Sins of a Solar Empire (edit march 12: WOOT 1.03 IS OUT)

[Caydr]

Yeah it's a pretty nice shot isn't it... I'll have to see if I can make a high resolution one later.

[Relative]

Cowardly AI is cowardly.

You guys have any advice for building up your econ and teching? I've been getting crushed when I have 2x as many planets as my opponents.


Also, huge maps don't end. If you want to play a very large map make sure you have good friends who you can communicate with to continue games later as it might take days to complete.

[Caydr]

For economy/resourcing:

I haven't tested this as I haven't played Sins in about a week, but I think you're allowed to have multiple trade stations per planet. Build as many of them as you can in your better-defended areas. I almost always make more money from trade than I do from tax by the end of a game, and that was BEFORE I realized you can have more than one per planet.

Also don't forget about influence. As your planets slip farther and farther from your sphere of influence, the amount of income you get from them (and their asteroids) decreases very quickly. I only realized this recently...

Also don't be afraid to move your capital to a more central location, it will greatly improve your income if your influence is low through most of your occupied space.

Finally, don't upgrade your logistics too quickly. I know it's really tempting to think that you can have a uberpwn fleet, but what you really need to think about is, "with my current number of ships, can I fight effectively?" Until that becomes "no", it's usually worth it to keep that extra 11% or whatever of your income. The last jump up to 75% in particular seems rough.

In the pics I posted a page back you'll notice I've still got 300 logistics points left. This is because, despite having a massive empire, I just stopped being able to increase my ship numbers. I'd get into a fight and by the time there's another fight I've *just* replenished my losses. I was literally at a standstill, and if I'd been caught in a fight I had to run from, I'd probably lose the game because from then on I'd be permanently on the defensive. I upgraded my logistics too much, too fast.

Every time you colonize a planet, immediately max out its civilian infrastructure. If you're not careful you'll get into a situation where you're actually losing more money than you're making. It's explained in the tutorial I think.

[Imperium]

Got the game today, had a dabble with it. Kinda hard to get to grips with at first but showed promise. Will play more later when I'm less busai.

[BlackLiger]

how the hell do you make the multiplayer save thing work?!

Also, I'm up for playing via hamatchi.

[Caydr]

I haven't tried it, how's it different from saving a regular game?

Then when you host, you specify you want to host a savegame, everyone picks the slot they came from.

[BlackLiger]

... why did I not think of that? Hell yes!

[Argh]

Looked at modding it for 15 minutes. Would be very, very easy to address the main issues of speed / decisiveness of combat, by editing a few text files.

[Caydr]

Ah cool what files can you edit like that?

I really love this game but I'm feeling like I don't want to play it until the next patch is out. After hearing the changes (fixed cowardly AI, .... well mainly that one) I feel like I'd just be annoyed if I played it now. Supposed to be out Friday or Monday tho.

EDIT

CORRECTION!!!!

Sins of a Solar Empire v1.03 full change log
Smarter AI, better multiplayer, new game setup options and lots more...
By Frogboy Posted March 11, 2008 19:07:58

Greetings! Ironclad has been hard at work on an update to Sins based on player feedback. We've got lots of new features in this build that we hope you find compelling.

Version 1.03 will be released later this week. We can assure you that we are intensively play testing this new update over. And over. And over. Because we love you guys, we are going that extra mile in making sure the update is just right by playing it all day and all night sometimes. That's the kind of sacrifice we are willing to make just for you!

Here is the full list of changes:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sins of a Solar Empire v1.03 Changelist
---------------------------------------------------------------------------


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gameplay / Balance:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-New Game Options Screen:
-Locked/Unlocked Teams
-Fleet Size
-Pirates or No Pirates (arrrr!)
-Income Rate Speed
-Build Speed
-Ship Speed
-Research Speed
-Culture Speed

***REMINDER***
-In singleplayer you can accelerate / deccelerate time by pressing the +/- buttons respectively. I'm mentionning it again because this request is coming up a lot even though it was implemented in the v1.02 patch.

-New Market System:
Highlights:
-Random fluctuations in addition to user influence on price.
-Can cause crash or boom by selling/buying too much.
-Known exploits removed.
-Can now buy and sell resources on the market in large increments again.

-Improved Group Phase Jumping for large groups of ships. The group will only wait for 90% of the value of the ships to be ready. The stragglers will follow shortly after. Typically, its only a couple ships that cause the whole operation to stall so this should eliminate the majority of problems.

