Tholan

Reply to Idea: Gradually paying for stuff in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

[quote]True, getting rid of that would be nice, though it really doesn't happen too often once the game gets off the ground. It's really just in the beginning when you don't have much to do that you're sitting and counting resources. Once the game gets rolling, it's a lot more common to notice you forgot to build stuff and are sitting on a pile of resources, than actually waiting for them to trickle in <img id="ImageResize_Image_8" onload="ImageResizer.createOn(this);" src="smiles/Tongue.gif" al

Reply to Losing a cap in a small game is too punishing. in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

I thought I would give you some real in game images as an example. Here is a game where all I did was build up economy. No enemies involved. Here is the start of the game. Top bar has resources. You start with +1 mass income per tick. [img]http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/2796/scframewedoct3120335420qf4.jpg[/img] I took another shot at about the 10 minute mark. Notice the huge increase in mass income. Now at +81 per tick. Of course, this will be exponential <img sr

Reply to Losing a cap in a small game is too punishing. in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

[quote]Which is a bigger limitation on resource production than a pure unit cap, because every single building in Supreme Commander counts towards the object cap[/quote] While yes, in SupCom every object, not just military, counts towards the object cap but don't think for a single second that this is somehow limiting with respect to how much you can increase your economy. For instance, you can start a sandbox game and do nothing but spam economy and military units. While you will qui

Reply to Losing a cap in a small game is too punishing. in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

That goes a while back so my memory is a bit fuzzy, but I thought there was a cap on how many farms you could have in a city.

Reply to Idea: Gradually paying for stuff in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

Yes that does help. Thank you. I now understand what you meant by "absolute". The way I interpret this request by the OP is to make it so that Sins does not follow an "absolute" build model. So you could actually queue up the building without having all the resources to build it. However, all your resource income and your resources in storage would only be consumed by whatever is at the front of the queue. You are right when you say that SupCom is different in this regard. It

Reply to Idea: Gradually paying for stuff in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

[quote]That still won't solve it immediately. Sure it puts it at the top of the queue, but you still have to wait to get resources to build it[/quote] You have to wait for it to build naturally anyway. If it is at the front of the queue, all your income would be funneled into whatever is at the front of the queue. So if your income rate is greater than your build rate then it will still build just as fast. And I am not sure what you meant in a earlier post when you said this:<b

Reply to Losing a cap in a small game is too punishing. in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

To elaborate perhaps a little bit further consider this example. Consider Sins. You can build a capital ship (top of the line unit) in a few minutes. I don't know the exact number but it isn't all that long. In SupCom if you tried to build a Mavor (top of the line unit) it would literally take HOURS of real time if you tried to construct it unassisted. Of course SupCom also follows an infinite build model where you can funnel any amount of your economy into building anything so

Reply to Losing a cap in a small game is too punishing. in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

Ya. You guys have misunderstood what I meant by an infinite resource model. pyschoak explained it fairly well. The idea behind an infinite resource model is that it does not depend on how much of the map you control. Dawn of War, Starcraft, Sins (and ever other RTS as far as I know) definitely are NOT based on this kind of model (meaning they are completely dependant on how much of the map you control). In SupcCom, you can increase your economy, or rate of resource income, even after every sin

Reply to Losing a cap in a small game is too punishing. in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

[quote]Well its not the only game with the infinte build or resources, but they were the only good or memorable ones lol![/quote] Really? I don't want to derail this conversion too much since I think it is a good one but I can't help but to ask. What other RTS has an infinite resource model?

Reply to Losing a cap in a small game is too punishing. in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

I am with psychoak and Shadowhal on this. Developing your planets should have greater rewards to give a player an alternative other than taking planets. Schod does have a point that you can let the other players duke it out and waste resources in there own personal wars while you develop your planets unhindered but of course this is only applicable in FFA type games. I also really like psycloak's comment that Sins is relatively one dimensional. Not only is it one dimensional in the sens

Reply to Idea: Gradually paying for stuff in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

Sins' is not really structured with an "infinite build model" in mind, although I wish it was. You can't set your factory to continuously churn out units, for example. This kind of game allows you churn out A LOT of cheap units very quickly, particularly when you are also churning an endless stream of engineers to help assist the factory. Obviously having to specify the exact cost of all your units up front does not fit this "infinite" kind of building. But should you have to h

Reply to Losing a cap in a small game is too punishing. in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

I definitely disagree with the statement that SupCom is a "traditional" RTS. I have seen many discussions about games taking too long. In fact, I believe Chris Taylor originally envisioned a large game of SupCom taking a weekend to play . In fact, the way Sins is evolving is following SupCom's evolution fairly closely. With the release of SupCom's stand alone expansion, Forged Alliance, the designers have taken much of the communitie

