I dont know if this is actually possible in a patch but ive been having some problems with online. I tend to drop regularly and i dont believe its my interenet because ive seen alot of other members in the lobbies with the same status ( 8 games played 0 wins 0 losses) Whether this is a host problem, an individual computer problem, or just some growing pains with the online support i dont know but at the moment it is the only thing hampering my experience and im still having a pretty damned good time so ya thats the only thing i would like to see is better online support

Add me to the list for "AI surrendering". Having to wipe out poorly defended asteroid after poorly defended asteroid when the AI is utterly unable to resist - all its major fleets and planets having been crushed or captured - is pointlessly and unentertainingly time consuming. I could probably play 50% more games of Sins if I didn't have to slog through the mop-up phase every time.

- Ash

offline custom ship builder (parts, a la GC deuce deuce)

but in reality...

Subtitled in english or Captioned Movies for Infor at least, I know there guys write for us, But it's much cooler for movies at same time, if I like to watch again.

The reason most people have games played that are not won or lost is because quitting does not count as a win or loss, and most players just quit when they are losing, not surrender, and the ones left quit as well because they don't want to sit there cleaning up the passive AI for an hour, thus all players in the game have a game played without a win or a loss. I personally have no disconnect issues, but I have rarely (twice now out of about 15 games) had a player time out shortly after starting a game.

This issue about quitting not counting against you has to go though, if you join the game to leave, it should count as a loss, and if you quit because your losing, it should also should count as a loss. With the current system it will not work though, as the players stuck not wanting to clean up the AI of a player that quit will get a loss as well, so the fix is two fold, count quitting as a loss, and give a win to the remaining players if there are no more human enemies.

I wouldn't mind seeing a slider for pirate difficulty in the game, which would be a mixture of things like how often they attack and how large their forces are, that kinda thing.

Many people just seem to want to see less and less of the pirates, but I'd be happy to see more of them. I'm the sort who'd be happy to play a mod where the objective would be to survive against them for as long as possible

On thing I would like is information stating current location and orders for fleets and individual units and maybe when moused over the location could flash.

I played my second game on a medium map with 4 AI's last night and spent alot of time trying to remember where my fleets where. I still managed to win but this was the only major headache I experienced.

For me the biggest issue is diplomacy. I don't really play online much and so I have to run around and be the AI's b*tch to keep them from attacking me. I have enough to worry about building up my own empire to go and be someone's hitman.

I hate to refer to Civ 4, but normal diplomacy works like that. You meet someone, you introduce yourself, and that's about it. You don't immediately try and cut each other's throats out.

Also, I completely agree with the "home field advantage" for defensive-minded players. If I have 10 capital ships and 150 frigates defending 1 planet fully upgraded, I expect to keep it.

PS - I L O V E T H I S G A M E

I agree with other posters. Increase the time frame for finishing missions, with maybe the possibility of outright rejecting them so another will pop up eventually. I also like the suggestion of more resource requests.

I also think the AI needs to be a little more aggressive at times in defending its planets and working to actively reinforce them when attacked.

I also agree that defense needs a bit of buffing to make it more worthwhile spending money on. Both gause cannons and Phase inhibitors fit in on this.

Best suggestion I've heard with this is that PI's should create a jump percentage failure rate. Ships trying to jump out have to roll against a percentage. If they fail the roll, they have to start over again to try and jump out, with the percentage going up based on how many inhibitors you have. Ships that fail the roll once could fail it again even. It would give inhibitors a real punch. You'd have to force AI to use their scout ships effectively before attacking though. For MP games, it would make using scouts an absolute necessity.

Tied with a increase in the strength of stationary defenses and a lowering in the hit points of the PI (and making them a key attack target), it could help generate differing strategies for colony defenses, given that you wouldn't be able to afford both in high quantities at the same time. You could even have a tech that increases the effectiveness of the PI's when researched.

And one more suggestion for ease of use. Perhaps separate the black market and pirates menus and give them both own tabs at the top of the main map screen. It'd make both more accessible.

The last thing I'd like is a fast forward button to temporarily speed up the game while you're playing. Sometimes all you end up doing is sitting around and waiting for 30 minutes at a time. I've actually done quite a bit of reading while playing this game.

Fleet mechanics.

