SE5 Demo Bug Reports & Annoyances/Requests

[inigma]

1. Feel free to post any bugs you encounter with the Space Empires V Demo, in this thread.

2. Also if you enounter a regular annoyance, please post here as well.

3. Please keep requests and other suggestions to obvious user-friendly changes (such as screen sizes, window management, information management, etc), and not actual game changes or expansions.

Let's help Aaron by keeping this thread focused on those things. Thanks!

Related Threads:

Demo Bug Reports thread at Strategy First:
http://www.strategyfirst.com/forum/cgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=58;t=000052

SEV Demo is Out thread at Shrapnel Community:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=445777&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=&fpart=7#Post445988

And don't forget to help expand the Space Empires V section at the Space Empires Wiki: http://wiki.spaceempires.net

[inigma]

I run WinXP SP2, DirectX v9.0 with ATI Radeon 9600

These are bugs I've found so far:

Bug: I get access violation errors occasionally when using the Design window. I have yet to nail down a reproducible cause yet. When I do get them, it halts the entire program and I have to force end it through Task Manager.

Bug: I also notice that when using the tutorial, when I alt+tab back to a WinXP program, and then alt+tab back into SEV Demo, the Tutorial screen doesn't render correctly, and instead is beset with a mess of distorted lines running across it. It goes away when I refresh.

Bug/Annoyance: When clicking on a name for an item in a selection box (like a filter or layout selection), the name highlights, but the blue ball doesn't fill in the item's empty ball slot and thus the item is not selected. Only when I click on the empty ball does it fill in. Even worse, when I double-click the name, the selection window closes without selecting the name I just double-clicked. It would be great if selecting items in lists was more intuative. Perhaps making the options in these screens respond to a single click selection instead of double, and respond when a name is clicked instead of just the icon of the ball, would make screen and options control better.

Typo: On page 20 of 51 of the Tutorial the phrase "Select the item titled 'Production' and the* press the OK button." *The word should be "then".

[Puke]

Reposted from the other demo thread:

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

[Suicide Junkie]

Beta tip:

If you do get a crash/lockup, try ALT-F4 for an easy-quick quit.

[StarShadow]

I'm not certain this is a bug but if it is it's a BIG one, during race creation I took the 'extra storage' trait, however, all my planets have the normal capacity (ie huge planets only house 8000m pop)!!

[Zereth]

After installing, when I try to run the game, I get an error box that says "Range check error.". And switching to Mozilla to tell people about this generates another error saying "Access violation at address 0047F56B in module "se5.exe". Read of address 000000EC." EDIT: With a new box every time I switch off of it, and then I discovered that there were three copies of se5.exe running all of hwich were generating new error boxes when I missed with any of them and I had to kill them all from the task manager. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

[Phoenix-D]

Note to anyone using a dual-core machine: if you force SE5 to use only a single core, it gets a LOT more stable.

To do this, run SE5, press CTRL-ALT-DELETE, click the process tab, right-click Se5.exe, click Set Affinity, and deselect one of the CPUs.

You'll have to do this every time you run the program, sadly; Windows XP doesn't keep track. I recommend installing Prio if you end up using this trick a lot- it forces XP to remember that setting.

[Fyron]

StarShadow said:
I'm not certain this is a bug but if it is it's a BIG one, during race creation I took the 'extra storage' trait, however, all my planets have the normal capacity (ie huge planets only house 8000m pop)!!

The trait was changed to only affect cargo, and it now affects both ship cargo and planet cargo.

[StarShadow]

Well that kind of sucks. But isn't it still supposed to apply to facility space?

[Noble713]

I've been trying to assault a planet. Through intel, I've managed to get both orbital defense bases and an enemy ship to mutiny to my side, so the AI has no space assets, only it's planet. I have about 20 ships, including 3 transports with troops. I give my transports orders to move toward the planet and drop troops. The rest of my fleet just mills about, or perhaps even tries to flee. What's annoying is that the combats keep ending after about 20 seconds, long before my transports reach the planet. I've burned up about 4 movement points trying to close the distance so far. Why does combat keep ending? I could understand if I was trying to withdraw, but I have (stolen) bases and ships sitting right next to the planet.

[Captain Kwok]

Is the population 0?

[Xaren Hypr]

Zereth said:
After installing, when I try to run the game, I get an error box that says "Range check error.". And switching to Mozilla to tell people about this generates another error saying "Access violation at address 0047F56B in module "se5.exe". Read of address 000000EC." EDIT: With a new box every time I switch off of it, and then I discovered that there were three copies of se5.exe running all of hwich were generating new error boxes when I missed with any of them and I had to kill them all from the task manager. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif



I'm also getting this error as well. Though I do not have three instances of se5.exe opening up, I still have to kill the process via task manager to stop the access violation popup window.

[Noble713]

No, it was there homeworld, pop ~ 3.5 billion. The good news was that after each attempted combat it remember my ships positions, allowing me to slowly inch my way to the planet. I assaulted another planet and used strategic combat, and there was no problem. However, that planet was slightly different as it had 1 or more weapons platforms for defense.

[Zereth]

Xaren Hypr said:
I'm also getting this error as well. Though I do not have three instances of se5.exe opening up, I still have to kill the process via task manager to stop the access violation popup window.


I'd actually tried running it three times before I noticed the access tuff behind other windows.

EDIT: Using a third-party program to make it start using ony one of my dual-core processor's cores, I still get the range check error, and the access violations when I move focus off, but clicking on the rnage check gets me a menu where I can acutally do stuff! more reports to follow.

EDIT EDIT: I wouldn't say it's "more stable". It's "less unstable". Attempting to change didsplay driver or video mode gets me an access violation and nothing else, and I can change graphics detail and whatever that other option was, but trying to play gets me another accesss violation and the program folds up and dies, although it does do so neatly without an nedless fountain of access violation popups.

[AMF]

Ok, I didnt know there was a bug forum, so some of these are cross-posts. My apologies for any duplicate boringness.

I have limited myself to only those things which are clearly bugs or SE4 functionality that has disappeared.

Its not clear to me how I rename planets.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Again, sorry for cross-posting annoyances.

Thanks,.

AMF

[Will]

Ok, I haven't really done enough to get any bugs/errors yet, but I do have a requests/annoyances list:
Tooltips need to have a delay time set. As it is now, if you have them turned on, if you so much as move your cursor near something, a tooltip pops up, usually blocking something you want to see.
Ship design window needs some work. The dialogs for filtering, setting name, type, strategy, etc. look pretty, they are cumbersome as dialogs for everything. Filtering, since it would likely be used more often, needs to have a faster interface... I would suggest a drop-down selection. The others, since they will likely be used only once, could remain dialogs, but could still be improved (a way to type in a design name without the dialog?).
Click-and-drop for designing is slow. Allow double clicking a component to auto-add or auto-remove from the design.
Frames/second display needs to be for only the system and combat displays. For other windows, it blocks some information.
On satellites, both Ordnance Storage and Small Ordnance Storage can be used, but both are the same size; and the small only provides only a fifth the storage.

[Wade]

In 3D mode I used mouse wheel to scroll/zoom all the way out. Now the top portion of the system grid is cut off and vanished untill I zoom in a little. The vanished portion goes down to where system modifiers text ends.

[Wade]

In Research: Some "Current Level:1" Technologies show "expected results" of what will be next while others show what I already have.

Examples: Light Hull Construction shows "expected results" shows what I have. Construction shows what is expected (fighters and mines). Perhaps this should show level 0?I have Rock Colonization 1(it shows "expected results"? why?) but I can still spend on this. Why?

Research sreen needs a complete overhaul.

[Captain Kwok]

It's not a bug. Ships and colonization have tech levels in SE:V. Although the little pics should show what level the expectant result is to avoid confusion.

[Noble713]

Wade said:
In 3D mode I used mouse wheel to scroll/zoom all the way out. Now the top portion of the system grid is cut off and vanished untill I zoom in a little. The vanished portion goes down to where system modifiers text ends.



Yeah, I wasn't thinking very clearly. Now I use the mosewheel to get a good angle, and then move the mouse "down" to back out the view until you see the whole system.

[Wade]

OK. That explains the colonization techs but the other examples still need to be adressed. Many to list. Just look through the research screen using the search criteria I have mentioned.

[Captain Kwok]

Wade said:
OK. That explains the colonization techs but the other examples still need to be adressed. Many to list. Just look through the research screen using the search criteria I have mentioned.

I'm not sure what other areas are showing problems? Aside from the pic not showing the level number (although a right click on the research area will show you) what is the problem?

[Wade]

Ok. Thanks Kwok. My bad. I'm not even that much of a newbie and this confused me a little.

I'm curious how many levels to the same hull and units works; such as Frigate,Colony Sip, and Small Freighter.It sounds neat. Must be like size and weight and cost and the such.

Any way, yes, like you say Kwok, it REALLY needs to show the level in "Expected Results". Especially for new players/customers.

[Captain Kwok]

The ship hulls increase in size with higher tech levels. Stock does it haphazardly but oh well. It's a nice feature though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[MasterChiToes]

Besides a violation lock up from repeated IM popups (the crashing one being during the launch satellite screen i believe), the bugs I have encountered so far are:

In Empire creation, you can sell off all the default technologies... giving tons of tech credits and you still get all the default tech.

There is also something funky in the empire management reporting... I was getting out of resources stops, when the reported expenses were less than my resource income... then with a net income of about 8k each of organics and radioactives, I went from 0 in storage to 50k in storage in two turns.

[Noble713]

If you open up the fleet report, right-click on a ship to open the ship report, and then again right-click on anything in the ship (cargo, component), it will open up the appropriate report, but will also open an entirely new (and different) ship report on top that you have to close before you can view the other stuff.

EDIT:
I've built 3 light carriers, which carry up to 22 small fighters each. I noticed that after each (strategic) battle my carriers were always totally drained of supplies. I watched the replay, and also noticed that nearly half of my fighters would begin to flee immediately after launching.

Apparently, your fighters "leech" supplies and ordnance from their mothership. My carriers only had enough total supplies for half of the fighters. The little buggers hold nearly 1000 supplies and 80 ordnance each, and my carrier only has 10,000 supplies and 600 ordnance. The supplied fighters didn't even show signs of supply/ordnance consumption, despite being armed with DUCs. The rest would launch, find themselves with 0 supplies and ordnance, and flee. I wouldn't have a problem with this conceptually if the surviving fighters would return to their carriers with the supplies/ordnance, but the stuff seems to just vanish. My carriers would then be sitting ducks when the next strategic turn came around, unable to move and effectively anchoring my entire fleet until they could be resupplied.

