RTS vs 4X Poll

4x it is for me.

but only because i just recently started up another game of MOO3. large galaxy do take long to play, and being Ithkul keeps me busy.

Anyway if i really wanted to play a rts games i would play Starcraft or Warhammer 40000. Incidentally I believe so far Warhammer was the only game I believe that replaced Starcraft as an RTS game for me. Hopefully Starcraft II will retake that spot, "Hell, It's about Time"

/signed 4x

dont get me wrong, I love my RTSs, but the management for sins should be focused on 4x, as of current those elements are almost entirely not there.

4x..... though i wanted to sign rts. i still play some old 4x every now n then but what i desire most is the tactical battles of sins. and yes as it stands now most of the 4x elements are missing/lacking. but overall, i truly hope the game continues to lean hard, if not harder than now, on the rts side. but dont let me stop a beautiful new diplo model and other hopeful 4x treats that the new AI really lets shine forth.

4X for me also...

I have plenty of other games that fill my need for RTS, I want what sins promises, RT4X!

4X for me too

*evil eyes*

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'secret huggles'

4x for me too. the way research is done and units are ordered, most of the resource system is more reminiscent of a large rts than a 4x.

yeah thats the problem, the technology are researched waay to fast.

Maybe its our new game speed that is to blame? and thats also a reason i dont like playing on fast gamespeed, as it makes it feel too much like a RTS game.

I hope the speed of the research are just temporary as we are testing it all.



*EVIL eyes* -.-

do you mean actual research time i.e. the time from pressing the research button to the research being done, or do you mean the lvl of research compared to the game progress?

I'd say both should be altered towards longer games. you shouldn't reach the end of the tech trech except for fairly large, fairly long games, by which I think of more than 4 - 5 hours.

That's already mostly the case. If not for the time needed, then the number of planets needed for that many military and civ labs

I mean both. Right now you can have everything researched in about 3hours.

jup, my impression also. in my last game we played a small random and I easily reached tech lvl 7 civic and 5 military and my opponent at least military 9. and I had gone for extreme culture, so it would have been entirely possible to reach the end. we played about 2 hours.

in fact all you need is a desert planet to stuff labs in and a few other planets to generate the resources for it. as I said, well possible even on small maps.

Sins is being pushed as the best of both the 4x, and RTS worlds. That is exactly what i expect it to be.

(Rant) Right now it is leaning more toward the RTS side of things.. gee, i wonder why. Is it because thats what everyone here has been asking for in the past? More tactic's, more clicky fest, more micro, more homeworld/starcraft wannabe? Wah, wah, wah, i want supcom, or DoW in space. Look at the past post's here, and you will get my drift

Why is it that all of a sudden NOW after the dev's said they cant do any major change to the engine anymore do we all decide to start talking about the 4x side of things? IIRC most 4x discussions got greeted with the "wah, i just want my RTS" type responses. Which is fine. To each their own. However, Do NOT start championing 4x after posting in the past many times in so many words that you wanted more RTS in the game. Some will say they didn't say these things, but don't take my word for it. Search the forums, and see for yourself. (end of rant)

As for me.. Well.. I want my freaking FOUR X!...dammit.

So far we have it, but in a very limited form. Sins does have everything any other 4x game has Exploration, Expansion, Exploitation, and Extermination. Diplomacy can use some more work, and it is being worked on. I hope i will see some more espionage in the final game. I want to be able to use spy's to infiltrate, and disable stuff. I want an influence system in place to where if i demand the AI to surrender they will do so if they are hopelessly outnumbered.

You guys now want to lengthen the research. Weren't people bitching that MP games took way too long in beta 3? (look it up) The dev's listened, and they did speed up the game. Now you want to go, and slow it back down again........

The research tree's still need some tweaking. As in some researches taken down to a lower tier which was discussed before, but the research speeds are fine as they are right now. If people think normal is too fast then switch it to slow (beta 3's normal).

Right now "flip flopping" is coming to mind.

There is more i wanted to talk about but i am tired, and cant think straight now.

I must say I'm happy to see people voting for 4x Like said in this post, I also do have games filling the RTS spot quite good, when I need an RTS game.

Kryo (or any other dev), do you have some action plans depending on the results of the pool? I mean, throwing out this question in a pool suggest it. If 95% of people wants it more 4x...

To be fair, Major Stress, I don't think they're talking so much about making games longer (that I would agree would be some pretty bad flip flopping), than about limiting research so that only "bigger" games can get to the top of the tree.

Personally, I think their view on it is pretty skewed, since yeah with a few deserts on a small map you can get to some high up techs, but a) nobody ever does unless the whole game is between people who do nothing but spend the first 3 hours building up, and on small maps it takes a whole lot longer than it would on big ones just because you have very little room for economic expansion if you try to cram labs in every orifice

Basically, the idea that small games get very high techs is very extreme, it's very common for me never to get past 7 lab research even on more medium 4-ish player maps.



You'd have to ask the Ironcladians most likely (Blair or Craig, the two most frequent forum posters), but even the Stardockians will tell you that nothing major can be done at this point, beyond what's already in the pipe that we haven't seen. Times/lengths of research/development/yaddayadda can be tweaked, but no mechanics changes. That said, Major Stress did have a very good point in that a lot of earlier complaints about Multiplayer was that games took too long, people wanted medium games to take 60-90 minutes, right now most of them take a bit longer, but making the game more "4x" would make them longer still. So in that regard, he's right, the devs gave us exactly what we asked for

Nothing major can be done at this point and it is interesting how people have gone from one extreme to another.   Of course, if you're playing a Fast game and things progress quickly, you really shouldn't be at all surprised.

