I have been playing Sins since it came out and here are some thoughts I have for future changes. I have been using the mods and made some changes of my own that have worked welland I wanted to present them to you. I would like to say that Uzii's, Aequitas', and Sky_Line Hun's mods are all great and the basis for most of these ideas and comments. I need to preface these ideas/comments with the fact that I always play TEC so income has never been a problem once a few colonies are up and running, and I only play LAN games with friends, not multiplayer online.

Units / Structures

1. I have made the capital ships have 2x the firepower,+500 hull points, and +500 shileds. I left everything else the same, shields, repair rate, cost, experience, etc. the same. I did change the capital carriers to gain 1 squadron per level as well. This seems to work well while not changing the game alot. Takes more units to kill them and they are more valuable, more like a capital ship should be, but not too dominating.

2. I raised the fighter/bombers firepower by 1.5x this makes them more effective for planet defense.

3. I tried upping the squadrons per cruiser carrier to 2 but the game became nothing but fleets with 40 carriers in them and I didn't like it very much. I enjoy more unit variety and more ship to ship action.

4. Incresed the flak frigates range a bit to offset the fighter/bomber upgrade.

5. Incresed the phase jump inhibitors range to cover the gravity well, the construction time to 1200 seconds, and the inhibit time to 700% (straight from the Mars Effect). Maybe too much, but really makes scouting a necessity.

6. Incresed the defense platforms damage by 150 for all, decreased cooldown by 2/3, and incresed range by 10,000. It makes the defenses better and will slow attackers up. I think this works well with large maps where you fleets are very spread out but planets will still fall to a medium assault. I think these factors may be too much, but not by much. I don't think the game becomes a turtling contest, buttry these changes and see what you think.

7. the siege frigates can go back tto their V1.02 configuration since the planetary defenses have been upgraded.

Planets / Bonuses

1. I have been using Uzii's mod and I really enjoy it so adding some new types of planets and bonuses would be great.

Research

1. I like the longer research options in v1.03 the only thing I would like to suggest would be more topics or more sub-categories (i.e. like the Distant Stars Mod).

Pirates

1. I like the v1.03 setup but maybe include more options for different raid time settings and raid strength. Maybe two categories of options, one for raid time and one for strength.

Black Market

I really don't know on this one. You will always have a limiting resource, like crystal, and the v1.03 still has those they are just handled differently than 1.02.

Diplomacy

I don't really have many ideas here, sorry. I figure I am going to have to kill everyone anyway...

Multiplayer / LAN

When I first tried to set up a LAN game we could play for five minutes then the game would have a minidump on one computer or the other seemingly at random. I reinstalled, updated, made sure all the maps are the same etc several times. I then unchecked all of the anti-aliasing options and have not had a problem since (using v1.02 and 1.03). This might help some people out there. All of the computers have nVidia cards that are recent with the latest drivers. One is running in SLI however.

On a final note I would like to thank Ironclad and Stardock for the way you operate. Your attention to your customers is fantastic and your efforts to improve and continue to change the game experience is a breath of fresh air. I for one appreciate your efforts and patience. Thanks for your time. - J