3rd Expansion, what do we think/what would we like it to be?

I am hoping for an expansion that adds one or two additional races or factions of existing races with different tech mixes.

Adding new races and technology trees I feel is more appropriate for a full-scale expansion, not a micro-expansion.

I would love to see story campaigns, but again, those may be best suited for a full expansion.

Let's see: with defense and diplomacy covered, that leaves planet management and culture as possbilites.  Perhaps we will see finer control over planets? 

If I had a say in it, I would change the current allegiance system.  Rather than allegiance determine tax income rate, have tax income rate determine allegiance.  In other words, players can adjust the tax rate (either galaxy-wide or per planet, depending on what the developers are willing to implement) in favor of or against allegiance.  Allegiance would then affect structure and ship construction rate, effectiveness of placed defenses, resource extraction rate (think of it this way: higher taxes equals lower resource extraction; lower taxes equals higher resource extraction), and effectiveness of cultural structures and other factors that spread culture.  In summary, low taxes equal higher allegiance (thus higher productivity), high taxes equals lower allegiance (lower productivty).

Expanding upon culture: What if culture also affected a planet's max population as well as allegiance? Not that culture literally kills, but the population on a planet available (i.e. loyal) to the current player should fluctuate based on the presence of friendly culture and enemy culture.  This way, culture can still have an economical impact for players, especially if allegiance is changed in the way suggested above.

the "whatever" chasing the vasari as a new race.

plus a more expansive tech tree would be nice - winkwink

as for the culture increasing or decreasing population... it may not have to work that way, you could say that those under enemy culture spend money on foreign products and pay very little taxes in favour of giving money to the enemy player

the end result is the same but that could be the explanation.

personally setting the tax rate for individual planets is a bit too much micro for my taste, and to be honest, i think the way its done now is realistic. after all, center of power and government is your homeworld, which is where all the hell will spew from if you dont fall in line, so if you are 1 phase jump away you are more afraid of repercussions than if you are 7 jumps away... for that reason i think placing a phase stabiliser in a system should increase allegiance, because distances are reduced...

but i would definitly like more research stuff, perhaps stuff for engines, more weapon upgrades naturally, perhaps another level of resource filtering to increase effeciency

What do I think it will be? I would say economy and infrastructure. Planet based upgrades, more complex trade and other stuff like that. The current system isn't very complicated and requires a lot of micromanaging.

What I hope it will be is something like this: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/345229

ME TOO!!!

A story would be nice; but I suspect that would be a full expansion (or a set of miniexpansions - one story per race).

What would prove more practical would be the idea of more finetuning of planets - it'd be nice to feel you were actually building up an empire rather than creating starship factories. And an enhanced research tree would be lovely. I'd also be happy to see more ships and variety there too, but that's almost a given.

But yeah, other than a story, the real gameplay thing they'd want to work on is making ones empire more empire-ish.

I would really like to see alternative methods for capturing planets rather than brute-force.  I was thinking something along the lines of covert-agents infiltrating the planetary governments and causing either a rebellion or a chaotic collapse (rebellions would result in the planet's purchasing [such as colonization ranks and exploration] still being in tact, and the collapse would cause the entire planet to be loss).  I think the factors behind these covert agents would be effected by culture and enemy\friendly ships in the vacinity of the planet.  So the stronger the culture rate and\or the number of your own ships (this system could be similar to enemy ship retreating) the faster the agents work at getting the planet under your control or being screwed up due to all the chaos (like terrorism!)

I just get sick of having to gather a fleet of planetary assault ships who are slow and weak (both hull and weaponry) and are the priority target #1 reguardless of your fleet of 45 carriers who will utterly desimate (sp?) your enemies ships.

I suppose this could be added with the diplomacy expansion, while I'm on that note, I would REALLY like to see some true allegiance with the players you team up with especially in cases where they want you to attack their "enemy" and you go to destroy their enemies and ask for a few of their ships to come with you to help and they sit there saying that they don't want to attack their allies... WTF?!?!  That reason alone I play with FFA or locked teams just because of that bullcrap, its like the entire population of the galaxy are backstabbers.

Covert agents...maybe...but there would have to be some major drawback or else people would just use their fleet for defense and take over other empires solely with these agents.

I think this would wreck the advent  to other races economy balance.

I would expect what we get (for $10.00)in Micro-3 would be close to what we got in Micro-1, basically

A)  New tech- Defense Tree

  Upgradeable Ships - Starbases

C)  New ships- Minelayers and mining

(and as a side note...I think that was pretty great new material for just $10.00)

For Micro-3- (I like Escalation Maybe have...

A)  Techs - If Phase missile are shield negators, add armor negating weapons, or direct anti-shield or armor-reducing weapons.

  Upgradeable/New classes of ships, something like xploseve posted earlier...

Super Dreadnaughts

I like the idea of the dreadnuaght idea.

It be cool to have each race its own kind, taking the best of each capital ship and blending it to gether.

Still using the level idea from the Cap. ships but can buy upgrades to wepons and armor and specail abilities too it like the star base, as stated above.

But you can only have one.

I doubt they'd do the dreadnaught thing - the expansions are intended to be standalone. Imagine the chaos of having a dreadnaught... and no modules to expand.

so what about starbases and anti-structure cruisers? they arent in Original Recepie Sins, but were introduced in an expansion...

Yes, and they will remain viable without needing the second or third expansions.

My point is that they want each expansion to not require the previous ones, so there's no gurantee that someone that buys the third expansion will have the first.

I hope they introduce multicore rendering to support added detail , failing that I'd settle for something like Jumpgates being added or a scripting engine so fan's/players can make up campaigns.

so your saying the second and thrid expansions wont have starbases and anti-structure crusiers and the defense tech tree and whatever other changes? because someone who buys diplomacy may not have entrenchment?

seems kinda dumb to me

my GF is really into The Sims 2 atm, but shes not computer savvy so ive been helping her install and everything, i bought her 2 expansions, the way Sims works is each expansion is more like a patch, it gives the original program more/new music, items, abilities, locations. so, basically, you dont need to use the "Pets" disk to play with pets or the "Bon Voyage" disk to play with vacations, you can put in any of the 3 disks that you have and play with whatever you have installed.

i dont see why Sins would work any different, having to open up a different program to access different features seems REALLY silly to me.

No, no. I'm not saying it would be "Entrenchment vs Diplomacy: Pick one to play", I'm saying that you'll be able to buy and play Diplomacy without having bought Entrenchment to start with.

Thus, if the third expansion was "Dreadnaughts", this would leave you in the situation of being able to buy and install Dreadnaughts without having bought Entrenchment. Given this meant you had massive offensive power and nothing at all to counter it defensively... yeah, a small problem.

My suspicioni is that they'll aim in a direction they hadn't expanded yet, rather than building on something bigger still. Hence ... well, Entrenchment, Diplomacy... Empire is my guess, perhaps? I'd be up for a little more 'large scale' style things, like more comprehensive tech trees and more expansive planet options/interactions - it's certainly an area that's a little bit shallow* at the moment, and their goal seems definitely to expand on the weak points.

* When I say 'shallow', I don't mean what they did was bad. In several places like planetary upgrades and the diplomacy system, I admire what they were trying to do, but always found it a bit lacking in depth. If they wish to expand that, this is fine by me.

I sujested that each player get 1 and only one. unlike the starbases which max number is equal to  the amount of planets on the map plus four. Plus each person would get one, so while your stormen there place they could be stormen you.

Research choices - you can only choose X number of reserches in a new tree.  This may increase speed, defense, attack, or unlock new ships.

So... back to the problematic 'hard to defend and attack simultaneously' problem that Entrenchment explicitly attempted to fix? Yeah, I don't see that happening.

The concept is also a little redundant - capitals are already supposed to be your pride and joys whom you focus your attention on; having them relegated to less special because there's something even more special out there would probably defeat the point a bit. As noted in interviews, any singleplayer story would revolve at least partially around a veteran captain of a Kol-class battleship. I doubt they'd change the lore just to accomidate a single super-capital per side; at which point I doubt they'd put such a trump card in at all.

(Not that I mind the idea of having multiple/modular abilities for each capship class to select from, you understand - indeed, were it possible on the current capitals that would be pure awesomeness. I just have my doubts as to it being likely.)

I would like a capital ship focused expansion.

