Fixed the 'wall of text' problem I had after posting this from my iPod...sorry to anyone who had to witness that
What I mean by this is that the devs need to start listening to us players more, and opening their eyes to some of the great ideas we all have.
Let's face it guys. Sins is getting boring.
Since the game has been out for a few years now,(as with all games) it gets stale. Don't get me wrong, the Entrenchment and Diplomacy expansions and the mods have extended the awesome traits Sins brings to the table, but the game needs something new, something fresh.
Rebellion could change everything. With the new ships that Ironclad has confirmed, many new options could be added. The Titan class vessels could easily change the course of any battle, and the Corvettes have a ton of potential, as someone in another post had said. But there's some things I have read recently (and new ideas of my own) that I would like to see implemented in Rebellion or the inevitable sequel to the epic RTS experience that is Sins of a Solar Empire. First off, I have read about the idea of supply lines for ships. I didn't agree with the idea entirely, but to some degree I do. There shouldn't be supply ships that constantly have to refuel and replenish ammo, but maybe antimatter ships that could refill antimatter. The big place this could fit in would be repairs. When a ship is being repaired at the repair bay, the bay itself is using up it's antimatter to rebuild the battered ship's hull. But if there were antimatter ships roaming the galaxy from dedicated facilities, they could replenish the bay's supply and repair the ship faster.
This brings me to another thing: dry docking ships to a repair station. We all know that after a long engagement with the enemy, it takes forever to get a ship back to full health. But what if you manage to get the ship out to one of your planets, only to have an enemy fleet jump in after it? It's doomed. But--if you had a dedicated repair station to house the vessel for a minute or two, it would be back in ship shape (no pun intended) for the next fight. Of course, while docked, the ship would lose all combat capabilities and be immobile. But the bay it is in would be heavily armored, assuring its safety.
The weakness here would be that the repair bays must be supplied by a third party delivery of antimatter to function, not like the bay I mentioned above. They would be a different structor altogether from the repair bays we have now, being able to house a capital ship or a few frigates or cruisers. Titans wouldn't be able to fit, but they're probably so large and heavily armed and defended that if one is so badly damaged it has to retreat, you probably have lost anyway.
Another viable method to destroy these facilities would be an ability bombers could have. They would fly into the front of the bay, releasing their payloads as they go, then scream out the other end with a glorious jet of flames and shrapnel following them. A way to balance this out would be that the squadron flying through the repair bay would have to fly a certain distance perfectly straight without being hit too much in order to accurately fly into the opening. So you would want to defend these structures with fighters and flak. This would be so epic to watch, even for the owner of the repair bay. The antimatter ships could also go to other structures as well, providing it where needed. Eventually, through research, an antimatter ship could dock with a cap ship and drop off a cache of reserve antimatter to be used later. The possibilities are extraordinary.
There's also another thing that kind of bothers me: that lack of any weapons on carrier cruisers. I'm not saying that they need a ton of guns bristling off the sides of the hangers, but come on. What modern day aircraft carrier is unarmed? None. They're actually far from it, most having a ton of missile defense systems and anti-aircraft guns. But I'm not asking for much. I mean colony frigates have a laser battery! Ships that aren't even designed for combat have weapons! Don't give it too powerful of weapons, but at least a ship-to-ship cannon or two and a few AA guns.
Another new idea I read was the concept of ship carrying vessels. I love that idea! Imagine an immense ship capable of carrying 30 or so frigates or 5-10 cap ships. They would be completely unarmed but heavily armored. That would be such an epic sight. Of course it would be kind of impractical, but it could serve a role. Maybe they can't phase jump. But maybe they can, and are really, really, REALLY slow and must come to a complete stop to unload the ships one at a time. I don't honestly know what the devs could do with this, but they could make it work at some point if they liked the idea. It is sort of impractical, but what the hell.
Anyway, moving on to the Titan ships. Hopefully they will do something like this: For each race there will be two types of Titans, War and Economic. War Titans will be combat dedicated vessels, teeming with weapons of every shape and size, from flak cannons to rail guns, and housing squadrons of strikecraft. Eco Titans will be almost like a mobile civilization, acting as a trade and population center, with a few basic defended and a ton of armor. They will provide culture and income bonuses (or hindrances if enemy) to the planet it is currently at.
