SEV DEMO IS OUT!

[wilhil]

I never thought I would be the first to post this... i may not have been posting here for a while, but I check every so often for news on the release date and demo status.

anyway, I was browsing http://www.3dgamers.com and to my shock, it says SEV demo on the right... and I came here, but there is no news!

I waited a couple of hours, still nothing so I am posting it!

also, if you go to the strategy first website, browse to the bottom, look for space empires, and then somehow you find a link to SEV (it took me ages), something like http://www.strategyfirst.com/en/games/SpaceEmpiresV/ anyway, under downloads, the demo is there, so it is official, there just isnt a lot of news!

I was going to post here to ask if anyone knows if it is DRM/crappy protection free... I am going through a technophobe (?) session at the moment and am a bit carful about installing apps on my main machines. Anyway, I will be installing on a spare machine and have a go!

[Phoenix-D]

Downloading it now..but SF's SE5 section seems to have disappeared!

EDIT: here we go. Its not linked from the main page for some reason. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

http://www.strategyfirst.com/en/games/SpaceEmpiresV/
http://www.strategyfirst.com/en/games/SpaceEmpiresV/downloads/

demo download area

[wilhil]

I know, it took me ages to locate it!

anyway, dug it out, and it is here...

http://www.strategyfirst.com/en/games/SpaceEmpiresV/

correcting link in first post as well

[Raapys]

OOOOooooooooooooh, thanks for the headsup!

[Artaud]

The download is very sloooooow. So perhaps there are a lot of people interested in the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[Taqwus]

Thanks for the heads up. Curious to see what's new.

[Captain Kwok]

Yeah for you guys. Be sure to bug Aaron about any bugs etc. you might come across... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Atrocities]

Captain Kwok said:
Yeah for you guys. Be sure to bug Aaron about any bugs etc. you might come across... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif



Well said.

[AgentZero]

There've been more than a few people complaining about the speed of it, so I've set up a little torrent. Don't know if it's working properly, so someone should really test it out...
Click here for torrent (http://70.66.253.39:6969/torrents/SE5_Demo_v100_091106.zip.torrent?C4EB07B6398545B11 B1AA05DD217D982E503851B)

[Possum]

OMFG, slooooow download is right

[Possum]

what do we do with it, zero?

[Raapys]

Woot, neat torrent!

[Atrocities]

I have looked on many other sites for the demo, no joy.

[Possum]

LOL, ok, how do you use the torrent file?

[wilhil]

3d gamers is probably the best, get a free account or try one of there public servers but it may take longer than there free login servers (the ftp one works but only at 20KB/s), anyway, the other ones have a 20-30 min wait, look around, however when its done, it downloads at around 900KB/s here

[AgentZero]

Possum said:
LOL, ok, how do you use the torrent file?



You need a bittorrent client like utorrent or azureus, then you just download the torrent file, open it with the client of your choice, and you're off!

[Noble713]

Possum said:
LOL, ok, how do you use the torrent file?



Go here: www.bittorrent.com (http://www.bittorrent.com)

Download and install the program. Then download the torrent file and open it. It will ask you to pick a directory, where it will place the file(s) downloaded by the Torrent. Once the download is complete, just go to directory you picked and run the file.

[AgentZero]

What he said

[wilhil]

Now, some help from the beta people, I am a bit confused and not sure if this is a bug or a feature...

I created my empire, I am getting used to things, created a few designs and done the sim to test it out, and now I am trying research.

I know in the empire, you had to choose diffrent tech areas to start with, but now I am in the game and doing research, all the ones that say current level 1, if I hover the mouse over, it says expected results : and shows the ones I already have. does this mean I have to re research them, or will it go to next level and the expected results show what you already know from the area?

im confusing myself here, its 2:50AM, I need to go to bed!

[Tampa_Gamer]

Expected results show you what happens if you reach the next level of that area (i.e. new level of component or new tech area opened up).

[wilhil]

I was being stupid and not looking properlly, because the next level items have the same name, just diffrent levels, I thought that nothing was happening... I got a bit confused but I think I understand it now!

[Fyron]

I'd recommend uTorrent (http://www.utorrent.com) over the basic BT client. It's tiny (less than 200 kB), needs no install, and has pretty much all the best BT client features built-in.

wilhil said:
3d gamers is probably the best...

Relatively speaking, of course. It still blows chunks. Maybe less so than file planet, but not by a very wide margin. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[wilhil]

since the takeover, I think the files are served from the same place as fileplanet.

talking about that, I guess sfirst released it to the fileplanet network of sites (is it IGN?). and not really relative, at the moment it is all I can find, this torrent option may be good but I have no clue how fast it is being uploaded. I choose to wait, it took about 20-30 mins for a queue position, then it downloaded in less than 5 mins.


... think i may found a bug, but probably me just not understanding the game. whilst researching energy stream weapons, right clicking shows it will produce anti-proton beam and point defence beam, however there is only picture at the top for the proton beam, it does however show both at level 1 when going to research level 2.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

So much to learn - Too much, what with the painkillers. Still, I got a basic grasp on it, but where does it show built facilities?

[wilhil]

I was looking foward to that as well, I was hoping that it was something along the lines of you can build as many facilitys as you can arrange/fit on the planet, but it looks like that you have a limit like on SEIV, and it will just auto generate them when there is a ground battle... I never usually build ground units, looks like I am going to have to start!

[inigma]

Now's a good time to remind everyone that the Space Empires Wiki at wiki.spaceempires.net is looking for volunteers to develop and expand its Space Empires V section. If you'd like to contribute, feel free to look us up. With the demo out, I believe the Space Empires Wiki will be the best place to collect what we learn and update the Space Empires V manual as it grows:

Space Empires V Manual (SE Wiki Live Manual)
http://wiki.spaceempires.net/index.php/Manual_%28SEV%29

[wilhil]

is something wrong with strategys?

I have been doing everything manually because I want to mess around and stuff, but all my ships, even war ones, flee... I looked in strategys in the ship designer, but none are listed and in empire options, the menu ends at strategys and you cant see anything below the header.


edit - I remember seeing a error when I first started, so I restarted the game and got a default stratefies data file errors.... unable to load data file:.....

I created a empire, did new game rather than quick start, I will take a look at new empire again because maybe I was meant to select one... sorry, speaking my mind as I am doing it to try and fix it!


edit 2 - ok, fixed it, when creating a empire, the last option, I think it is styles or something, the one you have to set agreesive/defensive/neutral? (cant remember them all, but I know there is 3 and one is agressive!). anyway, choosing one fixes it. I think there should be a warning as this can ruin the game if you do not select one.

[Suicide Junkie]

BTW, if you are about to download, definitely go for the torrent!

There are so many seeders that people are getting rates of 250kB/s!

[Atrocities]

Yes, the torrent file only took me about 10 minutes to download. Very fast.

[MarkSheppard]

I was hoping for some uniqueness in the deck templates for the various classes, rather than just the same layout for upper deck middle deck and lower deck.

Shouldn't there be variations, like the middle deck having the most space (depending on ship design); along with small ships having virtually no space at all, and only one deck?

[Suicide Junkie]

The main idea is that the layouts be shaped like the ships, but also that your designs not be limited by a lack of slots.

(SE concerns itself with tonnage ratings)

[bearclaw]

Happy Birthday Atrocities!!!
I found a bug. Shift+Enter is suppose to toggle the system view, but it instead tries to start a combat simulator and then gives an Access Violation.

[Uncle_Joe]

Yeah, I'm getting Access Violations left and right...when designing ships and when trying to use the simulators.

[Rathar]

I haven't had time to do more than D-load the demo and quick start a game but oooh it's pretty! I really like the way systems look and are mouse spin/navigable.

Off to go really fiddle around!

Rathar

[AMF]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[frightlever]

Jeepers. I was was about to give up on the torrent and suddenly whoosh I'm up and running at 150kB/s.


Please don't suck!

[Randallw]

So, I gather Aaron has a large brown dog that apparently made half the game (judging by how much screen time it gets in the credits) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[frightlever]

I'm just getting a black screen when I try to run it.

EDIT: problem with neaudio.ax which is a Nero file. Took the recommendation off a google search to just rename the file (in Program Files under Ahead - your mileage may vary.) and I've at least got the menu now so everything looks like it's going to work. I like the intro music. Dark.

[Raapys]

Haven't encountered any bugs so far, everything's smooth. However, for some reason, at turn 4 or so the end turn process went from taking about 4 seconds to over 15 seconds.

I've not gotten used to the new system view yet, it feels a bit awkward. Space combat looks and feels very nice, though.

[Fyron]

Tried top-down view yet?

[wilhil]

I am not having a real problem here, it looks like you betas did a good job, but there is a few weird problems.... one of the things I like is that in some games pressing alt tab ruins the game and going back you get weird colors. Here, alt tab seems to fix a few things! I have seen a few problems at diffrent times where the colors on dialogs and menus go weird, but alt tabbing out and in fixes it all! I do not know what causes it, but at least it is fixable, and the biggest problem was the strategy error but I fixed it.

Anyway, I LOVE THIS GAME.

edit - raapys, like SEIV, the game gets complicated quickly as there is a lot more descions for the AI to make.

Also, another question. I love the way that you can stack builds of everything, right now I am stacking ships and choosing to build of 100 of whatever I want, so that the resources go over to the next one but they each come off when complete (I wish units did this in SEIV!). I was wondering with buildings and ships, even if they are not stacked, do they auto go to the next, and carry over resources?

[Randallw]

There was a bug I noticed as soon as I started but I can't remember what it was. Sorry. I do note at the end of the tutorial it says there are 2 warppoints that have not been explored. This should be, there are 2 warppoints that have been explored.

I tried out a battle. Impressive. However I would like to know how to rotate the screen in combat because the ships all went behind a planet and I couldn't see them. I did noticed it is slightly 3d as a ship was disabled and hung well above the plane.

[Randallw]

Bug: I started a new turn and then changed my mind so I cancelled. The screen went white and unresponsive.

[AMF]

Anyone figure out if there is a way to play simultaneus turns with the demo?

And, if there was a way to stop the darn thing from warning me at the end of each turn that I haven't allocated any of my zero intel points, that would be nice...

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

(and so the griping begins!)

[Randallw]

Are we going to create a thread just for bugs?

This isn't exactly a bug I suppose but there is something wrong when my rock world has a surface temperature of
-400 °C http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif.Absolute zero is -273.15 °C

[frightlever]

"This isn't exactly a bug I suppose but there is something wrong when my rock world has a surface temperature of
-400 °C "

Just think how efficient your computers will be.

How do you go fullscreen? I initially played windowed and decided I'd rather go fullscreen but no matter which option I pick in Setup I'm stuck with windowed. Is there a setup batch file somewhere I can hand change? I had a quick look but didn't spot anything.

I don't like the 3D planet display and the 2D version is a bit hard to read once you've panned out to view the whole system (ie the construction yard icons - I'm playing with the un-resized flag icons though I may switch back for the aforementioned reason.)


Guess it'll just take a while to get used to.

[wilhil]

@randallw, any graphics related bugs, I have encountered a few, if you alt tab or press the windows key on the keyboard, and switch to windows then alt tab back to game, it seems to fix most things.

if you dont have any other programs open, press the windows key then run, and type calc or notepad (something small and fast,) then alt tab or click on the game to get it back.

@AMF, it is best to just put 100% of intel to defence.

my wishlist so far, on planet view, I wish there was a way to see both build queue and how many buildings are there. I liked SEIV where I could see what planets are idle/producing nothing and the x/x list of how much room and how many factorys are there.

lastly, dont know if it is possible already, the end turn dialog is either on or off and gives warnings. I would like it so that it is off by default, and if there are any warnings, it would display it.

[frightlever]

And to put Intelligence defense to 100% you have to click on a button 100 times. That's wrong.

[wilhil]

hold shift, and use both mouse buttons to click!

at the moment, I cant figure out how to set waypoints, anyone know?

I have looked at almost every button, but I just cant figure it out.

[Raapys]

Tried top-down view yet?

Ah, just found out about the top-down view. Still getting used to the GUI, alot of sub-menus hidden in there.

I found a bug/exploit as well; I sent a couple of ships to join my fleet a few hexes away, and when I put them in the fleet they regained all their movement points( or rather, their lack of momvement points wasn't taken into the account when moving the fleet).

[frightlever]

To set Waypoint click on eg a planet and then hit ctrl-<number>

[se5a]

you have to use a keyboard shortcut to add waypoints.
the shortcut is... ahhh umn....
take a look in options, you can change keyboard short cuts in there, so it will show you there somewhere the current shortcut.

yes, extreme temperatures is a known bug.

so is the fleet movement.

