128 replies to this topic

[SPECTRE]

Isn't the purpose of the CCS and CAS to be the end all be all for the Covenant armada with pickets and SDVs sprinkled here and there.

yep but fighter spam gets messy as hell.

giving CCS fighters would fuck balance.

[Aunt Gruntie]

yep but fighter spam gets messy as hell.

giving CCS fighters would fuck balance.

 

 

They have fighters now.

[SPECTRE]

They have fighters now.

Ah that explains shit. I wondered why a covenant fleet had 230 squadrons.

[Aunt Gruntie]

Ah that explains shit. I wondered why a covenant fleet had 230 squadrons.

It was done to help Cov AI actually build the thing as opposed to the insane SVD spam (which it still does from time to time).

[Wilhelm König]

Positive things about the update from my perspective:
New planets give more variety to gameplay
The maps are areally interesting and it feels much better to play on them opposed to the regular random ones
Really like the starbase update

Negative
A bit disappointed about the research update in general, feels a bit empty now. Expected more.
Starbase+SMACs+Sabre Hangars still get spammed to death by fighters. (that sabre hangar, 4 slots for 2 fighters and weak guns)
Miss the jump disruptor and Culture, was nice to see the enemy try to run away while getting shot by SMACs and blue spreading in the galaxy (marking your territory).
The ship speed seems to be reduced (both in and out of gravity wells, i guess this is because of larger scaled galaxies, still a bit annoying)
Mines now spread way more (kinda difficult to mine a place when they end up all over the planet)
Hurts performance a bit more (might not be related to the mod, but i've noticed more performance drops in longer battles)
Anchor jump ability (well with the amount of stars, it rarely is as effective as it could be)
These are all subjective points and are in now way representative.

Nice update overall. I understand the reason behind most changes and don't oppose them. Just a bit disappointed, guess hyped it too much.
Is it somehow problematic if we mod the mod ourselfs (and give these modifications of it out to selected people to play with)? Some friends and i wanted some 'smaller' battles (less ships).

Really looking forward to see the next updates (especially looking forward to Infinity and sub-faction research)

[Lavo]

Shadows on the Halcyon don't work properly

Those shadows are proper. If they look strange that's due to how Sins does dynamic lighting.

 

Can't research research

Known, being fixed.

 

Texture For Marathon is backwards.

This is known; having the UNSC logo backwards is the trade off for the ship having proper a tangent map. It will be fixed once the ship gets a proper set of hard edges and tangents.

[KhevaKins]

Those shadows are proper. If they look strange that's due to how Sins does dynamic lighting.

They shadows just pop in and out on the model. It is exasperated if you play on lower settings.

Go check, just fly the Halcyon in a circle.

[Hageshii01]

You want my feedback?  Here's my feedback.

The Awesome (Good)

A hell of a lot.  The new models are fantastic, and my experiences so far lead me to like the Research changes.  Changes made to the CAS and DDS also seem positive; I feel like they are worth something now.  I don't remember if there was a change made to them, but I love the Seraphs.  And the space banshees are also amazingly awesome.

 

 

The Less Awesome

 

I want to precede this by establishing that I try to be critical at heart about anything that anyone asks feedback for.  So below are a *lot* of issues, some of them very small. that I noticed.  I'm 90% sure these things are already on your guys' radar, but I figure it would not be a bad thing to mention them just in case something was over-looked.  So if I've stepped on any toes here I apologize; that's not my intention.
 

-          In the Research, the SDV is described as a frigate.  SDVs are corvettes, specifically heavy corvettes.

-          The voice over for the Redemption-class (Super Destroyer) describes itself as a Salvation-class (“Salvation-class on point.”).  But the Salvation-class is the name given for the Assault Carrier in Research.  Probably the easiest thing to do would be to just remove that particular line from the Redemption-class, if the CAS is to remain the Salvation-Class.

