ShadowyGoat

Reply to Nuking planets is evil in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

On the other hand, it is not necessarily inconsistent that - if this is mostly TEC space, the TEC might have an easier time conquering human worlds (being that the population is going to be mostly human, even if temporarily ruled by Vasari); even formerly neutral worlds may conceivably prefer the TEC to the others - Advent might be inclined to forcibly convert (in which case such worlds may be very reluctant to rejoin TEC or Vasari) - Vasari might be inclined to enslav

Reply to Computer AI ... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Is it actually stated somewhere that the AI behaves differently on Hard than Normal, aside from the logical consequences of having additional resources? This would be somewhat unusual -- more typical is that difficulty level corresponds to a combination of starting resources, numerical bonuses for production or free reinforcements or the like, combat bonuses et al; but retains the same fundamental behavior. There are exceptions (like the AIs in AOE series being content to play "fo

Reply to Nuking planets is evil in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

There would need to be a large difference in feasibility between attempting to occupy a lightly populated settlement on some extremely inhospitable enviroment (asteroids, for instance) and attempting to invade a heavily populated, life-friendly world (like Terran class planets). Inhospitable worlds would be quite vulnerable to orbital bombardment -- cracking domes, damaging power plants, and the like -- and the residents would have to be aware of that. With the latter, unless yo

Reply to To the Devs: Backporting Entrenchment Features in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

*shrug* How do you think financial institutions transmit information these days? Post? (which, incidentally, has had its share of loss and deliberate theft)? Voice calls? And you'd rather have your bank account number and routing number transmitted, than a credit card number? The former can be used to initiate withdrawals directly from your bank account, while the latter lets you review the statement and possibly dispute transactions before you pay.

Reply to Give the newbie some help! in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

The manual is rather poor (it reminds me of the 'Europa Universalis' manual, and that's definitely not a compliment), but I seem to recall that it *does* mention every frigate, cruiser and capital ship in the base game -- including the Migrator, which is the Vasari colonization frigate. Each race has one frigate type used primarily for colonizing, and one capital ship which can spend an ability point to be able to colonize.

Reply to Question regarding the Flagship in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Why? Because bonuses and magic powers are 'cool'? Leadership bonuses don't really make a whole lot of sense when the game doesn't even really have a morale or order propagation system. There's no crews abandoning ship, none turning rogue or joining your enemies, none panicking and having difficulty following orders. All orders are magically propagated any distance, instantly, with perfect accuracy. All information received is precise, perfect, and also instanta

Reply to Capturing Planets - How to... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Infrastructure degradation might be a natural consequence of rioting leading up to the change, and perhaps deliberate sabotage both by those attempting to destabilize the local government and by the government itself when it realizes that its cause is lost. An exception might be made for Advent influence, if they have more effective means of mind control through their powers and associated technology.

Reply to Haven't got a clue what I'm doing in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

For the TEC, don't forget the Hoshikos -- repair is nice. So is a pair of Dunovs if you have the cap ship slots -- a pair, because they can't do the shield restore on themselves, but they can on each other. The pirates may be somewhat nasty initially (because early on you probably only have a single capital ship and maybe a few other frigates, and which may be involved elsewhere) but don't really scale to the endgame, particularly against a heavily upgraded starbase.

Reply to Thoughts on information presentation in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Yeah, a separate window. Regarding the ALT key display: After playing with it for a while, and checking things like starbases -- that have been upgraded to supposedly have multiple weapon systems with different engagement ranges -- obvious issues are that: - the ALT display is a single circle, which probably reflects only the maximum range of any weapon, instead of each different type, and - the ALT display shows a circle, instead of either explicitly showing f

Reply to Safety override protocol (last resort) in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

I suppose this sort of thing also only makes it even more important to send somebody disposable through a warp point or star. It'd be a nasty surprise to have a large fleet show up only to be already within range. :o

Reply to Safety override protocol (last resort) in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Hmmm. So the moral is -- what, primarily use large swarms of strikecraft against them, or ships you don't mind losing, or attempt to distract the owner with diversionary attacks (if the ability can't be automatically triggered at an appropriate time) ?

Reply to A Few Basic Entrechment Questions in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

[quote quoting="post"] I just got Entrenchment, and have a few questions. I only play single player. I know these are basic questions, but help wiould be appreciated. 1. Where in a gravity well is it best to locate a Starbase? Should it be closer to the planet, to try to protect structures/and the planet? Or is it better to have it out at the edge by a phase lane? How close does it have to be to a phase lane to disrupt it?[/quote] I

Reply to Thoughts on information presentation in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

It would be useful to know for sure. *shrug* As for the quantity -- the amount of detail, and the likelihood that you wouldn't need to frequently refer to it, are why I'd suggested that it be a separate screen or window instead of a constantly-on feature. Having detailed unit-type info available through a help menu or the like (or simply a dedicated unit reference, if there isn't much else to document) would be nifty. The range/lethality indicators would work bette

