Thats Yarlens house....

who says i havent convinced blair to move in with yarley?

Sins has a lot of factors to consider when determining what to build to deal with a given situation. Which unit (or combo of units) is good against which, is a good place to start but a lot depends on the current state and there can be different ways to approach it. Given the complexity of the space, I’ll just stick to some unit to unit consideration examples:

 

The basic considerations are hull points, shield points, antimatter, armor level and average damage per second (which is visible in retail now as requested). The higher the better and they are all available in-game.

 

Attack type versus armor type is key as well. This data is shown above and forms a nice table. It basically says that if you have attack type X and you are attacking armor type Y, your damage receives a multiplier Z because that attack type is better/worse against that armor type. Sins fails to make this information available during gameplay but more on this later.

 

Next, each attack type has a chance to hit a target of a certain movement type. For the most part, as I’ve mentioned in many other threads, technology in the Sins Universe is such that targeting is advanced enough to guarantee a hit against large, relatively slow moving targets unless there are is some sort of external factor (usually from an ability or the environment). The only exception to this is with strike craft; only a couple attack types have any reasonable chance of hitting them and most weapons can’t even fire at them. This information is available in-game because you won’t be able to fire at fighters if you don’t already have a very good chance of hitting them and hitting everything else is just about guaranteed.

 

There is also the consideration of the damage type which is either physical or energy. This really only comes into effect with certain abilities like Energy Absorption. The appropriate abilities will indicate as such in their info cards otherwise you don’t need to worry about it.

 

Weapon range is also important. For example the reason the Javelis is a decent counter to static defense is not because of any special anti-structure weapon (like the demolition charges for the Arcova), it’s because it can fire at it from outside the defense’s range. Weapon range info is available in-game by selecting a unit and holding down ALT, which will render an orange range circle. Ability ranges are also extremely important to consider for a variety of reasons. These ranges are accessible by hovering over the ability buttons, which will show the range as a purple range circle. (They aren’t tied to ALT because you wouldn’t know which ability was which if they all came up at once).

 

Linear Speed / Angular Speed / Weapon Positions are some minor considerations. Example: a group of weak, fast moving/rotation ships can constantly move out the firing solution of a slow ship with a limited firing arc coverage zone and take it down. Or a ship with powerful weapons in all banks is only doing a fraction of its potential DPS if it’s not in the center of a group of enemies. While not explicitly stated in-game, the relative speeds and weapon positions are fairly easy to observe.

  

Special abilities are a major consideration. I can’t possibly go through them all but a lot of them factor into the ability of a unit to counter another and they do this in a large number of different ways. Its here, more than anywhere, that we start to see how synergy is used to create combos of units as counters. For example the Cielo Command Cruiser’s Designate Target and/or Embolden along with a number of lower tier combat ships is meant to operate as a counter to the higher tier heavy cruisers. At the same time, the Cobalt’s (an early level light unit) Sabotage Reactor serves as a counter to the Cielo (which is highly dependant on antimatter). (On a side note, this serves as an example of how abilities are also part of the way that Sins attempts to make sure that units never go obsolete.)  Finally, very ability has a detailed, in-game description of how it functions but a player's interpretation of how to use it as a counter could vary with the use of some creativity.

 

Wow, I’m tired. This was due yesterday and I can’t think of all the other little things so this will have to be enough to make the point that there are a lot of considerations and in turn allows me to make the following statement:

 

In Sins the unit-unit counter diagram can’t be represented with a simple Spear > Cavalry > Archer > Infantry > Spear circle (which also has the advantage of being an intuitive real world relationship). I don’t even know if we could make a proper diagram because a lot depends on state but we do have one drawn on a great big white board in the office that is our attempt at a holistic overview (and was used to guide the design and balance process). 

 

In most cases the information is available in-game to help players make meaningful decisions but one of the most important things missing is the attack type versus armor type info. We’ve considered adding these values to the info cards but I still don’t know if that solves the fundamental problem.

 

The fundamental problem in my opinion is players shouldn’t have to sort through any of these considerations, whether they are in-game or not, to build at least a basic counter diagram in their minds right off the bat (by basic I mean one that would work for typical situations).

 

We attempted to solve this with the manual information. Just to add to Brian’s comments, the descriptions were intended as much for lore as for gameplay application (e.g Cobalt: “average weapons package” and “extremely effective at hunting down antimatter-dependant units”, Javelis: “exceptionally long range” and “groups of smaller frigates don’t stand a chance” and “weak armor and shields make it an easy target, especially for enemy fighters”, Krosov: “take out a planetary target”, Garda: “defend against enemy fighter and bomber wings” etc). 

 

We don’t think this is sufficient. As you can probably tell from all my comments above we are interested in an “in-game” solution that basically synthesizes all the considerations from a high level view and tells you who this unit is good against and who can kick his butt. We’ve been batting around a bunch of ideas on how to present this and the best I’ve heard so far is a list of icons in each ship’s build infocard. We’ll continue to brainstorm on it and we are open to ideas

 

 

 

Wow,

I am shocked by the quality of support going on in this forum. Just floored. Thanks guys and congratulations. The folks over at Massive have done a superb job with World in Conflict, but you guys set the bar even higher. Please know that I, and surely the rest of the community, appreciate it.

As far as helping new players understand unit functions. The system of Synergies rather than direct counters sounds brilliant. To me it gets at the essence of what RTS should be. I have a friend who plays RTSs by keeping tables of 1 to 1 unit counters in his mind. Sometimes 2:1, or 3:1 as the case may be... like if we're talking about scourge and battlecruisers. But he always thinks in terms of unit X is the direct counter to unit Y, and he has a really hard time wrapping his brain around RTSs that don't follow this simple logic.

