I apologize a head of time, I read the first half of that and mainly skimmed the rest.

But education is something the players can take into their own hands, anyone of us could open up a youtube channel and perhaps make educational videos on how to play SINS I have thought about it and I want to do it I just don't have the technological know-how. But it has crossed my mind, we need to help newer players find an understanding for the game.

 

I see a couple things with Sins.

1. ICO has mainly one strategy for nearly all the games played, doesn't matter if you're tec, vasari, or advent, the rush is the same. Sure, you start with different capital ships depending on the size of map or your play style. But it always boils down to a quick lrf rush followed by a bomber rush. Nearly every game I have watched or played recently, that's the strategy (and it's a good one when the game is set to faster settings.)

2. I think that the only way to get a VERY diverse set of strategies for the different races is for people (and I know they dont want to) to play at normal speeds on smaller maps. Sure, it's slower but the way it is now, your economy does not scale properly with the number of ships you should be loosing, you wind up with these tiny empires with a huge horde of cash, that's what hurts the online community for me * note that is just my personal preference. By playing at a slower game speed it allows for strategy. It doesn't boil down to a click fest like Starcraft 2 has. It would really force players to play to their race's strengths rather than just ignore them by spamming fleets with their over scaled economy.

My 2 cents, I'm curious what the others will say.

EDIT: 

I suppose what I am trying to say is that anyone who is looking for educational material on sins will probably read through the forum. The only time I looked on youtube for sins was looking for the game trailer to see if it was a pretty as promised. Most of it is easily picked up if you've ever played an RTS before...

Fixing the RNG system

As stated before by PBhead a lot of the times certain faction can win just because they had a lucky start. This is in fault due to how some of the random maps are designed it’s nice to have flavor this is a good thing. But anyone who has opened a match knows that it’s unfair when all you get is an asteroid with 1-2 metal extractors and the enemy gets 2 metal 1 crystal that’s no fun at all. And it disrupts balance, this is easily fixed by giving the map maker an algorithm when randomizing maps. You have a Terran homeworld, next to you is a asteroid. The same goes to all your opponents, make that asteroid have the same amount of Extractors as the enemies. The next set of planets will be decided by an RNG system, Volcanic, Ice, Whatever. And it does this until all planets have been decided it will set the competitive aspect not based on luck but who can actually macro better.

The next problem is Militia its random some people have to fight harder to claim those Terran or Desert worlds. Easily fixed, much like the system described above actually.

And as for planet bonuses I like them the way they are but they should almost be guaranteed upon upgrade just getting an artifact should be more rare because you at least invest into getting something instead of maybe getting something. RNG is bad for RTS’s.

Fixing the Burden of Knowledge Problem

The best way to fix this is to just nerf Trade into having only one space port per planet. This will fix trade port stacking however to help speed up the game, you could buff the amount of income that is received from a single trade port, or have it multiply per trade port’s around a system. So if you have a planet that leads to four other planets with trade ports income is increased on that planets trade by 4. This might even give a place to actually use refineries, of course there would need to be something done about resource focusing.

Another form of Burden of Knowledge is the Diplomacy menu I have no idea what Diplomatic Inclination is unless I look it up online. This can be fixed by giving descriptions when you scroll over the points(This would mean you would have to create a side menu for this however).

I believe these are the only two problems that actually involve burden of knowledge.

Cutting fat from the game, the tech trees, and speeding up the game

As I had said before there is much that needs to be done involving cutting fat from the game. I think this doesn’t need to gone into too much depth. But providing a list for stardock would help, looking at the Advent tree a lot of it actually makes sense. The hostility tree provides the basic essentials this is a good tree. I should say the same about the other races equivalent trees. The Vasari and Advent tech trees however suffer from a lack of items in their trees. This is easily solved by moving some of the other research abilities into the security tree as they imply defense but are in a harmony or oppression tree.

• Advent: Phase Jump Inhibitor, Augmented Defense Grid, Hardened Cities.
• Vasari: Phase Jump Inhibitor, Power Draining Nanites, Fortification Specialist

All these abilities imply defense but are not in their respective trees. I understand this may leave the Harmony tree a little bare. But this is also fixed as they are adding new research abilities into these trees at least is was indicated in one of the interviews.

And then there is a speed problem, this game can move incredibly slow. And even when you get to the late game there is no guarantee you will get all those late game techs such as Allure of the Unity, the main problem is that the costs are so high for these research upgrades. My opinion is lower the costs dramatically. And there is some reasoning behind this a lot of late game tech can cost you 3000 credits, 800 metal and crystal you are better off just macroing an army.  The better solution to this is just to dramatically decrease the cost. Of many of the abilities based on what they do not what their tier in the list in. Optimized construction is not worth the actual cost of researching; yes it is late game tier but even just getting their cost a lot of investment in Tech labs.

