SE5 Demo Bug Reports & Annoyances/Requests

[FaultyAirlock]

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned; I scanned through the thread but didn't see it anywhere...

In the Demo version, happiness is apparently 'backwards'... the government and racial choices that should make your citizens happy actually make them angry, and vice versa.

Other than that, I've encountered a few of the bugs already mentioned; game locking on turn processing, alt-tab problems, etc.

That being said, I'm impressed so far. I was/am a big fan of SEIV and the mods that it spawned, and while the demo certainly has it's share of bugs and balance issues, I'm going to remain cautiously optimistic about it. Good, deep games seem to be a rarity nowadays, and I certainly could use one that'll keep me occupied for months (or even years).

[arthurtuxedo]

I seem to be the only one in the world who is uncautiously optimistic. Sure, the game's got some serious flaws and rough edges, but so did SE4, and the improvments to the combat system and modability are nothing short of massive. Yet most of the buzz I'm hearing is negative.

It makes me wonder if this isn't another case of a great game destroyed by its own community, who turned on the game because it was too different from the previous ones and because they felt that they weren't being listened to. Then when new people try to pick up the game, they carry all the negative buzz with them and notice the problems more than they would have, and don't give it a fair chance. Reviewers are influenced by the negative buzz generated by the fans (turned anti-fans), and don't want to look like idiots, so they give it a bad score, and the whole franchise crashes and burns because of a bunch of whining idiots on forums complaining about virtually nothing. I'm not saying it will happen to SEV to that extent, but that is exactly what happened to Fallout Tactics.

Sorry for the rant, but I really am starting to see people developing and spreading irrational opinions of the game based on things like Aaron supposedly ignoring beta testers (which may or may not actually be true, but has no bearing on the quality of the game), and I would hate to see it happen to SEV.

[StarShadow]

Personally, I just don't see that. I've seen maybe two posts from people who said they absolutely didn't like SEV. Pretty much everyone else likes it to one degree or another. Sure, people are picking out little things they don't like, but almost everyone tends to compare the new to the old. In time most of the little things will be fixed/tweaked (or even left as is), and most people will accept the new things and keep playing. Personally I had some serious reservations about the game before it was released. I wasn't too happy about the 3d system view, or the real-time (sorry..continuous-time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif )tactical combat. After playing the demo (and seeing the *massive* potential of it), I am most definately looking forward to getting a copy, even though I still don't care for the CT combat model, I'll probably get used to it eventually, and might even end up liking it.

As far as people developing/spreading irrational opinions, well, people tend to do that. The best response is to correct any wrong info, or just ignore it. In a worst case scenario Arron could make a post to correct any wrong perceptions.

I just don't see a problem.

[StarShadow]

I have (another) question..do asteroids block ships/weapons? If I stick a base behind an asteriod will it provide protection to the base? I haven't fought in an asteroid field yet, so I don't know yet..

[bearclaw]

There appears to be a problem with fleets. I had about a dozen ships in a fleet all with 11 movement. Lots of supplies each and also included a supply transport. When they started moving in a fleet, they made it about 7 of their 11 movement before running out of supplies completely!!!

[StarShadow]

The Shard Cannon does 15 damage...at lvl 100..that has to be a bug!

[bearclaw]

Did another check and yep, something is buggered. Each of my ships consume 40 supplies per hex. When in a fleet of 10, they should consume 400 supplies per hex. Not so. I moved them and found that they consumed 4000 supplies per hex!

[bearclaw]

And something else. If you select a group (not fleeted) and give the whole grop the move to order, regardless of the movement points of the other ships, the entire group can move the maximum movement of the ship with the most movement points in that group.

[Blade W]

It happens me only with neutral empires. Non-neutrals seems react normally, including they are proposing teatries as well.

However I experienced they might stuck with exploration, which blocks them from expanding. In my game the Abiddons only have 2 colonies (at turn 56), some neutrals have better score, altough they cant leave their home system.

[Kamog]

Sometimes, when I exit the SEV demo, after it shows the ending splash screen for a few seconds, the entire screen turns black and the computer freezes up. I can't exit or use ESC or CTRL-ALT-DEL or ALT-TAB or anything to get it unstuck. I end up having to power off the computer and power back on.

[Kamog]

Occasionally, some of the graphics mess up and look like this. Then I quit and restart the game and it's OK.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/uploads/447750-SEV%20screenshot.JPG

[FaultyAirlock]

I'm not sure where you got the idea that "cautiously optimistic" means anything other than what it is; optimism tempered with realism. And concerning "negative buzz"; almost all the comments so far (including my own) have been positive...

I'm not expecting a bug-free game, or a perfectly balanced game, and I'm CERTAINLY not expecting a game that's exactly like SEIV (because if it WAS exactly like SEIV, I'd just play that instead; it's more stable and I already own it). All I'm really interested in is the game-breaking bugs being fixed... and I'm quite certain Aaron will be able to at least squash the worst of them before it goes gold.

[wrongshui]

Kamog are you running in safe memory mode? It fixed the graphical issue for another guy which looked just like yours.

[AMF]

I have some similar problems, I found that they're usually confined to one of the dialog windows, and if I close that window (using the ESC key) and then reopen it, it's fine.

[Kamog]

Thanks, I tried the 'safe' mode and it seems better; so far the graphics has not messed up. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I landed troops on a aplanet, but when it went into ground combat the terrain was black and there were no buildings. My troops killed the lone militia trooper and the combat ended but the planet was still enemy. I then noticed it was quoting an entirely unknown planet name.

I was getting that same hting every turn so that game was pretty much kaput.

[Ragnarok]

Kamog said:
Thanks, I tried the 'safe' mode and it seems better; so far the graphics has not messed up. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif



Safe mode is the best fix for this problem. I had the same issue. However, you can also fix it by opening a small program, such as calc, and when your graphics mess up in SEV simply alt-tab to the calc program and then back to SEV. It fixes it for a short period but not for long.

Safe mode is the best fix.

[Kamog]

At the end of a turn, it displays a warning "100% research points unspent" even though I have scrapped all my research facilities and have 0 research points.

Same thing happens for intelligence. It displays the points unspent warning even if you don't have any intelligence points to spend.

[StarShadow]

I've noticed that as well. I think they should kill those warning if you have no points to spend. After all, a warning that 100% of 0 research/intel is unallocated, is rather pointless...

[Kamog]

How to do you get Solar Generator facilities (from crystalline tech) to work? I built a Solar Generator on my home planet and it doesn't generate any resources at all. In fact, I have less resources per turn after building it because the facility uses maintenance.

Before building the solar generator:
production: minerals=49593, organics=5616, radioactives=5664
maintenance: 3680 / 400 / 0

After building the solar generator:
production: minerals=49593, organics=5616, radioactives=5664
maintenance: 4280 / 1000 / 600

This is my home system and there is a sun in the system. Is this a bug or is there some way to get it to work?

[wrongshui]

They wasn't working for me neither, nor all the special armors, I think a few abilities aint in the demo.

[StarShadow]

They don't work in the demo.

[Kamog]

In the vehicle design screen, it has the message:
"This vehicle can only have a maximum of 12 movement" (for example)
which isn't entirely correct.

What it really means is that you can only have 12 engines. You can actually have more movement by using engines with bonus movement like quantum engines and also by adding solar sails.

[StarShadow]

True, I've noticed that myself.

[tmcc]

I bought and played to death both SEIII and SEIV and saw multiple patches to fix and improve both, especially SEIV.

At first I did not like the SEV demo but is beginning to grow on me quite a bit, to the point that I am quite tired this morning and my wife will be sending nasty grams to Aaron. Obviously it needs work in a few areas, but experience tells us that we can expect most reasonable requests to be addressed. The key things I think SEV needs:

Fix the bugs.
Add ability to lock the view for each system so it looks the way you left it when you come back (default lock would be good). IMO this is the single biggest time waste in the UI.
Easier weapon targeting in tactical mode. Right now I can't figure out how to tell which weapons are already targeted and on whom.
Positive buzz to drive a large player community that will yield many great ideas and mods and provide necessary $ to keep the improvements coming.
Really good documentation.

As far as CT combat goes I don't really like it so far, mainly because I keep losing battles I would have easily won in SEIV. I guess if I won I would like it. In Xcom Apocalypse there was both CT and turn based combat options. CT was much faster to resolve but always yielded more casualties. Turn based was great for "must win" battles and times when minimal casualties were necessary. I thought this was a great feature in that game and would like to see it in SEV (eventually), probably a stretch though.

Just my tcw.

TM

[Kamog]

In the ship design window, if you move the cursor over the ship portrait, the help message says that you can click on the portrait to get an enlarged version of it.

But when you click on it, nothing happens.

[Captain Kwok]

The Solar Resource Generation ability is not working, so neither are Solar crystalline facilities. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Kamog]

Thanks for the info. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Here's a strange thing I noticed. Sometimes, some of the planets look weird. They still rotate and nothing else seems to be wrong except their strange appearance. If I change the view to a different system and then go back, the appearance of the planets return to normal.

In the picture below, three of the planets look weird.
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/uploads/447985-SEV%20planets.JPG

[Captain Kwok]

Hmm. It looks like the flag texture image is being applied to the texture of the planet. Have never seen that before! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

[Rellep]

While playing around with my "kewl rangez demod" (all weapon ranges about 1000 with alltech) I noticed that, for some reason, projectile weapons simply annihilated anything with beam weapons. It was obvious why missiles would do that (after all, with no way to mod it, direct fire weapons have a "to hit"-modifier of something like -1000) but why, say, meson blasters?

After some testing, I discovered that projectiles are fired directly at the target, with no adjustment whatsoever for hit penalties (or bonuses, for that matter). In other words, they always hit... Unless the target is moving even a bit laterally (in relation to the shooter) in which case they miss all the time, unless the range is so short the target has no time to move away from the bullets path... This also means that manual dodging is possible.

Weird.

[Rellep]

I also noticed that one can clone fighters with combat replay... I fought a battle, lost some fighters, watched replay (watching my destroyers/light carrier annihilate a squadron of alien scum, cool!)... And noticed that there was a new "fighter squadron" occupying the same sector with my ships.

At first I thought my carrier had simply not recovered its fighters after the (Glorious!) battle and simply loaded them, not paying attention to the number of fighters already onboard. Then I watched the battle again, just for kicks. And lo, another squadron-clone appears!

Turns out you can't actually order these squadrons around (they just disappear if given movement orders) but since you can retrieve them...

[Wade]

-----Um...my home planet's temperature for the Terrans is -292 degrees Celcius! Also, absolute zero is -273.15, according to Wikipedia.

I wonder about the gravity and radiation too.

Seems these Terrans are quite TOLERANT to cold (especially BEYOND absolute zero).

[wrongshui]

So i've found 2 fun bugs which could be exploits.

Happiness is backwards, if you choose naturally happy planets get unhappy and if you pick naturally depressed planets get happier.