This would fit into each race's canon quite nicely: For one, each faction needs more firepower, so that covers the War Titans. How they each do it however, is unique.
-TEC War Titans are loaded to the max with weapons. They have a massive gun mounted on the prow of the ship, with dozens of flak, laser, missile, and auto-cannon batteries on the sides. They also have front mounted beam weapons similar to the Kol's.
-The Advent are known for their strikecraft, and their War Titan is capable of housing over two dozen squadrons of them. They have Illiuminator stye beams on the sides, and plasma, anti-air, and laser batteries on the sides, and a whole host of special Advent-style abilities to boot.
-Vasari have mastered the art of phase manipulation, and with a vessel this size they now can jump the ship virtually anywhere. They also have the ability to produce ships out of the Titan, and to repair nearby vessels.
As for the Eco Titans:
-The TEC are always looking for a way to profit, and these would do just that, granting special resource and credit bonuses for them.
-The Advent try and spread their culture in any way possible, and these would give them bonuses in that, as well as a decrease in build time for structures and ships in the grav well.
-The Vasari have been running for so long that they are bound to have mobile "planets" so to speak. They get a tax income bonus and damage increase for nearby ships and static defenses.
The catch of all these special abilities is that they require a lot of antimatter to function. In order for the abilities to be used effectively, an antimatter ship could resupply it, or you could simply wait for the antimatter to refill itself, which takes a ton of time that you probably don't have. On the other hand, the Titans would have a huge pool of antimatter to use, maybe 500 to 1000 at max. But each resupply craft would only carry 50 at first, up to 200 with research, so it would take time to fill back up.
There's also a lot of ideas that the community wants, such as new planet types, new ships, more customization, planet weapons, invasions, ground combat, and so much more. I just listed some of the things that appeal to me the most, but there's a ton more. I posted this in hope that the developers would consider these ideas, along with all the other great ones here on the Sins forums, because there's some great stuff here. If they put even half of it in a game or expansion, it would be a hell of a game, and something we all would probably love and play for years to come.
/rant
Whats the lady with the spear from?
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2008/07/comic_movie_news_trifecta_the_magdalena_y_the_last.php
I have absolutely no idea what exactly this is...I originally found the image searching for "warrior woman" or something like that...
It appears to be from Top Cow's warrior-nun-esque series The Magdalena
woman who discovers she’s part of a line of female warriors descended from Mary Magdalene who serve as protectors of the Catholic Church.
Will you please stop advertising that?
Which is easy enough to do on your own and there's no real need for them to monkey around with doing it. They'd need to make some kind of toggle for it, because many people would probably also prefer to keep them together, they would need to be able to teach the AI what to do with them, since at the moment the fleet takes care of itself when following the fleet leader.. all more hassle than it's worth for something that's trivial for a player to do.
Annatar, with respect I do not see what the problem is. They could do whatever they wanted with the AI, the AI is changed to accomodate the change or not. Who cares. I just like convenient management options. And I dont think it would be much hassle.
The problem is that they'd have to re-write the entire fleet system to do it. It's not worth doing for the convenience of saving you an easy few clicks of the mouse.
Uhm...if it weren't for the fact that they're making an expansion pack, none of the recent updates would have been "worth doing"...they already have our money, where's the incentive to continually make updates after the first couple months? There is none....unless you just care about making a good game...
Fleet management has been brought up before by many people....there may not be much consensus, but it is certainly worth taking a look at...especially if you play on faster speed, a lot can happen in the time it takes you to split your fleet into two segments well composed and defend two fronts...
What relevance does this have to anything? Every project has deadlines and a budget. It took a long time in the original Sins beta to get the fleet system to what it is. Would you rather they focus on the big points they promised in Rebellion, or have them waste time rewriting the fleet system for something as trivial (for the player to do) as putting your carriers in another fleet?
