I totally agree with major stresse's points.

I think they didnt put all the AI power with the beta yet.

oh! I think these sliders would be great to have as option before you start a game:

Gamespeed
Economy efficiency
research efficiency
phase jump travel time


also I would rather see the larger ships (humans especially) to be more as "oldtime ships", where you turn around to give your enemy a broadside with your side mounted turrets.

With the help of some posters here I found the group phase jumping button (right click to toggle the move button). However on several occasions the group I ordered to jump together moved to the edge of the gravity well...and sat there for ten minutes until I gave up and changed the movement order back to the default setting.

There were no other units in system they could have been waiting for. What I think might have happened was that not all the units in the group had the group phase jump option selected. So they jumped immediately and the other units waited at the edge of the system for the already jumped units to join them.

I like the phase space lanes. Adding an option for short ranged non-phase space jumps sounds viable but please keep the phase space lanes. I know you contemplated earlier having planets orbit, perhaps having a beta version where we can see the planets orbit and either learn to hate or love it?

Oh and I saw the AI use scout frigates to ignore my inhibitors and attack the vulnerable rear of my systems (where I usually stash the inhibitors and the shield generators). Looking forward to seeing that option mentioned earlier to prevent this. For now I just add a gauss turret at the rear and that usually sees them off.

To repeat and summarize:
Larger gravity wells!
Different sized planets with different sized gravity wells!
Options for faster or slower research and phase jumps.
Options for higher or lower maintenance costs.
A chance to see orbiting planets! (Or at least leave the code there so when its released we can mod it in anyway.)
More fighters/bombers. (Perhaps not so strong)
Option to share research with allies.

Figured I should post my issue with Trade ship weirdness here.

ditto, my mouse clicking finger needs to rest too...

Wow guys! There are so many great ideas and valid concerns we can't possibly address them all right now, especially when we have to focus on technical issues at the moment. Please don't feel we are ignoring you if one of us doesn't respond to them. We are reading everything diligently and creating a massive suggestion list and assigning priorities to everything. Your comments will all get the attention they deserve.

I still think its valid to point out that many of the requests are pieces of the Sins puzzle that just didn't make it into the beta and a number of them are issues that are in the game that have been missed (which means we probably have to include more tutorials and make things more easily accessible). With regards to these two comments, I am extremely happy to see that some of the more veteran Sins forum members have taken on answering a number of the questions and giving out pointers.

Once again, thx for helping us perfect Sins!

Sorry I'm making separate posts instead of putting everything into one big one, but for some reason my Enter button isn't working in the editor, so I can't separate paragraphs. Anyway, I'm growing accustomed to playing the game from the Empire Box now, but it's still a little cumbersome. I think it would be nice if you would add an option to overlay the ship icons with the letters "C," "Fr," "Fi," and "B" to indicate each ship's general class (while retaining the "+" where appropriate to indicate upgradeability). Maybe you could do something similar with the structures as well, but that might be more trouble than it's worth. Also, since double-clicking an icon already selects and centers the camera on the unit, it would be helpful to make the game conform to the accepted Windows standard of list selection: Ctl-click to select multiple units out of the list, and Shift-click to select a range of units by clicking on the first and last.

I'd like to have hotkeys to filter a selection by ship class. For example, I could select my entire fleet (by whatever means), then press a key to cut that selection down to just the bombers, or just the capital ships, etc. Making it easy to issue orders by class. Or alternately, just have the key select all ships of X class at the current planet.

Orbiting planets could get tricky, you homeworld could go from being safe in your lines to the centre of the enemy quickly.

Maybe Gravity well sizes should change along with planet side, as in Terran Planets are bigger then an asteroid planets.

I also think that the Phase inhibitors should be toggled on/off like Interdictors in EAW.

I really don't like the beta's Phase Highway system. There should be no artificially forced space highways in the game. Okay, I've said it. My friends and I were really hoping that this game would use a movement system more like MOO or Rebellion for traveling between gravity wells.

