Right click on the movement icon to have your ships phase jump together. When in a phase jump all of your ships move at the same speed.

Double posting things -- or cross posting, as its sometimes called -- to different threads is generally a no-no!


Here is the thread you created with those observations.

@Yarlen & Kryo;
I don't know what bothered you so much. Ships have limited range and if you want a bigger range you can add ships that carry fuel. The limitations that this system bears add a strategic element to the game. The "dangers" Yarlen writes about are exactly the strategic elements I like. Getting stranded and destroyed etc. are things that you need to think in advance or bear the consequences. If that's not strategy...

And I'm pretty sure the players would get used to only traveling one system away from their lines very quickly if traveling further meant being stranded or huge upkeep.

That said I'm not at all trying to say that this is the only way a game should go. We've seen all sorts of lines connecting places in games and it is definitely no limitation to fun factor. It's just different. And limiting the range of travel (one way or another) through the lines would be advisable just as well. Steam roller effect works in all ways of travel...

Ironically , I liked the fuel management aspect of SOTS...

But it work mostly because it was TURN BASED, and you had time to plan such intricate details. In real time I don't want to have to worry about that stuff. Unless its dumbed down to the point where each fleet needs X number of support ships.

Not at all. What it does is graphically and numerically indicate the range of the fleet, calculating it depending on all factors involved (how many ships in the fleet, their original range and additional fuel-carrying ship). Really, I always knew when I'm sending a fleet with a one-way ticket. Why this wouldn't work in real time is beyond me.

Even if we were convinced this was a good thing, it's too late to make such a radical gameplay change now.

I am sorry for my spelling. Hi I must say your game is super. I have made many ship mods for sots and I just love making and customizing ships in games.

I would love this game so much more if it had the ship customization that Sword of the Stars has or something like it. Just being able to do that for the flagship alone would be just amazing, everyone would be able to give their empire a special flavor. For example, changing the way their flagship looks, making it out of different parts and weapons. Say you want the bridge or something that looks like it on the front or back of your flagship or say you want all the weapons on the front or on the side of your flagship. Something like that would make the game really addictive.

Also, you should add a battle cruiser and destroyer to the game. I love your game, I really do, but when super games are made customization is always left out, but if it's included then the replayability is endless.

A few more ideas and thoughts concerning gameplay.

1. AI Players should be less likely to ally with you if you've broken treaties in the past. So, if you betrayed/broke a treaty with an AI/Human player earlier in the game, the AI should be less likely to join up with you.

*Also, the AI you betrayed/broke the treaty with should be VERY unlikely to enter into another agreement with you.

2. AI needs to learn to keep its forces together strategically so you can't take on its fleet piecemeal.

3. AI needs to learn to keep its forces together during combat, so you can't take on its fleet piecemeal.

4. AI needs to learn to use focus fire.

5. Ships getting hit during combat should suffer some kind of accuracy penalty (weapon fire causes hull vibrations that throw off accuracy). This would help reduce the absolute power of focus fire tactics.

6. Damaged ships should suffer from reduced speed/maneuverability/weapon fire rates. This would make combat a whole lot more involving.

7. Large weapons should have a small chance of missing frigates (especially the scout/flak frigates). Maybe Cruisers could have a tiny chance of dodging the biggest weapons. Only Capital Ships should be hit 100% of the time.

8. Please enlarge the Gravity Wells 2 times for planets and 2-4 times for stars.

9. Strike craft need to have slightly faster speeds (especially the fighters).

10. Right now, having to jump through several stars to reach your destination star takes an insane amount of time (not worth playing it takes so long). Stars need to be 'fully connected' with all other stars in order to avoid this problem.
*I know Ironclad is anxious to avoid 'Whack-a-Mole', but that mostly applies to planets. Star-to-star takes so long to traverse, anyone with Radar Lvl 2 will see the enemy fleet a long ways away (complete with verbal warning). This leaves us with plenty of time to react = we are safe from 'Whack-a-Mole".

11. For the final modding tools, please include the ability for us to:

a.) mod in a fog of war/sight range within gravity wells
b.) make a single gravity well that holds a star as well as several fully functional planets/asteroids
c.) specify a range on the Phase Space Inhibitors.

12. If you leave a gravity well without docking your strike craft, they should be left behind to die. The present 'Super Zoom Speed' docking at the last second prior to Phase Jump is really, REALLY lame.


