You have more faith in humanity that I could ever dredge up if you can expect a quality campaign in the sandbox genre. It's possible, of course, but the sheer amount of time required to go down both roads is cringe worthy. It's true that Gal Civ has a story to it and the tentacle ships are mighty cute, I must admit. But I would argue that it's story is born of one of at least six distinct levels of hell.
I wonder if some of the complaints are based off the thought that there is no single player mode at all. The game does have AI support, and the buggers manage to get themselves slaughtered fairly convincingly in various epic space operatic ways while watching their children get incinerated by the players orbital bombardment.
So what exactly is tactical about the combat for the player? Even the special abilities have an auto-smart-cast and there's no bonus for flanking or ambushes.
It sounds pretty to watch but next to pointless to get involved in.
It was never billed as a successor to Homeworld, certainly not by the developers, who refrained from comparing it to anything. It's just something people who hadn't played came up with because hey, it's in space! And it has spaceships! And maybe a couple of the developer's guys used to work with Barking Dog or Relic or whatever.
In other words, and I'll bold this for anyone new to the thread, this is not homeworld based, derived, inspired, tributed nor a spiritual sequel. It just isn't. Don't expect to draw such comparisons during play, you won't.
The only similiarities they share are space, ships, and a tactical 3d battle element.
(Plus this isn't a bash post, I love the game, and I love Homeworld, but they are very different experiences)
So what exactly is tactical about the combat for the player? Even the special abilities have an auto-smart-cast and there's no bonus for flanking or ambushes.
It sounds pretty to watch but next to pointless to get involved in.
In general, you are correct, but it pays sometimes to get involved. You need to make sure the battle is going in your favour, for instance, else you need to retreat to prevent further losses. Also ships sometimes do not focus fire on what you might consider to be the most threatening (or the most easily disposed of) enemy target, like a capital ship that keeps disabling your own with it's abilities, or a half-dead defense platform.
I've also had ships break formation to chase a lone scout ship across a gravity well when they should be bombarding an enemy planet.
But yeah, micro has it's rewards, even if it isn't necessary.
3% downloaded.....FASTER DAMN YOU. Someone capture a game and youtube it or something
61%! It failed at 21%, saying it lost connection to the server. When I told it to start again it was at the same spot it was, and started downloading at 60+ kb/s rather than the 11 it had been doing. Woo.
Tactical combat in Sins is about ensuring that your ships don't die horrible, pointless deaths rather than moving that one ship to an optimum firing location. Ships might not be able to miss, but they can certainly get shot. The latter is what's important.
Your standard baby killing expedition will involve at least one capital ship, a swarm of light frigates, and your choice of mixed specialists. Be they long range missile boats, carriers, orbital bombardment platforms, command craft, whatever you're fond of.
Your standard bread basket will be protected a slew of turrets, in system bombers and an optional sea of light frigates with maybe a stray capital ship on it's way to the front line.
The trouble with letting your fleet do it's thing completely unattended is that the ai loves to slug it out against what would otherwise be utterly harmless static defenses. Your ships adore turrets, especially when they're sitting right at the edge of the grav well, unable to cover the vulnerable mining installations and research centers. That big, bad capital ship shudders with delight at the thought of trundling up to six or seven guns and gushing air with sexy results.
In the mean time, the enemy will happily buzz around behind your close combat ships, mowing down your lrm frigates and carriers before swarming whatever the solid field of turrets didn't manage to scrap.
To avoid that, all you need to do is assign a series of queued move and attack orders with appropriate stances to ensure that your short ranged vessels avoid fixed defenses and that your long ranged units don't get clobbered. That done, you only need to step in if the enemy player starts moving things around himself. Frigates and even cruisers tend work in swarms, and as such it's very easy to order a slew of things with guns on one end to swing outside the range of the close combatants and knock off every support ship the enemy fleet brought along.
For those of you who bought direct from the Sins home page, check your accounts. I found I got billed twice. Just sent an email to their sales department to refund the second billing.
i) The AI is smart, it sees holes in your lines which are created by you moving your defense fleets around to counter its previous attacks and moves to exploit them.
ii) Capitol ships gaining levels is most satisfying, and gives a real sense of power
iii) Random pirate raids are loads of fun, and can be useful too, when you use them against your enemies
iv) Its really pretty
v) Fantastic interface, if you need to move 6 light frigates and a siege frigate 8 sectors, before having them divide up to defend system A and B then you can do it in 10 seconds.
vi) Logical progression path
vii) Good balance of micro and macro, zooming in can be an advantage, but you will be making sacrifices at the Strategic level.
