Lavo

Why should it be halved when the ability works well for the other ships that use it? The ability is very usable in it's current state, and lowering the speed bonus would diminish it's effectiveness. There is no speed difference between regular ships and capitals; both have a 1000 max linear speed. The difference is in acceleration, the cruisers are superior in this regard. All the ships in the game need price reworking. This is due to the current prices having been made before planet mods were added to SoGE. I don't understand what you are trying to say here. Could you possibly rephrase this?

The Venator cruiser is not the only ship which uses this ability. And it isn't a useless ability at all, it merely needs refinement. With the ability it makes sense that they are faster than the capital version, as that is exactly what the ability does. I could put the old turn rate back in and fix the over shooting issue right there and then, though like I said, this brings back the issue of ships going way outside of a gravity well. The rate of turn is not fixed, and indeed, needs work in order to ensure that the Intercept ability works as intended. That restriction of gun range is not possible, and it would also hamper many positive uses of the ability (such as getting away from ships in gun range). This is an issue with all factions. As I said, I've tracked down two of them, the Tactical Hardening improves the armor and shield regeneration of tactical structures, and the Tac. Damage Increase boosts their rate of fire.

The Vong's frigate Carrier/Colonizer. That thing is so bloody OP it's not funny. Technically most of the Vong ships are OP, though that ship in particular is easily the worst. The CC-2200, for it's cost, it's extremely underpowered, and is useless for the AI to produce and waste resources on. The NR's Defender (forget exact ingame name) or Proficient. They are both have the exact same stats, however, the Proficient has Flak Burst and costs 4 credits and 1 crystal more. There really is no need to have both of these.

Update: March 30th, 2011 Botajef Armed Freighter should now correctly function as a colonizer. Kudos to ara for the heads up.

There aren't plans for more unique tech trees at this time, at least on my end. For now I'm focusing on the ships themselves... The Vong will be a nasty faction to deal with precisely due to their tech tree in relation to their weaponry.

In SoGE, the cruiser and capital variants of a ship are actually quite different. In reality, there was no such a difference, this was purely a game addition. The primary reason the capital version does not have the Intercept ability is due to making room for it's other abilities. As for the overshooting, this is my fault. In the past, the Intercept ability caused ships to make massive turns, which in fact caused them to veer off course from where they actually wanted to go. In order to remedy this, I attempted to slash the turn rate boost. This fixed the issue of veering off course, however, this brought in the new issue of overshooting. This is a game engine thing, nothing that can be done really. Depends on the faction. Though personally I don't build scouts much, I either build Hardcells as the CIS and/or micromanage the ones I already have. I'm looking at this now, will edit post. Edit: Do you mean the Republic, or New Republic? As if it's the former, I'm not seeing anything missing. Either way, if you can, tell me which you don't see, and/or provide screenshots, as I'll deal with it if so. However, if you are referring to the Health and Armor upgrades in the Defense tree, this is known. I've tracked down the two abilities responsible, and will put in strings for them at some point. This is likely due to having auto-join fleet on. Thanks for bringing this up, I haven't noticed this occurring until I checked the file. This should be fixed next update. When you start, the best strategy is indeed to build 1-2 capitals. This isn't gamey at all, it's just strategy. I've personally been doing this since I first started playing SoGE. The AI does not use this strategy however. It is interesting that you notice this now, as the Venator has actually been somewhat nerfed over the past capital updates. There's two benefits to frigates, cost and abilities. For many factions, there is indeed no point to get frigates, as is the case for the CIS (imo). However for factions like the Vong and Empire, frigates can be extremely useful, and provide a large amount of cost-effective firepower, cheap carriers, and/or abilities. Ships all have their time and place, what you use or find useful depends on your strategy or play style.

It's weaponry and abilities haven't changed. Only it's cost (hint: it increased ) and health have (mainly in the Hull department, shields are only 5000 less). With shield techs the SSD still has over 100 000 shielding. :v

The problem isn't the colonizer per se, it's how the AI uses it that's the problem. If I made it cheaper, removed it's fighters, or perhaps if it was on the first frigate page, it would be different. Putting in a new colonizer, from the few simulations I've done, and the one game I played (I ragequit because one of the Imperial AIs was destroying me :V), makes a world of difference.

The cheap colonizer has made a big difference for the Empire's AI (have a stopgap/temp one in, with correct stats and whatnot). Unless there's any objection, I'd like to add this to the SVN, at least once there's a model for it (for now it has their scout corvette model).

You aren't the first person to ask this, there have been multiple requests/questions on the Sins forum regarding this very subject.

Player names cannot be altered, this is a game engine/player file restriction. Planets can be named however. You can only make "new" or "custom" militia by editing/slapping them into the GalaxyScenDef file... Though you can't "insert" them into planets using the GF. You can make your own custom "planet" in the GalaxyScenDef file, assuming it is one of the planets already ingame, and give it a strong garrison/militia. Worlds like Terran and Industrial already have strong garrisons, so don't worry about those. Also, Nova's been working on an SW galaxy map.