The rest here are just a couple of questions.

1. When do we see these Phase Missiles?

2. Does having more than 1 Trade Port/Orbital Refinery per gravity well provide any benefit?

1. You already do... just launch some LRM at a vessel preparing to jump out They'll follow it down the phase lane, however long it takes!

2. Yes. Each different trade port will host its "own" set of traders, as will refineries. The question for refineries is when do you have so many refinery ships that the mines can't keep them stocked

Glad to hear you're enjoying the game, Terran.   There won't be ship customization like that in Sins, as we felt it wasn't practical for a real-time game. However, you can customize capital ships with various abilities to give them a more personal touch.

Thanks for the thoughts, Paradox. Just wanted to say that #1 is already in the game as of the latest update, though may be tweaked further.  Items 2-4 will be improved as the AI evolves.  Since Ironclad's already established that targetting systems in the future are pretty much perfect, I don't think item 5 or 7 is likely.   I'm with ya on item 10.   Item 11 was answered in another thread already. Fog of War and single-gravity wells may be made possible for modding but are backburner items based on time/feasibility. Item 12 is how it was in Beta 1 (and pre-beta) - you always lost your fighters/bombers during jumps and basically never had them as a result. The current system may not be pretty, but it works (and that's better than pretty at this stage).

Phase Missiles: Probably not for the beta as they are not TEC technology.

Multiple Ports/Refineries per Gravity Well:  I think for refineries it's a matter of diminishing returns, but this is more of a Blair question.

Thanks Yarlen, if you haven't had your praise for the day then...Yay! All hail Yarlen the Wise.

Here is an idea for dealing with strike craft doing that annoying super speed last second landing when their carriers are jumping to Phase Space. Perhaps when you give your carrier the order to jump to Phase Space, strike craft should be FORCED to land as quickly as possible. If the Carrier leaves before the strike craft land, ONLY THEN should they be allowed to do the super speed landing.

What I am trying to avoid here is strike craft fighting it out/doing damage up to the last microsecond when the carriers leave the gravity well.

I also wanted to mention to other readers that accuracy versus target type is fully moddable in Sins. As it stands now, only strike craft stand a chance of dodging weapons fire.

Yes, but convincing you may add new strategic element to Sins 2!!!   

Take a similar idea, but instead of "forced docking" if the fighters don't get back in time, have it set up to either "wait for formation" untill the fighters arrive if "Jump as group" is selected, or leave them behind if "jump solo" is selected (since the difference between the two is, usually, the difference between "get the heck out now" and "jump to enemy planet!".

It would be nice to assign trade ships to trade with certain ports to attain maximum distance and maximum profit...

I like your idea Ron! Anything to get rid of the 'last second speed of light strike craft docking' thing they have going on in beta 2.

Carriers would have to wait for their strike craft to dock before being able to jump into Phase Space. Maybe an "Emergency Jump" toggle could be used to get carriers without waiting, but at the cost of all the strike craft that don't make it back in time.

But they produce them for free AFAIK. That's no penalty. Perhaps the craft should cost some money and/or resources.

"Ask me for anything but time."

Time is money

Yeah, I kinda like the 'Time' cost for strike craft. As it is, there is no need to make strike craft cost resources.

I hope Ironclad introduces more models of strike craft. The more advanced models should take longer to build to simulate the added complexity.

It would make for some interesting fast build/average versus slow build/awesome strike craft confrontations.

Ok, as long as time is significant enough to "hurt" the fleeing fleet.

Yeah, the more advanced strike craft should take a very long time to build

They're fighter craft. Depending on your definition of "very long time", ok, but there are limits. Something long enough to avoid "in combat replacement" as an option, but short enough to actually be able to fill a carrier with 'em.

Yeah, it would be nice if 'in combat replacements' were produced at a slightly slower rate then the game presently is set at. But I see what you mean about needing a decent strike craft build speed outside of combat.

I would like it if a basic fighter squad took 1-2 minutes to build, and advanced fighter squads took more like 3-4 minutes to build. I am assuming here that the advanced fighters statistics would be about twice as powerful as the basic models.

I dont really believe that "powerful" should be the term used. I think that advanced craft would be faster and more agile, allowing them to survive longer in combat. Adding more firepower is pretty much useless if Flaks can kill them at the same rate as normal fighters, adding survivability makes a fighter much, much more worth it.

