This is the game scifi geeks have been waiting for

The diplomacy system is undergoing improvements currently so nobody other than the devs can comment on how it will be. Right now, there are 3 alliance options: military (ships don't fire at each other), trade (trade ships go between the players), and intel (one sees what the other sees). All special abilities that target friendlies start working on your military ally (really military goes hand in hand with trade, since otherwise your trade ships would all get shot up ), which means you can combine races for some very powerful combos, and join fleets in general for massive battles.



Currently, military is the main way to win. In FFA games, you can win if the remaining players are in an alliance (say, 6 person FFA game and 3 all ally with each other, as soon as the other 3 are eliminated, the alliance wins). Culture also plays an important role, but it's very difficult to win through culture alone if you're playing an opponent with experience.



You can give credits and resources, but as the races have different techs, those aren't exchangeable.



That's how it works Repair stations, trade ships flying to your ally's trade ports, joining fleets for attacks..



Oh, already answered above An alliance can win, but every player in it needs to be allied with each other. For example, if player A is allied with B and C, but B and C are at war, the game won't end. But if A, B, and C are all allied with each other, the game will end in an alliance victory.



This has been discussed and suggested, but I don't believe we ever got a concrete response on whether or not we will have a permanent scoreboard of sorts.



The galaxy generator has been removed from the 2 latest betas, but don't worry, it'll definitely be in at release



Do you mean design ships in game? Then no, that won't be in. It's just a different kind of game. For one, designing ships takes time, and with everything in real-time it becomes cumbersome. Then there's the whole balancing issue, etc etc. However, Sins is amazingly moddable, so you will be able to create lots of nifty stuff. There are many weapon types to play with, and you will be able to create your own meshes and such as well.



In truth, we don't really know MP beta is played in Flagship mode, where everyone gets a level 3 capital of their choice for free at the start. We know normal mode will be in, where you have to research/pay for your first capital, but beyond that we don't have any info.



Because the game is still changing and focused primarily on MP balance/bug testing, the AI has taken a seat back until all the changes are finalized and a good AI can be created from the start, without having the devs re-create the AI every time something big changes. So, for now you'll hear that the AI is pretty poor, but rest assured the devs do want to give us a fun and challenging AI



You might hear various opinions on this. The game follows the model "easy to learn, difficult to master". The races (2 of the 3 we have access to) have similar structures, resource collection, and some similar ship roles (missile ships, light carriers, 'line' frigates), but they have diverse tech trees and special abilities. Capital ships in Sins add a lot of tactical and strategic depth to the game, and make differences between races like light and day. For example, the Vasari (experts in phase technology) have a ship that can bypass phase jump inhibitors and open a phase gate at its location to allow you to jump your fleet into that planet's gravity well from any other phase gate you have built. That means you can sneak into your opponent's backyard and jump in your whole fleet, bypassing all of his stationary defenses at the forward planets. The TEC, on the other hand, have more traditional/supportive abilities. Their carrier can instantly replenish its fighter/bomber forces, one of their support capitals can create a cease fire in the whole gravity well, so on so forth. So, while the basic way the races are played as far as construction/resource gathering are the same, there is an enormous amount of difference in how the races actually play.

And the game was specifically not designed as rock-paper-scissors, except for a select few examples (and even then, not extreme ones).

There are 3 options - cease fire, information pact, and trade. Apparently this will be "better" come final release.



Have everyone be allied or take them over through culture.



Trade alliance allow you to do that, but you need a information pact to see what resources they have.



Sometimes they might get stuck on an asteroid but they do turn around. As far as enemy AI hard doesn't seem all that hard sometimes, but its also been said that it will be better come final release.




Thus far we only have 2 factions (TEC and Vasari). No rock paper scissors and the factions sorta play the same thus far.

Somebody else will come here with a better relpy soon

EDIT: Well there you go. Annatar made a better reply while I was typing.

And when they say it is being worked on, they mean it is being completely redone.

Wow, thanks for the quick answer!

It is said that you can leave fights to the AI or micromanage - however not to the point where the player who clicks faster or hits all the special abilities first wins. I like that statement, but do the players agree? And what can you actually manage about fights?

