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Joe Victoria

Join Date 06/2007

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Played a few games...have a few questions

I've played several games and keep picking up new things that can be done each time...so that is good.

In general, I'm definitely enjoying the game but have a few minor questions:

(1) Is there no "global summary" of how many ships and what class etc anywhere. I know you have the "windows explorer" like thing on the left hand side, but that is pretty scattered when you are trying to assess the "big picture". Plus the search function above that is pretty darn useless...unless I'm doint it wrong.

(2) The "artifacts" section: Only found a couple of things so far...actually only one... a penal colony on an asteroid. Is that an automatic bonus? It is "research" but can't click on it...so I'm thinking it is just stuck there because "hey...ya gotta put it somewhere"

(3) Now this is my BIGGEST problem with the game so far. TIMING....especially with ship building.

I spend X amount of time pummelling down someones capital ship inside their home gravity well...and hurray! I have destroyed it..time to rush over and finish off that capital ship factory. But wait..before I can even move my ships into position to attack the factory...they've built another one in about 1/15th the time it took to destroy. It doesn't make sense to me that one can build a ship faster than it takes to destroy a ship. Going along these lines...I race to destory their frigate factory which is still being built when I enter the gravity well (5% complete). I rush over and while I'm attacking it they are able to build 5 frigates (I was attacking with 5 weak TEC frigates). Ok two points here:

(a) Timing is off again...can't build a frigate factory + 5 ships in the amount of time it takes to destroy one with bombardment

( How the heck can the factory be so productive while being shelled up the arse? Your telling me that me firing massive amounts of lasers/missles into a factory has zero effect on it's productivity...c'mon.

(4) In general the speed at which things are produced is just a bit overwhelming when compared with the time it takes to destroy them or even travel within a gravity well. Feels like you are chasing your tail half the time when battles are close.

(5) Question: Piracy and bounty...I see that bounty decreases when the ships/facilities are destroyed...but if YOU destroy the ships/facilities, do you collect that bounty and your credits go up? (haven't had a chance to really notice).

Thanks in advance for your posts...I really would like to find out more about the timing issue and see if others have similar feelings.

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Ooh...Forgot one more.

(6) "Re-Forming fleet": I kind of micromanage some of the battles and notice that after killing a ship many times my ships will then try and turn around to "reform fleet" even if there is another valid target right in front of them. In so doing they've basically sealed their death sentence by having to fly towards the armada to simply turn around and do a 360 to fight the ship they were perfectly aligned to fight in the first place....

That is frustratingly dumb AI...any rationale for this one? Am I missing some "immediately acquire new target" function or do I just have to disassemble my fleet for every battle?

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Good Questions.

Only answer I know is yes, you collect bounties for killing the other player's units.

timing is off somewhat now that you speak about it, I think you're right build times of ships shodul likely be longer, but I think you should be able to queue ships for when sopace is available.

~Q

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Nice ordered list, easy to respond to.

(1) Highlight your fleet supply (top center, left of resources) should bring a drop down list like you want.

(2) Artifacts are automatic. However, there are two forms of "artifacts." The first being a planet resource (penal colony) is a buff for that planet/gravity well only.

The second is an actual artifact, you'll know when you get one of these. Theres a unique sound and the planet that found the artifact will have a new symbol next to it when you zoom out.

(3) I have not had this problem, however, it seems like you're attacking with an exceedingly weak force. 5 Light Frigates? Not surprised they're building faster than you can kill. That is likely intended so it's somewhat harder to rush someone. Build up and come back with 20+ LRMs or some Kodiaks. Things will go faster.

(3b) Well, now that you mention it, it might be nice to have weapons fire automatically disable ship production. But this was probably not done for the reason I stated above, there are however support craft and cap ship abilities to disable structures.

(4) Seems like you're restating (3). But perhaps you played a game with a large gravity well? If you did a random map, move the size slider to the left, should alleviate this problem somewhat.

(5) You collect bounties only if another player put the bounty on the target, you get different amounts depending on how much bounty is on the target and how strong a ship/structure is you're killing. If you highlight a target it will tell you how much bounty it is worth.

(6) I've never seen that happen while there were still enemy targets in the gravity well, unless the fleet's lead ship were not in that gravity well. However, when ships are inactive they return to formation with the lead ship. Theres something weird going on if it's happening in combat though.

Hope that answers your questions to a decent degree.

+1

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Thanks for responses Q and bohbohb.

bohbohb:
(1)...thanks I'll try that when I get home.

