Sins problems with spam...

from Sins Forums

Ive been thinking alot about spam in RTS games , and having read darths waah waah post. Is it a problem , is it not a problem?

Spam itself isnt a bad thing in Empire at War as for a long time (patches 1.0-1.5) it only had one unit worth making - the corvette . However the game made this unit so fun to use and raid with, that with one single unit the game had bags of variety. So this made me think of an analogy.

Boxing

In boxing - you cant kick , headbutt , bodyslam etc. Its ridiculous however to say Boxing sucks because your only spamming punches ,because we know the variety and depth to the sport is involved in how you use your punches , block those punches , dodge those punches.

However I liken Illums/LRMs to bitch slaps. Its a like bitch slapping contest. You simply try to slap harder then your opponent. No skill involved , just slap as hard as you can.

Which is why I draw to an interesting point of debate. Cobalts arent like bitch slaps , they are more like punches. Cobalts vs cobalts , theres more decision making about retreating because they have the armour to do so and less firepower . Chasing is more of a challenge because of the narrow arcs. Targetting can be managed, since lasers make it less ambigous to which ship your targeting. Cap ships are dominant too and play a more important role , rather then get ripped on and chased away.

Now during the very early beta , cobalts were spammed. This was due to lrms having no bonus afaik ,or they werent that powerful or it might just be people didnt discover the LRM . I cannot be too sure . Even though the cobalt was the predominant unit in the game and it was spammed in the early game, nobody ever complained that the cobalt was "spammed" , which is very very interesting.

Now it really is Ironclads call , but they should have a think about it.

multiplayer
5,748 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Gee and you say my thread was worthless.....
Also many people are of the opinion that boxing isnt really a sport its just two people beating each other in the head till one of them drops to the floor and a great way for reducing intelligence of two humanbeings.....

However I agree with your analogy completely sins is like boxing, its effectively just two people beating each other and skill is outweighed by strength in both ablity to give and take blows and at the end of the day even the winner is left a little stupider slower.

This is sins

Then you have something like starcraft.

Its fencing
No ammount of brute strength or ablity to take punishment will let you win, its helpful but grace reflexes and percision backed up by tactics is required. If you attempt to use brute strength the other guy is going to score a point before you even hit.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Quantity is a quality all its own.
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
What MINE said. You cant discount that just because people don't like it. I spam caps. I can take illum fleets. I don't see why anyone should have that option taken away. You are likening illums to bitch slaps, I liken it to groin hits. The son of a bitch HURTS. But still the person afraid of them should wear a cup. There ARE counter strategies to the LRMS and ILLUMS. Use guardian cruisers with advent in conjunction with Carriers. LRMS suck against strikecraft. Keep a progenitor in there and use malice. TEC the sova is your FRIEND. 3 of those pumping out missle platforms and strike craft will FINISH them, throw some hoshinko cruisers in there for healz and I dont see a problem. Or hell even better use 2 dunovs :D. Vasari, the battleship is a TANK, use it with the skiritantra to exploit both the illums weakness and keep healing your ships. You see an illum fleet coming you hit it with strike craft. Strike craft can attack a fleet at the other side of the friggin GRAV WELL. A usual illum spam player doesn't bring defense frigates. Lastly, you already said this, but make your OWN LRM spam.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
@ maheshjr2004

This is a discussion in the multiplayer forum and a "play to win" mentality considering we are addressing spam which is the product of a play to win mentality. Its all very well say you will make caps and stuff , or fighters but with current balance , anyone striving to become better at the game will unfortunately come across spam.

@ Darthkar

Ok atleast you get it. I agree Starcraft is the epitome of a skill factor game that offers players the chance to use reflexes , unit control , tactical ability , anticipation etc. It is like fencing. All you have done is just used different sports based on your interpretation of them to compare sins and starcraft. BitchSlap < Boxing < Fencing.

However Sins is a long way from being Fencing. Atm if I was to rate the skill factor value of sins..I would rate it Medeocre. Its get medeocre because special ability play gives it a few points. Not to say that sins is a bad game , it makes up for this by being the best skirmish vs AI game. If I was stuck with no internet connection I would choose to play Sins offline vs AI , then Starcraft offline vs AI.

However the Skill game in Sins is largely dictated by balance and as the balance stands , LRM spam dominates. Making cobalts dominate however is like replacing bitchslaps with fencing poles that essentially makes the game more skillful . Theres alot more skill involved in cobalt vs cobalt because of their retreat capability vs each other , and caps have a more important role.

I say this is the first step. The second step is to have Quantity but with the same quality.








Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
maheshjr2004
I had to laugh reading all your options....

Every singleone dies.. TRY IT.. dies.. to the same cost of illums.

Even all carrier fleet(thou the fighters stick around long enough to finish off a good portion of the illums) the guy could still simply withdraw and let the fighters themselves die.


Funny you claim capships are effective agasint illumspam because Illums are most effective agasint them.....

Sovas ARE good and if you can get 4-5 out and leveled up to have at least 3 fighters they can decimate illums... but the problem is normal carriers CANT a few anti fighter frigates wipes fighters out like crazy and due to the nature of the counter.. it costs less... which it should... anti fighter frigates should cost less then the thing they counter....

Carriers cost more then what they counter and the antifighter frigates when added to the Illum fleet still make it come out cheaper.


I also NEVER said SPAM shouldnt be an option, I am saying its the ONLY reasonable option currently if you want to win and that 2 races Advent and a lesser extent TEC with LRMs are overpowered.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
A run-of-the-mill lrm spammer can't beat me if I have 24 minutes of game time. And I won't use LRMs or other long range frigates to kill him either. If he can hit me before 24 minutes, then he is so close I should have attacked him sooner with. Unless there are 2 enemies near by, which is a pretty bad case as far as Sins is concerned.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Illuminator spam is in a completely different category compared to other spam. first of just 20 illums is painful enough against a faction with there heaviest ships. but I have seen someone with the fully upgraded long range laser tree researched and win against nine people who somehow have everything for their best ships and caps upgraded and nova's not win against a fleet of illums.
The thing is advent has the most damaging ships in the game already. People think vasari are tough fighters. advent spam mops the floor with them and on top of that advent can make more ships! the thing is a simple problem no one has noticed since the advent illum was fixed. Tec and Vasari Really don't have any ship that's in the same class as the illum. The vasari and tec equavilat should be the anti fighter ship or Carriers with fighters. Whatever you use fighters or bomber, flak or whatever illums shred them easy the illum should replace the destra crusader as the heavy ship since compared to illums destra's are worthless ok