Things I don't like
i) Vaguely anemic technology tree, needs a bit of beefing up to make the game feel more like a 4X
ii) Random diplomacy, the computer knows whats going on, but you can't really influence it. Why can't I make demands on it, rather than it only making demands on me?
iii) Unstoppable siege frigate swarms
iv) Weapons feel puny, even a top level fully teched up Battle cruiser capitol ship with all points in its mega single target damage ability has problems destroying a lone light frigate in one shot. This causes serious problems when the computer decides to simply ignore your fleets and fly on past. A reasonably sized fleet can push straight through an enormous fleet at full speed, warp out the other side of your system and head for your homeworld to blast it to pieces. Fighters and Bombers are especially pathetic, as are all the stationary system defences.
v) Ships remain stationary while fighting, I prefer my space battles to be all drifty.
vi) Effect of culture very poorly explained.
Weapons feel puny, even a top level fully teched up Battle cruiser capitol ship with all points in its mega single target damage ability has problems destroying a lone light frigate in one shot
I don't know how advanced Sins is so correct me if i'm horribly wrong but, surely it's supposed to be like that? In the laws of space combat, surely having a large mammoth capital ship attack a small frigate is pointless, because the large ship loses the aiming capabilities to attack it?
At least, that's what i'd have in my space rts/sim.
Weapons feel puny, even a top level fully teched up Battle cruiser capitol ship with all points in its mega single target damage ability has problems destroying a lone light frigate in one shot
I don't know how advanced Sins is so correct me if i'm horribly wrong but, surely it's supposed to be like that? In the laws of space combat, surely having a large mammoth capital ship attack a small frigate is pointless, because the large ship loses the aiming capabilities to attack it?
At least, that's what i'd have in my space rts/sim.
¬_¬
Depends, the mammoth capital ship has some pretty nasty side mounted flack turrets that seem suited for shooting down the puny little space ants.
I think he means that even if he hits an ion firgate with a direct hit from a Battleship, its not that damaged. Which should not be the case. Smaller frigates should be insta-killed if hit by a Battleships superweapon. Their manoueverability should be their only defense against it.
Kiith on
The very existense of flame throwers proves that at sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves "I want to set those people over there on fire, but i'm just not close enough to get the job done."
That would be cool if the ships moved. As they don't, we can pretend that it was a glancing blow. Perhaps a butterfly got in the way. It really is odd to see a frigate survive a full blast from a spinal mounted cannon 'o doom, but it's the way it works. Presumably for pacing reasons.
Happily, there should be roughly fourteen hundred balance mods coming out shortly to demonstrate why it works this way. =P
Any missiles, or just pew-pew lasers? One thing i loved about Nexus: The Jupiter Incident was that its missiles were extremely fucking powerful, resulting usually in a nice nuclear fireworks display if they hit anything. You could literally feel the place shake with explosive fury! :P
Indeed, so far the only thing I'm dissapointed with is the large ships just sitting still trading shots, but it's not that big of a deal. I spent the entire tutorial zooming in and out and then watching the fighters zoom around. The game looks alot more demanding than it actually is which is pretty slick.
The game could definately benefit from a few mods making ships a lot more vulnurable, and capships extremely expensive and prohibitive to operate, as well as being stupidly overpowered.
Perhaps remove most frigate class ships and make a lot more carrier ships with different types of support craft attached.
Any missiles, or just pew-pew lasers? One thing i loved about Nexus: The Jupiter Incident was that its missiles were extremely fucking powerful, resulting usually in a nice nuclear fireworks display if they hit anything. You could literally feel the place shake with explosive fury! :P
Lots, and lots of missiles. They're not always very spectacular, but there are a great many missiles involved. The sheer volume of missiles that go flying is humbling at times.
Also watching trade and refinery ships move across phase lanes was cool. I kinda wish there was a way drop them outta warp and steal their monies and metals.
Yeah, the weapons really do feel puny. I should be able to chew through frigates faster with a cap ship+20 frigates focus-firing. Bombers especially seem kind of weak.
Bombers are the only ships I can really tell do a lot of damage. Mainly because they seem to focus fire very well. 15 squadrons of bombers really tear ships up.
Hmmm, i could digital download this with paypal, but i might wait till Thursday when i get paid. That way the downloading/preloading stuff will probably have cleared up by then.
Bombers are the only ships I can really tell do a lot of damage. Mainly because they seem to focus fire very well. 15 squadrons of bombers really tear ships up.
