Numerous Bug/Gameplay issues and suggestions

SOSE is freaking awesome

from Sins Forums

I just finished a 15 hour game, still cant get all of the artifacts in one game L  Here are a list of bugs/suggestions if you guys get the chance.  I love this game, reminds me of anything David Weber writes.

 

  1. {UI}  Unit production sounds need a toggle on/off switch.  After about a 100 “The bigger they are the harder they fall” sounds I want to commit suicide.

 

  1. {Gameplay}  When the opponents quit in single player is not very predictable.  For example some quit when they are in the last three of their planets and some quit while still holding 7 and a titan.

 

 

  1. {Gameplay}  Starbases should mitigate or contribute to culture.  When entering an enemy solar system it is incredibly hard to get enough culture to colonize the first planet.

 

  1. {Bug}  There are numerous instances when in a pretty heavy battle the ability effects do not show.  Same with cap ship explosions.

 

 

  1. {Gameplay}  Titans should be at the front of a battle to destroy a titan or a starbase.  What happens is that they stop at max range and your cap ships get even closer, resulting in you losing cap ships at a prodigious rate while the titan, with a lot of HP, doesn’t get hardly any damage.

 

  1. {UI}  Cargo ships on/off should be in the in game effects menu to toggle on and off.  Many times at the beginning I like them but as the game slows down I like to turn them off.  Hate saving/quitting and reentering to get that done.

 

  1. {Bug}  Have a lot of ‘stuck’ ships in planets.  For example, I will attack a planet, move the fleet and one of my Cap ships will ‘stay’ in the grav well.  I try to move it but it doesn’t work.  It doesn’t actually show when you zoom into the grav well and if you double click its info card the game spins you out into some blank part of space.  The only thing I can do is scuttle the ship and build a new one.  This also happens with pirates and enemies as well, giving you a game long ‘your planet is under siege’ warning.  Nice militia bonuses for no reason though J

 

  1. {Gameplay}  Rebel sounds.  When a base is under attack by rebels there should be a different sound than the generic one “One of your planets is under attack” or the “hostile forces are approaching”.  It should say “Your planet is under attack/being raided by rebels”.  If it’s just rebels I usually ignore it in the game because I have bombers in system at most planets.  But it usually confuses me and I think a fleet has moved in.

 

  1. {Gameplay}  The Titans retaining their XP after being destroyed makes no sense.  If the crew dies then so should the XP, just like Cap ships.  Or at least you should pay a 50% penalty when building a new one and lose half of your previous XP.

 

  1. {Gameplay}  I love SOSE but the games are incredibly predictable.  One you get about half way through the game it usually is just a mopping up operation.  There are no late game surprises.  Here are some suggestions ala Simcity 1.0 J
    1. Make a new race appear later in the game
    2. Make a new planet or planets appear later in the game
    3. Let Comp players surrender to other comp players
    4. Have the old MOO ‘Trader race appear” and you have to get to it to to get a new tech
    5. Have Godzilla destroy a planet
    6. Let Rebels take over a planet and start a new government.

 

  1. {Gameplay}  Consider a new type of mine.  I loved the old Stars! And one of the mines they had was the ‘sticky’ mine.  If you deployed it the mine would slow down your ships or stop them completely for a time.

 

  1. {Gameplay}  Make it so that if you hold the shift or control button you can deploy more than 10 mines at once.  I would usually just do the auto placement but most times the AI sucks at where it places them.

 

  1. {Bug}  Still getting that “Victory” repeated sound at the end of every game.  If you guys could squash this bug first I would personally appreciate it J

 

  1. {Gameplay}  The new TEC Cap ship that can board ships should also be able to board and seize mining stations in asteroid belts/storms etc.  If it can land troops then a few mining techs should be a big deal.

 

  1. {Bug}  after you quit and then click Main Menu while playing a large game it takes almost 5 minutes to return to the main menu.  I have a I7 with a SSD and nothing in the game is as slow as that.  For the first few times I always thought the computer froze and I force quit the game.  Found out a few games back that it was just slow and now I wait, or eat or walk etc.

 

  1. {Gameplay}  You should be able to restrict Titans when you choose the game options.

 

  1. {Bug}  When you double click a ship in the pinned menu, under its fleet pin the left pin menu scrolls down to the planet where the ship actually is.  Pain in the but when try to create or split fleets.

 

  1. {Gameplay or Bug} After using Armistice with an Akkan cap ship the ships in the radius will stop attacking each other, but will still be able to attack anything else in the gravity well.  Armistice should just stop anything in the effect radius from attacking period. 

 

  1. {Gameplay}  Consider a research upgrade similar to the Logistics Costs in the Civ tree where you can add 1 more item to an existing maxed out starbase.  Trust me, we all forgot or need something later and I hate scuttling a whole starbase later in the game to try and max out my commerce points J

It is an excellent game and I appreciate all the work you guys have done and I hope some of these can help.

-Jason

6,357 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top


{Gameplay}  Starbases should mitigate or contribute to culture.  When entering an enemy solar system it is incredibly hard to get enough culture to colonize the first planet.
End of quote

Advent Starbases can get an upgrade to do this. The others should probably have supression when upgraded, like capital ships do.
 

{Gameplay}  Titans should be at the front of a battle to destroy a titan or a starbase.  What happens is that they stop at max range and your cap ships get even closer, resulting in you losing cap ships at a prodigious rate while the titan, with a lot of HP, doesn’t get hardly any damage.
End of quote

You could move your Titan in first manually, but Starbases can attack four (five if upgraded) targets simultaneously with ALL of their weapons. So even if you do that, your weaker ships are still going to take a pounding. There's no way to make your Titan soak all of the attacks from the Starbase.