Reply to Losing a cap in a small game is too punishing. in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

I was wondering when someone was going to point to that "slippery slope" article on sirlin. I think those are excellent reads. I think Sins suffers greatly from the "slippery slope" paradigm; once you start losing, it is difficult to come back. Even if you don't lose your flagship or any capital ships in the initial battle, the fact that you have to retreat and give up a contested planet is very costly. This is because Sins puts A LOT of value on geographic control. How many ships you

Reply to Stardock Central...Can't Finish Download...Refund? in Bug Reports Stardock Forums

Oh and I don't have Norton AV.

Reply to Stardock Central...Can't Finish Download...Refund? in Bug Reports Stardock Forums

Did you ever find a solution for this? I seem to be having the same problem (albeit with a different game). I sent a mail to support also.

Reply to Game play, Realism and Fun in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

LOL. Wow did this thread ever get derailed. I go away for a week on vacation and come back to an in depth discussion of Einstein's theory of relativity when I was rather hoping for a good discussion on some of the original points. I suppose that may not be possible now .

Reply to Phase Highways in space is a bad game concept! in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

Edit: Ignore my previous post. It somehow got all messed up when I posted and I can't edit it . I am really curious as to how IronClad/Stardock came to the conclusion that the open model failed. How did it fail and what about it wasn't fun? I am sure we can come up with some decent solutions to many of the problems you ran into. I would also like to add that input from the beta 1 communi

Reply to Phase Highways in space is a bad game concept! in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

I would caution the devs not to do that kind of thing but to find a design they want and make it work, not switching design at the first sign of trouble. Blair said (emphasis added): Secondly, <span universe="" vs="" with="" lanes.="" is="" likely="" one="" only="" times="" this="" kind="" of="" feedback="" could="" utilized="" since="" later="" in="" the="" design="" cy

Reply to Game play, Realism and Fun in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

The problem is that you can guess accurately where certain planets are and bee-line straight for them. If everyone behaves the same way then those who are randomly placed away from the predicted position of the Terran planets will always fall behind. This happened over and over again in our multiplayer testing. To expand on this further, a player SHOULD be able to logically guess where the best habitable planets might be. This fits into the ba

Reply to Game play, Realism and Fun in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

I think vain also makes some excellent points. Realism also helps a person understand how to play the game. It can potential completely remove the need for a manual and a lot of frustration for a player; ultimately leading to a much more fun experience.

Reply to Game play, Realism and Fun in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

Thanks Blair for your response. It is very encouraging. The reason why I opened a new thread on the topic is to try and consolidate much of the realism vs game play discussion in one location. Hopefully, it will be easier to try provide feedback and then for you guys at ironclad to absorb it. I wouldn't mind providing some feedback on the specific example at hand. ie: realistic planets types around a sun. You had responded with: The p

Reply to Phase Highways in space is a bad game concept! in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

I'm looking for a good game. and as the Devs have said, thats neigh impossible with open phasespace. just wait for the mod, then we can see how bad it is. I think we can take it for granted that everyone is looking for a "good" game. And if it is neigh impossible to actually create a good space RTS that actually has open space in it, then I can't see much of a point in building a game that takes place in space. May as well have a land env

Game play, Realism and Fun in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

I have seen a number of topics that directly or indirectly deal with the game play vs realism debate and whether or not realism needs to be sacrificed in order to keep the game fun. I would like to bring this discussion to the forefront and look at it head on. My position on the matter is that a certain amount of realism MUST be maintained in order to ensure the game is fun. Creating too many off the wall concepts to get around various game play issues can really hurt the fundamental re

Reply to Phase Highways in space is a bad game concept! in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

It's funny but 99% of space games be it in strategy MOO2,SpaceEmpires or simulations like X3,Freelancer,Eve have a spacelanes concept.I think gameplay has to take priority over realism of free movement.Ironclad have made it very clear this system is here to stay. Very true. I was hoping that Sins would be different and go a bit further and actually depict space in a somewhat (not totally of course, but somewhat)

Reply to Phase Highways in space is a bad game concept! in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

I think my comment "I have little doubt that phase lanes are a bad idea" was taking a little out of context. To be more clear, I think that trying to mimic terrain chokes points found in land based RTSs is a bad idea. This seems to be the primary purpose for phase lanes, which is why I made that comment. You can still have the concept of phase lanes in a space game, as long as it is not meant to try and recreate a land based RTS environment. The bottom line really comes down to how a g