This thread is for speculating and suggesting ideas for confirmed features. At present, this is the list:
New Factions: Players decide whether to become Loyalists or Rebels, which unlocks a unique new tech tree granting them new technologies and ship variants.
New Titan-class ships: Massive warships for each race that dwarf capital ships, these deadly new monsters are capable of wiping out entire enemy fleets single-handedly.
New Capital Ships: A new capital ship class arrives, giving players new strategic options.
New Corvette-class ships: Small, highly maneuverable light ships that are adept at a variety of tasks.
Loyalist and Rebel versions of some of the existing Sins’ frigates and cruisers, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses.
Updated lighting and particle effects for enhanced visuals.
New Victory Conditions to allow for more variety, differing strategies and shorter game sessions.
Additional capital ship ability levels, for greater strategic choice.
Impulse::Reactor support for chat, friends, achievements and more.
While I know this community has a wealth of creativity and ideas, I want to keep this thread focused on stuff that's going to make it into the game. So, as much as we all know that people want a campaign, that's not on the list. Feel free to write any comments, suggestions, ideas, or random responses to any of the stuff on the list.
So without further adieu, my own ideas and reactions:
Impulse::Reactor
Please, please, please have built-in map/mod transfer. Thank you.
New Victory Conditions
Victory conditions I'd love to see:
Domination: Control at least 60% of the galaxy for at least 30 minutes. The timer counts down twice as quickly if you control at least 70% of the galaxy, and six times as quickly if you control 80%. Victory is instant at 90% control. Uncolonizable gravity wells do not count to this requirement, but pirate bases do.
Artifact Excavation: All artifacts locations are revealed at the start of the match (there will be at least 2 per player under this game setting). To win, your team must control at least 75% of the artifacts (so if there are 5 artifacts, you must control 4 to win). Victory is instant when you achieve this.
Mega-Weapon: Super-weapons are disabled under this game mode; instead you build a “mega-weapon”. Its position on the tech tree replaces the super-weapon tech. The cost varies by faction (more for Vasari, less for Advent, compensating for prerequisites), but once it completes a count-down begins until it activates. Successful activation causes that team to instantly win the match. The location of a mega-weapon is revealed as soon as construction begins.
Contract Acquisition: All players can bid on a special contract to win the game. In order to win, you must maintain the higher bid for five consecutive minutes. Unlike bounty, this bid never depletes and does not contribute to anything except winning the game.
New Capital Ships
First off, I'm still hoping for the Dunov, Revelation, and Antorak to get some love. They've always come across as a bit "rushed" and never have really shined on their own. The guidance rework is a nice start, but doesn't quite get there. But hey, new caps, let's talk about what each faction could use:
TEC: I'd love to see a “command class” capital ship that focuses on controlling the battlefield. The only capital ship ability for TEC that's anything like this is targeting uplink. Here's a concept ability to see what I'm talking about: Disruption Matrix: All units, friendly and hostile, in an area of effect around this capital ship are immune to all special abilities. Persistent effects that are already in play are not removed.. Wouldn't that go nicely to counter guardians or subverters, eh?
Advent: With the Progenitor, Rapture, and Halcyon already providing more fleet support than Advent could ever need, an entirely different approach should be applied here. Advent could really use a true “dreadnaught” like the Marza or Vulkoras, since the dinky Revelation certainly doesn't apply. Pack it full of hard-hitting combat abilities and good frontal weaponry, and perhaps an ability that has stricter cooldown limitations to finally give a good combo for guidance.
Vasari: What do Vasari really need? They have great combat options, great support options, great specialty options... easily the most well-balanced capital ship lineup. I guess the only thing left to add is the sugary cereal to go with the balanced breakfast. How about an industrial capital ship that has the special ability to act as a frigate-factory, enabling it to produce units mid-battle (uses a cooldown rather than a build time, so the unit is produced instantly)?
Titan Class Ships
This one really gives me pause. What is the role of titans? What is their purpose? With capital ships and starbases both countered by bombers, and bombers being the dominant late-game unit to begin with, it would be total overkill for titans to be the same. So I'm actually rooting for some relatively strong anti-strike craft weaponry on these guys. The question becomes, what should their weaknesses be? They can't be unstoppable engines of destruction, after all.
