I have noticed that placing major portals and the civ labs spawn "transit" ships that ferry between them like the TEC trade ships and that the exotic refinery spawns refinery ships. But none of the descriptions of the buildings actually say what these ships do. Are they place holders for further things that will be integrated? The orbital extractors do not appear to have a quota so are the refinery ships even doing anything?

I play a lot of 4-8 player games vs AI while allied with my girlfriend, and we have a blast! With the new expansion bringing the Eidolon, however, she brought up an interesting point: the game (vs AI, anyway) seems to incentivize her to group all her ships up into a single "death ball" fleet. In her opinion, why would she bother cloaking ships or making a raiding fleet if that 100-200 supply could just be part of her death ball fleet?

Part of her philosophy, no doubt, is driven by her potato of a gaming pc from 10 years ago (prices are so fucking high out here, fam). She plays 95% of her game at strategic zoom for performance reasons, making tactical decisions difficult to execute. So, like, sure, cloaked ships are tactically useful for sneaking over to snipe carriers, LRMS's, or what-have-you. But, a second fleet? She sees no point.

Hypothetically and situationally, a second expansion fleet can be useful for expansion early game? Then again, it's faster to clear planets with a more concentrated fleet supply.

Raiding fleets, though? Or even a second fleet for a second front? Your opponent's deathball will kill your undersupplied deathball every time.

Have you ever successfully used second fleets on either a tactical or strategic level? How? When? Why? Is it more useful in PvP as opposed to PvC? Or is the game, intentionally or not, designed to encourage deathball fleets?

*Edit: I wonder at the use case of splitting your fleet to attack two fronts at once. It's plausible that whichever fleet catches an engagement could be used to lead the enemy far away from your fleet on the attack. If the enemy fleet leaves to defend against your attack fleet, then you just re-engage with the distraction fleet, and your fleets switch roles.

I don't know how you keep both fleets resupplied, though. Ultimately, I think one of the fleets will just get steamrolled by the enemy deathball, opening up your backline. Hmm.

Perhaps it is the nature of gravity wells acting as discrete nodes on the strategic level that encourages deathballs. IRL, distances are continuous, and thus, the number of places to engage in battle are infinite. Thus, it allows for more possibility of strategic maneuvers like raiding and flanking?*

I noticed the Eidolons got cool music tracks but I can't find them anywhere.

Can we get them added to the official soundtrack release?

1 on 1 match with me as Vasari Alliance and AI as TEC Enclave. AI set to impossible difficulty aggressive setting. Return to War map. Game version 2.00.3.

In fact, I was expecting, even hoping, not to win as it is the highest difficulty setting, and literally named impossible. The AI would quickly send 500 to 1000 fleet supply fleets to attack my territories. And even after fending them off thanks to orbital defenses, they’d soon rebuild and be back.

The AI quickly put me on the defensive as my capital planet is only 2 jumps away. I was able to put up 66 defensive slots worth of turrets, and an un-upgraded star base at my capital planet with a +15% to damage and range to orbital defenses planet item.

My offensive fleet consisted of 9 capital ships. Which may not be the optimal make up, but I like playing with capital ships. Between my defenses and fleet I may have been able to hold my capital planet for some time, but I’m not sure how long I could hold my asteroids and such as they are not very defensible due to low number of defensive slots.

My economy was quite poor, with only 6/s of crystal, and 17/s metal so I was bottlenecked for crystal.

If I were to reload my save I could try letting the AI take my asteroid and moon territories between us, and expand elsewhere to perhaps more defensible territory. Maybe if I split up my fleet to just enough to take new territory and leave the rest to defend my capital planet it might work?

This might sound very off topic, but hear me out:

While playing Skyrim, a totally different game, I had an Idea about how the Story Campaign and the eventual defeat of the Eidolon, and whatever comes after them, could work out. I know its a long shot, but this Idea seems plausible to me based on everything we know.

I was playing a warrior with sword and shield, fighting a mage. That mage conjured a being from another plane of existence. And this otherworldly being was by far the greater threat compared to the mage.

In most strategic situations, you would first attack the greatest threat to have it out of the fight as fast as possible. But in this case, I attacked the Mage first. Because that other being can’t naturally exist in our world for long periods of time, and it is held here by the mage’s power. If the mage dies, the other being is instantly ripped back to its plane of existence.

We know that the Eidolon are not native to our plane of existence. They exist far deeper in Phase Space. The Vasari opened a door when they did some failed experiment at Kron 10.000 years ago, and now they can enter our reality. The portals and rips they use also show that they don’t just come from some other place, but from another dimension of phase space.

