mehoo462

Reply to How do you counter LRM+Flak? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

sorry Dafeaz, good luck getting a critical mass of kodiaks out before facing this combo.

Reply to Utilizing Empire Tree, Fleets, and Unit AI to reduce Micromanagement? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Okay, I've done some more research and have some information about how fleets work. An entire fleet will always focus fire a single unit. So the point of a fleet is primarily to serve as a focus fire group. The fleet will choose it's focus fire target pretty wisely based on damage type vs. armor type. I've occasionlly noticed some wierd behavior, i think sometimes it may choose wierd things based on the units that are in it's immediate proximity. But generally it chooses

Reply to How do you counter LRM+Flak? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Foraven, you're a genius. This came up before and I dismissed it as pure lunacy, but now that I've gotten into running tests with Galaxy forge I thought I'de try something a little different. It turns out that at a 2:1 ratio, scouts pwn, and i mean PWN!! LRMs... they even do pretty will at a 3:2 ratio. as in, they will win... but take significant losses. Add to this the fact that a scout cost less than half an LRM, and builds in less than half the time... an

How do you counter LRM+Flak? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

LRMs- counter with fighters fighters - counter with flak flack- counter with light frigates light frigates - counter with LRMs So one approach is LRMs+lights. Use the lights to kill the flaks then send the LRMs toe to toe. The trouble here is flak frigates take so long to die, and LRMs pop lights like balloons. So I lose 2 lights for each flak i kill. However, this sort of works, but only if you micro like

Utilizing Empire Tree, Fleets, and Unit AI to reduce Micromanagement? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Hi all, I feel like I'm starting to grasp the game, and am finally getting some high-level skirmishes with my buddies. What I'm finding though is that most my battles turn into micromanagement nightmares. Not just nightmares, we’re talking hideous twitchfests that invovle wrangling with an interface that wasn't designed for such things and a unit AI that makes terribly unintuitive decisions. I'm talking Warcraft 3 level twitchfests, and it's driving me nuts! This game was supposed to be t

Reply to The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

[quote] Oh yeah, about the pirates' obsession with trade ships (the pirate ships have the ability to steal credits from your empire (100 at a time)... [/quote] What?! Can you please explain where you heard this, or how you've observed it in the game? Thanks

Reply to POLL: Do you like or dislike pirates? in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]Love the pirates, not a huge fan of the implementation. My main complaint about them is the way they work with bounty; if the pirates are to be mercenaries then they should have their own secret bids. If at all possible,I would like to see pirates reworked with a secret bid process and bounty more focused as a FFA enticement for other players.Should this occur, pirate raids should occur with no warning on a semi-regular time table to make them more Pirate like instead of like cl

Reply to The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

You think so? The deeper I dig into this game, the more I find good answers to questions I've been looking for. For example, why are trade routes so resistant to tradeship harassment? Because if they weren't we'de have to micro our trade routes, which would probably require the addition of a whole new interface element. Some sort of trade route overlay or something. This would a significant extra layer of complexity to this already overwhelming game. So why do

Reply to The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

k... i set up a couple of different scenarios to try to observe something about Trade Ship routing... I got nothin'. I can't discern any pattern to the trade ship routing, except that trade ships try to get move to and from friendly trade ports, even if it means attempting to move thruogh enemy owned grav wells. This isn't something they wanted us to worry about, which is why destroying them doesn't affect the game very much. But i still wonder if t

Reply to How is culture conflict calculated? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Okay, I just verified, the allegiance does indeed begin changing as soon as culture starts moving towards the grav well. However, it takes a long time for the allegiance rate of change to get to it's full value. (sometimes longer than it takes for the culture to make it all the way down the phase lane) If a planet is being hit by several cultures at once, the allegiance simply changes in favor of the faction with the strongest culture affecting the planet. The affect of

Reply to How is culture conflict calculated? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

yah, it's surprising but I'm quite sure that the allegiance begins to change as soon as culture starts moving down the phase lane. It starts very slowly at first, but ramps up and hits the full rate of change long before the culture actually reaches the planet. You can look at the infocard for the planets allegiance, and you'll see that the "allegiance shift" shows a non-zero value as SOON as a culture is moving towards that planet. Fronetier planets that

Reply to How is culture conflict calculated? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

can't edit... dunno why. This should probably go on a WIKI somewhere. Does anybody have any suggestion where and how to do that?

