At last we're being unchained by our marketing masters to start being able to publicly speak about Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy.
We (and by we I mean Ironclad and Stardock) can't talk about all the other cool stuff that's been happening behind the scenes. Mainly, it's because we're afraid of our PR manager Stephanie (if you knew her, you'd be afraid too).
But as I type, Blair at Ironclad has her distracted talking about something or other so I'm free to write here to tell you a little bit about what's going on.
So...
Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy. What's the idea here?
The idea is to have a secondary way to win the game other through sheer conquest. In the current diplomatic system, AI players give "missions" to players. Human players can't do the same back.
With Diplomacy, this system is being heavily revamped with a new technology tree. The technology tree could be views as a diplomatic arms race because diplomacy includes espionage and counter-espionage in there. How far it goes will depend largely on the beta testers and their preferences.
Then there's the balance and new game modes. We'll be putting our head together this week to see what can reasonably be put into a $9.95 micro expansion. But balance and tweaks you guys would like to see in Diplomacy you can freely post them here and we'll make sure to look at them.
There's also a whole new diplomacy system that lets players have a much more tactical view of why your relations are what with a given player. If you've ever played Civilization IV you can see some of the inspiration. The idea though is that relations shouldn't involve excessive guess work.
The official season has now officially started though for Diplomacy.
I truly hope that "...new game modes" are related to MP!
I simply still can't digest the fact that one of my fav games of all times (yes Sins!) still doesn't properly cater for MP crowed...
Please give us "new game modes" with MP so all who can't spare 3 hours per round can play this awesome game online as well!
Expansion or patch would be wonderful!
3# was:
"3.) Will there be support for moving sections or animations in meshes?"
ans.
"3.No. But keep in mind people have used animated particle meshes toaccomplish this indirectly. Details are in the forums and movies are onyoutube."
1/2/4 patch or otherwise would be a great bonus!
I think first an foremost for a Diplomacy Expansion is the possibility to trade/hand over units/planets/prototypes/technology/resources/starbases and for the AI to have the ability to know when to accept or decline an offer (or make one themselves - and not the typical "give me" outrageous ones) - a little like Civ4
Second, I would love to have the ability to have a starbase (or something like that) as a colony for empty systems (think asteroid fields) which can act like a planet (i.e. you can build modules around them, enhance their population, boost the defenses and so on)
I once had the idea for a game mechanism that for establishing peace treaties, seeing the others map/ships/systems, trading prototypes, handing over technology ans such or even (at it's extreme) chat with your teammate you need to establish routes of communication, which can be interrupted by other players to cut you off from your allies or feed you with misinformation on oneothers empire)
For trading of technology prototypes you could make it required to send a diplomatic ship which could be destroyed by others or their technology captured.
I would also like to see fighters not flying through planets or stars.
Next, many of us modders need a simple expansion: a buff making a unit comletely stealth -> ie no icon visible, no amount indication on the planet/star, no mesh visible.
The ability for modders to set the location of a ship to the target (+- directional modifier)
ie. You activate an ability which requires a target - you select the target, ship moves to the position of the target (planet (or ship)) +- the distance added to the movement vector. The movement can be set "instant" or "speed" with the modifier "movementspeed" for the speed at which the ship moves towards the target.This could be used in many ways - such as ramming a ship, jumping to another planet and so on
The ability to use constraints in a more elaborate ways - ie. not just in terms of shiptypes (frigate, fighter, capitalship) but also on a per unittype level (ie kol battleship, marza dreadnought, ...)
and (again posted by SteinerX) I will support the request for 1/2/4 of the list
as well as a complete modding documentation including all buffs the system makes use of.
Thanks for considering!
Having several years experience in the 3D, moving piece are not something heavy on the system... mainly, you have tthe model rig with a skeleton ( yes, like with a body )... join define the max angles allowed... it will not only allow moving turret but will allow some animation like rotating radar disk, and other thing... and will be more light that the actual work around with particule... a lot of FPS shooter use simplified skeleton for their ragdoll effect... lot of professional spaceship model have a skeleton too who allow via dial to open door, to move wings, to rotate turret, to change the elevation of the barrel, etc...
But for this, the engine need to support a skeleton... so, maybe for sins II...
Any idea of a beta release date? Go on, you know you want to tell us..
Please something more specific than "late fall".
Beta will happen when it happens. Having a million people asking "When's beta???" over and over isn't going to change that. If they knew, I'm sure they would have mentioned it by now.
is there any particular reason that i cant pre-order using paypal??
Me I am waiting for first anouncments of balance chnages they will go with the beta before preordering.
this is my big question about Diplomacy. How much diplomacy wil we have.
I'm a fan of Civ, and anyone who's played can tell you that it makes Sins' diplomatic system look like something that 2 year old wrote (no ofense guys). Complete with technologies and special abilities that help with diplomacy. I'm hoping that this will be something like that.
I believe they said Civ games were an inspiration. This is a 10 dollar expansion though so don't expect a truly massive diplomacy system. To me it looks like they are changing it a lot but I doubt it will use up sins' full potential. This is a micro expansion afterall.
