Sins Forums
Loving the game so far, really a blast. The pacts are something to strive for thoughout the game, something to work for. I like the pacts for everyone but the Tech. I think their pacts are a little lackluster... The armour is good, trade is good. But the other ones are a little blah... but I've never had so much fun with a beta before! 
any thoughts?
I don't like the way the pacts are being handled in this version. It just seems like a lot of work for too little. In almost all of my games I haven't even bothered to research any of them, because it's pretty much a win-more kind of ability. If I'm doing well, I research these, set up a pact, then recieve what I wish I could have recieved earlier. But as they stand they don't seem to work as intended, at least to me.
Yes, it's true they arent' very effective in the end game. Maybe it they made them more powerful? And setting up pacts with other races, will a pact with Vassari and Tech give the Vassari more powerful missles. Will the Vassari receive a resource bonus as well as a trade bonus?
yeah i'm pretty sure you lose them all. You lose them one at a time if your relationship starts to fall below certain numbers.
It seems the pacts are an awful lot of work to obtain. And when you finally get them, all, it's too late in the game to make a difference; i.e. you already won or lost. I really like the idea of them, but the implementation definitely needs to be improved.
And yeah, I'm really hoping for some AI improvements. Sooner is better. 
Some of the pacts may have logical secondary abilities that would increase their utility. The only one that comes to immediate mind is the Vasari phase jump pact: I'm sure many people would enjoy it if it allowed the pact-partner to use the Vasari member's phase lanes... but this may be difficult to code and would probably also justify swapping the phase pact's required % up to a higher value...
There may be other side effects that make sense, but looking over the other pacts, but looking at them and talking out what they are supposed to represent, most of them really are already well represented by the effect they offer, even if the balance may be a bit off. You could do something funky, like for the culture pact, have the other race's culture bonus apply to your ships as well in both culture zones... but again with the increased coding difficulty and probably the need to consider it a higher-end pact.
I guess we'll have to see what the next release brings. In the end we can probably just mod it ourselves and increase the value of pacts...
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