip warnings to something more descriptive -- I don't need to be spammed with "We've lost contact with a planet!" instead of something more descriptive of the fact that the planet is in the process of flipping. And on the planets tooltip, change it from "will flip soon" to something also more useful to the player.


+ Idea -- Modify ship effectiveness by crew morale (Link)
Morale would influence the effeciency of the ship damage/special abilities output.
Morale could reset to an average morale if theres no battle for a few minutes, that way a ship that lost a lot of its morale in a fight and retreated won't be crippled at all in the next fight.




Ongoing Discussions

+ Good, Bad, and "Its beta, I forgive you" (Link)
+ Should micromanagement of battles be more advantageous? (Link)
+ BETA EXCELLENT BUT VERY EASY (Link)
+ What is this community's opinion of competitive multiplayer? (Link)
+ "Here come the suns de-de-de-de!" (Link)
+ Who wants more single point static defenses? (Link)
+ Cloaking Device addon (Link)



Unsorted

+ First impressions "book" (Link)
+ My beta feed back and Idea (Link)