SE3 vs SE4, yes, some things got fubar

[PlAgUeDoG]

Hey all.
Just got the SE4 demo today and played my first 100 turn game.
I have a few things I've noticed:

- First, in tactical combat, you can't band-select ships, which you could do in SE3. In an attack I had upwards of thirty ships and had to order them all individually, that became very tedious and boring.
- Also, the whole wing thing sucks. If you move the wing leader, the other ships stay in formation. Thats great for show, but in a battle it just gets annoying and makes it impossible to maneuver.
- The next thing I noticed was that my station
{as follows:
Space Station (500kt)
5 Large Meson BLasters L2
4 Large APBeams L2
3 Shild Gens L2 (120 shields)}
lost to a single enemy light cruiser with NO shields. The station didn't lose because of range, i checked it in tactical like 8 times and the nme ship was in range of my guns every time.
So WTF is going on with the shields?
- Also, i noticed that in some cases, the enemy ships weapons ignored my shields, but they weren't phased weapons (plasma charge and that crazy acid globule thing)
- Finally, a couple times, i noticed that after I won a battle vs an unarmed colony or colony ship, one of my ships was critically damaged. How the hell did that happen? (Wasnt a self-destruct, i checked for that)

- Aside from bugs, i have some other falicies to inspect:

- The galaxy window pales in comparison to the SE3 one. I loved the way it made the circle multi-colored when diff empires were in one sector. And the sector display options were also very nice (ally, resupply, occupation, etc)
- The fleet system also is not nearly as good as the SE3 one in my opinion. The ships should be able to be in different sectors, and do different things independant of the rest of the fleet. I also think that the more ships are in a fleet, the less supplies each individual ship should use. (this may be in already, im not sure, ive only played one game)
- Thats all I can remember, but otherwise the game is great. I just want to be able to go past ten years, you cant do jack except maybe get intoa few small skirmishes. Hell I couldnt even finish the one major conflict I got into http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif and I really wanted to dust the bums.

[Taqwus]

a) LC vs Space Station -- An LC, if memory serves, is 400kt -- almost as heavy as your Station. It's also harder to hit. Plus, if the LC had decent armor, that could more than balance your shields given that your weapons aren't armor-piercing. IIRC, even the first level of armor can absorb 50kt per 20kt space. You don't mention the LC configuration, which is more than slightly important here.
b) Damaged by a colony ship -- the AI is, occasionally, smart enough to ram in tactical combat when it's doomed. It happens very very rarely as far as I can tell, but it does happen every once in a great while.
c) 100 turns is more than enough to crush your opponents -- if they're AI anyway. With a 3-planet high-resource/high race point start, and the non-optimal combo of Psychic/Time, large galaxy (and other settings default), I've crushed my foes to the tune of ~1.5 million pts in 60 turns. It was more than skirmishing, to the point where some of my planets were annoyed with me because of the number of civillians I'd wiped out ('peaceful' population, heh, just to make it more interesting).

Sure, you won't be able to explore the whole tech tree -- which means you've got to make choices. But if you want to go beserk and end up with colonies in almost every colonizable system, you can -- the default-level AI in the demo isn't strong enough to hold you to "skirmishes".

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[PlAgUeDoG]

The LC had no armor, no armor penetrating weapons
it had 4 plasma charge guns and two crazy acid glob things
both lev 2 i believe
either way, a space station getting wased by one light cruiser really blows
if that what the designers intend, then im gonna have to severely disagree with there tactical planning
in SE3, I put anywhere from one to five battle stations at each jumppoint coming into my territory
this worked incredibly well, and it took a fleet of large enemy ships to put a hole in my d, but by the time the enemy group got through, my fleet was waiting.
I really liked this in SE3 because it gave you the ability to establish a true border, and then run patrols and attacks based on it.
So far what Ive seen in SE4 is that ships are the final word, and basically stations are just there to serve as extra eyes.

By the way, i did small galaxy, average (or medium or whatever) computer diffuculty, and I just made a neutral player with no racial points used
(didnt know how to use em yet http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif )
Anyway, if stations couldnt stand up to light cruisers, than that would be a legitimate drive against my getting the game (Ill prolly get it anyway http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon12.gif )

[Seawolf]

Dog,

Wait for next demo things like this get fixed big time.



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Seawolf on the prowl

[Instar]

Actually, the galactic map does change colors, but it doesnt fill in the circle as it used to

[Urendi Maleldil]

The reason that bases don't really play much of a role is because SY components are so puny. Even the high-tech ones.

[Noble713]

Yeah, spending several years to build a battlestation is ridiculous; it didn't take that long in SE3. Maybe a starbase would, but not a BS when you have Yard III. Also, I never found defense stations to be worth the effort in SE3. They take forever to build, take almost as long to upgrade, are expensive to maintain, and can usually stand up to only a few ships each (cruisers for BS, dreads for SB). I just used mines with a station to build them, another to store them, and several ships to ferry them to the warp points.

[Seawolf]

Noble,

In SE4 the time need to build stuff is based upon the total number of "supplies" needed to build a ship or base. Each class of Shipyard can only use a certain number supplies per turn. As you advacne in tech level the amount used per turn increases which decreases building time.

SO you need to determine if you really want all those items on a ship or base or do you want to build a ship faster.



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Seawolf on the prowl