Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

Complex: Advent's main economic advantage (not that I'm going to claim it makes them competitive with other factions) is Allegiance. They get their culture structure real early, so they can start pursuing that pretty quick. Then in the mid-game their main starbase econ module is one that ups the neighboring planet's max allegiance. (I think it may even have a second level?) And if you get to the last tier of the diplo tree, there's a 2-level tech that also increases max allegiance. Your capital and nearby planets can end up way over 100%, and you can have some pretty far away planets at around 100% where other factions wouldn't be able to get anything close.

Hey, everyone that offered to play with me tonight: I have some family stuff that I completely forgot about last night, so I won't be able to make it. Sorry.

No prob, maybe another time.

If anyone else (Zell? Lobster? anyone?) is interested in a good ol' comp stomp, I'm on tonight.

Kloreep wrote:

No prob, maybe another time.

If anyone else (Zell? Lobster? anyone?) is interested in a good ol' comp stomp, I'm on tonight.

I could be. What time zone are you in?

Thanks for the game last night, Kloreep. Still not sure which faction I want. I'm leaning toward Advent because of their fighter bay upgrade but it seems weird to me to pick a faction based on a single upgrade, especially when the Vasari have many, many upgrades that I like.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Thanks for the game last night, Kloreep. Still not sure which faction I want. I'm leaning toward Advent because of their fighter bay upgrade but it seems weird to me to pick a faction based on a single upgrade, especially when the Vasari have many, many upgrades that I like.

Visari eats planets.
Nuff said!

I will be around tonight if anyone wants to stomp some comps. Hit me up on steam, link is in my sig.

Listening to the description on the last Conference Call pretty much sold me on this game. Seeing as the Steam Summer Sale of Summer Steamness is in the next week or two, however, I'll probably wait a bit even if it just ends up being 25% off (or not at all, I'll just buy it then).

the weekend after you buy it, it will go on sale. Its steam, its how they roll!

Yeah it's worth waiting another 8 days. You guys won't be totally burned out by then. Even 25% will probably be enough to get me to jump on this one.

Thanks for the game tonight guys. I still think we should find a decent size non random map that will be a bit quicker but not too quick in that we each get a planet and asteroid and thats it.

Do we have a final version map for tomorrow? From the look of it we have to do teams before hand and join in with a specific order?

Complex wrote:

Do we have a final version map for tomorrow? From the look of it we have to do teams before hand and join in with a specific order?

How long have these games been lasting? I just do solo games vs AI, because my games last like 6 hours and I have a wife and 5 month old daughter, so being able to drop out when I need to is very nice.

4-5 hours is the average game.

Complex wrote:

Do we have a final version map for tomorrow? From the look of it we have to do teams before hand and join in with a specific order?

We can try the one I posted earlier.

kazar wrote:

4-5 hours is the average game.

usually by then its clear that one side is going to prevail so the other side gives up, to my knowledge a game has never went all the way to the last unit to kill or whatever.

If Nim's map fails I know how to create a custom map using the in game map generator to fit our needs.

Hopefully I'll be around tonight. Looking forward to playing with you guys again!

Despite it being Stardock, I went ahead and picked it up. Some nice tweaks, not that different than the original. I should be able to join in on today's game.

I'm out for today's game. I just got finished moving and am dead tired, and will likely sleep past our start time.

Sitting in the Ventrilo lobby with a comatose Duoae. Anyone showing up today?

EDIT: Never mind, I thought the game started at noon. My bad!

Haha! I was busy

Good game guys - even though we didn't have a huge fight. It was fun going through the post-game analysis seeing where we mistook your home system for the unoccupied one!

Alright so I took the time to learn the map designer in game and I was able to construct a 5v5 3 system map.

For those that downloaded the file already I have updated the design so that the unoccupied system is always in the middle of the other 2 occupied systems making it equidistant for the two waring factions and giving no one an advantage. I should also point out that there are always two wormholes in each occupied system and they have a 50/50 chance of either connecting within system or to the other occupied system.

Here is the link. 5v5 3 system

This file needs to be placed into the map designer folder and only the host of the game needs it as this version is shared through the game.

For anyone interested in learning how the in game map designer works this is a great guide.

I should be around today if anyone wants to do a comp stomp or something. IIRC roommate-of-Xeknos (I forgot who you were, sorry!) was suggesting you two might be interested now that you're done moving?

Duoae wrote:

It was fun going through the post-game analysis seeing where we mistook your home system for the unoccupied one! :)

Hehe, I'm curious to hear how this happened.

So why no big fight? Someone had enough of an economic advantage? Or the war started fierce & early enough for it to be run and gun without much defenses getting in the way?

Kloreep wrote:

I should be around today if anyone wants to do a comp stomp or something. IIRC roommate-of-Xeknos (I forgot who you were, sorry!) was suggesting you two might be interested now that you're done moving?

Duoae wrote:

It was fun going through the post-game analysis seeing where we mistook your home system for the unoccupied one! :)

Hehe, I'm curious to hear how this happened.