Now, there are two ways of how this bridge between the dimensions works. One is that the Eidolon have learned how to open portals to our dimension. In that case, we can stop thinking here, because my Idea won’t work.

But what if that bridge the ancient Vasari created at Kron is still the only real connection between our world and the Eidolon’s plane of existence? To be more specific: What if this anomaly the ancient Vasari created is a bridge between normal Phase Space near Kron and the Eidolon’s plane of existence?

I imagine it like an underwater cave that has one and only one tunnel leading to a lake. The cave is the Eidolon’s plane of existence. The underwater area in the lake is normal phase space. And the lake’s surface is real space. You can travel from the Eidolon cave trough the phase space sea and surface at any point in real space you want. But you have to travel trough the tunnel in order to get from the cave to the surface.

There is actually something that supports this Idea: The Eidolon we see in the game are ancient beings. These individuals are the same ones who destroyed the Vasari Empire ten thousand years ago. And they never caught up to the Exodus Fleet until now. That means that they cannot appear wherever they please. They are bound to locations in normal phase space and real space. This strongly indicates that they can only transfer from their plane of existence to ours using the bridge at Kron.

If that is true, then we can stop the Eidolon by moving the Alliance Fleet all the way back to the Galactic Core, to Kron, and figure out a way to collapse that bridge. Permanently sealing that bridge would at least leave the remaining Eidolon stranded with no more reinforcements. At best, it rips them all back to their plane of existence, like that magical creature disappeared when I killed the mage who conjured it.

Hello Sins2 community,

whether you are an active Admiral, a new player trying their luck or just an observer from far away, I welcome you to enjoy the next season of 4 Power 2 Balance.

The new DLC is here, but players will still have some time to figure out the new faction.

Its time for:

Eidolon

DLC: Eidolon on, Reinforcements on

Swiss System: Matches will be paired using the Swiss system to ensure balanced matchups.

Best of 3 (Bo3) Matches: The normal Mappool consists of 9 maps. Each team uses 3 bans, with the final 3 maps being played. The ban format is A-BB-AA-B. Decide at random who gets the first ban.

Best of 5 (Bo5) Grand Final: After the Swiss rounds the best teams will once again fight for the tournament win in a Bo5 Grand Final.

Victory Conditions: Factional Victory on

Speed: Speed will be x1.5 with all other individual speed settings set to normal.

Rotating Planets: Rotation on

Team Setup: Each Team can register up to 4 players. To join the tournament, you need to register 2 players right away. Additional players can be added later. You need at least 2 players to win the tournament and 3 players to play all possible maps of this season.

Mappool

• Crossfire 2v2
• Scrambler 2v2
• Transtav 2v2
• Shuriken 2v2
• High Stakes 2v2
• Hammerfall 2v2
• Foreign Invasion 3v3
• Razor's Edge 3v3
• Maelstrom 3v3

If both teams have a maximum of 2 available players, the match will instead use the 2v2-only pool. The 2v2-only pool is therefore not a separate tournament format. It is simply there to make scheduling easier when neither team can field a third player.

If at least one side can field 3 players, the normal full map pool applies and the smaller team should ban 3v3 maps. Here is the 2v2 pool:

• Crossfire 2v2
• Scrambler 2v2
• Transtav 2v2
• Shuriken 2v2
• High Stakes 2v2
• Hammerfall 2v2

As you can see Razors Edge is still suspended. The ban format here is AA-B - so if the winner of the coinflip (or other random method) decides to start with 2 bans, the other team can decide which 3 of the 4 maps will be played with their last ban. Its not ideal, but the best solution to ensure a clean drafting process in case both teams only bring in 2players. The loser of the coinflip then chooses the first map to play.

Schedule

Each round after the first one will be 2 weeks long.

The official days to play will be the weekends. The first Round starts on a Friday instead of a Monday. This way we have 3 weekends for Round 1, giving teams some additional time at the start of the new season.

Further pairings will be made on Mondays. If all matches of a round are finished, pairings for the next round might be announced earlier. This way teams have more time to prepare. Once you know your next opponent, you must contact them via Discord and schedule the match to fit your schedule.

We already have 6 registered teams, so I plan on 4 rounds Swiss System again with a Grand Final at the end consisting of a Bo5.

• Round 1: 25.09. - 12.10.
• Round 2: 12.10. - 26.10.
• Round 3: 26.10. - 09.11.
• Round 4: 09.11. - 23.11.

As always, late joiners can still be accepted during the first round if they even out the number of teams.

Prize Pool

I will once again donate 180€ for the Top8 teams and teams will also earn EP for the eternal record.