-          Ship names for the Covenant aren’t very standardized.  Some, in the Research, are named after their Covenant class name (the Super Cruiser, for example, is listed as the Adjudicator-class) while some are listed by their UNSC designation (like the Assault Carrier, which is just named “CAS”, and the CCS, CPV, etc.).  Then some ships, when the research for that ship is completed, are listed by a completely different name.  For example, the Assault Carrier’s research is “CAS” while the ship is named “Salvation-class”.  This needs to be standardized; best suggestion I can think of is have all Research have the UNSC designation (CAS-class, CCS-class, etc.), and the unlock name for the ship is the Covenant class-name.  And the Covenant class-name is what would be seen in the actual factories.  The beginning of every Covenant ship’s description would then be “UNSC designation XXX-class XXXXXXXXX, the YYYYYYY-class is…..” So for example, the Assault Carrier would be “UNSC designation CAS-class Assault Carrier, the Salvation-class is…..”

-          The Covenant sound which plays when “Additional research required” is a normal human-male.

-          The Assault Carrier has two different “kinds” of sounds.  For all dialogue except attacking the voice is that of a Prophet, while the voice for attacking is that of an Elite.

-          Same thing with the CRS, though less obvious.  There are two fairly distinct Elite voices that play depending on the circumstance (clicking on the CRS, moving, etc.)

-          The icon for the SDV-class does not reflect the model (same icon as currently seen on the Super Cruiser.

-          This is largely my own opinion, BUT a lot of the Covenant ships have these maroon/red markings on them which don’t change color along with the team color.  This not only looks tacky if the colors do not match up (like blue with that red, or green with that red), but actually confused me while I was trying to take a screenshot a few times (I was red covie, enemy was blue covie and it would take me a second to figure out which ships were which).  Ideally, these markings should change color with the team color.

-          SDV needs a texture, but that’s fairly obvious.

-          Ships disappear when jumping to slipspace, and reappear when they arrive in-system.  They are essentially invisible through slipspace which, while technically canon, isn’t fun for the game.

-          Some of the ships need in-map icons (the colored icons which mark ships when you zoom out far enough) that reflect the actual design of the ship, like the CAR-class.

-          Many ships need updated icons on the HUD (the pictures in the middle at the bottom of the screen when you click on a ship).  A lot don’t look at all like the ship model.

-          The Adjudicator-class and Pious-class share the same VO.

-          The VO for the CCS-class Battlecruiser could maybe be a tad-bit louder compared to the other ships.

-          Certain obvious placeholder models need to be replaced (the Super Destroyer, Super Cruiser, etc.)

 

So yeah; just some stuff that stuck out to me that I wanted to jot down.

[KhevaKins]

-          This is largely my own opinion, BUT a lot of the Covenant ships have these maroon/red markings on them which don’t change color along with the team color.  This not only looks tacky if the colors do not match up (like blue with that red, or green with that red), but actually confused me while I was trying to take a screenshot a few times (I was red covie, enemy was blue covie and it would take me a second to figure out which ships were which).  Ideally, these markings should change color with the team color.

I agree, those random markings are out of place.

[Bornstellaris]

The SDV model and texture is on loan from Covenant at War and will be replaced with a HHF created asset when applicable. 

[Lavo]

They shadows just pop in and out on the model. It is exasperated if you play on lower settings.

Go check, just fly the Halcyon in a circle.

Yes, however those shadows and tangents are still good overall. Welcome to Sins, it hates boxy models at times. Unfixable.

[Bringer Of Eternal Night]

Firstly, while you might be able to alpha anything with enough strikecraft, there's a difference between intentionally massing hilariously huge numbers of strikecraft and having 4 or 5 capitals with a combined total of 40 or seraphs. That's an easily achievable, practical number which doesn't require you to gimp your fleet by just spamming SDVs or something. Even if we assume it's true that seraphs wouldn't be effective in that situation and would get picked off too quickly to do any appreciable damage to SMAC defenses, what we're left with is essentially a 50-supply, 4000 credit structure-bashing capital.

