My complaint about the game

from Sins Forums
    Maybe I should have said complaints? I am not sure. It basically comes down to this - you go on for x amount of time and you have a fleet that should be able to dominate the galaxy and more planets than anyone else. Then suddenly you get hit by 80 ships. No problem, except instead of fighting you, they run right past you to bomb your planets into oblivion and then repeat the process for the next planet. Even though you have maxed out planetary defenses they make no difference whatsoever.  The game advertises having an epic scale, but it doesn't feel like running a star empire so much as a gang of thugs with spaceships on a small scale.

It's stupid. No other way to put it. Having been on the internet before I know a whole bunch of idiots are bound to come forward and say "Well, here's how you compensate for these bad aspects of the game by doing even stupider things than the AI!", but I think it's better to think of why this happens and since stardock releases patches, try to fix it, instead of coming up with stupid exploits for a stupid aspect of the game.

First off, even if you unloaded every single nuke on earth today it would not kill everyone on earth, in spite of what most people think. Not even everyone in the US, probably the most heavily targeted area. According tot he US government, more like 30% of the populations. Wiping out a plant is going to be pretty tough, and it's not something that should take two seconds. It would be much better if the most common way to take out a planet was to have to actually send in ground forces to occupy it and have it so that close battles could rage on for a very long time if not enough troops were sent to take the planet and no invasion would go completely smoothly. As it plays now, they can blow up my planet in less time than it takes to destroy 1-2 of my defense platforms. That's just ridiculous. It's like having it take a week to sink the bismark, but the planet it's on can be destroyed in a day or two.

So to fix this part I would suggest a couple things.
1. Unless the player has some super powered endgame weapon, taking planets should require either a ground invasion or a LONG period of bombardment.
2. Have noncapital ships have only a tiny effect when it comes to bombardment - helpful for ground invasions but not huge by any means.
3. have some defense types that simply have to be destroyed to even approach the planet, and beef up the damage defense platforms give out by a factor of maybe five.After I build up these big defenses I always wonder what the point was. The AI runs right past them, blows up my planet in about two seconds, and moves on without engaging my fleet or defenses, and my fleet should be able to take them out in a heartbeat...if they would fight me directly.

Another big annoyance is the range of things. What? So these ships are all completely selfcontained and can just roam the stars at will, then? Just building 2-3 scout ships means you can have the whole map scouted out in hardly any time at all. What's to stop you from just spamming enemies' capitals constantly? Nothing. The problem is, that's not really very strategic gameplay. It's broken gameplay. It's a feature that makes no sense, breaks gameplay, and missings a good opportunity for interesting game features.

Building in a maximum range for your empire would have more benefits that stopping the odd gameplay breaks, though. It also gives a cool dynamic - range can become a serious advantage. If you can threaten stars behind the enemies' front lines in the endgame that could, well, end the game. It makes for an interesting research area, and if certain stars are simply unreachable if you don't plan ahead or if you blinly raze every planet imaginable then it puts some actual strategy into this strategy game, which is what it lacks.

The game has a lot of potential and I find myself strangely compelled by it, but after a few hours the same things happen every time and I just end up quitting the game in disgust. And like I said, this is not a thread where I am asking for game help. I can see how to work around these flaws, but they ARE flaws. Huge ones which ruin an otherwise very good game.




44,436 views 28 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
i agree with nearly everything u have mentioned. i mean this game doesnt really feel like ur playing on an epic scale. at most u might command 2 fleets of X number of ships. i had always though that this game would deliver an epic scale of space warfare but it really fails to do that. in every single game ive seen people focus their ships into 1 or maybe 2 fleets. how epic is that.....
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
but they ARE flaws
End of quote


Statements like this are always highly subjective. I have no issues with any of your "huge" flaws. In fact, I would consider them flaws if they *were* added.

