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[fchopin]

I have only played the game a little but you can micromanage both planets and military objects a little.

[Volus Warlord]

Neofelis Nebulosa wrote...

First off, I have never played SoaSE, please forgive me.

Second, I am just looking to remedy that, with Rebellion coming out now. Graphics spiced up, all previous expansions included, sounds like a good deal for newcomers.



My question to everyone is:

Have you played SoaSE and if yes, how is it? How much micromanaging is involved? How can you influence your territory, can you micromanage individual planets, spacestations or is it restricted to military micromanagement?

Sins doesn't have much in the way of micro at all. Most abilities are autocast or passive, and ships are sluggish enough so that it is hard to maneuver them in a way that avoids damage. Which is both good and bad. The only things you really do in combat is attack, retreat, focus fire, and maybe active abilities.

The capital ship system is a blatant copy of Warcraft 3's hero system, so if you played WC3 at all you should pick it up quickly.

Most of the game is economic expansion and preparing for battle. The majority of your income will be population (based on planets colonized), and later you can set up trade routes to make more $$ witch can boost your income over 50%, but are costly to develop. There are two secondary resources, metal and crystal, both of which are used in shipbuilding and construction. Then there is reseach, which is particularly cash and crystal hungry, but adds up.

The big things are:
-Planet upgrades to support max pop and avoid underdevelopment costs
-Planet colonization to get more resources
-Set up the trade routes
-Upgrade your eco and military
-Don't throw away your capital ships
-Have a good fleet composition (don't mass an overspecialized ship!)

Combat is fun to watch but your control over it is minimal compared to other RTSs. So don't worry about micro too much. Sins is straight macro.

[Volus Warlord]

EntropicAngel wrote...

He didn't say micromanaging combat, Volus, he said the military. You have a moderate amount of control over some of the ships, I think. Not fighting.

Not sure what he's talking about then. I already covered how much control you have over the ships. You can order them to move and tell them what planets to stay at and what to attack. What else is there?

[Volus Warlord]

EntropicAngel wrote...

Well, I know you can organize them into squads or some such.

You can make groups of them into "fleets", essentially control groups, but they typically make the ships even more sluggish. They get all anal about formation and that tends to maximize your losses.

[Volus Warlord]

The "neat" elements of the game are:

PIRATES!-Some systems have a heavily entrenched pirate base. Every so often, the pirates will announce a raid on whoever has the largest bounty on them.

Bounty- You can set bounties on other empires -$$ bonuses for killing ships and structures to get others to do your dirty work, or use to "justify" your own attacks

Black Market- You can buy or sell metal and crystal on the black market. It is essentially anonymous trading between players. You might be supplying your enemy.. There is another market, but the buy/sell factor is high and buying a lot or selling a lot will affect the price for a while.

Capital Ships-Big, powerful, expensive ships. Copy of WC3 Heroes in almost every capacity.

Naming-You can rename your planets and capital ships. However, the length of the name is rather limited. For instance, I wanted to rename the capital ship that led my planet bombing fleet the "VWS Diplomatic Solution" but that was waaayy too long for the game. I think it got to "VWS Diplo" So you have to stick to basic names. With planets I generally name them on the basis of the planet type.

[Volus Warlord]

Neofelis Nebulosa wrote...

Volus Warlord wrote...

EntropicAngel wrote...

He didn't say micromanaging combat, Volus, he said the military. You have a moderate amount of control over some of the ships, I think. Not fighting.

Not sure what he's talking about then. I already covered how much control you have over the ships. You can order them to move and tell them what planets to stay at and what to attack. What else is there?

My questions for the military and comabt micromanagement have been answered by you two.


What I meant by micromanaging planets is can you actively develope planets/colonies like instructing to build economic, technology or military facilities (compare Civilization series city management for example) or do you simply colonize a planet with no further oversight on how it developes?



Because if the empire building is just a mechanic to boost income and production for the military, then it's a bit too bland for me (especially in light of me having the "Final Frontier" mod for CIV, which is basically SoaSE with less military focus/capacity and turn-based but with vastly more empire developing if what I fear is true).

HOW COLONIZING PLANETS WORKS:

1.) Clear it
All planets have some neutral hostile ships guarding them off the bat. Better planets have many more ships guarding them.

2.) Colonize it
Some Capitol Ships have the Colonize ability, otherwise you will have to buy a Colony Frigate. Colony Frigates can make as many colonies as you want (you only NEED one) but they have long cooldowns and slow energy regeneration. When first founded, the planet will have an "underdevelopment cost", that is, it will take a lot of $$ out of your income until you upgrade.

3.) Upgrade it
Each colony has several upgrades to the planet itself.
-INFRASTRUCTURE- Upgrades the maximum supportable population.  Usually required once or twice to eliminate underdevelopment costs. The actual population grows slowly and linearly over time, so only get a couple upgrades at a time and save your money.
-EMERGENCY FACILITIES-Upgrades the planet's maximum health.  Like population, it starts low and grows linearly over time.  This will make it harder to purge the planet with bombing.
-LOGISTICS CAPACITY-Upgrades how many "logistics" stations you can have in orbit. This includes research, ship production,  and trade.
-MILITARY CAPACITY-Upgrades  how many defensive structures you can have in orbit.
-SEARCH PLANET-Looks for artifacts or any bonuses. The majority of the time, this upgrade does nothing, so you should hold off on this until your fleet is build and everthing else is relatively done. However, if you do find in artifact, its bonuses can be very powerful. Enemy empires will also know you found an artifact and where it is, so their bonuses come at a price.
-DESIGNATE CAPITAL-Makes a planet your capital. Nuff said.

4.) Build Stuff in Orbit
Planets almost always have metal or crystal asteroids in orbit. You can put up facilities to harvest them. They produce infinite resources.

You will need shipyards. Capital Ships have their own shipyard. You generally start out with a frigate shipyard at your homeworld.

You can build research facilities. There are military and civic research facilities. Military provides bonuses to your ships and defensive structures, and civic is for everything else. The more powerful upgrades require several research facilities as a way to force you to expand.

You can build defensive stuff. This includes cannon platforms, hangar bays for fighters and bombers, and so on. Not cheap but a good defense can chop up all but the strongest enemy fleets. 

PLANET STATS
Plants have three stats:
POPULATION: Current population. This affects income.
HEALTH: Current health. This effects how much it can take before being bombed out.
LOYALTY: How "loyal" it is to your empire. Planets will become less and less loyal the further away they are from your capital. The most notable effect is reduced income- a plant that is 65% loyal will only produce 65% of the resources of with 100% loyalty of the same population. The loyal drop can be reduced, but not eliminated, by building culture facilities. Culture facilities can also reduce the loyalty of enemy planets, but this takes time and the effect is often eliminated by the mere presence of a capital ship. Culture also makes it more difficult for enemies to colonize your fallen colonies, as you cannot colonize a planet under the effect of an enemy's culture.  If loyalty reaches 0, the planet will become neutral and can be colonized. 

[Volus Warlord]

Note: I only played "vanilla" Sins, not any of the expansions.