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I'm psychic

I did vote for the longer option ( I think 2 - 3 hours) back at the poll. in singleplayer I will very likely chose the slow option anyway, because I like a more gentle pace. in mp it will probably drag along too much and other players wont be liking it.

but alas, the question was asked and I put my 2 cents in.

btw ours was 2 hours mostly build up. some smaller skirmishes, but nothing major and no significant losses. my impression was that in small games you get to a stalemate where neither side dares any offensive move in midgame, because defenses + fleet make it very hard to break the lines.

As did I

i dont quite remember the old pool, but as far as i remember it i voted 2-3hours for medium maps.

Im not talking about making the game longer, but the tech tree last longer so that you actually have something to research in games that have multiply star systems.

As we all have heard that you can have maps that last for a very long time, like weeks, but if the research is already done in 3hours, i would feel it would become repetitive and boring after that.

I dunno how it will or can be done, but i do feel there is a need for more 4X then RTS in sins

which is exactly one of my concerns. while technically you could play dozens of stars, the game is de facto optimized to a handful with maybe 60 planets distributed amongst the players. research is done in the early stages of such a game and some of the controls would not work so well. especially there I would prefer a slower pace, since sometimes you may have multiple battles going on and then it becomes challenging to keep an eye on all of them and do other stuff still.

Since no major changes can be done i guess we will have to make due with what we have, and wait for the patches after release.

Apologies for coming off as an ass earlier. I was tired (still am), weird, and pissed off. Just a general bad day

Yes, we do need more 4X. More than what we have now. Especially in the exploration dept. Like i said it is there now. It just doesn't feel "right" i cant put my finger on it. It feels incomplete.

I totally agree with you about the large multi star maps. Everyone will be to lvl 15 tech long before the last planets are colonized, or before any major battles begin. By that time dark fleet, insurgency, and whatever the Advents lvl 15 game ender will be in the picture. Unless you play on "slow" for multi star maps i dont see how this can be fixed.

The thing is multiplayer conflicts with any true 4x type deal. This because most people want a short wham bam lets hurry up, and get it over with type games. Saving a game is cool, but TBH how many are actually gonna come back, and finish the game?

The only way i can see to solve this is to have 2 games in 1. Your very long 4x type single player game with all the 4x bells, and whistles that would slow down, and piss off the average multiplayer gamer. Then the multiplayer game which IMO right now it is fine as it stands.

not sure if by exploration you also mean planet development, because the latter is very nice as of beta 4. planets still bring very different boni, but it takes a while to profit from them, very cool.

exploration has been mentioned often enough, for me its mostly a bonus to sink extra cash in.

one thing which is not in and could make the whole thing more flexible: a structure that increases fleet points a bit. currenctly, planets are fairly flexible, you can either use them to get more creds/ resources, labs, factories or culture. so to a certain degree a desert can replace a terran or ice and vice versa. but we have nothing to replace a volcanic with, so a "fleet headquater" structure might be cool to trade research, trade, etc. opportunities for more fleet space.

that was of course widely off topic, sry. so back:

whil I would agree that saving and getting the same group of people together is hard it can be done. I dunno, for games of that size I would prefer to play with people I know anyways and then its a bit easier to coordinate. plus I love LANs, so I wouldn't discard the attraction of big, huge maps, if design fits. don't get me wrong, mp is a lot of fun, but as I played mostly single star maps I cannot make a good judgement on the larger models. my guess is though that it will result in full tech slugfests too early.

espionage, even if its just a consolidated intel report of all sightings in a planet overview screen (e.g. in imperium galactica 2 or tbs games), is also a classic 4x element and should find a way in.

more things would come to my mind probably (events, wonders, pop morale ...), but since its too late for now, I let it be at that.

Since day 1 (where day 1 for me is when I joined the beta), I'm asking for more 4x and I've answered in the pools that way.

But I guess the RTS community is bigger than the 4x one and Sins is becoming more and more RTS. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to see IronClad and Stardock answering the community with what it ask for (even if the changes are not the one I voted for).

I have no comments on how the game could be modified to be more 4x, because I haven't had the time to play a lot and all of you surely have better ideas. Right now, when I want to play a 4x type of game, I play GalCiv 2 and Star Wars Rebellion.

I hope one day I'll win the lottery and finance a game creation according to what I prefer, even if it doesn't sells good ! hehe

Since there is a pool about it, one has to wonder why they are asking...


No problemo, we all have those days


when you meet your opponent it will be the same, as the speed reduces the overall speed, not just the speed of ships or research. So in the end it will be the same.


That was what i was afraid of, when we got that pool about the times on the maps.
Also as i said earlier, i dont like playing on fast, as it makes it play more as a RTS game rather then a 4X game.
Fast isbe good for those as you said, that wants a quick game, but for ppl like me that wants to play Sins i want this epic-ness

I dunno if this would work, but making the research take longer could also increase there value in the sense of tactical choices, as you would have to make a choice to either get a better economy with more weaker ships or if you were to go more combat for stronger but with less ships :NOTSURE: