Stuff the community wants in Sins 2

Personally I disagree with more ship classes per function.  While I do believe some overlap in function is good, I do not think we should have multiple ships specialized in the same function.  My experience is that usually this results in one going unused completely in favour of the other, and can really reduce your choice as to whether to tech or not to tech.

I'd like to see more focus put on the civic technology side.  We need more interesting pieces of tech like the phase stabilizer that actually let you do something interesting with those civic labs rather than just bolster your economy.  Perhaps an entirely different economic outlook could be employed to add more flavour and variety to the currently monotonous colony system where each planet is largely the same.

Beyond that, I'd want Sins-2 to be its own game and not be defined by its predecessor.

yay another thread

Sins 2 should have a MODERATOR in the forum

That'd be a nice improvement.  Maybe clear up some of the hopelessly outdated stickies.

Some game sites allow dedicated members to be moderators. Darvin would be a great moderator me thinks. Anything would be better that what we have now. 

... there's an ongoing joke on one of the oldest forums I'm still active on:

"Darvin can't go anywhere for 5 minutes without being promoted to moderator"

Not exactly true, but in my time I've been heavily active on maybe a total of 12 forums... and of those I've been a moderator on six at one point or another.  That's pretty insane when you think about it...

glad to see i am getting responses. anyway the reasons i want multiple ship classes is to make the game feel more realistic. late game the technology levels have dramatically increased and when this happens in real life, sometimes new designs are needed. i do think the civic trees need heavy work as well, due to the fact that as they are, they dont do much except increase your income. 

Yet Another Sins 2 Thread.

I'd like to see:

• Don't screw up the basic chemistry of the game!  Don't try to improve a winning formula and chemistry so much that you destroy it.
• Allow for auto-download of Galaxy Forge made maps and mods.
• Allow options for up to 10 v 10 if that's what people want.
• Allow players to adjust the settings so that they can play the game online without any lag.  Allow players to reduce superfluous, unneeded features to a minimum.  (Does anyone who plays PvP really care how nice an individual ship looks when they spend 100% of their time zoomed out to where they would never see those details?)
• Release the game in a polished state--eliminate minidumps and desyncs.
• Create an improved ICO with far less lag and disconnects.
• Come up with some sort of a system that invites single player types to come online and play against other single player types.  "Ironclad Online invites you to join a 5v5 with other new online players."
• The game has to include some sort of a campaign that would serve as a tutorial.  Perhaps at the successful completion of the campaign players would be invited to go online or perhaps some of the campaigns could require being on the winning team in an online PvP game consisting of new players playing through the campaign.
• Built-in voice comm with the ability to easily mute other players or turn all voice comm off.
• An improved chat room system.

Now, I disagree with this stance.  I believe that to become a worthy successor, Sins 2 must find its own identity that is separate from its predecessor.  While I agree that does not mean throwing out everything that makes Sins 1 great, living in its shadow is not an option.

Technical feasibility should be a factor.

No, a campaign must not be treated as a tutorial, and must be a stand-alone experience of its own.  That's not to say it shouldn't leave you prepared for multiplayer, but this should not be its primary purpose.  The campaign should be a rich and fulfilling experience in the Sins universe that can satisfy singleplayer gamers who aren't into multiplayer.  This is really key in the sense that there should be "something for everyone".

Not a fan of voice-comm myself.

Totally agree with all other points.

IMHO all future Stardock/IC games should come with a 64-bit build. We have seen over and over and over that 4X strategy games have a sprawling nature to their data set that is very difficult to contain within the virtual address space of a 32-bit process, at least as far as Stardock's implementations have shown. Couple that with some kind of high performance on-disk database for caching less often used objects/data, and you should form the technical foundation for the future of Stardock/Ironclad 4X strategy games. These two measures would in principle get rid of the minidumps due to out of memory once and for all.

Technical issues aside, I'd like to see a more immersive customizability and personality to the units you create and the planets. GalCiv 2 would let you see the planet closer up, and throw out quotes from a database representing how the citizens feel about living there. That was pretty cool, but that represents just one step towards the kind of character-building that I'd like to see.

Next, I'd like to see a veterancy system for ordinary ships and starbases, so that they can improve their stats somewhat as they have more battle experience. They won't be able to get new abilities or improve their stats as markedly as a capital ship, but there would be value in retaining your ships rather than throwing them to their deaths. This would have to be balanced so that a player without veteran ships would still have a fighting chance (given proper strategy) to take out the guy who has been training up a fleet of veteran ships all game.

For planets, there should be one-off morale boosts for certain events, that only last a limited time. Morale would slightly improve the rate of construction, population growth and commerce. You would notice a morale boost if a planet gets sieged but survives due to a hard-won battle in orbit with your defending forces or fleets. You might also get a morale boost in a friendly system where your flagship (the oldest capital ship currently in service) is currently stationed.

I also like the idea of evolving technology, hinted at by someone in an earlier post. Keep the tech tree conceptually as-is, but also factor in that ships naturally and irreparably deteriorate over the span of years. For example, it is only possible to retrofit a ship so far, because design decisions like the shape of the hull and the space in the interior of the ship will eventually reach hard limits, and changing these limits would be too expensive or impossible without compromising structural integrity.

This concept of evolving technology would manifest as a gradual decrease in effectiveness of long-serving capships, eventually necessitating the decommissioning of a ship. When a ship is decommissioned, its service record is evaluated, coming up with a numerical "score" that represents the ratio of engagements attempted versus engagements "won" (where enemy losses exceeded friendly). The higher the score, the more of the crew of the ship will be re-commissioned into a new ship, which will be stronger, more current and more powerful than the old ship. This will manifest itself in things like flight speed, weapon damage, hull points, and the effectiveness of activated abilities.

So if your flagship reaches a very high level and has only rarely had to retreat from a losing battle, while on the flip side it conquered many planets, it would be decommissioned retaining, say, 90% of the experience points of the original ship. A new ship of the same class would be created with stats even greater than the starting values of the original flagship, and it would keep 90% of the experience.

Decommissioning wouldn't become mandatory at any given time; you could in principle leave an ancient ship in service forever. But after a certain point, additional credits would start to be deducted to keep the ship in service, presumably because obsolete parts have to be special-ordered, and crews trained on new ships have to be trained also on the ancient ship. The effectiveness debuff would cap out around 75%; e.g., an initial hull integrity of 1000 would stop deteriorating at 250. But you can't just decommission a brand new ship, either; decommissioning wouldn't be possible at all until, say, 20% of the initial stats have been lost due to ship age. It's up to the player to decide whether to keep an old ship in service, or to turn it around (at a significant strategic risk due to its unavailability) as soon as decommissioning is possible. Maybe also throw in a researchable tech to improve the benefits granted to replacement ships when you decommission.

The upshot of the decommissioning process is that, near the end of a very long game, capital ships would be extremely powerful. Having gone through 6 or 7 generations of improvements, your highly experienced crew could come out of the factory with a new ship at level 7 (out of 10) but with 3 times the firepower and hull points as the original design at the same experience level. This rewards careful strategists who make sure that their capital ships survive engagements, and provides the maximum reward to those who make sure that they actually win every engagement involving their cap ships. Eventually, this effect becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, helping to wind down painfully long games by providing the more skilled strategist with a fast, powerful behemoth of a capital ship that can roll in with a small escort fleet and conquer the enemy, regardless of the amount of resistance. But to get to that level, we're talking hours and hours and hours of play, accumulating momentum and field experience.

