According to the Impulse license FAQ, I get to download it from my Impulse account and play it on whatever computer I want, though only one downloaded version can exist at a time.
Need to play Tim. He has it on his laptop.
While on the topic of Sins, I've played exactly one game on my roommate's computer. It was a 1vs1 on Fertile Crescent (a slower map) against a Hard Computer (random personality). I'm guessing it took about two and a half hours, over the course of two days. Here's a brief summary of what happened:
I had been reading online about various capital ships. I normally pick the Marza Dreadnought because of it's absurd DPS, planet bombing abilities, and it's amazing ultimate ability, which deals 150 damage 20 times to all enemy ships in the area (affected by shield mitigation, so effectively "only" about 1500). It's pretty tough, too - the TEC builds ships like that.
However, the stuff that I was reading, while agreeing about the Marza's awesomeness, also reccomended the TEC's Kol Battleship. Why? Not because of its offensive power, but for it's balanced abilities and amazing defense. Without abilites, it is statistically the toughest capital ship in the game. It starts with a clean 3000 HP and enough armor to make it effectively 3750 HP... but better with regeneration. Decent shields. It has a a direct offensive ability, an anti-fighter-craft ability, and a defensive ability. It's ultimate ability does not ravage fleets like the Marza's, but gives it good regeneration in HP and shields. Gives its attacks splash damage, and decreases cooldown time on special abilities. Lastly, it increases antimatter regeneration. If you weren't spamming the special abilities during Finest Hour (its ultimate), you would not only generate antimatter to recoup the cost of using Finest Hour, you would also gain a net 150 antimatter. It seemed pretty decent, though I felt I would miss blowing up everything with my Marza.
So I started with the Kol, and scouted out the three unknown planets from my start. Immediately sent the Kol at the astroid, and it ripped appart the native defenders there. Colonized that, sent the Kol (again, by itself) to the next planet over, which happened to be moderately defended. Turns out? Kol doesn't kill things fast. It just sat there, dealt damage, and got hit a bunch. I had chosen the defensive ability early, so periodically it would take 15% less damage. I had heard good things about it, but 15% before mitigation doesn't seem that amazing.
Well, apparently it does work. The Kol nearly single-handedly cleared the system of it's defenders, and I went and colonized that planet. I then checked the damage on the Kol... It still had about 1700 HP left. The thing is like a friggen rock. I sent it to the next planet, now with back-up, and I cleared that as well, then colonized it.
I was happy - my initial push had seized two out of the three planets on the crescent, and so now I had enconomic superiority.
Then the oppnent arrived at the central star system, and started the battle that lasted, on and off, for nearly 2 hours.
My Kol was still pretty hurt from defeating the planet's defenders, and the planetary defenses were in the process of being built when they arrived. And by they, I mean bunches. I had about 3 missile frigates and my Kol. They had a Vulkoras Desolator, 7 of the Varsari's version of the missile frigate (which is more expensive, but better), and 10 or so light frigates. My LRM (long range missile frigates) do great damage against the light frigates, but my main concern was beating down their LRMs to slow the offensive power of their army until the planetary defenses were online, and the rest of my fleet returned (I had sent them to conquer a planet while the three LRMs and the Kol sat on the central planet, backed up by the planetary defenses).
Unfortunately for me, they soon warped in planet bombers, and started trying to destroy my colony on the central planet. With no colony, the constrution of planetary defenses would halt, and my delaying tactics would be for naught. I focused my remaining LRMs (which were going down fast) on the Karrastra Destructors and took them down. Unfortunately for me, my Kol was going down in health, and they were destroying the defense structures as they were being built. Eventually, though, I did manage to get a repair bay online, and that repaired my Kol (the LRMs were long dead at this point). Now faced with a 2000 or so HP Kol, two gauss gun defense platforms (admitedly at half health) and a repair bay, they decided to flee. I suddenly realized that their capital ship, despite arriving with more health than mine, was down to about 1000 HP. I didn't have enough offense to focus on finishing it, but it ran away anyway. My holdings were safe.
And then they came back.
Joining their damaged Desolator was another capital ship, the Jarrasul Evacutor - their colony ship. They now had about 10 of the Vasari LRM, and 10 of the light frigates. I fought for a bit, but once the repair platform was gone, I had to flee with my Kol. The Egg (as it is called) poses as a colony capital ship, but it has two insanely offensive-based abilities. One-on-one Cap versus Cap battles have the Egg (starting with the offensive ability) win every single time. In my case, it was a new ship, a level 1 ship compare to my level 3 Kol, but the nano-disassembler reduces my armor by two and deals 30 non-mitigated damage every second for 20 seconds. That's 600 damage, no ifs or buts. If my ship was at two low HP and got hit by that, it wouldn't matter if it ran.