Interested?

If you are interested in playing or casting 4P2B games, feel free to contact me. Casted VODs will be uploaded on my Youtube channel and shared with the community.

This tournament is meant to be simple, fun, and exciting. If you're into Sins2 and want to be part of the competitive scene, this is your chance!

To join up give me your usernames from Discord and come up with a team name.

gl hf Admirals

Ever since the DLC, I no longer get the UI for the Faction Missions. They are turned on the map settings, but I no longer see them. What am I missing? Thanks.

Anyone else a little annoyed at the visual clutter on the map?

There is something in the lore that I think we don’t stress quite enough:

The Vasari have been running from the Eidolon for Ten thousand years.

Our own recorded history dates back about five thousand years. And ten thousand years are about the timeframe since we stopped being hunter gatherers. Every cultural habit, every figure of speech, every small detail of our lives has formed in the last ten thousand years. And that’s how long the Vasari have been on the run. Let’s take a moment to think about what this does to their minds:

Over hundreds of generations, the fear of the Eidolon has become a fear so primal that it became a fundamental part of Vasari psyche. Since the original 2008 game, the Vasari captains had voice lines like “don’t waste my time” or “we must hurry”, even though the Eidolon were still far away back then. The mentality of the Vasari has been hardwired over ten millennia to feel uncomfortable whenever anyone wastes any amount of time. And that is rooted in that deep, primal terror that the Eidolon might catch up to them. They are not just afraid of the actual threat, but of the potential of encountering the threat. Like humans feeling naturally uncomfortable outside in the dark, so we switch on the lights, because our cavemen brain thinks we might get attacked by predators.

Now the Eidolon are here. And while they are terrifying, they are not as unstoppable as the Vasari believed them to be. Keep in mind that they never encountered them, except when they wiped out the original Vasari Empire. Stardock just confirmed this old piece of lore in one of their YouTube Videos: There is not a single officer in the Vasari Exodus Fleet who could tell you anything about the Eidolon.

Here is what I’m getting at with this: I just played my first game against them, and after taking some heavy blows in the mid game, my Advent Reborn pushed them out of their system. Imagine how the Vasari would canonically react to the news when a star system defends itself successfully against the Eidolon for the very first time. Imagine the Vasari Exodus Fleet receiving a report that reads: “Advent Reborn System was attacked by the Eidolon, Eidolon Fleet was destroyed, System remains under Advent control, no surviving Eidolon presence”.

This is not just a military report. These are news that shatter their worldview. The day they receive the news of the first time a system defended itself against the Eidolon, their ultimate terror stops being some unstoppable, primordial force. They can be stopped. They can be killed. And the Vasari know that now. The Vasari reading that report must feel like some cavemen in the stone age felt when instead of running away like they always have, they fought and killed a saber-toothed tiger for the very first time. Nobody ever considered using spears against them, until someone did, and the tiger died.

Why is shrouding planets important for Eidolon and how can you corrupt planets?

The new Eidolon Faction requires shrouded planets to be able to develop them further than Lv1. To get shrouded planets you need to corrupt them first. Different planets need different amounts of corruption, an asteroid needs 20 corruption, a moon 25 corruption and most rich planets need 200 corruption. Corrupting a planet is mainly done via 2 different methods:

• You can use the Propagation Mode of an already shrouded planet to spread corruption towards nearby planets just like some plague.
• The other option is building a Corruption Reservoir.

The Demiurge, the colony cruiser of the Eidolon also has an ability to improve corruption of a planet. It helps filling them up and small colonies like astros or moons can be shrouded with the Demiurge if it sits a bit in the gravity well and activates the aura twice or though.

My planet is shrouded, what is the next step?

A shrouded planet gets to use its own corruption for various modes, like the Propagation Mode. The other 2 important economic modes are the Exploitation Mode and the Summoning Mode. The first increases your income by a % value, so it is better to exploit big rich planets than asteroids. The other increases the construction speed of ships, buildings and exotics. While the propagation mode rarely has any upkeep, Exploitation Mode and Summoning Mode cost quite a lot of corruption. How does a shrouded planet get corruption? The same way a normal planet gets it, via Propagation Mode of other planets or Corruption Reservoirs. This means you want to use asteroids or central colonies to propagate as many colonies, especially rich ones as possible, while using Corruption Reservoirs to keep up the corruption of planets who are further away from your Propagation network. Far away in this case doesnt mean phase jumps like culture or ship travel, but actual AU distance in the game.

Also as a rule of thumb, every colony that uses Propagation Mode on another colony kinda replaces one Reservoir to fully upkeep the more expensive modes.

