Can we have an option/slider that effects the resources around starting planets on random maps?

fuck no.

this was an option back in Sins 1.0

it was removed for a REASON.

because no one likes balanced maps.

We cant scare off any person trying to play sins legitimately if we had balanced maps!

It would be horrible! there would be people playing for serious, and people shoutcasting games, all that free advertising, and all that icky pro stuff that no one wants.

Pbhead, can you show me one example of anyone casting a Sins game? You keep going on about how terrible it is that they aren't spending all their beta time on trying to compete with SC2 for e-sporting.

On topic, I'd like this and also the ability to control the composition of a random map. Like if I wanted a volcanic heavy game for some reason or desert planets.

no one casts sins games. that is my whole point. no one casts them because there is no pro scene, because no maps are balanced ever.

Sorry for derailing the thread but...

Pbhead, what on earth makes you think anyone should cast Sins games or consider it a legitimate e-sport? Has anyone ever cast a 4x game? If we're talking 1v1 then the map would have to be huge or it would be over in 5 minutes. If it's a 5v5 then the game will go on for 3 weeks. Alternatively people will just win with novalith spam. There aren't even sufficient micro opportunities in the game. I'm taking SC2 as the baseline here and it's been developed almost soley around being a competitive game. Nothing about Sins is comparable. Units don't even start having abilities until the midgame and ship movement isn't responsive enough to be a substitute.

Do you have any kind of precedent for it? Is there any other game you can point at that's comparable to Sins? I just can't see where this is coming from.

Online 5v5s take like an hour, two at most.

sc2 is over in 5 min, i dont see the problem. A short sins game can be over in 30 min.

A long sins game takes 2 hours. ya, sure thats longer than the 45 min long TVTs of starcraft, but not impossible.

Stupidly long games minidump at 5 hours, and are generally stalemate borefests, and would never get cast anyway.

what the crap is this 3 week thing you are talking about?

Yes there are micro opportunities, every cap ship ability, some frig abilities (designate target, distortion field, repulsion come to mind), repair bays have to be microed in many circumstances to make sure they are healing your 1/3 health capital ship and not the 95% health extractor. 

You should have seen me micro demobots before they became easy to use. it was quite epic.  I still have to micro distortion field, and that alone is quite a feat.  Gotta keep units on hold position so they dont charge into the enemy defences.  GOt to watch every single neutal gravity well to make sure he is not trying to go for my extractors, while I of course am going for his. 

got to individually tell my capital ships to retreat, so that they move at 525 speed instead of 500, and so they pick the closest jump point, instead of whereever the rest of the fleet is trying to jump.  Gotta give individual move orders to LF, heavies, corvettes, and flack for the same reason.

Got to micro my colony ships around so they can solocolonize astroids and moons. they cant otherwise do it if they dont have a decent antimatter supply when they warp in. often times gotta leave them at a safe neutral, or a sun to recharge, and heal, and then move in, and you cant forget about em.

Docking and undocking strike craft, and managing your carrier's antimatter reserves? gotta make sure your strikecraft are doing something and not just feeding the enemy caps/titans exp.

And then there is the advanced stuff. ALot of new micro capibility was added with corvettes, harrassing behind enemy lines and running around vasari units using charged missles has always been something possible and worth doing.  making sure you arent queing up to many units at your frig factories, and queing up more structures than you have constructors? bad form.

Cant forget about microing against shield mitigation to make sure your units are doing maximum damage (expecially AOE abilities) Captial ship and titan locations, to make sure all their weapon banks are firing...

There are very very few games where I find myself needing less APM, and quite a few wishing i could move faster.

there is the random map creator...

it would at least be nice to have militia strength be in proportion to a planets resources, so I don't have to fight through 7 or 8 ships just for a 2 extractor planet.  

Clearly I'm exaggerating. I thought that was fairly obvious.