-Research subjects queued in different fields can now upgrade in parallel.
-Overseer's Nanite Reactive Armor ability can now properly stack heals (but not the armor and max HP bonus).
-Kostura Cannon now only disables enemy units and structures at the target planet as originally intended.
-Autocast for many disabling abilities improved.
-Disciple's Transfer Antimatter no longer targets other Disciples when autocasting.
-Transfer Antimatter can no longer target entities with full antimatter.
-Can't attack unbuilt structures anymore.
-You can now change game options when loading save games.
-Defeated players can no longer give or be given resources in unlocked teams games.
-Defeated players can no longer place bounties in unlocked teams games.
-Fixed unintended halving of galaxy culture coverage in the game statistics. Pop Idol achievement is now actually achievable.
-No pirate maps removed due to new game option to remove pirates.
-Large and Huge random maps split into single and multi star system variants.

-Mission durations increased by 10 mins.
-Mission failure penalties to happiness reduced.
-Rebalanced happiness losses for killing various items (Killing enemy scouts no longer causes a loss of happiness).
-Phase Jump Inhibitors:
-cost reduced slightly.
-slot cost reduced from 3 to 2.
-jump charge rate penalty increase from -250% to -700%.
-Passive allegiance shift rates increased by 100%.
-Allegiance shift rates from culture increased 25%.
-Illuminator, Javelis, Assailant:
-Increased credit cost by approx 10%.
-Increased resource cost by approx 20%.
-Increased range by approx 30%.
-Illuminator and Assailant survivability tuned to be proportional to Javelis's on a per supply basis.
-Siege Frigates:
-Survivability reduced by ~20%.
-Build cost increased by ~25%.
-Supply cost increased from 12 to 15.
-Development Mandate research subject's max level reduced from 2 to 1.
-Tier 1 research times increased approx 40%
-Tier 2 research times increased approx 20%
-All other tiers research times increased 5%


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Graphics:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Fixed sometimes drastic frame rate drop when chat messages are displayed.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sound / Music:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Sins handles no soundcard now.
-Added sound option for varying music vol in battle.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
AI:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-AI now knows how to surrender (based on time elapsed, relative economy, relative fleet value, resource reserves, and allied strength). Also, an AI player will not surrender if he has a human ally.
-AI is now smarter about retreating and is willing to commit local suicide or accept local Phyrric victories if the global gain is higher and will also factor in local allied forces.
-Fixed various AI researching and building stall outs for the various trees (military in particular).
-Rewrote AI siege building and attack logic.
-Improved AI use of Black Market.
-Autocast for many disabling abilities improved.
-New AI Difficulty "Unfair" that gives the AI a tax income bonus and resource income bonus from resource asteroids (there is no other AI cheating in the game even at the Unfair difficulty level).
-Wide variety of AI upgrades.
-Improve AI taunting.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Networking / Multiplayer:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-AI will now take over for dropped players.
-You no longer have to kill all a dropped player's planets to win even when the AI takes over for him.

-Unified the in-game and ico chat system. They now share the same irc/wow like commands. Full autocomplete with tab/shift-tab. Autocomplete will attempt to either complete the name field or cycle through the available names.

<command> <name> <message>

Commands:

<none>: send to all
in-game: send to all human players in game.
ico: send to all players in current lobby

/w: whisper
in-game: if player is in game, uses the game chat system (will be recorded), otherwise go through ico.
ico: send directly to player (even if playing a game). tab autocomplete will cycle through all players in channel.

/a: send to all allies
in-game: send to all human allies in game
ico: n/a

/f: send to all ico-friends
in-game: send to all ico-friends, even if they are not in game
ico: send to all friends no matter where they are

/wa: whisper ally
in-game: same as whisper, but tab autocomplete will be constrained to only allies.
ico: n/a

/wf: whisper friend
in-game: same as whisper, but tab autocomplete will be constrained to only ico-friends.
ico: same as whisper, but tab autocomplete will be constrained to only ico-friends.

/r - doesn't take in a name for the second parameter, will send automatically to the last player who send a whisper
in-game same as ico

/wr - allows you to autocomplete with <tab> through all players who have recently sent a whisper.
in-game same as ico

-You can now send whispers to players with spaces in their names by using quotes. Autocomplete properly handles these names.

-Rewrite of ico friend status. all clients are now kept up to date on the current status of every friend at all times. This allows for a more friendly ui, the friend list is colored to show who is logged in/playing games. There are globbal events to notify the user of what friends are doing. This can be disabled like the channel notifications.

-Channel name list now saves the visual and selected state on any change, so it is now possible to select players on busy channels.
-There is now a setting for if the user wants to see "<x> has left/joined channel". checkbox in ico chat screen for controlling the setting.
-Players now leave their chat channels when playing games.
-Players rejoin their old chat channel when quitting a game.
-Quitting a game now brings you back to the lobby screen chat tab instead of the join or create game tab.
-Simplified game filtering.
-Hooked up the ability to change game options for ico games.
-Changed how the lobby screens get their game options so that it will come from the save files when needed.
-ico server now ignores case when searching for games.
-Deep checksumming is now employed before joining multiplayer games (to help avoid crashes and desyncs caused by modded data).


