General impressions

[EvilleJedi]

Since the bug tracker is for bugs I'd like to know what people's general impressions are with the mod so far

 

also if you have ideas for specific ship abilities or balance (right now don't suggest new ships, I want to get the ones in the mod working first)

 

 

I can explain some of the decisions for specific ships or at least my plans for them if they are not already done if any one wants as well.

 

part of the beta test is to add in the abilities and tech tree so I need some feedback on the versions as they are pushed out.

[Evaders99]

Comment: that the whole forcefields thing... can we rename abilities to be less "Trek"-y?

 

 

My assumption that the Rebels would be more culture-focused? Trying to sway the popular support and all that. The Empire would focus on military technology more.

 

Not sure about the Republic, Separatists... maybe the Separatists would get the "special abilities" from their research, stuff like the Dark Reaper, etc.

Republic... would focus on outfitting its clones? Not sure how to work that into a game mechanic, but maybe they would grow more through their economy, using their "elite" clone commandos

[EvilleJedi]

originally I wanted the empire to have three goals

 

expansion(easy to conquer hard to hold), exploitation (steal from worlds and trade) and force projection (more multirole vessels)

 

the alliance

 

insurgency(suprise tactics and ecomonomy), diplomacy and survivability/mobility

 

the separatists

 

economy(trade federation profits), automation (droid efficiency upgrades), weapons of mass destruction

 

the republic

 

militarization (converting civilian resources to military), upgrading (part of militarization) and defense (conquer and hold worlds)

[anachron]

Some thoughts so far :

 

Scout ships are destroyed to quickly. it's very difficult to explore systems.

 

It would be nice too have some research to start with old ship and progress throught year for use more recent and powerfull one, as actually many frigate and cruiser are almost useless from the start of the game as they die to fast against other ship.

 

Defenses of planet don't seem's to be really effective, even against the pirate raiders. Is it intended?

 

I'm very impressed by your work on this version. No minidump, and the mod is very fun to play. Thank you

 

PS : sorry for my english, i'm better in french.

 

Edit : Hangar defense seem's really small in front of a LEV construction frigate, Gauss Defense Platform (wich seem's really big actually) and Golan defense platform.

[Evaders99]

I'm sure all the structures are going to get overhauled

I think defenses will work much better then, esp if starbases are a part of the game.

 

Research and the scout issue are being worked on.

[EvilleJedi]

the hangers are only 500-600 m across, I could make them bigger but then they looked too big compared to the golan which is 2km, the construction frigates are really the things that are too big

[Spartanz1170]

I would suggest the smaller frigates to have some bigger sheilds as in my first test run (Sep. vs Republic) most of my small frigates were destroyed in the opening salvos.

[Ryuzaki777]

Alright so I've played a game on the beta, and so far I am enjoying it fully with no mini-dumps. I do have a few opinions for you Eville.

 

 

 

One: Movement speeds::: Alright so I think since you've expanded drastically on the amount of tactical squares around each planet that the normal fast movement speed is alittle sluggish, maybe you should think about resizing the gravity-wells again, or speeding up the ships movements more. It would make things alittle more productive for higher-paced games.

 

 

 

Two: Soundss::: The Sound Effects for the projectiles is horribly loud, maybe think about tuning it down a bit?

 

 

 

Three: Engagement ranges::: Ok so with the resizing of the ships comes the resizing of everything else. And in my personal opinion the ranges in which ships open fire, is WAY TOOO much they should be relatively close to each other, as they were during the space battle of episode III. Just something to think about.

 

 

 

 

 

P.S.: I have posted two minor bugs on the bug tracker.

 

 

P.P.S: I have posted this on the Sins site forums too. ^_^

[kyogre12]

Well first, I just have to say that you have the most amazing models. Seriously, they are probably the best I have seen in a Sins mod so far.