Also if you use the C key to colonize a system your ship flys off to colonize and runs out of movement points, if you press backspace to cancel its orders and then press C again and pick the planet again it will move one space, even though its out of movement points. You can keep doing this again and again through warp points and all sorts.

[MasterChiToes]

Weapon mounts don't get upgraded when you upgrade a ship design.

[wrongshui]

If you run a a simulation and end it and then click an enemy location in a system you can move enemy around on the sector view, then when you click to end placement you go back to the simulation window and then get an Access Violation error and the game bugs out. Easily reproducable.

[dmm]

I don't know if this is a bug or just a balance issue. Played the SEV demo for about 30 turns. Have missile5 and PDC5. In the simulator, a Frigate5 with 3 missiles easily defeats a LightCruiser2 with 11 PDC and 2 large-mount DUC5s, in either Tactical or Strategic mode. I figured the LC would chase the F into a corner and pummel it, but the missiles get through the PDC too often. [edit: Forgot to mention that LC has CombatSensor4.]

Note that the strategies are set to Med Range for the LC and Max Range for the F. (BTW, I also noticed that changing to Max Range _really_ helps missile ships, and editing the Max Range strategy to break formation and to target the closest ship is also critical for the success of missile ships in multi-ship strategic combats.)

Note also that I didn't know about directional damage until just now, so my PDC and armor are distributed around the perimeter of the LC in an aesthetic fashion. Don't know if that matters. Are there firing arcs as well?

Anyway, is this a bug, or a balance issue, or am I doing something wrong? As it stands, there seems to be no point in using any weapon but missiles for the first 50 turns, and there seems to be no point in bothering with PDC. (I haven't encountered any AI yet. [Wierd, but I did start in the corner.] I guess if they are using fighters I'm in big trouble.)

On the positive side, I love the look of the tactical combat, and how it can be varied from adrenalin-pumping real-time to almost cerebral turn-based. Also love how the ships can't change heading instantly -- they have momentum! Does engine placement affect this? (I'm guessing "no.")

[MasterChiToes]

I offered a treaty, the AI countered, I re-countered, and when the AI re-re-countered there was no reply option in the news, and the message didn't appear under the diplomatic menu.

When the AI escapes in combat, you can reposition your ships in the sector screen (surrounding the AI) and then attack again... maybe escaping ships should move to an adjacent hex (random or directional) so this wouldn't work (and possibly have them end up into an occupied hex and have to fight/flee again).

[wrongshui]

MasterChiToes said:When the AI escapes in combat, you can reposition your ships in the sector screen (surrounding the AI) and then attack again... maybe escaping ships should move to an adjacent hex (random or directional) so this wouldn't work (and possibly have them end up into an occupied hex and have to fight/flee again).



Totally agree, running away doesn't work. Maybe another work around would be to not allow hexes with engaged units in access to the sector view. In such a way that you can still surround them when you attack cloaked, but not after the first round.

[MasterChiToes]

wrongshui said:

MasterChiToes said:When the AI escapes in combat, you can reposition your ships in the sector screen (surrounding the AI) and then attack again... maybe escaping ships should move to an adjacent hex (random or directional) so this wouldn't work (and possibly have them end up into an occupied hex and have to fight/flee again).


Totally agree, running away doesn't work. Maybe another work around would be to not allow hexes with engaged units in access to the sector view. In such a way that you can still surround them when you attack cloaked, but not after the first round.


Still doesn't remove all the potential abuse... add sensors to a colony ship and use it as a scout, every time it runs out of movement go into sector view and place it on the edge of the map... should be completely safe from the AI unless engaging it moves it to another sector.

[wrongshui]

Any new engangement could always be centered around the defender, with the attackers at a set distance? The map is semi dynamic size wise so it could be possible.

[Captain Kwok]

I think fleeing ships that pass the "borders" of the combat area should move into the adjacent sector in the sytem. Any new combat in that sector would start in the middle again.

Sector placement should not be allowed for sectors that currently have an enemy presence.

[wrongshui]

Aw but I like using cloaking devices to do that, actually gives them a use in combat.

[jowe01]

Captain Kwok said:
I think the problem is limited to a couple of the races. For example, the Phong seem much more inclined to offer up treaties than some of the other guys. I'll have to investigate this matter more fully though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/stupid.gif



It is not only about them not offering treaties. Whe i send them a treaty proposal, I never revcéive any reaction. The do not even refuse, there just is no reaction at all.

[StarShadow]

I always get a reaction. Unless you have the Comms tab on the log showing, it's easy to miss though.

[neofit]

A couple of days ago I've been searching the web for a place to pre-order the SEV. Not anymore, until I see a playable demo first.

I'm a big fan of SEIV. My system: Intel Dual Core 2 Duo E6600, 3Gb RAM, Nvidia 7950GX2/1Gb graphics with the latest drivers. This system runs Everquest 2 at the highest settings (but the shadows) without a problem. In the SEV demo the mouse pointer is so slow that it's work just to navigate the menus. The pointer is very slow and lags constantly.

I've tried some suggestions in this thread. Removing AA and AF gave nothing. Setting the affinity of my dual-core to a single CPU seemed to help a bit, but still not enough, I still feel like I'm fighting with the cursor. Maybe it has something to do with the instant tooltips? Some even stick to the screen until I move the mouse cursor over them again. All screens are bad, but the worst are the game setup screens (when creating the race and stuff before a new game), the research and the ship design screens.

Then there is screen corruption on the 3D combat screen. I've tried to start one with the combat simulator, using a ship I so painfully created http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. After a few seconds of combat the 3-D screen starts to stop being updated, in large lines from the bottom to the top, the cursor leaves a trail on it, yet the menus at the bottom are being refreshed. I have to pause the simulation then resume it for the refresh to kick back in.

So, with the empire management screens (the meat of the game) unusable, and some weird corruption on the 3-D combat display, I'll give it a miss until I can see some changes without paying upfront.

Another thing - a suggestion about the planetary screen rotation. How hard would it be to implement a rotation system that does not involve moving the mouse to the sceen edge? We're not in the early 90s anymore, and many games, namely the RTS ones, have shown that it is quite possible to rotate a 3-D view by simply holding the right mouse button for instance then moving the mouse. Or maybe holding shift or control then moving the mouse? Moving the cursor to the screen edge to rotate is as clunky as... having 'hotkeys' that require to hands to be used (like the Shift-<key> ones), while the third hand is on the mouse to select objects http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

[tmcc]

I have seen both behaviors. Sometimes a race refuses the treaty and other times there is no response at all. Seems to be empire dependent in my experience. So far if an empire responds once it tends to always respond and likewise if it starts off not responding then it never does, at least in the game I'm playing. Maybe there is a hidden racial trait for rudeness http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

TM

[MasterChiToes]

Sentry is a sweet command (if there are no enemies already in sight)... however without a guard or skip turn command, I still end up wasting a ton of time clicking next to be sure I am done moving all my ships.

[edit]One more thing... what is with having coordinates as an option for the ship screen, but not system? I know you can see the system highlight in the minimap when you mouseover the ship in the list, but still... sorting ships by system would be invaluable.

[StarShadow]

@neo

Did you try changing to Safe video memory mode? That has cleared most people's video problems.

[wrongshui]

Safe memory mode fixed my 20-30 second mouse lag in window mode.

[jowe01]

Finished my first two demo games. Besides diplomacy not working (for me?, see above), the AI still is my main complaint. I ran a fighter-based strategy in the second game and the AIs failed to put any point-defense on their ships. Furthermore, there were no serious attacks from the AI (I always could feel very safe.

BTW, I sometimes had the impression that the defensive bonus of fighters do not really. With the 80 bonus and the AIs not using point defense weapons, they should shoot down very few of my fighters. However, about every second shot hit its mark.

[tmcc]

Found a new bug/feature last night. When setting construction queues to repeat build in the queue settings tab the first ship will be built in the normal time (3 turns for the frigate I designed) and then all subsequent ships of that design are built in 1 turn. Once this ship is removed from the queue build time reverts to the standard. As long as one instance of the ship remains in the queue more can be added at 1 turn each.

[Captain Kwok]

The combat hull bonuses are not being applied, it's a known bug. The AI could use some design optimization. Although some of the AI races are wimpy - others seem to be a lot more aggressive in attacking.

[BBegemott]

/threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif Colonisers have unlimited speed!. I have a coloniser, that has orders to move to PlanetX and colonise. I cancell its orders, then order to colonise the same planet again. It moves 1 hex towards the planet, though it has 0 movement points left!

/threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif drones have unlimited supplies! Few of my drones has croees 5-6 systems without losing a single supply point. And no, I do not have a resuply depot in any of the systems.

EDIT- And now the most insane bug: altering constant 'Starting Game Date' in Settings.txt it is possible to bypass 100 turns limit.

[Captain Kwok]

Ha Ha - I knew the changing the starting game date would work for bypassing the 100 turn demo limit!

[Kamog]

Really? I tried this and the game still stopped working at 100 turns. Actually the turn limit message came up at turn 101. What did you change the starting date to?

[BBegemott]

Actually I am at the turn 20 right now(2402.0). I cange that date to 23922, restart SEVd, and get message of 100 turn limit after 2 turns (2402.2=2392.2=10.0). I didn't try that for 2410.0 (didn't go that far yet), but if you set starting date at 24099, you should be able to keep playing extra turns, as the game will think you are currently at turn 1.

[Sorenson]

Look, I'm gonna' be honest: I ain't reading through twenty-plus pages of stuff to see what's been brought up and what hasn't, so I'm just throwing out my observations in full.

With that out of the way, things I've noticed:

I like what was done with the new background music, especially the opening theme...but it got cut really, REALLY badly at the end there.

When making a new empire, pressing Escape when you have a list window open for stuff like names, physiologies, and the like causes you to cancel out of the whole creation process outright instead of the window you opened.

The Home Planet Name system in empire creation doesn't seem to do a thing.

At the end of turn warning, the game doesn't recognise that I don't HAVE intelligence points to spend and still says I have 100% of them to deploy.

When looking at the specs of units on planets like weapon platforms, everything seems to look like a crew quarter componant in the micro-diagram they have. There's also a bad stutter you get when you look at anything like that in the main screen.

It seems that the game doesn't automatically keep so-and-so colonists on a plnet if the number a colony ship can carry exceeds the number on the planet when making its departure on send-colonizer mode. I accidentally exported the entire population of a planet when sending out a few ships for expansion.

No custom ship types during design? Not even a greyed-out button?

Loading up the game with a custom-tailored empire gets me an error when accessing the empires directory. Granted, I've been playing ONLY with custom empires, so I'm not sure if this is custom-only or widespread.

General graphics problems when you alt-tab, static pictures get all garbled and remain that way until the game is reset.

As far as stupid little things go:

"Bomblet missiles"? That's just not right.

Gamma pulse missiles do normal damage, but shield depleters (which use gamma radiation rays) only cause shield damage?

The view controls for 3D systems feel REALLY slow.

In stuff like Research and Intelligence, the arrows don't do auto-incrimintation if you hold it down. I guess it's sort of a stupid thing to notice especially with the sliders, but still something you might want to think about.

Plasma missiles represent drones in the R&D screen, which seems rather odd. Not very big, but still an annoying little niggle.

Oh, yeah, running on XP Home SP2, DX 9.0c, GeForce 4000 MX, 512 mB RAM, AMD Athlon 3000+

[Tim_Ward]

EDIT- And now the most insane bug: altering constant 'Starting Game Date' in Settings.txt it is possible to bypass 100 turns limit.



It doesn't - if you change the start date all your save games stop working, and the game will always stop 100 turns after the start date.

[Raapys]

Yah, I changed start date to 2500.3 something'ish and after 100 turns I got the demo message thingy. I even used a program called Cheat-o-matic to change the date in-game on the fly, and even that didn't yield any positive results. So I suspect there's some code that keeps track on the amount of turns the game has processed, totally independant of what the Current Date thingy says.

[Sorenson]

Got somethin' new for 'ya.

Was dicking around a few minutes ago in the space simulator testing out station designs and had a nice fight going between a fleet of my current frigates and the stations in question. It was going at 8X and there was a lot going on, and then these came up:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y116/TheSharpshooter/SEVBug1.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y116/TheSharpshooter/SEVBug2.jpg

and I was forced to right-click>close the demo.

[BBegemott]

Yah, I changed start date to 2500.3 something'ish and after 100 turns I got the demo message thingy. I even used a program called Cheat-o-matic to change the date in-game on the fly, and even that didn't yield any positive results. So I suspect there's some code that keeps track on the amount of turns the game has processed, totally independant of what the Current Date thingy says.



It looks like you still do not understand how the engine calculates 100 turn limit.
1. get starting date from Settings.txt
2. get current game turn.
3. if ([2]-[1] > 100) then show_demo_message()

So if you started game at 2500.3, made 100 turns, and you are now at the turn ~2510.2, so you should change the date lets say into 25100. Restart the SEV, load your 100-limit game. Say, do you get the demo-error at 2510.3?

[Heretic]

hi!

Just tried first demo game.

In ship construction it is very annoying not to be able to click on the component repeatedly to add this on the ships screen. Is there any use for 3 decks on a ship, other than nice gadget?

[AMF]

Not as far as I can tell. Email Aaron at MM and tell him to fix it.

[wrongshui]

BBegemott said:
It looks like you still do not understand how the engine calculates 100 turn limit.
1. get starting date from Settings.txt
2. get current game turn.
3. if ([2]-[1] > 100) then show_demo_message()

So if you started game at 2500.3, made 100 turns, and you are now at the turn ~2510.2, so you should change the date lets say into 25100. Restart the SEV, load your 100-limit game. Say, do you get the demo-error at 2510.3?



I do. Started at 2400 goto to 2409.9, changed starting date to 2409.8, still get the limit.

[Wenin]

I was afraid that the demo has a 100 turn limit, the same as previous demos.


Though I have to ask why we think it is alright to discuss how to try and crack the demo in order to play it beyond what the creator wanted??

[wrongshui]

Wenin said:
Though I have to ask why we think it is alright to discuss how to try and crack the demo in order to play it beyond what the creator wanted??



Why wouldn't it be? we can have multiple games spanning more than 100 turns in total, cheat to see all the tech, why be stuck at 100 turns?

[Santiago]

AMF said:
Not as far as I can tell. Email Aaron at MM and tell him to fix it.



What's a valid e-mail to Aaron? The malfador contact e-mail is not working- email returned.

[Artaud]

Wenin said:
Though I have to ask why we think it is alright to discuss how to try and crack the demo in order to play it beyond what the creator wanted??



Yeah, I've been wondering about that. Not good, guys.

To get back on topic, I've also been seeing the demo lock up after hitting my end-of-turn button.

[morphh]

I had the same problems as CRM114 described above - screen going wacko. This problem usually made itself apparent when I would open new windows in the game. My FPS would drop from 30 to less then 10 after opening a window.. when fps got down to around 7 the screen would flip out. I tried turning the memory to safe mode as described here but that didn't work - had problem where it would only show have the screen. Tried limiting the game to one processor core as described with no help. I'm running the game at 1900x1200 @ 32bit - changing resolution or color depth did not seem to do anything. My laptop is a Dell XPS M1710 with 2Gig with a GeForce Go 7900 GTX (512mb of vid mem) - So this is not a weak video system. (Tried multiple drivers - even beta).

I found that if I turned the Anti Aliasing off, it boosted my fps up to around 55, which pretty much fixed the problem. Also switching from 2x, 4x, or 8x to 2xQ or Application controlled worked. However, application controlled seemed to turn off the Anti Aliasing. So the best option seemed to be 2xQ, however, oddly - the game looked a bit better with it off (seemed to flip off and on when you went over the menus in 2xQ). I find it very odd that a single window will decrease the fps by 20 in any of my scenarios. This problem needs to be corrected. -- Morphh

[Devnullicus]

Bug Report:
I was playing the demo and the Abiddon decided that they didn't like me colonizing in their home system. So they wiped the planets out. This, understandably, annoyed me and so I brought in a few fleets and wiped out their empire.

As part of my crusade, I used intel and sabotage on them to the tune of about 25% of my intel budget. Unfortunately, my fun soon ended and I got a message saying I'd lost contact with the Abiddon (as I sterilized their last little colony).

When I check my intel screen, I notice that my defense was still 75%, but the 25% I had devoted to making the Abiddon's lives miserable was ... gone. Nothing I did could get my 25% budget back - the Abiddon had their revenge.

[ElectricEel]

Devnullicus said:When I check my intel screen, I notice that my defense was still 75%, but the 25% I had devoted to making the Abiddon's lives miserable was ... gone. Nothing I did could get my 25% budget back - the Abiddon had their revenge.


The percentage should be automatically deallocated when you end your turn. At least, that was what happened to me in a similar situation.

[Cyrien]

I am wordy. It is 12:49Am. I just finished playing like 5 games of the demo in a row all day. You are warned.

I like this demo and I think the game will be great. Most of the bugs don't bother me that much. MM has great record on that account. I noticed most of the bugs others have already posted (I read all 20 pages! *pats self on back*)

But I do have a few issues... not bugs just issues that really need to be fixed. Not things that can be modded or SHOULD have to be modded but that just should work the proper way (and yes for some things there just is a wrong and right way)
Ok. My biggest complaints are the following:

1. Units are listed as individuals and not stacked... this happens everywhere. Must be changed. The game will be super unwieldy late game if it isn't. Especially in the larger 10x slower research moded epic games that some prefer (ME).
Example:
Even when you minimize the images in the lists when you are building 10 fighters at 20 planets in a single turn that is 200 individual entries and out of those 200+ entries I need to pick out just a few that I need to take action on, for instance launching those new Helios IV recon satellites that my planets will be finishing up over the course of the next 5 turns to scan for my enemies new cloaked ships around my planets... but alas the list is filled with all of those hundreds of fighters).
Example 2:
Alternate instance being when trying to make sure my carriers have loaded up the proper fighter loadout. Check the carrier cargo listing and it just shows row after row of fighter pictures. I have to right click on each one to even find out what it is. I have to whip out a calculator and start dividing the fighter hull size by total cargo kt carried just to find out how many fighters I have... and that only works if all the fighters are the same kt size!

2. Flags and banners on planets. Smaller or with alpha seethrough or whatever it is that makes things still visible and legible but that you can still see what is behind them adequatly.

3. Those darn tooltips just need to stop popping instantly and hovering around blocking everything I need to see. An option for setting the tooltip delay would be nice and is just about standard in almost every other game with tooltips now adays.

4. The AI absolutly has to have at least a minimal understanding or scripting of the diplomacy options.
Example:
Me and the Amonkrie are both at war with the Xiati we have a nice little relationship going on and are getting along fine. They propose a very progressive and nice treaty that includes trade, scanner sharing, immigration, mutual intel, no planet bombing or blackholes and other evil stuff... and then... no research for either of us. Umm... what? So I alter it and send it back with only the no research option removed... and they reject it. The lights are on but I don't think anyone is going to answer the door... everyone is too busy walking into the wall over and over.

5. No screen clicking bleed through. I don't want to click on an option on the screen that popped up over the old one and wind up changing an option on the underlying screen as well. Almost certainly just a bug... but annoying enough for a mention.

6. I love the LOS and all... but it is minorly annoying when I have basic scanners with great range and cloaking detecting scanners with much less... so I have scanner systems that use both... but I can't tell exactly where I can start seeing the cloaked vessels and where it is just normal scanning. Maybe a darker green for the scanning squares where you have a second scanner with more functionality but less range?

7. I minor suggestion (thus at number 7) but I would really like to see more done with the whole ship design system. The squares are nice and all and I like the decks but there just isn't enough there to really justify it. Yah 3D hit detection and everything in battles is swell but is the average joe gamer even going to be aware of that option? Reading through the posts here several people already weren't aware of that and were missing the simpler setup of the lined up components in a list. The current system is also too easy to exploit.
Example:
I always split my engines into four seperate groups. One in the back one up front and one for each side. Thus my ships may be more likely to lose some movement in battle but they are far less likely to lose all of their movement, in addition since engines take up 10kt but have 20kt structure they actually make a decent early make shift armor between my enemies and more important systems... like my weapons. And still decent later game because hey... the make skip your shields and armor... but those engines aren't either. So they still have to take em out... buying you just enough time to get off that last volley to take out your enemies weapons and then the rest of him. And then of course weapons in the internal slots... etc etc...

That's about it for now... I need to sleep now since it is 1:16AM now! More SEV in the morning... ahh... the joys of being your own boss.

PS: For the decks. Does anyone know if the 3d detection system for combat damage takes them into account. I mean the battles are 2d flat plane? But If I have armor on one deck and not the others is there a chance of a hit hitting on those decks and taking out stuff on the inside of that deck since it has no armor? Because if not... it should. Maybe randomly choose a deck with something on it to hit for each shot and apply damage. No putting everything in the three decks internals and only have armor on one level to protect it all or have all three levels armor layers being applied as a single one to the different sides.

[Suicide Junkie]

About the decks;
There is nothing 3D about it, they're just to prevent you from running out of slots on your ships.

[PDF]

Suicide Junkie said:
About the decks;
There is nothing 3D about it, they're just to prevent you from running out of slots on your ships.



Decks are in fact essentially useless, why bother with them ? If some designs don't have enough boxes on 1 deck enlarge them...

Exploits such as exterior engines on all sides and interior weapons are show of poor (game) design also on this aspect.

SF had a nice 1-deck layout/design screen and way less exploits possible, SE5 has a way more unwieldy and poorer system, it's disappointing.

[MasterChiToes]

PDF said:

Suicide Junkie said:
About the decks;
There is nothing 3D about it, they're just to prevent you from running out of slots on your ships.


Decks are in fact essentially useless, why bother with them?



The decks are useless, but they probably weren't intended to be useless (or remain useless) earlier in development. I hope 3D directional stuff gets added or can be properly modded in... but that feature might be a big feat for the AI/autocomplete to be able to utilize.

