Oh hell yeah. I'd prefer more realistic system layouts. No more 50 or so planets orbiting one star please >_<

1. sure, why not...  I assume you're not talking Exodia-like auto-win if you get them all though

2. sure

3. YES.

4. yes

5. definitely

6. I like the idea, but I warn that doing so means rebuilding the combat of the game from scratch will take for freaking ever to get (mostly) balanced again ;_;  Until I went on the forums, I had no idea this game was rock/paper/scissors, so I definitely get the desire for it.  I'm just saying that this alone will suck up a ton of time to do.

7. definitely

8. definitely.  My favorite faction is AL, so of course I want better culture lol

9. would be nice.

i know this is never gona happen but i wish sins ships were sorta like Star citizen ships, or just more meaning and detail behind them 

Good point, it could easily become either OP or worthless. Perhaps it would be easier to balance if individual artifact fragments were inert and can only function when assembled or the only benefit artifacts give are to some sort of 'prestige stat' which would effect diplomacy.

Since the game would be based on a new engine, the devs would need to work from scratch anyway, although I agree that working out how the new system would work would take a lot of time in the conceptual phase. I think this change would also be easier to balance because there are no damage modifiers and therefore, each unit can be balanced separately without buffing/nerfing other units as a side-effect.

Having looked at the weapon types that you proposed for the fourth race, I like your ideas and can see that they would work well with my own. I really like the concept of rift beams and gravity pulse guns, since it gives each weapon type more unique gameplay effects.

I would support the idea of the chasers being a new race if as part of the lore, the 'evil' subfactions (TR, AL, VL) get wiped out since they are unwilling to work with anyone else, while the 'good' subfactions begin to work together so closely that they merge into a single faction. A multispecies 'Unity' with the technology of the Vasari and the industry of the TEC might be the only thing that can make a stand against the approaching threat. This is the only way that I can think of that would allow the chasers to be their own faction without being underwhelming.

One last point on titans: since titans have been added, they are definitely here to stay. But to make them more balanced, I think they should be more vulnerable cap ships. Cap ships should, if not kill them outright, be able to shut down most titan abilities and so frigates would be more valuable at all stages of the game.

Orchestration, Sword of the Stars 2 is what you want.

If they start from scratch on the mechanics, they will have to design all gameplay from scratch.  The game fundamentally is its combat system.  This is an RTS after all.  Change it too much and it shouldn't bear the title of sequel; it should just be a new (albeit very fun) game.  I'm all for weapons being more elaborate like lasers and autocannons being AA/point defense guns or Pulse Beams doing bonus damage against enemy X, or what have you.  Phase Missiles were a great idea that was overpowered because nothing else in the game had an effect like that.

Again, I'm concerned about changing it too much by mushing the "good" factions together.  I want people to be able to play as just Advent or Vasari or TEC.  But I also want to see the new guys get show time as a balanced race so they can be used online.  I also don't just want two races.  Four races allows more diversity than two does.  I don't mind the TR getting wiped out (they'd never survive alone anyways; they have no stable economy), but the AL...  Maybe I'm just biased here, but I feel like they could at least survive for a bit.  The AR+VR would certainly be willing to ally and the TL would happily fund their war and bombard the chasers with its Novalith horde, but woe betide any non-human that tries to enter trader space.

Again, the Chasers don't have to be stupid OP.  They just have to be something that could have taken down the Vasari Empire in the lore (which I believe my suggestion accounts for).  Besides, if we want Sins II to have a better MP scene, we need it to be balanced or it'll just be banned.  If someone wants to play SP against an impossible opponent, there would surely be mods for that.  Heck, one of the first mods I'm sure we'd see is one that pits amped up Chasers against the Trinity Alliance as a singular faction.

I still think taking the approach of different weapon types and mounts having different turret tracking speeds and projectile speeds. That's one way to balance things out without using armor types.

It allows weapons to miss and smaller fast ships to dodge the larger heavier guns.
Even beam weapons that are pretty much instant hit, may not be able to move the turret very fast, or may be in a fixed position like the Kol's forward beam weapons.