Soooo :P
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Maybe I should have said complaints? I am not sure. It basically comes down to this - you go on for x amount of time and you have a fleet that should be able to dominate the galaxy and more planets than anyone else. Then suddenly you get hit by 80 ships. No problem, except instead of fighting you, they run right past you to bomb your planets into oblivion and then repeat the process for the next planet. Even though you have maxed out planetary defenses they make no difference whatsoever. The game advertises having an epic scale, but it doesn't feel like running a star empire so much as a gang of thugs with spaceships on a small scale.
End of quote

how come nobody ever figures its an issue with their strategy, not the game?
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
i like the game how it is. maybe in future they can add number of recruited troops to fight on a planet , wich are transported by capital ship or another transport ship and deploys themselfs on the plannet to start the conquering process. or even ship takeovers

The game is made to be a war between space not more than that. Maybe a mod or updat or sins of solar empire 2 can make something new upcoming to this hehe =)

i think the game is great already. i'm sure there are alot of things wich can be add. but as you might know stardock has limited resources (in other words they have to respect times of programing and selling) so they must put their products on market in order to sell and make money to keep the company alive. As you might know piracy takes over around 70% of the market. I agree with Piracy with the porpuse of testing the game to later buy a copy. But as you might know most people dont think like that as they tend to want things free. For that our games wich are launched dont have everything we imagin hehe :P

Even the game with its rules its quite good already =) I just want the mini dump bug fixed.

Maybe there will be a mod or something wich will have those details you guys want hehe

Keep doing a good job stardock
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
To some points, I would say that "realism" isn't as important as "believability" in a game, and both are subordinate to "fun". To me, it's believable that these super-advanced civilizations have something that can do a ton of damage to a planet's infrastructure from orbit. I don't need to know the specific details. And while it would be more realistic to have to worry about details like ground forces, from a fun standpoint I'm fine with their absence - it would distract from the space battles.

If it helps, think of a planet's population as its industrial population, not its total population. If you bomb a planet to the point where its population drops to zero, after all, it still replenishes itself given time (even though 0 people make 0 babies). Attacks on planets destroy infrastructure, diminishing its industrial capacity, and thus reducing the income it can generate (which is pretty much what the population figure is there for anyway).

Still, that's just some points. There are ways to deal with a mass of siege ships heading into a system and going straight for the planet, but improved defense options would be better to make it harder to just enter a system and focus on the industrial targets without needing to deal with the defenses first (some later-game techs notwithstanding).

I don't know about the empire range - it's something that would have to be implemented without slowing the pace of the game too much. I understand the concept (I've played GalCiv 2, and it sounds like you have too), but I'm not sure that it's needed here. On some maps there actually are limits placed on your early range, since you can't travel between star systems or use wormholes without doing some tech research first. It's just not as gradual a limitation as an empire range would be (since unlocking the tech in a multi-star map immediately gives you access to all stars).

The "epic" bit is impaired by the advantage that a mass fleet has over several smaller fleets, true. It can make for some epic battles, certainly, but it does mean that you don't often get to juggle multiple smaller fleets - you try spreading them around, and you'll probably wind up with a massed fleet plowing into the heart of your empire and have to send everyone to fight it anyway.

There are ways to deal with some of those issues without nerfing yourself, at least. Check the mods people have been posting already - several adjust major portions of the game's balance, including defensive options (for example, Sins Plus, I think it is, includes point defense for anti-fighters and boosts the range of static guns, making them more effective and harder to ignore). For the epic part of things, you could try playing on larger maps (since often it would be harder to focus on just one or two fleets when you're defending dozens of colonies across multiple star systems).

I could say to wait and see what happens in future patches, but I agree that that's a cop-out (though so far the response to user concerns has seemed excellent). Instead I'll say that the game includes a modding system that's very flexible in terms of how game balance can be altered, and people have already taken advantage of it. Definitely check them out to see if you might have more fun with someone else's idea of how games should play out.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Holy frig... now that's bringing a ground combat mentality to a space game. Ever watch shows like say, Star Trek, and other sci-fi shows? Ships are _suppose_ to move freely.

Remember in ST:TNG how ONE - I mean ONE - Borg cube caused the *entire* Federation fleet to converge on it? And who the heck would send in ground troops when you can bombard a planet from orbit???