[Baal]

If I colonize a non-breathable planet with zero population then bring a population transport full of population I can go over the planetary limit when it adjusts for the fact I can't breathe the air.

Plus, Planets with zero population still build their construction ques. They didn't in SE4.

[MasterChiToes]

Baal said:
If I colonize a non-breathable planet with zero population then bring a population transport full of population I can go over the planetary limit when it adjusts for the fact I can't breathe the air.

Plus, Planets with zero population still build their construction ques. They didn't in SE4.



Odd, when I colonize a planet with an 'empty' colony ship, I get 1M population on it. I guess it is possible my species is so migration happy that it doesn't wait a turn to move in.

[dogscoff]

1. Units are listed as individuals and not stacked... this happens everywhere. Must be changed. The game will be super unwieldy late game if it isn't. Especially in the larger 10x slower research moded epic games that some prefer (ME).




Hell yeah... imagine a mid-game Proportions SE5 homeworld with hundreds of weapons platforms, thousands of fighters, tens of thousand of troops... no option for stacking? *shudder*

[Captain Kwok]

I don't recall any bug with 0 population and construction...

There's an auto-colonization amount of 1M...

[Baal]

MasterChiToes said:

Baal said:
If I colonize a non-breathable planet with zero population then bring a population transport full of population I can go over the planetary limit when it adjusts for the fact I can't breathe the air.

Plus, Planets with zero population still build their construction ques. They didn't in SE4.



Odd, when I colonize a planet with an 'empty' colony ship, I get 1M population on it. I guess it is possible my species is so migration happy that it doesn't wait a turn to move in.


I had used it to explore a bit. I hadn't given it the colinze command while it was over a planet. In any case I think you can do it if you drop the population on a planet then move it off the planet before you use the colonize command.

[RonGianti]

Captain Kwok said:
I don't recall any bug with 0 population and construction...

There's an auto-colonization amount of 1M...



I had a colonizer over a planet, told it to colonize a different planet in the system and the colonizer took every last person off the first planet to colonize the 2nd...

[Captain Kwok]

Yeah, the safety 1M population feature has not yet been applied to SE:V.

[Q]

Tried a larger combat in the simulator of the demo:
two empires with each about 20 dreadnoughts and a carrier with about 140 large fighter.
The fighters were launched and proceeded the ships.
When the two fughter groups opened fire the game froze.
I waited for more than 15 minutes but nothing happend.
I had to restart the computer, not even the task manager could be activated!
Athlon 64 3400+, 512MB RAM, Nividia GeForce FX 5500, Windows XP Home.
I have to add that until this I had absolutely no technical problems with the demo. Therefore I think it is just the number of units that killed the combat, but 280 fighters seems not that much to me.

[Captain Kwok]

The problem here is that all the fighters are trying to launch at once and ignoring the supposed fighter bay launch rates... it doesn't always result in a lock-up - but often does.

[Goodship]

Captain Kwok said:

Goodship said:
I can't start the game... It saids something is missing in the helptext.txt in the /data folder

Sometimes this randomally happens because the file is so large. If you close and restart it will be ok.



OK since i did that and it dopesn't worked out i will post the error message here

And since the number varies i will use X, Y and Z to represent the numbers involved

Help Text Data File
Filename: D:\Space Empires V Demo\data\HelpText.txt
-----------------------------
Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?MultiplayerX]Name" in record
Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?MultiplayerX]Descr" in record

(where X ranges from 1-20)

Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?Empire DetailsY]Name" in record
Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?Empire DetailsY]Descr" in record

(where Y ranges from 1-35)

Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?Race DetailsZ]Name" in record
Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?Race DetailsZ]Descr" in record

(where Z ranges from 1-14)

Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?GovernmentA]Name" in record
Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?GovernmentA]Descr" in record

(where A ranges from 1-2)

Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?SocietyB]Name" in record
Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?SocietyB]Descr" in record

(where B ranges from 1-2)

Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?Racial TraitsC]Name" in record
Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?Racial TraitsC]Descr" in record

(where C ranges from 1-3)

Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?TechnologyD]Name" in record
Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?TechnologyD]Descr" in record

(where D ranges from 1-4)

Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?HistoryE]Name" in record
Could not find field "Dlg Game Setup ?HistoryE]Descr" in record

(where E ranges from 1-4)

That's all please help me

[/quote]

Can somebody solve my problem?

I download from 3dgamers and strategy first with and without download accelerator but this problem still exists.

[/quote]

I have tried to uninstall and reinstall a couple of times from 2 different downloads and i still experienced that problem

My System is P3 500 Mhz and 512 MB RAM + Running Win XP SP1 with a GeForce 6200 Graphic Card and the latest DirectX driver Installed

[AMF]

Has there been any concrete indication that MM is fixing these and all the other numerous bugs and the UI before the final version is released?

I'm a bit bummed becuase my dissappointment in SEV has been growing, comensurate with all the hope I had for it in the build up to it's release. Really looking for some omen or sign from above that Aaron is interested in fixing the game to make it playable etc. before release.

Tks,

AMF

[Phoenix-D]

Concrete? There has been at least one beta build since the demo. No idea what it fixed or added.

Non-concrete? Check out the SE4 history.txt sometime.

[Q]

Q said:
Tried a larger combat in the simulator of the demo:
two empires with each about 20 dreadnoughts and a carrier with about 140 large fighter.
The fighters were launched and proceeded the ships.
When the two fughter groups opened fire the game froze.
I waited for more than 15 minutes but nothing happend.
I had to restart the computer, not even the task manager could be activated!
Athlon 64 3400+, 512MB RAM, Nividia GeForce FX 5500, Windows XP Home.
I have to add that until this I had absolutely no technical problems with the demo. Therefore I think it is just the number of units that killed the combat, but 280 fighters seems not that much to me.



Repeated this in strategic combat: In the beginning everthing proceeded apparently normal and the combat lasted till 00:12:16:1272. Then the game froze again like in the tactical combat.
If this happens in the full game and in regular combat situations, the game will not be playable for me.

[Slick]

I have had many crashes in the SE:V demo. 95% of them seem to occur at the end of strategic combat. This is so annoying to me that I select tactical and just let it run on auto at max speed, which doesn't crash. This totally needs to get fixed for multiplayer games.

[MasterChiToes]

Not sure if these have been mentioned before:

When I change orders for a ship that has run out of movement, often it moves a free hex... seems to happen when the direction of the order changes, mostly noticing it when I redirect a colonizer.

The highlight options on the expanded minimap are totally screwy... enemy systems and my systems highlight the same... and there doesn't seem to be a way to claim a system, or see system others have claimed.

There doesn't seem to be an option to 'remember' enemy colonies in the Fog of War... even though there is a remember enemy ships option in the data files. This is more annoying since you can determine if a colony is still there by trying to send a colonize order to a FOWed planet.

[dmm]

I think I found a MAJOR bug in space combat involving missiles and PDC.

Summary:
In the simulator, if the combat resolution is set to high speed, the PDC miss frequently, while at low speed the PDC either never allow a missile through (Tactical, 1/2 speed) or seldom allow one through (Strategic, 1x speed).

Details:
I am pitting two LC3s (500 kT) against each other.
Alligator has 4 A8 Armor, 10 PDC8, 12 CT-2 Engines, 2 DUC6 with LargeMount6, and CombatSensor11. LCM has 8 A8 Armor, 1 PDC5, 12 Ion-5 Engines, 5 CSM9. Both have 1 LifeSupport2, 2 CrewQuarter1, 1 Bridge1, 1 SupplyStore2, and 1 BasicSensor11. Both have OrdStore2 (1 for Alligator and 3 for LCM). All engines and weapons are in outer hull; all other non-armor in inner hull.
In either tactical or strategic battle simulations, the Alligator ALWAYS wins if I run the simulation at low speed, but the LCM ALWAYS wins if I run it at high speed.

[tmcc]

Interesting behavior. I think I remember something like this happening in Starfury as well, but I have not played that in a while. Coincidence??

Have you recreated this bug with other PD weapons like the Flak Cannon or Bomblets? It would be intertesing if it were weapon specific vs. general PD routine.

[dmm]

I also have a complaint about missile combat and PDC, which may or may not be a bug.

If I pit several LCMs against an equal (or even somewhat greater) number of Alligators (see previous post for descriptions), then the LCMs ALWAYS win, regardless of the speed setting of the simulator. What happens is this: when the leading LCM shoots its missiles at the leading 'Gator, all of the 'Gators shoot all of their PDC at the missiles. Then the second LCM shoots its missiles, and they ALL get through, because none of the 'Gators has PDC ready.
Unless this is fixed/changed, there is absolutely NO point in using PDC for missile defense, and absolutely NO point in trying to fight missile ships with direct-fire weapons with range < 9.

[dmm]

tmcc said:
Have you recreated this bug with other PD weapons like the Flak Cannon or Bomblets?


I tried making Alligators that relied on FlakCannons and/or Bomblets instead of PDC, and they always lost to the LCM, so I gave up. (Granted, they were 5 tech levels behind my PDC.)

[Ronik]

I've had two errors in the demo so far, in a few hours of playing...

I got a "Range Check Error" when trying to trade 2 of my starcharts for 1 of another empire's charts... I accidentally added the single chart for the other empire twice, and when I went to delete it, it crashed... The error wouldn't go away and I had to use the task manager to exit it...

The other error I got, I can't, unfortunately, remember quite HOW I got it... But the error was "Canvas Does Not Allow Drawing"... I got a gray screen, with the "windows is angry" error message sound after minimizing and clicking on the game on the taskbar. I got this just a few minutes after I had to restart SE5 for the other bug... I had to quit it with the task manager then too.

Otherwise, is there any way to disable ship movement animation? I find it annoyingly slow... Though that could just be my computer...

[wrongshui]

There's a fast movement option in the options.

[Ed Kolis]

I don't think you can disable the animation, but there is an option under Game Options (hit escape then Options) to make them go pretty fast...

[ckotchey]

Ok, I've played a tiny bit with SEV so far, and the game itself seems fine on the surface, but I *really* have issues with some of the GUI workings that are just plain annoying! (I'll limit this post to UI peeves)

* Pop-up Help text: the popups are very large, and very intrusive. When I turn it down to the "medium" (title only) setting, it's only slightly less annoying - is it really necessary that when I put the cursor over the "close" button that a popup that says "close" pops up? The ONLY buttons that really need pop-up help text are those buttons that have no text, like the ship order buttons, and the order buttons at the top of the screen. Turning the pop-ups off is best choice, but then I get all those picture-only icons mixed up!

* Scroll Bars - this is a pet peeve of mine - the "slider" in the scrollbars should resize itself (as it does in Windows) to indicate what percentage of the actual window is currently visible.

* The "Layout" buttons (and similar) - Ugh! Too many clicks to hit "layout", then find the appropriate display type, select it, then it "OK". All the layout options should be much easier to find and select.