Here's what I'm thinking:
Titans should be weak against capital ships and – wait for it – light frigates. The titans should have special abilities that require antimatter, but unlike capital ships they are not immune to the disruption abilities of light frigates. Once drained of antimatter, titans are much easier to take care of.
All titans should have anti-structure, anti-frigate, and anti-strike craft weapons. This enables them to be used to take down starbases, and tightly-packed frigate/SC forces. They use their antimatter-based abilities to boost their combat performance and plough through enemies, but are less powerful in the long-run once depleted and lack good weapons against high-durability targets that are not structures.
That's my angle on this issue.
Faction/Unit Variants
Am I the only one hoping we see a Skirmisher that gets phase missiles? One-way ticket from least-used unit in the game to everyone's favourite light frigate.
Eh, I'm gunna stop myself there...
crazy idea for the Vasari titan, a frigate/crusier crusher. similar to the Orkulus's debris vortex but can suck in a fully funtional enemy ship, plus if the titan has high enough health it'll spit out a converted vessel for you, but only if it's above say 80% health?
The Vasari should get a ship with attack tentacles
The Advent gets raped by the Vasari phase missiles all the time and now you want to go there?
Here's some of my thoughts on Titans(and caps):
1. it's would be a mobile starbase like unit, mid-late tech, with upgradable modules when levelingup.
2. it's effective counter unite should be bombers and other anti-heavy armor weapons
3. slow, very durable, multi bank weapon, counter of heavy units and caps, a special weapon to deal with starbases.
now let me place my arguements:
1. we can't have a tide-turning unit suddenly out of factory. Leave it late game and doom-to-all/game-ending unit will lost most stragical role of this lovely new ship. Titans should take time to grow and in the end reach somewhere slightly weaker then a fully armed starbase. right now a star base backed up with reasonable size of fleet on choke point is unbreakable , attacker player would need a much larger investment (cash wise) to take it down, and this sometimes lead to a long & boring strech. Titian should offer enuf firepower so players can choose between defensive and offensive and not been penalized for that.
2. I know everyone is complaining about how bombers are beating up everything, well IMO bomber should still stay a counter to Titans, the real balance issue here is the role of our caps. Right now caps are only important for about 30 mins into gameplay, after that most well-structured fleet could FF your caps in seconds. There's already a lot of threads here on forum discussing caps re-balancing. my suggestion is to insert a firepower/hull+shield bonus with each cap logistic supply purchase (right now that very expansive tech tree is like burning money while u can buy a heater to get warm instead) , reduce damage taking from LRF and Bombers. With caps to be more effecient in battles Titans should come to the right place.
3. Caps should return to be the center point / main focus of your fleet development, with durable & threatening late game caps it's for every player to make decisions if they want to waste some firepower on caps (due to lower damage efficiency) first, or would they start a battle with thinning enemy fleet. This case late game caps are real source of problem and their counter could possibly be: a Titan----- make what a massive Titan really deserves and more strategical choices gameplay wise.
×××××××××sorry for bad spelling and such...
Been watching the Sword of the Stars: Lords of Winter trailer?
I dont know about bombers being a counter to a titan-class ship...
Putting aside the argument about bombers being OP at the moment, it makes little sense for such tiny ships to be the counter. Sure, in Star Wars, Luke takes out the Death Star with a fighter, but its not like he did it by shooting the crap out of it. He did it by following a plan that made the Death Star destroy itself (chain reaction in the reactor). In fact, I would argue that titan-class ships should be immune to strikecraft completely.
I would think only capital ships, starbases, mines and super weapons would stand a chance against that. maybe some kind of big new turret as well.
No. This would be great in the hands of any other species, but NOT the vasari. Vasari already have too many options in attack and protection. Pretty much this creates a mobile starbase making capital ship, something that is so incredibly overpowered as to make one sick. This makes more sense in the hands of the TEC. Perhaps this could be the new sova super ability to replace rapid manufacturing.
1: Far more options with the Galaxy forge! a: I'd like to see some level of scripting available so campaigns could be made. b: I'd like planets to be resizeable c: Resources specifiable d: Gravity well size specifiable e: Specify z-coordinates for planets. f: And so forth...
2: Automatic map downloading for multiplayer games.
3: More use of the z-axis- the bulk of sins gameplay is sadly 2 dimensional.
