Like I said, not too useful, but if someone has an obsession with the aesthetic presentation fo their fleets and requires a third axis the ability is there. 
BTW, read your review…very good. I clicked on the recommend it to other players button. You hit most of the high points there and the things that seemed to annoy you are the same ones that I found to. For a future release of this game it would be cool if they did a campaign feature. Also, I’d like to see more on designing ships and weapons mixes (sort of like in Galactic Civ II) and maybe a more detailed tech tree. One thing I’ve found in really long games is that I eventually come to the point where I’ve pretty much developed all of the tech on the tree (with the exception of the logistics branch which I never fully develop because of the hit on the economy) with nothing more to do there but still a lot of game to slog through. Also, some more depth in the diplomacy section would be nice…and some way for the computer opponents to be able to surrender without having to slog through every system and asteroid they have (maybe having them concede if they lose their capital/home world). In most games there is definitely a point where there is no way the computer can win…but you still have to mop up and this can take additional hours before it happens.
What I’d like to see in the future is something like Galactic Civ II meets Sins of a Solar Empire, with an advanced tech tree like in GalCiv, star bases and such like in GalCiv (with economic, military and cultural bases and the ability to add on whatever defenses/weapons/components you want), star ship design like in GalCiv, diplomacy, etc…but the game play of SoaSE.
-XT
I think some of this stuff is making it to the next patch, due out in a week or two. Including AI surrendering, and less skittish AI.
Just played my first game on a built in map called Despot (or something like that… it started with a D). Was fun except the Easy AI seems to be about as intelligent a a box of rocks, though:
- The map was fairly linear, I never had much oppurtunity to be flanked
- I took out the pirate base (which happened to be on the planet next to my homeworld) accidentaly first thing, oops. Never got one raid. (As a note, you can check this by going tot he bounty section and if the portrait is shattered the pirates re dead).
- It was 1v1, so there was nor eall oppurtiunity for the computers to use diplomacy against me.
Some major mistakes that probably would’ve hurt me had I been playing a higher difficulty:
- I built my first scout late in the game. Not a good idea as I had little to no intel. I mean, I still won but…
- My fleet was a mess of those missile firing frigates a few cobalt light frigates and two (near the end three) capitols (one being a carrier).
- I only really had one fleet, so if things ever ended up getting hairy I would’ve had both no defenses, no reinforcements, or any reserves to send to an area being sneak attacked.
Right now though I’m thinking insurgency may be good to get a little earlier. As it stood the rebels on the enemy planets were more of a nuscence to ME than to them since it was so late in the game by the time they started really effecting them I was in their base and the rebels started attacking me as well. (Both of us were random and both ended up being TEC).
As a final note, does anyone know of any memory issues with the game and any fixes? I started it with only about 29% of my 2 gigs of RAM used and once during the advanced tutorial and once late in my game it kicked me out to do a memory dump for the game (luckily it autosaved a little earlier).
In my (limited) experience, you do want at least two thirds of your fleet to be LRM frigates as TEC, especially on higher difficulties and early in the game. They’re flimsy but their damage is obscene against pretty much everything except fighter/bomber squadrons. I tend to open with two scouts, Kol with the shield mitigation trained, a colony ship, then pure LRMs for a while.
In my last game I faced an Advent fleet with 48 squadrons. I had a fleet of about 50% LRM launchers and 50% flak frigates in my mobile defense fleet, and I got the living shit beaten out of me, when the little pips next to the planet showed our relative fleet strenght to be equal.
In my experience, fighters/bombers are incredibly freaking strong, even against quite a few flak frigates.
I could see them taking it too far, though. The tech tree in GalCiv2 is a monster that works well in it’s genre, but I’m not sure I’d want to navigate something like that every 90 seconds or so in Sins.
I agree that the tech tree just sort of fizzles out toward the end, though. I think the AI needs a boost in the later game, and I suspect it might be wasting money with unnecessary fleet expansion research. If the AI were more aggressive and willing to commit bigger fleets to their attacks, it would force the player to research higher into their own fleet size, and put us back on par with them. As it is, almost any AI attack can be countered with just planetary defenses.
Another idea would be to reduce the number of tactical slots most planets can use. If our planetary defenses are smaller, it would make us have to use more ships in more areas to be able to quickly reach a seiged planet.
One more AI problem is that they always seem to make wayyyyyy too many planet bombing frigates. The things take up ungodly fleet size points, and are much too weak for the amount of space they deny the real fighting ships.
I have been using this to my advantage building 3-4 hangar defense per planet. From what I am experiencing the response speed and damage potential of strike craft are the only thing that make true “choke points” possible. I have also found that some AI’s tend to be “pinned” by engaging fighters like they want to dig in and fight even though most of the fleet has little if any way to damage them.
I dont know about you but I have been tending to build all bombers for my strike craft they are in a word…devastating. However, if you are having problems with enemy bombers, fighters are the solution. I tried flipping a small carrier fleet to all fighters and used them for air superiority, it works very well for supressing the hordes of bombers. Now I tend to build about 50/50 mix just to make sure.
The flak frigates are good for one thing, every time the shoot down a bomber you are effectively cutting the damage output of that bomber group by 25%, whenever I am dealing with enemy ships because of my small craft centric tactics I will target flak frigates first then let the bombers have their way with what remains. Part of the reason why flak frigates may seem ineffective is also because the hangar defense will build new bombers to replace those shot down, sometimes quite quickly.
Once the hangar runs out of antimatter it will slow way down and small craft can be effectively suppresed. I have definitely noticed a difference in how effective my small craft were before and after the enemy AA was dealt with. Unless you are zoomed in its tough to see just how many small craft they bring down, I have so far been impressed with the number of small craft they do seem to shoot down, IME its not uncommon to bring one down every few seconds of they are in range. Follow a flak frigate in a big battle for a few minutes, look for a spot where you can still see small craft.