They are NASTY in combat though.

[Fyron]

Will said:
Click-and-drop for designing is slow. Allow double clicking a component to auto-add or auto-remove from the design.


Hold shift and click on a comp in the design to remove it. Hold shift and left click to add a comp, and keep the current selection. Handy for adding engines and such.

[Wade]

Shift clicking, such as used in ship design, should be noted on the appropriate screen. Perhaps with a scroll over.

[Ragnarok-X]

[b]Ragnarok-X said:[
The first suggestions that into mind is on the create design screen, right-clicking on a component opens a detail view for it. In order to close that detail-windows, you need to click close. Instead, a second right-click would be much better. As in click-open........click-close.

[MasterChiToes]

MasterChiToes said:
There is also something funky in the empire management reporting... I was getting out of resources stops, when the reported expenses were less than my resource income... then with a net income of about 8k each of organics and radioactives, I went from 0 in storage to 50k in storage in two turns.



Tried it again in another game... It seems any resource that zeroes out gets stuck at 0... I was producing 8k and spending maybe 500 and the depleted resources never recovered... however, saving and reloading seemed to cause the resources to jump from 0 to 20k in one turn (rather greater than the production per turn).

[Artaud]

Is there any way to increase the size of the ship icons relative to the planet icons? Without scrolling. I want to see the entire system and also see my individual ships.

[Aiken]

In the "Empires" tab of "Game setup" screen I'm unable to select, edit or remove any empire I've made. I have to click Cancel and then start it all over again.

General annoyances: bulky dialog's interface and too many mouseclicks for essential tasks.

[Wade]

In ship design if I go over the maximum tonnage while using shift click I get the warning. Then if I use shift click to remove items the warning stays because the numbers for current tonnage stays the same. I have to click on somethig else to fix this.

[MagnaZero]

I can't seem to be able to start a game. When I set up a certain resolution, the game starts and fine, and I get to the main menu. When I press New Game however, nothing happens when I click on the first option.

[Phoenix-D]

Are you stuck on the screen that says "A standard game of SE5" or did you get past that?

[MagnaZero]

Yeah, I'm stuck at that screen.

[Slick]

1) I'm trying to test minister effectiveness. I made a minelayer, turned on the minelayer minister both under the empire options and on the individual ship. However at the end of the turn, I get a warning that these ships don't have any orders and they don't seem to do anything on minister control. What's the trick?

2) Seems like the (E)xplore command performs the same as in SEIV in that the ship will warp thru the nearest unexplored warp point. The (/) Survey System command will explore the current system to eliminate any "red" sectors. Is that correct?

3) Is there any difference bewteen adding, say, 10 mines to a build queue in 1 shot or individually?

4) Is there a convenient way to build "1 turn's worth" of something without tweaking the number until it changes from 0.1 to 0.2 then back to 0.1 turns to complete?

5) How do you see planet orders, or can you even give planets orders to launch units and such?

6) Are the tricks to keep populations happy any different from SEIV?

[Captain Kwok]

1. Not sure about that you.
2. That is correct.
3. Construction points spill over, so it will build as many as it can
4. See 3.
5. There's a launch units order, I think it has two red arrows on it, or L for short
6. I think they're more or less the same. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[inigma]

Bug: Access violation error in Tutorial game using Strategic combat attacking with Explorer 0001 against an enemy planet (in the second system you explore, just after step 51 of the Tutorial). The enemy ship around the planet ran far away and I gave order to chase it during Tactical. Combat ended. I attacked again using the Attack command, and instead chose Strategic combat 8x. It seemed to konk out when the fleeing ship got too far away.

[Slick]

Some "settings.txt" surprises:

"Illusions", "derelicts", "comets" what the hell are those?

"monsters" really? I can't wait!

"rare hit types", "Near Miss", "Critical Hit" Is this D&D? I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

"migration" how does that work?

"sight level", "sight range", "sight obscuration" What's the difference?

unit maintenance? ok. facility maintenance? you've got to be kidding.

"Population Required to Operate One Facility := 50" hmmm...

[Captain Kwok]

Some of those are not operational in-game like illusion and derelicts. There's also no monsters at this time either.

Migration is actually quite useful particularly with breathable planets as their populations grow very fast!

Sight level - As in how sensitive (ie can we detect cloaked ships etc)
Sight range - How far you can see

The maintenance is fine. You don't even notice it really.

The last line is not used.

[Wade]

"sight level", "sight range", "sight obscuration" What's the difference?

Sight Obscuration...: Does this mean that we will be able to hide ships behind stars, planets, asteroids, storms, etc.? That would add more strategy to the manuevering process. Cool.

[Wade]

--In the ship design, ship type list there does not appear to be a way to add/remove them like the name ship list. Will this stay like this? Is this for AI issues?

--Also, I see Mine, Mine layer, and Satelite but not Satelite Layer!

--Also, this bothered me in SEIV also. Why not label "Base Space Yard" to read as "Space Yard Base" to be in conjunction with the other similiar types and proper adjective-noun usage. Is this for organization issues regarding Attack Base and Defense Base?

--This may be a stretch but I'd like to be able to see the game date in the vehicle designs screen as in SEIV. I use these dates in naming my designs. I know that I could just make a note of the date before hand.

[Aiken]

Bug: Sometimes, computer confuse my empire and an AI driven empire.
During one of the test games, I've got several battle reports, and according to them my ships won several battles against other fleet.
The only problem is that I had no ships at all in this game, and even had no contact with an opposing empire. I just sat down in my home system and hit F12. Ministers were off. No over systems were explored.
Furthermore, combat log was availiable, so I could see ship designs and such. After that distant system appeared on the quadrant map, though it was obscured.
Weird.

[Slick]

Bug: when you fill a construction queue with a custom list, it will delete & replace anything already in the queue. It should add to the bottom without deleting anything.

[MarkSheppard]

Annoyance:

Upper Deck
Middle Deck
Lower Deck

on ship designs are all the same; there's no gradual tapering, etc; and small ships have too many decks; small ships should only have one deck; to represent that they're small!

[MarkSheppard]

Request:

Add Weapons Component Only Slots to Ship Design.

I like how you have "Inner, Outer, and Armor" component slots; but the lack of a weapons slot feature really does make the game a bit unrealistic; because in real life, ships don't bristle with weapons; there's only so much large/medium calibre weaponry you can put on before you run into structural and arc of fire limitations.

[Ragnarok-X]

Im really wondering what 50 Beta-Testers did all the time. There is so much obvious stuff...?!

[StarShadow]

Quote:
".. because in real life,ships don't bristle with weapons.."

Except, this isn't real life, it's a game. I can't speak for anyone else, but if I wanted realism I'd play a flight sim, or for even more realism, I'd shut the computer off and go do something else..

Edit:

No offense intended, but when you consider the entire premise of the game isn't very (or, at all) realistic, asking for more realism is rather pointless, and tends to end up sucking a lot of fun out of games like this.

[Mephisto]

Ragnarok-X said:
Im really wondering what 50 Beta-Testers did all the time. There is so much obvious stuff...?!



Well, we sent in bug reports, the list is quite long. We designed a whole web page with a discussion area and voting system to toss around ideas and features and to sort them by relevance. This list is quite long, too. We discussed a lot about the game in IRC. We made some Mods (for planets and systems, for tech, for balance...). We reported for about a year about UI issues and how to improve the UI. We did all of this in our spare time without much support from SF besides the existence of an beta forum. Please feel more then free to report all issues.

[Ragnarok-X]

Mephisto, just to make this clear: I didnt meant to offend you or any beta-tester, nor did i meant to critism you.

I just find it it very ****ing weird that 50 people test a game for many months, and when the demo is released <b>(with the full game at hand, this demo is 99% like the full game will be)</b> there are DOUZENS of bug reports and obvious suggestions. I was able to get the game to crash ! This is not excusable for a public demo.
I really think something is wrong with either Aaron or SEV. If i wouldnt knew it better, i would think he is ignoring his testers. I found so many, many flaws i can hardly believe it.

[Goodship]

I can't start the game

It saids something is missing in the helptext.txt in the /data folder

[Mephisto]

Ragnarok-X said:
Mephisto, just to make this clear: I didnt meant to offend you or any beta-tester, nor did i meant to critism you.



I know. I didn't take it as an affront. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Mephisto]

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



I suggest to re-install the demo once more. The file should be present. If this doesn't help, feel free to post again. The full error message will help us, too.

[StarShadow]

Quote:

"I really think something is wrong with either Aaron or SEV. If i wouldnt knew it better, i would think he is ignoring his testers. I found so many, many flaws i can hardly believe it."

From the sound of Mephisto's first response, I'd say the logical conclusion is that the beta testers are/were being ignored. Which begs the question, why have beta testers if you're just going to ignore their reports/suggestions?

[Captain Kwok]

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.

[Captain Kwok]

Ragnarok-X said:
I just find it it very ****ing weird that 50 people test a game for many months, and when the demo is released...

Unfortunately you're also assuming that 50 people were actively testing when that figure ended up being much lower...

-----

On an aside, the instability of the demo may be related to a change introduced just recently.

-----

The worst part is that there is a great game just hidden behind a layer of unfriendliness.

[Ragnarok-X]

Sorry Kwok, but even if ONLY 10 people tested activly, the demo is still a shame. I have the STRONG assumption, my beloved Space Empires V will turn into Master of Orion 3. A good idea, many features, but overall bugged and unpolished. Playable, yes, enjoyable...?

Im sorry to say that, but if 50, or even 10 testers can contribute so little within several months, i have no doubts SEV will fail. I really think you guys did your best, because like i do, you probably love Space Empires and wanted it become a really good game. At some point though, something didnt work out.


At any rate, i really want to believe your last sentence.



The worst part is that there is a great game just hidden behind a layer of unfriendliness.




Just exactly where is that ? So far, i would prefer SEIV on almost all aspects over SEV demo. THere are a few things i like. Would those be implented into SEIV, i would buy it again http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

- Planets dont have space for X facilites, they have space for facilites worth X kT of space. This is really good for modding. Love it.

