Overall Feedback and my unfurfilled hopes for this release thus far

I was a big on and off player from Sins Rebellion and had lots of feedback for rebellion that went unregarded so I had really substantial hopes for Sins II to have addressed some of the features that seemed easily with reach. 

Matchmaker and team games: Rebellion had a fairly consistent 10s scene (5v5) and the competition was balanced based on win rate in a steam card. The card was easy to spoof meaning you could fake wins with players against AI or fake a win rate vs a cooperative friend on a smurf. Sins II doesn’t show win rates or track Elo, or even consider a casual match vs a ranked match other than in lobby settings, which also doesn’t allow you to name lobbies in Sins II (what?!? they removed features? Also removed fleet group-jump settings?) 

I think the average RTS fan is used to certain industry standards at this point and although Sins a smaller scene it is not “stellaris” space opera with mixed turn based and RTS features making competitive play out of the question. Please update the lobby system to include namable matches, differences between casual and ranked matches, and win-loss rate tracking in game or preferably, Elo rating for ranked matches. Please also remove win rates for matches that are botched, like other RTS’ do to some extent, meaning early quitter in ~5m or less. Also clearly denote when this period ends or if anything disqualifying is happening. Don’t track win rates vs AI. 

Anti-Cheat, Eco wares, and HP fix wares. I’ve got lots of anecdotal evidence to say that sins rebellion was completely ruined by players cheating at the game habitually and the game overall seemed fairly easy to break. This is post-early access now and it’s been over a decade since the last release. I think it’s really important for Sins to address internal cryptographic handling of incomes, movement speed, hesitation times to fire at targets, damage tracked, repair cycles, ability cooldowns, factory build times, research times ect... The feeling I got from rebellion was that there was always some catch involved with a capital ability that made you, as the guy getting had, justify the opponent’s unkillable capital, and some of the time that was the correct surmization that you were lacking game knowledge regarding invulnerability periods or time of extreme repair rates, but I am 100% certain that things were going on beyond that level that made the game look like a non-competitive fist-clenching title and unworthy of professional study. 

In Particular the Vasari starbase players and titan players seemed to build up an unbreakable HP fixation that was exterior to the games coding and this is unacceptable. I also frequently notice (even today on II) an observation paradox regarding build and research times meaning the opponent has openly entered all system in the match and put hold-cycle style bugs on the variables controlling the progress bars involved. When this happens it’s up to the game to come to a complete halt and summon a referee/tech expert to get the illegal moves sorted out, and frequently the offending players are largely unaware of their offense, or offending as a proxy for some generalized method of RTS stemming from other titles and long hours of sweaty conflict. This isn’t an uncommon problem in RTS and I’ve written articles on supreme commander regarding this same problem. An attacker that can enter all the items of a game (server, and all hosts) simultaneously and enforce a breakdown is not an incompetent type of threat and is more on the level of government cyber-war or organized crime attempting a patronage buffet for profit. As of my observance, the problem is in descent with more and more people either complicit, oblivious, or just leaving RTS gaming entirely. 

I don’t expect the small Sins II team to entirely beat off the buzzing flies of all cybercrime in all games everywhere, but the basic effort and the basic handling of the game should reflect the star date and do the due diligence to conceal its important data handling, either as p2p or a server (I’m not sure which it runs as) and have secondary practices in place to track with anomalous things are happening, sort them out quickly with short adjustment periods, and if the problem is fully out of hand, to make a report to an authority on cybercrime without a human having to raise a red flag. In worst cases even just calling the match to a full-reset or calling it off entirely. 

Features: 

Attack move against a position and attack circle feature is needed (as seen in Beyond All Reason). Attack move should spread damage along the enemy positions laterally and move forward to range then fire (similar to the auto function but without waiting the time waiting after movement). Attack circle is much needed to switch targets fast when fighting corvettes as it is still an autistic-arthritis contest trying to hit the corvettes and not accidentally move your fleet forward fighting with standard fleet vs corvettes. Attack circle should draw a red circle and sets a target order from center outwards so easy to catch 2-3 corvettes in the right areas and likely get a nice hit sequence if they are still circling on that side. 

LRM and equivalent are not a cruiser instead of a frigate and right now seem to be the catchall force bulk unit. I would nerf their effectiveness vs heavy units some and their range as they are vastly OP. 

Pirate Wells and favor points and NPC diplomacy are currently looking pointless or confusing and I played rebellion so if I’m confused then likely many other are too. I tried to end a cease fire to farm up a titan in a single player and couldn’t figure out how to so this feature needs a better tutorial and implementation. 

Please add back all the basic features from rebellion that were down-graded like fleet jump coordination. 

Sound Effects: 

The “You missed a bid” SFX is annoying and I still never saw what or where I was bidding or what it does. Please add it to the tutorial or remove it or make that particular SFX mutable. 

Overall, the SFX was a very light polish from Rebellion, didn’t add any new music, didn’t change many sound fX just simple remaster and re-release which is fine but some new music, ambiance, and effects would have been nice to add depth. 

I may have more feedback after more play but this was my initial reaction after a few multi-player games. I’d also love to see (since it’s a smaller community) some player driven peak hours to play ranked games. I get the feeling that people sometimes run auto-players to keep the ladder moving and I don’t want to play with or against bots posed under an account, so let’s discourage bot players on steam accounts and set up times per day or week where the players can meet and get in a few ladder games based on skill during peak times that instead of just guessing at the lobby system for peak hours.