Sins beta 2 arrives

[GreasyPig]

Man, Stardock’s digital downloads are just so slick.

I played this all weekend. I’m addicted. I can’t wait to see what they add next.

My quick impressions:

In 15hrs of play I didn’t see any obvious bugs and the game was very stable.
There’s tons of strategic depth with lots of guns or butter decisions.

But, tactically it seems to me pretty shallow. It really came down to numbers. No real maneuvering, type of decisions. I think this is because the gravity wells are too small with too few options. What would be nice to see is a very large gravity well around a star with a few planets and asteroids in side the same well. And from there branch out to farther outlying gravity wells. This would spread the defenses out and give the attacker/defender more choices and room to maneuver.

How cool would it be to "cross the T".

I love the game so far and it’s very, very pretty.

[RepoMan]

I agree there's not a whole lot of tactics. The tactics seem to be more about making sure you've got the right fleets in the right gravity wells -- large-scale maneuvering rather than micro. This is clearly in order to steer the game towards management of a large galaxy where you can't micro in multiple planets simultaneously, but it does lose a bit of that Master of Orion feel. (It also skews the game towards monster long-running games, since the small games feel a bit under-tactical for the smaller scale.)

[BlairFraser]

Originally Posted by RepoMan

I agree there's not a whole lot of tactics. The tactics seem to be more about making sure you've got the right fleets in the right gravity wells -- large-scale maneuvering rather than micro. This is clearly in order to steer the game towards management of a large galaxy where you can't micro in multiple planets simultaneously, but it does lose a bit of that Master of Orion feel. (It also skews the game towards monster long-running games, since the small games feel a bit under-tactical for the smaller scale.)

I think if you watch some of the replays (not all demonstrate this) you can see that there can be a fair bit of tactics to combat and certainly as I watch and play more, the tactics are evolving with the more experienced players. Not that I'm a master or anything compared to some of the guys on the Sins team, but when I first played humans from the 'outside' I came to realize how many tactics I actually did use. I was regularly able to handle multiple humans with more / larger fleets through tactics alone. Although, I'm sure in the 10 days that has passed since then they will skool me (even in a 1 v 1).

Btw, the latest patch (Beta 3 Patch 1) will be out later today with a nice host of fixes, enhancements, new features and so - on. The full list can be found here: http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com...402&aid=162844.

Edit: Patch is up.