I have no idea what people are talking about, there are unique units in each faction that really change how the faction is played at times. It more or less has almost a Warcraft III feel to it.

With that in mind, I'll make a pointless effort by looking at some random posts:



Has the same diversification as your above criticism, try to be consistent.

So yes, they have unique units and unique structures, research options. But at least you're right on one thing : They all have different play styles

5/10 for effort.




You must be fairly new to the RTS/whatever genre; if something comes a different tier then it changes how the strategy is played especially early and mid game thus changing how you react or plan with that race. Whenever you have unique races in any manner it no long becomes "easy" in terms of game design, right now there are already imbalances somewhere go figure.

Also Company of Heroes vanilla is a piss poor example of game diversity if you're comparing it against Sins since they have more or less the same features. C&C is also in the same case throughout the entire series. It is the small nuances and abilities that really diversifies each faction though it may not seem like it at first.



SupCom/TA serves an entirely different purpose therefore it is perfectly acceptable to have nearly mirror races. Look for the purpose in the games before criticizing the delivery otherwise you might be puzzled as to why the game was designed the way it is.




There is plenty of diversity, have you really even played the game? If they aren't diverse in your opinion then you must answer to why each faction has specific strategies and counters to one another as well as why it the system is built on a soft counter system which is harder to balance and tweak than a hard system counter. Yeah, your complaints are all focused on the base game engine and the changes at best would be aesthetic. All you would have to do is rename a few things, change how a few things are animated and boom your complaints are addressed.

In the end your demands are unrealistic, they make hardly any sense, and you would have no idea how to implement the changes you desire without making a craptastic game. If devving was as easy as you're insinuating I am sure we'd all be cranking out top sellers right about... now.




Ever play a game competitively? It tends to reduce everything down to the most basic things. So all that is left is micro and inherent imba.



You're being fairly generous here.



We clearly don't play the same game. I suggest you click on Sins of a Solar Empire.exe and failing that buy the game. But I'll entertain your ... questions: Note that the TEC nova is ... in the military tree not the civilian one! And their ultimate civilian one is the ability to leech from everyone's economy! That's pretty epic if you ask me. Their trade ports do: It's called refineries + cargo holds. Why buy mercenary ships when you have pirates? Why spend that money when you have your own ships? If you have emergency fleets - wait , why not already have them out? Logistically , tactically, strategically it makes no sense to add that feature. A smart player might already have a strategic reserve. Go figure.

And why do people have the same class of warships? Because human imagination is uniquely human and because there are only so many ways to wage an efficient war. Why the HELL would you have a carrier carry main cannons? That leaves less room for fighters. You specialize because you have only so much room. The exception is the Death Star which can do everything because it has the room to. The Advent do have an ability it's called Dominate. Really, I suggest playing the game, it might do wonders for your argument.



The learning curve is almost nil because the buildings are more or less the same. Warcraft 1: All the buildings were more or less mirrored
Warcraft 2: Pretty much the same, this includes units save death knights/ogres/knights/mages (they had nearly the diversity of a chess game)
Warcraft 3: Everyone had the same core buildings including farms, unique abilities but same functions in the end.

Conclusion: I fail to see the difference between this and Sins , heroes = emulated by ships with different abilities. Unique units = all three races in Sins have different units with different abilities. Unique structures = A slight argument here but in their purpose and how you used them they were more or less the same.

Command and Conquer 1: Okay, unique. Uh let's see one had an obelisk of nod and the other had some missile tower - end result, really not that unique. Units? Wow, the difference between a light tank and medium tank! And a Mammoth tank! Yeah okay, one has a flamer/stealth tank. What's the difference between that and the Advent Iconus Guardian and the TEC robotics ship? They both have a very unique way with dealing with things.

Command and Conquer: Red Alert: Okay now the Allies get a medium tank and the Soviets get a Mammoth tank! Wow, a spy unit and a guard dog. The structures are more or less the same with a few abilities here and there. Unless you're retarded you pretty much knew how to play both factions: massing a tank isn't that hard and the core units were more or less the same. Again, very little deviation just as much as Sins at the very least/most/whatever.

Command and Conquer Tiberium Sun: I can't believe I touched this game and bought it, would've been better off pirating it. Same case as Red Alert, not that difficult of a cross over.

