I see The Light

I see the light, now.  Unfortunately, it's coming from an Advent task force, but no matter.  I mean, after they are done, no matter, as in no matter will be left.

I am speaking of my own personal discovery that gigantic-scale space battles in Sins are super-amazing, at least since the latest patch. 

I ordinarily do not play on the big maps because I find I get lost or frustrated trying to pick up the pieces after I save the game for the night and pick it up again, usually a few days later. (Maybe a Notepad in the game where you can write down things for future reference might be cool, but then there's always a pad and paper by my desk anyway.)

The last couple of nights have been Girls Night Out for Mrs. Twelvefield.  In my household, there's no point in doing chores if the other spouse doesn't see you doing them.  Long story, that.   So, with the job jar safely stowed someplace where I can't see it, I actually poured four consecutive hours into Sins on a large map with 3 teams of the three factions on Hard. 

Wow.  The beginning was slow until I realized that I was neighbours with the enemy.  Then it was an arms race to try to build connections with our respective allies.  Unfortunately, the AI won the race, but did not foresee my valiant strike at their homeworld. 

With its 1.4-enhanced intellect, the homeworld fleet did not disband.  Instead, it stood and fought its ground and eventually repelled my charge.  What with each of us pouring in re-inforcements, the actual battle took 20 minutes to resolve, which seems like forever in Sins time.

The last hour of the game was a series of continuous large-scale space battles, none having fewer than eight or so cap ships and all of the support craft and cannon fodder.  Unfortunately, the AI did a good job of divide-and-conquer, so that I never did get help from my AI team-mates (nor could I get to help them), and at the end, it was the Galaxy versus Twelvefield. 

The big space battles have caused me to re-think my attitude towards Sins for the positive.  I find the big games are too taxing in terms of both time and my will to play Sins very often, though.

The last battle over my homeworld lasted again about 20 minutes, and was a total lightshow.  Just amazing.  I can't think of a space game where I've seen so many active units on the screen at once.   When the show was over, the computer rolled in its planet-killers, and well, I am writing this message from within my spider hole, hoping the invading troops don't find me...