WHIPperSNAPper2008

Join Date 03/2008

+126

Next Patch -- what needs to go into it?

Is it too early to begin talking about what needs to go into the next patch?

I'd like to see a fix so that Entrenchment keybinds and regular Sins keybinds don't compete with one another. Both games access your uimappings.setting file but use different versiions of the file which are incompatible with one another. So if you have it set up for Entrenchment, Regular Sins will overwrite it and give you the default--making you reset your keybinds for both Regular and Entrenchment. (I have mine set for Entrenchment and locked to Read Only so I at least don't have to redo it for Entrenchment every time I load Regular, however I do have to do it for Regular every time.)

One solution would be to change the names of the files with the next patch so that Regular and Entrenchment have their own keybindings file. (Perhaps the Entrenchment version could be called uimappingsENT.setting.)

Ideally, since you cannot see and seamlessly join Regular games from Entrenchment and vice-versa, I'd like to be able to have both open at one time so that I can see the games for both without having keybind problems.

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^This, most certainly.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

Is it too early to begin talking about what needs to go into the next patch?

1) Construction of ships and structures stops without having to do so.

Reasons: You are upgrading the planet or fleet and start building. Instead of using up the present limit, all construction will be stopped once there are more structures/ships in the queue than this limit, thus construction can stop without even using a single point of the current available limit, waiting for all upgrades to be available.

This results in users having to do much micromanagement and also makes the domination ability useless as it will automatically stop ship production once it's activating! Furthermore, the code already does have the proper checks, it's simply not using them! Thus this should be a 15-minute fix (time including the time required to test it).

2) Phase Stabilizers need to be made working or removed and some working special added for Vasari. Having something that won't work is pretty annoying.

3) Planet upgrades should be handled the same as research, structure building and fleet building: They need to follow the order in which they have been clicked! There's no other way than to see the current behaviour as erroneus design.

4) The missing "Automatically rebuild lost structures" switch

...and really, the game should be updated to multithreading. I simply won't buy Entrenchment if vanilla Sins and it's expansions won't have it.

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PLEEEEEEASE fix the annoying Kol graphic error where the left beam cannons is missing a texture file making it tranparent.

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This isn't a fix, it's just something that would be nice to have, and would fit in with other aspects in which the game works.

You should be able to right click mining (resource mining, not "boom!" mining) on a new planet and have it build all of them automatically (autocast), rather than have to click each time. Someone might say "are you too lazy to do 3 clicks man?" It's not that, it's that often there isn't the money right away to buy all of them at once, and I don't want to have to remember to keep coming back to "babysit" queueing up the mines when more critical things are happening, like fighting my opponent.

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I'd like to see an option to customize the autosave option, every 2-5-10-15-20..etc minutes.

When it crash, the game tend to crash always 14.59 minutes or so from the earliest autosave (I'm lucky isn't it?), turning the option to be useless and forcing you to manually save every 2 minutes (I'd set it 2 or 5 for me).

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Fuzzy Logic

Join Date 05/2002

+496

1) Move phase jumps to the bottom of the empire tree so it doesn't jump up and down

2) Stop scouts heading directly for pirate bases once the base has been discovered

3) Have the AI prioritize seige frigates when entering a neutral gravity well instead of going for flaks so I can colonize the planet without micromanagement.

4) Make the AI tougher, and get it to create more caps.

5) On large maps the drop down list of income should be scrollable, so you can see all your planets' resource incomes, instead of it being cut off at the bottom of the screen.

I can think of lots more things but my brain is slow today...

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how about a side bar that can be shrunk for the planet displays, I cant stand it when Im in the middle of a battle and have to keep moving the screen to successfully micro my fleet. Because the planets and the little squares get in my way.

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Quoting Fuzzy Logic,

reply 6

2) Stop scouts heading directly for pirate bases once the base has been discovered

Good idea. Also, as soon as they discover that it's the pirate base, have them automatically jump back out or cut a short corner to another phase lane to reduce their time in that grvity well. Perhaps scouts could be allowed to auto-explore through the pirate base but only if they're going to quickly cut across a corner to another phase lane.

4) Make the AI tougher, and get it to create more caps.

This seems like a contradiction--make the AI build more capital ships which it doesn't know how to manage properly so that you can focus fire them to death--while also making it tougher? If anything, the AI needs to focus less on capital ships. When a defeated opponent quits an online game, I just blow up their caps and the AI desperately pumps out more. It might be better to instead have the AI build fewer seige frigates, fewer light frigates, fewer capital ships, and more LRMs or heavy fighting cruisers and a few more flaks.

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Create an option to allow players to tell frigate factories what settings newly "birthed" ships should have in terms of the auto-join fleet and most importantly, attack range settings.