* The Icon/Images that hover over colonized planets and my ships are ENORMOUS!! I can't see anything that is beneath them - even the name of the planet itself! Do they have to be so big?? And when a ship is in the same sector as a planet? Forget it! Can't read the name of ths planet, ship, or anything because all the text is piled up over each other! Maybe you can put the planet name UNDER the planet, instead of over it. Then, let's make those fonts a lot smaller so we can avoid the overlay issues.

* In the ship design window, the background image of the ship's shape gets "dithered" in the background of the icon representing a ship's components - this makes it rather hard to see the component icon - makes it hard to see & guess what it is.

* In general, I'll blanketly say that if anything is HUGE - it should be made smaller. The beauty I liked of SEIV is that everything is small, easy to read, and easy to access. Too much of the text, list items (like your turn log), icons, etc., is oddly gigantic. As a general rule, I'd say that if you can make anything smaller, and thus reduce/remove the need for scrollbars, then it's a very good thing. (oddly, though, the opposite direction seemed to have been taken for the ships' orders buttons, which are VERY tiny and hard to decipher).

Keep it simple, clear, and small.

[Suicide Junkie]

* The Icon/Images that hover over colonized planets and my ships are ENORMOUS!! I can't see anything that is beneath them - even the name of the planet itself! Do they have to be so big?? And when a ship is in the same sector as a planet? Forget it! Can't read the name of ths planet, ship, or anything because all the text is piled up over each other! Maybe you can put the planet name UNDER the planet, instead of over it. Then, let's make those fonts a lot smaller so we can avoid the overlay issues.

I bugged Aaron about that a ways back.

If you look in the empire options, system view I think, there should now be a flag /icon sizes option.
He did add a "small" option, but for the life of me I can't see why he also added a "Larger" option... symmetry perhaps.

[Phoenix-D]

That option is there SJ, but it also makes the status icons and numbers of ships/units smaller. :/

[Suicide Junkie]

Yeah. Which is why I still use the example flags I made instead of the internal sizing option. Smaller than the small option, and still legible.

[Captain Kwok]

More importantly it resizes the flag without resizing the status bar for number of ships etc.

[Q]

This has already been mentioned, but I think it is very important to fix therefore I report it again:
The point defense efficiency depends on the selected combat speed.
I had two identical ships firing with only seekers and point defense (blasters). At combat speed 1x all incoming seekers were destoyed by the point defense and no damage occured. By incresing the combat speed at 2x (without changing anything else, ships not moving at all) the point defense got leaky and the ships were damaged.

[Captain Kwok]

I added some emphasis on that problem in my latest bug report... so we'll see what happens.

[Blueentity]

Aside from re-echoing some the "Access violation" bugs that have been previously mentions, I have a few more "bugs" to add:

1. No ship strategies.
Choose quick start. Able to choose strategies for newly created ships (good). Start new game, create new empire. Unable to choose ship strategies and all ship appear to have "don't get hurt" as default, colonizers or attack ships with DUC's (didn't try missile ships).

2. Error during setup.
Choose quick start. No errors. Again, start new game, create new empire. During Galaxy creation receive a Data File error "Unable to load data file C:\Program Files\Strategy First\Malfador Machinations\Space Empires V Demo\Empires\"" (Yes, there was a " symbol after the Empire subfolder).

3. Unable to access ship mounts.
After discovering Ship Mounts, either from start (Create new empire) or by research in mid-game, I receive an "Access Violation at 006F0F1E" when clicking on the "None" in the Component Mounts menu of the Create Ship menu.

4. Odd blue box graphics.
In “Create Empire” menus, the area for choosing atmosphere and Planet type is a streaky blue box. In the “Design Ship” menu, the view of the hull is a number of similar streaky blue boxes. Neither of these are fatal, since the streaky boxes in the Design Ship are slightly different for Armor slots, Inner and Outer hull. In the Research menu, the bar that should be filling up with accumulated research is a blue streak with a off-set purple overlay.

System
Windows XP
AMD Duron
952 MHz
256 RAM
Direct X 9.0
Rage Pro Turbo AGP 2X video card
28 Gb free Hard drive

File
Downloaded se5_demo_v100_091106.exe from Filefront

[jimbob]

Hi all,

Well I'm excited about SEV. So there. As far as the ship, planet and fleet tags being too big, I just jig left or right with the arrow keys to see behind. Doesn't seem that big a deal to me.

I immediately tried to create a ship capture race, as that was a little buggy in SEIV. In space simulation the capturing ships would close, launch some little grey/white packets (presumably space marines) and run. The little packets swarmed around the ships, but did not ever succeed in taking any. Little exclamation points would pop up every once in a while, but I dont'know what they're supposed to indicate. The crew quarters of the swarmed ships did not sustain ANY damage, even when outnumbered 10 to 1.

Hope this can be fixed. Could it just be an error in the data files (ie. crew quarters too strong/space marines too weak)?

[PsyWreck]

I've found an interesting bug involving a colinize ship.
If you issue a colonize command on a planet with a colonizer after it has no movement left, and only after you cancel it's current orders, it wil move an extra space.
So by cancel order, colonize, cancel order, colonize, etc. You can colonize as far as you can see in one turn.

Also I'm running Vista and encountered a bug involving the mouse cursor being very unresponsive. By changing the resolution from being 32 bit to 16 bit seemed to fix it for me.

I've also found at empire creation, using the Naturally Depressed option for -500 and the Emotionless for 1000 to be interesting.

And the only minor annoyance is the whole having no intelligence output at the end of a turn, and it stating that 100% of your intelligence hasn't been allocated.

[jimbob]

Oh, another thing on UI:

There is no slider for intelligence/spying. As a result I had to click the mouse 99 times to allocate all my resources to "internal security". It didn't even have the "hold it down and it will count up automatically" feature.

[Phoenix-D]

jimbob: click directly on the slider and it'll set at that level. Alternately, shift-click will add 10 points at a time.

[MasterChiToes]

For research, I'd like a "<something>-click" to increment the research time (.1, .2, .3, .4, etc) instead of the %s.

[dmm]

BUG: In combat simulator, if you click on a ship that has been added to combat (before starting combat!) you can add cargo to it. (Use the Add Cargo button.) So I made a drone-launching cruiser and went to add drones to it. I had encountered another race and one of their sat designs was in the list of possible things to add, just below my drone design. But every time I clicked on the drone to add it, the program also added an alien sat. Then I had to click on the alien sat in my cargo bay to get rid of it. In addition, raising the amount of cargo to add had NO effect. So adding 8 drones to cargo took 16 clicks instead of only 2 or 3 clicks if things had worked. Now imagine if this had been a real game, and it was turn 150! Instant carpal tunnel.

[dmm]

In the combat simulator, I can't figure out how to get drones to attack the enemy. They just sit there.

[Captain Kwok]

Dmm:

It's *technically* not a bug, but the the add cargo function needs to be improved in the simulator certainly. It should be on the to-do list.

Drones with warheads are not working properly in the demo. If they have regular weapons they should work ok.

[Phoenix-D]

They don't. They'll shoot, but they won't move.

[dmm]

Missiles can't target drones, and drones can outrun ships. Therefore, ships with only missiles are easy prey to drones. The obvious solution is to put a few PDC or direct-fire weapons on the missile ship. Here is the design flaw: A crucial advantage of missile ships is that they can stay out of range of direct-fire ships. But if you have such weapons on your mainly-missile ship, it will use them to attack any drones EVEN IF THAT BRINGS THE SHIP WITHIN RANGE OF ENEMY MAIN GUNS (thus violating the "Maximum Range" orders). It's like bees to honey; they can't help themselves. And, to make matters worse, the drones can have few engines and lots of armor. So they quickly fall behind the main enemy fleet, causing the mainly-missile ships to run RIGHT THROUGH the line of enemy capital ships, subjecting themselves to devastating point-blank main-gun salvos in their mindless hatred of drones.

Note that you only need one drone, and that it has no purpose other than being bait, so it only needs one engine.

This exploit probably works with fighters and sats too. Sats would be particularly cost-effective.

Note that I am also assuming that the drone-launching fleet has sufficient PDC (or sufficient ships) to withstand the initial missile onslaught.

[Captain Kwok]

That can be remedied by adjusting the strategy for missile ships to target only other ships.

[MasterChiToes]

Captain Kwok said:
That can be remedied by adjusting the strategy for missile ships to target only other ships.


Wouldn't that prevent the point defense from working?

[RonGianti]

MasterChiToes said:

Captain Kwok said:
That can be remedied by adjusting the strategy for missile ships to target only other ships.


Wouldn't that prevent the point defense from working?



Good question. If so, how about this instead: remove the point defence entirely, create a ship with only point defence, set it to defend (picket?) the missle ships. Would that work?

[Phoenix-D]

A ship will NOT fire at anything its told not to engage, even in self-defense. So your missile ship PDCs would hold fire except at incoming missiles.

EDIT: if you stick seekers, drones, and such at the bottom of the priority list and make sure Type is one of the targeting priorities, the ship should stay away, though..

[MasterChiToes]

sounds like the targeting priorities need to be split into "targets of opportunity/in range targets" and "primary/actively pursued targets"... (not to mention different targeting priorities for different weapon types). Of course, I could be very wrong.

[Captain Kwok]

Aren't PDCs auto-fire for any valid targets - that's why I suggested removing drones from the target list. But if you're going to use direct fire weapons, then like Phoenix-D said, make sure ships are first priority.

[Phoenix-D]

No, PDCs will not fire (on fighters, at least) if the unit is set to Not Engage.

[Phoenix-D]

I'm not seeing the "Drone bait" problem with the default strategies. Are you using custom ones?

[MasterChiToes]

I've been thinking about the Reserved for Intel Defense clicker... and I know about the shift-click that increases it by 10% and the complaints about warnings when there is zero Intel point production.
Anyway, I think it should be made a slider... a two color Slider... One color is the "Reserved For Defense" that the player can set, and the other color would be for unspent Intel points that would automatically get added to Defense.

[Wenin]

UI Interface Enhancement requests

- Add an additional display of news that has each item taking up even less space than they do without the images.

- Add a display of the Supply and Ordanance for planets when viewing them from the default screen. Feel free to decrease the amount of space the Resource fields take up.

- Add small icons so that when you click on a sector and it lists the fleets, planets, ships, satellite groups.... etc... you can see their status..... (Just like SE IV did)

- When transfering population to a ship, include the Millions of people as well as the amount of space they take. (Just like SEIV)

- Supplies and Ordance should be treated exactly like Cargo. Why can't I fill a cargo hold full of supplies and ordance to be delivered around the galaxy? Supplies and Ordance stored in this way, can't be used to resupply ships in fleets. Perhaps add a component that can transfer supplies from cargo to usable.

- Add Mood and Reproduction to the planet default display. Keep it simple. Go off of the lowest mood of the planet, either color code the population figure or add an icon next to it... smilie face, frowns... etc... For reproduction, an up arrow, down arrow or dash next to the population. This is determined by the overall change that would occur given the values of each race..... I'm assuming you can have negative migration? If not, perhaps an overall average of the percentages.