 

I also like how you made some ships that were previously capital ships into expensive cruisers, or you made cruiser versions of the capitals (like the ISD and ISD II for the Empire). It's a very good way to get the AI to build more capital ships, and I think I'm going to steal your idea for my BSG mod

 

For research, I think you could give the Empire the "Shock and Awe" research that the Vasari have, that increases the culture repel rate of capital ships. While I wouldn't expect the Empire to have much in the way of culture, the whole "Tarkin Doctrine" thing was designed to keep people in line by the threat of force (ISD in orbit, etc)

 

Also, the TEC Insergency research would go great with the Rebels, for pretty obvious reasons.

[Ishi]

I'm not sure about this so I haven't added it to Mantis, but are the Golan IIIs lasers not firing at all or firing sporadically for anyone else? I've seen two go down without firing a single laser but they unleash a torrent of missiles. A third I saw fire its lasers only a handful of times.

[EvilleJedi]

noted on the golan

 

 

just so you guys know we are doing nightly updates, so you can update your version every morning and some bugs should be fixed and more abilities should be added

 

research and abilities are the big target if there are no bugs reported.

[psychoak]

Pirate raids, ouch! Maybe a wee bit smaller? It's pretty hard to keep the planets alive. The fleet sizes aren't terribly lethal, but when you've got 20 capship level bombardment vessels...

 

Flak, the defense structures feel about right, but the 500 antimatter frigates with a 12 second delay basically remove the fighters from combat, indefinitely.

 

Defense structures, 600 damage for turrets, 540 for Golan3? Two fighter wings aren't that good. Not for what it costs in comparison. The hangar feels about right though.

 

In regards the Alliance

 

Adaptive force field abilities, both of them. The regenerating one is rather weak, although it is good for restoring them inbetween battles aside from the failure to auto-cast.

 

The massively powerful 100% damage nullification from the other is an obscenity, until you get up against a ship with damage increases you're invincible. Of course, onslaught just rapes the Alliance when using that particular tactic. The light weight ships that have it pop like they're not even there, even the MC30c is an easy kill. It's a little extreme, going from invincibility to completely nullified like that.

 

Fleet usage balance is rather odd as well. Assault frigates are 4, Nebulon B's are 3 with a small fraction of the hull and shielding. Maurader corvettes are nearly as powerful as the Nebulon for only one point. They're by far the best bang for their buck in the weak ships.

 

Will post more as I play.

[Evaders99]

Great feedback!

[EvilleJedi]

all of these comments are great, I haven't looked at fleet balance a lot yet, the calculation is probably worth redoing.

 

The shield nullification is a problem, I was hoping it would activate on the first sign of damage however the damage gets applied before the ability can kick on because the calculation is backloaded. I will have to look into other solutions for small ships, mitigation isn't a great option because of the number of times a ship is hit from long range. so I may have to look into having very high shields with a recharge ability and very low hull values. I will look into this tonight.

[psychoak]

One thing to do is look into hull versus shield damage. I noticed you have the now 1000 per second shield regeneration ability set to trigger after it takes hull damage. With such an obscene value, it's more logical to set it to trigger right when shields are depleted. Under more normal circumstances where it's replenishing a less than cataclysmic damage amount, you'd want it to trigger at the latest, when it would almost replenish the shields entirely if not still taking damage.

 

This should be the most effective means of doing a shield restore:

 

aiUseTime "Anytime"

aiUseTargetCondition "ShieldDamageExceedsAmount"

onlyAutoCastWhenTargetShieldDamageExceedsAmount

Level:0 ###.000000

Level:1 ###.000000

Level:2 ###.000000

 

The other one I'm not real sure how to do, haven't played around with the ability system nearly enough.

[EvilleJedi]

try the new nightly build and see if it plays better

[Mindseye]

Just updated and repair bays work so that good. I turned off pirates this game because last game they became horrendous. The forcefield ability is rather redundant on everyship.Ships speeds need to be tripled to cross wells in a reasonable amount of time.Seems to me that super ships are way to cheap and make weaker ships obsolete.To make corvettes and gunships used in game they will need some utility abilities or bigger ships must be much more expensive and longer to buiuld.Everything works so far as I can tell excellent job.I cant tell why I would get a tie fighter over a tie interceptor.Laser fire looks a bit to fast compare to movies.