Clicking on a fleet with a unit should always join it. Producing with the fleet as a way point should join all ships. No exceptions. The auto-join features are just fine for making exceptions for things you don't think are supposed to be in a fleet, but if I want to add a siege frigate, I should be able to, stupid or not, without having to redo the fleet. They're hard to keep track of when you keep remaking them. It's much wasted effort.

The much mentioned capital ship fleet leader bombing the planet while the well is occupied still could use changing. They engage hostiles still, but ignoring the civ structures when you have a bombing fleet already there to do the job faster is a wee bit of micromanagement. If capital ships weren't the perfect and only good choice for a fleet leader it wouldn't be a problem, but as is it's a lethal one.

AI.

I like that they run away instead of getting butchered, it's smart. They don't seem to grasp the concept of collateral damage though. It's ok to stay and fight with 100 cobalts(a fleet that shouldn't exist in the first place, it sucks) and lose them all in return for a good chunk of the slightly larger army. It's idiotic to run away when it's to give away a planet. Running away with high level capital ships when they're going to get whipped makes perfect sense when it's not for a worthy cause, but the fodder should stand and die. Even high level capital ships shouldn't be retreating away from an improved planet with a large static defense present, they should be retreating to the defenses and slugging it out as long as possible.

Research... Differing AI types is nice, but I swear, research is the only one that is almost challenging. 200 cobalts just isn't a threat. 2000 cobalts isn't much more of one unless you're Vasari. The other AI types need to research things. Research heavy AI should be going to town on the upgrades, but they never even approach the level of research that I do, and I'm an expansionist, not a research whore. I frequently have nothing running and am horribly late to upgrade things in favor of setting up defenses and a large fleet to field on my multi-front wars. Priorities need to be prioritized instead of becoming purist.

Improvements. I swear, the AI is obsessed with infrastructure, but just doesn't build defensive shit. I go into many a well where there's one bloody turret, the defensive AI seem to like pairs of repair platforms with a turret next to each. One turret is just wasted resources, that's not a delaying force. That wont even kill a siege frigate before it gets past it to the other side of the planet. I want to pop my scout into a fortress world bristling with missile turrets surrounding a few repair platforms and hangers with a jammer thrown in for good measure.

Unit AI.

I shit you not, I have never seen the Vasari armor and hull buff auto-cast. That rat bastard overseer just sits there jacking off. The turd should be popping one off on any unit who's shields have or are about to drop. The Dunov shield restore not wasting itself on frigates all the time is nice, if I have a choice, leave it, but it doesn't auto-cast even when it's the only capital ship, very sad.

Pursuit, past the target... Very common. A cobalt closes to range, and closes some more, the target flees, the cobalt chases, the target stops, the cobalt stops after getting out of the firing fiend and coming to rest adjacent to it? Intelligent stopping would be when in range, or at some point inside that for a buffer zone on further flight, not to the point where it has to turn to re-target and robs itself of the rear advantage.

Logistics.

I hates it, I really hates it. The 2k cap isn't really low on a random huge, it's just inadequate for defending three star systems against all 9 remaining ai with 2k fleet points in cobalts. I just can't stress how irritating it is to be trying to kill a few thousand cobalts. You can still win with the right tactics, but it has progressed from fun to annoying by that point. It's actually become that some time around the point where you conquer the first star, but it's at least manageable.

I like the 2k cap not, but I like the research based fleet points even less. The upkeep system as a trade-off for a larger fleet is great, the fleet independent of territory is not. A pseudo return to the old ways, logistics from planets, but with a modifier from the fleet research with the accompanying upkeep is what I'm leaning towards as a fix. The cap can go bye bye too, the game doesn't need one. With allegiance modifiers you're never in danger of having absurd fleet counts. It will always be marginal gains as you spread further out. Any limitations of the hardware will come from the sheer size of the universe being played on. 2k fleet limit on a random small is preposterous, 2k fleet limit on a random huge is a little inadequate, but mainly it just utterly blows that you've got 2k with two full stars under your belt, and even the poor bastard with two planets left is still running around with 400 cobalts and a couple capital ship.

There's nothing wrong with losing when you're losing, and winning when you're winning. It's silly to have a system that keeps you damn near even when you've got a 4-1 advantage in strength.

Defenses.

