good question. im assuming per salvo.

Thanks for the info my GearHead brain is very happy.

It's not very rock/paper/scissors. Ships have different armor types and different weapons do bonus damage to some types and less to others (prime example, flaks. They do a lot of damage to fighters and bombers, but less to other ships even though they have a high damage output listed), but there really is no such thing as a unit being completely ineffective against another.

Flaks/fighters are kind of special cases because fighters and bombers are simply can't be targeted by other ships, so because of that their counters are somewhat more pronounced.

Difference racial ships vary for their analogs as well. The TEC's LRM frigate for example has a very long range but doesn't do very good anti-capital ship damage, while the Vasari's Assailants have much shorter range but are very good anti-capital ships.

Sins is designed in such a way that pretty much all the ships are useful in a combat scenario (save colony ships, but that's understandable). Naturally, the ships wouldn't have any individuality to them if they all worked the same against everything, but it's really hard to find an example in Sins where you're completely screwed if you don't have an x number of one ship to counter y number of the enemy's.

Ugh, this is what I was worried about. How is a player supposed to know this? There's nothing in the tooltips about it, and no indication on the damage listing. I hate this sort of stuff being kept under the hood. Games like Age of Empires III and the Rise of... RTSs have an option for detailed ingame unit info that explains exactly what kind of damage a unit does, what units it's good against. Heck, I think even C&C3 does this! Without this info, a lot of the functionality (and personality!) these ships should have is hidden.

-Tom

I thought the fact that Assailants are better vs capital ships stems from their shield penetrating researchable missile technology, not any innate hidden modifier. Which if so would fall more under the category of thinking about tactical uses for upgrades (a good thing) more than simply knowing obscure facts.

Maybe you are right though, and it is a hidden modifier, in which case yuck

It may well be explained in the manual, I don't know. I know what you mean, though, and there's probably room on the infocard to include a "Good against: " and "Bad against: ", although that's a bit too absolute for Sins in a way.

I'll give you the example with the TEC and Vasari missile frigates. The files are in your Sins install/GameInfo folders. I think I heard that they were converted to binary in your build? Beta 4 build files are normal text, making it easy for reading.

From FrigatePhaseLongRange.entity (Vasari Assailant)

armorType "Light"
WeaponType "Missile"
damageEnums
AttackType "CAPITALSHIP"

From FrigateTechLongRange.entity (TEC LRM)

armorType "Light"
WeaponType "Missile"
damageEnums
AttackType "ANTIMEDIUM"

So basically, the Vasari frigate has light armor and deals anti-capital damage, and the TEC has light armor and deals anti-medium armor damage. I'm haven't dabbled in the files enough, but there should be a file for the different armor types also.

Hum I wonder if there will be UI only mods for SoaSE that way someone could make a UI mod that added in the Extra Information. Then again I have no idea if this is possible with SoaSE current mod system. But it would be cool to be able to make UI only mods like you can in Supreme Commander.

You also have to understand the vasari are supposed to have fewer but more powerful, and expensive ships than TEC. So i can see why the assailant was given anti cap missiles. I do agree however this info should be on the info cards, and/or build menu's.

In Empires: Dawn of the Modern world, i know that when you hovered over a unit it would show in the bottom right corner its good versus x and bad versus y. You could really tell because it was pretty much a automatic win for the person who had the units good versus the other one, which made it very bad if someone else found out what was in your army and well, it ruined the fun sometimes. But also added if you had to quickly make new units to counter and so on...

will we be able to download the manual or is it included in the game download?

This all sounds good - a little r/p/s and a lot of emphasis on role-based ships to encourage combined arms, but not so much r/p/s that battles play like, well, r/p/s.

From what I've read, this is about as strong as "r/p/s" gets in the game:

- Strikecraft (Fighters/Bombers) do massive damage to ships with ArmorType:"Very Light"
- LRM frigates (or at least the TEC one) have ArmorType:"Very Light"
- LRM frigates (or any FF/CA/BB other than the flak FF and certain BB special abilities) cannot even shoot at strikecraft .
- Flak frigates tear strikecraft apart, but don't do much (anything?) to other ships, particularly at long range

So:
Paper = Flak frigates
Rock = Strikecraft
Scissors = LRM frigates

Of course, that neglects the many other uses of Strikecraft and LRM frigates, so it's kind of an island of r/p/s in a sea of more complex unit strategy.

Am I understanding things correctly, or am I way off base?

Thanks,
Keith

ohh yes lol thats what i wanted to hear i love reading the manual!