GameSpy Gamma Impressions

Hubba, hubba   

Those are some very nicely captured screenshots! Also sounds like GameSpy is pretty impressed, always a good thing

nice...

Very nice indeed. Cool picts as well.

I LIKE that new logistics system. w00t!

yes... because you're experienced with it.

as for me, hopes for the best, prepares for the worst (you're incorporating the money reduction again? wasnt that considered a complete flop in beta 1???)

Love the review

Stupid question: Why is there a 20% difference between Stardock download not even a box at $49,99 and those three other stores (box) at arround $39 ?

Not talking about pennies but 20% seems rather large.

because SD offers the CE and because retail people dont like you competing with them

Ewwwww upkeep

Hate to be a naysayer but I am unsure on this one. I think I would have preferred prohibitively large but flat monetary research costs to keep people from maxing fleet supply every game to upkeep.

At least in prior RTS games featuring upkeep it was more of a maintenance cost, and dropped back down when the army size diminished.

I dunno, maybe it makes sense to you more 4x familiar players, but the RTS in me tells me permanent levels of upkeep will make people just want to spend all their (few) fleet points on cap ships in the endgame. We shall see I guess.

Also with people being so strongly discouraged from creating giant fleets I have fears about too many massively turreted chokepoints with static defenses now. Hmmm. Somehow it feels wrong that turtling could be the "economically sound" solution.

You have it a little backwards - one of the major problems with the economy in beta is that after you build your fleet o' doom, money just keeps pouring on and on. Cost only becomes prohibitive if resources are finite. In Sins, resources are infinite and so it gets to the point where losing a huge fleet means nothing because you have enough shipyards and money piled up to build a new one very quickly.

I imagine the upkeep was decided on to balance out the infinite economy with the need to make losses felt.

If it's done right, I think it'll turn out to work pretty well. We'll see soon

Don't worry about the upkeep, it works perfectly IMO.  There's no more issues with players having infinite money and nothing to spend it on throughout an entire game.

i just hope that this doesnt end up in turtling strategies.

So let me get this straight about the upkeep: If you lose a ship in battle, do you still have to keep paying its maintenance costs anyway? I think I'm missing something here.

you're paying for the beaurocracy that creates the fleet cap, so you pay a bigger cost as you upgrade more. At least that's what I got from the article

You aren't paying for each individual ship.
You are paying on tier wise basis.
Each research tech that increases the cap will have a higher precentage of upkeep.

It doesn't matter how many ships you have, it matters how far up you researched.

Its an interesting concept. But I don't like it.

hrm... dont trust what I dont have experience with...

hey even they say that logistics are based off research!


Has anyone limped along on the research tree?? I mean if that is the greatest critique they can come up with then SINS is still doing AMAZING!!

I guess I can see why fleet cap was changed to work with upkeep, but rather than force me to make choices I think it will make my decisions easier. Traditionally in RTS games I am torn between three things: spending my money on increasing my unit cap, making more units, and researching better abilities for my units, all three being equally valuable and worthy of attention. But now with irrevocable penalties for increasing unit cap size I will be less likely to choose cap increases often, which also eliminates the need to build so many ships, and makes the path of research a more attractive option.

I am sure that the more 4X oriented people may place economic management high in there and have different priorities, but just by knowing my own gaming mentality I believe I will lean towards a research heavy playstyle.

The good news is I am even more looking forward to playing Vasari over the other races now (something I was planning on becasue they are so cool looking anyway). Having a select group of highly researched ships able to warp around the galaxy for hit and run attacks while being able to monitor movement and avoid unwinnable battles could work well against numerous, taxing, slow moving fleets of the TEC or Advent.

Just keep in mind the Advent apparently have no ship cap. Food for thought...

How so?

what?

"Just keep in mind the Advent apparently have no ship cap. Food for thought..."

Are you saying that because the article talked about them believing in no limits? I think the writers were just playing with words, tying in the segment about fleet limits with the segment about Advent lore and how they experiment with forbidden technology (they don't limit themselves to what's legal like the TEC does).

It may be so. I clearly took it to mean no ship limits. Maybe SD/IC could clear this point up.

I clearly interpreted it as a statement of the Advent's philosophy. Anyways, on the pic of an Advent tech tree you can clearly see the logistics tab. It must work the same as for the other races. Anything else would just be incredibly difficult to balance.

I'm not sure what their statement was referring to but I'll side with Kilumanjaro's interpretation and analysis.

does that mean even YOU dont know what is going on!?