You could then tie that with a 'size' class, so that for example the huge turrets on a titan have an accuracy penalty vs corvettes or such.

Also, using a system like this means you can dodge fire by being on the move, missiles won't spin around targets (because they will be able to collide with it and not have to hit the exact pixel they targeted.
Formations would also then be important, using tougher ships to block line of fire on your weaker ships and such.
It would add a lot to the tactical part of the game imo.

the best thing is from what we've seen so far the Nitrous engine can handle all of that.

I can see what you are saying, Sins 2 would have to be recognizably similar with the same sorts of ship classes and broadly similar combat. But I don't think the armour type mechanic is crucial to the franchise.

I get the appeal of playing with just TEC, Vasari or Advent, it appeals to me as well. You also have good ideas about the Chaser faction, but 4 factions is really hard to balance for MP and I'm not convinced that the Chasers can be portrayed as merely one faction among several.

I didn't see your suggested explanation for the lore so I can't comment on that. However, these Chasers spread out from a single planet and consumed the entire Vasari empire staggeringly fast without anybody ever figuring out what was going on. The Vasari in-game are mere refugees yet they are powerful enough to go head-to-head with two other space civilizations in their prime at the same time. Yet even they have no option other than flee. If the individual factions including the TEC and Advent could engage the chasers in battle with some success then the Vasari Empire would have easily contained and destroyed the threat when it first appeared. Remember, the Vasari have made no technological progress at all since their exodus. The Vasari titans are actually ancient ships that date back to before the exodus. The game and its lore surrounds the chasers with so much hype that it would be hard to reveal them without it being anticlimactic. The only alternative that I can think of is to introduce the chasers as their own faction but make these chasers nothing more than a light forward-scouting force that is well ahead of the main army. Perhaps this scouting fleet is actually Vasari in origin but the ships have been twisted and rebuilt to a new purpose. Thus the real threat remains unrevealed.

Personally, I don't imagine the chasers to be a faction at all. I don't think they even physically exist. The story sounds too much like a metaphor. The phrase 'you can't run away from the past forever' comes to mind. The threat emerged from a single planet and expanded at a rate faster than that of the Vasari Dark Fleet even when traveling through phase space. And this threat immediately wiped out any planet it came into contact with. That doesn't sound like a fleet or any military force.

Obviously this isn't suitable for MP though.

I fully agree with this.  This does not fundamentally change the combat system.  It just adds a layer of realism/depth below what we already have.

The armor system is what makes the combat what it is with counters and whatnot.  If we could create a system that still had counters without it, I'd be all for it, but the counters still need to be there or the new game won't belong in the same franchise.  I'm scared of seeing a Perimeter II-type failure here (although, admittedly, that was largely due to having new devs working on the franchise).

The basic premise I had when devising them as a faction was that they don't have to be stupid OP.  They just have to have been really good at bringing down the Vasari Empire.  Check out reply 163 in this thread.  I feel like I give a pretty good explanation of why I they needn't be super powerful in that post.

I like this idea.

I wasn't proposing the removal of counters. Instead, I was thinking of a way to implement the counters differently. So for example, long-range frigates would rely on high-explosive missiles with poor tracking speed and with a poor accuracy modifier against small targets. This would make them effective mainly against groups of weaker frigates and also structures but ineffective against e.g heavy cruisers and very fast and agile single targets like corvettes.

The Vasari empire and the TEC were both invaded and were at a disadvantage compared to the invaders. The TEC were peaceful and even when confronted with the Vasari and the Advent attacking them on two fronts, they didn't panic but stood their ground. Despite a massive technology and military disadvantage, the TEC could actually fight them both and learn something about them. The much more warlike Vasari wouldn't flee merely because they finally met an equal, they didn't flee from the Advent or militarised TEC. The Vasari empire had all the advantages of the TEC in its prime and had none of the disadvantages and the threat that attacked them was tiny yet the Vasari didn't stand a chance. The TEC were totally unprepared and faced a physically larger threat (the entire Exodus Fleet) and yet they still performed better under invasion. The Vasari 'hard-countered' the TEC by having an actual military and far more advanced technology but this wasn't enough to totally crush them. Whatever hit the Vasari empire was therefore a far bigger threat to them than the Vasari were to the TEC and the Vasari that attacked the TEC were a shadow compared to the Vasari empire.