4: A little more battle chatter would be nice- It doesn't have to be global, as you shouldn't hear battle chatter from across the galaxy, but certainly if there's a local conflict going on. Same story for sound effects- vary explosions and unit responses a bit more.
5: Tone down the bright backgrounds a bit, some of them are just too much.5a: Inversely, make the effects and laser fire more intense. I can't play Vanilla because half the time I can't tell what's going on.6: Reduce the range for drawing everything in the stars gravity well. This is a killer late game on _small_ maps with planets/etc. close to the star.
7: Try to keep the multiplayer community as cohesive as possible.
8: Try to avoid patches that break mod compatibility and replays.
9: 64bit executable. Don't care if you use DX10/11 or not, but a 64bit exe would be just swell.
Of your list, this is the only one that I think is realistic (not that I wouldn't like to see the others, I just don't think they're happening). Being able to specify the resource levels would add much more control to galaxyforge. Especially with uncolonizable gravity wells, it would be nice to finally have some control over what actually ends up there.
For that matter, militia are just as big of a wild card, and some control would be nice there.
Unfortunately, the z-axis is largely used for exploits like going over minefields or getting into a starbase's blindspot. The actual game itself is played mostly in 2D precisely because there's no mechanical reason to play in 3D, and it would take a substantial change to the gameplay mechanics (which isn't happening) to change that.
Nice ideas Darvin.
Few things on my list:
Make empire tree stationary so I can click on units and give them commands from tree.
Would like to see more planets and planet upgrades maybe even structures.
More useful research tecs.
New ships are nice and add a new dimension to the balance abyss.
Faster starting options for shorter mp(start with more ships,planets,ect).
Population should be much more important(pop=faster production,research,income).
Maybe a morale affect like culture.Ways to affect other empires morale(spies and propaganda).Morale has effects on your empires productions.
Much more mp support.Give people reason to try out mp.
Documentation, and/or a detailed tutorial on how to use Galaxy, and Particle Forge (for the new players).
Incorporate TSOP (shameless plug).
Fix the ship pathfinding so they dont constantly run into, and get stuck on asteroids, and other large objects.
Fix the fleet mechanic so that ships waiting for the fleet leader to jump in dont sit still getting shot up, and destroyed while waiting. Make them at least shoot back while they are waiting for the fleet leader.
Allow me to explain myself, I just have a scenario in my head of what would happen, take a 5v5, one guy builds one of these 'Mega weapons' and then imagine what I do, 5 fleets, 5 starbases, one gravity well... Good luck? Why leave your fleet anywhere else? Who needs the rest of your empire when all you need to do is hold what is essentially the most well defended choke point known to Sins-kind?
Just so I'm not a total ass, I do like your Domination victory idea!
First of all, "rush the mega-weapon" isn't necessarily as simple as it sounds. You have to survive long enough to build your economy to that point, and presumably the economizers will need to feed. The overall team's efficiency will have a substantial impact on how quiclky you can bee-line for it.
Second of all, an "all in" offensive against the target gravity well by the attackers is just as feasible as the all-in defense.
That said, I'd agree this wouldn't be my game-mode of choice in a 5v5.
I want option so that my fighters will only fly around its carrier.
Yeah, a defensive option would be good, where ships cover one another, such as flak frigates covering the other ships rather than bunching up or going after other ships. It would eliminate some micro though, so some wouldn't be happy.
Given that Sins is supposed to be much less micro-intensive, would be a nice change. Also unlikely, sadly.
I think there should be a limit on the number of titans a player is allowed to have at any given time. Even better would be if there was an option in the game settings for it.(ex No Titans, 1 Titans, 2 Titans, etc) This would also provide justification for making them extremely powerful.
For Titan durability, flat damage reduction for hull damage might be a good idea. This would mean that the dps of every unit firing on it is reduced by a set amount. This would really limit the ability of weaker units to damage the titan and let units with more powerful attack(ie capitals) be a natural counter. The damage reduction should only be to the hul though so other units will have a roll in fighting the titan( dropping shields so the capitals can damage the hull).
I think using a hybrid system of capital leveling and starbase upgrades would be interesting. Titans would level up like capital ships but would select starbase-style upgrades with their ability points. If the higher level upgrades were locked by research, then titans could be built starting mid-game but only get extremely powerfull in the end-game.
