f13.net

Been a while since I've been kinda stoked about an RTS that does something new. Anyway, I know a bunch of you will be playing (and I know some of you will stop when Culdcept comes out!) so here's some links to make things easy:

Download Stardock Central: http://sdc.stardock.com/sdcentral_setup.exe
Buy the game: http://www.sinsofasolarempire.com (plz to be buying directly from dev).
Get key in email.
Put key into Stardock Central (which is like steam, but uhhh shitty?)
Play!

Keys should be mass mailed sometime today (today being Monday).

And uhm. Yea.

Oh, and some guy put 20,000 ships into one scene in beta and his comp didn't crash. Pretty fucking cool.

(http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/2892/sinsofasolarempire20071cb1.jpg)

Yes, those dots are ships.

Who wants to try some MP tomorrow night?

Whats different about this game?

It's a 4x RTS. There's nothing NOT different about this game.

Gameplay example from their site with lots of pretty pictures.

http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/?forumid=402&aid=174538

So how is the gameplay.

I hate most RTS especially resource gathering RTS. In most RTS not the one with the best strategy wins but the one who clicks faster and has the most resources.

That is not what I'd call strategy. So what is different about this game?

And does it have Stellar Converters?

How does this compare to Galactic Civilizations? It started out sucky and buggy, but by the time the second expansion rolled around the game started to become pretty good. Is it the same / similar codebase / idea? It seems to be very pretty.

Hum. Combat is in real time?

(http://www.hyperorg.com/gifs/b9robot.jpeg)

You know the drill, Will Robinson!

I couldn't resist, I just pre-ordered.  I'll be ready for some multiplayer this weekend.

I think it's more along the lines of Homeworld + subset of 4X features in a multi-system galaxy.  There is media floating around that pretty much shows a whole game, what I saw looked pretty well polished.

I'm very interested in checking this out.  Unfortunately, this is a bad week for me so I probably won't get to it until next week.

Is there a demo?

I'm pretty sure this was already a Star Wars game a few years ago.  I'm waiting for good reviews before considering a purchase.

Must. Buy. Now.

:nda:

I'm so buying this.

Anyone come across reviews or have a BIIF?

I just got my serial number.

So, if you took MoO3 and launched the Homeworld client to handle the battles, would that be better or worse than this game?

OK so I'm going to get this tomorrow.

It's like Homeworld with a dash of 4X thrown in. The game's also heavily moddable.

I love me some Space RTS The only thing that kind of sucks is that there is no single player campaign :/

Well. There's tutorials and (seems to be some single player skirmish stuff).

The tutorials are long, and without voice acting, they feel really long. I'll probably have to get back to it this weekend. Though I really want to get some in before work.

As such.

Sleep time.

Uhhh.. wow.  Really? Just saved myself $40.

No single player is pretty depressing, I was looking forward to trying the game.  My schedule's too different from my friends' to be able to reliably get some multiplayer going, assuming I could sell them on the game. 

Oh well, there's no shortage of games being released right now to spend money on. 

Just curious why do you advise buy it from the website company?
Instead of local computer store?

Is the company really earning that much more profit?

I was under the impression that even if there's no storyline campaign, you can still play against the CPU offline.  Yes?

BTW what is this 4X you all keep talking about?

There's multiple Single Player Modes and map sizes and the like - there's just not crappy single player campaign to cripple your troop selection for 20 hours as you slog through voice acting and dialogue to get to the fun.

anyone know the max planet size you can make a map, like with Masters of Orion4, you could select HUGE map size and it had like 85-200 galaxies to fight over, ranging from 2-7/8 planets.

Edit: I got the impression from watching the g4tv preview it was limited to 5 galaxies a game?

you mean solar systems, not galaxies.  Large galaxies can contain billions of stars.

The stages of gameplay in Civ style games.

Explore
Expand
Exploit (?)
Exterminate

If I recall correctly.

I'll check when I get home, but yes, I'm 99.9% sure I saw that option.

Ah thanks for the clarification. So are all of these phases in SoaSE real time or are some turn based? As a previous poster mentioned some sort of MOO + Homeworld for the fights or Real time all the way?