The Phase Highway concept has been bugging me since I've started playing the beta. I've been quiet about it till now because the beta has a lot of potential in other areas. But if we don't say anything now about the Phase Highways, they will be guaranteed to be included in the final release.

Also, the developers really want to hear what we want. They don't want us to say "yeah, the beta is great" but then we don't buy the final release because we don't like it.

Games like Space Empires and Empires at War have their own versions of Phase Highways. The problem is that they kind of suck because of it. The concept of Phase Highways has been done to death in past games. Modders especially complain about them (check out the modding posts in the Space Empire Forums), because forcing players to use space highways mean that they can't make proper mods for Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, and so on.

In fact, the Phase Highway concept is used because game designers think that players need short term goals in order not to get bored/discouraged. They also think that the average player's intelligence can't handle too many choices at once. They really should acknowledgment that SciFi gamers are smarter than other gamers and that we would welcome more choice and potential.

Let's briefly examine how the game could work without using any Phase Highways and instead allowed ships to travel wherever they wanted to go. Of course, Phase Space itself should still be the means of traveling between gravity wells as it is a good game concept.


To see possible destination gravity wells in your home star system, Astronomy could become a researchable technology. The higher the level you have in Astronomy, the further your planets/asteroids/ships can see possible gravity well destinations.

Allies should share gravity well destination points. Hmmm, maybe you could even sell/buy gravity well destination points in the trade menu.

Stars should probably always be valid destination points regardless of your Astronomy Tech level, since they are so easy to see. Hmmm, you might make it so you have to jump to another star before you can initially see any of the planets in its orbit.

Some people might worry that defensive strategies without Phase Lanes would become impossible. This isn't the case. With sensors (and audio warnings), you can be warned of incoming enemy fleets as the beta already does. Allow the defending player to see the destination point of the incoming fleet. If they are trying to reach your inner planets by bypassing your outer worlds, you'll be able to send a suitable intercepting fleet to the contested system. Your fleet is going to be closer and so will arrive first.

If people have trouble dealing with multiple incoming fleets...well, they should have trouble sending interception fleets to deal with multiple attacking empires at once. Still, SoaSE has a good AI, and your ships can handle themselves while you are focusing elsewhere. So handling multiple incoming attackers at once won't be as fatal for you as it would be in other lesser games.

I suppose that Phase Space travel speed could be slowed down a bit if players find they have trouble organizing multiple defense and attack fleets. You might even allow a research tech that messes with Phase Space and slows travel through it. Or your ships might be allowed to travel a bit faster when traveling in Phase space inside your empire's borders (they would have a better grasp of local phase space conditions).


Please remove Phase Space Highways. Posters who've read this and agree with me, now is the time for you to speak up. They might be able to make a serious change like this now, but they won't be able to do it when the game nears release.

Hmmm, I should probably make a whole new forum post about this topic so we can see how many gamers feel the same way as I do. I suspect a lot of the posters right now are naturally more willing to praise than criticize...which speaks well for them.

Thanks DRavisher

Did anyone else think some of the completed research icons looking similar to the non-researched icons?

At a glance sometimes I can't make out if I researched an item. I had to hover the mouse over the research icon to read the text description. eg: refined lasers. Some of these icons have grey or dark backgrounds and thus can be mistaken that the research node has not been researched.

Another point might be that unresearched icons be greyed, semi-complete research to be partially colored (or have a small colored box in the icon to indicate the intermediate research level of that research node, and lastly a fully colored (and / or colored box in the icon).

To resolve the 'i can't find the enemy' problem of zoomed out combat, perhaps show 'tactical' icons of the ships (ala Supreme Commander zoomed out mode). It need not be detailed, but sufficient to differentiate that the unit is either a frigate, a capital ship, a defensive or support structure etc. so when we see it on the larger inter-system zooms, at least we can have a rough gauge on the units present in a system.