For combat ability, I agree with the idea that titans should be able to swat strikecraft and frigate swarms but go down to capital fleets. The best way to do that is to let the titan target a lot of units with its secondary weapons(something like 10-15 or even higher). If this is combined with the ability to upgrade titans then a weapon bank upgrade would help. Titans should have a primary weapon that is designed for anti-capital combat but it should only be able to target one ship at a time. The anti-capital weapon should also be only on the front of the titan so flanking it with capitals is a viable tactic.
A Titan Mode would be nice: Every player starts with a titan and lose when their titan is destroyed. Titans in this mode could have special rules(such as starting with all titan specific research being completed).
All you'd need for ships to follow each other is a specific follow option, set manually and distinct from fleets. Other than something like Supreme Commander or the older Age of Empires 2, you normally don't see that level of formation or pattern setting. Sup Com in particular let you set up advanced series of orders for units, such as automating ferrying services for slow land-based units with different aerial transports.
The best you can do as a workaround during specific battles is to tell the ships in question to move back and forth between two target ships. As the two target ships move about, they delay the the ships following them, keeping the followers close at hand for a long time. Many battles in Sins are slow enough for you to identify and shift-click different behaviors into the ships as needed.
I realize this is not a huge addition to gameplay but it would be cool to actually see upgrades for all ships (or even just capitals). For example, if you upgrade beams, they change color, pattern. If you upgrade armor, you actually see it on the ships. Damage effects could use an upgrade too.
This is a great idea and it would be very satisfying seeing an obvious visual change with upgrades.
It would allow players to gauge how high enemy tech is too without memorizing all the values.
I don't want to see Titans vulnerable to bombers; they're already good enough. You should need cap ships or cruisers to even have a prayer of taking down a ship that big, small craft should do little more than dent it. Would also shake up the normal fleet dynamic.
Capitals are theoretically a late game counter to lighter ship classes.
This is sadly not the case.
Adding an even larger combat focused capital will have one of two potential effects:
1) Caps are even more relegated to the background (pounded by small ships and titans)
2) The titan is useless (too weak to counter the horde)
Unlike most of the other posters, I'm a big fan of the strike craft focused meta. So I don't think that Titans should be immune to strike craft.
But I do agree that caps and titans need a better defense against larger fleets. After all, a percentage reduction isn't all that useful against many small packets of damage, and fleet sizes and FF being what they are, those packets will be overwhelming in short order.
So I'd suggest a flat armor based damage reduction of -X to every incoming packet of damage (ignored by bombers) for all caps and titans, which happens after (not before) damage is throttled by the anti-FF mechanism.
Meanwhile, standard combat frigates should receive limited engagement capabilities vs strike craft, and a slightly higher armor level against them and against caps.
At this point, a pleasing symmetry emerges. Strike craft counter caps, who counter cruisers, who counter frigs, who counter strike craft.
And then there's the titan. Rather than creating a massive damage pooping monster, I'd suggest a vessel with mostly support capabilities, dps and armor slightly higher than the combat cap, and an ultimate that did enormous amounts of damage to starbases (and ONLY starbases).
The way I see it, the game has gone too far in the direction of unbeatable defense. It's not impossible to break a defender, but it is possible for unbreakable positions to emerge. Having a ship that won't really change the fleet battle -- but slaughters the fixed defenses -- is a good means of eliminating that potential for stagnation.
I'm not sure how to handle the corvette. If it's a smaller frigate, it's a useless ship. If it's a larger strike craft, it's probably an alternative to the bomber and fighter that is slower, punchier and in a smaller squadron.
It could also be used for espionage stuff, I suppose, but it just doesn't seem likely to add all that much to the game.
Suggestion for a Titan Ability:Upon being built, the Titan will emit an aura that affects nearby computers so that the game will instantly support up to 8 core processors and 196 GB RAM.If the Titan gets destroyed, you're back to square one with 2GB RAM limit and single core.This way, people would be very careful about exposing the Titan to a firefight they can't win ^^
And if you know that your opponent is going to beat you, you can move a huge fleet into their grav-well and focus fire on the Titan. If the gamble pays off, their framerate hits rock-bottom and the game crashes. So you don't lose. Technically...
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