A large group (20+) of LRM Frigates (TEC Missile Frig) make for powerful alpha strikes. Usually take down an enemy frig in a single volley with missiles to spare before moving onto the next target.
Anyone have tips for dealing with pirate raids? I keep getting attacked by progressively larger groups every few minutes. They don't do a lot of damage per raid, but they require the attention of my entire fleet to defeat in a reasonable amount of time, and they usually manage to kill an amount of ships that cancels out anything I built since their last raid.
End result is my fleet never grows, and is constantly running from planet to planet to defend, then the enemy AI sends a massive wave in and steamrolls me. I'm playing as Advent which doesn't seem to have turrets. Usually by the end of the game I have several bomber hangars in my major systems. The bombers seem to do good at harassing the pirates and preventing them from attacking my structures, but they don't do anywhere near enough damage to actually stop them.
At the end of a 3 hour game I had 4 planets, 1 level 9 cap ship, 4 combat cruisers and 7 or 8 long range frigates. The enemy AI had the rest of the map(about 10 planets), about 50 assorted frigates, about 15 cruisers, and 3 mid level cap ships. Yea, I just quit after that entered my capitol.
That's basically what I ran into. I guess you are forced to buy them off, at least part of the time.
You have to keep the economic pressure up on the pirates to attack someone else, at least in the early stages of the game that works well enough to keep them smashing up another empire and not yours. Find whoever it is that someone else doesnt like and keep up the bribes for the pirates to attack them. In their weakened state they may also be an excellent invasion target.
Later in the game the pirates seem to be overwhelmingly attracted to your bases. I had 5000 credits of bounty out on another player, and pirate waves were still attacking my trade depots. I think that perhaps they weigh the bounty against the amount of destruction they hope to cause. Still, for that amount of cash I should have owned those pirates.
Temporary player listing:
PA Name Ironclad Online Name
-------------------------------------------
Dashui Vascorsis
Demiurge Demiurge
threelemmings threelemmings
PM me if I missed anyone, I'll keep this updated as best I can until a mod or someone can alter the OP
PS I am about to go into the lobby RIGHT NOW so someone should join me and play a small game.
You missed me, my Ironclad name is the same as my name here, I'd love to play, but can't right now. Maybe later.
The download is fairly painless as long as you don't have an existing account. If you do, make sure the information is exactly the same, because there is some kind of weirdness if you have a different buyer/account name than the one you link it to; Echo had some problems (and Aegis too, I think).
Posts
I wonder if some of the complaints are based off the thought that there is no single player mode at all. The game does have AI support, and the buggers manage to get themselves slaughtered fairly convincingly in various epic space operatic ways while watching their children get incinerated by the players orbital bombardment.
It's all very endearing.
It sounds pretty to watch but next to pointless to get involved in.
Someone should change the title then...
In general, you are correct, but it pays sometimes to get involved. You need to make sure the battle is going in your favour, for instance, else you need to retreat to prevent further losses. Also ships sometimes do not focus fire on what you might consider to be the most threatening (or the most easily disposed of) enemy target, like a capital ship that keeps disabling your own with it's abilities, or a half-dead defense platform.
I've also had ships break formation to chase a lone scout ship across a gravity well when they should be bombarding an enemy planet.
But yeah, micro has it's rewards, even if it isn't necessary.
61%! It failed at 21%, saying it lost connection to the server. When I told it to start again it was at the same spot it was, and started downloading at 60+ kb/s rather than the 11 it had been doing. Woo.
Your standard baby killing expedition will involve at least one capital ship, a swarm of light frigates, and your choice of mixed specialists. Be they long range missile boats, carriers, orbital bombardment platforms, command craft, whatever you're fond of.
Your standard bread basket will be protected a slew of turrets, in system bombers and an optional sea of light frigates with maybe a stray capital ship on it's way to the front line.
The trouble with letting your fleet do it's thing completely unattended is that the ai loves to slug it out against what would otherwise be utterly harmless static defenses. Your ships adore turrets, especially when they're sitting right at the edge of the grav well, unable to cover the vulnerable mining installations and research centers. That big, bad capital ship shudders with delight at the thought of trundling up to six or seven guns and gushing air with sexy results.
In the mean time, the enemy will happily buzz around behind your close combat ships, mowing down your lrm frigates and carriers before swarming whatever the solid field of turrets didn't manage to scrap.