Also, creating fighters/bombers should lower antimatter amounts, the amount being more to produce more complex fighters. This would solve the problem of in combat fighter replinishment, after the jump, most of the ships wouldnt have much antimatter left, making it hard to produce fighters and bombers. Conversely, a defending ship would have the antimatter and would be able to produce them faster.

There are a few points I'd like to see included, some of which I know have been said before me (which I won't repost), some which have likely been said before and some which I'd like to add...

- I think the research tree should 'grey-out' fully researched techs. When I look for new techs to research, I have to mouse over each one to ensure that I have researched them fully already or if there is more research required. It would be much easier to do this if the fully researched techs were grayed-out, as with future techs that lack resources or prerequisites.

- I'd quite like to see player-contructable jumps available to research and build. They'd probably require an outrageous number of tactical points (18/20?) and thus could only be built on certain 'worlds' and then, only if that world didn't use its tactical points on defences. Obviously you'd need to build 2 or more (on different planets) in order to set up a new 'jump'. Also, I think that the construction should be semi-permanent and by this, I mean two things: 1) it should take a great deal of damage to destroy and should not be scuttle-able; 2: If its orbited 'planet' is destroyed or changes allegiance, the jump should remain open and useable (still connected to the original owner's other jumps) for a short period of time (about 5 mins?).

- The ships move very slowly. I am often a little bored while I wait for things to happen, especially in the beginning when I have to wait for resources to trickle in and thus can't spend the extra time building things. I'd quite like an adjustable passage-of-time slider or something more to do while I wait. More research possibilities into things like sub-light engines would also be appreciated (actually, I'd like to see much more research across the board... research is fun).

- Perhaps the allegiance switch problem could be averted if sufficiently large fleets are in orbit around any planets that might switch. Perhaps linking the size of the planet's population with the number of ship slots required for the current fleet in orbit. For instance, a 200 population terran world would need 5 Captial Ships in orbit, until the planet's allegience can be brought back under control.

- The threats from dying nations becomes very irritating. I'd like to see them offering vasselage or something but most importantly, I'd definitely like their threats to stop.

- I'd like to see the pirates stealing resources ('money' in particular) during their 'raids' and I'd like to see them more concerned with escaping with loot than with sacrificing themselves for a little bounty. I'm not sure about them bombing planets either... it doesn't seem very 'piratey'.

- A long time ago, I played a game called "Conquest, Frontier Wars". The game was -in some ways- quite similar to Sins (not as pretty but definitely fun). One thing I did enjoy about the game was its admirals. I'd quite like an option to assign an admiral to my fleets when I make a new one using CTRL#. These admirals could then be given instructions in a seperate menu system allowing the player to set the admiral's general strategy. For example, Fleet 1's admiral could be told to await my instructions but engage enemies if they enter their current gravity well, while Fleet 2's admiral could be assigned to protect his Homeworld and the nearby worlds. If an enemy force is announced to be arriving in a nearby gravity well soon, the admiral could automatically move his forces to defend. An other general point that I'd like admirals to be able to attend to would be target assignments... It's far more efficient for my fleets to target individual ships, killing them one at a time, rather than damaging each enemy ship a little. I can do this target assignment myself of course but I think that the game should do it for me... Fleet admirals could be resonsible for this and for determining which target priority, too.
Additionally, something else that I do when I play but which an 'Admiral' could do instead would be the disengagement of ships when it becomes clear that they are taking too much damage and thus should use their faster engines to move out of range while repairs are performed (and while the other ships -with full shields and hull- deal with the aggressor in safety).

- I'd prefer it if the ships moved a little more spaceship-like rather than aircraft-like... so that they retain momentum until it is offset.

- Lastly (for now), I'd also like to see troop ships, allowing me to capture worlds (particularly so if the empire's race is the same as mine) rather than making me have to destroy them. Something about bombing innocent populations feels a little wrong *sad*.


Other than these points, so far I think the game is looking good and feeling great. I can't wait to see the other races and I hope they will play very differently to each other... I think that this is quite an important thing to consider in an RTS and something that made Starcraft and Warrior Kings:Battles great (maybe no one other than me will have played WK:B but I assure you, it was a great game... lots of fun to play and the 'races' were nicely balanced *sighs*).