Only way is culture, due to engine restrictions.

After giving the Imps a cheap colonizer, and running two test runs, I've noted that the Imps have done better, comparable to the other factions. Will do more testing on this later on.

Update: March 28th, 2011 NR and Vong cruisers have all had their experience for destroying increased, now they will give capitals real experience. Edit: Alliance Heavy Gunship, Blast Boulder, and ROIKCHUANMARA's costs have increased, Bayonet now takes 1 more second to build, Imperial Heavy Gunship, Imperial Carrack, Nebulon B2, and Tartan costs have decreased.

Agreed. The top-tier capitals (Venator, Providence, ISDs, and Nebula) all have the same starting shield restore rate and mitigation. They have 8000, 9000, 10000, and 11000 shielding respectfully. However, the ISD lacks the support of the Venator (as the Reps are all spam), the defense of the Providence (ECM ability), and the tech upgrades of the Nebula (more shielding), though this still does not answer the question.

Actually, for what you get, the ISDs are not overpriced by any means, whether it be by price or supply, likewise for the Dread. Though I've slightly tweaked the top-tier cruisers (see: SVN Log) which should remedy this a little. The other cruisers, barring the Escort Cruiser, are indeed worthless however. I do get what you say by them not lasting in battle... Why this happens I am at a loss to explain, as it even happens with a human player (from my personal experience). Their frigates are indeed overpriced as well. I've also found that the Imperial AI never makes usage of Lancer frigates... Which is a shame as they are the best anti-fighter frigate in the game, save possibly for the Vong's Uumufalh. Though one thing I'm wondering about, which a friend brought up to me, is the Imp's lack of a frigate/cheap colonizer, which may hamper the AI's colonization efforts early on, and thus effectively cripple the AI for the length of an entire game.

So as seen in this thread I've been exploring as to why the Imps always do shoddy, in comparison to the other factions. While discussing this with a friend, he pointed out that the Empire is the only faction to lack a frigate/"cheap" colonizer, and I further noted that the Imps really do not use the Gladiator SD well. In order to test this theory, I was wondering if there's a model of the Sentinel-class landing craft lying around, to use it as a cheap colonizer.

Alright so, the two factions I've been looking at recently (in terms of balancing and whatnot) are the Empire and NR. I'm asking people to post whatever experience people have with these two factions, whether it be playing as them or watching their AI. From what I can tell the former, while theoretically good on paper, has been under-preforming in reality. The latter appears to be fine, after the MC60, BAC, and Nebula were nerfed, though their cruisers appear to be not pricey enough, and preforms well as an AI due to the fact that all their cruisers are top-notch.

Make a Mantis account and post what your Mantis nick is, and then you should be good to go.

I'd imagine this was achieved by modifying the art/texture files that have to do with the "mini-explosions" that go off when a ship has taken a lot of damage. Though I wonder how much RAM that would eat up... SoGE is already dangerously close to the limit. Though I'd love to see this as well.

Update: March 27th, 2011 Golan platform costs have been slashed, I really should have taken a good look at them earlier, and now these platforms are worth their respective cost. For on average, to build and then max upgrade a platform (with the more expensive upgrades) will cost a player 6000 credits, 600 metal, and 720 crystal. This is in comparison to the capital ships, which at their worst cost around 4670 credits, 500 metal, and 600 crystal. The bonus planets in the Extra Planets maps have had their tax penalty removed, and have been moved to the Ice planet group (aka. Arctic Exploitation) this is simply due to the fact that these planets are meant to speed up the game, and are only present in these maps. The Ice group transfer was done so that in the event that a player is rushed early on, they aren't crippled for an extended period of time, as getting 6 civilian research labs isn't exactly easy. And I'll have to recalculate the supercap costs (again) sometime down the road, as what I did to find a ship's effective hull was botched, due to armor working in a different way (not surprised). Edit: MC90 and Rej SD supply cost increased, ISD and Tector supply cost decreased. Edit 2: Venator and Providence cruiser main gun's damage have been decreased, ISD I, II, and Nebula's increased. Venator also costs 19 supply up from 18.

That makes sense. Though a multiplier scheme sounds good as well.

Something i noticed... Is the Huge Toxic supposed to have such expensive infra upgrades? It's 14400 credits for the first stage, which is staggering. The Dwarf Toxic only costs 1800 in comparison. O_o

Update: March 26th, 2011 Starbase constructors for All, NR, imps, and Reps have been fixed. Platforms also have their correct laser colors/sizes (I planned to do this today).

Which faction? Edit: FFFFFFFFFFFFFF In my haste I forgot to fix the ability tags on the NR/All/Imp/Rep constructors. Fix will be up in the next 10 mins.