If you're playing as TEC, the Ogrov Torpedo Cruiser can fight it from outside the Starbases range and are the best SB killers in the game.
 

{Bug}  Have a lot of ‘stuck’ ships in planets.  For example, I will attack a planet, move the fleet and one of my Cap ships will ‘stay’ in the grav well.  I try to move it but it doesn’t work.  It doesn’t actually show when you zoom into the grav well and if you double click its info card the game spins you out into some blank part of space.  The only thing I can do is scuttle the ship and build a new one.  This also happens with pirates and enemies as well, giving you a game long ‘your planet is under siege’ warning.  Nice militia bonuses for no reason though J
End of quote

Apparently this was just fixed by the devs, so it should go away soon.


{Gameplay}  The Titans retaining their XP after being destroyed makes no sense.  If the crew dies then so should the XP, just like Cap ships.  Or at least you should pay a 50% penalty when building a new one and lose half of your previous XP.
End of quote

Agreed.


Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

One more, in addition to the separate thread for allowing users to limit ship types before starting a game.

Why does the computer never ever build starbases in the Suns gravity well?  The fact that you can build four means that in an epic game it strategically behooves one to do so.  Either as TEC for the money or else for the anchor in the defense.  Four starbases can hold off two full fleets and titans if the are arranged correctly.

But never, in a single game, have I ever faced a computer starbase in the solar gravity well.

Thanks again,

-Jason

Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

The AI sucks. The Rebellion beta AI sucks even more. Half your complaints are a result of this, such as lategame getting a mopup operation (I suggest unfair or higher AI to reduce this).

 

You can turn cargo ships on and off ingame. I do it all the time, never had to get out of the game for it. Unless they changed it in the latest beta patch.

You can unpin planets that you don't need to see all the time and fold charts of planets you don't currently reside in, this helps keeping a good overview. Also you can automatically add new ships to fleets by setting the relay point of the frigate factories to the fleet leader. Do this on two different planets to reduce the hassle of having to sort out the fleets afterwards.

 

The SSL only helps when loading the game. After you have won the game is cleaned from your RAM again and the menu is loaded again. So what takes up so much time is the 2GB of RAM the game clogged up till then. Strange thing is that some people (like me) odn't have this at all, whyever.

The Vasari have a mine that disables phase drives of ships if I recall correctly. And since they have a minelayer ship they can even deploy them in enemy grav wells.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting trackpads, reply 2


Why does the computer never ever build starbases in the Suns gravity well?
End of trackpads's quote


I'm kind of glad they don't. The phase destabilization makes a fair dent in fleets that try to bypass them. While it'd definitely make sense tactically, the thought of having to take control from a star that has up to five TEC starbases in a pile makes me wish I could point a novalith at starbases.

Also, definitely hope they add a culture repression to starbases a la capital ships. Wonder how hard that'd be to do myself...

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top


 

{Bug}  after you quit and then click Main Menu while playing a large game it takes almost 5 minutes to return to the main menu.  I have a I7 with a SSD and nothing in the game is as slow as that.  For the first few times I always thought the computer froze and I force quit the game.  Found out a few games back that it was just slow and now I wait, or eat or walk etc.

 


{Gameplay}  You should be able to restrict Titans when you choose the game options.

 


{Gameplay or Bug} After using Armistice with an Akkan cap ship the ships in the radius will stop attacking each other, but will still be able to attack anything else in the gravity well.  Armistice should just stop anything in the effect radius from attacking period. 

 


End of quote

 

The game has always been slow after quitting a game - it does not take 5 min - more like  10-100 seconds depending on the legenth of the game

 

Agree on turning titans on or off

 

Agree on Arnistice

 

good long/detailed post btw

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Oh no, on my games it was like 5 or more, trust me.  I cant wait to see the new one today and if it fixes it.  I doesnt bother me as much now that I realized it was the game and not my computer freezing each time :)

On starbases, I do wish they would build at least one in the solar gravity well, makes it harder for other AI or players to invade each others galaxy on large maps.  Gives a kind of firebreak.  Another location they should consider is in wormholes and uncolonizable zones. 

Thanks for the replies, cant wait to check out the new beta.  I m still on vacation until monday (whoot).

 

-Jason

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

A few more notes that I had taken during the last game:

1. The Scuttle button in the UI needs moved.  I know it is easier to use the Shift-S combo but if there is going to be a button it should be in a place that doesn't keep causing the screen to scroll down every time I reach for it :)

2.  Diplomacy Cease Fire:  This should not have a minimum relationship race once you have actually engaged the enemy.  Otherwise it becomes useless since every ship engagement or lost trade ship ensures it will never rise.  A temporary truce or something should be available just like in a real conflict.  You shouldn't have to make friends with your enemy before you decide to stop shooting at each other.

3. Starbase ability.  In addition to the red button, which is only a final resort, the TEC and other starbases should have an EMP weapon upgrade or a version of the armistice. Now that I think about it, just remove it form the Akkan and put it here.

4. Kill counters.  In the original Supreme Commander (not the crappy sequel) each defensive weapon and vehicle had 'kill counters' that would tell you how many enemies they had destroyed.  This would be awesome for defensive structures in SOSE because it would allow you to see which of the structures are most effective in their placements. 

5. Diplomacy warnings.  Ina  game with many players it is hard to keep up with the diplomacy screen.  When playing against 8 I continually have to check the diplomacy screen to see which rate is falling etc.  There should be a warning when your diplomacy rate falls enough to threaten a cease fire.  As it is right now when the cease fire is cancelled it is sort of shock like "why the hell is he shooting at me?" kind of shock.  Then, like noted earlier, it is a slow path downward unless you can avoid combat with them long enough to get your relationship back up. And he hasn't killed off all of your envoy ships you had sent them.

Thanks again,

-Jason