Seems real time all the way.

Yes. I may not buy this game, but if you do, buy it from Stardock (they'll send you a hard copy if you want). I'm all about their next turn-based game.

Though I do have to ask my standard RTS question, should be standard, anyway: Can you pause and issue orders? Freedom Force and Baldur's Gate 2 are both real-time games I pretty much played as TBS.

Played this for a few hours last night, can't say I've been blown away by anything but overall I was enjoying it.  But being only a couple of hours in I have a ton of of the game to get deeper into still.

I think this is a game that will purely shine in 10+ player matches. (if it can do more than 10).

But then, my pain in that being the case is averted by the fact it's totally indie. Which I'm OK with.

Production value is Very High for an indie title.

I guess it's technically an indie title, but it has a few of the homeworld developers that worked on it. It's not one guy in a basement like dwarf fortress.

As an aside to schild, the next dwarf fortress is going to feature graphics -- he's decided that while he loves ascii, it's a bit of a wall preventing some people from getting into the game :)

After a couple hours of play the game feels very much like real time GalCiv to me.  There doesn't even seem to be a pause command.

So far I'm impressed but a little overwhelmed. 

That would be why I only did one tutorial so far. I commented to Rasix that I need the instruction book that will be at least 200 pages before I get into this thing.

Dwarf Fortress...... :heart: :heart: :heart:

I've been impressed as a whole with Sins though, it seems pretty well polished for a fresh release.  My only gripe so far is that camera control could use a little work, it's not horrible, but it's not great either.

I can't help thinking about 200-page instruction manuals without thinking about Outpost, and then the rage blackouts come.

Are you being serious?  I was kind of looking forward to this game...

:cry2:

If you got the digital download, there should be a pdf in the main download directory.

It's not as much of an issue as you'd think Sky.  It plays more like a real time 4x than a RTS IMO.  Battles are rather simplistic as there isn't much of a Z-axis.  Also, you fleets are pretty damn good at doing things on their own.  Units auto use skills if you tell them to and as far as I can tell tactics like flanking aren't as nearly as important as they are in typical RTS games.

Un-sold.

Shit.

EDIT: Even if most people don't need it, odds are I would. Plus, I have a three year old. Sometimes you need to step away and deal with something.

You can hit escape and the game pauses at the main menu.  I just haven't found a pause command that lets you issue orders.  Seriously, the game is different enough I think those that are worried about pause should try the demo when it's released.

Pause sucks if you ever want to play multiplayer, it's a crutch!   :raspberry:

guys, real time strategy means REAL-TIME STRATEGY.

Pausing is for... NOT real-time strategy.

Retirement-Time Strategy.

Thats why most (Newer) real time strategy games give each player 3 time outs (Pauses)........

I simply do not have time for my 12 hour multi player Empire earth games any more.

It's a hybrid. It's not like you can pause in multi-player, so I don't see the problem with it. If you don't like it, don't pause. If you can't pause and give orders, I have zero interest. So you lose those who trend toward TBS when you could have both segments. Whatever.

The Sins page says they have various speeds you can play at if you need a little more time to deliberate.

MrBloodworth They provided the ability to save the state of the multiplayer game so you can play over successive meetings without having to marathon it.  I think I read that you can sub people in at different positions if need be, but don't hold me to that.

Sins looks really intriguing, waiting for some more playthrough impressions before I pick it up. Ah hell, who am I kidding, I'll most likely cave and buy the game this weekend.

If its a 4X game, then it presumably takes a fair amount of time to play. If its a multiplayer RTS, not only can you not reasonably pause it, but walking away will result in a loss. Sounds like a poopsock hardcore game.

I finally found the pause hotkey, it's pause.  Imagine that!  You really don't need it though.

I've spent a large portion of the day playing and it's all starting to come together.  It's really not as complicated as it first seems, just different.  Battles are actually incredibely simplistic.  The more I play it, the more I like it.

Praise the Lord Jesus.

Thank God you found the pause button.  I was worried for your bladders.