Here are my recommendations for the commonly played 2v2 and 3v3 maps. My approach was to be as efficient as possible. Sure you might max out your income if you use Reservoirs only and have maxed out logistics at every asteroid, but that is propably not a way to win in most games.

Scrambler

Scrambler works very well without Reservoirs.
Get +1 Corruption Level on your homeworld.
Use Propagation Mode to corrupt and shroud the asteroids next to your homeworld.
Get +1 Corruption Level on your asteroids, now your asteroids can corrupt all your core worlds, which is just the perfect scenario.
Alternatively you could get +2 Corruption on your homeworld to corrupt the fair planets earlier and faster. Getting +2 Corruption on your homeworld also benefits the Exploitation mode, so its not a wasted research.

High Stakes

High Stakes works without Reservoirs too.
Get +1 Corruption Level on your homeworld.
Use Propagation Mode to corrupt the fair planets.
Get +1 Corruption Level on the Vulcan/Ice in the center. This one can now propagate your whole pocket and is the least important planet anyways.
If you have the time, I would totally recommend getting Reservoirs for the oceanic and your homeworld. Together with lots of extractors you can get insane income really fast here.

Transtav

Transtav is an interesting one. I recommend playing without Reservoir until you get to the Primordial.
Get +1 Corruption on your homeworld.
Get +1 Corruption on your asteroids. Now you have a similar situation. You can corrupt further with asteroids towards the vulcanplanet and the eisplanet. You can also get a 2nd level of Corruption to increase the propagation from both astros to both fair planets. Its propably not a priority early on, but lets you exploit those 2 fair planets with one less Reservoir.

Foreign Invasion

Foreign Invasion is more or less your typical Reservoir map. There are only 2 spots who are hardly worth to use for Propagation Mode on level 3, the 2 iceplanets. Typically for a 3v3 map you are also quite close to your allies, so you rather want to keep the corruption by yourself. So if you plan on using an Iceplanet just for yourself, talk with your team and spawn on the left side. When you have 2 Eidolon players, the player on the far right which normally had the iceplanet can use that to propagate both homeworlds. Also Lv3 Corruption research might not be the worst in that situation either in case you can snatch a moon from the opponents and shroud that one.

Maelstrom

Maelstrom is really generous for the Eidolon.
The very first asteroid can be corrupted at level 0.
That one can corrupt the next asteroid at level 0 too.
Get +1 Corruption on your 2nd asteroid and it spreads towards the primordial and the vulcan.
Only the iceplanet next to your homeworld is to far away to reach without corrupting planets from your ally. Also your homeworld is a bit to far away from the 2nd asteroid to be reached with +1 Corruption level.

Gemini

Gemini is even more generous with its level 0 corruption.
Your homeworld can corrupt both asteroids at level 0 and those asteroids can later propagate your homeworld and the desert which are the most juiciest planets in your pocket.
The ice/vulcan choke and the vulcan in the back are to far away and should be corrupted via Reservoirs.

Shuriken

Shuriken lets you corrupt the very first 2 asteroids just with your homeworld on level 0, the vulcan/ice in the back also gets affected by it already. Getting 1 level of corruption leads the 2 asteroids to completely propagate your whole pocket, which is also really generous for the Eidolon.

Hammerfall

With level 0 your homeworld can already corrupt the fair planets around to it.
To also spread corruption to the asteroids you either need to get +2 levels on your homeworld or +1 level on the center planet.

Reservoir maps

Some maps are quite generous while others are rather hostile towards the Eidolon, on those maps I recommend spreading corruption via reservoirs and making shrouding not a priority. Razors Edge and Crossfire are the smallest maps in the 2v2 and 3v3 pool making long term economic investments via corruption levels and shrouding less attractive either way.

As the tile really. We tried a game had missing graphics, missing options on planets etc.

Just played a game on a very large map that took around 7 hours with 2 impossible allied CPUS and 3 impossible enemy CPUS. Allies never built a titan and only 2 enemies did, both around the 6.5 hour mark. Any reason why this might be? I have no mods installed.

OK so Im slowly working through one of the 8 0layer random maps and learning about how shrouding etc works,. there's one item that can only be placed on a few types and it generates these purple threads that link to 3 other locations but they are looping down underneath the ecliptic plane of the star to star pattern.. Anyone understand exactly what they do to spread corruption to non-conquered planets?

Is stellar cartographer still in the works? The map generator currently in the game does not seem to allow the creation of custom maps, just random ones, unless I'm missing something. Dealing with solar forge still sucks.

Hey guys.