[Mindseye]

Hey Eville if you are looking for balance suggestions and abilities then maybe you could throw up a guide for the direction of the factions.Like which ones will be focused in what areas.Also will you be up for non cannon abilities on ships or keeping it to movies and such?

[Evaders99]

Looks like he's done some of that here. I guess it could be expanded upon to flesh it out

 

originally I wanted the empire to have three goals

 

expansion(easy to conquer hard to hold), exploitation (steal from worlds and trade) and force projection (more multirole vessels)

 

the alliance

 

insurgency(suprise tactics and ecomonomy), diplomacy and survivability/mobility

 

the separatists

 

economy(trade federation profits), automation (droid efficiency upgrades), weapons of mass destruction

 

the republic

 

militarization (converting civilian resources to military), upgrading (part of militarization) and defense (conquer and hold worlds)

[psychoak]

The ability to rapidly defend one gravity well with ships from another is one of the things I don't particularly like in Sins. I consider it a plus that you can wipe a place out with a small fleet in the time it takes to move two wells. Positioning and proper defense is actually important. It's kinda boring watching them coast across the well to get to the next place at the start, but you did buy a 4X. They're usually much worse.

[SovietComrade]

This is a great mod! I love it, as soon as the research and textures are finished it will be the only mod I play! However, I am having a large issue. I'm trying to play with my friend together but he cannot join with me. The game says he has the wrong checksum, even though he used svn and got the same revision as me!

[Evaders99]

Hmmm wondering why that is. What checksum is it giving?

You may need to export from your local folder, which would remove the .svn files

[EvilleJedi]

for those that have tested multiplay do you need to export the directory or is it fine to leave the .svn files ?

[Mindseye]

Why not make the actual wells small but the space around the plantes big.That way ships can still move at their right speed but time thru wells is much slower.

 

Empire should get the most upgrades for terran population because of coruscant and how huge the empire is.They need to get pop upgrades from tier 1 and on while ultimately getting the most overall.Maybe could get the most for all planet types and use this for their main source of income.Move trade ports up to tier 4 or 5.Give them average pop increase rates while Ra has lowest and rep has highest with cloning upgrades.Ra should have lowest pop for all planet types and maybe get tp at tier 1-2.They should have techs like pervuasive eco and market discounts early on.They should be like vas in that their scouts get to capture neutrals.The seperatists should be trade dependant while rep is balanced between population and trade.Give ra a ship with ability to steal income from other systems.If you can figure out a way to cloak a ship maybe from soa2 team then it could have this ability or a smuggler ability that hides ship for an amount of time so the ra can steal income.Since strikecraft dont cost resources they need to cost alot in am.Heres some ideas.Tie fighters are cheapest and fastest to produce but prolly die quickest while packing same or similar firepower as an interceptor.Upgrades for tie fighter could be mass pruduction which would decrease its build.Im thinkin this is not possible so the sc will have to be generalized.So ultimately tie fighter will use less am from fleet and rebuild the fastest and should be slower than tie interceptors.

[Mindseye]

Interceptors should last alot longer vs other sc and be more expensive am wise plus be much faster then fighters.Bombers should be expensive am wise and have moderate rebuild times while gunboats should be really tuff since they had shields and very expensive am while being able to fight other sc but really good at killing ships too.If possible maybe gunboats will be a ship you have to research.Are you planning on putting in advanced carriers with advanced sc like scimitars and tie defenders or tie advance?If so you could just make the ship that builds them reaserchable.I would say 10 shield upgrades 4 hull and 4 armor upgrades for ra.6 hull 8 shiel 4 armor up grades for sep.5 shield 6 hull 7 armor for rep.4 shield 7 hull 7 armor for empire.The sep could get an upgrade for fleet supply like driod master controller or something.They can get ship build bonus thru driod factories.