Battles not that good?

Hmmm I would say if such features were introduced then only as a researchable tech. In the early stages this would make things too easy I think micro management should exist at the start of the game as far as battles go. Later stages, you are right it gets messy. Even with 50 ships on each side, I try to take out the enemy capital ship and then I just let it go on as a huge mess of things.

You can use the Pause command on your keyboard to get your bearings (it pauses the game while allowing you to look around), ahve not tried issuing commands though.

I agree on the Fleet management issues, I postred as much elsewhere.

I do enjoy micromanaging my caps at the start, the lack of macromgmt at th eend is gaping whole.

well, i kinda feel like im missing a few things.
The speed of weapons fire is too fast, and there should be a chance for them to miss

You can pause and issue orders but they are not listed until you unpause it again.I have read on another forum a post by the devs saying that the game is really about operational movement,it's about moving fleets,etc around and not really about the tactical side of things.The game looks and plays great as it stands, but I feel many will expect more tactical involvement from the battles.

In order to have a good game based on combat( ie SoaSE, even though they say that isnt the only thing) you need to have good tactical combat. There is no point in fleet movement if you a small guy and he/she is a big guy trying to kill you. if there is no real tactical combat, then there is no real point to micromanage a battle. If you aren't able to effectively micromanage a battle, then there is no hope of a smaller fleet being able to defeat a larger one. The only way to possibly do this, is to focus fire, but that isn't realistic. I am not a fan of super realism, but some does help.

This is a beta right? We have to remember that apparently according to the devs we are missing a lot of stuff. So yes the combat is a little dull at this time but I'm sure it will improve over time. Right now If I remember correctly this part of the beta is to make sure the game works on as many system setups as possible. Balancing the game becomes more important in the later stages of the beta.

yeah, otherwise what was the point in calling it an "RT4X?" I know its real time, but thats been done before... (I think anyhow)

Capitol ship ability's start out auto activated once you level them up. Granted i would rather control the ability's myself, but if you have over 100 ships fighting it out that makes things a little difficult. Still you have the choice of doing it manually, or letting the AI do it for you. I would like to see an auto level up feature for the cap ships.

I don't think the combat is that bad at the moment. It is still a beta, and many things are not in the game yet. I would like to see the capitol ships maneuver around a bit on their own, but ill wait, and see as more content is added to the game.

As far as it running in a wide range of systems. I have a pretty low end system compared to the standards now, and the game runs very smooth in full settings even with hundreds of units on the map.

define "pretty low end"
as soon as I start up sins the whole screen goes black for 1/2 a second, before reverting back to the original background of my computer and shutting down sins completely.

Yeah its been done before, specifically Nexus The Jupiter Incident (low sales game) and Homeworld 1 and 2 (big hits).

I always thought Nexus was a fantastic engine but it had no content in the form of good missions/campaigns etc. Basically it was like a bunch of programmers got otgether built a beautiful engine and never hired any content designers.

sigh, I was so waiting on that B5 mod too; mebbe someone will mod this game for a B5, it would be perfect for it imo Shame the creators of B5 universe arent more willing to license it out, great IP imo.

Homeworld was awesome. SImply put. If there was a Homeworld 3 Id likely buy it.

This game is a substitute for it, but if they finish it up nice and polished I will likely be playing this game for years and years. They got the engine down imo; the beta proves that given how well it runs on my ancient system (A XP2500+, Radeon9800).

Just right click on the ability assignment button to set it to auto-assign abilities as it sees fit.

Oooh didn't know that...

AMD Sempron 3100+ (1.8 gig clock), 2 gigs pc3200 ram (400 mhz clock), G-force 6600gt 256 meg vid card. Asus k8n MB with built in sound, running WinXP SP2 (I wont touch Vista with a 10 foot pole right now).

My computer has no issues running games made earlier than 2004, but definetly has problems running games like Supreme Commander, CoH, or others made '05, and up that deal with high end graphics.

You can do that??? Damn wish Id known that last major game I played, I ahd to build like 40+ cap ships and leveling em all up was a pain.

LOL! I didnt know that ether. Thanks kryo

I do hope that some more tactical elements are introduced into the game as it develops.

The thing is that as far as pure strategy is concerend, more traditional turn based 4x games like Galactic Civs II and Space Empires V are generally more rewarding. GCII, however, has NO tactical combat while SEV does have tactical real-time combat is limited in terms of eye and sound candy. Technically speaking, however, SEV has is actually deeper than Sins is at present.

I agree that the battles are a bit lacking.

Once you have phase inhibitors the best plan seems to be hang around in whatever border system is a chokepoint with overwhelming force, await the inevitable AI horde, crush it because it can't escape and then counterattack.

Now you have to have some method to at least make things difficult to jump deep into your rear planets but phase inhibitors are too powerful. I would suggest that phase inhibitors merely cause charging for jump take much longer (ie 5 to10 times longer) and that you can only jump to a planet from the appropriate jump point.

This would mean that if you're willing to take a pounding you can get past chokepoints as you run for the other jump point and also you can use decoys to draw off defenders before the main fleet comes especially if they put in some sort of stealth tech. Right now things are a bit too easy and too mechanical, once you weather the initial storm of attackers.

wow, now i know too

the game does appear to lack content, but as mentioned, it is still just a beta. i've played similar 3d rts space genre games, like the homeworlds, and i'm currently using them as a water mark for a good balance of content, ui quality, and combat/economic dynamics...

...right now, the game looks pretty decent, has a good interface; though i find the mouse controls confusing, but it's pretty bare with regards to content and realistic dynamics in both content and economics.

the resource system produces construction frigates 'automatically', figters/bombers are constructed similarly in cap ships...

...this bothers me. if something as crucial as the resource system is off, the whole game might be off.

The logic of the Fighter-bombers auto-build is quite simple, I'll take a peel from BSG. They BUILD everything they have, they don't have a shipyard they can run off to, so what do they do? they salvage from whats been ripped to shreds, and manufacture another one out of it, the mechanics would know exactly what is what and could build it themselves, hence why fighters and bombers autobuild.(Unless of course fighter squads were truly 7< then you'd run into issues.


But the logic is that these are merchants, industrialists, etc. They have these ships everywhere! this is the TEC we dunno what else we got yet.

LodossKnight is right, the TEC are the master merchants, industrialists, and economists of the galaxy.