Planetary defenses are just that - last line of defense. The firepower is in the *fleet*. No one would build the Enterprise so that it just sits in orbit.

Anyway, try building scouts to counter siege spam. Scouts + fighters from hangar defenses should shred the siege ships. Then decide if the game is really "epic" afterwards. ;)
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
First off, even if you unloaded every single nuke on earth today it would not kill everyone on earth, in spite of what most people think. Not even everyone in the US, probably the most heavily targeted area. According tot he US government, more like 30% of the populations. Wiping out a plant is going to be pretty tough, and it's not something that should take two seconds. It would be much better if the most common way to take out a planet was to have to actually send in ground forces to occupy it and have it so that close battles could rage on for a very long time if not enough troops were sent to take the planet and no invasion would go completely smoothly. As it plays now, they can blow up my planet in less time than it takes to destroy 1-2 of my defense platforms. That's just ridiculous. It's like having it take a week to sink the bismark, but the planet it's on can be destroyed in a day or two.

So to fix this part I would suggest a couple things.
1. Unless the player has some super powered endgame weapon, taking planets should require either a ground invasion or a LONG period of bombardment.
2. Have noncapital ships have only a tiny effect when it comes to bombardment - helpful for ground invasions but not huge by any means.
3. have some defense types that simply have to be destroyed to even approach the planet, and beef up the damage defense platforms give out by a factor of maybe five.After I build up these big defenses I always wonder what the point was. The AI runs right past them, blows up my planet in about two seconds, and moves on without engaging my fleet or defenses, and my fleet should be able to take them out in a heartbeat...if they would fight me directly.
End of quote


When you lay siege on a planet, you aren't killing the populace. You're destroying the government to the point that your colonizing forces can enlist(TEC), assimilate(Advent) or oppress and enslave(Vasari) the populace. Even in the beginning of the game, all the planets are inhabited by humans who were once semi-united under the Trade Order, but refused to join the TEC fearing loss of planetary autonomity. Once you destroy those 'neutral/militia' ships which are actually that planet's navy, you can colonize without a siege because those independent planetary governments are willing to surrender to you. So yes, you are destroying only some 30% of the populace, bringing the planet to the point of surrender.

As it is, the time taken for an interstellar phase jump equates to about a month in the game's universe(from Akkan Battlecruiser manual description), so it's not like sieges occur particularly quicker. The only thing that destroys planets REALLY quickly is the Jarrasul Evacuator's Level 6 Drain Planet ability(45 DPS + resource steal). And given the desperate circumstances all three factions in Sins are facing, and the lack of resources that they are all suffering, ground invasions are simply not feasible.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
No offense but it sounds like you arent setting up defenses, infrastructure, and fleet positioning right. After a couple of games on some reading on these forums, I have very little trouble defending against even 2 allied hards. I havent tried 3 yet.

Some thoughts
1) You mentioned that they bomb your planet out very quickly. This shouldnt happen even if they have a large fleet (unless its an asteriod, they always go down quick). It sounds like you arent upgrading your "emergency facilites". Thats what gives a planet more "health". Without upgrading they go down quick. A fully upgraded terran planet can take a long beating from even large fleets. The first things you should be upgrading after you colonize a location are Infrastructure (gives more pop which means more money) and "Emergency Facilities" for planet health.

2) Defenses. The formula that works for me against the AI is 2 repair bays, 10 turrets, 2 hangers with all fighters, and either a PJI or 3 more turrets. You should arrange all of it so that it faces the phase lanes that come from alien space and make sure the turrets and repair bays can cover eachother
P - planet, R - repair bay, H - hanger, X - turrets, J - jump inhibitor, = - phase lane

P R x x
PPP H x x
PPPP H x x
PPPP Jxx =================================
PPP R x x
P

The important thing to remember is those defenses arent meant to really kill anything but rather deter an enemy from attacking and/or buy you time. With the 2 repair bays the turrets can take quite a pounding before they go down. Make sure you get the research that increases the bays repair rate. The fighters are useful for taking care of any seige ships, esp from pirates. The time the defenses buy you should give one of your fleets plenty of time to respond.