And you didn't actually give any example of a 4x game that's worth a damn for casting. They're just too slow. All the micro you suggest is mid-game at the earliest so any caster would spend 5-10 minutes talking about how one guy just built an extractor and oh look there goes another extractor! 

sins isnt totally a 4x, and why the fuck would i want to give an example of a 4x game casted? sins is an awesome hybrid, one of its kind. stop being a noob. Sins is a fully blown RTS when played properly, just as exciting and fast paced as any other RTS.

and dont tell me casters dont talk about silly stuff in the first few mins of starcraft when all that is being built is probes and drones. Trust me. i watch a LOT of starcraft casted replays. At least sins players gotta go for neutrals, kill militia, CHOSE A CAPITAL SHIP and ability, (thats something worth talking about), doing their colony ship thing which is quite early game ya noob, and basicly are fighting less than a min into the match.  Starcraft casters talk about killing the neutral supply depo at around that time.

This thread is really close to being trolled by cookies and pudding....

However...

Leadhead here actually has a point...how a player pulls off their early game colonization, how teams deal with suicide players, how quickly eco players get the feed out...there actually is a lot that happens in the first 10 minutes of a Sins game...

Sins may not be SC2, but there is enough strategy and micro in it were one could cast...

I'm being perfectly civil and you start calling me names. This is why the devs have no reason to listen to you. If you can't make a case for something without insulting anyone who questions it then you clearly have nothing worth listening to.

A lot of that depends on what the game is. If it's a 1v1 then how big is the map because if it's actual 1v1 size the game isn't going to last long while if it's a larger map with just 2 players there's only so much neutral killing you can talk about before it gets really old. If it's a 5v5 then there's no way you could properly keep up with the dozens of research upgrades going on meaning it would just be commentating on the battles. You'd have to completely rebalance the entire game for this kind of strictly competitive play. The replay system would need a complete and total overhaul because there's no way it would work with what there currently is. Alternatively a live caster would never be able to keep up unless it's a 1v1.

I would like to see matches commentated or someone doing a let's play on a large map buy Pbhead is making out like it's some great crime that Ironclad aren't bending over backwards to accommodate something the game was clearly never designed to focus on. The fact is no matter how much he wants to deny that Sins has 4x elements they are there and they mean the game is too slow for it to be an e-sport. This doesn't mean casting is a bad idea but it doesn't fit the mold he's trying to shoehorn it into. I quite enjoyed TotalBiscuit's shoutcast despite him playing appallingly but it went on forever.

Maybe it's because I can't take E-sports seriously but I have no idea what you're talking about.

All I ever get from it is 'srs buziness' and 'try hard'.

But, yeah, while we get a map editor thing, some of us are a little lazy and would just like to check things off and adjust sliders and have at it.

we are both trolling in our own ways.

Did you watch the modders vs pros game? it was quite entertaining, even though it was nothing more than a recorded screencapture of one of the players playing. No rebalancing would be nessasary, the game is fine as it is! and quite enjoyable to watch. hell, you said you even enjoyed total biscuts snoozefest. Saying that sins is enjoyable to watch, and that it would need a complete balance overhaul to be castable is hypocracy.

And yes, there would need to be some addings of basic, standard multiplayer features which have been in games for over 15 years, but I dont see the problem with that... something you seem quite opposed to.

I only want to see sins succeed. I want sins to be the best game it can possibly be.  Adding in support features to make that possible is never a bad thing. 

And really. its from a gameplay perspective, not a shoehorn the shit into rts pro stuff. 

I am tired. tired of playing maps where either I or my enemy is in such a good position that the dam match is desided before the game begins.  If the maps were even, it would eleminate the excuse "you won because the map sucked" which i am quite tired of hearing.  I am tired of sucky maps. I am tired of sucky games because of sucky maps.  I want even maps so that games dont suck, and that alone would allow a pro scene, 1v1 ladder, and all that good stuff, if support was added, to develop... but none of that can come along till the god dam maps are not compeltely broken unfair.

Your membership in OMG! is under review...please be patient.

reference not secured. :-/

Lol--me sorry.  I couldn't help it.  So much seriousness.  I would like to see the ability to specify exact resource asteroid counts too--maddeningly it seems they had considered this with the new GF.  So close--yet so far.