- Tech Graphics

- Race Creation Screen.


Oh well ;(

[Q]

Just remember that SE IV was in the beginning not without problems:
Ships that went one after the other into a damaging sector, small fighters of 10kT which were completely useless, a log list that did not remember where you left it (this one was improved quite late). Just a few I remember.
So I really think it is best we e-mail our critics and suggestion to MM. I am convinced he will listen and improve the game.

[Suicide Junkie]

Keep in mind that you also have no idea what "beta" version 0.15 was like.

[Ragnarok-X]

Q,

I get your point. Even though, how can you assume mailing Aaron will help, if a beta-test "failed" and did not lead to major reworkings, which are most necesarry ?
Additionally, the points you mention are gameplay bugs. Nothing as major as what SEV is facing atm. A user interface usually wont be reworked using patches. Its all or nothing.


SJ,
as mentioned, i have no doubt it was even worse at some point. However, it should not be released at this point.
This will become a second MoO3. Lots of potential, wasted.



What harsh words. I so love space empires ;(
Im really wondering if Aaron or the testers did expect exactly this to happen after the demo release. Must have been obvious most people wouldnt like it that much.

[MarkSheppard]

Except, this isn't real life, it's a game. I can't speak for anyone else, but if I wanted realism I'd play a flight sim, or for even more realism, I'd shut the computer off and go do something else..

There is a definite structural limit to how many big guns you can put into a warship; there are issues like recoil that have to be taken into account. If realism wasn't an issue, why did Aaron introduce armor only slots then?

[MasterChiToes]

Not being able to page through all my construction screens is killing me... especially with the production carry over making it so entirely unclear whether that 1 turn build is really << 1 turn build and the queue will end up empty for much of the turn.

[I personally really need to be able to see (on one page): a list of what I have already built (including system wide effect buildings affecting the planet), the entire current queue, and the projected build time for the entire queue... and maybe even a current planet summary listing its value, etc.]

I never found the 'restricted systems' page... not sure what else I couldn't find, since the UI seems like an endless series of sub-pages that each have to be closed and can't be paged through.

[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

[Phoenix-D]

Just exactly where is that ? So far, i would prefer SEIV on almost all aspects over SEV demo. THere are a few things i like. Would those be implented into SEIV, i would buy it again http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

- Planets dont have space for X facilites, they have space for facilites worth X kT of space. This is really good for modding. Love it.

- Tech Graphics

- Race Creation Screen.
Oh well ;(



Overall I prefer SE5. The UI is a bit weird, but part of it comes from using SE4 for 6 YEARS, and being used to that (not all of it, but part of it). The return of the right-click menu alone is a very good thing.

Features that aren't just "oh, shiny!":
-Limited LOS and having to survey new systems (leads to a problem with the game not remembering enemy units, like in SE4, but there's a settings.txt line that mostly fixes that).
-Greatly expanded modding possibilites- take a look at the date files.
-Combat. Warp-assults especially will be much more interesting: ships don't appear all at once any more! they come through the WP in a steady stream. You can tell them to go through all at once, but that risks losing some to interpentration.
-research is better, and points carry over
-contruction carries over; you can build multiple ships per turn, and multiple TYPES of items per turn.
-many of the menus are very customizable and sortable
-Alliances
-The treaty system is no longer fixed to a few treaties- you can include whatever you like in any treaty. Don't want to let your treaty partner colonize in your system? You can forbid that. Want to share intelligence, but not research? you can do that.
-the log has been improved. You can see diplomatic messages you sent, and those the enemy sent from previous turns, for example.
-Strategic combat has been improved- you can pause it, run through at different speeds, reply, etc.
-path.txt is no more. Looks like you can select mods in-game.

There's more, but I think you get the idea. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Obviously not everyone will like every feature..

[arthurtuxedo]

Bugs
1. In the initial research screen, you can deselect all of the initial technologies for a massive headstart, and then still have the technologies you deselected when the game starts. Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

2. Strategic combat seems wonky in general, and produced a lot of crashes that tactical did not.

Design Issues
1. The new ground combat system is very good, but it necessitates a rethinking of troop size and costs. Troops on the ground combat map are like ships, not fighters, and if there are too many of them, things will slow to a crawl. And yet a single medium transport can carry enough troops to literally cover half the map. If they function like ships and not fighters, then they should be treated that way. I suggest inflating the size of troops by a factor of 10, and inflating the cost by a factor of about 3. The way it stands, the best troop transport is an attack ship that's missing one gun and one shield generator to get 2 or 3 cargo bays. Ridiculous.

2. The following defaults need to be changed:

Flag size should default to Small.

Alphasort should default to Off.

Most people will not realize that they can change these settings, at least not right away, so the defaults should be set to the value that will annoy the fewest people.

3. The prices for starting attributes are off. For instance, instead of paying 500 points for +5% construction, a person could pay the same amount for +20% construction by taking the -5% one and the +25% one. I was able to take Ancient Race, Advanced Propulsion, +20% construction, -33% Supply, and Natural Merchants without any significant drawbacks. -5% to something is not significant compared to these advantages. Aaron rightly ditched the min-max paradise known as the sliders, but he's still locked in the slider mentality of small, 5% changes. If an option does not have a large effect on the empire, why even include it?

Comments on the Community
I'm starting to notice some mass hysteria among community members. Yes, the game has bugs. Yes, it has lots of rough edges. Yes, the balance in the stock game is completely terrible. But let's put this in perspective. SE4 was just as bad when it first came out, and it's still very rough and unbalanced after 5 years. I can think of at least one good game that was killed by its own fan community because they got carried away with whining and complaining. The fact is that SE5 does a lot of exciting new things, and compared Stock to Stock against SE4, SE5 is much better.

EDIT:
Diplomacy
I really like the new treaty system, and I'm very much in favor of the idea of non-aggression in neutral systems only, but I feel that the implementation needs to be tweaked some. I had such a treaty with the Terrans in my last game, and they started attacking my planets and colonizers in my own systems even though we were friends and trading partners. This is not right.

If you have such a treaty and you're in someone's system, that should give them the right to attack you but not vice versa! If they decide to let it slide, fine, nothing happens, but the AI should not be instructed to treat your assets in your own system as enemies and seek them out. Also, if combat starts, the invader should only fire if fired on. So if their fleet crosses paths with your colonizer, they don't run it down and blow it to hell. Same for colony worlds.

What would be really nice is to give fleets or ships individual orders as to who and what they will and won't fire on, able to be broken down both by Empire and also by whether a ship has weapons, troops, colony modules, etc. I'm not holding my breath on that one, but most of the stuff above should be doable with some AI tweaks.

[Raapys]

One thing is bugs and unbalanced stuff: that can be fixed by mods and patches. Things like UI and the general gameplay, which can't, is what will make or break the game. As it stands, I don't really think the issues are big enough to break the game. They will, however, diminish it a great deal, so I'm really hoping significant changes will be done between now and the release; even if it means a delayed release.

If something *is* done, and we get an overhauled UI/design screen/system view window, then I see a ton of potential for the game, possibly even exceeding SEIV after some patches and some good mod releases.

[Ragnarok-X]

arthurtuxedo said:
Comments on the Community
I'm starting to notice some mass hysteria among community members. Yes, the game has bugs. Yes, it has lots of rough edges. Yes, the balance in the stock game is completely terrible. But let's put this in perspective. SE4 was just as bad when it first came out, and it's still very rough and unbalanced after 5 years. I can think of at least one good game that was killed by its own fan community because they got carried away with whining and complaining. The fact is that SE5 does a lot of exciting new things, and compared Stock to Stock against SE4, SE5 is much better.



Balance is no issue at all, since it can be altered/modded. The problem is, certain things will not change, such as a User Interface. I cant remember a single game where a patch introduced an entirely new interface, basicly because of the work involved.
Since the UI is the most important part of a strategygame, this is where the problem comes from. I for one am pretty sure SEIV was better than SEV without patches and all.

What is weird is the fact that this demo is so flawed. If the game goes retail in october, there is no more time to change stuff, maybe a few days, a week at the most. WTF should i buy a game that is not enjoyable (for me) at the moment, in order to wait and HOPE for bugfixes and patches, which are not certain at all ?
What exactly is the point in releasing a game which is not ready, just to add patches afterwards ? It makes absolutly no SENSE at all, apart from one point: There is no money left and you are forced to release it.

[Phoenix-D]

Ragnarok: you two are aruging over opinion now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif He thinks the UI is work-aroundable, I agree, you don't, you're not likely to convince anyone either way.

SE4's patches did add quite a bit, so there's the possibility of patches or pre-release changes improving the UI. If you don't like it, wait until that happens. There will be plenty of posts here saying if it happened or not. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Ragnarok-X]

Oh well, this board was so friendly over the last months. I wont start a war. Gotta go and see what happens the next days.

[Phoenix-D]

I case I gave the wrong impression- saying your opinion is fine. I'm just trying to keep the screaming and fanboyism (on both sides..) from rearching SE3 vs SE4 levels.

[LordAxel]

Bug or just dumb tech :
early game when you build satelites or the like you can use either small ordinance and supply or normal with both being the same size. small generate 50 and normal 250 for same space may be an overlooked thing

[MasterChiToes]

Upgrading stuff in the queue replaces the "build order" with an "upgrade order" (for the item that was never built)... resulting in an upgrade failed notice.

[Blade W]

I dont know it's a bug or feature but neutral empires seems refuse to reply any of my diplomatic treaty offer.

Also, the Amonkrie ask me to give them intelligence help cuz they buildings sabotaged in some way, but there was nothing any details what they want EXACTLY from me (how much intel points by the way, or how many times: only at once or for years??). I espionaged them for 3-4 turns(no sabotages), when I noticed they only contacted with me and a neutral empire, so it's possible they request help from an empire who espionaged, even sabotaged them in the previous turn?

And last: I caught my own Non-Intercourse offer when espionaged they communication channels. Weird http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

[Will]

Phoenix-D said:
I case I gave the wrong impression- saying your opinion is fine. I'm just trying to keep the screaming and fanboyism (on both sides..) from rearching SE3 vs SE4 levels.