 

And I still don't think that where you have a couple DDS and a couple Assault Carriers all loaded down with seraphs that static defenses/a defensive fleet can do enough damage to prevent you from killing a fair number of SMACs. Eventually they'll wipe the floor with the seraphs and you'll be left with no strikecraft, but you'll do enough damage to the static defenses to be effective. If one seraph does around 11 dps, 40 squadrons x however many seraphs per squadron is probably enough to alpha multiple SMACs at once on the first pass, which is way easier and cheaper than building Adjudicators for the sole purpose of bashing SMACs.

Wait, you only got 40? My average is 300 seraphs and banshees

[KhevaKins]

But the shadows used to work fine.

[Antigeist]

Wait, you only got 40? My average is 300 seraphs and banshees

You should read what I wrote again. I said 40 squadrons of seraphs and only between a handful of DDS/CAS-class ships.

[Lavo]

But the shadows used to work fine.

No they did not; they were broken on that model as it did not have hard edges or a tangent map. While you are entitled to your opinion, to claim that the shadows were working earlier is factually incorrect.

[psdt]

First and foremost: Good job guys. This whole undertaking is really marvelous especially considering none of you get paid or anything.

Anyways, the balance changes really show this time around. In a good way. It used to be that once the UNSC got rolling the covenant didn't really stand a chance. In my current game however that is not the case.

Its a 2v2 game, and one enemy AI is already out of the game, but the 2nd one is proving to be.. stubborn. Despite my best efforts the remaining AI just smashed both my fleet an my allies fleet. Battle took place on 2 planets, allied fleet at one and mine at the other. The covenant suffered heavy losses, but our were worse. At this point in the game it's safe to say that we're going to win anyway (Combined we have twice the planets), but I've never had the AI reverse an assault like that before. Things might get ugly while we're rebuilding our fleets.

Also, a couple odd glitches: Ships are invisible in slip space, and once I had a paris frigate scout out a wormhole and when I ordered it to return the slip space animation triggered early (ship was facing sideways, slip space portal open anyway). After this the ship jerked towards the planet I ordered it to move to and began to travel at normal sub-light speed (would've taken like 30 mins to get to the planet). Like in gravity well speed. Not slip space speed. I eventually got it to jump normally, but it was an odd little glitch.

 

EDIT: I'm also very pleased with the fact the culture has been removed. It just didn't fit in with the halo feel. And the AI would abuse the hell out of it.

[Stephan-338]

Ships are meant to be invisible in slip space and yeah, you can still see it burning and the lights flickering

[Lord Stark]

It does cause many issues when entering gravity wells with large planets though.

[_nyx]

All in all I feel this is a great update! I feel the balance between UNSC and Covie can be a tad wonky at times (It's either the reaping of the UNSC or the Covenant hired actual babies to fly their ships) but as someone who is also a game dev that's the purpose of public releases like this, to get feedback from outside your internal team on stuff you might not have considered.

On top of this the game looks very pretty. I must confess I play games like Sins Rebellion/SotP despite being kind of shitty at RTS because I want pretty space battles, and with your finished models and particles the game definitely deliveres there. I'd say the only thing to look into (And you guys probably already are) is maybe giving the Covenant more defense stations. I get the idea you guys are going for with keeping ships behind for defense but at least against the UNSC Ai it will hit a point where huge fleets will show up in like 6 different gravity wells at once and at least IMO just some defense ships and static hangars doesn't cut it. That said I'm guessing you'll be revisiting the Covenant starbase since a solid all of it's upgrades right now reference the Vasari base. Keep up the good work!

[Emperorfluffball]

most problems i have had is little stuff...
 

also i feel like the Redemption should be researchable at tier 7 or 8 instead of tier 6...

the Anchor station (with full upgrades) gets 90k+ health which seems a little much but hey they do have a shorter range than the Haven..