I've moaned about the setting intel for defense being too many clicks, it should be the same as setting it for a project - just click the bar, if you moan to Aaron about it to it may help.

graphic problems - try running under safe memory mode - set this in the setup menu(which is in the first menu you get when you start the game up).

also - if you're sending Aaron a bug, include a savegame if possable, he tends to take more notice if he has a savegame.
and feel free to send him savegames and bug reports on already knowen bugs too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[wilhil]

all bugs so far that I have found are client side such as graphics which just clear when I alt tab, or save and reload.

wont sending loads of bugs and saves just pi$$ him off? also, I dont know if there should me for refrence to waypoints, or forget this if it was in the tutorial, I skipped it!

anyway, thanks for that.

also, i feel a little dirty talking about SEV on this board. when are we going to start moving and using the other board?

edit - I was wondering if you can ever select a lesser ship size/level? it is a bit annoying that upgrading can increase the cost, I would like it so that at every stage you can choose one for diffrent costs rather than using the latest that costs more... but I am guessing this is far to big of a think to change now and we have to live with it! hay, its just me nitpicking, its all fine!

[se5a]

The more attention a bug gets the higher priority it becomes on his todo list.
Yes there should be a gui button for the waypoints, but there's not. bug him about that too.

feel free to post in the other board if you like. though I don't think shrap minds - this is good for them since they can show you advertising on their games http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[frightlever]

Can you turn off the edge scrolling of the system display? I'm actually getting sick of the new interface - is it unreasonable for me to just want to see the whole system at once without it skipping off the edge when my mouse strays off the display (which I still can't maximise - after uninstalling, deleting the directory and erasing the registry entries and re-installing. It won't move out of windowed mode.) I have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome so I use a vertical mouse but it's not exactly a boon for fine control.

The SF forums are relatively dead compared to here.

[se5a]

you can turn off windowed mode in the setup screen (first menu when you start seV up)

[se5a]

also - #spaceempires IRC is normaly active.
fyron has a java web client on spaceempires.net if you don't have an IRC client already
Link:
http://www.spaceempires.net/home/irc.html
click the "connect from the site" link and wait for it to load.

[frightlever]

"you can turn off windowed mode in the setup screen (first menu when you start seV up) "

First time I played I selected 1280x1024x32 but I got a crash because of a conflict with a Nero audio file. Not knowing that at the time I selected windowed mode to see if it would make a difference. Which it didn't. So eventually I sorted the crash problem but I've been stuck in windowed ever since. I'm well aware of the setup options! But hey thanks for taking part.


EDIT: I see what I did wrong. I changed from "Primary Display Adapter" to my actual video card on the list. Switched back to PDA and it's working a treat.

[se5a]

sweet.

[frightlever]

I'd still like to turn off edge scrolling though. In full screen at 1280x1024 the display is just right but I want to lock it so that if a cat jumps on my desk and knocks my arm I don't have to re-centre my (2D) display. (HOW TO RE-CENTRE YOUR 2D DISPLAY - hit re-centre, switch back to 2D and then pan back out to your preferred level of zoom. It should just re-centre your display and not reset your view type.)


Of course if a cat jumps on my desk it means both lines of anti-cat defenses have been breached and I have bigger problems than the GUI.

[wilhil]

I take back my comment about layout and seeing what is doing what, it has taken me a while, but I didnt scroll to the bottom where you can create custom layout.

this game gets better and better by the second!

[se5a]

we had to do some serious arm twisting to get those custom layouts, glad you like them.

[Caduceus]

I need to futz around with those settings too..

[wilhil]

They are brilliant and just what I wanted in the game.

I would be happy to live without them if they had everything I wanted, but they dont.. so I created one that has (on production)...

picture, name, can build ships, under construction, time, current buildings, max buildings.

I LOVE IT, on SEIV, I build most of my planets exactly the same so now I can see from one screen what planets are full, what have space, what is building (or not) and if the planet can build ships.

IT IS BRILLIANT!, basically I have created a look similar to the production menu in SEIV when factory (I think it is) is selected.

thanks so much, this feature is brilliant.

[AMF]

How did you get the game to run at higher than 1280*800*32? That's the best option it gives me.

Just curious.

Tks,

AMF



frightlever said:
I'd still like to turn off edge scrolling though. In full screen at 1280x1024 the display is just right b

[Captain Kwok]

The resolutions available probably depends on what your video card supports - or at least in theory that is how it should work.

[frightlever]

I have 2 resolutions available at 2 colour depths. Either 1024x800 or 1280x1024. I've got a measly 17" TFT (that I thought was the bees knees a couple of years ago) and a 7800GS grafix card. 1280x800 sounds like a widescreen mode...

[wilhil]

one bug/typo.

I was looking for ages how to scrap a facility... it comes under scrap cargo. maybe it should have its name changed as I skipped it because of cargo and was looking for ages.

scrap bug - scrap seems to always be a option, however with more than one ship you do not get the error message that there is no space yard and it just does nothing. (tested trying to recycle two ships at a warp point)

[Ragnarok-X]

Im not too impressed. I think there is a lot of stuff that is not polished. The first suggestions that into mind is on the create design screen, right-clicking on a component opens a detail view for it. In order to close that detail-windows, you need to click close. Instead, a second right-click would be much better. As in click-open........click-close.
I had a battle around a planet...the planet did look very flurry, and the rings it had (i dont know, atmosphere rings or what) did look horrible.


Research-Screen: Did i miss something, or am i forced to enter exact amounts for every research ? Is there no option such as "finished this", which spends all your research on that project, then you can click the next one "finish this" and the computer automaticly assigns the right amount of research ? This bugged me a lot in the first turn, where you can complete several research with the research boost.

Component graphics look good.

[Captain Kwok]

Note that any extra points will spillover into the next level for a tech. In fact, you can gain multiple levels in a single turn. Although you suggestion would be nice too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[wilhil]

just had to add... I LOVE THIS GAME! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


combat is brilliant, just built a ship with 7 weapons, against 4 diffrent ships, 2 weapons on each with 1 on the last.

it is so cool, (I won http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif it was a sim, I wanted to test some stuff).

just wondering if anyone knew, if the other ships that are targeted out of range, will it use all available weapons on a ship in range, or will it only use the weapons you specify?...

[frightlever]

You reminded me about the research screen! When I play SEIV I turn off dividing and enable repeat projects. As you say there's no longer a way for me to have that as my default method. I like to line up a series of technologies I want/need to research and then reorder the queue as I go along. It's not even that the level of micro-management changes but the number of button clicks has gone through the roof.

[StarShadow]

SWEET! Thanks for the heads up. Downloading now through the torrent.

Edit: Got it!

Haven't even got through set-up yet and I have a gripe and a bug.

Bug: I hit random for planet type and got a white screen and an access violation.

Gripe: Almost no set-up options for a demo game, defaults only. That is extremely annoying!

[Phoenix-D]

frightlever said:
You reminded me about the research screen! When I play SEIV I turn off dividing and enable repeat projects. As you say there's no longer a way for me to have that as my default method. I like to line up a series of technologies I want/need to research and then reorder the queue as I go along. It's not even that the level of micro-management changes but the number of button clicks has gone through the roof.



Actually you can do it that way quite easily in SE5. Click on the very end of the Spending bar and your research will be set to 100%. It will automatically repeat; when you want to switch to another project click on the other end to set it to 0, then set the new one to 100%.

You can't set up a research que this way, but that's the only thing that doesn't work.

[wilhil]

I do exactly the same in research, but I find this so much better, it is pretty much the same. just put the percentage to what you want, and even better than SEIV, it carrys over to the next project.

However one filter that is missing and annoying. on planet list, there is a way to filter colonizable which is good, but not a way to hide the ones in restricted systems http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif (or did I miss it?)

[frightlever]

"Actually you can do it that way quite easily in SE5. Click on the very end of the Spending bar and your research will be set to 100%. It will automatically repeat; when you want to switch to another project click on the other end to set it to 0, then set the new one to 100%."

Like Wilhil says this doesn't let you carryover research points between projects or take advantage of auto-repeat for several projects (3 or 4 completions in one turn not a problem in SEIV).

You CAN auto-repeat a single project or multi-complete several projects but that's not how I've played. I can adapt but I still don't see it as progress.

Perhaps I'm out of touch and most people divided research points in SEIV - any call outs on this? I would do it if I had some big projects on-going but I also wanted to fasttrack a bunch of newer techs. BUt mainly not. In fact that just proves that before I had options that have now been taken away.

[Suicide Junkie]

There are +es and -es to the system, indeed.

If you want to, you could set the percentage so that it will finish in an integer number of turns and spend the rest on your next project.

[wilhil]

I am getting really confused :S

what I was trying to say, and I think you understand partly... research is so much better on SEV.

there were 2 options on SEIV, either devide equally or finish them all of in order, then they go to the end.

the problem with divide equally is, if you have something requiring tons of research and another requiring a few hundred, they will get the same and some is waisted.

the problem with the second one is that you can not easilly just do 2 projects, or what you want.

on SEV, you can choose the percentage, and if you happen to go over, it carrys over which is brilliant as you do not waiste research.

what you can do is set all the ones you want (whether it be 2 or 30) to a percentage, then it will spend all your points, and carry over if you spent to much, however you can set it to show turns left, and they you wont go over as just put the percentage up until it says 0.1 turn.

it is brilliant the new research.

.... just got my first access violation. went in to combat, and pressed the windows key, the taskbar poped up and the screen went to desktop. cant remember if I alt tabed back or clicked SEV on taskbar, but anyway, it gave access violation and all I can see is a white screen http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Q]

One thing I miss (or I did not find it) in the construction queue: one turn worth of units.
And I was quite surprised to find that the space yard component requires level 10 of space yard research (quite hard to reach in 100 turn demo).
What I really like are the detailed treaty options (although I accepted stupidly a treaty that forbids any research)!
My biggest complaint so far is the log list. Even without any pictures it is too detailed and the message for every single unit constructed is just absurd. Here I prefer the SE IV log list defenitely.

[se5a]

Research: this is more how se3 worked.
I prefer this, I think it gives a bit more control. though I can see how people like se4 method more.

[wilhil]

also, I wondered how many it was, but I am a bit annoyed that you cant go past 100 turns... I wish they followed the lead from some AAA games such as RON, where it is unlimited use within their settings... here you have to do their settings and you only get 100 turns http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Captain Kwok]

Q said:
One thing I miss (or I did not find it) in the construction queue: one turn worth of units.

Construction points spill over so you don't need that command anymore. The space yard will construct as much as possible of what you have queued up. So it is possible to build a mineral facility and some troops in a single turn. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[frightlever]

With all due respect Wilhil you sound like a Strategy First shill. Everything is brilliant? Research is brilliant? You have 12 techologies you need to research, 4 will take a long time, 4 medium and 4 quick. You want to fasttrack the quick ones, idle the medium and leave the advanced techs on the back burner so you allocate a third to each divided between the four projects.




Now the enemy turns up with a new type of shield. Time to change research.... enjoy your clicking. Brilliant!

[Captain Kwok]

Note you can use shift+click to increase/decrease research by 10% chunks. I find the SE:V research interface to be more flexible once you get used to it. Any excess points just drop into the next level of the item.

[frightlever]

"Construction points spill over so you don't need that command anymore. "

Now THIS I liked.

[Suicide Junkie]

Hey, now. You're going the opposite way full throttle.

Indeed, mostly you should be focussing on one or maybe two projects.

In SE3, I would put 3% research into medicine, since I knew that that would give me the cures just in time for when they would be needed. (Or be close enough to be one turn from completion) Handy to set and forget.

I have also taken to putting 1% into all of the tech areas I want in the near future. Then I can use the "only in-progress" view, and shift the rest of my research back and forth between them.


To make the best use of the research scheme, having very fine tech levels with automatic/free upgrades to the component/facility abilities can be very effective.
That way, it dosen't matter if you spend 20% on Lasers, 60% on engines and 20% on Armor, since you will be getting levelups in all three every turn, with no wasted points or delayed benefits.

[frightlever]

I never played SE3 so it's entirely possible I'm missing a good thing here. I'll reserve judgement I guess. The medicine example is a good one.

[wilhil]

I wish I was working for SF, maybe I would have been in on the beta!

not everything is fine, but it is all brilliant and it is a brilliant game, I am guessing there will be a bit where problems are fixed, but if its anything like SEIV, it will be a well supported game.