So I ran a bit early, when I was at 1500 HP. By the time I got out of the gravity well to the next planet (which I had built defenses on), it had been hit by the nano-disassembler and focus fire by most other ships during the armor decrease. It phase-jumped to safety with literally only 45 HP left.
I sent it to the repair bay in the planet there while my LRM fleet got over to meet up with it. My LRM fleet, plus the new LRMs I had built at my factory, was about 15 ships, plus my newly-repaired Kol.
Meanwhile, their fleet was ripping appart my defenses, and starting to bomb the planet via the two capital ships. The Desolator is specialized into planetary bombardment like the Marza is, and so it was going a bit faster than I would like.
When my Kol was nearly repaired, I sent it and the fleet over to the planet. I ordered the LRMs to destroy their LRMs, and I had my Kol focus on the damaged Desolator. Meanwhile, while my fleet distracted theirs, I tried to built a repair bay. Three of them were destroyed before one of them got built. Meanwhile, my LRMs all died and my Kol stubornly sat there, soaking up damage while chipping away at their much more fragile Desolator. Their Egg was apparently out of antimatter, as it only hit me with the Nano every now and then, rather than each time the 12 second cool-down finished... which is shorter than the 20 second effect, by the way.
The Kol eventually destroyed the Desolator, and the enemy fled against, giving me a brief respite to build a few more repair bays, and reinforce with a few LRMs. Then they came back with the Egg and their own main battleship, their equivalent of the Kol. My Kol was at level 4 now, compared to their level 2 egg and level main battleship. I sat on my repair bays and destroyed their Egg while my LRMs fought their LRMs. My Kol leveled up to 5 just in time before they sent a number of carrier cruisers into the gravity well under contention. Meanwhile, I used my resource advantage (I controlled one more planet than them, plus being the TEC) to research my own carriers, and send them out as well, outfited with air superiority craft. Vasari air is better than TEC air, but mine were cheaper. More importantly, my last level-up with the Kol had me investing in its Flak Burst, an anti-strikecraft measure. Unfortunately, while the flak burst rips apparet opposing TEC and Advent strikecraft, both of which are fragile, the Varsari craft had about 85 HP, and could weather the Flak Burst better than most.
Combat went on, with the enemy sending in periodic reinforcements and me sending in the same. I always had less of an army than my foe, but I had multiple repair bays to repair my ships and each other.
Eventually I researched into repair ships and eventually heavy cruisers, and the repair ships started making life easier. A bit easier. My Kol got to level six, and then it started using Finest hour, which, given its negative antimatter cost, was on one third of the time. (60/180 seconds. It's actually more like a finest minute). Very helpful. After the Kol got to level six, I built a second capital ship, a Marza, and sent that in. The Marza did it's thing, and I kept my strategy focused on destroying any capital ships they sent at me, using the fact that my capital ships kept getting stronger to provide me with an advantage. I dealt with their frigates as I could.
My strategy paid off when I got to level six with my Marza, and unleashed its Missile Barrage. This nearly killed all of their amassed frigates and some of their cruisers, and suddenly the battle was in my favor. I routed them, and the remains fled to the next system. Using the momentum of the minute, I sent scouts over to the next planet, and made sure they had no huge fleet of reinforcements there. They didn't.
About this time, I realized their plan - while the battle was taking forever, they were building broadcasting units on their planet and building up culture. Defend it as I might, the central planet would have revolted against me if the culture had converted the population.
I attacked their planet, and destroyed everything I could. Their fleet fled, but I was fine with that. I destroyed their colony and their orbital structures, including a broadcasting structure. I figured out that most of them were in their home planet, where their fleet had to be re-massing for a final defense.
I waited in that planet until my ships were ready to fight again. Specifically, the repair cruisers had repaired my capital ships, and the four minute cooldown on the Missile Barrage finished. I then invaded their planet.
Again, they had a larger fleet than me, but once I sent the Marza into the middle of their fleet and used the missile barrage, I was in a much better spot than them. I destroyed their latest capital ship, destroyed their fleet, and set to work on the orbital structures and the planet.
From there, it went smoothly. My economy was much better than the two remaining planets they had, and all that was left was wiping out the remains.
Victory was mine.
So that was the first game I played on my roommate's computer. Sort of a warm-up game, getting used to his mouse and keyboard and such.
Some real Sins of A Solar Empire will be played later.
I should play against Tim...
I managed to blow up the Desolator, and the rest of their fleet fled back to one of their planets.
Very nice, good sir. This sounds like an epic battle.
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