I doubt it would happen, but giving capitals upgrades like starbases would be cool.  Make some of them require both a certain level capital and a certain level of capital logistics research.  Having ship specific ones would be cool like: Expanded Colony module for colony capitals - starts a newly colonized planet at a cetain percent of its maximum population, Expanded Hanger: for carrier capitals, gives another squad of strikecraft.

What I really want is a sixth capital for each race.  There is room for an anti-strike craft capital that can target strikecraft with its normal weapons.

Also, it would be nice to have the designation 'flagship' be important.  Give the ship double bonuses from leveling up, but have it provde a big penalty for 1-2 minutes to all friendly ships that are around when it is destroyed( demoralizing to lose a flagship).  There should be a way to designate a flagship by paying 500-1000 credits if you don't have one.

i don't think a dreadnaught work word balance wise as cool as it would be.

Also mutually exclusive research might be nice: say you have to chose between faster build speed or cheaper ships as an example.

Now, according to IP laws, by posting this stuff are pretty much ensuring that it can't happen because IC could never prove they came up with the idea?  Oh well, if you like it, baby it's free.

i scanned some of the previous posts, sorry if I repeat.

I think the logical sequel to an entrenchment game is a trench-busting game.  But do you really want to go there?  I dunno.  Sins and entrenchment both do such a great job of not being about who has the bigger gun, and I really wouldn't want an expansion to be about gigantic guns with weirdo achilles heels, you know?  And iron clad I'm sure would do a stellar job avoiding that pitfall.

Ok, so some of the ideas I'd had in mind are like this.

The vasari have been here 50 years now without making any real headway in subdueing the region.  They're running thin and it's do or die.  In a move of desparation they've begun sending their starbases into contested systems to cleanse the planet of inhabitants and stripped of usable materials, even if it means leaving the planet a waste and barely usable so long as the enemy can't have it.

The advent are completely frustrated by their continued failure to punish their enemies.  Their shame at defeat is outstripped only by their hatred of the TEC. As an attempt to strengthen their psionic bond and reaffirm their unified purpose against their enemies, advent have began collecting together in colossal suicide pacts, detonating all of the souls on the planet, sending unfathomable waves psionic energy throughout space.

The TEC are weary and wasted by war.  A generation has come and goes now having known only sacrifice and they begin to fear their eventual extinction.  Parks and civic centers are now strip mines and factories populated by children.  No labor goes unused, no resource goes unexploited. Experienced crews are put aboard fresh capital ships and sent into battle. Novice crews are put aboard hastily constructed cruisers and waved off with little hope of coming back.

Yeah, in this theme there is this sort of desparation that they each have one last chance to make this turn out right and it doesn't matter how big of a mess it makes.  The working idea being that this is the expansion where the true colors come out and see what these races were all made to do. It seems very natural to me for the vasari to send some massive structure to just absolutely rape a world in preparation for their next jump, and now they're using it as a weapon.  They come, they take, they leave, that's the vasari way.  So now, they come, they take, they leave a nearly dead asteroid, denying the resources to their enemy.

I've always had the vibe that the advent would gladly kill themselves if it meant making the TEC suffer/die.  What better way to show your devotion to unity than opting for death on your terran world and unseating the culture in all of the neighboring gravity wells, and giving your buddies a fighting boost 3-4 jumps away.  The Heaven's Gate ain't got nothing on this s***.

And the tec.  They were hardworking industrious peeps before and now they've turned their attention to total war. Anyone who can hold a gun gets one, everyone else gets a hammer and a factory job.  They can produce more ships from the same resources and faster, can overcrowd their planets to get more income and even more production, their crews are reckless with their lives pulling off bold moves, but this comes at a price of quality and experience. Some ships are guns with engines and some crews have never seen space before. I can think of all kinds of creative ways to pull that off.

Give me researsh for a ship to be able to steal star ships and capital ships and let me be able to steal  other races  buildings so i can have a little of say tec ships and advent frigits

That sounds really interesting and doable in a micro expansion. I would love to see something like stealing bases and ships or maybe add mixed factions of Vasari + TEC, Vasari + Advent, TEC + Advent, ext....

Just dreaming a little bigger (for maybe a full expansion) but imagine a Vasari + TEC faction that had a wacked out frigate crossover between an Kanrak Assailant and Javelis LRM. I can dream.