to be honest, the idea of the TEC accepting a "negative" buff for their fleet when they use the superweapon fits with the lore of a civilisation on the edge, desparate to survive, at any cost.

to draw a parallel with Halo, it says in one of the books that, according to the Elites and Prophets "the humans only win by drowning us in their own blood!" this fits with the TEC's cheap ships and fast production: throw sheer weight of numbers at the B*****ds and dont care about shields at all

i personally support the complete removal of all shields within the grav well following a Novalith detonation. it fits with the TEC lore and also makes advantage of the heavy armour and hull strength they get. that is why they would accept such a weapon, it is a necessary evil to loose our shields so they loose theirs

on another idea, how about the EMP/radiation whatever disabling weapons/engines/sensors? the TEC could retain theirs as they would have shielded systems (i dont mean energy shields there). with the sensors thing, it could reduce ship attack range or greatly reduce accuracy or something

hows that for an alternative to getting rid of shields after the big bomb goes boom?

Can we have a game option that allows us to choose whether or not we want the enemy to surrender? I'm kinda annoyed at doing so well only to have my opponents give up at their last stand... hell the last game I played I beat one player and all three dropped. To be honest I have not won a good hard victory against the AI since this little thing was implemented... they all give up...

indeed. it would be interesting if the AI players set behaviour determines how willing they are to surrender

for example, a "fortifier" player would never give in, nor would an "aggressor" but an "economist" might not want to stay in for the long haul if you start to equal him in economy, or a "researcher" may decide to fight on, hoping that the reearch bonuses are enough to let his fleet win against a superior enemy

i throw that into the melting pot

also, RelvarTA, you are right that such a thing would be overpowered, but the Novalith definitly needs SOMETHING to tip the balance in favour of the TEC in an orbital battle. the EMP kncks out shields sounds most viable to me, and makes the most sense

another thing i would like to see is a way to set capital ships to automatically retreat when their health falls below a certai limit, say 25% or whatever. this would be setable by the player so as to prevent unnecessary "glorious last stand" type incidents with your favourite Marza against a swarm of Skavros enforcers

Agreed. Making the AI choose to make my caps run is a horrible idea IMHO. If you cant decide as the fleet commander when to pull a ship then head back to the training camp.

i cincede the point about the capital ship auto retreat thing. it just occurred to me as useful if you are having to deal with several battles at once

They have stated a number of times that it is NOT trivial and adds significant expense to the process, so they don't do it.

maljieUSN i am right behind you. i can sympathise with the trouble impulse provides when i lost the internet connectioj  on the PC where i played SINS and was unable to patch it sufficntly to run Entrenchment which i had purchased shortly vefore my internet calamity

i was eventually able to jerryrig a solution using my laptop, but it is FAR from acceptable

i simply cannot understand the insistence on using Impulse exclusivly

i mean, fair enough, tieing it in to the game reduces the potential for piracy, which is good, but is also forces users to use a single method for acquiring updates etc

how hard would it be to have a update package available on the main website, independent of Impulse? for those of us who have the game but not an internet connection?

also, i carefully examined my DVD case for SINs and NOWHERE on it does it say that an internet connection is required for updating the game!

false advertising, anyone?

First off updating is covered in the manual its in the manual, page 74.I post it here cuz Im nice:

Obtaining Updates

You can use Stardock‘s Impulse to obtain updates. An Internet connection and your serial

number are required to validate your purchase. If you don‘t have access to the Internet on

your PC, you can follow the on-screen instructions on how to apply updates manually from an

Internet-connected system.

id like v1.17 and v1.03 to come out already unless the devs like some ideas here and are trying to cram as much in as possible...

lastly, for the last time, Sins does not require you to be online or have Impulse running while playing (single player that is, MP is pretty duh)

i mean, ive stopped playing Sins for a bit recently, i feel like doing something that Sins cant really provide. Yet, i know that there should be a few patches coming soon, so i still log on once a week or so and check for them. no harm no foul.

but seriously, you are worried you cant play online games without Impulse cause you cant patch if you dont have internet.... have you ever wondered how it is you intend to play an online game if you dont have internet in the first place?

if you dont have internet, thats your problem. regardless, Impulse and Sins do not require you to be on the internet to play (SP). its that simple and i dont know how you people can possibly ignore that simple fact! its like saying, no, i want the sky to be green cause its my fav colour, so no, i absolutely ignore the fact that the sky is actually blue

seriously, tell me how Impulse is diff to a standalone server, or why you need internet and impulse running when playing SP or why you need impule running when playing MP

I dont really mind impulse, i just wish the impulse anywhere service allowed downloading of updates rather than just the full game download.    I dont have internet on my gaming pc and anytime i want to update the game i have re download the entire game.   thats like 1.5 gigs including entrenchment.     

Also for those saying internet access requirment was on the box.   I brought the game when the updates where able to be downloaded from ironclad online.    Impulse is fine just allow those of us that can only use anywhere.impulse  the ability to download updates instead of the full game.

When is this happening?

I want to start a new game and don't want to lose it to an update.