One of the areas that adds micromanagement to the game is having to instruct each new ship that it needs to set its attack range to "Hold Position" and to not Auto-Join fleets. I normally do end up just selecting all of my ships and resetting the attack range to "Hold Position", however, I still find that sometimes not all of the ships received the order. An enemy scout or fleet will come into the gravity well and the ones that are set to full attack range leave my fleet and begin to chase after them. I dub them as being the "retaded ships" since they are suicidally leaving the safety of the mother fleet and then I micromanage them back to the fleet.

Proposed Solution: Let players click on a factory and assign it attack range and auto-join fleet settings with all those settings applying to every ship birthed by that factory.

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Fuzzy Logic

Join Date 05/2002

+496

For those of us reading this from other sites, can you not post in yellow, it doesn't read well against white

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Perhaps a line in the entity files for ships on AI priority? Would be easily changeable for both patches and mods.

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Allow AI to use level 6 Capital ship abilities. Would make single-player that much more better.

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3) Have the AI prioritize seige frigates when entering a neutral gravity well instead of going for flaks so I can colonize the planet without micromanagement.

You're using light frigates, aren't you? The reason light frigates prioritize flaks is because they get a damage bonus against them. This is reasonable enough.

4) Make the AI tougher, and get it to create more caps.

How about using its caps more effectively? The problem isn't that the AI doesn't make caps, but rather that it uses them horribly and gets them killed. This is indicitive of its entire playstyle, unfortunately.

Allow AI to use level 6 Capital ship abilities.

I rarely see AI capital ships actually survive long enough to get these abilities, but otherwise yeah they need to use all their abilities intelligently.

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In distant stars, they made marza autocast missile barrage. Well, i got my ass kicked by the ia in a battle for the first time in a while.

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Fuzzy Logic

Join Date 05/2002

+496

You're using light frigates, aren't you? The reason light frigates prioritize flaks is because they get a damage bonus against them. This is reasonable enough.

No, I use a single Akkan. I turn off colonize autocast. Then I manually get it to remove seige frigates so I can colonize asap. If you don't do that, the Akkan will auto colonize, and then only attack the seige when it starts bombing the planet. If there is more than one seige then the planet will be lost...

Plus, the quicker I colonize, the quicker I can get that planet's economy going. Left to itself, the Akkan will go for flaks first. Once I've got rid of the seige and colonized, the Akkan can do what it likes...

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Then don't leave it just to the Akkan. The AI is never going to get to the point at which it will be able to pull of a lightning colonization operation, you'll have to do that yourself. It's not like there's very much else to do in the early game...

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Pbhead

Join Date 12/2008

+77

Quoting Screet,

reply 2

quoting post
Is it too early to begin talking about what needs to go into the next patch?

1) Construction of ships and structures stops without having to do so.

Reasons: You are upgrading the planet or fleet and start building. Instead of using up the present limit, all construction will be stopped once there are more structures/ships in the queue than this limit, thus construction can stop without even using a single point of the current available limit, waiting for all upgrades to be available.

This results in users having to do much micromanagement and also makes the domination ability useless as it will automatically stop ship production once it's activating! Furthermore, the code already does have the proper checks, it's simply not using them! Thus this should be a 15-minute fix (time including the time required to test it).

2) Phase Stabilizers need to be made working or removed and some working special added for Vasari. Having something that won't work is pretty annoying.

3) Planet upgrades should be handled the same as research, structure building and fleet building: They need to follow the order in which they have been clicked! There's no other way than to see the current behaviour as erroneus design.

4) The missing "Automatically rebuild lost structures" switch

...and really, the game should be updated to multithreading. I simply won't buy Entrenchment if vanilla Sins and it's expansions won't have it.

Screet

1. umm... this is hard to understand... but what i think you are trying to say is not true at all.

2. they do work (most of the time)

3. they do folly the order in which they have been clicked (unless something is preventing it from building... in which it will get back to that as soon as whatever is preventing it stops being preventing... for example... tell it to build 3 hanger bays and 2 trade ports... but you dont have enough tatical slots... it will build the first hanger bay and then the trade ports... untill the tatical slot upgrade finishes... and then it goes back to the hanger bays.)

4. that would be nice... but its not a "bug" that needs fixing. its a feature... and something that would need to be left off else your constructor ships will start building junk while the enemy is killing it... build a trade port... pop... build the same trade port... pop... build the same trade port... pop...

It is almost impossible to upgrade a game to multithreading.

oh, and considering you dont have entrenchment... thats prolly your biggest issue right there.

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I agree with customize autosave intervals. My game always seems to crash 13 minutes since the last autosave. If you're concerned about hard drive space, just make it overwrite the last save,

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Hmm.....

Numero Uno: Fix the 1 Phase Lane Starts

This was supposed to be fixed a long time ago.

