What if research didn't cost?

i dont know about free, but i deffinitly support an option to make techs cheeper (or more expencive) for multiplayer games. right now they take tooo long and i think this would be a really good way to get more ships fighting sooner... wich is why we play the game

*huggles*

Both of you have excellent ideas, the cost of everything being so high, and the need for all the research labs and logistics slots to support really makes it expensive.

I seriously want a game where I can max out the tech tree of at least one side (military or civilian) within 3 hrs... As it stands now, I am lucky if I get up to tier 4 or 5 on either the military or civilian sides within 3 hrs... And thats if I am only being lightly attacked...
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And before the Naysayers say, cost and such and such and logstics and such and such, allow for deeper Strategy, make it an option (slider at the start of a game) to adjust costs. It makes sense if you are playing a 100 planet 6 star system game that you would want research to be spread out over the course of the 20 straight hours or so it would take you to play such a game.

Sins is a unique game in that it has gotten the attention of a lot of RTS players and a lot of 4x players, overall game aspects that affect speed of play are really tuned toward the 4x portion of our community.

I fourth this motion if not free just cheaper or optionable. I think this has also been mention before but have a begining tech option which you can set which lvl you start at.

I agree. Multiplayer games stall, and drag because of the way research is now. Many dont have the time to play 5+ hour MP games.

Good suggestion about the starting tech level.

The 4x aspect of the game is great for single player, because you can save, and start again later from where you left off. We dont have that option in Multiplayer. If you quit you automatically lose. We need an alternative for quick MP games (games intended to last 1 hour, or less). Ether by doubling/tripling research speed, reduce the cost, start at tech level "x", or start with all tech (except insurgency) researched.

This is stupid lol. They should always cost something. Its not free to fun research teams but maby you could have an option for only frigs or everything fully researched

Everything you do to speed up the game will make it less of a strategy and more of a finger twitching. What stops you from attacking with low-tech ships? AFAIK you can build the ships from the start. So there is no limitation to start the war.

IMO the technology starting level is the way to go for MP, as others said already.

With demands like this there is no wonder the game is turning from the epic it was said to be into a usually shallow RTS.

If you have too much time and you are bored perhaps you should ask for more strategic content to fill it up instead of wanting faster action.

Agree. Ther should be some speed settings like 100% 150% 200% that would afect research speed, bilding speed, ...

Agreed and here is an idea...

There should be an additional resource called Science Points or something similar which represents the scientific resources of your empire.

Science points are generated per tick like credits and are generated by research stations. The more stations you have , the more points per tick.
Research , only costs Science Points. Science points can be traded and possibly even bought on the blackmarket.

scientific anomalies that you can build a research station on to increase your research discount.

And with all the "Make it an option" things we're getting, we're going to end up with a game creation screen consisting of a wall of a thousand super-tiny toggles and bars, trying to control everything in the game.

And the devs are going to have a HUGE headache trying to balance it all out. Even for just one "make it an option" they have to balance the options out, and balance is hard. Doing hundreds of options? Thats really hard.

I say just get rid of research costs as an option to speed up MP games, it is a possibly easy solution to increasing game speed. How do you honestly know it works until it has been tried? If it doesn't work out it isn't the end of the world, and it is our job to test this.



Yea, there is quite a bit of free time, but I don't want to fill it up, I want to get rid of it so I don't have to play a 3 hr long multiplayer game, like I said. If it is an option, it wont affect you.

Not really. Most people would probably just settle into a plan and queue up everything they want. Then it's just a matter of waiting for new ships, etc to come available at X time in the game, and there's no longer any strategy involved in it at all.

I've thought about both scenerios, and I would do the same with or without costs. As it is now I know which techs I want in what order, I would queue em all up if I had the money. There would still be the same amount of strategy, at least in my case because money doesn't affect my research decisions. If I want something then I have to save up, that takes time out of the game that I would rather have doing something else.

there is still a strategy it is just less important because it removes the strategic choice between research and ships... overall I think it is a fascinating 4X idea, but not a good RTS idea.

Personally I think it would neat, but I would save it for a mod. I think the dev's have bigger problems.

Though I am concerned with Ron's opinion regarding options.

1. Some options don't need to be balanced, people will accept that the Devs don't neccesarily see the need to perfect issues placed in for 'just for fun' or 'rainy day' games. Happens in most games, some options people love even if it works against them!

2. More options is always better, the more possible comibinations of play the longer the replay value is. Now obviously an option of 'I want this one tech to cost X ammount' would be a bit annoying... but it would also be pretty easy to implement that in any reasonable scenario editor. Which I hope sins will have or get.

3. The more important options are those which will be too hard or annoying to implement by the community... For one I think it would be quite nice to have a random map setting where all planets are connected to all planets, or all planets are connected to the sun. That would save some people allot of time modding maps for it. Or settings where I can set the quantity of resources in a map, which if set to heavy might yielf 4-5 resource asteroids in most planets all ridiculously laden with resources.

Lots of options are a good thing, prioritizing which ones to implement in the budget is difficult, but Im sure Ironclad/Stardock are happy to oblige the task, and I don't think lack of space on the page is at all an issue.