Reply to Economy Boosts in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Regarding the planetary pop upgrades: Non/barely-upgraded planets cost you credits over time. Upgrading will eventually reduce this to 0. Upgrading will also increase the planet's maximum population, which will result in higher tax revenue as the population grows. If it's far away from your capital, the allegiance will be lower and you won't get as much revenue. (* Note: Advent in base game can do research that increases the maximum allegiance of thei

Thoughts on information presentation in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Disclaimer: I am the sort of person who has enjoyed pushing carboard chits with symbols and numerical codes on them. I have played Mechwarrior 2 in wireframe mode for more efficient presentation. I don't mind one bit the spartan imagery of Introversion's DEFCON, or the dated-ness of Illwinter's Dominions, and prefer either to pretty but inefficient or idiotic interfaces. When playing a wargame, I prefer interfaces that provide good command/control, not interfaces that

Minor musing on TEC ship sizes... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

If memory serves, the manual suggests that the TEC warships, including all the capital ships but the Marza, are primarily reconfigured civilian designs. In-game, the icons for these ships tend to be far larger than the freighters zipping between refineries, extractors, and trade ports. This suggests that either (1) the redesign process involves massive inflation, (2) the ships *are* larger and the backstory is fluff that wasn't written to imply anything about the

Reply to what do you think would make Sins a better game in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Damage rules. 'Sins' ships are binary in one way (perfectly functioning, or destroyed), and weirdly organic in another (given time, they repair fully at no cost, no matter how damaged). No dead crew, no irreplaceable parts, no ammunition limits apparently. It would be interesting if there were derelicts essentially created by killing all the crew on board a ship; one could see possible research or intelligence benefits should one be able to board and thoroughly examine

Reply to Carrier fix is not what you might expect in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

*shrug* Regardless of how the drones are controlled, they're probably material objects. There's not likely to be an infinite number of drones on board, making them would require parts, and drones obliterated by weapons fire seem unlikely to be 100% recyclable at no cost -- some of the mass might not even be findable, if it's been scattered into high-velocity fragments. Of course, the same holds for missiles, armor and other parts of other ships; hence I don't think it'd be

Reply to Carrier fix is not what you might expect in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

More realistic than an odd hit point decrease would be -- - dual-track casualty system: when damage is taken or strikecraft are destroyed, some fraction is *not* repairable or rebuilt except when in a friendly system and not under fire. Damage control is realistic, but not to the point of perfection. - strikecraft cost resources to build; ships take resources to repair. - for more realism, upkeep should be based on ships, wear/tear and usage. Sh

Reply to Is Sins one of your Top 5 PC games of all time? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Relative to when they came out? No. "The Ancient Art of War", "Dominions" (as series -- still playing 3rd), and Bolo (the Appletalk game, that is -- with tanks, little green men, bases and pillboxes) would all get slots on my list. The other two slots are more contentious, but Civ II, Space Empires IV, and Jagged Alliance 2 would all be stronger contenders. At the moment I'm spending much more time in Dominions 3 and the demo of DEFCON than Sins.

Reply to Is there hope for multi-core processing in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Ron is partly right; while parallelization is not something you do as an afterthought, heavy-duty multiprocessing is actually a very old and very common art. All those 'big iron' servers with multiple CPUs and all that engineering work into designing good systems for sharing memory between 'em -- that's been around for many, many years. All those distributed database systems? They're running many queries simultaneously, in different locations, wh

Reply to Who are the races around the planets in the early game in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Might be useful to note that - these neutral fleets will never leave their worlds - they won't ever be reinforced (at least, AFAICT -- not that I've left them alive *too* long) - your first capital ship costs zero credits, minerals, or radioactives other than the cost of the factory -- and will generally vanquish these independent fleets with ease without help, although I haven't bothered sending an unescorted carrier capital against a full-strength Terran fleet.

Reply to NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO SEE IN SINS OF A SOLAR EMPIRE in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Prime irritation for me isn't the lack of items, per se, but the more 'gamey' aspects, as well as interface/micromanagement. 1- More refined damage model. Ships that are nearly destroyed should be acting like it, not functioning at peak efficiency. This is easier to properly model with ships that actually track individual components and locations, but having chances to afflict different systems with different levels of dysfunction would make sense. 2

Reply to "Mass Reduction"? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

A search suggests 'speed'. More acceleration makes sense; -- F=MA.

Reply to [Feature Suggestion] Custom Targeting Priorities in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Being able to script priorities (whom to target, whom to repair first, whether or not to auto-join fleets, et al) for units w/o explicit orders would be convenient, although it'd have to stay pretty light-weight to be computationally reasonable for a real-time game. Regarding the previous reply -- individual effectiveness isn't necessarily the same as in fleets. e.g. if there's a fleet containing multiple Hoshikos, Kodiaks, a Kol, and a pair of Dunovs, it may make