late game you would not be doing that... also I dont waste "seasoning" on the levels I can buy.

I don't understand how you can have enough cash to train the crews that much. I have plenty of research to do or ships to build instead with those 2500 credits. But yes, they are a lot more powerful when trained.

p5yy thats a gross overreaction on many levels, so much so I dont feel like explaining it right now.
besides if you play correctly you should be desensitized to your resources throughout most of the game

oh trust me, you should have plenty of money for it by the time you buy one.

Nope. The cash is spent after the ship is finished, so you can collect it while the ship is building.



Yeah, well, let me point out that you had superior numbers in both frigates and capitols throughout most of the game -- my taking your ships on a one-for-one basis (each time doing a number on your frigate forces as well!) should speak for itself.

This quote bothers me some. I think you should always be sensitive to your resources throughout the entire game. If Sins is designed in such a way that "correct" game play means you are desensitized to your resources then that would indicate a problem in my view.

I agree. Resources should be the driving force of your game. Its the driving force of almost every RTS game to date.

Sins has tried to make it different , maybe it will get good marks for originality. The driving force in Sins is Fleet Cap in the late game. The only way however to hurt Fleet Cap is to kill a planet and colonise it yourself. Because of this nature , Steamrolling is the only valid strategy to achieve this.

If however , the nature of Sins was that your Fleet size was dependant and limited by your resources throughout the game and that you rarely ever reached the Fleet cap , this means your power is sensitized to resources. If the enemy hurts your resources , you will see noticable effects on your fleet + other stuff.

Now why is having Resources as the driving force great in RTS. - Its the very nature of the distribution of resources across a map . RTS games can distribute resources across the map in vulnerable contested positions to make players fight over them , raid them , protect them - use map control and organise multi-fleet movements.In Sins, although extractors are in vulnerable positions , the emphasis is on killing the planet , and we all know that strategy-wise this leads to steamrolling as the most efficient way.

Now compare to Homeworld 2. It had unit caps , but very often or not you will not reach the limit of your cap for every unit in a 1 hour-2hour game. This means that throughout the game , the ability to use small fleets round the back to hurt resources has a direct effect on the enemies overall fleet size. Because you raided that resource patch , his fleet is a few frigs smaller, It may be 1-2 techs lighter. Your fleet is sensitive to your economy.

Yes, of course. I definitely had to pound those battleships for a long time to breach them, and using the ion bolt repeatedly as well during it, no quarrel there. You had few other forces though. That was what I meant by spending the extra cash on frigates and/or research instead of pumping the capitals, it naturally translates to more ships. If funneled only into frigates it's about 6-7 cobalts, counting the extra metal which could be translated into credits for training. I think the extra frigates are not something to dismiss out of hand (I gather from other threads that Multianna also likes many small ships).

If you have unlimited funds and nothing interesting to spend it on, or lack of fleet support, I heartily endorse crew training. I just haven't been there yet. I may be convinced by later games, as I only have two battles under my belt yet.

As some of the criticism against the previous limited resources was that it suddenly snapped from full steam to a snail's pace: How about reducing the rate of harvesting over time? It's even realistic, like in mines or oil wells on Earth; you'd first get the resources that were easy to mine, sometimes even lying on the ground, requiring little to no digging. Then more and more effort is needed to extract the remainders.

If it is not desirable to stop all production at the end (sounds like it's not), you could halt the diminishing at any given efficiency.

I have only read some of the things on here and to me the answer is simple, give an option for finite and infinite resources and isf so desired an advanced option for specifying which resource in particular will be finitie or infinite.

While on the Resource note, I remember there being talk that each faction would rely more heavily on one resource then another. Has this changed?

Take Care and God Bless,

Lharrs

In REPLY #91 I meant to say in the first sentence that resources WERE infinite in Beta 3, not 'weren't'

Sorry but I cannot seem to edit the post right now.

I suggested that we have this be an option already Lharrs, but its good to bring that up again! The problem is having to balance both systems, the easiest way is to balance one system and let the other method of playing being not neccessarily balanced and for those who don't neccessarily care so much about that.

But which one eh?

yeah... sorry    haha

Is it really the income?

Your fleet points proportionally shrink as your empire gets bigger, your income does as well, but to a lesser degree. Logistics slots don't suffer from the distance modifiers. In a huge galaxy, there is no difference between mines that run dry and mines that don't. You have more resources than you can shake a stick at either way. Research is even worse, it doesn't have a soft cap.

In a small map things make sense because it's usually over before anyone comes close to maxing out the research, and maybe even before all the planets are finished expanding. In a medium, I usually get what I'm after before things start moving much, and have a flood of unused resources by the time I win or lose. Anything bigger and the tech tree is simply insufficient. All your planets are max pop with full upgrades and your tech trees finished long before you'll win a 100 planet map across 10 stars. It's not the income, it's the lack of anything to spend it on. The tech tree, planetary improvements, and even the fleet cap are all far surpassed by income as the maps get bigger.

Mines aren't even your primary intake on a big enough map. Assuming you bother to build a decent number of refineries(and you wont really need them) you can far surpass the mine income with just one a planet.

Open ended research(with scaled research times to the number of labs) and planetary improvements with exponential costs would go a long ways towards the economy issue. The mines themselves aren't a problem, just the most obvious cause in a fairly small map.

ok, looks like I'm going to need a post on build order. t'is sad, as the only real master of economy I've seen in game (sans moi, of course) would be multi.

this isnt meant as an insult, but people are freaking out over the economy when frankly, it flows rather quickly. its not to say there arent decisions, just that it isnt "this or the other, not both" its "both, but which first?" this isnt Supcom...
ok, I want to hear people's initial build "orders", just give me a general description of how you begin. far as I've seen the - income numbers have been rampant in beta 4 and thats a HUGE no no, so if you have issues maybe I can help.