You know what? I am done, you're fairly bias in your comparisons without any objectivity what so ever. Unless you're a person of particularly low intelligence or you have difficulty with the genre you won't really feel any of the differences. They're minute at best and a mere shrug or say a hour of playing. Saying that Sins is not as diverse as those games is pretty stupid considering that all of the above games and Sins share almost all the commonalities possible: Many approaches to strategy, unique units, and unique aesthetics.

Stardock clearly should've just set made up a new genre label instead of hybridizing it.

All of a sudden I get this feeling that some of the people here are required to make use of all their mental resources just so they do not drool on their keyboards.

Harsh ;(

While I did, at the same time we all have one of those moments from time to time where we are completely drool cup when posting. So uh, have we cleaned up all the confusion here? Can we move onto a new topic?

well, there are hit and miss in the "All races are the same" statement.

Miss:

- I play the game enough that I can see there are varieties in the game.
- Each races have a different focus, and their abilities differentiate themselves enough that if you're throughly know how to use it, you can see that you'll be using different fleet combination.
- In late game, the distintion between each races become even more apperarent tactical wise (especially if you play as advent).

Hit:

- Here is the problem, while there are varieties, there are not enough differences. I think the problem that make it hard to argue against this is that for the most part, you can always find an equivalent unit of one race from another. If you built a light frigate, you built a light frigate doesn't matter it's TEC, Advent or Vasari.

- Look at Starcraft (and I hate Starcraft), each race has their own set of grunt, backbone, hard-hitter and OMGWTF units, but you rarely can say one is the equivalent of another. Is Marine the equivalent to Zealot? No. Is Hegalisk the equivalent to Dragon/Firebage? No. Is Yamato the equivalent unit to Carrier? No. What is the equivalent of Tank? Nothing. Or a more recent example is Universe at War. Each races has their own set of building, units and even economic models. That's what it meant by differences.

- While there are varieties in tactic in Sins, it only requires a minimum of adjustment in your tactic when you move from one race to another. In the other two examples however, your playing style will have to differentia greatly. Make a hardcore Zerg player play as Terran an 99% of chance he's going to suck. Can the samething be said when someone move from TEC to Vasari? No.



I don't intend to argue over which model work better than which, as that to each his/her own and for specific reasons. I just want to "objectively" point out what is the on and off about the assumtion of similarity between 3 races in Sins. Varieties? Yes. Difference? No. That's all.

Grenadiers also come at tier one and phase out volksgren in performance, Sturmtruppen are grenadiers with new abilities and KC are rarely ever built and are matched by the Allies who have Rangers/Airborne. So it's more of a streamlined version of what the Axis have except better since rifle spam was one of the most devastating strategies (lol?) with the exception to that both sides still had mortars, snipers, bikes (jeeps), etc. Sins has more or less the same thing.

You don't seem to understand that your real point is more or less invalid - you deliberately ignore everything unique about the races. Here I'll give you an example: TEC Robotics vs Advent Guardian. Are you going to tell me that they're the same? And the research bonuses for the Advent Culture vs the TEC vs the Vasari? Or the trade researches?




Depends on your definition of suck, but most top players will beat the average player and those who play 'hardcore' generally carry over to the other races fairly easily. As much as Sins in a matter of fact. A game or two is all you need before you adjust. All RTS requires minimum adjustment otherwise the game would be even harder to balance. There is a direct correlation. So, we'll mark this off as a fallacy and move on.



You posted subjectively and contradicted yourself at that. If there are varieties then there are differences in either aesthetics of playing style, the latter is what kills your claim.



No, but you can say the vulture is the equivalent to a zealot and that the siege tank is the equivalent to the reaver. In top games that's pretty much how it's done. Who masses marines against Protoss anyways? =/ Yet, you can directly compare marines to hydralisks/zerglings and firebats to zealots. You would end up with a relatively close one regarding numbers/DPS.

Here's a brief lesson to those people who use other RTS and compare: Don't.

Bensam, you're pretty arrogant for skipping the posts. The assertion is that TEC=Vasari=Advent , that was proven by the defensive posts to be erroneous in all manners in game play.



