Auto-cast should be off by default on all capital ship abilities, end of story. While we're at it, auto-cast should [i]never[/i] override a manual order given by the player, either.
That last one might be answered simply by saying that distance in phase space has no correlation with distance in three dimensions. Just because a planet is relatively further away by phase travel doesn't mean it's relatively further away by travel in three dimensions. That would also explain the anomalie of why all the planets in a star system couldn't be mapped out just with standard astronomical equipment without having to be explored manually; just because they're there in thr
Depends on how many and what kind of enemies are in the target world. Usually the defenders are scattered around, so if you scout and plan ahead of time, you can usually take out some of them quickly before the others make their way from the other side of the gravity well. A cheap way to claim a terran planet is to kill the siege frigates protecting it quickly (SF's are very weak, so this isn't hard), and then use a colonization cap to take over the planet.
With the possible exception of a 3-way game, locked teams is always [i]much[/i] easier than unlocked teams games played with the AI. With locked teams, the AI will prioritize its attacks against its enemies without prejudice as to whether it's a human player or another AI. In other words, a level playing field. With unlocked teams, the AI will almost always prioritize its attacks against the human player, and you need to complete missions to convince t
Flak is slow-acting. It's not that it's bad, it's just that fighters are quite likely to kill fragile units like LRF's faster than flak can kill them. If, on the other hand, flak is supporting HC's and Hoshikos, I don't think you'll have the same problem (at least until your opponent catches on and starts making bombers).
I think the underlying issue here isn't the relative strengths of these units, but the rocks/paper/scissors balance that's going on between them. I do think most people could agree that fighters are too strong overall, while LF's are too weak considering their hard counter is usually on the field after only a few minutes. However, tweaking these values is never going to change the fact that we have RPS balance, and however well that kind of game is designed
Unfortunately, a lot of people like me just can't make the commitment to sit down to a game for 2 hours straight, which you have to be ready for with a game like Sins.
The aggressive AI goes several levels too high into upkeep early on and its resource income gets crushed. Combined with its very poor unit choice (LF's and SF's, primarily. It only gets away with it thanks to its resource cheating), it gets hammered mid-late game. The other AI's aren't much better since they still spend their money recklessly on bad units and investments. On big maps, the AI's usually bring out trade way too late, on small maps they bring out better un
You can save and then load to confirm their difficulty. It will show you the difficulty of all AI's (and, in fact, allow you to change them) on the game load confirmation screen. I do not know how changing an AI's difficulty when you load will affect achievements. I will say that some maps can confuse the AI somewhat, so that may be what's causing the issue. As well, the AI tends to be a strong rusher (due to its resource cheating) but sucks mid-game b
Refineries are far less effective than trade ports at producing wealth, and are only useful if (or rather, when) your credit income is so high that you're forced to buy a lot of your resources directly from the black market. If you're not leaning on the black market, you'll typically benefit from extra trade ports than putting up a refinery. One thing with trade ports is to plan out your longest trade route. Spam trade ports like mad on worlds along your trade rou
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It'll only be available online, although there is speculation that when all three expansions are done, they might be boxed and sold in stores as a set.
[quote] Dude if you spilt all your fire between all enemy frigates you will lose 100% of the time. [/quote] This is true if you presume equal-sized armies and some repair speed upgrades. If we're talking about a 4 vs 2 frigate battle, you'll actually kill them faster if you put two guys on each frigate. The presence of anything with a good repair or regeneration ability pretty much throws diffused fire out the window as a viable strategy and requires focus fire.&
If someone says "middle" they obviously don't mean right on top of the planet, but they wouldn't use that to describe something that was anywhere near the edge of the gravity well. Gravity Tolerance gives you some nice extra range, but as I said he'd have to be thoroughly exaggerating for that to be a viable explanation. Also, rereading the original post, it appears this bug occurred with the TEC, so gravity tolerance couldn't have been a factor.
[quote] all the sudden they did a "purple" jump away from the middle of the gravity well [/quote] The Vasari phase jump ability is neither sudden, nor can it be used anywhere near the middle of a gravity well. Unless he's exaggerating significantly on both counts, the gravity tolerance upgrade doesn't explain this at all.
Scary; that would make missile barrage look like a parlour trick... Anyways, when you highlight a skill icon, a purple circle will appear showing you the range of that skill. Useful information, particularly for abilities like the mothership's shield regeneration.
I've seen some weird jump behavior in the past, but I've never seen the exact same bug twice. I'd just chock it up to random glitchiness. It happens, but not very often.
[quote] Agreed there sniper, the way defences are done at present makes it very easy for someone to just rush a lot of siege firgates to the least defended sideof the planet, would be great if your defence investments could rotate around the planets to avoid the enemy just flanking it. [/quote] Actually, it might be neat if static defenses [i]did[/i] orbit around a planet. Would mean there would never be an angle of attack where the planet was defenseless, but it
While the AI will fall for that, a player will dock his strike craft rather than let them be ripped apart needlessly by flak.
[quote] Hello, I just registered my product and have been playing sins for awhile and have gotten the hang of it for the most part. I’m having problems with the AI staying happy. Once I get them to agree to a peace treaty they usually help but then a little while later like an half hour to a hour later they break off the peace treaty saying im incompetent and that I have broug
[QUOTE] It's like trying to play a round of Starcraft as the Terrans without the science ship. [/QUOTE] Actually, as far as Hoshikos are concerned, it's like trying to play terran without medics.
There are two types of strike craft; bombers, and fighters. Flak will do wonders against fighters, but won't deal with bombers fast enough. You need backup for your flak in at least one of three ways (preferably all three!). If your opponent is building lots of bombers, your best reaction is to build your own light carriers with lots of fighters. Then there are Hoshikos, something no TEC player should be without. These guys are really inexpensive s
As to focus fire vs diffuse fire; If you focus on one enemy at a time, you'll give them the maximum shield mitigation bonus, so your effective damage will be lower. However, once that target is destroyed, its is no longer capable of using special abilities or causing damage, hence your fleet will no longer be threatened by it. It's a trade-off; you can focus fire if you really want to remove a specific enemy from play, or you can just use diffuse fire to max
Now THAT'S a bit of an overstatement. If there are about 12 siege frigates backed up with a huge number of combat frigates and multiple cap ships on an early game rush (play unlocked teams and you'll see what I mean <_<) then yes they'll get the job done. Such a huge army will quickly destroy any amount of early game static defense, much quicker than they can take down that many siege frigates, and then cover them long enough to take out an unupgraded planet. However,
[quote] But are there really version of this game hacked to cheat? [/quote] Without actually looking at the program's design, no one can say exactly what's possible. Map hacks are very common for RTS games, much easier to make one than it is to detect and stop one. Resource hacks are the opposite; they typically require some sort of weakness or bug in the game to exploit in order to work, and are easily disabled by closing that software issue that they're u
If we're talking desert/terran planets, then yeah, I'd go for the cheater explanation, as well. If we're talking about asteroids it could just be that he was busy expanding while the OP was waiting for his capital ship to finish. Without a replay, we can't say for certain.