[UPDATE] Sins vs Entrenchment Changes
Posted: 2009-03-21 02:21am
Since laughing about how fundamentally broken Sins was, I thought it'd be fun to talk about how it's changed in the most recent patch paid expansion.
First, siege frigates and planetary bombardments in general. In Sins a few bombardment ships or caps could lay waste to a planet, regardless of hitpoints, in a few minutes and kill every taxpayer in the first salvo. The AI loved them and a quick rush with sieges could decide a battle. They tried to balance this by first making bombardment ships expensive and then making them do less damage, but this just lent more impetus to the 'caps only lol' strategy.
In Entrenchment, planets take damage WAY slower from all sources, and even an unfortified 1500-hp asteroid colony will last more than a few minutes under 3-4 ship bombardment; I was able to move my entire fleet 4 full jumps (including sublight transit of each leg) before such a colony was destroyed by 3 siege ships. However, the AI now actually avoids turrets with their frigates (which boils down to 'fly a wide circle around the jump line and approach the planet from an unconventional angle) which makes it less trivial to just mob the fuck out of the avenue of approach with turrets.
Secondly, the fucking retarded and utterly broken 'armour type' and 'damage type' system. As noted in the other thread, it meant that flak guns could rip missile ships to pieces, but the giant space lasers on capital ships couldn't. The guns on scouts were actually the best dps against some types of unit. Ships had an 'armour' rating, which WAS NOT THE ARMOUR TYPE, and the effect of this number was never explained. They actually had to release a counter diagram to actually inform people how this retarded and unnecessary system worked.
In Entrenchment, while it's still present (the changelogs talk about changes to the armourtypes as before), it's FAR less noticeable. You no longer win with huge swarms of LRMs. Caps are no longer near-impotent against small ships. It's not perfect - it still takes way too long to finish some fights - but it's way less annoying and glaring.
Defences have obviously recieved the most attention. In Sins, defences were only really useful in giant quantities (unless the AI parked it's bombarment group near a turret) and there were very few upgrades available. In Entrenchment, aside from the introduction of mines and starbases, the other structures are now more useful and versatile. Because Ironclad can't balance jack shit, the TEC have the best new defence upgrades and the Lesbians have the most ridiculously unbalanced. TEC Hangars can now be upgraded to possess flak guns, the turrets can add LRM packs and lategame a giant long-range ability, and their starbases are biased towards trade and toughness. The Lesbian base is obviously a fighter spamfest, but also has a bunch of synergies with the beam turrets (beam turrets can stack shield buffs now, so a cloud of them + starbase = lololololol). The Zerg starbase fucking MOVES (although it can't jump) and is set up for direct, captial-ship style combat. Each race's mines are a bit different; the Zerg have a minelayer that builds mines for money and can be upgraded with 'gravity mines', the TEC build them from the tactical menu once researched, and the Lesbians have a new type of fighter that is deployable as mines (making their hangars even more flexible unbalanced.
However, the big ideas in Sins (ie slowness, market, pirates etc) never really worked. The game is slower than a fast RTS, but nowhere near as slow as a game like Kohan. The market is basically irrelvant and regardless of demand you'll buy for 350-500 and sell for 200-250. The pirates are WAY less annoying, but the whole bounty thing is still a bit of a nag (although they're easily turned off). The addition of specific cruisers for anti-structure work (artillery ships basically) makes cracking the pirate base pretty easy midgame.
In the sphere of enemy AI the game has seen the most dramatic improvements. The game now actually HAS AI, for instance. In one battle, I was blowing up an enemy starbase with artillery and they moved their fleet in to intercept me. I dropped a ping on the system, and my ally jumped into a nearby enemy system and started wrecking the place. The enemy fleet went over there to deal with them, letting me blow up the starbase. My ally then decided to retreat, having been heavily damaged by the enemy, and I jumped over there to assist - arriving just as my allies ships left. Expecting this to go badly (with my fleet outnumbered and out of antimatter/shields) I was surprised when my allies' fleet jumped right back in, bringing it's most spaceworthy ships and all their carriers to the party. As the battle progressed (we held the enemy fleet between our two forces), the ally actually build robotics cruisers and bought them to the system to repair my damaged capital ships and used their own capital powers to recharge my shields and disrupt the enemy fighters. Needless to say, nothing like this would EVER happen in Sins.