Notice this is not a rant on game balance it’s a rant on cleaning up the game giving it a more professional look to it.

Tournament Mode

Also I feel as though the size of the game may be a bit too big at a max fleet not to many computers can handle all those ships.  This can be changed, but there is no actual standard mode for a tournament to be had. Things need to be sharpened up and this is a huge change I want everyone to discuss. This would be my purposed settings.

[Upon creating a game you can select between normal which gives you free reign over whatever settings you want to put into play. There is also tournament mode which is a locked setting you cannot change any settings, but it works in a way so that should you host a tournament at least you will have something standardized think of it like in league there is Blind Pick which has practically no rules or restrictions as there are no bans. And then there is draft pick which lets you see what the enemy is picking and has bans.]

• Locked Teams – this is a tournament and I feel as though there should be no betrayals or anything that can influence a loss on your teams part.
• Small Fleet Size – It keeps the game running smooth, and makes looking at the game from a spectator’s position much easier.
• Pirates Inactive – I am not to sure about this as I like the idea of pirates it would add interesting gameplay. But could also heavily influence the game in an unbalanced way as a TEC player would have a much easier time handling pirates than say the Advent.
• Diplomatic Victory Off – It’s a tournament its about bloodshed not peaceful endings!!!
• Quickstart – yup no explanation needed.
• And all game speed increasers are on the fastest.
  
  This would also perhaps come with player profiles and perhaps even a ladder!

Pet Peeves

There are some small things that do bother me about this game.  But I will just go through a short list.

• Ai Relationship boost: Remove this from PC view.
• Insurgency:  Yes its cool that this ability is a viable ability that is also a culture ability. But “eyes of the converted” is only useable if culture is in the enemy territory. Instead of having insurgency work anywhere make it work on planets with low allegiance.  Or the lower the Allegiance the higher the chance of insurgence popping up.
• Envoys: More of a change I think would be appropriate just because it makes sense. Should you offer or be offered a trade alliance, make colonization vessels and envoys invulnerable to said factions because it kind of makes sense. Both are harmless and civilian operated and both open up avenues to diplomacy. It would also broaden the use of the Trade alliance option. I only bring this up because I would think anyone who would want a trade alliance is clearly looking for a diplomatic approach. And the colonization vessels I just added for flavor as I kind of feel bad for attacking a bunch of civilians.
• Add Better Descriptions to upkeep upgrades: This is a small one but I want it just for flavor. You have for the TEC when you want to build another capital ships. Basic Officer Training, give it a description as stated before.
• Basic Officers Training – Your empire begins a new Officers training program to provide more experienced commanders for your fleet and enables you to build one capitalship.
• Basic Provisioning – A new program rushes for huge amounts of food and supplies to be made to provide for more soldiers increasing your fleet capacity.

I think you may be missing the point of my actual post, i'll try to analyze what you did section by section.

1. Its not that all are fixable with user created maps its just a majority of the maps are imbalanced.

2. You are confusing quicker gameplay with faster gameplay(Unless this wasn't referring to my post but im going to go in detail on this). A quicker game is something that would end fast or be resolved by rushing, this is caused by imbalanced maps where enemy factions get more resources due to the amount of resources they get at the beginning. A faster game is one that progresses at a smooth rate allowing you to reach late game tech earlier. Please tell me when was the last time you saw allure of the unity upgraded outside of single player.

3. The problem with mods is, as a modder you see it as strange why we ICO users do not use mods. This comes because of standardization, why doesn't SC2 use mods to fix the imbalance of marines, or even other RTS games. Because they are no official fixes they do not belong in a competitive environment. And it isn't accessible to a wide variety of people either this goes back to the burden of knowledge. If everyone used said mod and some newbie went online and he saw no one online he would be stumped thinking it was a dead game. Using a mod as an official patch would create more problems than actually fixing them.

4. Its not trying to make it like sc2, sc2 has a quick paced imbalanced mindfuck that where you have to focus on Macro. Sc2 has no heart to it at all like Sins does. So many units are imbalanced, but they are left imbalanced knowingly to keep the metagame the same.

5. You are also confusing complexity with uniqueness. Having different amounts of Insurgence isn't unique, nor is a different amount of extractors on your asteroid vs their asteroid. Its unique yes, but its imbalanced.

6. I wouldent say its meant to be slower, online I see games ending around the 30 minute mark thats pretty standard for RTS games even hour long games are pretty standard.

Watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM&feature=related