What's there to take a look at if there's no consensus? At this point, the only change that I think would be universally desired in terms of fleets would be to change what auto-join means (meaning, auto-join off on fleet means no ships join the fleet, instead of having to set it off for each ship that you don't want joining a fleet). And this is something I'm pushing for sure.
Also, I'm probably going to come off as a jerk for this comment.. but regardless of what speed setting you play on, thereis a pause function and orders can be issued while paused, so..
Adding resctrictions would be good in rebellion.
I would like to play a game without LRM's for example or no mines or no starbases or no envoys or so.It would add more user repeatatiility because you would be forced to play differently,say without LRM,or support cruisers.
Finally,adding newmodes like Death Match would be nice.Huge money ammounts at the start so as to begin en masse from start.
Also an option for full tech could be good,all players would start with full tech.Players who'd like not to tech,like me,but rather would like to focus on battle could really appreciate this.
Some RTS games have them,like SupCom,it would be good to see something like that in rebellion since rebellion is a standalone expansion,not an addon,it could change its formula a bit.
Thank you for reading.
Orilord
Pirates could easily be considered "trivial" since hardly any MP game has them and many SP games have them turned off...yet they got a pretty big overhaul in the last update (new entity files, new lines added in Gameplay.constants, etc.)...many other changes to specific abilities (missile barrage range decrease, better GRG, better Guidance, etc) are trivial, yet demonstrate Stardock's attention to quality and responsiveness to the community...
SD needs to rebuild credibility with a lot of people, and neglecting to fix issues with Diplomacy discourages people from buying Rebellion regardless of what Rebellion promises to include...better fleet management and ship scripting could be improved via updates or publicized as promised changes for Rebellion....either way they are spending the same amount of time on it, but making it as an update increases people's faith in SD and its ability to continually enhance the quality of sins...
This statement alone severely undermines your argument....you don't pause during an MP game to give orders to your ships...you don't...continually do it, and no one will every play with you again (and you only have 10 pauses anyway so better make em count)...
I don't know you or your history on ICO (or MP in general) but better/faster/more efficient fleet management would be greatly beneficial to MP where many games are on very fast speeds and you don't have the luxury of pausing...right or wrong, your statement indicates you come from a SP point of view...that's perfectly fine, but don't criticize people that come from a MP perspective for wanting features/improvements that do little for SP play...
OriLord, your suggestion for including limitations (like no starbases) is interesting though I have this inkling it won't get implemented (hopefully I'm wrong though)...
If you really enjoy the game without certain elements, consider making a mod (if you haven't already) that takes them away...it is not as convenient as Rebellion doing it for you, but more power to you if you can make your gaming experience more fun with or without SD's help...
So what about something that gives each player a few features from each race. I really like the TEC and it took me awhile to start playing as the other races. The most interesting thing I noticed from advent and vasari was there superpowers, and the vasari's phase nodes. But what I wanted to have phase nodes as TEC? I didnt actually get to try it out yet but the idea seems overpowered. Another idea would be that each faction gets a really super superweapon that combines the power of each. Just a thought. I just hope my money is worth Rebellion.
Again, you're missing the point. There is a huge difference between tweaking some entity files, and re-writing the fleet system. Admittedly, a good amount of people don't play with pirates. But in terms of workload vs payoff, it was a positive change. These were not difficult changes to make, and the ingame benefit is considerable. On the other hand, rewriting the fleet system so that carriers can stay behind is a lot of effort, for an incredibly tiny payoff - it only takes a few clicks to throw carriers into their own fleet which will happily hang out at the edge of the grav well if you so choose.
This is your personal opinion and that's fine, I'm not going to argue against it. But the reality is against this. They have limited time and limited budget, they are not going to undertake things which are a massive workload for little payoff. There are much bigger fish to fry for a majority of the playerbase. Such is reality.
Actually, no, it does not. My argument was for SP, because MP absolutely does not factor into this. It has always been the case for MP games that to get better you have to play better. If you're playing competitively, where apparently a second or two longer to split your fleet can make a huge difference, it should be up to you the player to get better at it - this is the core of competitive RTS (and why I mainly stick to SP). Otherwise, I believe you're rather strongly blowing it out of proportion.