"The idea is to have a secondary way to win the game other through sheer conquest"
This sounds nice, but it immediately makes me think of similar systems in other games. The "Diplomatic Victory" in Civilization and its kin was really just a different way of phrasing the "conquest" victory; you'd almost never win it through actual diplomacy, you'd win it by conquering more than half the world and being a majority voter by yourself. So all it really did was eliminate that "mopping up" stage at the end of the game, which is something SoaSE could really use help with.
"But balance and tweaks you guys would like to see in Diplomacy you can freely post them here and we'll make sure to look at them."
Okay, here goes.
The first thing I'd like to see is the pirate system overhauled, and yes, I saw that that was already listed as part of the expansion's features. But I'm not sure how far you'll take it; while I'd love to see pirate capital ships and/or starbases, what I really think needs to be changed is the TIMING. Even if it's just an optional thing. Currently, every 15 minutes, the pirates send one fleet after whichever player has the highest bounty at that exact moment, with the size of the fleet depending on the phase of the game and the amount of the bounty. Every other player is safe, and there's little reason (pirate-wise) to put bounty on someone until the timer is blinking. This is extremely abuseable against the AI.
Instead, I'd like to see a more "dynamic" pirate option. Every thirty seconds, the game would make a check for each player based on the amount of bounty that player currently has. Most of the time, nothing will happen, but sometimes it'll decide to launch a Minor, Moderate, or Major pirate raid on your empire, and IMMEDIATELY deduct the appropriate amount from your bounty (not waiting until the pirates damage something). So if you have 1000 bounty, maybe there's a 10% chance of a 100-point raid, a 4% chance of a 400-point raid, and a 1% chance of a 1000-point raid. 85% of the time nothing would happen, and even most of the time when something does happen it'd just be a token scouting party. But the percentages and sizes should both scale up quickly, so that someone with 5000 points of bounty is basically guaranteed to get a significant raid in the next thiry seconds, and spending a lot of money on a single player should give them enough raids to make life very difficult.
The key is that this would be enemy-independent, in that the game might decide to launch five raids at five different players; raising an opponent's bounty wouldn't do anything to protect you from the consequences of your own bounty, and you wouldn't save up your money for a single spending spree every 15m.
@Spatzimaus
I second that! But I'd rather have a system where one cannot only set a bounty for a player, but also a mission for the pirates (i.e. hire them)
It would be much more interesting if one could hire the pirates for specific tasks such as attack fleet, attack planet, steal resources, steal technology, attack trade routes, sabotage starbases, gather empire information, and so on each with their pricetag adjusted by the strength of the player and the mission chosen. Maybe as an additional force i.e. mercenarys. They would be cheaper than producing the units yourself, not add to the fleetsupply but dissappear once the task is finished.
Sweet!
What about assassins? You pay an assassin to play as an undercover fleet in the enemy's fleet. When you're about to go into battle, the assassins board the enemy's capital ships and detonate it with some C4
Just kidding! Looking forward to this expansion pack. Was about to pre-order it when I read "2010". So I decided to wait untill some teasers or more information are being released.
I want an option to enable or disable AI resign.
Sometimes I want to track down every enemy ship and planet, other times I just want to end a game quickly once its apparent I'm going to win. More upgrade options for starbasses would be neat, but thats just day dreams.
I'd like to suggest a simple thing that I doubt anyone could really have a reason to disagree with; the expansion of the character limit when renaming planets, starbases, and capital ships.
In the game's current state, we're currently restricted to small names. This is especially so for people who prefer to use ship prefixes for their capitals, such as CSS or UMS and so forth. An example that comes to mind is that "USS Gravestone" is over the character limit. That's hardly a long name, so you can see why me and many others are somewhat annoyed with this.
On the topic of names, I'd also like to make this suggestion:
If someone "controls" a neutral gravity well (By having the most culture in that area), they are allowed to rename it. If your culture overthrows an enemy planet (Assuming the current overthrow mechanics stay the way they are in Diplomacy), you attain the naming rights to it. You keep the rights until the planet is either taken by another player or if your culture slips from the area.
And, on the topic of culture...
If your culture begins to affect a pirate base, their "allegiance" towards you goes up. This means that raids launched from this base against you are likely to be smaller in size, use weaker ships, or have a delay before the raid actually starts. The effect could be dependent upon how much "allegiance" the pirate base has towards you. This would increase the usefulness of a peaceful approach and culture itself.
Not maybe, definately required for Sins II but understandably a step too far for Diplomacy.
Diplomacy Idea: I'm a race that has decided to go with economy or culture with a smaller less powerful fleet. I'm about to be invaded by large fleet. Unfortunately their crew is not quite as loyal being so far in my gravity well and is willing to accept a bribe to end their attack. The bribe would be outside of the oppents control of their fleet and would suspend all attacks on the planet/system until the bribe runs out*, possibly giving time for your fleet to attend to the issue and/or build defensives. This would only work in owned grav wells with a significant culture and would not work in weakly aligned or neutral planets.