If the chasers 'hard-counter' Vasari technology like phase drives then the chasers would hard-counter all the other races as well since they are equally reliant on it.

The only way I could see the chasers being able to crush the Vasari by targeting their Achilles' heel without being OP is if the chasers only counter nanotechnology and nothing else.

True, but I still have concerns about such a system.  I'm welcome to brainstorm on it to see what we can come up with though.  What about the weapon type differences between factions?  LRF use missiles yet Illuminators use Beams which personally seem like weapons that should easily carve up armor.  It's not that think that this system couldn't work, it's just that it'll take a lot of work and I'm not personally sure how to do it.

Except the Vasari didn't see Kron's error coming.  I think the TEC did actually see the Vasari coming based on the intro video.  Perhaps they never militarized in preparation for them because they thought they'd be peaceful when they arrived or perhaps internal politics prevented it (much more likely as we know the Aluxi Dynasty fell shortly after the arrival of the Vasari).  Or maybe the TO couldn't.  The TO had no commander-in-chief and thus couldn't mobilize a property military response.  Perhaps the TO after so long at peace no longer retained the power to have a military and could at best create police forces.

The mere fact that the TO could have seen the Vasari coming likely could have meant that they at least stood a chance.  The other thing is that Kron was presumably within the heart of the Vasari empire.  If the Chasers knocked out the capital of the empire within short order, logistics and communication would have been disrupted preventing a proper response.

You raise some major difficulties. I mainly had TEC in mind when I came up with this idea but as you pointed out, the Advent as they currently are don't really fit.

My solution to this would involve Wintercross's suggestion, which I would like to build upon by suggesting some new stats. Each individual ship with a 'size' or 'detectability' stat and an agility stat. The first would be a simple modifier to an enemy's accuracy. The agility stat would effect a ship's turning circle and how easily it can aim at a moving target and/or dodge incoming fire. 

Secondly, I would split the LRF class into 2 new classes: LRFs and destroyers. LRFs have poor tracking speed, a long aim time and poor armour penetration but have very high damage and splash damage. They are very dangerous to clusters of frigates and destroyers when at range but are not effective against heavy cruisers or cap ships due to their much higher armour. The TEC would have high-explosive missiles for this, Vasari would have high-explosive phase missiles and the Advent could have a new ship armed with psionic surge cannons or something.

Since LRFs have to continually track their missiles to the target, fast ships like light frigates can close the gap and negate them. If a LRF receives damage, any missile en route to a target gets disrupted and misses the target. Thus, if light frigates get in close, they can cause LRFs to miss most of their shots so LRFs cannot be used as front like units.

Destroyers would be armed with weapons that have very high armour penetration making them dangerous to heavy cruisers, cap ships, structures and starbases. But their poor tracking speed and long aim time and lack of splash damage makes them very vulnerable to corvettes and SC and light frigates to a lesser degree. Illuminators could fit quite well into this class I think.

Good points. I never before thought of the possibility that the TO saw the Vasari coming before they reached Trader space. It makes sense and it really changes my perspective of the whole thing.

I guess it comes down to what we want the chasers to bring to the game. Most people seem to want an extra race while I was thinking of something more campaign focused. But I don't see how a campaign could be made to be actually interesting and not just a glorified tutorial.

My system idea would work fine for this.
The Advent LRF with Beams could either be fixed forward firing requiring the ship be aligned right, or could be on slow moving turrets that would struggle to keep up with fast moving ships like Light Frigates and Corvettes.