I have been playing for a while now trying out diffrent things and all I can say is I love it!

...have you seen, refrences to the manual, buttons and things, but it looks like they forgot to include it!

edit, oh, and suicide junkie (spelling?), I do the same thing! put 1% on ones I want, but not to commit to just yet, then improve as I need them!

[frightlever]

"oh, and suicide junkie (spelling?), I do the same thing! put 1% on ones I want, but not to commit to just yet, then improve as I need them!"

That does seem like the way to go. Hmm.

[Captain Kwok]

There should be 2 levels of help text that can be very useful for figuring out what things are for - check under options for it.

[Puke]

so i notice a few things:

1 - you cant mod the demo. wtf?

2 - i see no stellar manipulation components. hmmm. HMMMM. there do seem to be planet types and graphics for constructed worlds, but....

3 - cultural achievements and empire gained abilities look very cool. i see great mod potential here, including the foundation for making a capital or palace facility.

4 - odd bug. very odd. start in a system with 2 warp points. warp thru the first, find system A. set the ship to "explore" and it goes back to the home system, and then transits the second warppoint into system B. now the quadrant display shows the systems linked in a line, Home -> A -> B, instead of how they actually should be V shaped like A <- Home -> B.

[DarkAnt]

Oh wth guys....Why didn't you all email 100 times to tell me the demo was out!

[wilhil]

it doesnt matter the game, and empire earth was quite good, but they never seem to have a very good explore method, somehow, it usually messes up!

as for moding... it is a demo, is there any demo that you can mod?

steller manipulations... I have no idea, havent got that far. as I previously said, I am a little mad at the turn limit (think I may have found a work around, testing http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ).

the game you can play is already restricted why limit people from experimenting and trying out a full game within the peramaters like AOE3, RON, and some other AAA strategy games, it is good as it lets people have a real feel for the game within the enviroment people want. they seem to have done a restricted game within restricted enviroments. I wish they did like RON/EE2 (it was one of them!) and release the demo a few months ago with the features I say above, but say it is a beta and many features will change. I think this would of given a bigger beta test, and people would hear about the game, and like it because they would of had a few full games, all be it limited which would be a incentive to buy the game

[capnq]

wilhil said: i feel a little dirty talking about SEV on this board. when are we going to start moving and using the other board?

There is no reason to feel this way; I'm sure Strategy First will be happy to have people talking about the game in as many places as possible.

Up until now, this board has had more daily traffic than the corresponding S1st board gets in a week. I suppose that will change now that the demo is out. OTOH, the S1st site is so difficult to navigate that I have trouble imagining it getting more popular than this site.
wilhil said: as for moding... it is a demo, is there any demo that you can mod?

The SE IV demo had some modding potential; we're just spoiled. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Puke]

wilhil said:
it doesnt matter the game, and empire earth was quite good, but they never seem to have a very good explore method, somehow, it usually messes up!



Oh, i dont mean that the explore feature isnt as usefull as i like. I mean that the quadrant view is borked, and doesnt properly display how systems are connected to each other.


wilhil said:
as for moding... it is a demo, is there any demo that you can mod?



yes. the se4 demo.


wilhil said:
steller manipulations... I have no idea, havent got that far.



just look at the data files. they aint there.

[Suicide Junkie]

Shrapnel will always be the official forums in my heart.

[Captain Kwok]

It's been mentioned at SE.net that you can mod some of the demo's data files.

[wilhil]

in SEV, is it just me, or do space yards no longer increase the factory building rate?

[Noble713]

So far I'm loving it. My biggest gripe is the Empire/Colony flags over every planet. If you reduce their size to "Small", the flag looks okay but you can't read the ship/base #'s below it or the colony flags either. At medium size they are clear but so big that they tend to block planets/ships behind them.

[Phoenix-D]

SJ already has a mod out to deal with that.

http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE5/Mods/SJs_EmpireFlag_Patch.zip

[Suicide Junkie]

By the way, don't stop that from letting you email Aaron to fix the hardcoded "small size" option.

[Wade]

I want to see and play! I went to the Strategy First side and started the download. I just get a white screen with the Microsoft flag waving still; so some thing is processing. It's been like this for 40 minutes now. I thought I'd wait patiently but...c'mon!

Any experienced advice? Should I try another site mentioned before? I just thought that it would be best to use the "official" site of Strategy First.

[Suicide Junkie]

Just use the torrent.

Strategy first has no bandwidth left, but the torrent will get you awesome rates since there are over 50 seeders now.

[wilhil]

I am now annoyed that so many features are missing from this demo.

lol, im still happy with the game, but just annoyed with the limitations.

[MarkSheppard]

The main idea is that the layouts be shaped like the ships, but also that your designs not be limited by a lack of slots.

That makes little sense. In SEIV you could just keep adding things to your ships as long as you had tonnage free; ignoring the fact that ships had internal volume to worry about too.

And if they're shaped like the ships, why is the number and of slots the same for every deck? these aren't cookie cutter ships with slab sides; there are supposed to be angles, etc , decks that get smaller as you go up or down.

[Wade]

Geez! SEV does still use tonnage. The slots and decks are just generalizations for all the possible shapes and space available on many different ships.

[wilhil]

i know what you mean, it feels nice to design a ship and think where to put things rather than click click click, however it sort of gets boring after a while, I wouldnt mind if it actually had firing arcs and all that, but when it comes down to it, there are 3 positions to put things in and it does not matter where they are placed.

It would be a very diffrent game if combat was completly like starfury with arcs and you got damage on the side where you got hit but frankly as there are only 3 positions and it does not matter... there is little point in designing the ship, and I wished you had SEIII style of a radio box to select A, I or O, then double click on the component and it goes in automatically, but at the same time still allowing you to put the component how/where you want.

hope that makes sense :S

[Artaud]

Noble713 said:
So far I'm loving it. My biggest gripe is the Empire/Colony flags over every planet. If you reduce their size to "Small", the flag looks okay but you can't read the ship/base #'s below it or the colony flags either. At medium size they are clear but so big that they tend to block planets/ships behind them.



I was trying to wait a bit before posting thoughts on the demo, but I have to agree about the Empire/Colony flags. I want to be able to see my ships. You should not have to depend on a mod just to get your ship icons to a visible size! This is basic!

[wilhil]

I agree, I think it may be better if there was a SEIV style number on the square and you just click for more info.

If there were only a few planets, it is good however in dense solar systems, they just colide with each on big or medium and on small you just cant read it. I wish there was just a total number with icon. I manage shipyard and everything else from production menu and not for the solar system view, it is a very nice feature, but it is not really needed, so I turn it off, again, total number of Ships + bases + units would be enough for me.

giving so many ideas and saying what I am so close to launch, is it a bit pointless? :S

[przy]

Downloaded and trying it out. Looks good so far. Can't wait for the real thing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[AMF]

First, Im so far happy with the game. Having said that, heres some of my general feelings: First, although its a great game, IF I wasnt a SE4 player, I would find it far to obscure and hard to get a handle on to play it. I think your average gamer geek will be put off by its inaccessibility.

Second, I think the later game (after 100 turns or so) will be even more tedious than it is under SE4. A lot of the shortcuts appear to have been made less accessible, with more keystrokes needed. Such as cancel orders, repeat orders, etc,

Now, a lot of lesser gripes, all of them fixable (I think), an upn which I base the above comments (and please note that I have not yet played tactical combat, and probably wont for a while, its just not my bag):

First, please tell me I can do simultaneous games in the full version.

For the love of Pete, please make the sector item window (bottom middle of screen), orders window (bottom right), and quadrant window (bottom left) moveable! They obscure the bloody solar system map, and there is dead space on the left and right that they could be moved to. Its extremely frustrating to not be able to see the entire solar system at once. And, all other windows are moveable, so why not these? It would help the visibility A LOT.

From the -planet report- screen, under ‘construction tab I instinctively want to be able to add to the build queue for that planet. Any way to add a double-click functionality that brings up the -set construction Q- screen? And, yes, I know I could hotkey Q to get there, but its much more instinctive to use a double click.

Anyone yet figured out what difference radiation, gravity, and temperature make? Are they just fluff?

Its not clear to me how I rename planets.

I look forward to someone coming up with a mod that makes the graphics much less cluttered. The new UI is way too busy, way too much deadspace, for my tastes, and a lot of it is unnecessary fluff.

Intel should be defaulted to -100% to defense- at the start of the game (or kill the ‘reminder at end of turn glitch mentioned earlier)

Would be very nice to have an abbreviated facilities view - for those planets with more than ten or so facilities, its annoying to have to scroll paste a bunch of the same ones to see what is on the planet. Why not just title them -Research facility x 10- etc. Ditto for ship components (mentioned below).

Apparently, the race of a ships crew is now noted for each ship. How is this important? I like it, a lot, but Im curious as to what actual effect it might have on the gameplay.

Ships are now listed as having ‘production values - which really appear, so far, to just be maintenance costs. But am I to take it that ships will now, with the right components, be able to produce various resources and thereby make them available to the empire at large?

Apparently, we can no longer have an abbreviated view for ships - when I start having dreadnoughts with hundreds of armor, its gonna be real annoying to try and scroll through the ship components to see whats on it. Any chance of fixing this so it says -armor x 50- instead of listing 50 armor components?

Its more of a pain to ‘cancel orders for a ship then it was before - have to go to ‘orders settings then hit ‘cancel orders. Likewise for ‘repeat orders. In the later game, these shortcuts become very important, but theyre awful hard to get to, despite the fact that there is plenty of screen space to put them on the initial orders window.

For the ‘item list window (bottom middle) the ‘back to list button lights up, even when there is only one item in the list. Seems wrong, (a bit misleading)

One side-effect of having hex contents obscured until you come within sensor range of them, is that a colonizer (or any ship) will bypass a good planet because you give it orders before you know what is in the region of space. A rational ships captain of a colonizer, for example, is out to find a good planet, and make a colony on it. Unfortunately, since you give it movement orders and only after it has moved all turn do you discover what it passed by can you colonize things. It would be logical to have a -colonize best planet- option that it enacts when it has movement orders. This probably isnt possible given the current movement mechanics, but it would be a big improvement.

Exploit/Bug: on the quadrant map, outgoing warp lines are indicated, even when you havent yet seen the sectors that contain them (in the systems). For example, if I go into a new system, and I havent explored any sectors there yet, I can still go to the quadrant map and see how many outgoing warp lines it has, and interpolate their general sector location as well.

In the 2D view, the empire flag graphics come in front of other graphics - this makes figuring out which planet is selected pretty tough sometimes. Can the highlighted hex borders be made to be in front of the flag graphics, to make it easier? Or at least make them a different color than white so theyre easier to see.

When designing fighters (and probably ships and units as well) when you have shift-clicked on a component, and you want to go to -next page- you can click the next page button. Thats good. But you cant click the ‘middle or other decks button to go there. SO, youre placing a lot of engines on a fighter, and you run out of spaces on the upper decks, so you want to go to the middle decks, but you cant without going back to the component section, and then going to select the deck, and then going back to once again pick up the engine component. Very awkward.

The whole layout for the ship design screens will get very annoying as ships get bigger. I cant imagine placing hundreds of armor components on a dreadnought, since it appears I will have to choose a location for each armor bit I put on. Is there no way to shorten this, and just allow me to place multiple armor straight up? I fear the latter stages of games will become very tedious for this reason.

Is it possible to turn off the ‘Colony type screen? Who has ever really cared about colony type? Does it make a difference? If so, it shouldnt.

Frankly, I dont see why the design screen needs to have stats for the unit on different window panes. Why should I need to push a button to figure out ship speed, and switch back to figure out tonnage still available, and so forth? Theres lots of dead space available here - why not get rid of a ‘page and display all the information on one?

The RETURN key isnt enabled!??! ARGHHH! For ship design, and a lot of other things, return key should = ‘OK. Unless Im the only keyboard jockey out there.

Its quite annoying to have to go through the ‘filter key to get to my unit designs. There are button spaces left - why not just have a ‘units/ships toggle button?

I never understood why SE4, and now SE5, forced me to calculate -facility space remaining.- Were always shown the facility space used and total facility space, but the difference between the two is the only number we, as players, really care about. I should be able to order and rank planets in various queues by ‘available facility space and not have to mentally do that calculation myself.

The Construction Queues window custom layout function should have all the functionalities of the ‘Colonies window - for example, I would find it very ueful to show construction queues by planet, nclding their population and number of facilities and so forth, not just things like their construction rates etc.