- When in the Fleet Transfer screen, the first ship and first fleet listed should automatically be selected.

- Condense the lists of troops, satellites, etc... just like SEIV did.

- Do not itemize the construction of each Unit that is built. Just like SEIV did

- When turning on Repeat Build, have a multiplication appear next to items in the list that will be built multiple times within a single turn.

- I'm unable to find it, but there is an icon that appears over ships that appear heavily damaged. The icon is a red barrel with a deep red or yellow (can't remember) X in the lower left corner. Anyway, when I place my cursor over it, the tooltip of what it is doesn't display.

- Overall, descrease the width of fields displayed in the various screens. Descreasing them will allow players to display more of them on the screen at once.

- Add a horizontal scroll bar for the various screens, since you are able to list more columsn of data than can fit on the screen.

[Captain Kwok]

Your suggestions are funny. I think I've made screenshots for almost every item you list that I've sent to MM.

Migration only goes from high to low - it's like osmosis. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Caduceus]

I've noticed that Ordnance is not used during the combat screen, but shows up depleted after a battle.

[Slick]

Ok, girly whining here, but since this the minor annoyances thread...

In the demo, if you are going thru the tutorial, the "T" key toggles the tutorial window on/off. Unfortunately, it's always working so if you want to name a ship something that has a "T" in the name, you get no T, but you do toggle the tutorial window.

This would be a total zero for me and I wouldn't have even mentioned it save for one thing: It appears that SE:V allows user-created scenarios, based on my looking at the tutorial data files. If the "T" key will be used for user-created scenarios, this should be fixed. I see great potential for user-created scenarios. More research needed on how easy they are to create and how many things could be controlled in-game.

[StarJack]

I'll just echo the access violations, seemingly random, but most likely to occur in the ship design screen, and most likely to occur there when holding the shift key and adding multiple components. I have turned off one of the CPU's, doesn't seem to matter. Getting them waaaaay to frequently.

WIN XP SP2
Pentium D CPU 2.8 GHZ
1 G RAM
Radeon X300 128 Meg
Over 200 giggles of HD space free!

[geoschmo]

Slick said:
This would be a total zero for me and I wouldn't have even mentioned it save for one thing: It appears that SE:V allows user-created scenarios, based on my looking at the tutorial data files. If the "T" key will be used for user-created scenarios, this should be fixed. I see great potential for user-created scenarios. More research needed on how easy they are to create and how many things could be controlled in-game.


I haven't looked at the scenario creating for SE5 yet, but in SE4 also had the T button to toggle the tutorial, and it also had user-creatable scenarios, but the T button was hard coded to only work for the tutorial. It did not function in the user-created scenarios.

[Q]

When you try to conquer a enemy colony frequently the population is killed and a colony with 0 population is left. This can happen (but it is too often IMO) and not itself a bug. However this ghost colony cannot be destroyed even if you give the specific attack order. That IMO is a bug. I read that you can occupy this empty colony by dropping population on it. However you still should have the option to just nuke it.

[Q]

If you colonize a planet with foreign population that breathe a different atmosphere, which matches this planet, you should of course get an undomed colony. However always 1M of your original population is added (migration I suppose) which gives then a domed colony!
You as a human player can commit mass murder by jettison your original population into space to get back the undomed colony. But I am pretty sure the AI will never do that.

[Captain Kwok]

It's actually not from migration. Migration only moves from high to low and only to breathable planets.

It's from the auto colonization amount in settings.txt ...

[Q]

So you can turn that off. That is good news. I would then suggest that the standard value is 0.

[Captain Kwok]

I will give migration props though. It makes population management so easy. Population increases really quickly on breathable planets without having to micromanage population transports and you don't lose any population from your homeworld being at the maximum population amount as many will migrate elsewhere.

When you capture races of different atmospheres - they'll start migrating to planets of their type, which you can then remove your own population and then make them undomed - reducing 50% of the work required to do this in SE:IV or if you prefer to just jettison your own people into space it's 100% reduction. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Q]

I agree completely that migration is a good feature of SE V.
I was talking about the auto colonization amount that I would set to zero as standard.
What just gets very important IMO is that the population minister/AI can handle the migration benefits from foreign population and removes unwanted races from a colony to undome it.

[Phoenix-D]

Well, the auto-colonization could be left alone- just make it so when you colonize with people already in the hold, it doesn't add that amount.

[dmm]

Phoenix-D said:
I'm not seeing the "Drone bait" problem with the default strategies. Are you using custom ones?


I did change the default strategy for "max range," because the default strategy was faulty. Instead of staying at max range for every enemy ship (if they could), missile ships were only staying at max range for the ship they were currently attacking. So, of course, once that ship's engines got damaged and it fell behind the rest of its fleet, the missile ships would allow themselves to come within range of the (undamaged) untargetted enemy ships. And they would quickly get destroyed. (The problem is quite similar to the "drone bait" problem.)

But, if I remember correctly, all I did was switch the order of preferred targets to put "nearest enemy" at the top of the list, and had them "break formation immediately." This causes ships with long-range weapons to stay out of range of everyone else (assuming equal engine technology). It doesn't work perfectly for larger vessels because (like all SEV ships on autopilot) they fail to account for the time it will take them to turn tail and run after coming within range. Therefore they start their turn too late and this allows the enemy to get off a shot or two at extreme range. But it works much better than the disastrous default "max range" setting. In practice, it makes ships with longer-range weapons almost invincible to other ships with the same engine tech.

[Phoenix-D]

That's why, then. Move Target Type near the top of the list and put drones down near the bottom of the Target Type list, and it should solve that issue.

As far as I can tell what the ship is doing is looking at its PDCs and saying "Hmm, what's the nearest target these can shoot at?" There's only the one drone and thus..off it goes!

[dmm]

Phoenix-D said:
That's why, then. Move Target Type near the top of the list and put drones down near the bottom of the Target Type list, and it should solve that issue.

As far as I can tell what the ship is doing is looking at its PDCs and saying "Hmm, what's the nearest target these can shoot at?" There's only the one drone and thus..off it goes!



I agree with your second paragraph, but your solution in the first paragraph won't help. It MIGHT help for drones but leaves the underlying problem uncorrected, which is that there is a bug in the way targets are selected. When you pick "max range from nearest target," the computer SHOULD use the max range of the longest-range weapon that can target any enemy. But it doesn't. (Certainly not with PDCs, and my guess is not with other weapons.) My missile ships dutifully stay at max PDC range from the enemy drones as they attempt to pick them off with PDC. Meanwhile, they fire their missiles at the nearest enemy ship, so they clearly know about the enemy ships and their distances. But the max PDC range is over-riding the max missile range, even though it is smaller. That's a bug. I don't think it is solvable by tweaking strategies. (If it is, then the default settings for the max range strategy are wrong, which is still a bug, although a more-easily fixed one.)

[Phoenix-D]

Well, it doesn't happen with the standard max range strategy, so it CAN be fixed.

EDIT: and yeah, that's a problem with any tactical AI. If you set it up like you said, you'd get the opposite problem- a ship armed with, say, Ripper Beams would stay at PDC range. Blag.

At least they don't friendly fire each other. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[dmm]

Whatever software algorithm is used for "Max Range," it should work out to "as much as possible, stay as far away from danger as you can while still being able to attack the enemy." As a human being, it is not too hard to figure out what to do in every situation as it comes up. But it is hard to think of an algorithm that covers all reasonable cases. If you can figure out the algorithm used, you can usually find a horrible weakness. However, the current algorithm seems particularly bad and should be improved. It is too easily exploited.

[dmm]

Phoenix-D said:
Well, it doesn't happen with the standard max range strategy, so it CAN be fixed.



See my earlier post explaining why I changed the standard max range strategy. In brief, it is monumentally stupid, making long-range weapons worthless for anything but 1-on-1 fights.

[dmm]

Phoenix-D said:
If you set it up like you said, you'd get the opposite problem- a ship armed with, say, Ripper Beams would stay at PDC range. Blag.


But that's apples and oranges -- RBs are not a long-range weapon, so if your ship mainly had RBs you wouldn't set the strategy to MaxRange. However, if the ship was mainly intended to be a PDC ship and the RB was just to provide some last-ditch defense against close-in enemies, then you might choose MaxRange strategy, and then the behavior you describe would be exactly what you want.

[dmm]

Sorry to cut off the discussion, but I gotta go. No more responses until at least Monday.

Did I mention that SEV is very fun and addictive?

[StarJack]

I had been setting system affinity to 1 CPU only and having frequent access violations. I stopped doing that and have played about 25 turns without an access violation now. So try everything I guess is my point. I don't have any suggestions or other reports that haven't already been made. I'm sure things will be improved, but I'm liking SEV overall and looking forward to the journey!

[AAshbery76]

This might seem a small annoyance,but I can't put capital letters when naming ships,etc.

[Wenin]

When you want to rename a ship design, it should give you the existing name to edit.

[Wenin]

I am able to use capital letters all the time AAshbery. Sounds like a system issue you're having.

[tmcc]

I too have no problem with using capitals naming either ships or units.

[Tim_Ward]

With the game unstable as it is, it might be an idea for it to remember your autosave settings...

[Phoenix-D]

It really should remember *all* the settings, except maybe strategies and ministers. :/ Who really changes their display settings based on what empire they are using?

[AAshbery76]

tmcc said:
I too have no problem with using capitals naming either ships or units.



Using shift with caps lock on works.Caps lock without shift does no capitals in this game for some reason.

[aegisx]

My biggest annoyance is the unstable warp points. They someone warp to themselves or even different points within the system or different systems.

[AngleWyrm]

There's a new bug and feature reporting section at www.spaceempires5.com (http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/project/SE5_demo). It works like the system at sourceforge.

[Q]

Damaged facilities seem not to be repaired, at least if there is no space yard facility on the planet.

[boran_blok]

AngleWyrm said:
There's a new bug and feature reporting section at www.spaceempires5.com (http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/project/SE5_demo). It works like the system at sourceforge.



Ihighly reccomend everyone to use that instead of this forum post. (or together with this forum post) Because a bug tracking system is waaaay more readable and manageable than one huuuge post like this. Remember SEV has only one developer.

And as stated, the demo will most likely not be bugfixed. But the bugs might also occur in the game that is to be released.

Make sure that you include instructions on how to reliably reproduce the bug.

[Q]

I recommend to e-mail true bugs to MM unless they clearly say they will read regularly any of these forums, which is until now not the case.
But all these forums are very useful for us, as sometimes a suspected bug turns out not to be a bug.

[Q]

If you have a treaty (with empire A) that forbids any further treaty with other empires, you can't change this existing treaty with empire A at all! You get the message that the treaty forbids it.
And the log message for a technology transfer according to a treaty seems wrong. If I give empire A technology B, I get the message that empire A has given technology B to me.

[Kamog]

If you click on the picture of a component in the component report, it opens a window which is blank inside.

[Jarena]

Kamog: I think that's just because the demo doesn't include the large-sized component pictures that should be showing up there, I imagine they'd take up space better left out of a small demo.