Tell what ship which ship to attack and which abilities to use. That or you can just turn certain abilities off autocast (capital ships that can colonize planets will go to colonize the planet even if there are 100 enemy units next to it ). Ships might also be dumb and go after a small frigate that does 8 damage rather than the heavy cruiser that does 20.

That's the goal, and I believe the devs are working hard at making that happen. Right now, the AI isn't quite as advanced as pretty much everyone (devs included) want it to be in regards to being intelligent in combat. The basics work fine if you leave the AI to manage the battle for you, but a lot of the more situational abilities and advanced targetting/maneuvers it just can't do well. As a prime example, Cobalt/Skirmisher frigates are short range quick ships. Left to the AI, they love to attack all the stationary defense placements, getting shredded in the process because they get in range of all of them. The AI has target priorities based on what the enemy has in the grav well, and that's what it goes by, it doesn't quite seek the most opportunistic targets.

However, as mentioned, the AI is being heavily worked on, and how it will turn out in the end we just won't know until we see it

As far as what you can manage about fights, as much or as little as you want. Ships have combat stances you can set. Gravity well will let the AI pick targets anywhere in the grav well if you don't override it with your own orders. Hold position will keep them still and only shoot at what's in range. Local Area will give them a limited area in which to target hostiles. You can leave the AI on those settings, and by doing that you don't have to bother with every little battle in which you have a clear advantage. But if you decide to micromanage, pretty much anything goes. Carriers and their fighter/bomber squads are separate entities, so you can order the carrier and its complement independently, you can micromanage every single ability, or leave them all on autocast. You can queue waypoints for your ships to fly, and what targets to destroy in which order. And if you like, you can order ships one by one

Thanks again for your answers!



What are those situational abilities and manouvers?

And that is good, as it stands its quite poor in terms of the options made available in a 4x game, on the other hand, its about average for a RTS game.

Yarlen-


Yep using Forge Tools you can pretty much do anything  

I already gave you an example of Cobalts/Skirmishers not being the best to take on defenses head on. Other maneuvers would be waypoints in-grav well to bypass some defenses and hit softer targets, or move the capital ships in range of defenses first (so they take the pounding) and then the smaller fragile frigates can move in and attack without getting beat up.

As for abilities, here are a few examples:

The TEC Dunov capital can restore a large amount of shields to a single ship. Since most frigates have few shields (200-300, and the Dunov can restore upwards of 1.5-2k), the ability is best used on friendly capitals. But the AI will just use it on whatever ship is in range that could use a shield boost, it won't save if for when a friendly capital really needs it.

The Vasari Antorak Marauder can use its Phase Out Hull ability on either friendly or hostile targets to put them out of the fight. It has a very short duration (but also a short cooldown), so it needs good timing and target choice. But it means the ship is capable of negating several enemy capitals so you have less incoming fire, or it can protect friendly ships if you have too much incoming focused fire. The AI can't use that ability on autocast as well as it can be used. It won't continually phase out even one enemy or friendly capital, it'll just switch targets around and won't be nearly as effective.

Those kinds of things I can give you more examples if you like, but those two illustrate it quite well I think.

Yeah they do, thanks!! ...but to be honest, I don't mind more examples, because it sounds like it could be fun using those





You guys are saying that they're rebuilding major and utmost important aspects of the game, like diplomacy, while also adding another race and enabling more game modes and bringing a galaxy customizer back in. This is next to even more work thay have to do to get the game done and to top it off there's even more secret stuff they're saying they're including in the final release. They're going to do all that and *after that* they really start working on the AI? Maybe I'm getting it wrong, but if they couldn't build a convincing AI in all the dev time until now, how are they going to build a superb AI till February? I hope they pull it off!




Can you play the beta till final release or does the beta end some day before release?


What about disconnecters? Are people leaving the game when they're not winning? Can someone else take the place, i.e. can you join an ongoing multiplayer game?

The devs have had a lot of features "on the back burner" for a while -- we reached "feature lock" (no new features to be added that weren't already in the works) a while ago, but we haven't received a lot of those features because they were still being finished (either basic programming, or polishing, probably a little of both). They're probably working on the "final" AI already, and they definitely want any AI feedback we can give 'em.