3) Fleet positioning. In the beginning of the game you should play vary aggressively to colonize any obvious chokepoints. Get trade ASAP, and then research LRM frigates and spam them to the front lines (cap ship location). After the initial colonizing rush you may need to split your fleet into 2 or 3 fleets gaurding key defense zones. By that I mean, if you have a n area of say 3 planets that can all be attacked by the enemey (no chokepoint), then put one fleet there that can easily jump to all 3 locations. As long as your not to many hops away you should be able to respond to any attacks in time. Even if your fleet and defenses are smaller than the attacking ai fleet dont panic. As long as you got your two repair bays up then your cap ships can take a tremendous amount of pounding before the go down. The ai is to stupid to target the repair bays. Just keep streaming in reinforcements (helps to build frigate factories at your front line) and target his cap ships.

hope that helps
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Only thing I agree with is that ships can run past you, jump, and keep moving through your planets and never have to engage anything. And that Defensive buildings are weak and pointless. I also reject the idea that they are only ment to repel small invasions. Because they do not repel anything at all. Small or not!
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
AS I ALREADY SAID, I know that this can be worked around. TRY READING.

The problem is, this is bad design for a game, if you want it to have actual strategy instead of a mindless clickfest.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
but they ARE flawsStatements
like this are always highly subjective. I have no issues with any of
your "huge" flaws. In fact, I would consider them flaws if they *were*
added.Soooo
End of quote


Well, you can argue anything is subjective, but I think the game emphasizes the realtime part much more than the strategy part right now. In fact I'd say the strategy part is practically nonexistent.

If you are simply spamming out ships then to me it's a broken, retarded game.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
I agree with you that it can sometimes be annoying when the AI has a little pack of bombardment ships that he runs past you and hits a planet in your back lines etc. But for me this is just typically a minor annoyance then a game halting issue. Basically I usually have a force somewhere near to deal with them or I make a new little "security force" group of maybe 5-6 LRM's and maybe a carrier ship or something and chase them off etc.

My biggest complaint right now with the game to be honest is the AI is WAY to easy. I have 3 other friends and we love to play coop against the AI. We have been working our way up on challenges but to be honest we havent had one from the AI at all really. Last night we played a game with 4 of us against 5 Hard AI's on the same team and we just walked through them. We are hoping the 1.03 patch fixes some of this.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
I don't know about the rush of siege ships as such, but it infuriates me when I jump my ships into a gravity well, only to encounter the AI massing siege ships. The number of times they've subsequently jumped straight past me back to my now undefended planets is beyond counting.

However, I don't blame the game. I blame me not having learnt how to properly position my defense yet.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
I know a whole bunch of idiots are bound to come forward and say
End of quote


thanks for the constructive criticism
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
Learning tactics and how to counter siege or whatever is part of any RTS! It isn't a "workaround".

Sins is about dealing with both micro and macro issues. If one can't deal with simple tactics, then there's no point trying to build a strategy. LOL.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
Only thing I agree with is that ships can run past you, jump, and keep moving through your planets and never have to engage anything. And that Defensive buildings are weak and pointless. I also reject the idea that they are only ment to repel small invasions. Because they do not repel anything at all. Small or not!
End of quote


While I would agree that there needs to be more of a penalty when you pass through an enemy planet or retreat(PJI's arent very effective), if the fleet just keeps hoping past your planets without stopping to fight then big deal. You can either chase him or attack one of his planets. Also the defensive setup I mentioned will repel all pirate attacks without any need for fleet help since the AI is too dumb. So they do repel "small" AI forces. Their value does go WAY down when facing a human opponent though. In that regard I can see arguments for making defenses stronger or easier to cover the entire gravity well.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
It strikes me that the whole game is designed to keep things moving - ebbs, flows, surges, retreats.