HW has free reaserch, and it is very good, and very tacticly in-depth, you know that your enimy is reaserching just as fast as you, so you have to reaserch something that will counter what he is reaserching (I personly was nvr good at predecting my enimies stratigy)

and reaserch will nvr be completly free, the reaserch stations themselves cost a good deal in the beggining of the game.

I think we need a slider, where it goes from completly free, to un-belivably expensive.

This bar would be set by the person who makes the game, at the beggening.

the 4x could go very expensive, and RTS ppl can go somewhat cheap, noobs and other ppl simaler to me will go completely free.



This would be awsome, both 4x and rtsers will be free, one more ground-breaking idea for sins.


I also like the idea of a speed selection slider for the same reasons, keep BOTH groups happay, I don't belive it is possible to combine two good things to make one great thing, I do like the idea where the gamer, can shape his game, now THAT is epic.

There has to be something in between 'real'-time GalCiv and kiddie click-fest that most people would find acceptable, if not ideal? I'd hate to see the game dumbed down to the "C&C in space" that somebody wanted, but then I can't find the time for 5 hour online games either.

Maybe compromise is better than a multitude of options, at least for online play? The trouble with having too many options for online games is that you spend half your time trying to agree on which to use. You need some sort of standard or the community will just be splintered into little groups, and die very quickly.

I think making research free, or much simpler/easier/faster than it is now would be a terrible idea. Why, like a lot of people said, is because it lessens strategy and dumbs it down. Right now you actually have choices to make. In the beginning, do you build ships and rely on numbers and combined firepower, or do you take the risk to set up a research infrastructure and have stronger ships/planets but fewer? There's room for both, as someone who rushes to build lots of low tech ships might have more numbers, but by the time he gets around to attacking you, you may meet his fleet of Cobalts with your own mini fleet of Kodiaks and make him turn tail and run.

The thing is, I don't think we're *meant* to be able to research everything unless the game is incredibly long, as with many things it reduces variery and makes everything predictable. Right now for reasonable-length games you're forced to choose exactly what you want/need because you can't get everything. Do you take the time to research your light carriers, or do you attempt to make do without and hopefully be faster than the other guy? Do you risk spending lots of money/logistics to get those Kodiaks, or do you set up trade posts instead and build a larger fleet of weaker ships?

Choices, options, and variety are what make multiplayer games interesting because you never know what the other guy is going to do next. Taking that away will make it boring easily.

My vote: Leave it the way it is. If the pace of MP games is increased, the pace of research will increase along with it, and that will be enough.

To address the whole "C&C in space" issue: this is not meant to be a C&C style game. It's not a build-your-base and whack the other guy game. It's, at the heart of it, and empire building game and by nature those are meant to be longer. It is not Homeworld. Homeworld had great elements, but it was meant to be a very fast paced game, this is not. Trying to shape Sins into a game where you can have 40 minute MP matches with maxed out fleets would ruin the concept of the game. As it is, you can finish a 4 player game in 2-3 hours on the right map, and that's perfectly reasonable. It is not the fault of the game if everyone sits around and tries to max out all the research, planet improvements, and fleets before attacking, it is an issue with the way people play. There's a good reason that siege frigates are tier 1 research and they are very, very effective. With a few of them, it is *quite* easy to blitzkrieg early into the game. If anything, there should just be more smaller maps so people who don't have a lot of time have good variety of maps to choose from, and those who have more time have the same variety with bigger maps.

do you ACTULLLY have 2-3 hours to play the game and still work for a living??

I may not have to support myself yet, but school and scholerships combined is plently to not have 2-3 hours to play a game



as I said, make it variable, it will NOT de-generate into a click fest..... unless that is what the players want.

I can manage it with working full time, postgraduate study AND raising child and dog, so that's hardly an issue - depending on what you are studying, of course. It's just time management, one three hour game takes up as much time as three on hour games.

The point, surely, is that for those who want or can only manage shorter online games there isn't exactly a shortage of alternatives. There are several for those who prefer more draw-out turn based games, too. SotSE offers something unique as a balance between the two - it would be a huge shame to throw that away to satisfy one crowd or the other. Point taken on options, but I still think that will divide the online community too much.

Just about the only way to make it variable but not degenerating into a click fest while keeping the concept of the game intact is to make smaller maps. This is assuming the general game speed will be increased a bit since the common consensus is that it is slow (and I agree, for the most part).

But at the core of it all, the issue is not that the game does not allow for fast matches, the mechanism is there. As I've said, siege frigates are easy to get, as is a basic fleet of cap ship + Cobalts + LRMs, and at that point in the game most people will not have a swarm of gauss platforms around their planets. It's just that currently people prefer to sit and turtle while maxing out their research or what have you, but nobody has to do that. The ability to have quick matches are present in the game, and will hopefully become more visible once the pace is quickened a bit.