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
UserInterface / HUD:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Added culture flipping planet event.
-Made the use of 'strike craft' when refering to both fighters and bombers more consistent (often just fighters before).
-Various text color updates.
-Improved description of Development Mandate research.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Modding:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Can now mod in different textures without copying the entire texture directory.
-Fixed corrupt particle effects when loading mods up in-game.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Misc:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Various crash fixes.
-Game stats infocards now sort by value.
-Game stats now track the number of active units instead of built so that the graphs are more interesting.
-Game stats no longer tracks the number of units lost in combat as this was confusing with number of units killed and the information is now apparent from the number of active units stats.
-Scenario names are now localized, no longer use the filename, but instead use a string inside the file.
-Removed no pirate maps (not needed as its a game option now).
-Other very minor additions and changes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
End
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next stop is the demo version and then it's on to v1.04.

Compare that to the Crysis patches Also this is the third patch in the month it's been available.

[Zoombie]

Wow, that's ALMOST as good as the Witcher's next patch, which can be classified as a small expansion pack (seeing as how it adds 10 hours of content) and is completely free.

Yay Stardock and CD Projeckt. Two awesome Devs in a market of idiots and explotivists.

[Comp1337]

Wow, that's ALMOST as good as the Witcher's next patch, which can be classified as a small expansion pack (seeing as how it adds 10 hours of content) and is completely free.

NICE

[Argh]

@Caydr: Go here. Download this, and RTM, it's fairly well explained.

It's very easy, so long as you don't want to code all-new special attacks for ships. I could probably do a "decisive combat mod" in about an hour (well-balanced, no, but meh, it'd sure be a lot faster, I guarantee ). I don't have this game, so my interest in doing so is minimal, but it's pretty much just editing some text files, just like OTA.

[Michilus_nimbus]

Just got it today.
This is one hell of an overwhelming game. So much to do.

[Relative]

Demo was just released, but right now its an exclusive with gamespot:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/sin ... 88180.html

[Caydr]

1.04 just got released, it's the first balance-related patch. Next up is 1.1 which is aimed at correcting a few nasty multiplayer bugs.

[ralphie]

I can't fathom playing this multiplayer.

5 hours later...

[Caydr]

I started an 8 player game. 7 hours ago. I think I've got about 20 hours to go if it keeps up this way.

I think the multiplayer is pretty much made for you and good friends, to be played out over many weekends. Trying to finish anything but the smallest of maps with just some person out there could almost never happen.

A little while ago I promised pictures of a "real" battle, for people who haven't tried Sins yet. I've finally got some... Will post in a bit.


Me = Blue, Him = Purple. He's attacking a minor outpost of mine, something I really don't value too much... it was left minimally defended save for a single damaged capital ship. The capital ship in question raided one of his worlds and attracted some attention, then limped back home. It had about 1000 HP left, and has, sadly, now been destroyed.

A little while later I send in a few ships - I don't want to lose this system after all, even if only to save face.


Sadly, these ships too become overwhelmed as he sends reinforcements.

Wait a minute, I think I missed something on that first screenshot... I'll zoom out.


Hmm... a gratuitously large fleet of mine... but it's probably too far away to do anything about the situation that's now developed.... Wait, could this be it?


Ah, I renamed the colony.


Ah yes, that was it. My gratuitously large fleet was waiting at the edge of a neighboring planet's gravity well, in formation, ready to jump.


Shall we dance, bitch?


The ensuing battle goes badly. For him. "Captain, warp drives malfunctioning! We can't jump!"


"NOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

With purple effectively out of the game for the time being, I turn my attention to Pink, who has been backing my ally, Red, into a corner for some time now. Red has fought valiantly but now his homeworld is under attack. I am 6 jumps away from his homeworld, and can't possibly make it in time. Could this have all just been a trick to lure my fleet away from a position where I can defend Red? No, not likely. But it would've been a good narrative.


So I attack one of Pink's major colonies. His homeworld, to be specific.

Pink retreats immediately, rushing back home to defend his most well-developed planet.


But in time, he thinks better of it and decides he'd be better off running away.


But not fast enough.

I've already closed off his only route of exit that doesn't lead back into Red space. And I've directed Red to defend that planet with everything he's got.


So Pink does the only thing he can do, and retreats into my trap. I warp in right behind him.

But I'm not through yet. I've also put a bounty of 5,000 on Pink's ships, causing a massive pirate attack on his colonies.

Pirates are such a nuisance though. I spend so much money buying them off so I can concentrate on my real enemies.


Once they launch to ruin Pink's stuff, I come in and wipe out their base so they won't trouble me any longer.

[TheBigPK]

very nice. i got this game a couple weeks ago and it's awesome, but i haven't found it all that hard... i played imperium galactica 2 like crazy when i was younger so i suppose that helps. without the newer patches, i could go solo against 3 hard ai's and win (barely...).

[Muzic]

Jesus Caydr, that looks so epic.