Numero Dos: Can we rebalance the neutrals? Plz?

Numero Tres: Can we stop the maps where sometimes it's full of planets and sometime's it's full of nothing but neutrals?

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Small thing: I did notice that "Scramble Bombers" is being autocast when the ship cannot launch strike craft (not too much of a problem for human players, but I'm sure the AI wastes antimatter on it).

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Quoting Pbhead,

reply 17

1. umm... this is hard to understand... but what i think you are trying to say is not true at all.

2. they do work (most of the time)

3. they do folly the order in which they have been clicked (unless something is preventing it from building... in which it will get back to that as soon as whatever is preventing it stops being preventing... for example... tell it to build 3 hanger bays and 2 trade ports... but you dont have enough tatical slots... it will build the first hanger bay and then the trade ports... untill the tatical slot upgrade finishes... and then it goes back to the hanger bays.)

4. that would be nice... but its not a "bug" that needs fixing. its a feature... and something that would need to be left off else your constructor ships will start building junk while the enemy is killing it... build a trade port... pop... build the same trade port... pop... build the same trade port... pop...

It is almost impossible to upgrade a game to multithreading.

oh, and considering you dont have entrenchment... thats prolly your biggest issue right there.

1) not true? Why does building of structures and ships stop all the time then? The support says it's not a bug but it's because there's more queued than the current limit - so it has to stop even without reaching that limit first...

2) They do work after many many minutes but not after construction - and only if I did not use stabilize phase space ability by the cap?!?

3) They do not follow the order. If I make one civilian infrastructure upgrade and then three military ones and then the remaining civilians, it will first upgrade the planet to full civilian infarstructure before beginning to upgrade the military one...thus I do have to micromanage this for every colonized planet.

About multithreading: At least in germany, the game is advertised as doing so. Thus I did expect that when I bought it - just to find out that it's only busy on one core. It's even not running satisfactory for large maps on a Core i7 975.

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1-Fix the empire tree so I can manage my fleets(I really think devs are watching from ICO as I try to select a ship and the tree jumps then they all laugh at me)

2-I think a few things could still use some tweaking(slight sc buff,need more ways to counter repulse mainly make some abilities outrange it like dunovs emp,vas hanger bay ability op imo,and more balance to sb rushing)

3-what ra,dirty,fuzzy,kitkun,and darvin said.

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Random maps need fixing.

Planetary upgrades do not build in the correct order.

The AI needs serious fixing. Specifically, siege frigates (AI insists on maintaining 5, and sending them in unprotected), capital ships (selection, usage of them, and ultimate abilities). AI still does not use superweapons. And AI does not research enough.

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When I make a specific grouping for my random maps, then, dammit, I'd BETTER get the groupings where I specify them! I SPECIFICALLY ask the map to have my homeworlds surrounded by at LEAST 1 ice and one asteroid, plus 1-3 others.

Longer Names allowed, plzkthx. There's so many names I've tried that are JUST one or two letters too long than what's allowed.

If the wave cannons upgrade can't be placed earlier in the tree, then at least bump up the Enforcer's attack strength. It still comes off mediocre when compared to the Kodiak and/or Crusader.

Speaking of the Crusader, maybe Ruthlessness should be allowed to stack, but only to some limit like 3 or 4 times. And even then, that's only if 3 or 4 Crusaders fire on the target.

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Fuzzy Logic

Join Date 05/2002

+496

I specify them! I SPECIFICALLY ask the map to have my homeworlds surrounded by at LEAST 1 ice and one asteroid, plus 1-3 others.

You can change the mapname.galaxy file to have as many planets/asteroids as you want. Just change what is highlighted below:

randomizerParams
    starPosOffsetRange
        minPercentage 10.0
        maxPercentage 15.0
    playerParams
        startingCredits 80000
        startingMetal 40000
        startingCrystal 40000
        homePlanetType "TerranHome"
        homePlanetStarRadiusRange
            minPercentage 1
            maxPercentage 1.1
        areExtraPlanetsColonized FALSE
        extraPlanetsMaxRadius 15
        extraPlanetsRadiusRange
            minPercentage 0.9
            maxPercentage 1.0
        extraPlanetGroupCount 2
        extraPlanetGroup
            minCount 1
            maxCount 1
            planetTypeCount 1
            planetType "Asteroid"
        extraPlanetGroup
            minCount 1
            maxCount 1
            planetTypeCount 1
            planetType "RandomIceVolcanic"

So you could put something like:

        extraPlanetGroupCount 2
        extraPlanetGroup
            minCount 3
            maxCount 3
            planetTypeCount 1
            planetType "Asteroid"
        extraPlanetGroup
            minCount 2
            maxCount 2
            planetTypeCount 1
            planetType "Ice"

You could also change the extraPlanetGroupCount and add a few groups

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