You could set things up with stronger defenses etc (some mods have them) and that may be an equally fun game, but it is a different game, with a different rhythm.

But why not try some of the mods out there?
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
TRY THE MODS.!!!!!!

The game fails to be a long term entertainment. It ain't nothing but cat and mouse at choke points...

I personally HATE the idea of phase lanes. Its SPACE for crying out loud. The WHOLE game would be better if Space was OPEN ENDED with no phase lanes AKA NO choke points but better planetary defense.






Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
I personally HATE the idea of phase lanes. Its SPACE for crying out loud. The WHOLE game would be better if Space was OPEN ENDED with no phase lanes AKA NO choke points but better planetary defense.
End of quote


You think its cat and mouse now....It was way worse with no phase lanes.
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
I agree with you that it can sometimes be annoying when the AI has a
little pack of bombardment ships that he runs past you and hits a
planet in your back lines etc. But for me this is just typically a
minor annoyance then a game halting issue. Basically I usually have a
force somewhere near to deal with them or I make a new little "security
force" group of maybe 5-6 LRM's and maybe a carrier ship or something
and chase them off etc.My biggest complaint right now with the
game to be honest is the AI is WAY to easy. I have 3 other friends and
we love to play coop against the AI. We have been working our way up on
challenges but to be honest we havent had one from the AI at all
really. Last night we played a game with 4 of us against 5 Hard AI's on
the same team and we just walked through them. We are hoping the 1.03
patch fixes some of this.
End of quote


Yeah, that is a big issue. it is not even gamethreatening when this happens...just ANNOYING.

I guess I should have made that clear to help head off people like Schod. The issue is hardly that it's not beatable, it's just not done the way I feel it should be.


@whoever talked about spaceships having unlimited ange and the borg thing...they don't launch airplanes from washington dc to go directly attack baghdad and then have the planes just hover around in the air and never ever refuel. It's ridiculous. Even in star trek they don't have unlimited range!

Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
I wouldn't say these are flaws it just sounds like you might not be building up your planetary defenses enough. I usually put at least one hanger defense around all planets, 2 - 3 at choke points. That way no matter where the enemy is in the gravity well my defenses will respond and at least inflict some damage on him before he is able to jump to the next planet. Also as others have stated you need to build up your infrastructure and emergency facilities otherwise your planet is a sitting duck to a bombardment.

As far as your suggestion of range, there is a slight notion of that with the allegiance percentage of your planets, the farther away from your capital planet they are the lower the allegiance and the easier they are for an enemy to capture. Install media towers to increase the allegiance level and that may help as well.

These aren't workarounds they're tactics and strategy.
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
That's what emergency facilities and jump inhibitors are for, with a 6000HP planet and 250% charge jump rate you should be fully capable of taking down a large number of their ships each time they try and take out a planet.
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
You seem to vastly underestimate the power if this... Fully armed and operational battle station!

Seriously though, the idea that the population will pretty fine (even from a nuclear attack) if off. First we are bombing from space. So you get to add the conversion of gravitational potential energy to heat when the projectile lands. Second is the fact these ships are big- they have thousands of people. Don't underestimate the size of their bombs. Finally it turns out it is pretty easy to cause a ton of damage- simply dumb shots into the sea and you will flood the land. Of course the easiest way to kill everyone would be to blow of the atmosphere, which could be done with a big enough shot (not sure if the ships can do that) killing everyone instantly. Or using plasma to turn the atmosphere into a fire storm. Or using spore weapons. If they used spore weapons I think you'd stop playing this game.
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
Actually having thought about it a bit more - you can put like 15+ defensive platforms around a planet, that would instantly destroy a seige ship every time it fired. I have no idea what you're whingeing about.
Reply #25 from Stardock Forums Top
Learning tactics and how to counter siege or whatever is part of any RTS! It isn't a "workaround".Sins
is about dealing with both micro and macro issues. If one can't deal
with simple tactics, then there's no point trying to build a strategy.
LOL.
End of quote



My comment about idiots was to avoid exactly this kind of comment.