* The bribe would not be a transfer of money to the opposing fleet, but just be money spent to delay any attack. * Similar to the armistice ability.
Diplomacy Idea: Add ability to tactical menu to buy a local militia to defend planets. Militia would not go against fleet size and would not be controlled by the player. Militia would attack enemy invaders and not attack parties participating in a cease fire or peace treaty. Militia would disband if culture on the planet falls to low.
I like the previous posts that give the idea to buy Pirate raids versus the current system, especially to buy raids to steal items, such as artifacts, resources, income, target structures...
I also really like the posts related to peaceably taking over planets. I just feel really wrong being a benevolant race that just BOMBED the current population out of existence in order to take them over. I also like the idea of maintaing some infrastructure or militia if present when peaceably taking control of planets.
Give scouts the ability to search and destroy trade ships similar to destroying structures, providing a negative affect to enemy economy. It would be nice if you could configure what type of structures scouts target when using timed explosives such as research/trade/diplomatic/...
Maybe it's just me but fighting multiple opponents at once has me wishing for some macro-management fleet options.
Idea: Add macro tactical management options to fleets.
1) Attack Priority: Idea, setup 3-4 fleets to attack specific targets simultaneously and drop them in the targets gravity well. This idea is to allow fleet composition to fit the attack type role you want them to perform as well as keeping support units close to that fleet. I understand micro-management of fleets is more effecient but I just keep wanting an option to direct expansion fleets against a grav well and not have to micro manage them while I am fighting a battle in another grav well.
Planet - Moves Fleet to Planet, bombers attack planet while fleet defends bombers.Research Stations - Ships attack research stations as first priority before attacking ships or defenses.Defensive Structures - Ships attack defensive structures as first priority before attacking ships or defenses.Starbase - Ships attack starbase as first priority before attacking ships or defenses.
Auto retreat at 75% fleet loss, 50% fleet loss, 25% fleet loss. I know..., I was to pre-occupied to notice my secondary fleet was being demolished! lol... Also, it just seems like you should be able to leave standing orders for a secondary fleet such as fight to the death(default)/flee if outnumbered(Auto retreat)/Target capital ship(demoralize enemy)/Target support ships (weaken enemy)/etc until your main fleet arrives.
I agree!
I just wanted to combine all my suggestions from previous posts into one posting on this thread.
Pirate Idea
I like to see them rework the whole Pirates system. They become useless after a while because of the new ugraded defences, mines and what not. Since Pirates can't upgrade their tech, its just a matter of time before they become useless.
-If they could caqture planents for their own use and board and hijack players (Both AI & Human) ships that would be awesome!
-If they could steal technologies from other races like shields and what not.
-I think there is a cap on the max number pirates per bounty, if so then get rid of that!
Game Mechanic Idea:
I wonder if a tactical element that would effect ships and structures to function with penalties or act erractic as damage gets closer to critical is possible. I think it would be a neat idea.
For example, as ships nears critical damage threshold:
1. their weapons cool down rate increases
2. phase jump calculations take longer
3. abilities are randomly disabled
4. ships could spiral out of control for a bit
Something similar could be applied to structures, weapon platforms and starbases.
By doing so, this could add a very interested dynamic to battles and strategies and more emphasis on in battle repairs or tactical retreats and what not.
I want to see mines invisable to enemies again unless they have a scoutt ship with their fleet. This should make both units more useful again!
Game Mode Idea:
I'd like to see a limited resource system implemented or as an option. Astroids for crystals and Minerals should have a limited reasonable quantity and a production curve.
-a Mine Life cycle, should have something like a bell curve production cycle. This would cause the whole market for resources to make sense.
-it would encourage more aggressive game play and risky tactics to be used in order to obtain more resources!
I always find the early game to be most exciting but the late game to be too routine, I think limiting the resources would help solve that and make certain technologies more relevant!
Diplomacy Idea:
For the game, I'd like to see an option or method to allow neutral planets to join your empire through diplomacy instead of the normal destroy and conquer approach! I mean, if you can use diplomacy, maybe when and if they join there resources, infrastructure & ships come with
Neutral planets should also have some planetary defenses (like the pirate bases), because if they can build ships, they should have defences too! By doing so it makes the might approach harder, it may encourage other means of expanding territory.
Also, if neutral planets could request aid when attacked and you provide it, it could help build an alliance between worlds!
Culture would play a huge role too from planets joining or defecting and what not.... Oh the possibilities!
Can we have an single player option to disable certain ships? I just want to disable the new anti-structure ships that where introduced in Entrechment, I like to play defensive and watch the massive battles as the computer tries to break through - but having some kind of tech tree screen in options before starting a game where you can select what can be built and what cant would be pretty cool. I can't really make the computer play along with my rules, like frigates only when bored.
Mods are your friends
Agreed... I'm routinely irked that I cannot unleash my full repetoire of badass ship names.
-Itharus
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