I remember this. And it got pretty bad. Half the community for SEIII was up in arms, saying they wouldn't touch SEIV unless they had X, Y, Z. Hell, when I was a beta tester way back when, I thought I was still going to spend more time playing SEIII than SEIV. I can say this much from experience: the instability is largely from feature-creep, because fans of this game always want MORE features; and, the game will get better. I think it is very playable as a demo right now, but that's only from two one-hour game sessions over the weekend so far. And you will get used to the interface if you keep playing it, and a lot of things that are annoyances now will seem to disappear (e.g. I thought ship design was going to be a complete pain with dragging every. single. component. one. at. a. time. After playing with it a bit, and learning the shift-click trick, I find it to be similar designing speed to SEIV. Until SJ makes Carrier Battles for SEV, and you need to add a bajillion armor components.)

Anyway, there are really two options for SEV: you take it released with some flaws, or you wait for your perfect game, and keep on requesting more and more from it, and the game is never released.

[Lord Q'Daan]

Crash bugs aren't too bad, just have to save often. I can't figure out the Solar Generators from the Crystal tech tree. It should be producing 2000+ MOR per star, minus a 500 MOR maintanence cost. In a binary system that's so worth it. But I don't seem to be generating any resources. Possible bug.

[Atrocities]

Ragnarok-X said:
Mephisto, just to make this clear: I didnt meant to offend you or any beta-tester, nor did i meant to critism you.

I just find it it very ****ing weird that 50 people test a game for many months, and when the demo is released <b>(with the full game at hand, this demo is 99% like the full game will be)</b> there are DOUZENS of bug reports and obvious suggestions. I was able to get the game to crash ! This is not excusable for a public demo.
I really think something is wrong with either Aaron or SEV. If i wouldnt knew it better, i would think he is ignoring his testers. I found so many, many flaws i can hardly believe it.



RD - We did our job and UI improvements were made. However the focus was on bugs, getting the game working, balance issues, and implamenting the features. I don't know if you know this or not, but Aaron spent a considerable amount of time addressing huge lists of bugs and gaming issues. The UI was important but a lower priority. Now that the game is out, Aaron and SF will have the advantage of a whole new list of bug reports and will more than likely now be able to spend some quality time working on the UI to. The game can only get better now that the demo has been released. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[bearclaw]

On the System screen Shift+Enter is suppose to toggle the view in some way. But when I try it, it tries to open a combat simulator and then gives an Access Violation.

One of my favorite new items: customizable columns in Planet/colony/ship lists!!!

I also remember what SEIV started out as. I am tremendously impressed with what I've seen so far. Lots of new stuff to learn, new locations to find what I'm looking for. But loving it so far.
Also, remember that a large portion of us (myself included) have been pleading for something, ANYthing concerning SEV. We got it. It'll improve.

Thank you Aaron for yet another wonderful addition to SE!!

[Goodship]

Goodship said:

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



Can somebody solve my problem?

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

[Atrocities]

Ragnarok-X said:
However, it should not be released at this point.
This will become a second MoO3*. Lots of potential, wasted.

- *Master of Orion 3

SE V IS NOT NOR WILL IT EVER BE a Masters of Orion 3! Let us get this out in the open and aired right here and now! Aaron programed SE V by himself for the most part and did NOT have the benefit of a huge budge and dozens of programers. SE V in its current state is 1000X better than the final product of MOO3! I keep saying this too people and hopefully it will start to sink in! "The game can only get better now that it has been released."

By that I mean that Aaron will continue to work on the game and improve it just as he did with ALL of his prvious games. Now that it has been released he will have the added benefit of having a whole bunch of new players perspectives on things. That means more bug reports, more improvement suggestions, and more help in sorting out balance and game play issues.

You should all look at this as a huge oppurtunity, how often is it that a game develope will listen to the fans and actually depends upon them to make their game better?

SE V is no MOO3! Nuff Said!

[StarShadow]

Ugh! I hate fanboyism, I hope this site manages to keep away from that for the most part.

SEV has a LOT of potential, I hope it manages to live up to it. The UI definately needs some fixing, too many tasks which were simple to do in SEIV, are clunky and complicated in SEV, retrofitting is a prime example. Also, there seems to be quite a few things that needs more info during the game, for example, bases (not all, but any bases with shields or weapons) now need supply/ordinance storage, but nothing in the game tells you that.

Hopefully Aaron starts listening to the beta-testers instead of ignoring them. After all, what is the point of having beta testers, if you just ignore most of the issues they point out?

[Atrocities]

Ugh! I hate fanboyism, I hope this site manages to keep away from that for the most part


You say this as if you didn't know that this forum is filled with fanboys. Becareful who you are attempting to insult, you just might be surprised.

I love how people assume that Aaron did not listen to the beta testers... That just cracks me up. I mean what the hell do they know? I guess they forget that Aaron, and only Aaron, was programming this game. Now if stating that Aaron is just one guy is fanboyism, then so be it. The truth of the matter cannot be ignored, Aaron had a lot of work and we kept him very busy.

[Matryx]

StarShadow said:
Ugh! I hate fanboyism, I hope this site manages to keep away from that for the most part.



Not quite sure what you're looking for on these forums.... they are after all 'fan'-forums.

Yes the game has issues which needs to be sorted out, but don't go hating the fans for trying to make things better.

Remember too that it's all been developed by one person. The reason the SE community is so great (I find) is that those who stick around realise how much work Aaron has to do for development, and rather than *****ing and whining all the time make useful suggestions and reports to him.

I seriously doubt Aaron has been ignoring the beta testers, more likely is the fact that he's been busy working on critical-game-breaking problems.

[StarShadow]

"You say this as if you didn't know that this forum is filled with fanboys. Becareful who you are attempting to insult, you just might be surprised."

Are you going out of your way to be inhospitable? I know this forum is filled with fans of the game. Fanboyism is a different thing altogether.



"I love how people assume that Aaron did not listen to the beta testers... That just cracks me up. I mean what the hell do they know?"

Well excuse me. I'm just saying what other beta testers have themselves said.

"Now if stating that Aaron is just one guy is fanboyism, then so be it."

I have no idea what prompted this remark.

All in all I think I'm going to go back to lurking, lest I be accused of 'attempting to insult' more people.

[Kana]

Well in the short 6 hours I played the demo, I was alittle confused with UI, but after awhile, you do learn the 'tricks' of using it, and then it actually in many ways is better than SEIV, yet there are still issues that I see will probably be cleared up or defined better for people not in the know, or not able to figure it out.

Empire flags are annoying...to be useful they have to be big, but if they are, you cant see stuff around them, and if you make the smaller, its harder to see the small print info stuff.

As for actual bugs and such...

I got some kind of exception error, violation whatever, while pushing some buttons on a report window...I dont have the detail, so I will leave it at that, I'm sure someone has mentioned it already.

The other, was I had a fleet(love the fleets and TF's by the way), over a planet, which also had a 'fleet' of Satellites in orbit. I selected what I thought was the ship fleet, and ended up selecting them both. Then moved them in the system to another hex, and both 'fleets' moved. This is either some bug with satellites, or a feature of the satellites in orbit being 'tractored/tugged' to a new location by the ship fleet, but I'm sure its a bug...I seperated the two 'fleets', and then the satellite 'fleet' couldn't move, moved them back together, selected both, and they moved again.

Over all very pleased with many aspects, like LOS, sensors, Fog of War, and the systems exploration. Havent tried any combat yet...I'm sure I will have some stuff after that. Not in love with the multiple decks on the ship design screen. Fighters do look like they are going to be ugly, especially with a small fighter, weighing in a 35ktons, and all their components taking up 1kton each. After LS, cockpit, and a sensor or two, you still have like 30ktons of weapons, armor, and engines. Ugly little buggers, but the carrier having to carry supplies and ordanance for them will be a limiting factor. The mods are going to be so much better than any mod for SEIV ever was...the possiblities seem endless...trust in Aaron to fix stuff, but only if we can report them.

[Matryx]

You should be aware that posting what you did straight after a post will look (as indeed it is) as a direct reply to that post. Thus you've just expressed your disgust at Atrocities "fanboyism" (which, even fits contextually).

Goodness knows what your intention was, but you certainly came across as hostile and insulting.

[StarShadow]

It definately was not my intention to be either hostile or insulting. Nor was I responding to AT's post which preceded mine. In fact my subject line said 'Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports [Re: Will] ' I was responding to what Will said about the SE3 vs SE4 split. And as I said, a fan and a fanboy, are, in my opinion, different things.

[frightlever]

Has this one been reported? I dug myself into a hole with minerals and was trying to trade with my enemy for some. I could shift click on the "slider" to increase the setting by 10000 but it still shows as 0. If I hit the add button it does add the correct amount of resources.

[Phoenix-D]

Yeah, I've noticed that as well.

[Fyron]

Will said:
Until SJ makes Carrier Battles for SEV, and you need to add a bajillion armor components.)

Luckily, this will not be necessary at all. Components store individual damage, and you can make real leakiness with custom damage types. Damage is directional, not totally random as in SE4. There isn't much need for having 100 1kt armor comps in SE5.

[Mindi]

Look, I’m almost reluctant to say anything, but I have to look out for the harmony of the community as a whole. I just want to remind everyone that everyone is entitled to their own opinion and we’re not always going to agree. The important thing is to treat one another with respect and to not respond in haste. I’ve recently had to remind people of this in the Dominions community as well as lock threads and issue warnings there. I really don’t want to have to do that here too. I know that emotions are running high right now, but lets remember to keep things civil and user friendly. We want people to enjoy participating in the discussion, not run away screaming. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Injured.gif

You can now go back to your regularly scheduled programming....

edit note: Oh and this is not directed towards only one person, I've seen more than one post that seemed to be uncalled for.

[Mephisto]

FYI: The latest (beta) version has an improved ship/unit/cargo report screen which displays informations about a component just like in the ship report in combat.

[Wade]

-----In empire creation, governments list, "Oligarchy" does not have any positives or negatives listed.(This was missed?!)

-----In vehicle designs, vehicle name screen, the numeric keypad does not work. Only the numerals at the top of keyboard do. The numeric keypad worked in SEIV. (I use the game date in naming my vehicles. I wish the date was still visible in this screen. I mentioned this before. I know that I can just note the date before hand.)