When constructing units, the option -one turns worth- was very useful (pretty much the only thing I ever used for constructing units). As far as I can tell, that is gone now. I think that it is automatic however (ie: if youset a planet to construct 50 fighters, it will construct one turns worth eac turn until it gets to fifty, rather than construct 50 at once on turn X). But still, the option to do -one turns worth- was very helpful.

In the tech research window, its hard to grasp that an advance in tech is often really just an advance in the level of an existent tech. Tech level pictures should have a number displayed that indicates the level I am about to achieve, rather than just the type. If I am researching projectile weapons, and the advances I expect to get are DUCs, then Im confused, because, goldarnit, I already have DUCs, why am I spending money on getting them again? If I research industry apparently Im going to get space port, but dont I already have them? See what I mean? Its confusing for newbies, I fear.

In SE4, from the log window, you could go to the news item, and do relevant things, and when you were done, you would return to the log window (not all cases, but most). This is no longer the case. Given that there is a much longer log window than before, it means that I am starting up the log window many times each turn. Again, bodes ill for the late game. Or I am just not doing something right (highly possible)

It seems as if one really needs to use both mouse and keyboard to make this game work. It should be more that one can use EITHER mouse OR keyboard, having to use both defeats the purpose of using them each alone. Not sure what can be done at this point, except to redo the hotkeys and mouse-short cuts, but needed to be mentioned.

Thats it for now, more to come tomorrow Im sure,

Tks,

AMF


Ps: apparently you can’t display apostrophes on the forum, so my above grammar is challenged to say the least.

[wilhil]

another bug I think...

I have loads of research facilitys on diffrent planets, some building, some planets complete. I upgraded them all... so now some of them are upgrading, then I researched another level before they were finished upgrading so I clicked upgrade again. Now, it looks like I have lost quite a few research facilities on diffrent planets http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

I wish I was one of the beta testers!

edit - on further look, it doesnt look I have lost any that were built, but the ones that were building have disappeared from the queue to be replaced with one upgrade

[wilhil]

amf, you say keyboard jocky... you know for cancel orders you can press backspace?

honestly, there was always shortcut keys for pretty much everything but I always used to use the buttons!, now I still have the options for both but because the cancel order is awkward to get to (one extra click!) I am using the backspace button.

if it was straight there, I would press it rather than backspace though.

I understand some of things being hidden as they are only sometimes used, but I would of though cancel would be a important one! and it did take me a moment to find as I thought it would be always visible!

and some other things, I had a ship in a enemy sector and clicked repaired, rather than go back the way it came, it went foward to the unexplored bit and went through a warp hole I didnt realise was there (but like AMF said, I could of seen from system view), and then went to a shipyard somewhere else! I thought this was funny!

I like the fact you have to explore new systems though, it really gives the impression of we are just here in space as later on with better sensors it becomes easier to explore.

[Renegade 13]

Whoa...84 new posts since I came to the forum last night...that's insane!

[Q]

I had a look at the data files: the damage types seem really fascinating. As far as I understand you can create almost unlimited damage type combinations, different armor and shield types. This is excellent.
I still do not see however why the ship design has to be so complicated if you consider how little effect it has functionally. I would prefer to be able to skip the layout and add the components like in SE IV (make this an option!). The auto complete seems to be useful only at the beginning, later you have to check carefully: it did not include combat sensor or ECM to my ships although I had the technology.
In the construction window I would still prefer the "one turn worth" option for units, even if now the construction of larger numbers is divided into turns automatically. However if you upgrade your unit designs, you are stuck with the old design if you entered a large number in the construction window.
The system map display is not optimal as already mentioned: overlap with other windows and the large empire flags make it hard to get all the relevant informations quickly.
I can't tell anything yet about the AI except that it seems I am far ahead of all AI empires.

[wilhil]

@ renegade 13, demo is out, a lot has happened!

also, how long is combat meant to last and when does it quit?

some times attacking a ship can last for ages but when I was in the middle of attacking a planet, it just stoped http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Captain Kwok]

Alarkif,

Right click on an object when it is selected to see all the applicable orders. This will help you to learn the hotkeys. Also make sure you have the help text on as it will allow you to find the orders you want faster. 'N' to re-name a planet when selected. Right click also allows easy access to many screens like cargo or the construciton queue.

There is simultaneous ofc.

The planet stats are fluff right now.

The return key is enabled on many windows but not all. Also note you can dbl-click on most items to select and close.

System display options under Empire Options is where you can turn off colony type selection. It's really only important if you're using ministers or something to ensure they build what you want.

One turn's worth is less necessary as we have construction point spillover, but I guess for situations where you want to occupy the queue for just 1 turn it would be helpful still.

You can make your own hotkeys.

[scJazz]

arghhhhhh The progress bar for the download is going tooooo slowly! Why can't life be instantaneous!

(I am using torrent btw)

Just griping...

[Q]

One minor imperfection: if you upgrade a design and create it, you return to the available ship/unit design list with the new design highlighted.
Because you most probably want to make obsolete the old design this is one more unnecessary mouseclick. In SE IV the old design was already chosen to be obsoleted.

[Noble713]

AMF said:
One side-effect of having hex contents obscured until you come within sensor range of them, is that a colonizer (or any ship) will bypass a good planet because you give it orders before you know what is in the region of space. A rational ships captain of a colonizer, for example, is out to find a good planet, and make a colony on it. Unfortunately, since you give it movement orders and only after it has moved all turn do you discover what it passed by can you colonize things. It would be logical to have a -colonize best planet- option that it enacts when it has movement orders. This probably isnt possible given the current movement mechanics, but it would be a big improvement.



I'd argue that you should send Explorer ships to survey systems (very useful button IMO) before you send in colony ships. I don't even include sensors on my colony ships.


AMF said:
In the tech research window, its hard to grasp that an advance in tech is often really just an advance in the level of an existent tech. Tech level pictures should have a number displayed that indicates the level I am about to achieve, rather than just the type. If I am researching projectile weapons, and the advances I expect to get are DUCs, then Im confused, because, goldarnit, I already have DUCs, why am I spending money on getting them again? If I research industry apparently Im going to get space port, but dont I already have them? See what I mean? Its confusing for newbies, I fear.



The way I look at it, your scientists may have a general idea of what areas/equipment will be improved, but not the specifics. You make a good point about confusing newbies though.

And your comments about the ship/unit design screen are spot-on. Defintely not user-friendly.


wilhil said:
some times attacking a ship can last for ages but when I was in the middle of attacking a planet, it just stoped http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif



Yes! I had that same problem! You can compare notes with my experience here: http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=445975&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1#Post446044

[Wade]

Cool. Thanks. I used Bit Torrent and I am now exploring the game. It's decent looking. I'm having trouble finding where the facilities on my planet are listed other than scrap cargo area. I noticed current facilities/maximum facilities is listed as tonnage. 19000/20000. I have room for one more facilitie I think.

Update: OK. Right click on the planet image in the interface to get planet screen.Also, right click then choose report. Perhaps double clicking on planet in system should do this too.

[Q]

I like the game setup menu in general. The only thing I miss from SE IV is the gradual 1% change you could make in increasing/decreasing racial characteristics. The fixed 5% option you have here is a little bit crude.

[Suicide Junkie]

We all want that back; with forumulas for cost it would be amazing.

I despise the fool who conviced Aaron to drop sliders from the racial setup. Their only fault in SE4 was poor cost settings http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[wilhil]

I was a bit confused about being able to choose tech during starting a game, it all costs thousands (i am talking techs instead of traits). is this for mods?

from what I have said since the beggining of this thread, for a demo that is limited, it has some annoying features that lead to nothing.

[Captain Kwok]

Tech points and racial points are separate and both are used in the normal game. The tech points are used to allow the player to select starting techs, while the racial points are used to select traits.

[wilhil]

some things I dont like... levels of ships, they seem to be in alphabetic order rather than order of how good they are, and it gets confusing as when you research them, if for example you take a top destroyer has more hull than a low destroyer.

this gets confusing, and I think that on all of them the cost should be changed so that it costs more, but the smallest destroyer should be bigger than the biggest frigate.

it just gets a little bit confusing... :S

edit - @kwok, well, first time I played it, and I got confused. cant cancel down any and start with it saying 2000 points when creating a empire, I couldnt increase any of the techs as they cost to much and it is greyed out to make any lower. I got confused, and I am sure others will to... I didnt realise what it was, and I was trying to get rid of one of the techs to get all the good benefits!

[Renegade 13]

Suicide Junkie said:
I despise the fool who conviced Aaron to drop sliders from the racial setup. Their only fault in SE4 was poor cost settings http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

All beta testers have pushed for this right from the beginning. It's just too bad that Aaron didn't agree with us... maybe if enough people complain, it'll be changed!

Note for those of you trying out the demo. If you find something that you don't like, or seems like it could be done better email Aaron and tell him about it! I can't stress that enough. Essentially, you're all second-line beta testers, and if enough complain about something, it has a much better chance of being changed, especially if the beta testers have been pushing for the same change.

The power is in your hands! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[Captain Kwok]

The select your starting techs is a re-introduction from SE:III. I thought there was expanded help text that described the function of technology points?

[wilhil]

Also, is it just me, or is it more effiecent to put one engine of the highest tech and fill it all up with ions? for cost, it works out cheaper and you get the better benefits :S in SEIV, you had to have all of one type to get the benefits I thought.

[Raapys]

I'd have to agree with AMF's points. Also, to scrap facilities you have to search high and low, eventually ending up in the "Cargo Orders->Scrap Cargo" part of the menu. Took me some time to figure that one out.

So far I've been positively surprised though, and just about all the issues I have with the game has to do with the rather awkard/impractical GUI.

[Q]

First impression of the AI by switching all AI empires to human control after 50 turns:
They have enough resources and a lot of ships. However they seem a little bit lost with the reaearch. Too many projects that will take very long to complete. And there is a problem with ship design: Although they have combat sensors and use them in sats, they don't use them in attack ships, not even in destroyers. They will have a hard time against my ships with level 6 ECM and combat sensors! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/firedevil.gif

[Captain Kwok]

There are a number of known bugs and inefficiencies with the AI research and design scripts. It's something that I expect will be addressed in the next few weeks. I have a balance/stock mod that has already done some work in this area to help out.

[Ragnarok-X]

Renegade 13 said:

Note for those of you trying out the demo. If you find something that you don't like, or seems like it could be done better email Aaron and tell him about it!



Does anybody here think Aaron or anyone will change "major" features codewise, with the release at hand ?

no way.

[Phoenix-D]

I don't know. As I understand it the SE4 Ringworlds and Sphereworlds were a fairly last-minute addon. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Plus there's always patches.

[Captain Kwok]

No. But he can address a number of UI issues like the cargo screen and things of that sort. Aside from slot layouts, I haven't seen much complaints about the actual features themselves.

[Fyron]

wilhil said:
...you got damage on the side where you got hit ...


Damage is directional... Slots still suck terribly though. Viva le SE3!

[wilhil]

I am a bit annoyed now by the construction layout.

I am trying to get it exactly like SEIV with facilities selected as I believe this is the best view (well at least for me with my gameplay style). I also used to like switching over to value view, so I know what resource buildings to build where. I find it annoying to look at each planet seporatly.

I so far have name / status icons / under construnction / facilties / max facilities / move to.

It is annoying that there is not the blue box on the galaxy view or even a blue box with a number, or best of all, in a unused area, it just says. I really want to have time remaining as a field, but there is not any room for it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif. Are facilities in the thousands for show, or will some actually take up diffrent space? if so, cant we have another field being facility x/x so it takes up less space.

anyway... that was another ranting by wil!

[Fyron]

wilhil said:
some things I dont like... levels of ships, they seem to be in alphabetic order rather than order of how good they are, and it gets confusing as when you research them, if for example you take a top destroyer has more hull than a low destroyer.

You can fix this horrible, horrible blunder in Empire Options. Alphasort can be turned off for both components and hulls. Also, it can be fixed more permanently in Settings.txt. I suspect that almost every mod will turn off the crappy alphasort...

[wilhil]

@ fyron - so it is best to evanly put everything :S I thought the only thing that mattered was A I O, I didnt realise that there was a diffrence on position... He riped the combat engine right from starfury! anyway, I like it a bit better now, but it will take some getting used to.

[Fyron]

I really want to have time remaining as a field, but there is not any room for it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif.

Try clicking on the icon column header to reduce icon size; it often gives just enough room for another column.

Are facilities in the thousands for show, or will some actually take up diffrent space?

Like everything else Aaron adds, it isn't very well used in the stock game... but mods can make great use of variable sized facilities.