[dmm]

I was playing around with large drones. Made a super planet killer using the 'alltech' cheat. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif Drones don't move in demo, so it didn't work. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif But that's not the point of this post. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif The point I want to make is that this drone had level 21 cloaking, and if I turned it on and moved it one sector to a planet sector (in system view), then moved it next to the planet (in sector view), then turned it off (in system view), it wound up having zero supplies. Even if I used the 'restoresupplies' cheat first, the short period of cloaking used up all supplies (and it had 12 max level quantum engines). Does cloaking really use supplies that heavily, or is this a bug? Seems like a bug. Doesn't really matter in demo since drones are disabled anyway, but would be bad bug for full game. I mean, doesn't everyone want to make super-cloaked planet-killing drones? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

[dmm]

Refer to several posts below for discussion of this problem. It turns out, I'm dumb. The quick-and-dirty solution is obvious. Just use those anti-missile missiles instead of PDC, if you want to give your missile ships some defense against missiles/fighters/drones. Their range is 9, just like missiles, so you don't run into all the problems that I brought up in earlier posts. True, they don't work as well as PDC, but your missile ships will be running away anyway, trying to keep at max range, so enemy missiles will run out of fuel before hitting you while enemy fighters/drones will only catch up slowly. (Note that you still need to change the 'maximum range' strategy to put 'nearest enemy' at the top of the targetting list.)

[dmm]

In earlier posts I described how the PDC doesn't work properly for multiple ships. Here is a quick-and-dirty fix: use meson blaster PDC, which has a fire rate of 0.5 instead of 1. This makes all the difference in fleet battles, so that fleets of missile ships are NOT undefeatable.

[tmcc]

I still hope this is fixed because as it is now it is ridiculous. I tried 1 missile FG with 3 CSMs against two DDs each with 4 PDC, 2 DUC and combat sensors. Every time the 8 PDCs can't stop the missiles. They almost always only get one, rarely two. Always ends with both DDs destroyed or crippled

Haven't tested against fighters yet. Are PDCs equally useless against fighters?

[jimbob]

I posted this over at Space Empires Universe, but it's pretty slow over there still...


Boarding parties are not working correctly (I don't imagine this is a "feature").

At first I posted at the Shrapnel site. I thought it was a missile vs projectile ship issue, but I have since reinvestigated my "bug report". I created boarding ships with a single boarding party, and in simulation they would launch the little grey shuttle things, which would attempt a boarding action. However, no damage was done to the target ship's crew regardless of the type of ship. I had 30:1 odds, yet the target ship did not lose a single crew member!

However, if I put two or three boarding parties on a single ship, it could successfully take over the target ship.

Two problems with this system:
1) it just doesn't make sense logically - and this is the style by which most players will be attempting to play. Two boarding parties from a single ship are successful, but 30 boarding parties from 30 ships don't succeed in killing even one crew member of the target ship? Ack.

2)it means that once people start getting into huge ships, only huge ships with boarding parties will be successful. So much for the swarms of pirates coming to capture that one giant treasure ship.

I don't know, the current system just doesn't allow much flexibility, and is not readily apparent to the user (which will cause disatisfaction in the game). When the inevitable Pirates and Nomads mod comes out (please please please SJ) this will be a hindrance.

Thoughts?

[Phoenix-D]

Timing on the boarding parties- did they all arrive at the same time, or one-by-one?

I can see there being a problem like in SE4's troop combat, where the first set arroves, gets massacred, then the second wave arrives, etc.

Instead of 30-1 odds you actually have odds stacked the other way, only repeated over and over..

[RonGianti]

tmcc said:
I still hope this is fixed because as it is now it is ridiculous. I tried 1 missile FG with 3 CSMs against two DDs each with 4 PDC, 2 DUC and combat sensors.



What are the other factors in this equation? Level x CSM vs. Level x PDC?

Plus, what type of PDC? There are like, a lot. I've yet to get to test with them all, so please share.

[Q]

Regarding PDC/missiles: I reported earlier that the combat speed influences the PDC efficiency. Higher speed decreases the PDC effect!!

[Captain Kwok]

The boarding parties from multiple ships shoud be easy enough to implement though - be sure to send an e-mail to MM about it.

[Phoenix-D]

Q said:
Regarding PDC/missiles: I reported earlier that the combat speed influences the PDC efficiency. Higher speed decreases the PDC effect!!



And vice versa, right?

I hope that doesn't apply to Strategic combat. :/

[Captain Kwok]

Strategic combat is just the same as tactical minus the graphics component - so it's likely to carry over there. However I think the current workaround in that PD weapons should fire at an increased rate is a good solution. Although I'm running some more tests to confirm the effectiveness of this change.

[jimbob]

Phoenix: Yes, they were boarding one at a time. You're probably correct, but I still don't think this is a good way for the combat to work. Furthermore the odds of one boarding party to one crew quarter should be even enough (IMO) for the boarding party to cause some degree of damage.

Kwok: Thanks for forwarding that to MM. Tell them I'll buy the game either way, but a fix will make me extra giddy.

Cheers all.

[EDIT] Oh, and is there a way to avoid ALL the boarding parties heading for the same target ship? Would task groups change this?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Maybe boarding parties are killed one component at a time?

[Q]

Blockade of an enemy colony by a fast ship with "don't get hurt" strategy can be very powerful, too powerful IMHO. The ship can fly away and avoid combat indefenitely without leaving the sector therefore maintaining the blockade.
And in SE V a blockeded colony not only produces no resources but costs maintenance!

[Phoenix-D]

Only really a problem if the planet has ships defending it or the blockader doesn't have weapons, IMO.

[Captain Kwok]

Fighters move much faster than ships so it might be a good situation to deploy them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Although I've suggested elsewhere that ships that go "off" the combat map should move into the adjacent system sector...

[arthurtuxedo]

One way to deal with this, of course, is to use the sector view to place a ship, satellite, etc. right next to the blockading ship. Kind of cheap, but so is blockading with a fast ship.

[Thermodyne]

I found the source of my memory access violation woes. They are related to using the quick start. If I use quick start 1 never get to turn 50. If I don’t use quick start, then I as far as I can before a big battle locks it up. I avoided all big pushes through defended warp points, trying to get to 100 turns, but it locked up when I was creating a ship. So I still have yet to make the turn limit.

[dmm]

Q said:
Blockade of an enemy colony by a fast ship with "don't get hurt" strategy can be very powerful, too powerful IMHO. The ship can fly away and avoid combat indefenitely without leaving the sector therefore maintaining the blockade.
And in SE V a blockeded colony not only produces no resources but costs maintenance!


There are 4 problems that you bring up:
1) Retreating from combat is too easy. Like Kwok says, if you retreat past the edge of the map, you should wind up in the next sector. The opponent can then choose to stay away from the edge and remain in that sector, or follow and also wind up in the next sector. If the opponent chooses to follow and already has ships in that next sector, then you should start the next turn in space combat, surrounded.
2) Movement during combat should use up some supplies. So a blockader who is repeatedly attacked but keeps fleeing should run out of supplies and become a sitting duck.
3) You probably should not be able to totally blockade an undomed colony with only one ship. We usually can't do that for islands on Earth's oceans, and that's only two dimensional. And blockades should be less (or not at all) effective if the enemy has better cloaking than you have scanners.
4) Blockaded planets should be able to use their resource production to maintain themselves, even if they can't get anything in or out. (Conversely, if a blockaded planet doesn't produce the required resources to maintain its facilities and population then those should degrade. And a blockaded planet shouldn't be able to build stuff from non-existent resources.)

I think that #2 would be pretty easy to put into the game, would be well-received, and would take care of the "chicken blockader" problem, not to mention the "unstoppable colonizers" and "untouchable explorers" freely passing through hostile systems. (One can put colony components into fast hulls.)

[dmm]

arthurtuxedo said:
One way to deal with this, of course, is to use the sector view to place a ship, satellite, etc. right next to the blockading ship. Kind of cheap, but so is blockading with a fast ship.


You can do this without cloaking? Didn't realize that.

[dmm]

I don't know if other lists have this problem, but when you are setting your repair priorities, the "Send to Top" and "Send to Bottom" buttons do not work properly. Instead of sending the chosen item to the top/bottom, these buttons SWITCH the chosen item with the top/bottom item.

[dmm]

Captain Kwok said:
Fighters move much faster than ships so it might be a good situation to deploy them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif


Could use drones too. They get a speed bonus.

Captain Kwok said:Although I've suggested elsewhere that ships that go "off" the combat map should move into the adjacent system sector...


Agreed. And if there are enemy combat vessels there, they should be lying in wait. But, practically speaking, this has been suggested (and debated) for a LONG time (at least 6 years), and it's pretty clear that Aaron isn't going to put this in. It's not like he didn't know about the issue or the suggestion. Rightly or wrongly, he decided to implement an endless attack map. I think that his solution would work if ship movement during combat used supplies. Does it? I hadn't noticed. If it doesn't, can it be modded in? If it can, then retreating won't be such a big deal.

[dmm]

Q said:
Blockade of an enemy colony by a fast ship with "don't get hurt" strategy can be very powerful, too powerful IMHO. The ship can fly away and avoid combat indefenitely without leaving the sector therefore maintaining the blockade.
And in SE V a blockeded colony not only produces no resources but costs maintenance!


A very simple solution would be that ships with the "don't get hurt" strategy do not impose any blockade. Can this be modded? Plus, normal attack ships with no working weapons, or no movement, whether due to design or damage or no ordnance/supplies, should also not impose a blockade. (Really, helpless ships orbiting a colony all by themselves should be destroyed or captured after one turn by freebooters. But I don't suppose THAT can be modded!)

[Phoenix-D]

Actually depending on how flexible the events script is..it might be.

[LordAxel]

in se2 i believe running from battle put you in a adjacent square. Thus being able to run past a fleet

[tmcc]

RonGianti said:

tmcc said:
I still hope this is fixed because as it is now it is ridiculous. I tried 1 missile FG with 3 CSMs against two DDs each with 4 PDC, 2 DUC and combat sensors.



What are the other factors in this equation? Level x CSM vs. Level x PDC?

Plus, what type of PDC? There are like, a lot. I've yet to get to test with them all, so please share.



All weapons are level 5 plus PDC has the benefit of level 5 combat sensors. PDC is just that Point Defense Cannon. I have teated the Flak Cannon and Bomblet Missiles with very similar results. Increased range of the Bomblets Missile does not provide any benefit in actual combat due to increased reload time.

As I watch combat it appears that missiles come in as a stream and the PD weapons target the first one and all fire at that one. I think it is necessary to re-work the targeting algorithm so that the PDC fire is spread out. Increasing fire rate would help but the problem of all firing at one missile would remain.

Also I do not know why PDCs from non targeted vehicles are exceptionaly useless. I have not seen one hit yet and I have seen many fire after the missile actually hits the target.

[Q]

Although it is hard to evaluate the AI in the demo version as it is only at medium difficulty level, the colonization minister seems to be asleep most of the time. The AI just does not expand fast enough and rarely has more than 2-3 systems when my human empire has already 15-20 systems with around 30-40 colonies. Is this better in the full game?

