Sins Beta 4 Gameplay Feedback - *POST HERE*

is it too late to request this game gets made into a first person shooter?

This change is very nice. But now we need a graphical representation of this (besides the one we get when pressing the Alt-key).

I would propose tho shade the outer circle of the grav well in a lighter blue then the inner circle, to distinguish those two easily. It's imho information that should be available all the time since it's crucial for ship and fleet movement.

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The builder ships still show as pips in the planet overview, making finding ships still very hard.

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Most weapon effects seem to be 2d. Which is ok with most of them. But the Vasari green crescent (or sickle) looks not that well this way, because its quite a large effect. It looks especially bad when seen from the front, because you'll get a very thin line.

Also the Vasari beam weapon animation is way too short (time wise), especially because it's so wide. I would propose to make it either thinner, or to last much longer (I would prefer to make it thinner).

That's my first impression of beta 4.

PS. The new Kol looks awesome. The Vasari ships look even more awesome.

second. I didnt know about the alt thing, I used pressed the move buttom and then I saw those different areas, but a different blue shading would be perfect.

ah, the kol, very nice model. it somewhat reminds me of the model of the old hw 1 taidan heavy cruiser.

good, more extensive feedback later, but one thing I noticed when I saw one of the vasari caps had a "return home phase gate" ultimate ability. how about a system to prioritise autocast abilities? like saying "always leave enough antimatter left, so that this ability can best cast when cooldown is ready" I'd say there is little more frustrating when you have a wonderful ability and just the perfect moment to cast it and then you don't have the antimatter. it can be done with the other abilities too, like giving priority to gauss canon over reflective shield and so on.

plus I hope the autocast is now smarter i.e. shield restore is really used (almost) only on damaged capships.

in any case, looks nice so far, though at least some of the elements of the base formula might have been broken up a bit for a new race. more still to come.

I was under the impression that there was a vasari ship capable of creating a temporary phaseline system to it... allowing for sneak attacks...


also question: are phaselanes between phasegates open to all? or simply the people owning the phasegates?

I would need to check the description again, but I think its only a dial home device. would be rather kick ass powerful if they could just go anywhere they want.

second question: got no idea. the do however not actually travel through the phase gate. as soon as its completed (and its pendant somewhere else) the just behave as if there were a direct phase lane between the two planets. hah, these things are amazing.

not if you had to get your fleet there first...

I figured, although admitedly a cinematic of going through the gate would be rather kickass...

Vasari Wreckage Salvage can't be researched -- requires 2 points in the one point pre req.

Dead asteroids have no tax income, yet when colonized they have the same -2.2 drain of all the other planets. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since dead asteroids have no population and there really isn't much 'development' to be done for them.

Thats because of the upkeep system that was reinstated for planetary structures.

I agree about the "green sickles of doom" effect feeling a little flat. You cant even see it from looking at it edge on.

As far as the beams i think the animation needs to be just a little longer (time wise).

New Kol is a great looking ship, but the old one grew on me (yea, yea, i know it was a prototype placeholder model).

Vasari look awsome. Only gripe is on some ships you can barely see any details on the textures. Even when zoomed in close, because they are so dark (I know they are supposed to be dark. Perhaps a little more bump, and specular can bring out the details more).

AI still has the execute "get the hell out of here" maneuver down pact. They wont fight you unless they outnumber you 3 to 1.

sense or not, I actually find this quite interesting strategically, as you really have to weigh whether or how much you need that planet for defensive position and whether it is worth the permament malus to income.

and since such a decision comes into play ... maybe turning off the autocolonize on the ships will work, but most will probably keep it one, so maybe there should be an option to flag a planet as "don't colonise". would be a pity if you see that colonising a planet doesnt (yet) make sense and then per random one of your ships does do it. not very likely but still.

I think they should simply give the dead asteorids an development option, that doesnt add any population, but removes the costs.
That way you could decide between lifetime rates or a one time bigger investment to solve the matter.
If its a point heavily combated that you might loose you can pay the rates, but if its more back and you are probably going to keep it for a while the higher cost of the development might be the right route.

hm, why not? its basically the same idea "you have to pay to own this grav well". and those 2.2 or whatever are fairly hefty when you have no means to lower it.

They have that. You can do one infrastructure upgrade on a dead asteroid to remove the cost.. but as there's no population there, the upgrade itself doesn't *do* anything other than give a negligible hp boost and remove the cost. It seems a bit contrived, since instead of being nudged to upgrade your planets to get a bonus out of the upgrade, you're forced to upgrade to get rid of a penalty.