[wilhil]

Ive already tried that, but I am already using it all!

The stock game is allright this time it seems. I emailed him, probably about a year or two ago about infinity research so you keep on building, and I love the fact that items are now based on tech level (seen some of the formulas) so you can in theory have a endless tech tree! (or up to 255... lets hope there isnt a hex limit or something like that!)

SEV really should be advertised as a engine... and that the mods will keep you playing.... I played SEIV for ages on stock, and still like it occassionly, but the mods, I play for years upon years! SE is one of the best space strategy game engines!

[Captain Kwok]

"Infinite tech" is not as good of an idea as it may sound. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[wilhil]

why not?

for me the research side of the game was always the same... ship hulls + physics, then shields and beam weapons

obviously a few others, but it was mainly this, then build the same style ships over and over again.

I like the fact that this gives the game almost a open endness, and the fact that mods will be brilliant...

I am thinking of hulls that get bigger and bigger (in game called minimturisation, despite being bigger :S), then components getting infinitely more powerful with increase in weight or get smaller if hulls dont get bigger...

what I am trying to say is that tech will be endless and you will have to assign propor research colonies along with the normal running of the empire and always research new tech and constantly build new designs.

I really really like it!

when I say research colonies, I used to in SEIV build endless colonies that are just for research to get max research quickly, then scrap and build normally... dont know if I was the only one, but I very often, even on some of the big mods, got ALL research done within 100 turns http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

edit - just looked, weapon mounts get more and more powerful whilst costing the same.... it is just brilliant having almost endless tech and the stock game will probably be brilliant let alone any mod!

[Captain Kwok]

Trust me. A well designed tree with 10-20 levels and appropriate research costs provides more than enough stuff to research for many a turn.

-----

The problem in SE:V stock is that the tech levels are too cheap and the upgrades pointless until you've achieved several levels. This hurts the AI and players won't bother upgraded for several levels anyway. So pump up the cost and make each level potentially meaningful.

-----

Although it should be possible in SE:V that you can automatic upgrades for X levels before a retrofit is required. Perhaps SJ can elaborate.

[wilhil]

I understand, but once you do it, thats that. endless adds more fun!

dont get me wrong, I understand what you are saying, and mods like the star trek mod are brilliant, but imagine if the weapons go on for ever, shields match by going forever...

it will just add a lot of variety, and people will have to take research seriously and have a propor strategy for it.

edit - forgot to write, of course, there is no reason at all why people can not have mods that are not infinate.

also, something funny... there is a complete unbalanced thing reguarding engines, it is both cheaper and better to add ion engines than supply storage, and you get a lot more, but not only that, on a big design, it is much cheaper to have all ions with one of the highest sort as you get all the benefits of it!

[Suicide Junkie]

My idea is basically to replace all instances of "[%Level%]" (component level) in a component with the lower of either "current tech level of the empire" or "component level + N".

Where N can be whatever fits the mod. About N=5 for GGmod with 100 levels, or N=100 if I expand the techs with 100x more levels and 1/100th the cost per level.

[wilhil]

bad bug found I think....

jacked photon engine level 1, resource cost is 1,200 when right clicked off of available components list, but it is only 400 when right clicked on ship... giving values of minerals.

I am good at this sort of thing and done loads in this thread! why wasnt i a beta tester!

edit - found it. it is when I set a component mount on, it gives all values x 4, even if it will not be affected by the mount.

[Suicide Junkie]

wilhil said:
...it is both cheaper and better to add ion engines than supply storage...

YES! Thank you.

Why is it so hard for people to see that a component specifically designed to store supplies and do nothing else should be better at that one focussed task than another component that provides movement as its primary task?

[wilhil]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

lol! and it is better to have engines here, they provide more room and if you get hit loads, you have more engines as back up!

maybe at a higher level resource storage gets increased at a much higher rate than ion engines? if not, then it is stupid.

in the unmoded SEIV, wasnt it the same, or very similar, only you couldnt have over a certain ammount of engines? :S I am playing a PBW game, but I just can not think how engines worked off the top of my head... (been playing star trek mod), on that you can only have so many engines, but they perform much better!

damn, it looks like you cant put on more than a certain ammount of engines! but still... I dont think its right they hold more supplies...

[Possum]

Noble713 said:

Possum said:
LOL, ok, how do you use the torrent file?



Go here: www.bittorrent.com (http://www.bittorrent.com)

Download and install the program. Then download the torrent file and open it. It will ask you to pick a directory, where it will place the file(s) downloaded by the Torrent. Once the download is complete, just go to directory you picked and run the file.



I went to that url, www.bittorrent.com (http://www.bittorrent.com), and it was a subscription service, they want you to pay for it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Microtorrent is good
http://www.utorrent.com/download.php

[Wade]

http://www.bittorrent.com/index.html

This was free, easy, and quick for me.

[Noble713]

Possum said:
I went to that url, www.bittorrent.com (http://www.bittorrent.com), and it was a subscription service, they want you to pay for it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif



Clicking on either "Download Bittorrent" or "Get Bittorent" should eventually redirect you to Download.com, which is totally free: http://www.download.com/BitTorrent/3000-2196-10211384.html?part=dl-BitTorrent&subj=dl&tag=button

I've never paid a dime to use Torrents. Sure it will pop-up a window sometimes when you use it but I don't even get those anymore (maybe that was mIRC with the annoying "DONATE MONEY!" pop-ups).

[Possum]

Yeah, OK, I got the free client, no clue how I wound up at that pay site last night.

Right, so I DL and install the bittorrent client, and it won't run. It does the "hourglass for 10 seconds and then nothing" routine.

Sigh. WTF ever happened to good old FTP? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[wilhil]

I am having a bit of a headache trying to work out weapon mounts...

... with no range improvements, is it just me, or is it better to use loads of large ship mounts rather than a few massive ship mounts.

Large - damage x200%, weight x50%
Massive - damage x500%, weight x200%

is it just me, or is there no benefits? or am I missing out other factors?

and why is it that planetary napalms say 2k damage on massive, and 980-980 on large... its giving me a headache!

[Possum]

w00t! uTorrent works, but I'm only getting 30 kB/s

AAAAAH~!

****************** edit **************

Ah, so desu ka! If you skimp the UL rate, the client or network (uncertain which) skimps your DL rate! I had the UL at 5 kBs, and was getting the 30 kBs DL rate referred to above.

I increased the UL rate to 20 kBs, and the DL rate jumped up to 270 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Wade]

I did get where I downloaded Bittorrent then doubleclicked to start the icon and nothing happened. I restarted my computer and tried again. Same thing happened. A momoment later several started opening from my many tries. There was/is some sort of lag.It still does this if I try now. So I guess the process was not that easy.

Maybe try utorrent.com.

[wilhil]

a feature that would be nice is the select multiple queues thing is a bit stupid...

it should be either you choose the mode like it is now, but then on multiple, clicking on the line should do the same thing as clicking the button on coloumn one.

having it the way it is is a waste, and maybe they should have it on multiple always by default as this allows you to select single planets, but easily do multiples...

hopefully you know what I mean

[frightlever]

Okay I quit for now. I've spent the last several hours trying to fall in love with the game but the interface is killing me. I am bitterly disappointed having played SEIV from almost the start right up til now thanks to mods like Star Trek, Devnull and Adamant. I had a lot of hope invested in five but what's done right is hidden behind multiple layers of frustration. To me there are some really obvious ways the interface could be fixed but if months of beta-testing hasn't turned this up then I'm not hopeful it's going to change. Let's face it there were things we didn't like about four that never got an official nod.

Get the interface right. It's basic. Being happy you can change some column settings is not, to me, an alternative to having the right column settings in the first place. And that's not even going back to the system display which is just horribly flawed - like we meet up to play a game of chess and I balance the board on a tennis ball. For kicks. I gotta eff off for now because I'm getting pissed off again. This game if released as is will be savaged by independent reviewers. So if you're not getting new players and you're losing old players like me then all you have left are the dedicated fans who can see no evil. How did you manage a year of beta-testing without fixing the system display?

See? Angry. Gone for a bit.

[Phoenix-D]

Give it time. There are problems, yes, but SE4 had its share of them as well. And SE4's UI is just as clunky in its own way (remember the screaming about disappearing right-clicks?)

MM does a good job in general, but interfaces are something he can't quite master, it seems. :/

[frightlever]

Hell yeah I'm giving it time. (I know I should be gone but it's 2am here and I'm wide awake AND sober for a change)(though there is that beer in the fridge... back in a sec).

I want the game to work and I cut AH as much slack as he needs but that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend the game is hot just because it knows how to slap on some lipstick.

[Phoenix-D]

I think you need to go to bed and get drunk, maybe not in that order. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[frightlever]

Personally I was thinking cheeseburger but your idea has merit too.

[Mephisto]

frightlever said:
Okay I quit for now...



Frightlever, please post Aaron about all the things that you don't like. I really don't want to sound like a wiseguy but nearly everthing that was said in this thread has been said in beta, too.

[Renegade 13]

frightlever, we've (beta testers) mentioned most, if not all of the things mentioned in the thread. Some things just weren't fixed, I think due to a bit of a rush.

[Fyron]

frightlever said:
...if months of beta-testing hasn't turned this up then I'm not hopeful it's going to change... How did you manage a year of beta-testing without fixing the system display?

Please do not blame the beta testers for this...

[Randallw]

I tried out the combat simulator to see how missiles looked and as I am wont to do I started it a second time and discovered all the ships just sat there. I discovered that after a sim all the ships stay damaged rather than starting all over again. This means if you want to try something different you have to remove all the damged ships and chose all over again.

[Suicide Junkie]

The nice thing is that that does let you try combats with damaged ships.

The fastest way to clear the list is just to quit the simulator and go back in.

[Kana]

Torrent link no longer appears to work. Would some please post a new torrent link? Also SF might want to consider listing the torrent on their website/forum, so that we torrent users, can share the bandwith download for the demo.

[StarShadow]

I have a question...how do you fine tune your race? You know, add x% to construction ability, etc. I can't seem to find how to do that.

[Captain Kwok]

StarShadow said:
I have a question...how do you fine tune your race? You know, add x% to construction ability, etc. I can't seem to find how to do that.

That's not in SE:V.

[StarShadow]

Well that just totally, utterly, completely SUCKS!

[Wade]

You can create a custom race similiar to that. The new way is by spending the points on the various choices in the list. Most of these are for a bonus or negative of 5 percent.
This may have been changed for balancing issues. I too still prefer, so far, the SEIV feature of slider/switches of 1 percent.

[Will]

Ok, torrent will be a little spotty for a while. AgentZero was the previous tracker, I'm setting myself up as one, but I won't be able to keep it up indefinitely either. Try out Strategy First's download to see if it is decent, otherwise, I'm limiting to about 60kbps, plus whatever any other seeders give.

Demo Torrent link (http://68.181.252.145:6969/torrents/SE5_Demo_v100_091106.zip.torrent?C4EB07B6398545B11 B1AA05DD217D982E503851B)

[dumbluck]

I'm still seeding, too. I have been for about 24 hours now. I'll leave it on again tonight....

[Q]

I just discovered a really excellent feature of the UI: in the construction list you can create your custom display with all the information you want. That is just great!

[Fyron]

How about a third tracker for ultimate redundancy? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

http://kazharii.no-ip.com:6969

Many clients can manually add trackers to active torrents (in utorrent, its right in the properties of the torrent; in azureus, it is "show details" from the torrent, then right click on the tracker url of general tab), so you can put in new urls at will.

To add mine, you'd want to add http://kazharii.no-ip.com:6969/announce
To add Wills, you'd want to add http://68.181.252.145:6969/announce

Then, your client should look at all of these trackers to find peers/seeds.

[StarShadow]

Suicide Junkie said:

wilhil said:
...it is both cheaper and better to add ion engines than supply storage...

YES! Thank you.

Why is it so hard for people to see that a component specifically designed to store supplies and do nothing else should be better at that one focussed task than another component that provides movement as its primary task?



Well I just noticed something on this topic. Engines do seem to be the best way to add supply storage to ships...bases are a whole 'nother thing. You have to add supply storage to bases (ordinance too if your weapons need it), as bases no longer seem to generate their own supplies. Without supplies your base is just a sitting duck...no shields, can't fire...

Is this a bug? Shouldn't bases generate supplies for their personal use?

[Q]

Just had my first major combat with a carrier against several enemy ships and it is really impressive how this works. No problems with the replay and I like the possibilities you have in tactical combat.

[MarkSheppard]

How do we email Aaron about our suggestions?