It's fine to want features/improvements for MP, but at the same time these should be realistic. The MP population is small. The competitive MP population is even smaller. Realistically, they are not going to rewrite a core game system because you can't pause in MP.
Basically, what Anny said.
The devs LIVE.
*resurrects just long enough to kill yarlen, then dies again*
This is just one of many suggestions that have been provided for fleet management and scripting...better scripting for ship movement, better scripting for ability usage, more options for ability usage (beyond autocast simply on/off), better control over which/how ships join fleet, better control over rally points (like the ability to avoid pirate bases or select fleets instead of individual ships as rally points)...
This is more than just having carriers piddle around at the edge of a gravity well...this is an entire group of possible improvements (with several threads, old and new, devoted to it) that you are dismissing and could make the game better for SP and MP...additionally, these options inherently could make the AI better (as the AI could be programmed to use them with use new time parameters)...I have a hard time accepting this part of the game as "trivial" and some of it is comparable to things already done in previous expansions and updates (like adding constraints, ai use times, entity modifiers, etc)...
The point of expansions is to add new content and to improve current elements of the game...fleet management and scripting is a major element of the game that has the potential for massive improvement and additions...this is not to say that it's bad, this is simply to indicate it can be greatly improved by something like an expansion pack...
I'm going to paraphrase this statement..."There is no point in improving a game element for MP...everyone is on equal footing, so everyone has to deal with the same shitty elements making it all FAIR...nevermind that improvements might make MP games more tactical, strategic, or complex...nope, if you think a game element is holding you back, just remember all the pros have magically found a way to overcome it."
Now, that is not a fair or accurate paraphrase at all...but really, I have a hard time believing you wouldn't want improvements to the game simply because it will help all MP players equally...
The MP population is not small when you consider the total audience here...ICO population? Yes...but many of the people who actually buy the expansions and are even aware there are updates play or have played MP (do not underestimate how many people play LAN games)...and the best way to get new people on board with sins is to improve MP...
There are people who have no interest in "competitive" play yet enjoy MP and even start whole threads just to get people to play casual games with them...improvements to fleet management and scripting would certainly be popular to these people as well as SP players...I would also argue that competitive players would appreciate this as well...instead of clickfest/hotkey microing, having more broad control over your fleet would make tactical strategy deeper and more fun...
Ultimately, my biggest reason for wanting UI/AI/scripting changes is that these are things we modders cannot change...we can add factions, add stars/planets/moons, make ships, add factions, change the music, put pink ponies on each planet, but we can't change the AI, UI, or fleet management/scripting at a fundamental level...
Considering that better scripting/fleet management could also be utilized by the AI (which like many RTS is arguably sin's greatest weakest), I would say this is a very important issue regardless of what gameplay you prefer...
I have a hard time seeing how they are not related...from a programming perspective they may not be "related" but from a gameplay perspective they are...
Let's go with the option (though it is not one I much care about) of having a single button/toggle/something that tells all carriers "sit here at edge of gravity well"...
First off, this changes the UI (at the very least adding an extra action button)...second, scripting for the light carrier has to be programmed...third, the AI can be programmed to make use of this scripting when it attacks SBs...fourth, now the AI is more adept at assaulting fortified planets instead of having it carriers huddle around your SB...
One change to fleet management has the potential to make the AI better and solve one of the biggest problems with sin's AI (the inability to attack SBs)...
If a programmer from SD says "no, that's too much work and not worth it" fine...but I guarantee you that the AI's poor assaulting abilities is a well known problem that has been brought up by the community for quite a while...and this suggestion regarding carriers has the potential to improve that problem...
I'll give another example...good players like to micro their flak so that 2 or more weapon banks are hitting the enemy ship...imagine instead of having to micro flak, you could do this quickly and efficiently through the UI. How? I don't know, but it is a possibility...more importantly, the AI is not smart enough to make use of flak's multiple banks when countering LRFs, so a fleet management change that requires scripting again leads to a better and more effective AI...