PJI's blow, established I think. I dislike the stops all traffic version, it's a little much, but considering how easy they are to blow up, stopping all traffic past them wasn't that big a deal. A lot of "how will you blow up the super weapon" talk, but how will you stop someone from blowing it up with them? All I have to do is bring a couple high level sova's loaded with bombers, and send them right at it, poof, no more pji. With an anti-matter store to do so, a gravity warhead type pulse that would autocast as soon as enemy ships tried to jump out would be just fine. If it builds with zero antimatter, you can't trap someone there without them having been able to scout it first and avoid the problem. It also wouldn't need to be that big of a delay, thirty seconds is not a death trap unless it was a death trap when you went in. It would be more than enough to destroy the ping-pong army of death(by irritation) and allow your defending fleets to chase down and destroy penetrating fleets that were going after your softer interior. Consider making it a much more beefy structure as well, much tougher than turrets, but with a fairly high cost in tac points, like 10. This is especially true if they end up returning to a beta style implementation. Then you wont have people spamming them, and they wont be a single pass bomber run to blow up while traveling through the well to the other side. They weren't particularly effective at stopping a carrier heavy fleet, unless you built a dozen of them, in which case it took you forever to get out of the system.

Turrets, hangars and repair platforms. I like the repair platform, change nothing there. Hangars seem to blow up a wee bit fast for their investment, they could probably use a little more armor. Turrets, more range I don't like. More damage I could go along with. They're nice and tough, and dish it out, eventually. They're also short enough in range that it takes effort to try and protect everything. Siege frigates kill planets faster than they kill them, but other than that they're just fine. There is one serious deficiency though. Turrets should not be prioritizing capital ships. Sorry, but trying and failing to kill the 2k shields with 65% mitigation and 4k hull points with 12 armor is a really dumb move when there are two dozen cobalts doing vastly more damage than would all die in far less time than that lone Kol will. If you do increase the damage or range, only do one, not both. Powerful, fleet destroying turrets that outrange the missile frigates designed to combat them is not a good thing...

Capital ship commentary.

A bit of talk on capital ships not being "capital" enough. What is enough? With a few levels, they are vastly more powerful than any comparable expenditure. If you're trying to kill heavy cruisers with a single dunov, yeah, you're screwed. But five kodiaks kill a high level dreadnought? Not a chance. Maybe against the upgrade-less wonder of an AI, but there's no way a level 6 Kol is getting dropped by five kodiaks of similar research improvements. You'd be hard pressed to manage it against a level 3. With the proper support, they are near invincible killing machines, capable of withstanding huge fleets and making it out alive. TEC in particular have excellent synergies between their high level capital ships for obscene survival capabilities. If they were much tougher, there wouldn't be any reason to build frigates and cruisers at all. Protect them, buy the low levels when you can, they're bloody ridiculous after they get their level 6 abilities.

No pirates for Large and Huge Random maps. More stable diplomatic relations and maybe more diplomatic options.

Er, sorry for being long winded but:

FFA games shouldn't end for everyone if the host gets killed.

You might be able to ping basic commands but that's hardly helpful when you're already engaged half a map away and by the time the AI actually gets there your fleet has either been wiped out and/or your Planet destroyed. Take Alpha Centuari, an 8 year old game this year. That has a far superior diplomacy ability than Sins does almost a decade later. It allows you to co-ordinate attacks on cities with the AI before you attack, not once you're engaged. Sins seems to be suffering from an identity crisis when it comes to Diplomacy - does it want it in or doesn't it? There is no point in unlocked teams because the AI should be offering you "missions" (let's be honest, they're not missions, they're threats) based upon your current tech level, not asking the impossible of you. You, the player, should also be able to offer the AI missions rather than sitting there being extorted. I keep saying it and I'll keep saying it until it's fixed - diplomacy in unlocked teams is broken and should either be remoed or fixed.

Also as previously mentioned, Seige frigates are in need of a nerf. They're overpowered for their cost. I would recomend simply changing them from a Frigate to a Cruiser with an appropriate change being made in their speed and tech requirements whilst retaining their current hit points. I have no idea how they made it through beta but they are game breakingly powerful. The PJI needs fixing but that topic has been done to death. Finally, for the love of god, upgrade turrets range because they are far too easy to circumvent.

Don't get me wrong, Sins is a very good game, but there are parts of it that are frankly broken and should of been picked up and addressed in Beta, not once the game has gone retail. That of course is not Ironclad's fault but let's address these problems now.