[Atrocities]

Captain Kwok said:

StarShadow said:
I have a question...how do you fine tune your race? You know, add x% to construction ability, etc. I can't seem to find how to do that.

That's not in SE:V.



Much to the disappointment of many I am fraid. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Q]

MarkSheppard said:
How do we email Aaron about our suggestions?



Go to the MM website and hit the "contact" button.

It is funny that on the MM site the demo is still listed as unavailable.

[wilhil]

Dont know if it went through properlly so reposting my long long message...

Now a honest, complete, and unbiased view of SEV (well not complete unbiased, I am a big fan of the SEV series, I just mean, looking at both sides of everything and not looking at it with rose color glasses!)

Had my game up to 100 turns, (tried looking in save game for hex value of turns then put it back to 1, and changing all the 100's to 300's in the exe, but no luck, although the game ran fine with no problems, no idea what them 100's where! I would have more of a look later, but I have to much work to do and I have waisted a day playing!)

anyway, my oppinions, It will take A LOT of getting used to, and some of the buttons need to be changed, for example stop needs to be a main one whilst some of the others can be taken off. Maybe have steller manipulations as one of the advanced orders as it will not be used by half the ships.

I would love to see the attack order removed, and instead you just had move and like in SEIV, if there is a enemy, once you get there, it will say enemy in sector... or, what I would love even more is just a smart move, when you are choosing the sector to move to, if there is a enemy there, then it simply says do you want to attack target?, and it will do the same thing as clicking attack, meaning it will auto go in to combat with statics and chase ships. (and save up a button on the panel!)

The game will take a lot of getting used to, and I found my self not doing as many things as I would do in SEIV such as mainting colonise and putting the correct mining facilities as it was awkward to see the value from the construction screen.

The game would be much better if it was just a SEIV with updated graphics and content meaning reasearch, components, and everything else but keep the back end stuff the same such as filters/tables as it is annoying in colonies I can do empty and colonizable, but not filter out system to avoid.

Overall a good game, but I wish the demo was unlimited but just had the settings locked. I wanted to do steller manipulations and just generally have a full game.

It will take a lot of getting used to, but it is good, however I felt myself not doing tasks I would of done on SEIV due to it taking longer or to hard to do such as maintain a constant supply of ships to a warp point, upgrade them, decomission... (you know what I mean), but I just didnt feel like I was playing the same as I would of done if the game was SEIV.

I really like the survey systems in early games as later on you can almost scan a whole system in one go, I just really really love the idea of starting with nothing (low powered guns) later on extending to being able to blow up planets/suns, laser weapons and shields...

I love epic battles and tried a sim with 10 maxed out ships with 12 weapons on each against 300 little ships... I wanted to test the engine! it ran fine for ages, then I got a access violation, and had to quit... of course I forgot to save after creating the big design http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

I also got a access violation during one time playing when it went to combat and I accidently pressed the windows key.

During my first game, I never selected a empire style as I never realised you were meant to (I did new game rather than quick start). It came up with errors and nothing had a strategy. With the lack of customising available in the demo, I really think that it should have quick start and only quick start as it is unnessicary confusion to new players.

I had a few graphics bugs, however alt tabing then reloading seemed to solve it (unlike other games where alt+tab breaks! including starfury!). I think however the cause of these problems were other applications I was running. sometimes alt + tab did not work and I saved, quit and reloaded, and that seemed to work. I never got any errors before an hour - 2 hours of game play, so even reloading eventually caused it.

There were a few minor bugs, which I have written all over this post, but there was nothing that made the game unplayable (thanks beta testers!)

I did not figure out what makes combat end, I am guessing a distance from your ship and target, but once it quit whilst in the middle of just attacking a planet.

Unlimited research is brilliant and what I always wanted, it is probably one of my favourite features as I love doing research in the game and often how I provision most of my colonise, however more balancing is needed with components.. such as Ion engines more efficent than building supply storage (and cheaper)

the funny thing is at diffrent points, in game help, title screen, it says about a manual, however this is missing from the release!

a annoying feature is some components are unbalanced and seem stupid. I wrote about Massive mounts and the first mounts (cant remember name). one has 200% damage, 50% weight increase, the other one 500% damage, 200% weight increase. Without range increase, it is better to build loads of little ones, unless my maths is wrong :S

I could go on more but I will finish with...

Will I buy the game... honestly, not at first, I may wait a year but I 100% will buy it eventually. The game is bloody good it plays like SEIV only much better, the combat is brilliant and I did simulator so many times because it was just fun and looked wonderful. I can only hope that all the layouts tables and filters go from SEIV to SEV as that is my main complaints, I would love to just be able to use the SEIV tables (and I would like the ability to copy the built in tables and start from that... not edit them, but start a new one with the defaults of another.) There were no big problems other than the general hard to migrate feeling of leeving SEIV and using something new, over time I will get used to everything new, there is nothing bad, it is just really diffrent.

Why wont I be buying the game? a) there are minor bugs, but knwoing how well SEIV was looked after, they will be fixed soon, however I would still buy it if it wasnt for b) my company is taking up increasing ammounts of my time, I waisted a whole day playing the demo and posting here! if I buy it, I know I will be addicted and not get on with any work. provisioning time doesnt work as I will try to sneak in a game, and before I know it, I have waisted a week playing! (happened before, with star trek mod...)

to finish off in these words.

"good game, very minor problems but nothing unfixable", 27% rating from me

I deducated 70% because I was not selected as beta tester! real rating, 97%


I hope I didnt repeat my self much, it is 2:40AM and I am about to go to bed! taken me ages typing this up, and my arms are killing!

[wilhil]

well, before the weekends done, i thought I would try another game.

I clicked explore on a ship, it went through a warp point and stoped in the new system with movement points left, I then clicked explore again, and it has found gone on to a new system but not moved properlly and it did a lot more moves that it should... basically really weird behaviour and I can not explain it. :S

[frightlever]

"Please do not blame the beta testers for this..."

I didn't. I blamed the beta-testing process. If big AH doesn't want to take your advice there's only so much you can do.

Wilhil - 97%? There's a solid 80% game lurking under a 50% interface. I played for about 3 hours this morning and I'm over my issues with the system display. I still want to see it changed but it's not annoying me so much anymore.

I opened SEIV up again to see what so different with its interface. Take the SEIV display and replace the 2D display with the 2D/3D display of SEV and you've got everything you need. Move stuff like the Deconstrucion sub-options to a separate screen (like in IV) to reduce the number of icons on screen and you won't even need to add that many extra icons.

Look at ship designs. I want to see my units - in IV I click on Units in the Design menu while in V I click on Filter, click on non-obsolete Unit designs and click close. Why? Theres room on that menu for Our Ship Designs, Our Unit Designs, Enemy Ship Designs, Enemy Unit Designs and a toggle for Hide Obsolete. There's no need for a filter option.

In fact the whole design philosophy seems to have been to hide the meat behind Filter and Layout options. The custom layouts are a good thing but the basic report layouts should just be a click away not three clicks away.

[Suicide Junkie]

StarShadow said:
Well I just noticed something on this topic. Engines do seem to be the best way to add supply storage to ships...bases are a whole 'nother thing. You have to add supply storage to bases (ordinance too if your weapons need it), as bases no longer seem to generate their own supplies. Without supplies your base is just a sitting duck...no shields, can't fire...

Is this a bug? Shouldn't bases generate supplies for their personal use?

Resupply depots deliver 500 points to vehicles anywhere in the system in addition to generating them.

The real problem is that bases don't give much indication that they NEED supply tanks.
In GGmod, I just give all ships a design requirement that they have supply.

[StarShadow]

Yes, I like that new feature of the resupply depots. What I meant though was that bases should function like their SEIV counterparts and generate their own 'endless' supplies.

[Q]

After about 12 hours playing with the demo I overall like SE V in spite of the problems with insufficient and unpractical interface and displays.
The possibilities of modding seem very exciting to me and I trust that MM will fix the major points of critics. The combat is excellent in my opinion and in contrast to many reports here, I had not a single malfunction of the game. However I am concerned that apparently the voices of many beta-testers have been ignored.
I am still not sure how good the AI is, because the demo works with medium AI difficulty. And the intel system seems as bad as in SE III and IV.
Anyway I will buy the game and trust that MM will hear and respond to our suggested improvents.

[Suicide Junkie]

There is no longer infinite supply generation.

And, of course there is no reason why you can't add a generation ability to bases. Solar panels work well.

99% of the time, bases will have plenty of supplies and ordnance stored anyways... the only time they wouldn't is if the enemy lays siege to them, in which case the limited supply is a feature.
Throwing enough cannon fodder at your bases that they run out of ammo is a VERY expensive way to win a battle.

[wilhil]

To add to my very long post, and @frightlever, 97% really was to game play and I was tired when writing.

I think honestly and from a profesional side, the game how it is deserves a 85-90% because it is extremly playable and works well however as a SEIV player, I would give it 70% and to get higher it really needs to have the SAME filters, coloumns and info as in SEIV, I still think SEIV is much better in this area and I wish that it was put in.

If this was added, I would easily and happy give the game a 95%+ as this is the only thing that makes it less playable as it is extremly awkward on long lists and tables to filter and view.

AGAIN, I want the same tables, layout and other info as in SEIV as I honestly think this is what made the game last so long for me, how easy it was to quickly look at info. Right now for colonising, I cant filter avoid systems, I have to change to see what planets are what, then see if there are ships on route at the same time. It is annoying and I have on more than one occassion sent two ships to one planet because I was to lazy to switch between list and ships on route as it takes a while to get around the menu system.

It is bad design when as a end user, you do not do something you can and should do becuase you feel that you cant be bothered to go around the process of changing it.... if you know what I mean.

[Ragnarok-X]

Wow, you are probably the biggest fanboy i have ever seen. I can guarantee if SEV is being tested, and the release is identical to the demo we are facing, most online sites will give it 3/5 stars, maybe partly 2/5. In percent, i assume it will be in the high 60s, just maybe able to breach 70. Not that im going by reviews, but the vast majority does, since SEV is no mainstream game with loads of advertising and previews etc.

And im not talking about the mainstream-sides like IGN or Gamespy. I feel even the Wargamer will not like it.

There is no way it will receive even 80% in its current state.

I need to laugh though. You cant be serious.



it is extremly playable and works

[StarDragon]

This thread reminded me of bugs/discrepencies I forgot to post in the other thread..

Ditto On the facilities/building qeues. My major question is , if it ain't broke why change it? I see no "enhancement" by the chages, only a lowering of quality/ease of use.

I cringe by the implication that what we see now is basicly the release version minus "stuff".

I miss all the build icons and status icons of my planets, it makes things harder to remember as to what I have on each particular planet until I click on it..

Bring back more SE4 features PLEASE!!!. SE4 was (and still is) a great game and although I like the majority of the window dressing, the interfaces and ways of doing things has becoem harder, more complicated and overall less enjoyable.

On a final note, who ever made the Terran Dread is blind... I extracted the model to make a render and it's out of porportion. Either it was meant to be that way(asymetrical), or just sloppy 3d work. I corrected it and mirrored the relevant parts.

That reminds me, what are the polygon limits for adding NEW ships (or components)to the game? IS that even a limiting factor? (I'm thinking ahead of translating some WIP mods I have for SE4 and improving them for SE5).

Do SE4 mods work with SE5, or even just parts of them?

[wilhil]

When I said +80% I am talking simply about playability. Graphics, 3d and all that never goes in to my reviews (and I have done a few professionally before) I simply rate based on the ammount of fun I have when playing, compare with features of other games within the same genre, and everything else.

If I was writing a professional review I would say it was a bloody good space strategy game with minor flaws hence 80%-85%. The only thing preventing more is due to the fact it takes ages to get to certain features and certain views in the tables/filters are annoying, but still, all the features are there which is why it gets it. if they were re organised to make it easy to get to the features, then the gameplay would be a lot smoother.

When I do a review, I always take in to consideration a lot of other factors, one being the developer/s and past titles, by the way SEIV was supported, I think the features will be included, it will just take some time.

Honestly, if the tables are putten in like in SEIV and the other things I said.... if I was asked to review the game, I would of easily and honestly given it a 90%-95%. if it was out of 5, being a niche game, it would never get a 5, but when all the other factors are considered, it would probably easily get a 4/5

I would say more, but I am not being paid to review it!

[Noble713]

StarDragon said:
That reminds me, what are the polygon limits for adding NEW ships (or components)to the game? IS that even a limiting factor? (I'm thinking ahead of translating some WIP mods I have for SE4 and improving them for SE5).