I have seen a few comments about not liking the decks in ship design, especially for small ships. They say a small ship should have one deck. Without debating these points I want to point out some things.
The size of a vehicle is expressed with the ...size...the tonnage weight. The slots on three leveles are so that we are not limited in available spaces. We are limited in available tonnage.
Even though they all have three decks a small ship still has less slots(as well as tonnage) then a larger ship.
I like the decks. They add some creativity to design. Maybe later (or in a mod) they can be a factor in combat and dammage.
Also, who's to say how many weapons of future technologies will fit on future vehicles.

[Suicide Junkie]

Imperator Fyron said:

Will said:
Until SJ makes Carrier Battles for SEV, and you need to add a bajillion armor components.)

Luckily, this will not be necessary at all. Components store individual damage, and you can make real leakiness with custom damage types. Damage is directional, not totally random as in SE4. There isn't much need for having 100 1kt armor comps in SE5.

Currently I'm starting with up to 5 layers of 50% absorption armor.

Of course, I do plan to eventually use an intermediate system of modest amounts of inert components as armor...

That way you can choose to surround certain critical components like your drive reactors with armor, focus on certain directions or spread the protection around.

[Suicide Junkie]

Ogliarchy is the "Neutral culture" of the government types.

[Aiken]

Is there any way to make a font for planet names in the system view smaller? I just want to see planet names, but don't really need a floating 22 pt-sized letters, which block view in 5-6 hexes.

[Wade]

"Ogliarchy is the "Neutral culture" of the government types."

-----If this is the case then it should be noted in the list so that it does not look odd and cause confusion. There may be other ares that need notes too.

I really appreciate and am impressed with the scroll over notes throughout the game.

[wrongshui]

Hello folks, I'm new to the forums just to point out some bits I noticed, played SEIV and SEIII.

So far despite the less than intuitive, although hardly game breaking, UI I think its brilliant.


frightlever said:
Has this one been reported? I dug myself into a hole with minerals and was trying to trade with my enemy for some. I could shift click on the "slider" to increase the setting by 10000 but it still shows as 0. If I hit the add button it does add the correct amount of resources.



I noticed that.

Also weapons that skip shields and armour don't destroy armour components which means combat doesn't end as the ship is technically invincible if all you have is shield/armour skipping weapons, despite its structure value being 0. Is this intended? Just me it happens too?

Also I can't play in windowed mode, the mouse cursor has a 20 to 30 second lag, almost looks like someone else is controlling it.

[Atrocities]

StarShadow said:
Are you going out of your way to be inhospitable? I know this forum is filled with fans of the game. Fanboyism is a different thing altogether.



No I am not trying to be inhospitable, only trying to enlighten those who believe that we are all blindly dedicated to SE that we didn't tell Aaron what we though or that we were not honest with them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

You might define what you meant by Fanboy as I took it to be a derogatory comment against those who defend the game and Aaron. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif




"I love how people assume that Aaron did not listen to the beta testers... That just cracks me up. I mean what the hell do they know?"

Well excuse me. I'm just saying what other beta testers have themselves said.



I would enjoy knowing who these beta testers are so that I can read for myself what it is they said. I don't believe Aaron ignored any one. He just chose to focus his attention on what he felt was the priority, bug fixing, balance issues, and getting the features such as the new political system working first before moving onto other important issues such as UI improvements.





All in all I think I'm going to go back to lurking, lest I be accused of 'attempting to insult' more people.



Thats is entirely your choice however I would hope that you would keep posting as the more people who voice their views and post suggestions, bug reports, complaints, and other can only help improve the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[MarkSheppard]

Request:

An improved naming feature, so I can autoname ships by simply entering this in the ship name screen:

FF-(A) (Name)

with (A) being a variable for number; you could have 26 different hull numbers tracked with this.

So the game automatally then generates:

FF-1 Thomas A Gates
FF-2 Stonewall Jackson; etc.

[MarkSheppard]

The size of a vehicle is expressed with the ...size...the tonnage weight. The slots on three leveles are so that we are not limited in available spaces. We are limited in available tonnage.

You're making no sense.

Tonnage and Space have always vied with each other in warship design since time immemorial.

Take for example, modern US Navy Warships from the Spruance Class onwards; their boxy sides allow for a lot of internal volume to carry volume intensive equipment like computerized combat systems; which while weighing less than a gun; take up a lot more space; with cooling requirements, etc.

Even though they all have three decks a small ship still has less slots(as well as tonnage) then a larger ship.

I wouldn't mind the three decks on smaller combatants if each deck wasn't an identical copy of the deck above it and below it; making the ships look like they were pounded out of cookie cutter makers

Real ships have decks that are smaller/bigger than other decks due to the shape of the hull.

I like the decks. They add some creativity to design.

As it is now, they really don't because there are simply too many slots for things, even on the smallest combatant, so you're not forced to make tough decisions on what you want on your ship.

Also, who's to say how many weapons of future technologies will fit on future vehicles.

Do you have any idea how idiotic that sounds?

Ships since time immemorial all have been designed around the weapons they carry. The Yamato's huge size was simply the only way to move 9 x 18" guns at 20+ knots with sufficient armor across the ocean.

For a gun, whether it be projectile or a ray gun, you need a clear line of fire from where the gun is mounted to the target, which limits where you can put it. Secondly, there are other constraints, like recoil from the gun if it's a railgun or chemical propellant weapon, you have to place them in areas where the hull is strong enough to take the recoil. If it's an energy weapon, you've traded one problem (recoil) for another problem, that of getting sufficient power from the ships' power plant to the gun itself.

Missiles and torpedoes on the other hand, do not need a direct line of sight; since they can guide themselves to their target; but they do need a clear launching area; look at the decks of modern VLS surface combatants; they're free of obstructions that a missile could hit while climbing out of it's launcher.

To simply handwave away ship design problems by saying "it's the future!" annoys me highly.

[Phoenix-D]

MarkSheppard: If SE5 is anything like Starfury, you'll be able to restrict weapon placement using custom slot types. Or simply require weapons to be in the Outer Hull region. Can't do anything about the decks all being the same size, though.

[StarShadow]

Re: fanboy definition

Simplified, my definition of a fanboy, is someone who rabidly promotes/defends something as being the best regardless of any other factors. As an example, in my opinion someone would be an SE5 fanboy if they considered the demo to be perfect and (as often happens) attacked anyone who disagreed.

In all my time here, I don't think I've come across anyone I'd consider a fanboy, as everyone here seems to be pretty reasonable.

[Wade]

MarkSheppard, I thank you for your "opinions" but not for your unsubtle rudeness. Have a nice day...

And by the way, to assume that hundreds of years from now the dynamics of ship design and combat will be very similiar to today is "idiotic". Like comparing the placement of weapons on a ancient Greek warship to an American Missile Cruiser! "It's the future!" (Also it's a game.)

Good day!

[Captain Kwok]

I just think he's being a little too literal on the use of the term "decks". It's really just a way of providing the extra slots on a design.

[Wade]

With the demo released more and more people are posting. New personalities will be introduced that we may not yet be used to.
Also, some will be just rude. Let's do like Mindi recomends and be civil.

[Wade]

-----In some areas like Planet Report screen, Facilities tab, the mouse pointer lags/jumps, it's not smooth movement.

-----In the costruction queue screen of my home planet,the Available Items list shows "0" for facilities "In Existence". This is an error.
The "In Queues" is so far correct.

[Phoenix-D]

When making a bug or crash report to MM, remember to include your system specs! I don't get the previously reported lag, for example, and knowing what hardware it occurs on might be important to fixing the bug. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Renegade 13]

MarkSheppard said:
Real ships have decks that are smaller/bigger than other decks due to the shape of the hull.

I completely disagree. We're talking about interstellar spacecraft here. These craft obviously don't have to contend with the restraints atmospheric craft have to put up with, due to aerodynamics, etc.

The point is, you don't have to have a ship with any particular shape. If you want a square ship, with decks that are identical to each other, it isn't inherently worse than a ship with a different structural shape. If you want true realism, every ship from every race would be spherical, since that's the shape that provides the most internal volume for the least expenditure of resources. In that case, every ship would have nearly identical decks, just slightly smaller or larger than the previous deck. Saying that decks being different in shape from each other is more realistic is, in my personal opinion, not at all true.

[Jarena]

I have to agree with MarkSheppard on this one. If we get decks I'd rather they influence the design. I'd rather just have SEIV's slots (and hey even some nice top-down pictures if you really want. But that might be asking too much.
Although... now that I think about it making some unorthodox design widow views for a shipset might end up being pretty cool. Blueprints and alien script and such.

@Wade: I don't think so. If you have a 20mm gun or a ancient Roman ballista or a particle projection beam, they all work in kind of the same way.
Bang.
I don't like the fact that I can design a ship in SEV and put all of the engines on the right side and the ship DOESN'T spin endlessly in circles while my imperial engineers are sent to the labor camps. Yeah it's a game. Yeah it's the future. Half the fun comes from immersion, the feeling that you're an alien overlord designing the ship that will terrorize millions of your hated enemies... then sticking the forward-firing DUCs BEHIND the ion engines because - hey, why not? In the future we do things like this.

[Wade]

It's very minor but stll noticable compared to the system screen.

My system:
Intel 2.8 ghz
256 GB video card (Nvidia)
1 GB dual memory
200 GB HD (Maxtor)
Windows XP

[Renegade 13]

Kana said:
The other, was I had a fleet...over a planet, which also had a 'fleet' of Satellites in orbit. I selected what I thought was the ship fleet, and ended up selecting them both. Then moved them in the system to another hex, and both 'fleets' moved.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif You should have seen a bug in the early beta...if you selected a planet and a fleet, then tried to move the fleet, the planet would move as well!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif It was really quite amusing.

[inigma]

oooh moving planets, now there's an idea...

[Wade]

Hey! That would be a great peice of late technology! The ability to move planets and travel like a ship. Once the planet has attained self sustaining heat from the civilization. This was in the Ringworld series by Larry Niven. The Puppeteer race have their "Fleet of Worlds" of 5 planets. Home world and 4 farm planets.

Ringworlds and Sphereworlds could be made to travel also!
The Ringworld in the story was also adjusted to travel in the fourth novel, 'Ringworld's Children'.

[inigma]

I was also thinking about how cool revolutions around the central star would be on a turn by turn basis - after all turns take a month each, right? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Hmmm, tractor beams, and normal planetary and object revolutions.

...ok back on topic now, I'm breaking my own thread rule.