I don't like this type of thinking, it leads to very straightforward if x, then y gameplay, which gets solved very easily, and the situation quickly devolves into clickfests.

The situation you are describing doesn't fit into this box because of the myriad of unit abilities and special features which create rich and complex synergies... which means you're not trying to counter the enemy's units one to one... rather, you are trying to counter his entire synergistic solution. You do this by inventing a different synergistic solution. This is where RTS genre really shines for me, not in memorizing a counter table and executing it properly, but in creatively devising new ideas in real time!

The combinations of synergies and subtle abilities that can be leveraged to great affect can be endless... any unit can be combined with any other unit to do SOMETHING effectively! What that something is, and how should you use it? How can you take the units you've got and combine them in a way to do something you need? That's the joy of this kind of RTS, and I think these are things the player should have to discern for himself, in real time, as the game is being played.

This forces the player to invent uses for his units, rather than having those uses dictated to him by the documentation... which is what we want. It makes perfect sense to avoid a direct counter list, or even an armor/attack type table. I think it's a brilliant idea, and i understand exactly where you're coming from.

But we're still left with the issue of how to handle Newbs. People can't start putting synergies together until they understand the intimate details of each unit, and they can't learn those if their units just keeping popping on them because their synergies are poor.

I recommend the solution found in Rise of Legends... in my opinion the best RTS to date, and the first one to really effectively apply this "synergistic" approach. Every unit card in their game had a "stong against" and a "counter with" list in the unit card. Some of these were vague, like (light ground), and some were specific (clockwork men). The lists were brief,and in most cases the "counter with" list didn't even include units from each race.

The key here was not to be thorough, but just to give an example. So the first time you see a giant scorpion and say "what the hell is that?" and "what do I do about it" you have an answer. "oh, I should build clockwork men." Maybe not the best answer, and certainly not the only answer, but something to get you started. Spamming Clockwork men wasn't t the only counter to scorpions but it was A counter, and an easy to execute counter. In this way, you got to see a scorpion, you got to see a clockwork man, you got to move the units around and see what they do, and your game didn't completely crumble on you as you were trying to learn it. (assuming you're weren't playing against a stupid hard AI, which would be stupid if your learning, and the developers shouldn't be concerned with your plight if that's the case)

But as time went on and you got to know the units better, you understood that clockwork men weren't really a "direct" counter to scorpions, but they are a critical element in one of many synergies that works against a synergy that includes scorpions.

I would love to see a little "strong against," "counter with" list in the infocards in Sins. I don't think they need to be thorough, or exhaustive. But just a simple suggestion to get you started. So the first time you see a unit, you have a suggestion of what to do with it/against it... I don't think you have to be given all the solutions, or even all of ONE solution. I think all you need is just to be pointed in the right direction for one possible solution, then you'll have quite a good time pulling together the rest of the pieces of this puzzle, and also have an idea of how to go about solving other ones.


I had a miserable time teaching Rise of Legends to newbs. "Oh my god!!What do i do against this?" "well you can build,this, this and this. Or you can build that, that, and that? Oh, wait, I'll bet this and that will work too... and you've already got a couple, try that." There's no way, and no point to covering it all in your documentation.

After you play for a bit and read all the help text you start seeing how these things are put together and once you begin to get a handle on all the different units and their abilities, you can synthesize their own counters.

Which i think is fine. The documentationd/infocards don't have to cover everything. They don't even have to give truly viable solutions for medium or high level play.

All the infocards have to do is give some rudimentary suggestions so the new player doesn't get blown up to bits while he's taking his leisurely self-guided walking tour of the game and reading all the text and figuring things out for himself.


I'm excited about Sins so because it sounds so much like everything Rise of Legends was and more! With a functional online system to boot! Can't miss. Can't miss.

Sorry I'm feeling so long-winded tonight.
Enjoy.

Blair was referring to another post earlier in the thread that listed out all the numbers.

Thanks for the post, Blair. That was above and beyond the call of duty! I'm gradually coming around to discovering a lot of what you talked about, and I'm excited to see that Sins will support as much tactical tinkering as I can throw at it. It seems to play at two levels. The first level is to just move the ships to systems and let the AI take over. This is what hooked me. But what keeps pulling me in is a second deeper level, where I'm learning more about various ship synergies and how to manage them tactically.

For instance, I just noticed today that the Advent's equivalent of a missile frigate, the Illuminator, was shooting something out of its side. Huh? So I zoomed in for a closer look and saw on the model a beam mounted to fire off its starboard. It was periodically firing it at a second target while using its nose-mounted beam to attack its assigned target. And sure enough, there was another beam mounted on the port side. Hmm, I wonder if I move it to where it's situated between two groups of ships... Yes! When properly positioned, that little sucker was firing at three targets at a time. Holy cow.

(BTW, before anyone pipes up with "Nerf the Illuminator!", keep in mind that to position itself properly, it will almost certainly have to sacrifice its range advantage. What a canny bit of game design on Ironclad's part!)

What's exciting about this is that I see a real difference between the Advent Illuminator and the other races' missile frigates. At first, I thought Sins was like Kohan, a game that plays almost entirely at a strategic level. But I see now that's absolutely not the case. And I look forward to whatever tools you guys can build into the game to help us appreciate the tactical nuances of what you've created.

-Tom

P.S. Great post, mehoo. I'm always tickled to see some Rise of Legends love. It's an absolute frickin' heart-rending shame that Big Huge didn't get more critical and commercial success with that game. I see a lot of Big Huge in Sins, and I love it all the more for it.