[dmm]

Q said:
Although it is hard to evaluate the AI in the demo version as it is only at medium difficulty level, the colonization minister seems to be asleep most of the time. The AI just does not expand fast enough and rarely has more than 2-3 systems when my human empire has already 15-20 systems with around 30-40 colonies. Is this better in the full game?


I've only played one game of the demo so far, but I've encountered 4 AI races and 3 of the 4 have not left their home system (at turn 65+). IIRC, stock SEIV had the same problem when it first came out. That last sentence is becoming way too common on these boards. I am beginning to wonder if Aaron is an AI. (And if so, can we mod him?)

[dmm]

tmcc said:
As I watch combat it appears that missiles come in as a stream and the PD weapons target the first one and all fire at that one. I think it is necessary to re-work the targeting algorithm so that the PDC fire is spread out. Increasing fire rate would help but the problem of all firing at one missile would remain.

Also I do not know why PDCs from non targeted vehicles are exceptionaly useless. I have not seen one hit yet and I have seen many fire after the missile actually hits the target.


I have not seen either of these behaviors, but I have about twice as many PDC on my direct-fire ships as there are missiles on the missile ships. You seem to have about the same number of PDC as missiles.

What I see is that, at slow combat speed (either tactical or strategic), all of the missiles in the first salvo from the leading missile ship get destroyed by the PDC from the leading direct-fire ship. Unfortunately, the PDC from any other direct-fire ships ALSO fire at the first salvo (and of course they never hit because, in my situation, there is nothing to destroy). The problem is that, when the second missile ship comes into range and fires a salvo, there is no PDC left in the entire direct-fire fleet -- everyone is still reloading -- so the second salvo gets through untouched and does massive damage to its target.

Substituting PointDefenseBlasters (PDB, which are based on meson blasters) for PDC (based on DUCs) halves the reload time and eliminates the above problem (or at least substantially reduces it).

However, if I run combat at fast speeds, then I get substantial "leakage" through the PDC, even when I have twice as many PDC as missiles. Perhaps it is the behavior you describe; I can't tell for sure. But it seems to me to be more like 1 or 2 out of a 5-missile salvo getting through, rather than 4 out of 5.

[StarShadow]

Actually it quarters the reload time, going from 2 seconds to 1/2 second per shot. I think the PD problem may be another manifestation of a known problem. The problem being, that when only one target is availible (ie in range), *all* weapons will completely unload at it. Even though more targets may be in range shortly.

[PvK]

dmm said:
I am beginning to wonder if Aaron is an AI. (And if so, can we mod him?)



LOL!

[Kamog]

I don't understand: do the results of a battle change depending on the speed at which you run the combat? I thought that the time rate increase / decrease controls should affect everything in the battle equally, so that the outcome should be the same, you just watch it happen quicker or slower. So that's not how it works? What's really going on, do missiles and beams stay the same speed while ships move faster or slower? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

[Phoenix-D]

They SHOULD, but they don't. Everything moves the same relative speed, but the targeting for weapon fire doesn't work quite right, resulting in more misses at higher speeds.

[jimbob]

that when only one target is availible (ie in range), *all* weapons will completely unload at it. Even though more targets may be in range shortly.



How was this handled in SEIV?

[StarShadow]

In SE4 all weapons except seekers hit their target instantly (in SE5 all weapon projectiles including beams have travel time), and fired sequentially (ie one after the other) until the target was destroyed.

[Phoenix-D]

And seekers did exibit the overkill effect, especially against planets.

[StarShadow]

I was hoping to see if increasing the beam/bolt projectile speed, in the hopes of making them basicly instant-hit, would help any. Unfortunately the demo won't allow it.

[Phoenix-D]

It helped in Starfury, except when you increased the speed too high the projectiles had a tendancy to randomly explode.

No, I have no idea why either.

[Thermodyne]

Is it just me, or is everyone getting 100% CPU usage at the game setup windows? I played with the display driver/memory settings and was able to get the kernel time down, but the usage stays pegged at 100%


http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/53/thisisstrangemv1.th.jpg (http://img170.imageshack.us/my.php?image=thisisstrangemv1.jpg)

[Phoenix-D]

That's fairly normal for 3d games actually, and it shouldn't affect your actual system performance.

[Slick]

It's not just you. Additionally, game turns won't progress when the game is minimized. So much for surfing the web during turn processing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[PvK]

Phoenix-D said:
And seekers did exibit the overkill effect, especially against planets.



Except:

* In the latest versions of SEIV, the targetting AI will distribute seeker fire to avoid overtargetting somewhat.

* Since there was a delay of a whole SEIV tactical combat turn before targetting opportunities, instead of once every 1/10th of a second or so in SE5, many targets could be in range at the same time, making the above decision more likely to be interesting. The "continuous action" of SE5 combat poses an extra challenge for the AI to figure out how to distribute targetting effectively, which evidently has not been solved for the demo.

Meanwhile, players missing the ability to munckin-abuse the tactical AI can use this by sending out decoys to draw fire and dodge while other ships move into range to engage. Tricky to do though with the slow turning rates etc.

PvK

[Thermodyne]

Phoenix-D said:
That's fairly normal for 3d games actually, and it shouldn't affect your actual system performance.



Um..I can’t speak to that, I don’t do much 3D gaming. But I fail to see what would cause it to do that. Once the flat window loads, it’s only playing music while it waits for user input.

[Baal]

A friend of mine had a ship get cargo bombed leaving it with no supplies but it still had full movement point that turn. Only after I went to the next round did the game recognize that the ship had no supplies and reduced its speed.

Also, the same friend built an 18 ship fleet but whenever it would move it would run out of supplies after 1 turn of movement. Mind you the fleet was fully supplied but when they moved in a fleet they used many times the supplies they should have. When the ships were all taken out of the fleet they functioned normally and did not brun supplies so quickly.

[Suicide Junkie]

Thermodyne said:

Phoenix-D said:
That's fairly normal for 3d games actually, and it shouldn't affect your actual system performance.



Um..I can’t speak to that, I don’t do much 3D gaming. But I fail to see what would cause it to do that. Once the flat window loads, it’s only playing music while it waits for user input.

Not quite... it is re-rendering the screen repeatedly, trying to maximize the frame rate.
The downside to directX and 3d engines in general...

[Ragnarok]

I apologize if this was brought up already. I haven't read the entire thread.

While creating your empire you are able to select your empire logo (this is a neat little feature, BTW). Later, after you start the game, you will encounter other players - the AI obviously - that may have the same logo.

I think when the game creates the other empires for your game it should chose empire logos that are not in use currently.

Is this possible? Has anyone brought it up?

[Captain Kwok]

It's actually been fixed in the upcoming first patch.

[Ragnarok]

Captain Kwok said:
It's actually been fixed in the upcoming first patch.



Alright, that's good. I haven't seen the patch fix list since 1.05 and even at that, I didn't read through every line. I'm glad to see that it is fixed. Go Malfador!

Thanks, Kwok!

[Jarena]

This is a minor graphical one, and I don't know if it was brought up before, but:

Is there any way to center ringworlds and sphereworlds around the star?
Is that moddable or does it require a patching?

[Baron Munchausen]

Awk! It still doesn't center them on the star!? This was reported months ago. I guess it fell through the cracks like so many things. This lone programmer is very, very busy. He must spend all day with his hands flying over the keyboard, and spend all night with his hands wrapped in ice packs or something. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Phoenix-D]

From the looks of things, it centers in some systems but not others..

[AngleWyrm]

Give an order to warp, and the ship (with enough mp) warps, and now you're in the new system, looking at a tasty new green planet a couple hexes away.

Give the order 'c' colonize (or right click menu) and...Nothing happens. The warp point was added to the ship selection without you doing it.

This happens with a lot of orders; the selection randomly changes, and you have to go back and re-select what you had just a second ago.

Oops, you just accidentally used up the movement points of all the other ships in your hex -- too bad, you should have been watching for the selection box to perform some wierd GUI dance, instead of moving your ships.

[Suicide Junkie]

It selects everything in the hex after an order instead of only the things that were selected before and that are in the hex now.

I've bugged aaron about it already.

[el_Gato]

I apologize in advance if these issues have been brought up before, but I haven't ssen them in this thread:

Bug / Exploit: Let's say that you engage in combat against an enemy who has faster ships then you, and he disengages, leaving your ships on the other side of the sector. No problem! After the end of combat, go to the "View Sector" button at the bottom of the UI screen, select yr ships, and hand place them anywhere in the sector! (Usually, right on top of the fleeing enemy). Exit out, hit the "Attack" button, and now you'll start the fight right on top of the enemy. I can see why this was implemented: To set up yr ships defensively in the sector. But you shouldn't be able to move ships around manually if enemy units are present in the hex.

While I'm on the subject of combat: The "Show Weapon Range" toggle needs to be scalable, i.e; you should be able to toggle it for individual ships. If there's more than a dozen vessels all mixed together, it's next to impossible to determine which range ring belongs to which ship.

Also, when viewing the "targeting" area of the ship combat info screen --- the area that shows weapons and their reload times --- when a target is selected, at the far right of the screen data on the target damage percentage is shown, but not percentage chance to hit! I can determine how much damage the target has by clicking on said target --- what I need is my percentage chance to hit said target with said weapon.

Why can't you rotate around the tactical combat map, just like you can on the main system maps? The view angle, and limited zoom make the tactical map very frustrating when several ships are in play --- especially when they're fleeing, and you have to continually scroll the map to keep them in sight. Shouldn't there be a "center camera on ship" function that ties the camera view to a particular ship?

Ship data screen, main UI: Do away with the useless Maitenance Cost and Recycle Recovery info areas, and put in Armor and Shield points info. It's rediculous that I have to go under "Racial Abilities" on the main ship info page to find out how much shield points a ship has --- for armor, I have to go under components and add it up manually.

Cargo, Ship Info Screen: Why, for the love of God, is each and every Troop unit listed individually in the cargo area of a freighter??? What's worse is, they aren't ID'd in any way --- you have to click on each unit to find out what version they are! Do you realize how annoying that is??? Can't like units be stacked together (like population is, or like units are in SEIV), with a number in the lower right corner listing how many of each type?

In the Main Ship Listing page, there needs to be a way to sort ships by "Class". I can't believe this was left out.

[Spectarofdeath]

Not sure if it's been reported yet or not, just thought I add these two things in, at one point when I was using the construction que button it went into it, but it was all black where any kind of graphics should be, like the map, the planets and stuff, it still had the text though. Played a turn to see if it would correct, no such luck, ended up quiting and re-loading. Another thing it seems as if it sometimes "sticks" during other players turns, had it sit on player 15's turn for like 5 minutes, not sure if it was just doing combat or what....but then I was just playing and it stuck on "processing turns" for 15 minutes, by that time I had enough sitting here and just force end through task panel. Bummer, last time I saved was a hour ago....guess I need to turn on auto save :-(