Unfortunately, you don't have the guns to back up your arrogance. If you actually read the earlier statements, you would figure out why DoW is an erroneous standard. Every race in DoW uses the exact same economic model, has the exact same building types with the exception of Necrons who differ just slightly by having a reliance on energy rather than req + energy but they need 'req' points anyways for building speed. The difference in races when you actually play them is pretty much the same across the board with slight nuances - Just like Sins!

Man are you ignorant, Starcraft may speak of polish and balance but Dawn of War does not. SC's comparison falls short for reasons noted above. Yeah, Dawn of War is balanced alright must be why Imperial Guard is the least represented in the top 100 and why there are literally no counters to certain things.

The rest of your post is pure stupidity simply because you use Dawn of War as your base, even regarding the spirit of it there are differences in play that surpasses Supreme Commander's model. There is also a reason why DoW has virtually no community, because the game blows incidentally.

Go gouge your eye out and actually play Dawn of War competitively and perhaps as Imperial Guard, then look at the boards of Relic and figure out where your precious balance is and where your precious 'unique game play style' is. Everyone is offensive in that game, no one is defensive. Not even Imperial Guard.

The only redeeming portion of your dead-brained post is this (and even then it is lacking):


A general statement that holds true, but there are specific games that may or may not hold to that. However, it does point to the fact that all RTS races are more or less the same save the small nuances but they play out the same in the larger scheme of things. Result, you have a game that 'FEELS' unique and diverse, but really isn't.

That is pretty much a must for any game to have balance. Duh.

Ironically, while you claim to have substance, you lack it. Don't rely on comparisons with other RTS games do an internal one instead.

DoW was a piece of junk. Starcraft is a masterpiece. This game, I'm still getting there.

Just looking at the stats of the different ships, TEC are armor heavy, Advent are shield heavy, and V have better shields than TEC and better armor than Advent. That alone should constitute different play styles. However, I kind of agree that the units do need some additional different aspects.

However, again, if you look at the stats of the various ships you do see some significant differences in how the ships work via abilities and their gun ports. (TEC and V have usually 3 sets of weapons for larger ships. Advent have 2. Advent and TEC have ships that fire in all directions. V have more ships that fire forward.) Stuff like that. Whether that creates a unique playstyle is up for debate.

So to say that they are not different is false, but to say that they are completely so is also false. So, I'm kinda on the fence right now. There are differences and they do feel a little different, but not to the extent of Starcraft or the like. (DOn't get me started on DoW. POS game.)

Uhmm so I didn't finish reading, Sorry

But I came close lol!

Firstly: Someone Quoted Garion333 inaccurately, he did not post the original post or the other notably insulting post. Mistaken identity there.

Secondly: The devs should always defend themselves openly and vocally. It is the sign of dilligence and integrity that they don't treat us from 'en high' and completely ignore such things.

Thirdly: I will play devil's advocate and note that games like War Craft 3 and Star Craft and the newest installment of Galactic Civilizations II certainly do have much more variety in the racial system.

In addition, I don't think making the races similar actually achieved anything in terms of helping people learn the game. That being said, Sins races are at least as diverse as standard RTS (defined by Supreme Commander or CnC3)but not in the obvious ways. The later techs do really shake things up.

In the future I hope a few more midlevel techs and unit changes helps shape up the diversity. The Advent feel fine to me, the Tec too. My main beef is with the Vasari and their nomadic background.

Actually, Bensam, I do believe that you are the one completely dodging the issue at hand by not only dismissing people who use quotes, even though they do not relate to the entire post or are meant to offend people (in fact, they're meant to get your attention amongst the masses), but also keep stating the same thing over and over without taking the things mentioned to heart as you mentioned others should do.

There are two rather large mistakes you make:

The first one is obviously that you have purposely missed large parts of the topic because you apparently have some sort of issue with people wanting to discuss your arguments. This also means you must have missed the many users stating that the major flaw with Sins is that it is structured in the same way with each race on the surface, meaning you will find the "equivalent" of each faction's units/buildings in the same spot on each menu. This point was then disputed by saying that units are same-ish/countered by equivalent units in many RTS games. Likewise, as I mentioned in my first post, pretty much all RTS games (including DoW) have their respective units/buildings placed almost exactly the same way between the races after how they fight. You then argued that the economic models are very different in DoW, even though only 1 in 7 races actually have a different base system and that it's their tech/unit cost that decide the difference.. Again, this is also found in Sins, although maybe not to the scale you wish.