In another thread Captain Kwok recommended no more than 300-500 polys, I think. On the subject of polys, I wonder how efficient/inefficient the 3d engine is. In ground battles with several dozen troops on the screen the game starts to chug. I can play Rome:Total War with hundreds of infantry, all with far more polys than SE5's units (plus animations!) with no problem.

[Raapys]

Rome's units doesn't have individual AI though, and there's some pretty heavy LOD. Not sure if SEV even has LOD? That's not scratching the fact that Rome probably had ten times as much resources put into the engine.

Oh, one thing that's been annoying me to no end in SEV regarding combat is how it's not possible to zoom further out. So many games have this issue when switching to 3D.

[Captain Kwok]

The zoom amounts can be changed in settings.txt, although the demo settings file is probably locked.

[Raapys]

Ah, that's good to know. I'll see if it's possible in the demo as well.

[Quitch]

I'm a SEIII player. I worshipped at the idol of SEIII and loved it to bits... in part because the graphics were easy to customise so I could make my own ship design even though I suck at art, but mainly because the game was massively customisable and deep, yet the interface (and more importantly the advisers) kept it managable. There were niggles, like contructions ministers failing to scrap obsolete buildings, but I loved it.


For some reason I never picked up SEIV. I think it's because the demo was limited to 100 turns, so I didn't really get a chance to fall in love again. I have happy memories of the SEIII demo and the epic war I had going, with my empire and another allied against two others (not forced, came about as part of the game) and only a couple of sectors linking our two halves of the galaxy. I lost count of the number of cruisers which died in those sectors.

So, having missed IV I was happily looking forward to V. The fact that the AI was going to be easier to tweak was a massive bonus, since I'm an offline gamer. I'd played Galactic Civilisations 2, but it all seemed a little empty and souless, where as SEIII had truly random races and enough treaties to keep things interesting. I was ready to rejoin the world of SE.

Yet the above has me deeply concerned. I'm actualy stunned that SEV hasn't moved beyond text windows for the tutorial, and that the damn things are flipping tiny! Not to mention that they don't work with the scroll wheel. It also sounds like much of the customisation for which I live is gone...

I am worried and am seriously considering getting SEIV gold, along with that improved AI mod.

[Raapys]

Actually, the customization is higher than ever, from what I've gathered. Heck, now it's even possible to make wormholes that can only allow certain ship-sizes. The problem with this incarnation of Space Empires is, to me, purely the GUI, which is very awkward, illogical and tedious.

[Phoenix-D]

settings.txt is not locked in the demo. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The wormhole sizes thing does NOT work as far as I can tell. Quitch: if you've only played SEIII..SE5's customization is going to blow you out of the water.

[Raapys]

Neat, it was possible to increase the number of AI's and systems through it. Now I've got 4 Amon'Krie(ish) empires in my game and 3 others. I set the startdate to 25000, never know if it might avoid the 100-turn limit.

[frightlever]

Speaking of Rome Total War - if the SEV demo gets 95% what score would you give to RTW, Wilhil?

R:TW is probably the only game I've logged close to as many hours in as SEIV. I know they're not comparable but at this rate I'll be buying Medievel TW 2 before SEV.

[wilhil]

honestly, I have not played it!

I have been giving gaming a break recently as my other jobs have been taking up a lot of my time.

the honest truth again to high ratings, I can honestly 100% say that some rating systems just suck, talking about tv game shows, some bias mags... where they get people not interested in a genre and tell them to review it. At the end of the day, if you hate FPS games, you wouldnt play one if it had a 100% rating, and space games are niche, especially space strategy. It is always important to get someone who is interested in the genere/niche to rate a game and to others in the same genre, not to other games, and you have to take a lot of other factors in to consideration as well.

I personally used to review real time and turn based strategy games along with a niche of space games and sim flying games... havent done it for ages! but it was good fun! I hope to start doing it again along with my main business soon as I am hoping to launch some new big website projects early next year!

[frightlever]

And will this new website use your innovative ratings system running the gamut from 90%(rubbish) to 100%(brilliant)? Hehe.

I take your point about games being reviewed by people who don't like the genres involved though.

[wilhil]

seriously as I said, it does not get a 90% in its current state, due to the fact it needs to have the tables and filters.. general UI stuff sorted, there will be no problem giving it close to 95% once that is in place.

When I did the long post, I was not being entirly serious, it is not as though I am being paid here to test out the game and do a full report... I used to write reports, reviews, scoring... everything! I used to have one to one chats with devs or reps of the devs/publishers, but I am just giving a little review from playing a little! please dont take it to seriously!

[frightlever]

Chill! I'm teasing.

[wilhil]

sorry, i didnt mean to be so aggresive sounding! long day and all!

[Fyron]

Are these sites being tested outside of IE? heheh, j/k.

[Blade W]

I sadly constated that the AI isnt much improved since SE:IV, as I hoped. In the AI home system I saw a 22% mineral planet filled with 20+ mines and next to this there is a research colony (20+ facility too) with 122% mineral value.

However nice to see all the new diplomatic options, but diplomacy with the AI seems as pointless and dumb as was in SE:IV.

[wilhil]

lol, I honestly wondered if you were reading or would of remembered!

I have been learning more about other techs, but I still generally think if it looks alright, there is no need to stick to them strictly... I am using more and more, but probably not as many as you would want me to, but that is another issue I wont go in to!


however one project I am working on will require standard, but I cant go in to more details at the moment http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif shhh!

[Uncle_Joe]

So I guess I'm the only one getting so many Access Violations that I cant even get to turn 20, eh? Any suggestions? Do I have a bad install? I cant imagine that I'm having any issues with systems specs.

What are some potential causes of 'access violations'?

Thanks

[Phoenix-D]

In my case it was from my dual core machine. If you have a dual core processor, open SE5, CTRL-ALT-DELETE, click the process tab, right-click Se5.exe, click Set Affinity and deselect one core. See if that helps.

You have to do it every time you launch SE5, though. :/

Beyond that I'm not sure what it could be.

[reen]

I had once a problem as i didn't choose one of the different minister files at the starting options menu...
the game crashed very often, and the safe files were corrupted... perhaps this might help

[Uncle_Joe]

Thanks guys, but I dont have a dual core system and I've been selecting a minister style too although that was a problem at the start for me too.

I get it in the simulator (which I've stopped using) but I also get it simply designing ships.

[Phoenix-D]

Try turning on the design minister and letting that do all your ships, see if it still crashes. That might help us narrow it down a little. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

And email MM about with as good a description as you can. The demo is probably a little more unstable thanks to all the restrictions, but he needs to know about the issue.

[Spoo]

After playing for a few hours, I think I enjoy the game over-all. However, I agree that the UI needs refinement. Using the keyboard shortcuts helps a lot.

I would also like ship design to be more meaningful. It feels half-implemented to me. If there are going to be engine limits for each ship, then why not have engine slots? Why am I allowed to put guns in the center of the ship? Why have so many available slots even for frigates?

[RonGianti]

The GAMING GODS ARE SMILING! Downloading now, WOOT!

[boran_blok]

I really reccomend the Torrent. I'll be seeding the rest of the day.
Enjoy it people!

[Captain Kwok]

Blade W said:
I sadly constated that the AI isnt much improved since SE:IV, as I hoped. In the AI home system I saw a 22% mineral planet filled with 20+ mines and next to this there is a research colony (20+ facility too) with 122% mineral value. However nice to see all the new diplomatic options, but diplomacy with the AI seems as pointless and dumb as was in SE:IV.

It's due to the way the current AI is setup to choose colonies type, which is based first on having a percentage of each colony type - rather than evaluating the planet first for what colony type it would be best as. I suspect a script doing the later will come along shortly after the game's release. For diplomacy, I think AI treaty proposals generate random terms which is pretty crappy. I'd imagine improving that set of scripts will be a priority among AI modders.

[Barnacle Bill]

Being an old timer who played these things as board games back in the 70's, I don't get too worked up over the UI stuff. At the risk of sounding like Grandpa talking about how he walked 10 miles through the snow to school every day, I had loads of fun playing Stellar Conquest and that meant keeping MOO1-style records on every colony in your empire with pencil/paper/calculator http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

What I do care about is features & "game mechanics" (i.e. the "rules", including customization opportunities). That's what makes a great game to me.

OK, I played the tutorial and am about 1/2 way through a "full" 100 turn game with my own custom-designed race (using the Terran shipset). Here's what I think so far...

I wish they'd have provided a manual of some sort (e.g. the "Great Invasions" devs posted a full beta manual on their website). Even for an experienced SEIII/SEIV player, there are a lot of questions. I hope now that the demo is out the beta testers are allowed to answer "how does it work" (or "how is it supposed to work") questions...

My biggest beef with SEIII/SEIV was in the diplomacy area - specifically the inability to defend your territory from your "allies". In SEIII, once you signed a treaty whereby combat didn't occur if you were in the same sector, the AI's colony ships would swarm into your systems and colonize anything they could. They also had a tendency to sign such a treat, spend a few turns penetrating deep into your empire, and then Pearl Harbor you. So, I always had to keep it to "non-aggression" or war and garison the border warp points. It kind of felt like Rome vs the Barbarians. I thought SEIV would fix that with the ability to clain systems and negociate ownership, but the AI turned out to be automatically programmed to claim any system adjacent to one contailing their colony - even if a few turns earlier they had dropped their claim as part of an agreement with you. So, Rome vs the Barbarians again.

I like the custom treaty system in SEV. A question I have is relative to the treaty element "can colonize each others systems" - does this mean unless I make such an agreement they can't, even if I have all sorts of alliances with them otherwise? Also, I don't see a mechanism to claim a system - what makes it "mine" from the standpoint of that treaty element? Also, I have one race in my game that just seems to ignore diplomatic proposals - no answer at all - bug or feature? How does the AI react to getting beat up? I mean if I thrash his fleet is he more likely to agree to my treaty proposals because he's intimidated, or less likely because he's angry?

Some aspects of the GUI are actually improvements, BTW. For example, I like the ability to create custom reports, the ability to save & recall build ques & that I can now upgrade ships while they are still in fleets.

On the subject of upgrades, now that higher levels of a given hull type are available (e.g. larger sizes of Frigate with each level of the applicable tech), I think this could have been used for a more effective limit on upgrading that the cost rule carried over from SEIV (which never stopped anybody, just made you go through several upgrade steps). My idea is just don't allow a ship to upgrade to a design that uses a larger "level" of hull that it has. You'd need to ability to upgrade designs without upgrading the hull level, but that wouldn't be a big deal. Eventually your oldest ships might have the latest tech, but would be significantly smaller & less capable than newer ones (more or less how it works in real life).

On the subject of ship design, that is a place where I do admit the GUI needs a little work. I'd like an SEIV-type collapsed view so I could see at a glance what was on a given design. Having the level of the system superimposed on its icon as in SEIV would also be nice. Having the boxes aranged on an outline of the ship is visually interesting, but unless the decks actually mean something in combat I'd prefer to get just three rows of slots/boxes - armor, outer hull & inner hull. The collapsed view should show those separeately, since it does apparently matter.

One thing that I find odd is that (so far, up to light cruiser) level 5 of a hull type uncovers the tech for the next hull type. The odd part is that a level 5 frigate hull and a level 1 destroyer hull have the same volume, but the destroyer has more crew & life support overhead, so the frigate ends up more capable! That doesn't seem right. The starting point for a given hull type should still be bigger than the prerequisite level of the next smaller hull type (easily modable, though).

I like the new system-wide function of Resupply Depots. I think that will make maintaining warp point pickets in your own systems without all the micromanagement (in my game so far my fleet is too small to afford to park ships, though). I find the separation of supplies & ordnance interesting. I can envision large scale offensive operations requiring a considerable fleet train of logistics ships - especially if you use a lot of ordnance-intensive weapons. Somebody up-topic mentioned how their fighters sucked their carrier dry of supplies & ordnance - sounds like something you need to allow for in carrier design (real life carriers devote a lot of internal space to that). Again, my fleet is still too small to have to worry about it, but can you directly transfer supplies & ordnance between ships? Do ships in the same fleet share?