We get to go straight from beta to release.

No, you can't. On the other hand, most people tend to stick around "to the bitter end" or just admit defeat -- no "surrender" mechanic exists yet, but they admit it and both sides know its over and quit

You will find in it's final implemenation that this is well beyond well-known RTS titles.

 

The beta client that we have is probably a good month (at least) behind their internal builds. Ultimately, our beta test isn't just to freely play the game. Beta 3, for example, was basically as bare bones of an MP beta as you could get. They actually removed features from beta 2, just so that they could have a controlled test of MP stability/issues (and we hammered those out pretty well, I think, though a few ones still linger). Beta 4 introduced a second race, while keeping the feature set the same. As Ron mentioned, they've already reached the point where the game is feature locked. At this point it's tweaks - balance, UI, AI. It's going to be a crunch, for sure, but I didn't mean it to sound like they're just now starting to work on it all. They've been at it for a while, we just haven't had the opportunity to see it



Hm, there are a lot of nifty abilities! The Vasari carrier capital can create 3 functional copies of a friendly frigate or cruiser for a period of time. The Vasari battleship capital can put a debuff on enemy ships that causes a big boom when those ships are destroyed, damaging pretty heavily ships around them. The Vasari missile/bombardment capital (Vulkoras Desolator) can deal continuous damage to an enemy ship while repairing itself by the same amount. The TEC missile capital (Marza) adds heavy AoE damage to its missiles, the Dunov can magnetize ships' hulls and cause nearby fighters and bombers to crash into them, dealing damage. The Akkan has a passive range boost for nearby friendly ships, and can ion bolt enemy ships to disable their engines/weapons. One of the more iconic ships, the Vasari planet sucker/space whale (as it become popularly called) basically sucks a planet dry, giving you credits in return and heavily damaging the planet's infrastructure (needed to destroy enemy presense and open it up to your own colony ships).

Think of capitals as WC3 hero units, the mechanic for them is similar. They can level up to 10, and each ship has 5 abilities, 3 'normal' ones with 3 ranks in each, and one ultimate that gets one rank. Each side gets 5 ships (so far it's one 'line' ship, 2 support ships, 1 carrier, 1 missile ship), but each of them is incredibly diverse and handles very differently, even between racial analogs And, unlike WC3, here you can have as many capitals as your command crews (research to build additional capitals) and fleet points allow. I believe right now the current research limit allows for 24 capital ships

Also, you probably didn't see the thread by our resident video maker guru, Multianna.

Check it here!

If you don't mind long downloads, he's got high quality gameplay videos from each beta, with the beta 4 video being an actual MP game so you can get a good idea at how it's played outside of demos, as well as see some of the cool abilities in action

Eh, more like a battleship, a carrier, a dreadnought, a colonizer (slow, poorly armed, but nice abilities), and an extra... the Dunov and the Antorak are not anywhere close to each other. The Dunov is a support ship, while the Antorak is a fast raider... and nasty.

Technicalities It still has support capabilities! However, by 'support' I meant that their uses lie outside of direct combat, plus I did mention that each of them plays pretty differently from their racial counterpart

and when I do see that you will be getting LOTS of *Huggles*

Though, in the files they are identified as the battleship, carrier, and 3 utility ships, meaning the Advent will get a battleship and a carrier, but may not get a dreadnought.

Oh really? That surprised me!

The current TEC and Vasari lineup also names them Utility A, B and C. The Marza/Desolator is considered a utility ship for some reason. I think they're pretty straightforward planet killers.

They're considered utility because the classification is the same for all three races. If the advent does not have a planet bombing cap ship, then you can't make a bombardment classification.

What about the customization that we had in gal civ2? that u somehow could customize your own ships, it would be a lot of fun, instead of all vasari/ TEC / Advent ships look the same. Especially if there are two players who wanna play the same faction.

it has been talked about and i BELIEVE the devs have said you would be able to edit ships OUTSIDE of the game and then use them ingame. Editing ships ingame, however, has been an emphatic "no."

Actually, I believe they said you could use mods to edit ships -- in or out game graphics-only modding ala GalCiv2 isn't going to happen.