Edit: Sorry, didn't notice there was a dedicated beta forum. If I find anything else worth posting about I'll do it in there.
- When I have ships set as a fleet and jump them into an enemy system, they seem reluctant to fight. They move around a bit but don't seem to grasp that they're supposed to be attacking. Or at least most of them don't. It might have to do with the size of my fleet (medium-large) or the presence of a Titan in it. I built a Titan pretty early into the game and it was present in most battles so I don't know if the problem happens when there isn't one in the fleet.
- The AI seems extremely weak, unless I just got a very bad roll of the dice. I know it's a beta so I'm not sure if this is worth reporting... anyway, with 3 other empires in a medium-sized random map, I got attacked exactly three times over the course of about 6 hours. Once by two planet bombers, once by a Titan and 3 capital ships, and once by an actual large fleet. Also they didn't seem too keen on using the pirate bounty system. I don't think the bounty got above 1000 even once.
- A Titan and 3 capital ships attacked a lone starbase of mine in an asteroid field. The starbase had full armor and but no weapon upgrades, and was functioning just as a trading post. Anyway, I thought my starbase was toast, but an AI quirk saved it. The enemy ships - including the Titan - wasted about half their firepower killing the incoming trade ships from two neighboring planets. As a result they got their asses handed to them by a starbase that didn't have any weapon upgrades. Kinda funny and sad at the same time.
- If you set a rally point and then start building corvettes, they all pile on each other at the other end, vibrating in place as they attempt to all get to the same location. Looked kinda silly. I don't think I've seen other ships do this. Most RTSs solve this by having the unit stop trying to move once it's clear they can't get closer.
- An Advent AI I was fighting had all their colonies destroyed (by me) and they were completely out of the game. However, their residual influence remained for over half an hour, eventually killing one of my colonies and preventing me from colonizing any of their worlds. This seemed like it would continue forever, but I finally eliminated their influence by sending in 10 capital ships which pushed the influence back into oblivion. Anyway, if they're out of the game I think it would make better sense if their influence deteriorated a bit quicker. edit: related?
- It seems much too easy to build a Titan IMHO. That's just my personal preference, but I think it would make more sense if they took longer to build and were a higher-level technology, preferably with some prerequisites. It's true that you can only have one, and it's true that they're very expensive, but when I was attacking an AI I must've fought about 5 or so in a short period of time. It just felt kind of silly seeing so many from one AI, one right after another, considering that it's supposed to be this uniquely powerful unit.
- For shiggles I built about 300 corvettes and put them all in a fleet. The game lagged for about 2 seconds on my i7 2600K @ 4.4 GHz when I gave the "create fleet" command. When I ran into the aforementioned "ships in a fleet don't bother attacking anything" problem, I kicked them all out of the fleet and Sins froze as soon as I clicked "leave fleet" with all of them selected. After about 30 seconds it still hadn't recovered so I killed the Sins process. The game still appeared to be doing something according to Task Manager so it might've eventually recovered, but it was getting late and the game was basically over anyway at that point. Since I killed the process it probably didn't make a dump.
- When corvettes attack fighters, if their target fighter is destroyed they just stop and hang in space for a few seconds until they decide upon a new target. It would look a lot better if they'd just keep flying in the same direction or at least slow down more gradually until the game has had an opportunity to assign them a new target.
- I had some scouts clearing a TEC minefield, On several occasions they just stopped moving and sat still for a minute or so until I told them to move a bit closer to the mines, whereupon they resumed clearing the field. I'm guessing their weapon range isn't long enough to actually attack the mines they've revealed.
- I heard a new sound effect several times, I think it happened when there was a metal/crystal boom/bust. I only seemed to hear it when I was zoomed fairly close though. Just a coincidence?
- Is it just me or have the neutral ships that appear at the beginning of the game been severely reduced in number? In earlier iterations of Sins I can remember needing to send my capital ship home for repairs after attacking one. It made me have to think about whether I should try to expand rapidly or keep my first capital near my homeworld and in good condition in case I got attacked. I liked that; it was something pretty unique to Sins. But in the game I just played, I only ever saw maybe 3 or 4 neutral ships per planet at most and they were never even a threat to my small fleet of 4 frigates let alone my capital ship. I was playing on a randomly-generated medium map if that helps.
- Thanks for releasing on Steam, this is something I was hoping for. I don't know what was involved for this to be done, but I appreciate not having to support Gamestop as I have had various negative experiences with them.