[MarkSheppard]

I completely disagree. We're talking about interstellar spacecraft here.

Tell that to the 3D designers who did the models for the spacecraft. The hulls angle inwards, do all sorts of things, the majority of them are not simple square slabs.

[Wade]

Like Captain Kwok said:

"I just think he's being a little too literal on the use of the term "decks". It's really just a way of providing the extra slots on a design."

[MarkSheppard]

MarkSheppard, I thank you for your "opinions" but not for your unsubtle rudeness. Have a nice day...

If you don't want me to be "rude" don't say things which insult my intelligence highly.

And by the way, to assume that hundreds of years from now the dynamics of ship design and combat will be very similiar to today is "idiotic". Like comparing the placement of weapons on a ancient Greek warship to an American Missile Cruiser! "It's the future!" (Also it's a game.)

I see my previous lecture did not sink in. You can't cram a billion archers onto a Greek Tireme in much the same way you can't cram a billion missiles onto an AEGIS cruiser; there are system limitations which present themselves. While an Archer is a very low impact weapons system which does not require heavy reinforcement of the ship's structure, or heavy power cabling runs; he still requires enough space on deck to load, pull, and fire his bow effectively; this imposes an upper limit on how many archers you can cram onto a trieme and be effective.

(Also it's a game.)

Then I guess we better play balance the M4 Sherman and Tiger I so that the German player in a game doesn't gain an unfair advantage!

[Wade]

-----Exception error: In vehicle design, Space Simulator list of vehicles. I added a star, a planet, and a warp point. I then clicked on "Add Vehicle" a few times. It was adding more warp points to the list. I double clicked on one in the list and got the error and a white screen.
Update: It does this error also if you click the "Remove Vehicle" button.

-----Exception error: During Space Simulation: Tactical: Five identical Frigates versus the same five identical frigates. One enemy ship came at my group of five. It started to explode after the attack. The explosion (and the simulation)froze. I tried to move my ships then the game crashed.

[Noble713]

I understand Mark Sheppard's point and was hoping for a similar mechanism, where the shapes of each deck were based on the design of the ship in question. For example, a Trek ship like the various NCC-1701 Enterprises would have the Upper Deck saucer-shaped with slots over the saucer, the Middle Deck with a few boxes over the front of the engineering section (where the neck is) and boxes over the nacelles, and the Lower Deck a rectangular group of boxes over the Engineering/Secondary Hull section.

Then again, I was also expecting weapon and engine slots ala Starfury. If you are going to go with the slot system, go all the way. Maybe in Space Empires V GOLD, if we bug him enough.

But on the flip side, I AM reasonably content to soldier on with what we have now. I like it, and try not to make abusive and non-sensical component arrangements.

[Atrocities]

Moderator Mode

Just a friendly reminder of what Mindi said earlier, please keep perspective and don't fall into any avenues that might lead down the wrong path.

[Dizzy]

lol, u guys are WAY too involved. Take a step back and have a cup of tea. Look at the clouds a while.

[Phoenix-D]

Dizzy said:
lol, u guys are WAY too involved. Take a step back and have a cup of tea. Look at the clouds a while.



If I go outside right now my eyes and throat burn and I have to flee inside. Are you trying to kill me!? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Wade]

-----In Research screen, the Expected Results window does not show all of what is listed if you right click to get the Expected Results. For example :Try Cultural Studies: Sports and Sociology are not in the window.

[AMF]

I have no doubt that there is a great game underneath the SEV UI. But I can't get there, at least, not without so much trouble that, knowing myself, I won’t play SEV with the UI as is.

HOWEVER, I think it can be fixed. It sounds like a problem of political will on the part of MM.

Here's a lot of things that are probably easy to do and would go a long way to fixing things:

* make the ship, component, and other images much smaller (like in SE4) in order to reduce overall window sizes.
* Make the empire-wide orders window, quadrant window, item list window, and orders window moveable.
* shrink the windows borders and other useless flashy parts to one pixel wide (like SE4) - the only thing each window needs wider is a title bar, for moving it.
* lock the view so that it doesn't move whenever I move the mouse to the edge of the screen
* redo the orders window so all typical orders ('Cancel orders' etc) are available with one mouse click
* Offset the flag and other planet icons from the hex borders, so you can see which planet you've selected. Make them smaller and transparent as well. Give the user textual options for these as well ('R' for resupply, 'Y' for shipyard, etc)


* For the ship design UI: get rid of the whole blueprint graphic and decks, and allow players to add more than components just by clicking rather than drag and drop. Maybe use a slider (like under the cargo transfer window) to set a number, or whatever, and then add that number of components (to add 10 engines at once, etc...) with a single click. And make them go automatically into appropriate hulls, working from inner to outer until all space is used up. Having to place each component is extremely tedious even for a frigate.

* for every window with filters and layout buttons: simply put the most common filters and layouts used in the main button list. I shouldn't have to click layout and then click units to show just units. For example, the ship list window buttons should read: layout, filter, units only, fleets only, etc...Ditto for ALL windows with layout and filter options.

I think, if the above simple 8 modifications were implemented, then the UI would go a long way to being fixed. And then I could see the great game underneath the UI.

Thanks,

AMF

[MasterChiToes]

AMF said:
* make the planet, ship, and other images much smaller (like in SE4)




Those images in the Turn Reports could be way smaller too... one line of text/info next to a ~200px tall image is just a waste... and makes for way too much scrolling. And the text generally everywhere could be smaller too... small text means less scrolling which actually makes it easier to read.

[Blade W]

---- When I tried to load a game from a space combat got an acces violation.

[Spoo]

Bug?:

In a ground assault, my troops stopped firing and ran away after being shot at by the militia. Right-clicking on my troops showed that they had no damage (thanks to sheilding), but their weapom fire rate was "damaged". Do the militia have some crazy relode damaging weapons?

Also, the militia fully regenerated each turn (even when I had surviving troops).

[Captain Kwok]

Note:

Clicking on the column header with the icon/image in lists or the log cycles through different pic sizes. For example, the log can have big, small, and none. For list screens like colonies, ships, planets etc., you can have normal, small, and none. This greatly increases the amount of rows for the list screens.

[Mephisto]

I'm sorry, Goodship, I have no clue how to fix it. Make sure to contact Aaron about this bug.

[AMF]

Ok, I'll power it up again and try that. That might help a lot.

For those people with gigantic hi res monitors, they could probably get away with the larger versions, maybe the resolution options in the setup screen could be made to automatically choose pic size to optimize visible system space?

edit: but smaller pics only really help IF they result in more visibile system space, so I can actually see planet names etc.


Captain Kwok said:
Note:

Clicking on the column header with the icon/image in lists or the log cycles through different pic sizes. For example, the log can have big, small, and none. For list screens like colonies, ships, planets etc., you can have normal, small, and none. This greatly increases the amount of rows for the list screens.

[Renegade 13]

MarkSheppard said:
I completely disagree. We're talking about interstellar spacecraft here.

Tell that to the 3D designers who did the models for the spacecraft. The hulls angle inwards, do all sorts of things, the majority of them are not simple square slabs.

I think I see what you mean now. True, it could have been done that way, but there is no real gameplay reason why it should be done that way, other than for a tiny bit more realism. However, something like slot layout when designing a ship doesn't really help to immerse me in the game any more than I already am. Perhaps it is different with other people though, such as youself. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[Raapys]

As it stands, I'd say the whole slot thingy is completely unnecessary and just make for more tedious designing; there's enough slots for 'anything' anyway, so why bother with it at all? It basically just make you place the components instead of simply clicking them. More work, same goal achived.

It could be made to actually serve a purpose following some of the suggestions here, but that would probably be too much work for little gain.

[wrongshui]

Raapys said:
As it stands, I'd say the whole slot thingy is completely unnecessary and just make for more tedious designing; there's enough slots for 'anything' anyway, so why bother with it at all? It basically just make you place the components instead of simply clicking them. More work, same goal achived.



The directional damage would not work if components didn't have a set position. I like it, the AI stick engines at the back of the ship, so a fleeing enemy is usual disabled.

[RonGianti]

Ok, stuck at work, but read all these reports and have a suggestion, if its not presumptious:

Might it be better if this was relabeled (and right quick!) as a Public Beta? WE (Aarons fan club!) understand that this is a work in progress, but when people see DEMO, they think (and rightly so) COMPLETED.

Maybe a simple relabling would calm some nerves?

Sign me Aarons fanboy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Q]

Bug?
I gave an highly damage ship the order to await fire and be destroyed. And I had some other ships with fuctional weapons in that sector. Nothing happens.

[Phoenix-D]

Did the other ships have movement points? I just tried fire on and it did work..

[boran_blok]

Can the bugs be put in an issue tracking system somwhere ? (where aron can assign priorities, and where everyone can search if their bug has or hasnt been found)

My own contribution (maybe, havent red thru whole thread)

When opening up planet report in the tutorial (maybe elsewhere too) and then going to the structures tab, you can right click to open a detailed info screen of a structure. you can right click on any other structure even when it is underneath the now opened info screen. I understand multiple can be opened, but sending clicks thru a screen is not standard UI behaviour.

[boran_blok]

Another one, when designing a ship, when adding engines while holding shift. If you go over the maximum movement. If you then remove the engine by clicking on it once more while still holding shift (you hear the error sound) the engine is gone, but the warning of movement remains. only way to fix is to add or remove one engine without holding shift.

[boran_blok]

And another one, when editing ship type the ship list in the ship designer overview does not update to reflect the changed type.

[VanderVecken]

Here is what's wrong and right with the demo as I've played it (so far) in a simple analogy. Imagine the actual game is a fantastic engine to a car. More powerful and able to do more than lasts year's model (exactly what we asked for and now have. But to move the vehicle and get it to do all these great things, they made buttons and knobs to allow us to get to some levers and switches to get that engine to do what it was made to do. Also this car's hood has a nicely updated paint job but they did it on a Semi-trailer sized hood where we really wanted some that would keep the Car/game more aerodynamic/intuitive.
So, yes ... I'm a little sad the UI reminds me of another car I bought a few years ago called MOO3, but at least under the hood, which has 3 latches, and a push pad to get it open; there IS a turbo-charged engine instead of Moo3's often barely adequate V-4 with a leaky head gasket and a slightly bent main trans-axel. I'll need to play more to see if this instant aversion is something I can overcome, because there is a heck of a game there. And although I just don't have time to do so myself ... the Modding potential for SE:V looks better than just about any other car you can find on the Auto dealer's) lot.

