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I don't know if I am more excited about this game or the new Requiem that will come along with it....

I'm in on the beta for this, and the TEC Loyalist/Rebels (the only factions available while I was still on my gaming desktop) seemed pretty well done. I particularly like the Titans, I think they are pretty well intergrated, and I am particularly fond of the expanded victory conditions.

Goddamn people who type 'SoaSE' are dumb. :v

It's pretty sad that even this late I still think their effects are worse than a fan mod for years ago. The victory stuff is good, but broken stuff like pirates and the market are still broken and AI still sucks.

Still, better than Sword of the Stars.

The market definitely needs work, I could never get the "selling to other players" thing to work. As for pirates being broken, I tend to play on my own maps that don't have them anyway so I haven't noticed

That's because it's totally broken. It's got stupid rules (like price always returning to set value) and they nerfed it into irrelevance with the first expansion. All people use it for is a late game source of gas because TEC has infinite money.

The whole idea of the pirates was stupid and boring (ie the most militarised group in the game never expands because .... And they only use TEC ships). They didn't even target mercantile ships until after an expansion for fucks sake. Piracy = suicide Zerg rush now?? Lol

But sadly it's all you got if you want space pew pews.

Better than nothing. And at least they are making some effort to fix things.

In a series of paid expansions years later? Gee, thanks.

The best part is making the neutral planets less static would have meant they didn't need the bizarre and incongruous pirate suicide cult. And they clearly don't even care about their market ideas anymore and seem to ignore it (which is for the best since 'return to fixed value' shows they know less about markets than I do about knitting). Any of their ideas could have been interesting, but aren't, so we're left with a really static RTS with shit AI.

Oh sorry, RT4X marketing bullshit for morons. :v

Stark wrote:Goddamn people who type 'SoaSE' are dumb. :v

It's pretty sad that even this late I still think their effects are worse than a fan mod for years ago. The victory stuff is good, but broken stuff like pirates and the market are still broken and AI still sucks.

Still, better than Sword of the Stars.

And if I hadn’t used the acronym, some other troglodyte would have thusly responded…
“Goddamn people who type Sins of a Solar Empire are dumb. :v”

Eternal_Freedom wrote:I'm in on the beta for this, and the TEC Loyalist/Rebels (the only factions available while I was still on my gaming desktop) seemed pretty well done. I particularly like the Titans, I think they are pretty well intergrated, and I am particularly fond of the expanded victory conditions.

Cool yeah I just realized they had the open Beta for it....
I just signed on for it but I haven't played any yet so will get back after I check it out.
how do the titans feel as far as balancing issues?

Is there actually going to be a campaign with this one instead of just a vague story and a bunch of skirmish matches and MP?

I'm definitely not one of the game's big fans, but for my own sake I really hope they improve things. It's not like the basis of the game is unworkably bad, and they could pull something like a MOO1 -> MOO2 and re-lay the groundwork all over again and make it quite excellent... but I'm really not sure if that'll happen in the span of a single expansion--even a big one. My hope is that they make the game actually better and not just broader. They should definitely do that, but going back and retooling some of their fundamental assumptions would be great.

As it stands the game isn't horrid but it's not what I'd want to buy for a retail release. For a budget release you'd be getting my money, but not for thiiis. I'm more than happy to go retro and get my fix that way, and for "Unrivaled Scale" I really have to laugh, since the game felt very very small. But hey, if a good game comes out of this I'll be happy.

And not just to grouse, but what I'd like to see them do more with is an expanded military/economy model that allows me to have fleets without bankrupting myself (like some games do) but in such a way that I don't feel like I'm gaming the system by just building the most obviously cost-effective units. I'd also like a bit more variety in my economic assets. I'm not into micro-management of my economy, but I like the idea of "terrain" in a strategic sense and the resources and such of planetary systems are essentially like the logistics and terrain aspects of a General's map. And lastly make the combat suck less. Homeworld did this infinitely better and that was in the murky past. Some turrets and a bit of glitz would make it more satisfying.

Alkaloid wrote:Is there actually going to be a campaign with this one instead of just a vague story and a bunch of skirmish matches and MP?

Who cares? I'd never play it.

Cov, they repeated their whole 'animated turrets would be IMPOSSIBLE' thing in an interview. :v

It's really a shame that I think they got sidelined by the 'surprise' of their combat balance problems at release and really de-prioritised everything else. The whole first expansion existed to answer serious flow problems, and diplomacy existed to make diplomacy not embarrassingly awful. You're right, though - if they honestly made a 'RT4X' game (lol) instead of a really slow and bland RTS there mug be more to do than spam units and steamroll shit AI.

Yes. There's not much work to do to make it work. Of all the things an Empire does in terms of day-to-day business, only a bare minimum of it has to do with the actual production of warships and soldiers. It may be one of the more interesting things for Kings to focus on, but my Galactic Highness could still look across a vast swath of planets that are under my control and nonetheless only have 2-3 main locations for shipbuilding and heavy weapons industry.

Their combat was for shit but even for shit combat can be okay if it's strategic in flow. It was lacking in strategy because it was just braindead simple to mass units and pour them down an enemy's throat, which they couldn't handle until you pack them into their last few systems. So you wall those off, wait, and then kill them via superior industry.

