My Thoughts Since the Beginning

Might have been better to complain about this earlier, not three expansions later.   Especially since a lot of people praise Sins' interface. *shrugs*

That said, one of the big causes of Empire tree jumping was helped recently thanks to a new option to hide phase jumping ships.

lol.  yeah.  I mentioned this long ago (about the interface).  you know, I forgot about the option to hide phase jumping ships.  I am gonna try that.  thanks!

no one had anything to say about the Coronata though?? 

lol

Having messed with all the Titans against the AI I would say they are all really awesome in their own ways. Just got done with a AL run and yes, the Coronata is awesome for its epic planet capture ability. Especially when the culture is rampant as culture will not affect this ability.

Its true we have gotten a lot of praise over the user interface so I'm surprised to read this - HOWEVER - it is true that is could use some more love. I have a big list of improvements I'd like to implement but they will likely have to wait for a sequel. I have plans to completely redesign the empire tree for example. Watching how other people play it on youtube over the last few years (yes I watch many of the 'let's play' type videos) has really helped me see how its being used (or not) and what people value and don't value. Other things that stood out was how often people didn't take advantage of many of the shortcuts and interface tricks we included. I guess they weren't intuitive enough and we need to do a better job of making those apparent. (For example clicking through individual entities instead of just band-boxing and tabbing was surprising or fumbling around to find the source of an alert instead of using the shortcut key or clicking through the alert icons).

Yes, the Coronata rocks!

For me those shortcuts are too difficult to remember (if you are referring to the various commands involving multiple keyboard buttons), there are too many, like 1000, I have no time and will for learning those, I can only use the shift for multiple commands, alt for selecting every unit of the same type, and my version of the "make-HUD-disappear" to see battles like it was in a movie (though this should have a button for doing so, as the original shortcut is very strange for it, and it is nice not having to see the HUD when I want to see only the ships and lasers and such), every other thing is much easier to do with clicking, no need to remember different combinations and no need to use your left (or right if you are left-handed) hand that many times so I can put my chin on it [it is a must if I play after 22:00 and I am tired a bit] luxury (or laziness ) level9000, but really, I do think this is one of the reasons for not using those.

Many players are strange and refuse saving time, in a replay I have seen someone clicking so many times, but he could have solved his task with 50% less clicks.Like my parents, double clicking on something that opens the program with only one click, and they will never be more efficient..

MAYBE putting more stuff about these shortcuts in the tutorials to help people learn the use of these would help, though tutorials are not the best in this game I think many people just skip them..

I use some customized hotkeys fairly often - the q,w,e,r,t set for manual casting of abilities 0-4, the a,s,d,f,g set for toggling autocast on abilities 0-4, k & l for dock/launch strikecraft. And band-boxing + tabbing is useful for catching moving units... I can never catch them by trying to click on them, esp. strikecraft and vettes. As for planet/econ control, that's basically entirely clicking for me, since the planet control card is good enough.

What would be nice is some way to alter unit behaviour. There is an old old now-freeware RTS called Warzone 2100 (http://wz2100.net/) which had groups of units led by a commander unit, slightly similar to fleets in SoaSE, with various tactical management options for the whole group (firing ranges and behaviours, etc.). But one of the options that I really liked in WZ2100 was the ability to set units to auto-retreat to the nearest repair station after taking a certain % damage (75/50/25), and so they would automatically try to fall back after getting damaged to that point, get repaired, and then automatically move to rejoin the commander. The pathing was bad and if the commander was damaged the whole group would begin to flee haphazardly, but the idea was very nice in my opinion.

Presently in Sins, retreats are manual and in fleet battles generally only capital ships and titans are pulled out manually because of their value - frigates and cruisers of course have no self-preservation automatic behaviour and fight to the death. It would be nice to be able to set 'retreat rally points', possibly around a Repair Bay or Temple of Renewal or Starbase, and hence set units to fight, say, until shields are down / hull at 75/50/25% (or fight to the death) before they automatically retreat, and then regenerate to a set amount (say full hull, shields to 50%, full shields - some customizable option) and automatically rejoin. I think it would lead to an interesting set of tactical choices - you could have your Hoshikos/Overseers present in the battle, where they're vulnerable to an attack, and set your units to fight to the death because they'll be healed while they're fighting, or you could have your healer group act as a forward mobile repair rallypoint. If you don't have such units, then you'd have to watch out because the enemy could flank you with a group of corvettes and pick off damaged units as they try to make it back to your designated rally point. TEC Rebels could have damaged units retreat into the protection of the pirate base. And you'd have to set your frigates to choose whether it's worth breaking formation to pursue and kill a fleeing unit (which is probably how corvettes and strikecraft would behave) or maintain formation and fight on (probably better, for, say, Illuminators). And unlike the clunky, dopey commander units from WZ, Sins could have a fleet have a first, second, third, fourth-in-command, etc. group of ships in a fleet, so that if one of them retreats, the flagship becomes a different ship until the original higher-ups rejoin.

Another unit behaviour feature that has been requested by people before would be the 'alt-attack', to set a group of units to prioritize attacks on a certain type of enemy unit on command - say, getting corvettes to prioritize bombers, or fighters to prioritize LRFs. I would support this idea.

