Darvin3

Reply to Do you think unit upkeep is too high? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

If your economy is too weak to support upkeep and you're being beaten by attrition, your problem is probably more in the early game than the late game. Keep in mind that the AI cheats for extra resources, but is otherwise an idiot. What's causing your stalemate isn't that upkeep is crippling your economy, but rather that the AI was too stupid to use its massive economic advantage earlier and kill you before you reached 2000 fleet command. You need to make your moves earlier

Reply to <noob in Strategy Sins Forums

Yeah, I personally do not use fleets. More trouble than they're worth IMO. [quote]how do u split them up as in say i have 20 lrf and i want to send 15 of them to defend another planet how do i only select 15 cuz on my tree it has them in stacks on 10 how do i split that last grp of 10 into 5[/quote] Rather than selecting exactly fifteen, I'll select roughly fifteen. Zoom in, drag-and-select about as many as you want, then send them off on the

Reply to Patch Stat Changes Forum [NEW TOPIC: Adjudicators 8/25/09]!! in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Personally I like to build mines around my frigate factory / repair bay combo when I'm on the defensive against illums. Illuminators need to move in close to use all their beams, but with mines on the field they can't do this without sacrificing some of their numbers. At very least it buys you precious time. Still, I find mines to be way too easy to disarm, avoid, or otherwise just tank through with flak frigates (those things can absorb so much punishment before dying for

Reply to <noob in Strategy Sins Forums

1) fleet cohesion settings; set them to be less strict. 2) choosing when to build new capital ships (and which ones to build) is a huge decision. You can't reduce it down to a formula. You'll get more muscle (hit points and damage) from buying frigates rather than capital ships, but you'll get more utility and long-term growth potential out of a capital ship. It all depends on your needs and strategy. If you lose a capital ship, it's a good idea t

Reply to Quirks, Irks, and Things that Bother Me TAKE FOUR in Strategy Sins Forums

Quite simply, I think for the random generator after the map's creation an algorithm needs to evaluate what each player has within 3 or 4 jumps of his homeworld and tweak it if there's too much militia or too few planets. Random-any is fine, it makes each solar system created by random very different. The problem is solely what (and how much...) ends up in close proximity to your start location.

Reply to Barren Worlds in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Eh? That doesn't really float mja. We have dead asteroids in the game which are colonizable, and really truly worthless to your economy. A barren planet could be a varient of dead asteroid that allows for logistic slots.

Reply to Bunch a questions from a developing noob :) in Strategy Sins Forums

1) No, the physical location does not affect the productivity of the trade port. 2) You should definitely leave the guardian shield ability on, but you should turn off autocast when you aren't in battle. The guardian has a bad habit of wasting antimatter on this ability if an enemy scout flies by. As for repulse, yeah, it's a little weird and I haven't fully figured it out myself. 3) PJI's don't stop a fleet from phasing out, they simply increase the "c

Reply to Barren Worlds in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

I thought the same thing. I went to create our solar system, and I realized that there was no good representation of Mercury and the Moon (as well as Ceres and many of the other dwarf planets). From a game-design perspective, though, it's not really necessary.

Reply to Advent strategy in Strategy Sins Forums

All the Advent capital ships are awesome. The progenitor, halcyon, and radiance are typically considered the "holy trinity" and barring any special needs or player preference are almost always the first three capital ship choices for an Advent player. The progenitor offers a strong colonization ability along with shield restore, and many consider it the strongest capital ship in the game. The radiance is the optimal capital-ship disabler, and the halcyon offers you a strong

Reply to Helping a Noob in Sins Multiplayer Sins Forums

Word of advice: don't spend too many credits on pirate bounties in any given cycle. They're annoying, but typically not dangerous to the victim. If he has repair bays (you [i]should[/i] have repair bays on most of your front-line planets) he's unlikely to lose any units, and aside from the temporary distraction it's not going to harm him. On the other hand, the player who is attacked by pirates gains experience every time. I've won several games because the opponent sp

Reply to Some of the New Entrenchment Voiceovers in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

[quote]Darvin3, you play Sins on a computer where other people are in the room?[/quote] We have multiple computers set up in a LAN in the same room, so often there are other people using one of the other computers when I'm playing Sins.

Reply to Homeworld Population Upgrade in Strategy Sins Forums

Early on you're typically selling one or both resource types (whereas it's usually not until the late game that you're necessarily selling both), so I find a 1:3 ratio is more realistic in these cases. But anyways, that's a whole other bag of worms and ultimately dependent on the map layout.