Fortunately, I don't. ^_^

Played it for awhile online with some friends tonight.  Not sure if I love it yet.  It is not near as complicated as I first thought.  One cool feature, is the ability to pay space pirates to harass your enemies.  If your enemies pay the pirates to harass you, just pay them more.  The combat is not as pretty as Homeworld 2.  I played the zealots, their battleship is mighty.  Put a scout or a harassment force at the Sun(s) on medium/big maps.

I dug English trenches for the rest of the night in Company of Heroes - Opposing Fronts.  It was an RTS day.

Thats better then.

I'm leery of this title, due to the fact that it looks like Sword of the Stars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_the_Stars).

Ill have to find a "Demo" or something i guess, and no, i haven't fully researched this title to compare. But thats also why i didn't understand what was new in this game.

EDIT: Spelling and other stupidness.

Are you Denis Leary of this title or Timothy Leary?

I love the pirates. They're PLing fodder for your capital ships.

 :?

(http://www.forumopolis.com/images/smilies/groucho.gif)

(http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/images/smilies/zombie3.gif)

(http://smilies.newcastlebeats.com/smilies/zombie1.gif)

At what point is a smiley no longer a smiley?

Pretty sure that previous post hit it.

The Pirates were driving me batty since I had to keep stalling out my offensives to pull back and defend against them.  Eventually I wised up and realized that I could simply bribe them and use them against my opponent.   Makes a huge difference.

I've dumped about 10 hours so far into this game I'm going to stick with the badly voice-acted TEC. Since the tech trees are all different, I'd rather memorize just one for now. Apparently, you can't put spaces/tabs in front of lines, so I coded it for easier reading.

    BUILD ORDER when you are starting with nothing but one Frigate Factory.
    All can be done by clicking on the planet except for the final step.

    1. Frigates -> 2 Scout frigates
                   3 Light Frigates
    2. Logistics Structures -> Capital Ship yard, Place beside frigate factory.
                               Crystal Extractor
                               2 Metal Extractor
    3. Click on each of the scouts as they pop out, right click to autocast explore
    4. Capital Ships -> One on the far left (for me, the Kol Battleship)
    5. Frigates -> 2 more Light Frigates           
    6. Kol battleship should pop out. Your scouts should have also scouted 3-4 planets.
       Highlight your battleship and 5 frigates, hit tab until the battleship is selected.   
       Ctrl-1 to Make a grouping.
            Tactics Management -> Create Fleet.
            Ability Management -> Rail Gun. Leave autocast on if you're lazy.
            Alternate between Rail gun and Adaptive Shield for leveling. Turn off adaptive shield autocast.
    7. If there's a Asteroid or Terran planet nearby:
       Send your Kol and 5 frigates to clear it.
       Logistics Structures -> Military Lab.
       Queue Research Military -> Ballistics and Rocketry -> Laser Amplification
    7A. If all you've got is a Volcanic or Arctic planet (or both)
       Send your Kol and 5 frigates to clear whichever has more crystal asteroids
       Logistics Structures -> Civic Research station x2 (you will have to wait for more crystals)
       Queue Research Civilian -> Engineering -> XXXX planet Exploitation
    8. Frigate Factory (not Planet) -> Colony Frigate
                                       Right click on Kol battleship to create rally point

This should get you your first expansion. Obviously, a asteroid or terran planet is a preferred expansion, but it's not a game restarter if you get bad luck and have to go straight to arctic. I would not skip ajacent planets for colonization unless you can create a chokepoint by doing so -- it will become too hard to defend against pirates.

Pirates should come after you finish clearing your first area if it's a planet, second if your first is an asteroid belt. This is good. You want your battleship to be always fighting. Don't worry about damage, research into advanced metallurgy and hull reinforcement and it will be able to repair the hull faster than it can be damaged (at least early game). Continue replacing frigates that you have lost up to your maximum fleet cap. Where you go for research is up to you; Metallurgy->Ferro-Uranite rounds are a good choice since it increases your battleship damage. Efficient Crystal Sorting is also key.