Edit: And another thing regarding unit behaviour - it would be nice to preset a certain unit type's default starting behaviour from somewhere, inside or outside of an actual game. So that you can make Guardians come pre-built with Hold Position and all autocasts turned off, have carriers come pre-built with fighters and bombers already queued up, etc.
So this is all stuff that would be nice to see in a Sins sequel, whenever if ever that comes out. The original Sins is too.. entrenched by now, and is a brilliant game, but of course isn't perfect and has room for improvement!

Also, agreed about the Coronata. I love Unity Mass, esp. combined with Malice. It looks and sounds awesome and has awesomely lethal effect. Suppression Aura is neat too, as is Repossession. I personally don't tend to put points towards Subjugating Assault though - I like a more pure combat-oriented style with lots of antimatter dedicated to Unity Mass blasts. Probably the Coronata's biggest weakness would be vulnerability to bombers, which all Titans have, but is most so for the Coronata and Ragnarov. So Halcyons with Telekinetic Push and Aerias and lots of fighters are its friend, as are Dominas for help against Phase Missiles. Doesn't synergize very easily with the Guardian though - you need to position them to Repulse enemies into the Suppression Aura, which is a bit tricky, and a badly-timed/badly-positioned usage or Repulsion can just as well nullify the benefit of the Aura.

Well, I like it, getting a full fleet of vasari ships is a nice thing my record is like 50 carriers and numerous other ships Best thing is when your fleet actually consists of more enemy ships than yours.

You should try to escort the Coronata with a fleet of illuminators.

The Advent Loyalist have some rather hefty damage increase researches..... and so those illuminators dish out damage worthy of a heavy cruiser. Death in all directions! 

Combined with Unity Mass nothing can stand before you. Starbases and Titans alike melt like butter.

I am not as proficient a player as most here, but if I may suggest one thing: pin the planets by order of attack level.  I mean, say the AI is attacking 3 of my planets.  Say I have 12 planets.  I want to see only those 3 on my left and preferrably ranked in terms of enemy attack strength.  I don't want to see planets on the left that have a single ship "visiting" or "scouting" it.  And lately I have noticed what may be a bug.  When I am zommed on a planet and go to the tree, I notice it may take me out of the planet and clicking the planet I want to see doesn't display it for me, so I have to click a ship in orbit to actually get there.  ??

Also, if we are gonna pin ships, why not all of them instead of groups of 10?  I hate fighting in the pinned format, but I generally have to ask, when you send your ships/bombers to attack a "pinned" fleet, who do they attack?  do they all attack the one with the least hull, shields, or completely random?  If I were an actual commander in the fleet I know what I would say and in the pinned format I feel helpless. 

In the above comment about "hiding ships in hyperspace" I did have that on.

I love Sins, and I will buy another expansion pack when it is out.

Also, I am not convinced the planetary culture upgrades work.  I can put 4 temples of communion on one planet and max out the culture upgrades and it seems like I am fighting a losing battle against the enemy and when I get there, the enemy don't have nearly the broadcast centers as I, and I am Advent for christ's sake?!!!!!

I agree that the interface when playing needs something so that a player can quickly move from action on one planet to another.  How to accomplish this though, I'm not sure.

One complaint I would like to have specifically addressed though is the ICO multiplayer interface when choosing games and joining them.  All players should be able to do the following:

1.  When clicking Join Game, the list of available games should automatically update rather than having to click the refresh button manually.

2.  When a player has joined a game and is waiting, another window should still be available on the side allowing the player to see other available games (again, updated automatically as in #1), be able to click to see their list of friends, and also click through the chat channels (which they can currently do)

3.  Players should also have an ignore list available that can block anything the blocked user types and also prevents them from whispering to you.

4.  As a host, additional options should be available for managing each player in the game, such as when they go to kick them from game, a 'ban' option should also be available to prevent them from re-joining. 

5.  Perhaps add a network latency indicator for every player?  For example, beside each player's name this indicator is visible to anyone else.  Green = latency between 0ms - 100ms; Yellow = 101-200ms; Red = 201ms+

Hmm well an Argonev would just explode in your face if you went after it with a juiced-up Illum-ball. You'd need 2 or 3 Radiances to keep it shut up until you can put it down. Similar thing with a Transcencia, and for that matter enemy Advent could just try to Repulse the whole group since everything in it, except for the Coronata's regular weapons and the resident strikecraft complement, has a range of <=6000.

Also a Kultorask may well survive; I don't think even heavily upgraded in-culture Fury of the Unity, Amplify Energy Aura assisted Illums could overwhelm its Nano Leech (unless it's very low-level).

The sweet thing about the Coronata is that it doesnt need much of leveling to take down a fully upgraded starbase alone. Havent seen Repulsion being used in ages....  not to mention that you could just repulse back.

The Kultorask might survive the buffed up illuminations..... that is not too difficult.... but I am pretty confident that it wont survive a high level Unity Mass.

I am going to test this this week or so.

Coronata and Illuminators have awesome synergy..... Illuminators compensate for Coronates inability to deal with many targets at the same time..... and the Coronata compensates for illuminators lack of focus fire and durability.