With the past history of this game's designer, I'm sure most Bugs wil be squashed in a timely fashion. And any game balance issues as well.
But I just hate to see this new LOOK(Data screens that are 1/4 to 1/3 flash) and a clunky interface attached to what is supposed to be (and has the potential) to be the next step in 4x Space gaming.

P.S. I also have issues with the ship design boxes. I actually like the idea, and directional combat is something that I certainly can take. But when I buy a Bridge Module for 10 Tons and a Rock Colony Module for 100 Tons and the each take up 1 square I loose interest in that part of designing ships. Each Ship desgn should have a number of possible 5(Ton) boxes equal to approx. 125% of that vessels tonnage. <Fighters could use 0.25 or 0.5 Ton boxes.> Each component should have boxes to fill equal to tonnage devided by 5; so that placement isnt fixed like some games but that IT matters more than the current game at hand. (just remember that in space-combat your current vector doesnt matter much for weapons fire as with even modest spin rates over various axis's most weapon could come to bare in seconds, even on quite huge vessels. You'll never see a wet Navy Battleship move much off the XY 2-D grid (except when she give a broadside that'll rock the boat, hehehe) but a space battleship could be spinning like a top on any number of diff. XYZ plots.
In addition, the smallest vessels should have a very limited # of Inner boxes, so that you really had to think about what you wanted to protect.
The Bridge ... keeps that experienced crew/captain alive
Maybe a few engines ... in hopes of getting away
Or your best weapon ... make em pay to kill your ship
or ... can you see the potential.

Also Capital ships should have yet another layer, the 'C' Core, which due to the shear bulk of these behemoths, are protected even more so than 'I' Inner boxes. Most weapons and engines due to their functionality couldn't be put at Core boxes (or could be put there but only could be used when all 'O' outer boxes have been removed.) I love the look of the new ship designs but they are currently more work for the little gameplay we gain, would get a slightly better review if not also saddled with another UI backstep (even with Shift-click, it's graphics should be shrunk a bit to get more components in view. (everywhere this is needed. shrink the views a little and keep borders THIN.)

By the way, Thanks all who helped get this Car onto the test track, I'm hoping that the UI can/will be modified before they put it on the lot, or the hard work of the designer(and testers and even MM) will not pay the dividend the engine under the hood deserves to reap.

Whoa, sorry, I should have seperated this into 2 or 3 Replies. I'm back to game now. I can hear the Engine still running and I want to drive some more .. if I can just find the lever to unlock the Accelerator pedal.

remember: the greatest farmer in the world doesn't wear a Tux to the stable (I'll take clean utility over burdomsome Pizazz)

[Captain Kwok]

boran_blok said:
And another one, when editing ship type the ship list in the ship designer overview does not update to reflect the changed type.

It does, but it doesn't show it until a refresh is done (either by selecting filter or upon re-entering the screen). It's one of a few bugs releated to refreshing.

[boran_blok]

I slightly agree with you, but take into account that you're used to SEIV. Swithing from anything you're used to to anything you're not used to is not always intuitive. I for one really LOVE that the right click has gotten it's functionality back.

[VanderVecken]

Yea, right click functionality is a GOOD thing. Lots of good things in there.

[Phoenix-D]

Yeah, my opinion of the interface improved after I learned it a little more. A lot of the initial dislike was "this works differently from SE4!". Not that there aren't still issues.

SE5 is going to need a good manual though, to explain the effort-saving tricks if nothing else. And given the track record in that regard I'm not hopeful. :/

[Captain Kwok]

It took some time but I've become quite efficient with most operations in the game. I've sent in lots of little suggestions recently regarding optimizing specific operations like cargo transfer or combining like-units etc., so hopefully those will start cropping up in patches. What's the level of the help-text in the demo, does it give name of object and description?

[Phoenix-D]

It gives the whole shebang. Doesn't explain stuff like where you can right click to get what menu, or tht you can click in the middle of the percentage bars to set a percent.

It also doesn't have a delay, which makes it a bit spammy.

[Captain Kwok]

Yep. I Keep spamming MM with that 1-sec delay for the pop-up. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

I usually only play with the short description these days just to keep me in the know for some of the less-used orders.

[Raapys]

The right-click menu does seem a bit like an afterthought?

[Captain Kwok]

Raapys said:
The right-click menu does seem a bit like an afterthought?

Not necessarily, although most would agree that the arrangement of orders could be optimized.

[wrongshui]

I solved my 20-30 second mouse lag by switching to safe memory mode. What exactly is the difference between safe and auto anyway?

Also why is the frame rate capped to 30 for space combat? Why do I get horrid slow down in ground battles? I have AMD64 3500+ gig o ram and a Geforce 7800GT.

[Artaud]

AMF said:
* make the ship, component, and other images much smaller (like in SE4) in order to reduce overall window sizes.




I disagree. I like to see my ships. As it is you can either see your ships by zooming all the way in, or see your entire system by zooming out.

What's the point of playing, say, the Klingons if you can't see those beautiful ships?

[Suicide Junkie]

Artaud said:

AMF said:
* make the ship, component, and other images much smaller (like in SE4) in order to reduce overall window sizes.




I disagree. I like to see my ships. As it is you can either see your ships by zooming all the way in, or see your entire system by zooming out.

What's the point of playing, say, the Klingons if you can't see those beautiful ships?

AMF means the portraits, not the models, I think.

The idea being that shrinking the pictures and maybe the fonts would allow room for more rows in the list screens like in SE4.

[Phoenix-D]

Well, part of the issue is SE5 sort everything into its own tabbed catagory. In SE4's construction que screen, for example, the planet icon, name, and status icons were all shoved together and took up a LOT less horizontal space. But you couldn't sort by planet type, or by "has troops", etc.

Usage per turn was the same way- you could see all three, and sort by minerals, but not by organics or radioactives.

SE5 could still combine things without losing funtionality. There's no reason "on hold", "repeat", and "emergency build" all need their own tabs, for example. All three could easily be combined into what's being built..

[CovertJaguar]

I seem to come a across a bug involving warp points. I create a quick play game as the humans. First thing I decided to do was design a scout ship. 'kay, all's good so far. While shift-clicking and putting in comps in my scout ship the game crashes.

Alright, take two. I try again same settings. This time I get my scout ship built no problem. I set it to auto-explore. It goes through the nearest warp point into the nearby system. It's empty, just a star. So I hit auto-explore again. It returns to my home system, funny thing is it returned through a different warp point that the one it left through. I try going through the original warp point again and I end up back where I started, at the second warp point, without even leaving the system. I found that a little strange. I decide to investigate another warp, same thing. My ship jumps to second warp point again. I try the fourth warp point. This one works. I takes me to another empty system though. I have two warp points that lead back to my home system and two that lead to empty star systems. At this point I realized I was stuck. There is no where else to go. Anyone else had problems like these?


EDIT: Hmm...tried going through the first warp point again. This time I end up in a empty binary system. Strange.

EDIT2: It seems the warp points work now, and apparently the systems aren't empty, just not explored. This may all be just my imagination and confusion with the new interface working against me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

[wrongshui]

Some Warp points double up for me too.

Does Organic Armour work for anyone? I can't seem to get it to regenerate at all. I like the organic ships though, would be cool if you could make organic equivalents of other components, switch from a minerals based empire to a organics one.

[frightlever]

Mineral planets are the best.

[Possum]

Captain Kwok said: What's the level of the help-text in the demo, does it give name of object and description?



Uhh, Kwok, are you seriously telling me you're in here discussing the demo when you don't even have/play it? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I'm majorly underwhelmed with the demo thus far.

It seems to me like it has too many bells & whistles, too much feature creep. There's too much damn flash & chrome that just gets in the way, and obscures or interferes with functionality.

Worst of all, the whole thing is way way way too click-intensive. My first session with the demo ended when my wrist started to ache, something that never happens with SE4. This is going to be an issue for older gamers in longer game sessions.

[Phoenix-D]

Kwok has the better IIRC, he doesn't need the demo. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Again, right click is your friend. So are the keyboard commands (backspace for cancel orders especially- no idea why that command got burried..) Ship design not withstanding SE5 doesn't have that many more clicks than SE4- and if you use shift-click, ship design is tolerable.

[CRM114]

Hey guys, the SEV demo really, really doesn't like my laptop for some reason. It's got an nVdia GeForce Go 6400 video card. Check out the nastiness.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v510/joeheller/sev3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v510/joeheller/sev2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v510/joeheller/sev1.jpg

I've tried all the detail settings and nothing helps. When I tried bypassing the 3D card by setting the game to RGB emulation, it just crashed continuously. Any thoughts?

[StarShadow]

Did you try changing the video from 'Auto' to 'Safe'? Also, what version of DirectX does your laptop support?

[Possum]

Phoenix-D said:
Ship design not withstanding SE5 doesn't have that many more clicks than SE4- and if you use shift-click, ship design is tolerable.

\

That's just not true, Phoenix.

[Phoenix-D]

Possum said:

Phoenix-D said:
Ship design not withstanding SE5 doesn't have that many more clicks than SE4- and if you use shift-click, ship design is tolerable.

\

That's just not true, Phoenix.



Aside from ship design and retrofitting, give me an example.

Construction que? Same. Report screen? One extra click, less if you setup a custom layout. Movement? Same. Selecting ships and planets? Same. Research? Arguably less clicking (click on the slider itself, not the buttons to either side! Much faster.). Cargo transfer and retrofit take one extra click to access.

You do have to scroll the system screen a bit, but nothing too major. Canceling orders is burried for some bizzare reason, but keyboard shortcuts help there..and you don't need to cancel as much, since orders can be edited now.

[Fyron]

Attack order takes what, 5 clicks? SE4, you hit a, click target, click ok (or hit enter). Retrofitting? Easy, simple in SE4. SE5, its some 5 or 6 clicks _per ship_.

[VanderVecken]

Starting to really dislike that the "cancel" order for ships is on a different screen than main one ... this positioning of that order bugs me but what will a SE: newbie do. Maybe they'll learn the "WAY" SE:V does it. Or they may think that this along with some other UI issues just are not worth their computer time and they also might give bad word of mouth to their friends. (word of mouth is what sells games unless you are Sid Meier, a football game with Madden in the title, or WoW).
I'm still playing and I'm still liking what I see, I just had hoped that I could say I loved the experience. It's not there ... yet.