I will not deny that such changes may be difficult...but if SD was not concerned about improving their game why the hell even bother with v1.2? Why have devs participate on these forums? We are talking about things that may appear in an expansion (which has hyped up to be bigger than entrenchment)...
Serious changes to the game (beyond adding/changing a couple entity files) were made with entrenchment...hell, Dark Avatar and Twilight of the Arnor made some serious fundamental changes to the GalCiv II: Dread Lords...we are talking about a company that has shown a willingness to invest a lot of time and energy in improving its games beyond small tweaks and additions...
If you don't want to continue expecting the same excellence from SD's future products, fine, but I will...
Now, I'm not going to go cry a river if SD doesn't change the fleet management or whatever for Rebellion...I'm not going to whine on these forums how SD doesn't care about it games anymore if ship scripting isn't completed redone...but honestly, asking for better scripting and fleet management options is not like asking for the game to be multi-threaded...is it a fair amount of work? Yes...is it worth their trouble? Maybe...could it improve a players game experience? Almost certainly (it certainly won't hurt)...
Maybe this post is more frustration than anything else...if the devs don't feel it's worth their time then they won't do it, but I'm tired of people getting all pissy (forum in general, not just this thread) because some small suggestion is "too trivial", "not realistic", or "unbalanced"...some of the suggestions we have seen are completely asinine and just plain stupid, but somebody somewhere took the time to join these damn forums, read them, actually think about an idea, and then be willing to throw it out there and be vetted by all the "pros" and "experts"...
I guarantee you if the devs shared with us all their ideas that didn't make it into the game, they'd come off as half-retarded...such is the process of brainstorming and thinking of ideas...
With that being said, maybe shooter23843's idea isn't the most brilliant, the most feasible, or the most important...but I wouldn't write it off as too impractical (considering the possible indirect improvements it could lead to), especially if compared to some of the things people expect to be changed in ICO (which has how many people daily?)
And no, you haven't been a jerk...so thank you...and maybe other people will learn to be as nice even when they think someone else is a few fries short of a happy meal...
Except... it's the programming part that matters in this case. It's changing a ton of different systems, not one or two.
Like I said before, it comes down to effort vs payback. They needed to do 1.2 to get the memory usage down so that they can actually do Rebellion, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to make any new toys. It was necessity. There are many ways to improve the game. Absolutely, adding extensive fleet control can only improve the game. But you have to consider the amount of improvement and number of people it improves it for (a lot don't use fleets, though you could argue that they might start if they were better automated - a bit of a gamble). There are literally hundreds of things they could do. But at the same time, they can't do them all, and they can't sell an expansion by tweaking stuff. Doing fleets will be a lot of work. The overall benefit is, in the grand scheme of things, fairly minor. Among all the improvements they can do, they do have to prioritize.
Umm... I think you are missing something. There ARE many threads old and new regarding what seleuceia just said. Im not actually sure what you mean. oops, guess he already responded to this... cant remove it. So I still am not sure what the issue was entirely... nevermind... disregard.
And I agree that though it seems like a trivial change and not worth it, the more user friendly management options there are, the less frustrating and tiring it is to play games like this. Splitting your fleets and turning them inside out or whatever, should be as easy as moving a chess piece (no chess is not easy) and will increase interest in games like these and make them more replayable. If I had a good console game to play right now I would be playing that so the point is im a little tired of sins, also because to fully get a challenge, I have to play on at least hard, and when I play hard, I have to work rapidly. And the idea about carriers was actually Aeon's idea.
What about tweaking a carrier's following distance within a fleet?
Instead of having them huddle around the capital ship perhaps they can form a separate line further back than the long range frigates? Perhaps that could provide a happy medium to keep them from kissing a starbase? Maybe set their follow range to match the range of an Ogrov Torpedo Cruiser? Since the flagship assaulting the starbase is not in the same position as the starbase, the carriers should be beyond the range of its weapons systems. That alone seems like it would help the AI greatly. And aside from Illuminators, long range frigates wouldn't need to change direction to blast light assault frigates if they zoom forward toward the carriers.
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