Hertston put it quite a well in that Sins is a unique game that tries to blend 4x depth and real-time. Moving it too far to one side or the other would be like making it hop on one leg, it just isn't going to be very good. Empire building, creating a thriving economy, research, exploration, those are all pretty vital elements of 4x games and cutting back on any of them too much will have a negative effect on the game. But likewise making it too complex that it is virtually impossible to have a way to end games quickly is also damaging. So far, I think Sins is doing a good job staying in the middle. People just haven't learned to take advantage of it yet

I don't have any problem with modding.

Just don't ask the devs to throw it into the "vanilla" game.

Not really -- my last game I barely had any defenses, its just that it takes too much time to build up the economy needed to build a fleet capable of crushing an opponent, if he's even slightly capable.

Again I prupose discounts. At the beggining of the game everything is cheaper except for maybe ships. As the game progress(or as you gain more resources) prices increase.

Depends on what you do, I guess. The first thing I usually research is ice planet colonization (if I have those near me), then trade outposts, and I build a trade outpost on every planet I control. Even with 4 planets, the income from trade ships adds quite a bit of income I find.

Also, again, I'm posting this argument with the assumption that the general pace of the game will be increased in some manner, as the devs said they're looking into it. Whether it's just speeding up resource gathering or speeding up everything. That will help a lot.

I actually timed the difference between a single player game and a typical MP game (I've yet to see one without the jerky movement/lag, so that's typical for me). In an SP game, it took 1 minute 40 seconds just about to gain 50 antimatter on my colony ship. In a multiplayer game, it took slightly over 2 and a half minutes to gain the same 50. That's a huge difference for a little lag. The part that worries me is that presumably everyone's hosting on either DSL or Cable, which shouldn't in theory be laggy like that.

But anyway, I think a lot of people are panicing with the current pace, and proposing some pretty drastic changes that I think are unnecessary. I say wait until the devs do what they do with the game pace, and then we'll see how much it improves.

Also, it doesn't take that much to build up a "fleet", a single cap ship, 10ish Cobalts and 10ish LRMs can do a lot of damage if accompanied by a couple of siege frigates. That's not a huge fleet, nor does it take huge amounts of resources to build. Presumably you will be attacking while your opponent's fleet is tied up somewhere else

This debate seems to reflect the most basic divide among the players.

We have the usual RTS players who want to have a fast-paced action, somewhere along the lines of HW. Meaning practically NO strategy and a lot of nice looking battles. EDIT: And he wants to lead all of them.

The other side is the usual non-RTS players, meaning turn-based strategy players.

Why do we have both sides? Because Sins was said to be a strategy game that combines the two... The real time happening of the RTS and the time needed for strategy. Now both poles are trying to pull the game into their direction.

To go on - RTS players want short action-packed games, both SP and MP. Us in-depth strategy players who want more content than you can fit into a standard half an hour, want long games filled with strategic elements that demand TIME to manage, with the occasional action or at least action that you don't need to supervise all the time. Like Sins promised - huge simultaneous real-time battles that play themselves and leave you the time to manage the empire - but if a certain battle is very important to you, you are able to jump in and ACT. Which used to be in a domain of turn-based games. Like Total War series, where you can autocalc most battles but the ones that matter you can play as a general.

I saw EvilTesla-RG's comment about (not) having 3 hours to play... TB gamers are used to games that take several tens of hours, but most of us don't have 3 or more hours PER DAY. This is why savegame is for. You save your game and continue when you have the time. When I want to actually finish a TW:M2 campaign it takes me up to a month!

This is defintiely NOT compatible with usual multiplayer players so naturally you need to make games shorter, but the RTS pole seems to be a much stronger pull (read: market) than the in-depth strategy.

Perhaps the MP Sins component should be a heavily reduced version of the single-player campaign? So you could add more resources etc. to SP and just cut it for MP? Otherwise I see no way in hell to please us all. I personally am more than prepared to play an MP game per-partes but the majority want to end the game in the same session.

I thought reducing the usual game to a few hours will do, but now people want shorter and shorter games. We don't need another Homeworld. It's been done before. And is there to be played. Why make a new copy?

Really, I fell in love with (an idea of) Sins when I read the descriptions like (as already stated) huge ongoing battles with good AI etc. Now this is called whack-a-mole. The idea was presented as a real-time game with the depth of a 4X TB games. This is now called too long and boring. What is next?

The main problem with this is Sins just doesn't has the content. There isn't enough things to do to occupy one long enough. Currently in a typical Sins match, I've things to do the first five minutes and after that there is something occasionally to do every other minute, leaving me bored for the rest of the time. In the late game it's even worse, there are times when I have nothing to do for 5 minutes, then give some fleet commands and wait another five minutes doing nothing. There is just not much in Sins that need managing during the game (which isn't necessary a bad thing, but...)

I've even started reading books while playing late game Sins matches.

The battles are currently the only thing that are time intensive. I need to micromanage them, because the AI sucks at doing this for me. So, the most exciting thing in Sins currently are the battles. No wonder people demand faster games, if important battles only happen after half an hour and then every 15 minutes (yeah, I'm exaggerating a bit, but you get the drift).


I personally don't have any problems playing 3 hours straight, if (a big if) there is something to do for 3 hours. But if those 3 hours are mostly spent watching fleets jumping from one planet to the other, or waiting until I get enough resources to research something, it's not much fun.