Only one battle so far. One of my exploration Frigates mounting a 1st generation missile launcher (or maybe 2) popped into a warp point defended by a gaggle of Depleted Uranium Cannon-armed Frigates belonging to the race mentioned above (the one that won't talk - in fact this was "first contact"). I was quickly wiped out, but went back to my previous save & tried again a few times to get the hang of the combat system. As it turned out, the gaggle were all either the same speed or 1 slower than me, so if I took off immediately running away they could not close to within weapons range (the range rings are cool). I could let the lead guy catch up to my missile envelop, then run again while pounding him - three broadsides => mission kill (speed <4) - wait until the next guy passed the first & repeat. Unlike SEIV, there is no corner to catch you. After I got the last one, I probably had insufficent odnance to actually finish any of them off. So, I tried circling around back to the warp point to escape, but the combat ended before I got very far along on that plan. It seems like a design strategy of the highest speed & longest range weapons will mean that the worst that can happen to you is a stalemate (if the other guy has lots of point defense). I'm not sure that's a good thing, but that was SEIV, too. Now you have to worry abount running out of ordnance, though. Of course, stalemate isn't good if you are on the strategic defensive...

[Phoenix-D]

"Can conlonize each other systems" means you can ONLY colonize in the other's systems if that's turned on. You can have a full military treaty and still not allow that.

Who gets what is determined by who plants a colony there first, as far as I can tell.

The position of components does matter. Once your shields and armor fail, damage is directional- if the hit comes from behind, components at the back will die first.

Speed is life if you have short range weapons, yes. That's fairly basic tactics. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif What a human player could do, and the AI sadly won't, is split his force to try and hem you in from multiple directions. At least in SE5 you can't do the "missile dance" anymore.

[Barnacle Bill]

Phoenix-D said:
"Can conlonize each other systems" means you can ONLY colonize in the other's systems if that's turned on. You can have a full military treaty and still not allow that.




Great - exactly what I was hoping for...


Phoenix-D said:
Who gets what is determined by who plants a colony there first, as far as I can tell.




Not so great - don't want any alien colonies in systems that link my empire, either. If I could claim them a la SEIV, but their recognition of the claim would stick unlike SEIV...


Phoenix-D said:
The position of components does matter. Once your shields and armor fail, damage is directional- if the hit comes from behind, components at the back will die first.




Interesting... Kind of the opposite of Star Fleet Battles, where shields are directional but the interior stuff is not. Is armor directional?


Phoenix-D said:
Speed is life if you have short range weapons, yes. That's fairly basic tactics. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif What a human player could do, and the AI sadly won't, is split his force to try and hem you in from multiple directions. At least in SE5 you can't do the "missile dance" anymore.



Actually, what I did was the SEV equivalent of the missile dance. Given the relative speeds and starting positions (all of the gaggle in a roughly 120 degree arc from me and initially out or range), I think even a human player would have had trouble hemming me in by splitting his force. Then again, this tended to be an issue in Starfire (the board game which originally inspired SE) as well. Maybe I'm missing something, though. It bears some watching...

On another note, I really like the visibility range thing in the system display. This promises to slow down the initial land rush, since you now have to survey the system. It also offeres some possibility of Midway-like carrier battles...

[Phoenix-D]

Armor isn't directional either. Go figure.

What you did wasn't qyite the missile dance. The missile dance was worse- even if your opponent had the same range of missile, you could duck in, fire, and duck out. He'd never get to shoot back.

[AAshbery76]

I think the demo rocks and you can see the vast improvement over SEIV on all levels.After an hours play the UI is no problem either.


My only problem is the stupid A.I diplomacy.It lacks any logic.Spawning offers of no research,no intel for a trade deal every turn is insane.The A.I should never offer no research treatys at all,especially when there are other Empires in the galaxy.I really hope the A.I gets more attention by gold.

[Mephisto]

BTW a quick tip abot custom layouts: If you save your empire during a game, it will save your custom layouts with it. You can then create a new race for a new game based on this file with your custom layouts right with it.

[Noble713]

Again, my fleet is still too small to have to worry about it, but can you directly transfer supplies & ordnance between ships?



Yes, on the cargo transfer screen.



Do ships in the same fleet share?[



It doesn't seem like it.

[Barnacle Bill]

wilhil said:
Had my game up to 100 turns, (tried looking in save game for hex value of turns then put it back to 1, and changing all the 100's to 300's in the exe, but no luck, although the game ran fine with no problems, no idea what them 100's where! I would have more of a look later, but I have to much work to do and I have waisted a day playing!)




This is really getting in the way-back machine, but if I recall correctly we had a similar situation with SEIV (limited turns demo out weeks/months before the game) and there was a work-around. IIRC, what you had to do was hex-edit the savegame file to change the date. IIRC, it messed up the log but otherwise ran fine. However, it's been 6-7 years, so maybe I'm confused with some other game. I'll probably p-lay around with it once I get to 100 turns, bewcause I really hate to leave a game in progress unfinished...

[StarShadow]

Hey...correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like it's possible to trade unique/racial techs in SEV, that's pretty cool..

[Jayalin]

Question: I tried the "ALLTECH" cheat someone mentioned in some thread somewhere, as I wanted to see what sort of technologies are avaliable later in the game. I have to say, I hope that a lot of techs aren't included in the demo, because the results seemed pretty sparse, even in comparison to SEIV. Is this the case?

Also, a lot of the weapon damage formulas seemed to be weird, because it looked like at max level pretty much everything is inferior to anti-proton beam, including all the high-energy weapons and so forth. I thought this was pretty weird?

[arthurtuxedo]

Jayalin said:
Question: I tried the "ALLTECH" cheat someone mentioned in some thread somewhere, as I wanted to see what sort of technologies are avaliable later in the game. I have to say, I hope that a lot of techs aren't included in the demo, because the results seemed pretty sparse, even in comparison to SEIV. Is this the case?

Also, a lot of the weapon damage formulas seemed to be weird, because it looked like at max level pretty much everything is inferior to anti-proton beam, including all the high-energy weapons and so forth. I thought this was pretty weird?


If you look more closely, you'll find that even the APB is inferior to the Meson Blaster, which has the same damage and range, but is smaller and uses less supply. Also, the Meson Blaster version of point defence is a slam dunk compared to the other two forms of PD. Because of the way the formulas are written (Meson Blaster starts at lower damage but gets the same amount per level), I'm going to make an early call and say that the Meson Blaster will be the best weapon in the game, the Phased Polaron Beam of SEV.

Anyway, only some of the techs are actually included in the demo, and I suspect that some of the techs we did get are disabled (people are reporting that emissive does nothing, for instance, which I hope means that it's disabled for the demo rather than bugged).

[StarShadow]

Nah..if you want a really strong (direct fire) weapon, you need a maxed out telekinetic projector, range 12, and it does 1000+ damage unmounted...

In any case, you have to take into account the space each weapon takes up, and the fire rate, and the range(it's always nice to get the first shot). For example, you can fit 3 meson blasters in the space 2 APB's would take up, plus the meson blasters have range 12, APB's have a max range of only 9.

[StarShadow]

@arthurtuxedo

not quite right..the meson has a longer range(12) vs the APB(9).

As for the award of Best Weapon, I nominate the Kinetic Projector (Psychic Weapon), it has a range of 12, and a max damage of over 1000, unmounted.

[arthurtuxedo]

Yes but you can fit 2 Meson Blasters for every Kinetic and they cost 1,000 starting points, so I still give the nod to Mesons.

[Captain Kwok]

Warning. Do not look for logic or balance in the data files! Your brain will overload and your body will shut down. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/stupid.gif

[StarShadow]

Actually, the Kinetic does exactly twice the damage of Meson, the starting points aren't even a factor. So in the end, you end up with equal damage (vs space), at a cheaper overall cost. Advantage: Kinetic.

[Captain Kwok]

You could argue though that you need to spend 1000 racial points to get the Telekinetic Projector, which in turn might reduce its advantage...

[StarShadow]

And I could argue right back that you could always get an extra 1000 points by taking inept farming/inept refining. The 5% hit on farming and refining is really rather miniscule since organics are still barely used (unless you take the organic trait), and rads are still used less than minerals. Plus you get access to more than one weapon, and some nice facilities (system-wide training, for example), also.

[arthurtuxedo]

Yes, you can easily game the system and get 1,000 starting points with basically no drawbacks, but you're ignoring opportunity cost. Those thousand points could have been used for a lot of other stuff, like organic, crystalline, etc.

Also, twice the weapons for the same total damage is advantageous vs. fighters, and increases the chance of hitting with at least one of those weapons.

I agree that Telekinetic Projectors share the "way better than the other weapons" spot, but I still say Mesons slightly edge them out, all things considered.

[StarShadow]

Game the system? The negative options (ie drawbacks that give extra creation points) are there for a reason. And frankly I don't think that arguement makes any sense. Spending 100 points on the Psychic trait isn't advantagous because you could have spent them on a different trait? I don't get it. Taking a racial trait is *easier* to justify (and finance) in SEV, than it was in SEIV. In SEIV, I'd have the choice of taking a racial trait (for 1500 points), or bumping up my construction to 150%, after having to juggle points in other skills. Compared to SEIV, race creation in SEV is extremely simplified.

As for fighters, that's a complete non-point, point defenses are for fighters, not main guns.

[arthurtuxedo]

The drawbacks that you speak of are not really drawbacks at all, compared to what you can buy with them. -5% organic and intel for +25% construction, as an example. But eventually you run out of things to decrease, and you have to make some choices. If you choose Psychic, you're missing out on at least one 1,000 point choice, such as the aforementioned +25% build rate. So if you have two weapons that are very close in performance, but in order to have access to one of them, you have to give up +25% build rate or a similar advantage, the other one is the better weapon overall.

[StarShadow]

I'm sorry, but you are really just grasping for reasons, this arguement makes less sense than your last one. How about we just agree to disagree?

[Fyron]

Opportunity cost is a very real and present aspect.

[StarShadow]

I just don't see it. If you could explain it to me, I would have a better idea, of what, precisely, you mean.

[Yimboli]

The fact that you can simply take the hits on refining and organic harvesting to get back the 1000 means nothing. I think you're focusing on the small picture. While the psychic tech is kinda free, you still must consider that you are expending 1000 racial points to get the psychic tech no matter what. If you and I are playing in a game, let's assume you'll use the 1000 for psychic tech and get it right back by taking hits on refining and organics. It's definitely a plus for you as long as you don't look at the big picture. I can just as easily take hits on refining and organics, and use the 1000 elsewhere, which may or may not benefit me more than psychic tech. You're still trading 1000 points for psychic tech. I can't emphasize that enough. It's great that you're getting those points back by reducing refining and organics, but everyone has that option so it's not an advantage. And if you hadn't chosen psychic tech you'd have 1000 more racial points.

No matter which way you look at it, you are trading 1000 racial points for psychic tech at the most basic and undebatable level.

Since you said oppurtunity cost didn't make sense, as an aside I'll mention that this is what Fyron's referring to as oppurtunity cost (he payed attention in economics) - if you had not chosen psychic tech you'd still have 1000 racial points to distribute, so the oppurtunity cost of psychic tech is 1000 racial points. That's the definition of oppurtunity cost. If you get those points back some other way it's superfluous.

If you still don't understand oppurtunity cost check it out on wikipedia.

If you think the psychic tech is free, you're kinda right. This fact does not, however, create an advantage over other players and also does not *necessarily* make the psychic direct fire weapon better than the meson blaster. Those points could potentially be spent elsewhere that might outweigh the benefits of psychic tech. I think that's everyone's point here (at least those that argue with you) - there's still options to explore so the case isn't closed yet.

Cheers!

[Kamog]

There is a nasty weapon called "Shield Imploder." The damage type is Shield Implosion:
"The target vehicle takes a percentage of its shields as internal damage and all shields are removed."

That would be a devestating weapon to use. It's in the Components.txt file but you can't access it in the demo because it requires a technology that's not available in the demo.

[Fyron]

And to think, the adjustable racial characteristics were removed due to complaints about imbalance... I think I'm gonna be sick. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

[StarShadow]

I've never complained about it, I've always loved being able to adjust characteristics. Although since that got removed, I must be in the minority.

[Will]

Just jumping in real quick, I noticed some talk about the best weapon in the game. Yet I didn't see any mention of the Canon Cannon?! Ye'gods, man, nothing can beat that!

[Fyron]

Although since that got removed, I must be in the minority.

Actually, you are in a vast majority... Everyone that misses the racial characteristics should email Aaron about it (se5 at malfador dot com). The more that raise an issue, the more likely something will be done. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[StarShadow]

Imperator Fyron said:
Although since that got removed, I must be in the minority.

Actually, you are in a vast majority... Everyone that misses the racial characteristics should email Aaron about it (se5 at malfador dot com). The more that raise an issue, the more likely something will be done. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



If the majority of people liked it then why the phong did it get removed?? Sounds like the 'vocal minority' got to screw the rest of us again. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif