A Sins 2...

Some pretty good ideas, but unlimited levels for capships sounds very overpowered to me. I cant imagine crews surviving the death of their ship. glowing/pulsing planets when under seige are already in the game. I think that special ebilities are fine, more subtle visual representations od abilities would look boring though. Other ideas are good. Randomization of combat such as lucky shots would EAT processing power.

As long as the progression of unlimited experience levels is one of diminishing returns i.e. the higher the level, the less benefit from advancing to the next. By example, going from level 2 to level 3 might be a substantial improvement for a capital starship, whereas advancing from level 72 to 73 would be negligible. You`d still obviously prefer a level 73 vessel (!) to a level 3 vessel, but with mechanical nuance and subtlety such assets could still be defeated.

This is a link to an old post of mine about adding a Company of Heroes style critical hit system to the game. I still think it would make the combat a lot more interesting and varied; others dissagree.

http://lostwld.impulsedriven.net/article/306747/Critical_Hit_System

Strange I can`t view that. Some kind of Explorer 7 requirement versus my Explorer 6. Waah. Got a copy & paste quotation? I`d rather not fiddle with Explorer, but maybe it may be time to, also if Impulse makes use of it.

I don't think it's such a bad idea, but after Level 10 the only practical upgrade might be for the ships to merely gain more shield hit points, hull hit points, and max antimatter and perhaps another armor upgrade or two.

With regards to the OP's comments about combat predictability and his desire for a single player campaign, if he's getting bored then I highly recommend that he consider playing online multiplayer for a greater challenge against real human opponents.  If he's only played single player then he has no idea just how big of a challenge and just how much game intensity and fun he's missed out on.

Diminishing benefits from capship levels is a very good solution. I like it.

I think the ideas are great. Especially the idea of critical hits and perhaps even the chance of a shot gone astray and not hitting... leveling up with less benefit at higher levels is cool, too.

What about the possibility to hide a fleet in an ionic storm or a gas cloud and only to be detected via scouts? Would be nice if you could park some ships there while the battlefront is moving towards your planets and then suddenly you have some of your ships behind enemy lines...

some nice idea's yeah, specially the unlimited cap ship level, only thing that wont fit in atm would be Advent's progenitor ultimate ability   (dont know name, never use it.. but do know what it does)   namely, it transfers crew from a dead capship to a new one, so it hasnt lost a level

(never actually seen it work tough......, it doesnt autocast a dieing ship, nor does manually work)

I'm not a fan of randomness. One of the reasons why Starcraft was so successful was the lack of randomness. If you use X, you know what it gives you. You're not going to get weird cases where you get crushed by a tiny fleet because the random number generator didn't like you.

If you're intent on making a game focused on strategy, randomness is a bad thing.

Like runescape... (Shudder)

I hit a 9! I hit a 1! I hit a 0! I hit a 0! I hit a 0! I hit a 3!

 I dont know where you got that idea,randomness is the best thing a RTS could have,if your units would do the exact same thing and have the exact same outcome,your strategy would be very limited and it will all boil down to who can spam X faster,exemple of that sort of RTS is Tiberium Wars,tho in that game RTS stands for Real Time Spamming.

 I want 2 of my small frigates to have a chance to outwit 2 cruisers using a little micro from me and a little luck,plus in RL battles have always being random etc.

Well, Starcraft is one of the best (if not the best) RTS ever made. It has pretty well no randomness. All damage is fixed. All armor is fixed. There's no random critical hits. All abilities are fixed. If I fire a special ability, I know exactly what its going to do to whatever I shoot it at.

Randomness is not strategy. Randomness is in fact the opposite of strategy. Its throwing stuff out there and hoping the RNG works in your favor.

If your two frigates can outwit two cruisers using micro, great. Micro is a skill, and you're probably going to use some kind of strategy to beat those cruisers.

Beating them because you rolled a 20 and your opponent rolled a 1? There's no skill or strategy in that at all. Its luck, nothing more.

The strategy is in how you deal with your luck. Bad luck can allow the underdog to regain a foothold and fight back or turn a close battle into a slaughter.

I agree with most of your ideas, but I'd like to comment on the three I quoted.

1. That sounds like a VERY good idea. Would you have the cap. ships keep the abilities they unlock in the current Sins? I would like if those stayed, and when you level up you get to choose one of the following: One "Ability Point", used for unlocking/upgrading abilities, one "Weapons Point" which you can use to add turrets or beam weapons you suggested, and one "Defense Point" that you can use to add armor.

2. That's kind of in the game already. If you get an alert in the bottom right corner that says something like "Our planet [planet name] is under attack", when you move the mouse over it (maybe you have to click, I forget) the planet glows.

3. I would love to have a campaign. I stopped playing Sins for about two months because I got bored with no campaign. Hopefully they'll make a campaign expansion pack

I give your ideas five stars

I'm going to have to agree with those who think that radomizing Sins is a bad idea. Like Tridus said, if you can micro 2 frigates to kill 2 HCs, I'm fine with that. But if my fleet of 10 cap-ships and 200+ assorted other ships is taken down by 50 ships and one cap-ship because of some lucky little thing, I am going to be really pissed and will probably never play the game again. Lucky shots make great movie scenes (if done correctly), but they do not make fun gameplay. If I build a Death Star, I am not going to be happy if a couple of little fighters manage to take it down with one proton torpedo. Great movie scene, yes. Fun to play, no.

Civ had the issue of randoming units based on probability. The problem was that a phalanx unit could kill a end of game battleship.

They fixed this in Civ2 by having hit points. So the phalanx unit may get lucky and do some damage, but the chances of it winning every time so that it killed the battleship were so high that you would have a better chance with lotto (maybe a slight over exageration...).

The critical shot concept is interesting - Mech Commander 2 had this - a lucky shot could destroy a weapon before that section of a mech was fully totalled (i.e. it still had armour).

Where it would get difficult is in the fact that EVERY player is simulating the game on their PC - and each PC would have a different "random" number sequence based on whatever seed they came up with (I guess you could get the host to generate one and hope that that works...).

So good idea - but they would have to look at how they code the game as I am not sure the current architecture could support it (but I could be wrong..)

unlimited levels for cap ships? it just wouldnt work, the reason you have the level limits is to stop the cap ships becoming some major all overpowering vessel you can wipe the floor with, the idea is to use them as part of a fleet rather than as the previously mentioned, and though i can see what your getting at withthe less value from higher levels,,,if theirs less value to leveling from lv72 to lv73 than their is from lv2 to lv 3 then whats the point in bothering to level up? it would undermine the point of the system and make it extremely menotonous

Reputation and prestige...

Thanks!

Just to respond to your #2 response, in the case of Trade Lanes I would like to see a more readily fathomable visual map area display of those lanes, particularly when they are under enemy attack. More 'direct pane' feedback, less necessary reliance upon text at screen bottom. Trying to remember where hot commerce arteries are can be difficult.

I think this illustrates a fundamental distinction between us rts gamers (and turn-based gamers?). I don`t mind BuckCraft®, it had its appeal for sure, but I also hate the utter predictability of it. Perhaps I am more of a *role player* than a *chess player*. I have never enjoyed chess as it is far too rigid and static in execution for my creative or theatrical mind... too clinical, too definite and analytical, if that makes any sense.

I hypothesize that most chess players prefer contests like BuckCraft to that which I describe previously.

(P.S.: Not flaming you chess-minded folk, btw.)