It's a paid-for patch, but it's only $10 and I'd recommend anyone that was disappointed in Sins should give it another go. With Bailknight's graphics mod, of course... the basic effects are still hideous.
First, siege frigates and planetary bombardments in general. In Sins a few bombardment ships or caps could lay waste to a planet, regardless of hitpoints, in a few minutes and kill every taxpayer in the first salvo. The AI loved them and a quick rush with sieges could decide a battle. They tried to balance this by first making bombardment ships expensive and then making them do less damage, but this just lent more impetus to the 'caps only lol' strategy.
In Entrenchment, planets take damage WAY slower from all sources, and even an unfortified 1500-hp asteroid colony will last more than a few minutes under 3-4 ship bombardment; I was able to move my entire fleet 4 full jumps (including sublight transit of each leg) before such a colony was destroyed by 3 siege ships. However, the AI now actually avoids turrets with their frigates (which boils down to 'fly a wide circle around the jump line and approach the planet from an unconventional angle) which makes it less trivial to just mob the fuck out of the avenue of approach with turrets.
Secondly, the fucking retarded and utterly broken 'armour type' and 'damage type' system. As noted in the other thread, it meant that flak guns could rip missile ships to pieces, but the giant space lasers on capital ships couldn't. The guns on scouts were actually the best dps against some types of unit. Ships had an 'armour' rating, which WAS NOT THE ARMOUR TYPE, and the effect of this number was never explained. They actually had to release a counter diagram to actually inform people how this retarded and unnecessary system worked.
In Entrenchment, while it's still present (the changelogs talk about changes to the armourtypes as before), it's FAR less noticeable. You no longer win with huge swarms of LRMs. Caps are no longer near-impotent against small ships. It's not perfect - it still takes way too long to finish some fights - but it's way less annoying and glaring.
Defences have obviously recieved the most attention. In Sins, defences were only really useful in giant quantities (unless the AI parked it's bombarment group near a turret) and there were very few upgrades available. In Entrenchment, aside from the introduction of mines and starbases, the other structures are now more useful and versatile. Because Ironclad can't balance jack shit, the TEC have the best new defence upgrades and the Lesbians have the most ridiculously unbalanced. TEC Hangars can now be upgraded to possess flak guns, the turrets can add LRM packs and lategame a giant long-range ability, and their starbases are biased towards trade and toughness. The Lesbian base is obviously a fighter spamfest, but also has a bunch of synergies with the beam turrets (beam turrets can stack shield buffs now, so a cloud of them + starbase = lololololol). The Zerg starbase fucking MOVES (although it can't jump) and is set up for direct, captial-ship style combat. Each race's mines are a bit different; the Zerg have a minelayer that builds mines for money and can be upgraded with 'gravity mines', the TEC build them from the tactical menu once researched, and the Lesbians have a new type of fighter that is deployable as mines (making their hangars even more flexible unbalanced.
However, the big ideas in Sins (ie slowness, market, pirates etc) never really worked. The game is slower than a fast RTS, but nowhere near as slow as a game like Kohan. The market is basically irrelvant and regardless of demand you'll buy for 350-500 and sell for 200-250. The pirates are WAY less annoying, but the whole bounty thing is still a bit of a nag (although they're easily turned off). The addition of specific cruisers for anti-structure work (artillery ships basically) makes cracking the pirate base pretty easy midgame.
In the sphere of enemy AI the game has seen the most dramatic improvements. The game now actually HAS AI, for instance. In one battle, I was blowing up an enemy starbase with artillery and they moved their fleet in to intercept me. I dropped a ping on the system, and my ally jumped into a nearby enemy system and started wrecking the place. The enemy fleet went over there to deal with them, letting me blow up the starbase. My ally then decided to retreat, having been heavily damaged by the enemy, and I jumped over there to assist - arriving just as my allies ships left. Expecting this to go badly (with my fleet outnumbered and out of antimatter/shields) I was surprised when my allies' fleet jumped right back in, bringing it's most spaceworthy ships and all their carriers to the party. As the battle progressed (we held the enemy fleet between our two forces), the ally actually build robotics cruisers and bought them to the system to repair my damaged capital ships and used their own capital powers to recharge my shields and disrupt the enemy fighters. Needless to say, nothing like this would EVER happen in Sins.
It's a paid-for patch, but it's only $10 and I'd recommend anyone that was disappointed in Sins should give it another go. With Bailknight's graphics mod, of course... the basic effects are still hideous.