I took out my main enemy and then I realized I was good and truly pissed at the pirates.

I decided to bring to bear two task forces - both anchored by experienced battleships and with appropriate support carriers and frigates.  I swung the two forces to opposite jump points, and sent in the first task force.   After the majority of his forces surrounding the pirate base swung out of position, I jumped my second task force in and attacked his flank.  It was somewhere around 40-50 quality ships vs 100+ crap pirate frigates.


(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2188/2249747018_3ed514d259.jpg)
 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jwiv/2249747018/)

That's a pretty cool screenshot. I may check this out if they ever come out with a demo. (I usually don't last past the demo phase for games like this).

Are there random maps, or are they all premade?

Stardock makes stupidly awesome games.  I've been betaing the upcoming Galactic Civilizations II expansion, and it is of pure distilled win.  Race-specific tech trees and buildings FTW!

There's three star system sizes to choose from s,m,l and each has a random map generator, then each has scenario type maps that I think are random but haven't tried them yet.

I picked it up and played a little (i.e. until dawn, I'm fucking awful with putting down strategy games).  I have yet to win, but have steamrolled my opponent into a single system and have four level 10 capital ships blowing the fuck out of anything he scrounges up to send my way, so the game was basically mine by the time I was too bleary to keep playing.  My initial impression... was a bit off.  The tutorials cover so little of the actual gameplay that I was utterly lost for the first half-hour or so, flailing around in ignorance and generally not accomplishing much.  There's such a big gap between what the tutorials tell you (how to move a ship) and what you actually need to know (what the ships do) that you may as well consider your first couple of plays to be the actual tutorial.  Now that I actually have a handle on things, I think I can take another shot at it and have a more enjoyable time.

I don't think the game has what it takes to be a good multiplayer empire builder, sadly.  It has (unless I've missed them) only relatively basic tools for working with another player, hinging around resource-sharing rather than more complicated deals like technology and military trades.  Whenever I've been in multiplayer empire building games (Stars!) with friends, we've focused heavily on alliances, working together, the occasional betrayal, never an every man for himself kind of thing.

Holy shit, someone else played Stars!  Me and a college roomate played it almost religiously for years.  It was great fun and way ahead of its time.

With that said, I have yet to play a multiplayer game of Sins.  From what I've seen in single player though I'd imagine you could trade resources and establish alliances.  I do wish there were more diplomatic options, perhaps they will add some in the coming patches.

I finally beat my first medium map against 3 medium AI opponents last night.  The game took 17 hours total with the first 10 being mostly gathering planets and holding them until the right time presented itself to bring holy death down upon the surrounding empires.  It was glorious.  It was by no means and easy win for me either as there were a couple battles which could have easily went both ways had it not been for me loading a previous save and preparing better.

Also, the more I play the more I like Sins.  I wasn’t sure at first, it seemed too complicated and the real time aspect of it made me feel rushed, something I don’t appreciate in a 4x game.  Once it clicks though it becomes obvious just how simplistic the game really is.  Now I wish there were more options.  The game needs custom ships similar to GalCiv or Ascendancy.  Also, more civil buildings and ships would help.  I’d like a capital style ship that specializes in boosting civil defense systems, speeding resource gathering, or amplifying cultural broadcasting.

As it stands I haven’t had this much fun on my PC in years.  With a few patches or maybe an expansion, this game could go down with the likes of XCom and Masters of Magic in my book.  It’s fucking genius.

Edit:  Also, after playing Sins I realized how much I missed games set in space.  I have had a huge passion for cosmology since I can remember.  So, I picked up GalCiv2 plus expansions.  From what I've seen it has a learning curve that is even more daunting than Sins.  I can't wait!

Are you sure about the missing ship design?  I loved galciv 2 allot, I tough the systems were well designed and balanced.  I didn't finish a single game because ship design felt grindy.  It's nice to customize the ship style, but having to upgrade every model manually evertime I had a new component was abusive.  At the end, with a stable political map, I was basically advancing the turns really fast until the next upgrade, then advance, then upgrade.  meh.