To avoid that, all you need to do is assign a series of queued move and attack orders with appropriate stances to ensure that your short ranged vessels avoid fixed defenses and that your long ranged units don't get clobbered. That done, you only need to step in if the enemy player starts moving things around himself. Frigates and even cruisers tend work in swarms, and as such it's very easy to order a slew of things with guns on one end to swing outside the range of the close combatants and knock off every support ship the enemy fleet brought along.
i) The AI is smart, it sees holes in your lines which are created by you moving your defense fleets around to counter its previous attacks and moves to exploit them.
ii) Capitol ships gaining levels is most satisfying, and gives a real sense of power
iii) Random pirate raids are loads of fun, and can be useful too, when you use them against your enemies
iv) Its really pretty
v) Fantastic interface, if you need to move 6 light frigates and a siege frigate 8 sectors, before having them divide up to defend system A and B then you can do it in 10 seconds.
vi) Logical progression path
vii) Good balance of micro and macro, zooming in can be an advantage, but you will be making sacrifices at the Strategic level.
Things I don't like
i) Vaguely anemic technology tree, needs a bit of beefing up to make the game feel more like a 4X
ii) Random diplomacy, the computer knows whats going on, but you can't really influence it. Why can't I make demands on it, rather than it only making demands on me?
iii) Unstoppable siege frigate swarms
iv) Weapons feel puny, even a top level fully teched up Battle cruiser capitol ship with all points in its mega single target damage ability has problems destroying a lone light frigate in one shot. This causes serious problems when the computer decides to simply ignore your fleets and fly on past. A reasonably sized fleet can push straight through an enormous fleet at full speed, warp out the other side of your system and head for your homeworld to blast it to pieces. Fighters and Bombers are especially pathetic, as are all the stationary system defences.
v) Ships remain stationary while fighting, I prefer my space battles to be all drifty.
vi) Effect of culture very poorly explained.
I don't know how advanced Sins is so correct me if i'm horribly wrong but, surely it's supposed to be like that? In the laws of space combat, surely having a large mammoth capital ship attack a small frigate is pointless, because the large ship loses the aiming capabilities to attack it?
At least, that's what i'd have in my space rts/sim.
¬_¬
Depends, the mammoth capital ship has some pretty nasty side mounted flack turrets that seem suited for shooting down the puny little space ants.
Happily, there should be roughly fourteen hundred balance mods coming out shortly to demonstrate why it works this way. =P
Perhaps remove most frigate class ships and make a lot more carrier ships with different types of support craft attached.
Lots, and lots of missiles. They're not always very spectacular, but there are a great many missiles involved. The sheer volume of missiles that go flying is humbling at times.
More updates when I can wrench myself away from the game and work.
So... expect more impressions like in 3 months.
This game I can see already being my own personal Civ 5. As in, weekends will vanish in the blink of an eye, and I will lose 4 stone while playing it.
Me and DoA were talking about getting a game going tomorrow though, probably around 5-6 GMT or something. PM That is.
A large group (20+) of LRM Frigates (TEC Missile Frig) make for powerful alpha strikes. Usually take down an enemy frig in a single volley with missiles to spare before moving onto the next target.
End result is my fleet never grows, and is constantly running from planet to planet to defend, then the enemy AI sends a massive wave in and steamrolls me. I'm playing as Advent which doesn't seem to have turrets. Usually by the end of the game I have several bomber hangars in my major systems. The bombers seem to do good at harassing the pirates and preventing them from attacking my structures, but they don't do anywhere near enough damage to actually stop them.
At the end of a 3 hour game I had 4 planets, 1 level 9 cap ship, 4 combat cruisers and 7 or 8 long range frigates. The enemy AI had the rest of the map(about 10 planets), about 50 assorted frigates, about 15 cruisers, and 3 mid level cap ships. Yea, I just quit after that entered my capitol.
You have to keep the economic pressure up on the pirates to attack someone else, at least in the early stages of the game that works well enough to keep them smashing up another empire and not yours. Find whoever it is that someone else doesnt like and keep up the bribes for the pirates to attack them. In their weakened state they may also be an excellent invasion target.
Later in the game the pirates seem to be overwhelmingly attracted to your bases. I had 5000 credits of bounty out on another player, and pirate waves were still attacking my trade depots. I think that perhaps they weigh the bounty against the amount of destruction they hope to cause. Still, for that amount of cash I should have owned those pirates.
How so? Your first capital ship comes absolutely free of charge.
PS I am about to go into the lobby RIGHT NOW so someone should join me and play a small game.
Whatever map I played, that wasn't the case.
You missed me, my Ironclad name is the same as my name here, I'd love to play, but can't right now. Maybe later.
Assuming yes.. what was decided on the best way to get it ?
Librarians harbor a terrible secret. Find it.