I'm not all Deep Indie "I want my wars to be about morale and readiness and causus belli" and stuff like a Paradox fan would be, but I do think what their game was lacking was the whole idea of actually having an Empire. If they had simply painted the ground of a Supreme Commander level black and given you only air units, it'd feel more like a satisfying space RTS than SoapSe did, and their Imperialness was just godawful poor. It's hard to do scale and realtime for a reason. They should focus on making the Imperial side interesting and relevant, with few but strategic fights, or they should focus on making it an interesting RTS with the galactic map as your resources. Oh well.

Too bad turrets are impossible. Some actual combat dynamics would make it worth playing the game at something other than full zoom-back.

The level of territory interaction was really poor; press the infinite money button or the unlock research snooze button? Press the increase hit points button a lot! Pretty sophisticated lol.

Fan mods even put in heaps more and heaps more meaningful zone characteristics and modifiers, to take the place of territory modifiers in a 4X. The shallow and fast tech tree plus the awful awful economy means it wasn't very successful, though.

Maybe they'll do themselves a favor and steal a bunch of those ideas. Ideally they'd throw a nod to the modders somehow--ask 'em for permission or whatever--but they really need to do something. The game just feels hollow.

I could never get to win a single SP game of Sin of a Solar Empire even with the AI at lowest settings because I can't keep pace with micromanaging my whole empire of five planets AND three simultaneous engagements with two different enemies on opposite corners of the map.

Am I deficient ?

No. The AI just cheats and has more resources than you do.

If only there was a "PAUSE" button in single-player which you could use to issue orders or manage things like research, fleet & infrastructure constructions, etc... That would be an easy way to "fix" half of the game's problems.

Rabid wrote:I could never get to win a single SP game of Sin of a Solar Empire even with the AI at lowest settings because I can't keep pace with micromanaging my whole empire of five planets AND three simultaneous engagements with two different enemies on opposite corners of the map.
)
Am I deficient ?

The way I learned to organized everything was by fleets and the drop down menu on the left... that helped me organize my planets and empire. But researching and everything else tying into that is a lot of running around to do.
the most I ever attempted and won was several hard empires and there were miscellaneous empires In there as well.

A couple of guys in my fraternity got into it (Sins:Entrenchment). We managed the AI on hard and unfair by delegating roles and hacking the map to put us all in one star system. One of us would play sugar daddy and bankroll the war fleets for myself and another guy, and the fourth guy would carve out his own empire in the corner and just do his own thing. We'd race for the star and try to lock it down with starbases before SPACE MONGOLIA poured the combined resources of 3 systems into it. Fun, in a Minecraft-grind and grand strategy sort of way.

That's pretty sad because you can do that by yourself. The economy is totally broken - Rabid probably just never found the one true path through early game (ie tech to markets while spamming frigates). Its the mark of a shit game that basically forces you to break the economy to not die, and then has nothing to offer beyond 'effortlessly defeat everyone over the next two boring hours'.

But man the combat is SOOOOO SLOOOOOOW you can do the two tasks your planets need in no time. Shit, you can get up and walk away. It can take like five minutes for a cap ship to die vs parity, and that's just fucking boring since they basically don't move and just sit there (unless you waste your time microing). You just have to have learned all the buttons that are basically useless.

Stark wrote:But man the combat is SOOOOO SLOOOOOOW you can do the two tasks your planets need in no time. Shit, you can get up and walk away. It can take like five minutes for a cap ship to die vs parity, and that's just fucking boring since they basically don't move and just sit there (unless you waste your time microing). You just have to have learned all the buttons that are basically useless.

Slow doesn’t even begin to describe it….My friends and I have only played LAN games a few times and we never stayed put for the whole thing… I believe the last match we ever played was a 11 hour ordeal....

I never had a problem with the AI. The first Titan vessel you got was free, so I'd make one very very early and use that to bully my opponents--getting the Titan thing that was most effective versus small ships. Then I went and got a bunch of the most efficient ships and just mass produced those, build sizable defenses on some fortress worlds, and kept the pirates paid off so I never had to bother with them. Game the economy for the money, mash units, and then just sweep up the rest. What was the problem in that?

You probably just over thought the game. When something is broken, just keep doing that.

Covenant wrote:I never had a problem with the AI. The first Titan vessel you got was free, so I'd make one very very early and use that to bully my opponents--getting the Titan thing that was most effective versus small ships. Then I went and got a bunch of the most efficient ships and just mass produced those, build sizable defenses on some fortress worlds, and kept the pirates paid off so I never had to bother with them. Game the economy for the money, mash units, and then just sweep up the rest. What was the problem in that?

You probably just over thought the game. When something is broken, just keep doing that.

the first Titan was free?? do you mean capital ship? I have the beta and I just havent played but the first ten minutes so I really dont know, but it would be kickass to have a free titan as soon as you could build one.

Covenant wrote:I never had a problem with the AI. The first Titan vessel you got was free, so I'd make one very very early and use that to bully my opponents--getting the Titan thing that was most effective versus small ships. Then I went and got a bunch of the most efficient ships and just mass produced those, build sizable defenses on some fortress worlds, and kept the pirates paid off so I never had to bother with them. Game the economy for the money, mash units, and then just sweep up the rest. What was the problem in that?

That it's no fun. When playing a strategy game, most people would assume there to be a variety of viable and fun strategies to choose from.

Covenant wrote:You probably just over thought the game. When something is broken, just keep doing that.

How would you know to do it, when nothing in the game tells you that most of its content is useless?