It's too bad because the strategy was amazing.  Nothing like playing a neutral the diplomat while bribing the monkey psychopath with technology to have him annihilate your enemies.  Protecting minor races for tech and trade, having one huge ship turn the tide of a war, etc, etc.

Great game, a pain to play.

They took it out intentionally to make it easier.

Do you mean you have to redesign the ship with each component upgrade, or complaining that the ships already in the field do not receive the new hardware automatically?

The latter simply makes sense, especially from a balance standpoint. As to the former, there's an option buried in there somewhere to keep your designs static, allowing you to quickly modify models whenever you get a piece you want to put on your new ships. As I don't have the game installed currently, I cannot tell you where this option is, unfortunately.

That. 

Maybe I missed an option.  Every time I was getting a new component, I uploaded  my original design and had to reassign guns, sensors, engine, etc.  It's not that long but it's still a pain.  Especially when it's a new engine or armor and you want to add it to multiple ship blueprints.

The upgrading system was much better.

As an aside, that was why I didn't play Firaxis' Alpha Centauri all that much. Redesigning all my units every dozen turns - and then trying to weed old designs out of my build list - was an obnoxious bore.

That crazy tech tree weaned me off AC.  "You have now gained Obsequious Technophage" or some shit.

There were decent options for automating that stuff. I used to hate it and was messing around years later and figured out a way to make it not-very annoying. I don't remember exactly now, it's been a couple years since I've played.

Ethical Calculus. That one was so conceptually preposterous to me, I made fun of it on Noveria (sadly, that conversation was cut - Liara was to interject, "There's no such thing as ethical calculus!")

Same with the space games for me. But I never liked the GalCiv series because their maps are too open. There are no chokepoints or strategic fronts. Just a huge, black morass of space. Obviously that's nice and realistic, but makes for a very sloppy strategy game. I'm finding Sins much much better because of the way the planets are all connected by phase lanes. You can pile up guns and ships at one junction, and keep all your goodies tucked away on the other side of the planet. That was always missing from GalCiv2 for me.

Yeah, well, after the skys are burnt black in the Mathematical Wars, you'll PRAY for ethical calculus, bucko!

Oh, and on topic, until I figured out that people could bid on the pirates to attack someone, I was very unhappy. WHY DO THE PIRATES KEEP ATTACKING ME AND ONLY ME I DO NOT UNDERSTAND  :oh_i_see: :uhrr:

I bought this on Sunday (Sin of a Solar Empire, not the derailer).  DL was quick and painless, install was uneventful and ~10 hours later I was going, "I gotta stop and go to bed, I have work in the morning.  Let me just get those pirates first."

And of course as soon as I did that the AI opponent (small map, 1 star 14 planets, random, 2 players, easy AI) warped in a rather impressive 4 cap ship fleet with LOTS of support.  Which then immediately turned around upon seeing my fleet and hauled ass back.

I guess it was trying to get the pirates as well and didn't know I was there?

Anyway, very fun, "just one more thing" engrossing game play.

The AI has very firm ideas about winning and losing propositions; if it thinks it's outmatched it'll haul ass out of the system on the spot.  There've been a couple times where a fleet would pop up to one of my worlds, the AI would send a 'Haw haw, you're fucked!' message, and my fleet would arrive at the same planet seconds later completely by coincidence, and the AI would run.  I wasn't even trying to fight, I was just moving to point B and dropped a disorganized pile of ships in its lap and drove it off.

Unfortunately, the AI isn't so good at a risk vs. reward prediction.  There've been a few times when it had one of my capital ships down to a sliver of armor, but retreated before killing it after its fleet had sustained enough damage to make it appear significantly weaker than mine and trigger that 'run away' code.  When if it had stuck around for just a few seconds longer, it could have dealt me a significant blow before retreating.

You can abuse this with one of the TEC commandships that has the ion cannon. Bolt his mothership and the rest of the fleet will abandon him. Level 2 bolt is enough to cancel the buildup to jump indefinitely.