Reply to How is culture conflict calculated? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

k, got some information here: First we review the basics. Planet A is yours, planet B is mine. A-----B You build a culture production center and start shipping culture down the phase lane at a rate of 1. + is your culture. A++----B Allegiance at planet B immediately starts shifting in your favor. The rate of allegiance change is a fixed thing that is not affected by culture spread rate or anything else the player can upgra

Reply to The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

ahhh... that's an excellent point. At some point I have to get back to my life, but i'll see if I can deduce something about Trade Ship routing next time i have a chance. : )

Reply to How is culture conflict calculated? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Excellent, This is all very insightful. Do you know how neutral planets are handled? I.e. When "you cannot colonize this planet because enemy culture is too strong." At what point CAN you colonize this planet? Do you have to repel the enemy culture entirely? Repel it halfway down the phase lane? Or simply reduce the difference between your spread rate and his spread rate below a certain margin? Thanks.

Reply to The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

well Defeaz, that seems to go against everythng I've documented. Perhaps you could check the replay to see what was going on?

Reply to The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Hi retro, Where did you check to get that bounty info? That's actually not bad. 80 credits. 50 for trade ship bonus, 30 for bounty. And the're easy to kill en masse. But yah, wierd it doesn't cost you anything to lose them. (again, i may have missed it, whatever it is. This is the part that I'm least confident about)

Reply to The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Sorry to spam this thread, but my brain is really munching on this and I keep thinking of things. I've run a couple of experiments to try to see what it would take to set up an effective trade blockade by setting up a line of planets with a pirate base in the middle. Turns out i couldn't get the pirate base in the middle of my trade lanes to have any effect on my trade income until i reduced it to one planet on either side of the base, each with 5 trade ports. This way there

Reply to The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Trade ships are worth 5 xp. Which aint bad considering how easy they are to kill, and how many there are. It's a nice, easy way to collect bounty and level up my new capships. The problem here, is that's there still no penalty for losing them, there's no strategic reason not to shoot down my own tradeships. (The only reason I can't is because the game won't let me attack friendly targets) But everything else is just too well designed for me to believe this... i mus

Reply to The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

I found this in Gameplay Constants.entity, I don't know what it means, but it suggests bounty awarded is based off of experience points worth. [quote] bountyPerExperiencePointMin 6 bountyPerExperiencePointMax 41 [/quote]

Reply to The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Okay, i went to Mod school and modded the game to remove tax income, therefore isolating trade income so I could run some experiments. Here are some things I discovered. As I expected, trade ships function the same way that Caravans do in Rise of Legends. They provide a constant stream of income regardless of where they are or what they're doing. So there is no insta-deposit when a trade ship hits a trade port. They serve as money factories just by being alive. <br/

Reply to Do the Pirates Matter? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Well damnit, I want to be able to exploit them offensively against a competent player!! It just sounds like so much fun! :/

Reply to The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Hi Retro, I suppose it's possible that my income WAS dropping, it just wasn't being displayed in the Credits infocard due to the way those numbers are calculated. But that would be a really tough one to figure out. It's tough one to eyeball because the income goes up due to all sorts of different values at all sorts of different times. And creating a map that isolates trade income would be a tough one to engineer because we'de have to figure out a way to turn off tax

Reply to Do the Pirates Matter? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

I'm continuing to explore and experiment. I'm finding that there are so many ways to exploit the Pirate AI and distract them from being dangerous it's scary. I believe they're targeting priority is 1) Trade Ships. 2) Defeding Fleet and Static Defenses. 3) Other structures. But when it comes to 2) they don't function tactically at all. They just shoot the first thing they come in contact with. So my favorite exploit is to build a hangar bay, and let the pirates com

The Strategic Value of Trade Ships.... in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Hi all, I'm imagining a world where we can attack an opponents trade lanes, kill their trade ships faster than they can be replaced, and cripple his trade economy. Or ya know, hire the pirates to do so. But this doesn't seem to be the world we live in. Trade vessels move so fast, and are replaced so quickly it's virtually impossible to use them as a means to affect the enemy economy. I just created an experminet in Galaxy Forge... I crated a trade nextwork on