Reply to Quirks, Irks, and Things that Bother Me TAKE FOUR in Strategy Sins Forums

The worst case I ever had was where I had only one planet adjacent to my homeworld. It was a two-rock ice. Beyond the ice was a [i]massively[/i] defended two rock desert and an empty neutral. I had to go three jumps to find my first asteroid, plus a volcanic. My opponent had three asteroids and a desert within two jumps of his homeworld. It was over from the word "go".

Reply to Micro vs. Macro in Strategy Sins Forums

Sorry, misread you. I keep hearing the usual "micro = fast clicking" stuff and so I've developed a knee-jerk reaction to it. You just happened to step on one of my biggest pet peeves; sorry for biting your head off.

Reply to Homeworld Population Upgrade in Strategy Sins Forums

A good player will typically scout first (and with normal start, you should definitely scout before deciding how to spend your starting cash). The economy/military spending balance is almost entirely based upon your enemy's proximity. With quick-start, I've found half-and-half to be very viable, particularly as TEC and Vasari. This is because with one lab you can have repair bays and population upgrades (as well as several other useful ones, depending on which faction you are).&

Reply to Getting Ponded by Advent as Vasari in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]Don't Vasari get star travel at a lower tier than the other races?[/quote] 2 labs instead of 3. In practice, this doesn't amount to very much. If you do have an enemy in your local star system, you don't need this technology to reach them. If you don't have an enemy in your local star system, you should probably trade port spam... those lovely 4-lab trade ports. The only major advantage Vasari get out of this is that they can send their scouts to other s

Reply to Micro vs. Macro in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]Some people often think of micro as "whoever can click the fastest (Highest APM - Actoins Per Minute) has the best micro", while this should be true[/quote] Couldn't be more false. It's not about how much you click, but how much you're achieving with those clicks. In fact, the biggest mistake novice RTS players can make is going too fast. There's a common misconception that you need to click fast to be a high level player. Most people have suffic

Reply to Helping a Noob in Sins Multiplayer Sins Forums

[quote]See I love fighting to the bitter end, I dont like to quit while I can still fight, that being said I dont play rabbit with people[/quote] I'm totally with you there, Ru. Fight to the bitter end, have your last stand, then quit when you are truly and utterly beaten. I almost never leave when any of my allies are still in the game. Mind you, Sins games can roll on for hours, and sometimes life calls.

Reply to Micro vs. Macro in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]but my question would be how often have you run into repulse and you have above 20% phase missiles?[/quote] Like anything in the Advent vs Vasari matchup, you really have to be one step ahead of your opponent all the way along. Frankly if it's equal economies, research, fleet, and skill, then Advent has already won. I personally do try to get my phase missile upgrades way up there against Advent.

Reply to Quirks, Irks, and Things that Bother Me TAKE FOUR in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]I was getting at the REALLY early stages where guardians aren't even out yet.[/quote] While you won't get the same decisive results, illums with SR will also get the job done if the starbase is unupgraded.

Reply to Quirks, Irks, and Things that Bother Me TAKE FOUR in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]The only thing that can have a prayer to fight off a starbase in the first 20 min is Advent bombers (because tier 2), or long range frigates. That's it.[/quote] Nanos can also kill a starbase, since it ignores both mitigation and armour, leaving a starbase with little more health than a regular turret. Guardians + SR backing up illums can also beat a starbase with few casualties (what [i]cant[/i] it beat?). Otherwise, yes, the Vasari SB is a beast with all too few c

Reply to Micro vs. Macro in Strategy Sins Forums

Careful of the macro term, Amish. While micromanagement has a [i]somewhat[/i] well accepted definition among RTS gamers (the details may vary, though), macromanagement has no such accepted definition. For instance, a Starcraft player will usually define macromanagement as balancing worker and factory activity, so you don't have long queues at one factory while another is idle or huge sums of one resource and little of another. This is wholly incompatible with the ver

Reply to Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy updates in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

[quote who="Hack78" reply="25" id="2309725"] 65535?[/quote] That would be the next logical guess. As far as I'm aware, the highest karma people around here have averaged around 1 karma per day. At that rate, it would take 200 years to reach 65535 karma. Hence, they will [i]never[/i] hit such a limit within the lifetime of this forum.

Reply to Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy updates in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

[quote]im just waiting to see the karma limit.[/quote] If it wasn't 256, then they're never going to hit it.

Reply to any advantage of Advent? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

[quote]Correct... The Progenitor is best at colonization, but on a map where an attack on your homeworld is inevitable, Radiance is a better choice...[/quote] Not necessarily; shield restoration is still a [i]powerful[/i] combat ability. Against TEC, I might still go progenitor even on those tiny maps (since there isn't a super powerful ability to negate until missile barrage). However, against Advent and Vasari the ability to negate their capital ship abilities is a