Aside from modelling the real life facts of design obsolescence, this system would also model the real life concept of operational knowledge, which is basically a whole set of competencies and rules that ship crewmen (in the modern Navy) accumulate over the course of their career. When the chain of command is unbroken, and senior officers are allowed to personally train green officers in the ways of the ship, the operational knowledge is preserved from generation to generation, even across new ships. If the ship is lost in combat, all that operational knowledge is lost. And we can assume that ships that do very poorly in combat won't have much valuable operational knowledge to share anyway, hence there would be a significant (50-60%) exp loss by decommissioning a ship that loses most of its engagements.

Just thought of something else: Maybe you can have the decommissioning process only apply for TEC, to add some flavor. For the Vasari, ships don't deteriorate, but you can invest materials / credits to unlock experience levels above 10, forming a sort of "super-elite" crew that can crank the ship stats into overdrive. Same result, immensely powerful capships, but without deterioration over time, instead bringing in a resource cost. Not sure what other unique system you could introduce for the Advent, but I'm sure someone could think of one.

get rid of the contrived and overly restrictive phase lane system

make the weapons effects and projectiles actual objects instead of cosmetic

One balance idea would be to control the number and types of resource meteors in maps (or at least map creators) so that the game is more balanced, since the difference between winning early game could be a crystal and metal meteor.

"get rid of the contrived and overly restrictive phase lane system"

This. Or better, make phase lanes only between stars, like in the FreeSpace universe (intersystem jump nodes) or Space Empires. Intrasystem jumps should be possible between any two gravity wells, provided there is no third gravity well between them intersecting with the jump trajectory. Of course they shoud still take time based on the distance, not be instantaneous.

Phase lane system is fine. It's be really annoying to have defenders always one jump away but also have every area vulnerable. Lot of structures suddenly become very weak or useless.

This. Starbases, static defenses, super weapons, they would all go completely out the window. The whole "home planet" concept would have to be scrapped, because you'd probably never be able to hold on to a planet long enough for the bonus to take effect.

Exactly the opposite IMHO. Building of starbases and static defenses would become even more important, since you would have to secure your every important planet in a system with enemy presence, not just one chokepoint. Also more complex fleets deployment strategies and fleet splitting would be encouraged, instead of simply having one giant fleet from all the fleet supply and starbase stationed at the chokepoint gravity well, thus often creating late-game stalls because of impenetrable defenses at one location.

Also, phase lanes would be there - but intersystem ones. So you would have to create maps more realistically - 15 stars with 6-10 gravity wells each, instead of one system with 80 gravity wells and 10 earthlike planets like it very often is now. See my FreeSpace map for better idea how map with "very open" intrasystem phase lanes and intersystem phaselane chokepoints would play. Its essentially like Sins, but on a bigger scale (whole systems playing the role of current gravity wells, gravity wells adding additional layer of strategy into them - this additional layer is not possible with current Sins).

The problem starbases already suffer from is you can just go around them. Unless they have Auxillery Government, you can just bomb the planet without worrying about the starbase. No phase lanes would make it even worse, you can just bypass the whole planet. Sure, you might have to come back after you've destroyed they're other planets, but at that point you've already won. You wouldn't be able to afford to fortify all of your planets.

Super weapons would be worthless. "Oh hey, he built a superweapon on planet X. Let's go attack planet X!" No more superweapon for you. Although, you'd be spending so much to fortify all your planets that you probably couldn't afford to build a superweapon anyway...

Removing phase lanes also removes two of the advantages the Vasari have over the other two. Phase Gates are mostly worthless if you can already jump from any planet to any other planet. The Kostura Cannon's secondary effect of creating a phase gate on the target planet is also useless.

If I want to go from planet a to planet b I should be able to without going through c, d and e. 

Of coarse the game would need new abilities and defenses but if I built a super weapon on planet X with fortifications and you sent a fleet big enough to overcome this it would leave your space open to attack. My super weapon would not fire a straight line to your planet, it would launch, change coarse a few times so you did not know where it came from. 