Here's your reference.

I believe there was another post with a similar argument. 

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/420016

I'm just popping in to reply to this.

As somebody who has been doing casting for numerous groups and numerous games for years, Sins is not a castable game in the same sense an RTS or FPS can be. It's just a bit too slow.

That being said it can be done and I'm sure I could make it work but it just wouldn't flow well. The difference between Sc2 and Sins is that Sc2 only really has that downtime at the start of the match and that's for 45 seconds until people start getting into build orders and after a large fight when both sides retreat, which easily goes into strategy. The thing about both of those is they end quickly. The state of the game changes every handful of seconds, and Sins doesn't change as quickly. You'll need to fill a LOT of dead air with stuff. Camera wise it's not an issue, but in terms of speaking it doesn't flow as well. Also, choosing that cap ship and ability is nice, but when it ends in 3 minutes and all that's happened is some astroid taking...

If you'd like I could nab a replay of a 5v5 and do a practice run, let you know how it goes. Don't have my casting buddy, though.

I've had several games where I'll start a game and find myself to be on the planet farthest from the bright center to the universe... oh and a wormhole and or pirates within reach of most of the local junk I have nearby.  Oh and I'm the Advent and there isn't a desert planet to be found anywhere near me... and not much crystal.

Meanwhile a couple AIs pick up four planets all lined up together and connected within one jump of home and some nicely spaced choke points that the AI can defend from and then hit me from several points. 

Argh.

Doesn't happen to me a huge amount but it is a bit irksome.  Not that I want the map to be 100% balanced but a bit of control would be nice.

Why not just make your own "balanced" maps..?

Cookies, pudding and riddleking.

I haven't seen Pbhead this angry since he was a victim of corvettes spam. As you can imagine this was very distasteful but he has outgrown that pain and anger. 

@ every sentient being in the universe 

Please be happy with what you get with each map. At the end it all adds up and you are ok-its just how fast you colonize that determines who has the bigger economy. 

.

I was a victim of corvette spam? i dont remember that.

efferil: it doesnt work that way. you cant make balanced maps without mods.

scp121: I would LOVE to see you try to cast a game of sins 5v5.    

If anyone would like to post a good 5v5, that would be awesome... I will try to play a few games this weekend, If i get a good one, ill post it for you... though there will be a patch... tuesday? so might even want to wait for that to come out. hmm...

Do you have a youtube channel btw?

The problem is I don't have a casting buddy for this game. When I do league or Sc2, my best bud would come along and comment with me, since we both know the games in and out, but he doesn't play Sins at all.

I will also admit I'm not incredibly knowledgable of "competitive" play in Sins, I only really play SP. I can still try if you'd like, but no promises I'll post it, since casting by yourself can really be tough. I don't have a youtube, but I have an own3d and a Livestream, but my casting stuff isn't recorded on there.

EDIT: The more I look into this, the more interested I am in seeing how it would go over. I'll probably do a few practice runs before casting the game itself. Either way, give me a replay of a good pvp, 5v5. I wonder if I can keep up with all of them...

You are making me really really excited. by the way.

And, your best bud should at least be present to learn about sins. he can talk about how pretty all the lasers are.

If your stuff was recorded, i would love to watch it sometime.  Too bad you dont have a youtube yet, it takes time for youtube to lift the 15 min limit on videos, and sins games are definitely longer than 15 min.

hmmm...

If you want to, i could upload the videos for you... though, i am sure there are better options.

 edit: geofan recorded a 4v4. it was a slaughterfest, and it is a live stream, but it might show how intresting a casted game of sins might be. https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/421989

It's not a matter of simply having another person there. I did that once, had a guy I was friends with sub in for a League game when he knew a quarter of the champions and shit all about mechanics and tactics. It doesn't go over well. I'd rather go solo than work with somebody who doesn't know the game. Not that I can blame him, the game isn't his style and if he doesn't like it I'm not going to force him to buy and play it just for some casting.

EDIT: Is there a way to tell who's on who's team without memorizing it beforehand? I've never watched a replay.