game speed, and Who doesnt build extractors at the start?.

Because the three minutes it takes you to build extractors in a 3 hour game is too long? Also, colony ships are fine. If you want faster caps, build the Colony Cap first instead of the battleship. That can jump in, fight, and cap in no time.

I'm running a 4-hour-and-counting single player game at home. It's quite fun

I've assimilated over 30% of the solar system just with my empire and just crushed the last big enemy fleet at about 6:00 AM this morning. That's when I realized the time and decided to take a nap before heading to work.

But, to reply to the post, I do think it's a tad long for online play. Maybe have the online play give you a starter fleet, like maybe 4 light frigates, 2 scouts and a colony ship as well as having the extractors built right away??

I used to play Star Trek Armada online a lot and those games would take HOURS and that's pretty much how we selected online play to be most of the time as it saved about 15 minutes. So, since we all had lives everyone enjoyed it. They were fun but still... back then there were many a yells from mother to do chores and I would yell back "in just a minute".. hehe.

There are certain maps that start you with units, extractors, structures, etc. Also, its unlikely to have a 4 hour multiplayer game, unless you do 2 people on a massive map or 5v5, all really good players. Either way, the 5 minutes you save in the beginning is not even worth talking about given the length of these games.

That's just it. I'm a noob so it takes me a while to position to get anything worth of value. Hell, I spent 3 hours just gaining planet/doing research/building my fleet before I started any major planet nabbing of the enemy variety.

No matter what civ you are, extractors immediately is very important/smart. Depending on your strat though, you might not need more than 3-4 of each type.

you people seem to think that the 3 mins extractors take to build wont speed up the game..

Giving you extractors doesnt just save you 3 mintues it increaes the whole speed at which you can explore colonise and attack.

and if it doesnt do a darn thing.. why not include it?

the game is spose to be agasint micro yet at the start of game you have to hurry to micro and sometimes your builders are on the otherside of the system and they dont move that fast.. othertimes they are right next to the astroids.

someone can be at a disadvante or advantage from the start.

If you want things faster DrathKar, then make a map where you start with billion credits and go play it. Compared to any other 4x, sins plays very fast. And compared to RTS it is nice and slow, which I like.

About that... I think ships should be able to move a lot faster within gravity wells. The current speed gives it a touch of battlestar gallactica realism but at the same time I think it drags games out a bit. I think perhaps increase the speed by 50% but also increase the time to phase jump by an equal amount.

The speed for fighters is fine. Just the regular ships are slow as hell.

Edit: And in that show anyway the fighters stay somewhat close in range to the ships to keep the battle group fairly tight for tactical purposes. Also... there's no way a ship should be able to be spotted that's directly on the other side of a planet unless the planet is yours. There have been several times where I've got to a neutral world with an enemy directly on the other side of the planet from my small strike force and my fighters go crazy trying to track down the enemy.

There should be some line of sight restrictions.

if you play on the right map sizes games are generally a reasonable length. I play 1v1s with my buddy on 13-18 planet maps. These games generally take about an hour fifteen to an hour and a half. I don't think we've ever played for longer than an hour and 40 minutes.

2v2s are probably the same so long as the map size is proper.

(we play with everything set to fast)

This are fun games that definitely have a sense of early-game, mid-game, and late-game. And you have to choose your techs very very carefully because there definitely won't be time to get everything.


Also, extractors at the start. if you want an agressive start, I recommend building your capship factory before you build extractors. Then go metal extractors. Becaue you need metal to build light frigates. You probably only need one. You can hold off on the crystal extractor until you have the right amount of light frigates.

Figure an extractor cost about the same as a light frigates, so if you're trying to be really agressive you can get that frigate out that much sooner if you odn't build the extractor. And I definitely don't upgrade infrastructure right away, because it's more important for me to get the frigates out promptly.

Again, this only applies to an aggressive start, which usually means fast creeping to level up capship, then go hang around the enemy asteroid to annoy him. You're not going to rush and destroy him in five minutes, but you can put him off balance pretty well. And even though you've creeped several planets, you don't expand too quickly otherwise you'll ruin yourself with infrastructure debt.

I agree, starting with the extractors already built seems like a good idea. Its not a huge time savings, but nothing is really going on when you're buliding them at the very start anyway.

It reminds me a lot of "advanced start" in Civilization 4. The idea there was that you could start with a bit of a boost (extra towns/units/research). The main thing it got rid of was how the first 20 turns of every game in Civ 4 are basically just "move the scout and hit next turn." Speeding up the opening a bit lets you get to the actual game faster.

ironcily I dont like fast starts in CIV... the starting build orders in CIV vastly effected how well you did and I generaly have better starts then most...

On the otherhand it was annoying when someone wouldnt click end turn for the first 30 turns

in SINS I cant see anything that it does... the above post... by the time you RUSH the enemy they normaly have scouts know your comming and can have more ships there then you have strung out over systems comming to reinforce while there fighting on home turf and can build defences.. and then your noty only lost a rush but your got resources behind ontop of what you lost shipwise

The way the game starts is fine, and speeding up ships in gravity wells is not a good idea either, many a time i have had a enemy fleet take 30seconds to cross my gravity well to reach my defence only to find i jump my main fleet in right on top of them from the planet next door

You could always ask for a optional speed adjustment, like in AOE and such, 3settings 1/1.5/2 have it locked or unlocked before the game and you can just goto 2X speed at the start for a bit if everyone agrees or something, that would speed the game up but to be honest i hvan't had any complaints and don't have any complains on how the system works now and how fats you start, sometimes i seem to start really fast and do well other times i am slow off the mark and i got allies on tech3 while i am still on my 2nd planet...

Actually you can tweak your build quite a bit depending on when you build extractors. Crystal extractor along with cap factory are usually my first builds, but from there I usually have four or five other things going before the metal extractors. Depending on map as Vasari I'll have 3 scouts out looking for neutral extractors and colony frigate queued up before I bother with metal.

Watch some of the replays at https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/308726 and you'll see that hardly anyone in high-level multiplayer hits all of their extractors first thing.

Point is, something as small as prioritizing your beginning build order - extractors included, can influence the next hour of play. Quickstart maps exist and are good if you want to jump right in to a single player game, but part of the greatness of Sins is making small choices with large consequences from the first moments of play til the last.

Edit: also, I'd say most online games I've played are over in less than an hour. Stay away from FFA and multi-system or huge maps and you should see the same

Obviously he never played anyone worth their salt on close encounters. getting 3 extractors up is possible, but may lead to your death. Building extractors first is what noobs do. You build capital ship factory first 99% of the time.