Your second big mistake is comparing Sins to a fast paced fully RTS game and thus completely ignore the massive 4X aspects present in Sins. Your tech, and thus also your strategy, varies over time instead of a preset build order. This is the 4X aspect kicking in and this is not present in a game like DoW that is usually over within minutes, instead of hours. In DoW, there are only so many ways you can tech with a given race (Tau does have more options, though) before completely overlapping with any other player of the same race during competetive play, due to the fact that there is a "most effective way" to go about things within a certain time constraint (ie. before player X arrives in your base and start shooting your stuff).

In Sins, there are many more ways I can overwhelm a player due to the time it takes to play. I can completely skip my civics tech, for one, or go the other way around and completely skip my military. I can also choose to expand fast, place no defenses, only do light research in civics and then suddenly show up at my enemy's place with an army of higher tech ships than he has, since ships don't require X amount of other techs before getting them.. My fleet will be outnumbered by his many frigs but if I time it right, I can overwhelm them through sheer brute force of my stronger units.

In DoW, I must have HQ upgrade 1 and 2, plus a few buildings of each other tech level before I can build whatever unit I wish to build. This would, in a 4X sense, constitute a waste of resources, as you do not really wish for units A, B and C along the way but sort of have to get them because that's the way it's structured.

In Sins, I am much more free to choose my techs than I am in DoW, as all that many of the techs require is X number of stations and an increasing amount of resources. A prime example of this is the superweapons.. While you can't exactly rush one out due to it's massive cost, it is very possible to get one fairly "early" if you turtle a little more than the other guys, as the only requirement for a superweapon research is 8 labs.

Finally, the reason why the many strategies in Sins are possible is that there is a black market trade. This means if I happen to find an ice planet early on, I can sell my comparatively massive amount of crystal for much more credit than I can buy the equivalent metal I need for.. Thus I will have earned resources overall and can now pursue my chosen techs while skipping another part without falling behind in the arms/economics race for the time being.

It's not the Sins community's fault if people can't see that it may be a viable strategy to go a bit outside the box tech wise and add a new strategic layer this way.. Personally, I would also like a couple of specialized units but if you have ever played a 4X game, you will know why things need to be similar (something I also touch upon in my previous post).

To my mind, Sins is a fantanstic achievement showing how you can take three 'sides' in a game, give them virtually the same base units (lets face it, only a couple of the cruisers and the Cap ships actually differ in abilities), and yet via tweaking the structure of the tech tree and economy basis get three sides that play entirely differently.

Stuff like how the shield and culture techs are lower down the tree and go further for the Advent. Stuff like how the Vasari have Phase Gates. Stuff like how the TEC trader techs ramp up their economy to a massive degree. Stuff like how the three races have different capacity to make the most of different planet types.

In a game like Sins it matters that the three races start each game playing virtually identically. At the start you are establishing your base and not directly confronting the enemy players (unless rushing - which is the same strat for everyone). On that basis the races have to play the same because otherwise someone would discover an exploit for one race that meant they would have a significantly easier early game. An easy early game means more economy>research>military in early>mid game which means everyone would have to play that race to stay competitive.

In Sins the races start to really differenciate from each other at the point in the game where you actually make contact with the other players, and that's exactly when they need to.

I have issues with the game balance at the moment (LRM spam seems far too easy and strong, and I suspect the TEC economy may need the tinyest nerf to prevent it running away from the other races too much) but no problems at all with the race differenciation.

The races are definitivly not the same. read the manual and the first games and you think so. This is the first game EVER that ive seen that actually makes you micro differently depending on what race you are. Examples: Tec has very little shields and so any playing vs tech should focus fire during combats. Advent on the other hand has very much shields so playing vs them you should spread out fire. (This is because if you target one ship with 12 ships the damage reduction of the shield is at 57% thats means over HALF the damage is waisted by focus firing on that ship. In big enough battles it will be more efficient to spread out fire actually...until the shield is down then its focus fire time again.)

Tec on the other hand is much more focus fire resistant when shields are down as they have lots of armor early.

And the changes are deeper than that. The different races uses different weapons on theyre ships and counter units differently.

Example: did you know the advent defender unit will kill 12 lrm from tec and survive with 8... Not in the description that its good vs em..but try it out!