I wager many gamers are put off by the length of typical Sins games, we get comments like "plays the speed of molasses". This hinders the multiplayer scene as well, because players perceive that games can drag on for hours and hours. IC should give us an option to make games shorter - and there are ways to do this so the boring parts are cropped out and the most fun parts remain.

One option is to shorten the game in the beginning. After all it's mostly the basic expansion stuff, and the vast majority of players will research the core technologies pretty soon anyway. It does not pit the skill of a player versus others in any major fashion. To fix this, IC could give options in the game setup to give everyone some extra planets, tech or resources in the start of the game. (We had an option in HW2 to give players extra RU.) Or we can get things like this from community-made scenario maps.

The other option is to shorten the game from the end. I find the late game tends to be uninteresting, when one side has lost its fleets and the other can press on freely, even if slowly and painfully. At this point most players seem to lose their morale and just quit the game.

As a solution to shorten the late game, I propose new victory conditions to be added, for example:

1. The team achieves 80% of galactic culture
2. The team achieves 80% of galactic economy (credits and other RU)
3. The team achieves 80% of planets colonized
4. The team achieves domination (100%, 1000pts, whatever -> Domination game mode)
5. The team eliminates 75% of opposing players/has 75% of all players left in the game

There would be audible alarms when an enemy team reaches 60% and 70% in a given parameter. Pressing an F key would bring up a screen that lists each player's percentage (so you know whom to attack to fix it) as well as each team's total. Having victory conditions like this would actually bring about a more intense late game, when the winning team pushes over the threshold - instead the people in the losing team quitting the game one by one, resulting into a miserable trail-off.

What's really interesting is the middle part of the game, when both sides have fleets built up, some research has been done, and there are planets to fight over. This is the part that generally will decide the outcome of the game, when the results of one's strategic choices are seen, and definitely the part where the vast majority of tactical skill that matters is shown. In essence, this is the part of the game that is most balanced, most lively and consequently, most fun. IC should endeavor to make this part of the game dominate.