When you start getting into this game, you'll realize that it's really not very deep at all. :/

The only thing you do with new colonies is click a few buttons to build extractors and population.
Research is fixed and there is no way to speed up / slow down / reallocate resources.
There is no end-game combat strategy but blobbing.

Hopefully, modding and future patches will solve some of this blandness.

Not sure what this means.  Just because you can blob everything and send it in at once doesn't really mean that's the most efficient use of resources.

One tactic I've been using is to make two fleets, one a heavy assault fleet (Battleships and heavy crusiers) and another a support fleet (Carriers and missile frigates).  Drop the assault fleet in a minute or two earlier, let the enemy get entangled and then jump the carrier fleet in behind them.  Very effective and lets you do more with less.  A similar sized fleet just 'blobbed' in will get massacred against a fleet that the above tactic can handle easily.

Additionally there is a lot of strategy in designating targets, finding choke points or prioritizing your invasion schedule based on which planets provide/deny the most resources and other such considerations.  Against a human player there is much to consider because it's pretty easy to move a fleet through a defended planet and into the rear area for hit and run attacks.

There is even ship level tactics, as far as prioritizing targets, get the Cap ships first?  Go after the, weakly defended, carriers?  Just let them scrum?  Ignore the defenders and nuke the planet?  Kill off logistics improvements first.

Meh, there's lots of strategy and tactics even for 'blob' combat.

Well, it's no homeworld.

Yes, you want to mix your fleets a bit, but really, once you have more than about 60 ships on each side, prioritization is pretty pointless - even cap ships pop pretty much instantly.

There is a lot of strategy involved, but as far as tactics go, this game is kind of a disappointment.

I played two games on the small map, one with TEC and one with Advent.

The game feels like a simplified Supreme Commander in space.

I was unsure of the game when I first picked it up, mainly for all the same reasons you mentioned. The more I play, however, the more I like it. Note that I haven't touched the single player and don't intend to - 3 to 8 person FFA is where the game really shines. There's no joy like telling your ally to attack an opponent while hiding a fleet in a nebula next door to his homeworld, and delivering a massive coup-de-grace in one strike.

The idea that there's no strategy involved is, quite frankly, untrue. It's mainly a system of counters; knowing which units deal which type of damage and have which type of armor. You can find an easy chart describing that here -> http://www.crimsonsky.com/images/Sins-Ship-Damage-Chart.jpg

In the late game, it is very easy to pop cap ships if you have a huge fleet, but generally only when the enemy hasn't taken any precautions. Every fleet should be accompanied by several battlecruisers in support rules, recharging shields and providing immunity-like abilities as needed. A straight up group of carriers or battleships will find itself swarmed under.

As I said, the more I play, the more I like it. My one complaint is with culture, especially the Advent superweapon - firing off a once-every-five-minute megacannon should do more than just give me a 4% shield mitigation boost next time I fight in that system.

edit: and damn is it pretty.

I think there's a lot of potential here, but first of all it's way to easy to just jump away with units, it should be impossible to space jump if you're being fired on. And secondly it's just way to slow, at least on normal speed, I'm gonna give fast a spin today. Otherwise it's mostly goodie.

I'm having trouble finding a boxed copy (which I prefer). None of the stores in Edmonton have it, and Stardock's mail order only uses UPS International, which means they charge ridiculous shipping to Canada. The game might be good, but I'm not certain I'll find it $70US good.

That's what.. $40 cdn?

The collector's edition box that i ordered from the dev website just came in. It's a nice package.

I did a three-player FFA today, me against two AIs on a medium map with two solar systems.  They put up a hell of a fight; whenever I would go to stomp one, the other would usually come knocking with a big fleet.  I eventually wound up abandoning a sizable number of less-important worlds to their grisly fate to free up enough of my ships to keep the valuable planets protected while I went around stomping the AIs.  It took a loooong time, but protecting only the most resource-heavy planets let me expand out to other good planets and get on top of the resource game, then build enough ships to take out the other two players.