So why no big fight? Someone had enough of an economic advantage? Or the war started fierce & early enough for it to be run and gun without much defenses getting in the way?

Um, I kinda went into their home system (thought it was the expansion system) and proceeded to eat a few planets here or there. While also taking an earth planet for myself, fortifying it with defenses, and then me and Duoae defeated a titan and a few fleets with my titan hanging on with 100 health or so. I wish sins had a replay function or something so I could spectate a game after it was played.

LOL, stumbled into a wisely aggressive strategy, huh?

And doesn't it have a replay function? Though I have no idea if MP games are auto-saved.

Can't you record games?

I thought it was built right into the game?

Kloreep wrote:

I should be around today if anyone wants to do a comp stomp or something. IIRC roommate-of-Xeknos (I forgot who you were, sorry!) was suggesting you two might be interested now that you're done moving?

Duoae wrote:

It was fun going through the post-game analysis seeing where we mistook your home system for the unoccupied one! :)

Hehe, I'm curious to hear how this happened.

So why no big fight? Someone had enough of an economic advantage? Or the war started fierce & early enough for it to be run and gun without much defenses getting in the way?

Basically, I was looking at these two wormholes - one sitting right beside Complex - and I asked the team (being a relative newb and all): "Hey, guys. Should we be making sure that these wormholes go through our system or somewhere else?"

I remember them replying in the affirmative so I researched the tech and jumped through the one on my left - I found nothing! I went to two different systems adjacent to the wormhole and discovered untouched "neutral" planets (and the pirate base)... My scout frigate died then but since we had pretty much the whole of our system occupied already I presumed that there were no opponents over there in "system 2". Complex then went ahead and entered the wormhole to my right (the one near him) and he also found no opponents within four or so systems around that wormhole.

So, basically, I thought I'd be clever and send through a starbase builder to "protect" the wormhole. This took me a little while as I had no military tech stations (I'd been focusing exclusively on econ) but when I sent it through with another scout frigate low and behold there was this f****r there named Gaald or something. I quickly found out that he hadn't just protected the wormhole with a starbase but also colonised both planets either side of it as well. Well, our team all believed, at this point, that the other team had managed to get to that system and find one of the wormholes and significantly blockade it - bear in mind that Complex was still unhindered on the other side of the system.

I, thinking that Gaald just had an exploratory force there and was dividing his attention between his home system and this one, built up a percheron (fighter/bomber squadron host) and garda (anti-fighter/bomber) fleet and sent it through the wormhole to take care of his starbase - only there were now three of them - two of the moving Vasari bases were sitting pretty there too.. and I discovered that they can move faster than normal ships (which I think is a bit rubbish!). So I retreated towards Complex and it was at that point that I noticed that there was a titan on its way towards his planet in system 2, along with a couple of other fleets. We dithered a little bit while we discussed where to stand and fight and eventually agreed on his more developed planet - which probably saved our bacons! Unfortunately, I only had 9 percherons, 8 garda and a single Akkan battleship. I also had to go AFK for about 5 mins and so my fleet was left right at the edge of the planet gravity well where the enemy would jump in.

I returned after my little sojourn to find myself down only one single percheron! I have no idea how it happened but it looks like Complex had a pretty maxed-out fleet (I seriously have no idea how you guys build so fast!) and so the enemy had concentrated on his titan and/or 6-8 cap ships he had in the gravity well. This was quite fortunate for two reasons - A) my fleet was still intact and B) I was ripping apart the enemy air squadrons AND ripping apart his cap ships and titan with my bombers.

Complex had a great strategy for the battle: I don't know how he managed it but he kept his entire fleet in close proximity to his planet, drawing in the enemy fleet and allowing three repair bays to keep his titan from being destroyed. I helped out as much as I could but really he had a pretty awesome fleet. Once the enemy titan and fleet were dispatched (they literally had a few frigates left) the other team disconnected - the game didn't say "surrender" and we were a bit confused as to what was going on because, as far as we were concerned, this was a tertiary fight and Jam was in the process of "attacking" system 3 in order to draw them off of us....

So, all in all, a short but pretty good game. I'm just glad I ended up helping in some small way!

Gaald wrote:

Can't you record games?

I thought it was built right into the game?

I see an option to watch auto recorded games, but I can't find an option to save auto-recorded games. And I don't have any to choose from. I wonder if you have to check that option before you turn the game off and save it then? I am going to do some google searches and see if I can find out, it would be interesting to rewatch some of these battles and maybe record a commentary for them.

Ok, here is how, you have to be IN a game to do this. You go to menu, record, and turn on auto record there. For some reason this isn't in the main options or anything, only in the options within the game. Does anyone have an auto-record for that last battle? I am guessing it records only your view?

We had a pretty interesting comp stomp today using the map I created. After playing I asked for some suggestions and one of them was that there might be issues with being starved for planets, so I tooled around and created a new version (I still have the old one available).

The new version has a few different options that will hopefully alleviate that issue without giving people potentially to many planets. Again this map goes in the map designer folder not galaxy forge, and only the host needs the file.