I don't agree with a choke point asteroid, this is space and I should easily be able to bypass over, under or around (3D) to get to your home world. A true orbiting universe I would love with no phase lanes but you dont want to just warp into space without probing for junk that will kill you so you build the lanes by exploring and setting wav points that are safe for warp speed. You can also give these routes to new allies if you wish. If an enemy probe finds your planet you know they have a fast route now and better set up to defend but until then there is no way for the enemy to even see your planet until it has been probed or scouted.

As of now this is just a ground map with no ground.

I bet that if sins did not have phase lanes, this thread would be about implementing phase-lane like limits.

Everyone just wants something different. A breath of fresh air.

Removing phase lanes from the game could completely destroy it since the game play would be very different.  The phase lane, travel distances, and the choke points they create are integral to the strategy of the game.

I don't think we need more ships per race. Or go to extremes and make customizable ships in 2 or 3 sizes.

Allow higher level ships maybe not with more abilities over all but an extra ability earner only by reaching level 12 like Hero of the Fleet (culture spread due to fame/infamy).

How about a customizable defense ship? you know like mini star bases they can never leave the space they are made in with a limit of 2 or 3 or 10 whatever depending on Technology and Strength.

Allow each race to build 1 customizable ship it's so called Flagship that is not exactly like any other ship in the fleet.

Must keep phase lanes and i think making all the star bases mobile it is far too easy to bypass them otherwise..

I play Vasari 90% for 2 big reasons mobile star bases and the Phase Gates. The single biggest factor though is cool/creepy alien look and vibe they have.

I would like to see another race or two show up. At least one new one like the ones Vasari are running from.

More planet types.

More Technology with more unique ones per race.

Keep Pirates more or less the same but more balanced.

I like the idea of pirates having unique ships of their own they really need to have a few capital ships used by so called leaders of the pirates as personal ships and once killed they reappear with another random name as some else raises to power ie Blackbeards Planet killer (High planet Damage) or Sally longshanks (Missile barge) etc etc of course these pirate leaders should retreat at a high rate because no one can spend money if they are dead and no one rises to power by treating ever mission like it is a suicide mission.

More diplomacy options including bribing goodwill towards you or affecting the attitude towards a 3rd party. ie Bribe another race to back off or become more aggressive towards a different 3rd party race

PS Updated Galaxy Forge is a must as well (Edit copy/paste and undo much needed)

An updated Galaxy Forge with "copy/paste" and an "undo" function would be nice.  However, it would still be kind of useless for people who play online multiplayer PvP since the maps won't auto-download.

This. If you could have stars on their own be stationary, but have all of the planets orbit the star, as in actually move (slowly, of course) and have even all objects around a planet orbit the planet (buildings and ships alike, especially starbases). Then you could have dynamic phase lanes to different planets, with no phase lanes to/through the star, such as have all planets 'within view' of the current planet be reachable via phase jump, and this changes as the planets orbit the star, all at the same 'speed', but since they are different distances from the star they will orbit at a faster rate of revolutions, thereby changing their relative position from other planets.

And as all objects around a planet orbit said planet, you would have to scout more often to avoid mines/starbases, and even then the starbase or static defenses could end up making a pass near your battlegroup to tear them up, making it a bit more dynamic.

This could bring an end to the boring static phase lanes, but also have it possible to defend for a certain amount of time until that phase lane disappears or a new one comes around, and the phase jump times would change as the planets change distances from each other.

They tried that in the early beta versions. According to IC, it wasn't fun. I'm inclined to agree that in practice it wouldn't be as fun as it sounds in theory.

bah, phase lanes are critical. without phase lanes first of the entire dynamic of the game changes. im not going into detail as it has already been said. One thing that i also did not see mentioned is that the game would be extremly difficult to manage without phase lanes. as it is i have a hard enough time trying to keep track of everything. keep in mind guys the idea is not to make the game more massive or complicated but slightly more realistic and alot more fun.

i like phase lanes but would like it to be more 3d in its approach to map creation rather than the current 2d flat map.

a limit to the number of planets per star would also be good