Assuming the Nitrous engine can handle it, Missiles could have a 'max tracking angle'
This could vary, but for now lets say it's something like 30 degrees from center of the missile. So if a faster, smallish ship flies past it, or dodges out of the way there is a good chance the missile will lose it's lock and will just fly straight till it expires or hits something else. (I like the idea of stray shots hitting other units. Friendly fire optional and not mandatory =P)

Then the different LRF's would also have differences instead of being statistically the same. Missile based LRF's have the advantage that the missiles can chase an enemy to some extent without the LRF having to move at all, but has a higher chance of missing a highly mobile target.

a Beam based LRF has to maneuver more to keep it's weapons on target, but has a better chance of at least scoring a bit of damage on a fast mover as the beams sweep around.

I guess the main point is I'd like the combat to retain the general feel of Sins, but have more realistic 'physics' based weaponry than the purely cosmetic effects we have at the moment.

Being able to do things like draw enemy fire into another target by dodging, or physically blocking the shots against one damaged ship by putting another in the line of fire would add a lot to the tactical side of things making positioning and formations much more important.

I feel like the advent while in the game lore they did improve facilities but ultimately nothing that affected the CORE of the advent, the physic power of the advent, oh yes when the advent arrived they had the cute little powers, but in 30 years they didn't expand their powers they just re-used the same old physic push and maybe made it pull. Nothing new in the advent powers so this is where they could add balancing, say the advent would begin "transcending" and sometimes some attacks simply phase through due to the ships halfway/temporally transcending into a higher spiritual plane in the ether, but they cant fully do it due to the fragmentation in the core of the unity with the rebel/loyalist split?

Cool ideas.

+1

As for new Advent powers, the Advent seem to have gotten less attention in Rebellion. The Advent Rebels got some really interesting stuff like resurrection and wail of the sacrificed but overall, the new Advent stuff seems much less dramatic than that of the other factions.

SoaSE 2: Easily done.

SoaSE with 64 bit support.

Update graphics.

Continue with story: 

TEC Rebels have died out due to pouring all of their economy into a vengeful destructive path, and were struck by a few cunning attacks by both Tec Loyalist and Vasari Rebels.

As TEC L joins up with Vasari R, TEC R is left behind in tatters, defending itself against the remnants of the Advent L. They are both overtaken by the Dark Fleet that the Vasari have been running from. As they make their escape, they join up with the Advent Rebels who are hastily making their own retreat.

Just an idea.

Whatever the case, each faction has benefits. I think all 7 factions should be playable. TEC R/L, Advent R/L, Vasari R/L.

If they aren't playable, then whatever faction "won" should have all special abilities of the other factions, all met with proper balance, and then this "dark fleet" chasing the Vasari makes its entrance.

Dunno don't really care on the plot/story.

What  matters here is gameplay. And I have tired of having to use minimal fleet sizes in order to not hit the 2gb memory limit. MUST HAVE 64 BIT CAPABILITY!!!!

Some good quality deathwish coffee after 37 hrs no sleep.

BUT

It was new ideas

With no sleep come the best ideas my friend!

The Dark Fleet is the Vasari military, not the chasers. The Vasari in game are supposed to be a mostly civilian migrant fleet.

I would like all the factions remain in game, but for them to do what they were going to do originally; You pick TEC for example, then IN GAME you can split off into Loyalist or Rebel.

I would also like a single player campaign, though lacking that at least give us access to scripting and event triggers so we can make out own.

Ah, my mistake. Wonder who the chasers are?

Your idea for IN GAME picking makes FAR more sense.

So yes. Definitely.

Retain all factions.

Change the mechanic to choose what you want to do whilst in game. For multiplayer this would add a completely different edge--you have absolutely zero clue what your opponents are going to do.

64bit game engine. Slight update to graphics and a few mechanics.

Game is done.

Release on Steam.

????

PROFIT.

STARDOCK ARE YA LISTENING!?

I have been busy in real life, but August has passed. Has there been any news?

If you're talking about something else, I don't know what you mean.

Care Bears.