And yeah, in my experience, mixed fleets are the way to go.  I strive to get one of each capital ship into space ASAP; a fleet consisting of the five capital ship classes is very hard to stop.  Rather than just pump out damage or fighters, they repair and buff each other while debuffing the stuff they're fighting, it's a much more powerful combination.  The Advent also has some supremely useful cruisers, one that absorbs damage given to ships around it (and has enough shields to pull that off without exploding in seconds), and another that cripples enemy frigates and repairs friendly ships.  Stick a handful of those cruisers in with your capital fleet and dust a sprinkling of the basic frigates (which can steal power from enemy ships and give it to yours), and you wind up with a hellish juggernaut of pain.

Another thing I learned early on: don't dismiss the colonizer capital ships.  Having a big, decently-armed ship that can colonize worlds is sooooo helpful, and they usually have some other great abilities on the side that will buff the rest of the fleet.

Protect and level up your capital ships.  They get a special ability at level 6 that's usually far more powerful than their usual abilities, plus they get more powerful with each level.  Level 10 capital ships are terrors, so do your best to keep them from getting blown up in the lower levels.  I'd sooner sacrifice a planet than lose a high-level capital ship; you can always get the planet back, so don't be shy about retreating if your ships look like they'll blow before your opponents' will.

You can build jump inhibitors which slow down the rate at which ships can escape a gravity well.  They are not as useful as I'd like but they help.  I'm hoping they mess with them some more in coming patches.

Also, I think I read they are working on implementing a speed slider which can be adjusted during a game.

I really want to try a demo of this before plunking down monies.

Um, what? I've managed to wipe out fleets using inhibitors. Even if they don't allow me time to get a fleet into the system they're jumping from, it does give me time to get the fleet in place to jump on top of them or even time to build another inhibitor close by to slow them down while my fleet intercepts. Throwing up an inhibitor and as many hangar defenses as you can is great way to defend a system.

I was playing a game where a guy jumped through one of my systems heading into my home planet and my fleet was sitting a system away ready to jump in, so I waited till he jumped into my home planet and came in behind him. He had 4 level 6-7 cap ships and with all the bombers he didn't leave with any of them and if not for the inhibitors he probably would of been able to jump back where I didn't have an inhibitor or as much hangar defense.

Ok I'm gonna buy this later today and try it out.  I hope this is not another 'Sword of the Stars'.

Right now the dollars are at parity, but for the past four months a CDN$ has averaged 97 cents US.

When I moved here a Canadian dollar was worth about 80 cents US.

You need to hit at least 88mph if you're  going to attempt to jump the sarchasm.

Anyone still playing this game?  Looking at some new games recently and I'm curious about the longevity to it?  How long did you guys play before you moved on to something else.

Hi. You have read f13, yes?

This is not the place to gauge longevity. If a forum could have ADHD, this is it.

I play it every once in a while.

I'm sorry, by longevity I meant more than a week.  That clear it up?

So did Sky.... so did Sky.

Well I lasted a DAY.


I will pick it back up down the road.  It really turned me off initially.

A few days. It's too shallow to really draw me in. Not nearly enough depth. Maybe in a few patches / expansions; GalCiv was the same way, it got really good after the last expansion.

I keep going back to it.  Getting a little further each time.  I keep reminding myself I had to do that with Civ initially too.

I actually went out and bought NWN2 for my father and myself.  He was a big fan of the 1st one.  This 2nd one's camera sucks.  Oh well, things you do for family.

Ill wait on Sins.

I haven't played anything but Sins (with a sprinkling of GalCiv2) since it was released.  Patch 1.03 was released today but I think I'm going to actually try to play some Lost Odyssey and 08 The Show this week.  I bought them at release and they are still sealed thanks to Stardock.

Linky (http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/post.aspx?postid=303738).

I think that Sins needs another couple of patches to shine.  Right now it has that Starcraft-without-Brood-Wars feel to it, like it needs an extra few elements to take the step from good to great.  1.03 handled AI and some gameplay stuff, so hopefully they'll be working on content for .04 and .05.

Because this game is  :drill:  and nobody has mentioned that there's an mini-expansion coming out soon for $10 via Impulse.


New tech, weapon upgrades and starbases.

November 18