My, they do kick ass, don’t they?
Thanks, my abilities have improved somewhat.
Two aborted games. I won the third tonight. Lots of flak frigates, light cruisers, hanger protection of planets. One battleship, two carriers with fighters. Once they are on the run from attacking a planet I gave the orders Modred did in Knights of the Round Table: “Pursue and Slay!” 
Played a game starting on Sunday…and just lost it. First time I’ve lost since I first got the game. No idea what got into the AI but they all ganged up on me. They kept hitting me with combined raids of all 3 of the computer players as soon as I captured about half of the middle (contested) star system. I fought a defensive action hoping they would turn on each other but lost star system after star system and fleet after fleet. Took the computer hours but they just wore me down…one system at a time. It’s simply impossible to fend off 3 full blow fleets even with planetary defenses and a full fleet of capital ships and support ships. I finally just gave up when they threw me back to my home system and kept combine raiding into my star. The last battle I managed to get my full fleet back in order and was winning…until yet another full on raid hit me from every side at once.
I guess the computer was tired of losing or something. No idea.
-XT
Xtisme - maybe that’s the point at which you might want to pursue diplomatic relations with at least one faction to keep them off your back/help you target the others.
“The best diplomat is a fully charged phaser bank.”
-Montgomery Scott.
The diplomacy is screwed - or did they patch it? I managed to eke out a cease fire exactly once so far, but then the AI kept giving me ‘Destroy’ missions that I didn’t have the resources to carry out, and cancelled it.
The diplomacy model certainly isn’t the best I’ve ever encountered - you could throw thousands of credits/metal/crystals at your opponents but unless it’s part of a resources mission they don’t seem to care. The only way it seems you can reach a level of relations that allows you to get a ceasefire or peace treaty is by conducting missions (which as you say are often destroy missions which you may not be in a position to undertake).
I was able to do some missions early on and get a few of the AI’s up to 30-40%…but the best I could do is get trade agreements. At some point though they all seemed to band together to attack me and I couldn’t buy them off, either directly or with offers of bounty. Not sure what happened there but they weren’t having any of it. At one point it was all I could do to produce ships enough just to fight for the planets I had in the contested system…I had zero credits or resources to spare for even trying to post bounties at that point.
I think it had to do with building all those media stations…for some reason that really seemed to set them off. Though I’ve done it in other games and never had this reaction before. This was the first game I’ve played where the AI seemed to band together against me…normally they all fight each other as much as they do me which means I can defeat them in detail. If they all come against you and you can’t even distract them with bounty (except the Pirates…they actually continued to go after the bounty, though by that point they are more a nuisance than a real threat) no one could win.
I loaded an earlier saved game last night and am trying to puzzle out what’s going on and see if there is a way I can change what happened. Instead of fighting a do or die losing battle in the central contested system I built a fleet in my own system (pretty much leaving my huge fleet in the contested system to fend for itself in a series of defensive battles as the AI tightens the noose around my neck there…going to make a last stand at the one Terra planet I managed to capture in the system and am building defenses only there this time, leaving any system where 2 or more fleets attack me in concert to the AI). What I’m doing is attacking the AI’s home systems instead while they fight it out in the central system…and so far it has worked. They didn’t even try and defend the first system I attacked and I took all 5 planets including the orange guys home world. The next system they sent a token fleet (like 3 capital ships and maybe 10 other support ships) which I easily defeated…and again took all five planets including the red guys home world. Going to go after the blue guys worlds tonight. I think with that base and if my main fleet can tie down the majority of the AI’s fleets as they siege it I can pretty much pick off some of the worlds in the contested system and start whittling them down…they shouldn’t have the resources OR the ship building capabilities to maintain fleet after fleet. I was able to fight them off several times in the losing game…they just overwhelmed me in the end. This time though it seems to be going better.
The best defense is a strong offense. And to me diplomacy comes down to how big a stick you have…
-XT
I’m still loving this game. Although I don’t often have the hours to devote to a good game. I am keeping an eye on the mods that are being placed out there. Specifically the ones that try and balance out the gameplay a bit. It’ll be interesting to see how the mod community can change the game and perhaps make it better.
If you find any good mods please post the links in this thread…would love to try some out.
-XT
I played a long campaign as the Vaseri, and I have to say they’re my new vote for “most powerful”.
One of their end techs is called “returning Armada” which gives you free units periodically at every planet where you build a phase stabilizer.
Money is absolutely worthless after you develop this tech. You can pour 100% of your funds into fleet upkeep and pirate bounty, lose your ships entire fleets at a time, and still never spend 3 minutes without a fully maxed out fleet.
I did not know you could move in the Z-axis on purpose either but I can think of one use and that is to stack structures on top of each other rather than side-by-side.
Against the AI, if I know it only has one lane of attack, I will put a wall of defense turrets up facing that approach (I put a few around the planet/asteroid to keep opportunist planet assault frigs honest). The AI, if it wants your planet, will prioritize attacking those defense turrets. If you can bring almost the whole system’s worth of defense turrets to bear at once they can hurt a lot and drop capital ships pretty fast. If your turrets are spread all over they get picked off one at a time rather easily.
Even against a human they need to deal with that eventually if they want the system (although of course they are smarter and can tear apart the system and stay away from your lumped turrets).
If you do the wall of turrets they still get spread out and it can be hard to get all of them on one target at the same time. If you could pile them atop one another then you have a more effective wall that can all target one ship simultaneously.
Dunno if this will really work but when I get home I will have to give it a try.