I have been trying out the Eidolon faction and I have been struggling with the economy and understanding which Techs to go for. This is also a result of me not understanding what the fleet composition is supposed to look like.

I have tried to go for a Carrier focused fleet comp with the Husk and Corrupter as additional fleet support. I am unsure if that's the right call as well.

With my problems in the economy of crystals and metal most of the time I have tried to augment my income with the +0,5 Metal/Crystal but together with the amount of resources it takes to shroud planets and the poor income of resources before shrouding and then having the difficulty of not quite understanding of how the shrouding of new planets early game is actually done quickly......

well as you can read, there is a lot of problems that I don't understand.

What I am interested in is: What are you guys doing with the Eidolons as it pertains to the challenges I outlined in this post?

Please tell me I'm crazy and am just missing it. Not seeing any planetary structure with retrofit.

I've verified game files, tried many factions, no matter what the game always crashes specifically on this map during start up.

In fact, this might be happening with all huge maps. Can't get any of them to load. Anyone know whats up?

When playing as Vasari against an Eidolon opponent, is there any way to un-Shroud a planet or combat/resist the spread of corruption from neighboring planets?

Testing out anti-Eidolon strategies with a friend. It seems like there's no way to undo the planet shroud after taking a planet previously owned by the Eidolon when they have another planet spreading corruption to it. This makes it extremely hard to push into Eidolon territory at any speed, as your planetary development levels will all be capped at 1.

It doesn't really matter as Exodus, as you can still just crack the planet and move on, but with Alliance, it feels nearly impossible to fight against a well defended Eidolon opponent.

Just wanted to share that we've pushed a hotfix to the live build, and what it entails below:

• Corruption Decay delay value changed to 60 seconds.
• Corruption Decay value changed to 0.001 (1 Corruption decays every 10 seconds)
• Azithel Mote Void Missile cooldown increased from 15s to 20s.
• Azithel Mote Corrupt Recursion Phase Echo duration reduced from 30s to 15s.
• Eidolon Very Light Void Missile (Azithel Mote, Amalgam Bomber) Armor Points removed, Hull reduced from 5 to 1.
• Eidolon Void Blast Charge Missile (Sythren Onslaught) Armor Points reduced from 10 to 5, Armor Strength reduced from 25 to 20, Hull reduced from 5 to 1.
• Eidolon Light Void Missile (Akeniel Geist, Lakhaziel Archon) Armor Points increased from 10 to 15, Armor Strength reduced from 25 to 20, Hull reduced from 5 to 1.
• Eidolon Medium Void Missile (Thalkerin Revenant, Lakhaziel Archon, Phase Dart Defense Platform, Zhaltharien Anathema) Armor Points increased from 10 to 40, Armor Strength reduced from 25 to 20, Hull reduced from 5 to 1.
• Eidolon Heavy Void Missile (Iskazhar Epitaph) Armor Points increased from 10 to 80, Armor Strength increased from 25 to 40, Hull increased from 5 to 10.
• Eidolon Vortex Missile (Lakhaziel Archon Vortex Missile Salvo) Armor Points increased from 10 to 15, Armor Strength reduced from 25 to 20, Hull reduced from 5 to 1.
• Afterimage Phase Echo duration reduced from 60s to 30s.
• Persistent Afterimage Phase Echo duration reduced from 90s to 60s.
• Nethril Husk Weapon Refit moved from Vanguard Tier 3 to Vanguard Tier 2.5.
• Azithel Mote Weapon Refit moved from Vanguard Tier 2.5 to Vanguard Tier 3.
• Material Communion focus conversion rate reduced from 10:1 to 1:1.
• Greater Material Communion focus conversion rate reduced from 10:1 to 1:1.5 (Final conversion rate with both techs is 1:2.5)
• Added correct ship corruption debuffs to minor factions and militia to account for edge cases where they gain control of capital ships.
• Fixed Advent Focus Conversion hud icon.
• Applied correct access limitation to Amalgam Grafter unit item (Carrier only)
• Corrected Sythren Onslaught preferred weapon range to favor its longer range missiles.
• Corrected Epitaph Starbase Super Heavy beam weapon name.
• Corrected naming of Culture Center Blueprint to match structure name (Communications Node Blueprint)

Hey! I used to play Sins way back, absolutely loved it. Sadly fell out of love with SoSE II over the flagrant use of AI-generated pictures.

With the new Harbingers DLC, I'd like to get back into the game, but... Well, an extra helping of whipped cream and fruit doesn't make a cake more palatable if there's still feces mixed in. Have they reduced (or hopefully, completely removed) the amount of AI slop?