I like the new development system overall where you need to improve to get rid of the negative, but I just don't think it should apply to dead asteroids

Does anyone else feel kinda let down by the Vasari?

I mean, I was expecting all three races to be pretty unique in their designs and ships. But what we seem to have is just:

- different skins
- different names
- different weapons graphics

But then they seem to mirror their TEC counterparts in function. The Vasari have a carrier class capital that mirrors the Sova. An Akkan type capital that can colonize, etc.


I'm not seeing a lot of differences here, and I don't get the feeling that I'm playing anything but the TEC with different colors and designs slapped on.

I guess this game will be awesome once we start seeing the Star Wars, Star Trek & Babylon 5 mods for it.   

I have to admit that i noticed that, too.
The two races share so many similarities, i was hoping for quite diverse races aswell.
Right now its only a difference in ship numbers (vasari are more expensive but stronger) and capship abilities.
And of course the lategame special techs, like phasegates ect.
For the rest each ship has its counterpart, even ranges, speed and the like are very similar.

I hope, they put a lot more differences in the races, so that they have a different feel and playstyle to them.

I feel the same

I have mixed feelings on this. At first I'll admit I was put off by the similarity, just scrolling through the list of ships. But even if the roles are similar, they still end up playing differently (speaking mostly of capitals).

For example, Sova vs the Vasari Carrier (will take a while to get used to the names). Most will agree the Sova really doesn't belong on the front lines, it has fairly passive abilities, other than the missile battery but it's always better to drop it and run before the Sova is focus-fired on. So for the TEC, the carrier is mainly a "keep safe and let strike craft do the work". For the Vasari, not so much. It has a much bigger role on the front lines - it can repair nearby ships (and itself), it can deploy an extra bomber squadron into the fight right away (won't need to fly through half the grav well) and with the ultimate it can create clones. It's much more pronounced on the front lines than the Sova is.

The same can be said for the Akkan vs the Vasari colonizer.

So while ship types are similar, the way you use them is different and that still adds different strategies and tactics to Vasari players.

If anything, my main gripe about the Vasari is not the similarity of the ships, but that they just don't have that 'technologically superior but fewer in number' feeling like they should. The Cobalt and Skirmisher have the same damage, the Skirmisher just costs a little more and has a little more hull/shield, and uses 7 fleet points instead of 5. It's pretty minor difference, overall.. The closest relevant example I can think of off the top of my head is for HW2 players: the Progenitor tech. Once you got that Dreadnaught, it really gave you the feeling that the ship was vastly superior in technology, but not invincible as its primary weapon was dead-on firing, for example.

You should take a closer look at the abilities then. For example, the Vasari (with a little research) Cobalt / Kodiak "analogs" have the ability to self-repair. Instead of having a planetary shield, they have a weapons jamming system, and to drive us insane they don't appear to have a Cielo / Hoshiko analog -- their two ships don't appear to have repair functions on them, though maybe I should actually build them before I judge (my one game so far didn't get that far before it was over, alas...).

Edit:

Which isn't to say going back in and increasing costs / power might not be a good idea...

I built them in my last game but didn't get to use them much because using the Desolator's ultimate crashed my game. But from what I recall, the Hoshiko analog drains enemy shields and speeds up your ships, and the Cielo analog detects phase jumps into its system and messes with enemy phase jumps. I could be getting them a little mixed up, but I believe those are the basic abilities

Well, what I didn't like at all where the Vasari buildings. Besides the phase gate/planetary shield generator/weapon lock/phase jump lock they're totally identical to the Tech buildings in role.



Why do the Vasari have trade buildings? They are not the Tech after all.

Imho the Vasari should get a building (a replacement for it's "refinery") that would generate metal and crystal (at a 2:1 rate for each) by exploiting the planet (or asteroid). Vasari don't care much about staying at planets for long, they are on the run after all, so environmental destruction isn't really something they care about.

Something similar should be made for it's trade station equivalent. Vasari just don't trade goods.

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Also the Vasari military tech tree is a bit disappointing, when compared to the Tech technology tree which is almost the same in scope, even though the Vasari should be much more technological advanced, lore wise.

Like OMG Vasari?!?!

No real fleet tactics or formations still.What a shame.

The changelog stated it wouldn't make it into the initial Beta 4 build. May be patched in later, though.

i really hope we get to test that later on, its a quite vital feature