(2)...kinda what I figured..just wanted to make sure

(3) >>I have not had this problem, however, it seems like you're attacking with an exceedingly weak force. 5 Light Frigates?<<
Well, in this particular case, I was actually battling with them in their home gravity well with my main fleet and had already destroyed their frigate factory. I noticed as reinforcements were arriving they had begun rebuilding a factory in the neighboring gravity well...so those reinforcements (of 5 light frigates) went to attack it. In the time it took 5 ships to destroy a just-built frigate factory...5 ships were made by said factory.
I still have a general issue with the speed of production + building while attacking...but perhaps I'm rushing into battles to early in the game. Just hard NOT to attack a completely undefended (minus some gauss cannons) homeworld...even if fleet is "weak".

(4) Yeah..you are right...4 is just displeasure overflow from (3).

(5)...Ah, highlight = bounty..I see. That is why sometimes you can get "intel" from a unexplored planet when it gives you a "credit value" associated with the "?". That is a bit of a "bug" in my opinion..why should I be able to know where someones homeworld is early just by looking for the big bounty value associated with the "?"

(6) Yes..you have pointed out exactly the thing I have issue with:
>>However, when ships are inactive they return to formation with the lead ship.<<
If you are fighting in a gravity well with split forces..say half on "east-side" and half on "west-side" and the lead ship is in the east. If my ships are engaged on the west-side with 10 ships and they kill one..they immediately try and turn around and cross the gravity well to return to formation with lead ship...meanwhile hot plasma and missles are being shoved up their exhaust pipes (not as fun as it sounds!).
This is an extreme example, but it can still be problematic when your lead ship has much longer range (ie capital ship) than front ships and can cause your front ships to do an "about face" even when fleet is attacking the same armada right in front of it.

Once again, thanks for the comments. Do you primarily play multiplayer games? I'm still trying to figure out how well this game would transfer to multiplayer (I pause way too much).

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It doesn't make sense to me that one can build a ship faster than it takes to destroy a ship.

I think this is really a call for injection of more "realism" into the game when really it's a gameplay mechanic that is required to ensure buildings aren't too fragile. It doesn't make sense if you think about it in real-world terms, but it's very sensible indeed within a balance context.

When you look at the Sins "metagame", there is a certain balance of power associated with structures and ships, and this is reflected in the cost that produces them. Ships are incredibly more powerful than structures because they are mobile, so their cost per hit point is very high. However, structures provide a very high number of hit points per resource point precisely because they do not move and cannot be used offensively. I find this a very reasonable general perspective.

If you were to allow smaller numbers of ships to destroy structures faster, to preserve the balance of cost-per-hit-point, you'd have to either make the buildings much cheaper or the ships much more expensive. The former would change the whole flow of gameplay by allowing players to spam defense buildings rapidly and build up planets quickly. The latter would slow down gameplay and move Sins more into a micromanaged save-every-ship context.

The other solution - reducing global structure hit points without affecting cost - would seriously destabilize the game by allowing players to vault through opposing empires and leave a swath of destruction using lightning raids. A nimble fleet of scouts could wreck a trader or resource-based economy, and it would bring a Zerg Rush mechanic into Sins. Blech.

So, in short, not being able to take out a structure with a small force is kind of necessary for the type of game that Sins is.

-- Retro

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The way I see buildings health.

You have 4000 hitpoints but no mitigation + very fast regeneration + v heavy class modifier

A cobalt has 600 hitpoints + 300 shield points + mitigation + slow regeneration + medium class modifier

So I would say a building is about as tough as 4-5 Cobalts...approx.

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6) Yeah.. i'm having this problem too. It seems to have something to do with the way a fleet is formed, and when. They always seem to head to exactly the spot they arrive at when they first leave a factory.

At first I thought it happened whenever a craft joined a fleet while an enemy ship in the same system. But i'm not too sure now.

Then I thought it was something to do with the auto-join fleet thingy combined with a factory run of ships, maybe the last ship in the run was becoming stuck somehow.

Whatever it is, It's a pain. The way the AI worked is mostly pretty good. You can easily manage multiple battles. But when you find yourself babysitting a homesick capital ship.. grrrr..

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I've had 6 happen to me as well. It hurts and the closest work around I know of is simply to use larger numbers of smaller fleets.

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If they are building factories quicker then you can knock them down, you are doing something wrong - e.g. not enough ships attacking, or you are attacking something that is being repaired or you have picked the wrong target (e.g. go for the drone rather then the building so they cannot build a new structure). At the end of the day though 4-5 cobalts or equivilent are going to struggle to knock down a 4000+ HP structure quickly.

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