how so?

there are no inconsistancies whatsoever. in fact, the game goes beyond the lore within the same vein

they feel PLENTY alien, just not what you were expecting. if you think the way they collected resources is a form of diversification, or the way they construct buildings, or even the ratio of resources to money is "more alien" ... haven't I said this before?

when i read about the vasari i was thinking umm they would have like 1 ship that can take on 4 tec ships and the tec ships would out number them 4:1 = an even fightish. but this is not the case. Anyway the vasari are still more powerfull 1v1 against the tec but i was expecting them to be more expensive and more powerful. Maby double shields and double price or somthin

The mandate upgrade is not overpowered. Yes, it's a massive boost, it's 12 civ labs massive. You do actually have to build all that shit after you get the building space, it's not like you all of a sudden added 20k credits and several thousand resources in infrastructure. You spent a fortune and invested heavily in civic research to get a heavy boost to your production power. Vasari get a 20% fleet increase and phase gates at 9, both more powerful additions.

Yarlen, thank you for chiming in, despite giving validation for Schod's beliefs.

My problem is that the TEC are listed as "primitive" and even the Beta when you play the Vasari shows a screen saying that the TEC have no organization or military technology.

So for the TEC to be presented as a "brute force" while the Vasari are made some finesse race really blows myself and many other players away as to what we expected and wanted from the game.

In the end, it's your game to design. It's our dollars to spend as we see fit. For those who pre-ordered, like myself, it's a disappointment. But I guess we've all grown used to having to get mods to make many games enjoyable lately.

So I'll look at this as purchasing a nice gaming engine and pickup various mods to play it the way I want.

Yarlen, you broke my heart, and now SINS is going to lose a member of its community...










































*stabs Schod threw the heart with the mighty spork of doom*

Yarlen, thanks for weighing in on this issue; one of the things that's always impressed me about Sins is the general availability of the devs.

With regard to the issue at hand, it seems that a lot of people expected the Vasari to be extremely powerful individually, balanced by a lack of numbers: specifically, much increased resource and fleet capacity costs. I don't really see that this is incompatible with them being a more finesse-oriented race, in the manner that you've stated. I think that most people would agree (though clearly I can't speak for them) that what they want is a balance where one-on-one a Vasari warship will decisively defeat its approximate TEC counterpart -- but the TEC will always have superior numbers of ships, such that resource-to-resource the Vasari can't quite stand head to head with their enemies. The Vasari are technologically superior, but their population is very limited, and losses should hurt them far more than they hurt the entrenched, numerically-superior TEC.

For example, imagine that the Vasari Devastator could reliably bring down a Kol battleship and a small-to-moderate fleet of escorts in a straight-up fight, and survive to run and repair itself. But that Devastator would cost 60-80 fleet cap (probably 60, since you need to be able to build a flagship at game start) and significantly more resources than the Kol, such that the TEC need never send a single Kol against a Devastator -- unless their Vasari opponent outsmarted them and struck where they were weak. Perhaps training upgrades also become more expensive for the Vasari, so that losing a warship with an experienced crew becomes even more painful. This balance can also come down to the frigate level -- perhaps the Transporter carries two squadrons, but costs twice as much in resources and fleet capacity as it does now, for example. (Note that all numbers are pulled out of thin air, and not indicative of actual balance calculations. )

I think this sort of solution would satisfy both sides of the argument and, as one of the devs has pointed out elsewhere, be relatively easy to implement. LordKosc has more or less already done so in his Vasari mod, in fact. I do have to say that I'm extremely impressed with the way the game has been shaping up so far; it's eating up far too much of my free time (and sleep time) even as a beta.

Heh, thanks, Annatar11. I have to admit, I was pretty surprised when the Vasari capships cost the same as their TEC counterparts -- I expected a straight-up 50% increase in resource and fleet capacity cost. I was definitely expecting few, powerful units, and I think that's the root cause of discontent here: the Vasari don't FEEL like an ancient, powerful race. It's the sort of thing that probably won't change their playstyle much, if at all, to fix -- they'll still have to use finesse to evade the vast, primitive fleets of their TEC enemies, they'll just seem stronger while they do it.

I am obese, I bounce when I hit the bottom and survive

you know what is sorely needed? a "wipe out all grav wells between here and there" button, also a patrol button would be cool.

additionally I would like there to be a visual shield accompanying the phasic barrier

finally the ability to switch some abilities between "spam when not in battle" "spam in battle" "dont spam" and "spam continuously"
by spam I of course mean autocast, a great example is the kol level 6 thing (forget its name) would allow continuous antimatter regen.

the bonus is a bit op, but then again the Vasari need to be brought down a notch at later tech levels to, so I'm not too concerned about it.

Clearly the Vasari are not what people expected them to be... That doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with them. I admit that I was somewhat disappointed when I first tried the Vasari and discovered that the basically had all the same ship and building types as the TEC. Then I realized that there are certain roles that need to be filled for either faction to have any real chance on winning and there's really no good reason to be have radical differences. Also, there are significant differences between the factions once you get into tech trees a bit.

I really think people are over-reacting to this whole thing, it's space combat, there really only so many ways to go about it. That being said, it wouldn't hurt to differentiate the frigates and structures a little more. I'm not worried about it though, the devs have done a great job so far in reacting to player input and improving the game. So just be patient, try to make constructive suggestions for the devs and quit arguing like six year olds on the playground.

Bombers are the bane of vasari.

TEC can almost combat massed bombers, but vasari capital ships are relegated to back seat driving and defense. No shield regen, weak repair capabilities in general, and no instant boosters. They also have no anti-fighter mechanisms like the akkan. The jamming ability doesn't seem to have much range at all if it works. Fighters need to actually accomplish something instead of just killing them. Even if you have twice as many fighters and flak frigates on top of it, 20 bombers will drop a level 10 capship just fine. It kinda sucks. Maybe make them evade fire or something when engaged by fighters and stop bombing? They aren't really countered, just slowly killed, so nothing can be safeguarded as vasari unless it's just not used to start with.

Here is my conlcusion about the Vasari-

Its clear now that the Devs don't want to produce the unique and varied model for balance, thats fine, its a rarity, I think it is vastly superior to what they are doing, but its fine, most games don't do it, and I don't expect the extra (more like Gigantic) effort from a new and small company.

So, fine, no true nomadic race, I even don't care too too much about making the ships more powerful...

But what would make them feel much more advanced would be to reorganize their tech tree... if they are so advanced why is phase gates level 9? I think instead their best techs should be early on, allowing them to seem very powerful in the early phase of the game, but having less ships hurts them enough that it wont be too imballanced. The TEC would 'catch up' technologically throughout the game, while the Vasari advantage from technologies would drop off significantly...

Phase Gates should be level 3, but make more mundane things like Hangars, 4 or 5... and so forth. That will give them a very advanced feel, and reducing their early game vulnerabillity, but without really making them the 'protoss'.