[CRM114]

That fixed it! Thanks, man.

[Artaud]

In the main window, would it be possible to have some kind of border around the system when you are zoomed out?

If you are playing with the hexes switched off, as I do, zoomed out so you can tell your teeny tiny ship where to go, you cannot tell where the system ends until you click somewhere and your ship does not respond. Then you click closer to the center of the screen, and still your ship won't move. Then a little closer...and finally your ship begins to move.

If SEV is going to become all fancy with the graphics, perhaps a "plasma barrier" or something could be added to the system view so that you can see where the system ends.

And I'll say it again: ship icons need to be larger.

Planets, also, look much worse in the system map than in SEIV. Most of them just look like smudges of color. The planet images in the description windows look quite nice, but in the system maps they look horrible.

[Phoenix-D]

Imperator Fyron said:
Attack order takes what, 5 clicks? SE4, you hit a, click target, click ok (or hit enter). Retrofitting? Easy, simple in SE4. SE5, its some 5 or 6 clicks _per ship_.



In SE5 you hit a, click target. End.

Yes, retrofitting is borked. But only if you need more than one ship- otherwise SE5 takes exactly ONE extra click. Yes, the cancel button is in a wacky spot. The keyboard shortcuts are tolerable though, which makes both those issues livable.

[wrongshui]

Cystaline Armor doesn't do anything either, thats both crystaline and organic, do the other armor types work?

[VanderVecken]

Ahh, Phoenix-D. For the casual and the new SE:gamers the feel of SE:V is not as intuitive as SE:IV was.
I'm very glad that with custom layouts you can do wonderful things; but most casual and new gamers will have dropped this title before they have enough experience to do those wonderful things, the same goes for keyboard shortcuts and slider bars because if these helpers are not WELL documented, they don't exist to them.

These people are the new Fan base ( and the people who can make this game a money-maker for MM as well). Some of you core SE:gamers may have hundreds or even thousands of posts on SE alone. And the Mods and customizing that you can do are beyond belief .. but if a game can't motivate a new group to become Fanatics like most of us here who participate in this Forum, It has failed.
I hope this game was designed for success for both groups. I was a lurker here for ages B4 I ever replied to a post and UI elegance is a key in keeping most of those people who want to DO what <INSERT TITLE> game says it can do; whether its a Space 4X, MMO's, wargame, Shooter, or even a dance-dance-music game.

Bugs are fixable (usually), but UI issues either take patience, strong familiarity with possible work-a-rounds or shortcuts, or Superb documentation. or the casual gamer moves to something else before he/she becomes a Core - player. One 'extra click' keeps SE:V from acheiving the elegance of design my fondest games usually have. Since 4X space games are my favorite, I'll BE patient, DEVELOP a strong familiarity with the UI, and READ, and re-read, and reread, and ... the manual.

I hope that some of the new and casual gamers who decide to buy this title also do so because we need to keep growing this base. And if someday there's to be a SE:XII (in true hologramic display) with all the bells and whistles all the SE:XI players have been asking for, we'll need SE:V to be (and be perceived to be) a true level up from SE:IV. I' like what it can do but is it where it needs to be, or is it still climbing those step to get there (the next Level in 4X gaming experience)

[Phoenix-D]

Don't put too much hope on reading the manual. The SE4 manuals were useful for..nothing, really.

And yeah, the shortcuts aren't obvious and should be. Hence why I keep repeating them to people. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Dizzy]

VanderVecken said:
Ahh, Phoenix-D. For the casual and the new SE:gamers the feel of SE:V is not as intuitive as SE:IV was. I'm very glad that with custom layouts you can do wonderful things; but most casual and new gamers will have dropped this title before they have enough experience to do those wonderful things, same goes for keyboard shortcuts and slider bars because if these helpers are not WELL documented, they don't exist to them. These people are the new Fan base ( and the people who can make this game a money-maker for MM as well). Some of you core SE:gamers may have hundreds or even thousands of posts on SE alone. And the Mods and customizing that you can do are beyond belief .. but if a game can't motivate a new group to become Fanatics like most of us here who participate in this Forum, It has failed. I hope this game was designed for success for both groups. I was a lurker here for ages B4 I ever replied to a post and UI elegance is a key keeping most of those people who want to do what <INSERT TITLE> game says it can do. Whether its Space 4X, MMO's, wargames, or even dance-dance-music games. Bugs are fixable (usually), UI issues either take patience, strong familiarity with possible work-a-rounds or shortcuts, or Superb documentation. or the casual gamer moves to something else before he/she becomes a Core - player. One 'extra click' keeps SE:V from acheiving the elegance of design my fondest games usually have. Since 4X space games are my favorite, I'll BE patient, DEVELOP a strong familiarity with the UI, and READ, and re-read, and reread, and ... the manual. I hope that some of the new and casual gamers who decide to buy this title also do so because we need to keep growing this base. And if someday there's to be a SE:XII (in true hologramic display) with all the bells and whistles all the SE:XI players have been asking for, we'll need SE:V to be (and be perceived to be) a true level up from SE:IV. I' like what it can do but is it where it needs to be, or is it still climbing those step to get there (the next Level in 4X gaming experience)



good god, man, didnt you ever finish jr school? PARAGRAPHS!!! PLEASE!!! Your post is too painful to read.

[Dizzy]

Phoenix-D said:
Don't put too much hope on reading the manual. The SE4 manuals were useful for..nothing, really.




W/o that online manual I woulda not figured out the game and quit... Mb that would have been better. Damned addictive game.

[VanderVecken]

Dizzy, Someday I want to become a Writer (really), but for now I'll just practice to write better. You are absolutely right.

I type very slow and think really fast .. same issues that a powerful modern Graphics card would have going thru a old Pentium II chip and board set. Still, I'll try to do better.

[Fyron]

Phoenix-D said:
In SE5 you hit a, click target. End.

Hmm... he must have listened and changed that then.

[Phoenix-D]

Imperator Fyron said:

Phoenix-D said:
In SE5 you hit a, click target. End.

Hmm... he must have listened and changed that then.



Dare I ask how it was before?

[Captain Kwok]

I think he is talking about simultaneous, where you need to choose between attack seek and attack.

[Phoenix-D]

..I'm not seeing how those two could be different, unless attack is just "go here, kill anything that happens to be at that location" (why can you not move onto enemy units now, anyway? it -must- be an attack order?)

[Santiago]

Quick start game locked up at about turn 48. "processing players turns" Had to close the game down.

[Captain Kwok]

Phoenix-D said:
..I'm not seeing how those two could be different, unless attack is just "go here, kill anything that happens to be at that location" (why can you not move onto enemy units now, anyway? it -must- be an attack order?)

The general reason is to make sure that's what you want to do (since you can't cancel a move order - well in sequential at least) - in other words making it more newbie friendly.

[bearclaw]

The Log Report entries are too big on the screen. Would be nice if it showed all units/vehicles built at one location as a single entry and more entries were visable at one time. Only seeing 3 at a time and having to scroll through 25+ items only to discover that it's only telling you you've just built 23 troops and 2 ships is kinda anoying.

[Will]

bearclaw said:
The Log Report entries are too big on the screen. Would be nice if it showed all units/vehicles built at one location as a single entry and more entries were visable at one time. Only seeing 3 at a time and having to scroll through 25+ items only to discover that it's only telling you you've just built 23 troops and 2 ships is kinda anoying.


I had the same complaint earlier in this thread, or perhaps another one. I was informed that clicking on the tab above the images gives you smaller or no image next to the log entry, so you can see more than three at a time. I also wished for multiple construction-completion items at a single location to be merged. Time to start bugging Aaron for that in a patch http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Captain Kwok]

You should see the log entry I generated once building troop complements for 50 or so planets during 1 turn. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[bearclaw]

Thanks Will! that "will" be helpful. ahahahahahahhah
Problem is, this thread is already getting too large to read through. I tried. I really did, http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I'm curious how the usage stats for this and other forums (se.net and St1st) have increased since the Demo came out...

[Captain Kwok]

bearclaw said:I'm curious how the usage stats for this and other forums (se.net and St1st) have increased since the Demo came out...

I'd say the number of viewers at this forum has doubled, with posting probably 3-4x the recent average.

My own site has also spiked to nearly double the recent average of visitors per day. It looks like Fyron's site has seen the same jump.

[jowe01]

Dunno if it is a bug or WAD. I cannot seem to be able to bombard a planet with my beam frigates. They just sit above the planet and do not fire until combat is over although i have clearly indicated the planet as target. Has anybody experienced this, too?

[przy]

Don't know if this has happened to anyone else but, my right click functionality does not seem to work properly. By that I mean when I right click, the box comes up, but the lettering or words I should say do not appear, it is just blank. I hope you all understand what I mean, I apologize if I make no sense. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

[AMF]

Have you checked to make sure the weapons you're using can target planets? Certain weapons cannot, IIRC.


jowe01 said:
Dunno if it is a bug or WAD. I cannot seem to be able to bombard a planet with my beam frigates. They just sit above the planet and do not fire until combat is over although i have clearly indicated the planet as target. Has anybody experienced this, too?

[jowe01]

ok, by now I have played about 70 turns of the demo. I very much like the animated combat (although the interface is also somewhat tedious here). However, there seem to be so many bugs and shortcomings that i am a little bit worried how Aaron is ever going to get the game in any shape for the release. Just my main hick-ups:
1) Crash bugs. that's how i just "terminated" my game, no clue what caused them.
2) Diplomacy: just does not seem to work. I propose a treaty and specify it. Then I receive an information that my message had been sent. However, in most cases there is never any reaction from the AIs.
3)AI: Seems to suffer from the same weaknesses as in SE4 (here I am really disappointed - I thought building on SE4 was a good idea, so you did not have to start from scratch but could develop the AI into a new dimension of quality. This soes not seem to have happened), namely a lack of "memory" (always making the same mistakes) and an inconsequent behaviour (the AI attacks on of my planets in a system, the withdraws instead of attacking my other colonies with its much superior forces).
4) The really tedious UI with its complicated ways of doing things and its unsuitable proportions between buttons, legends, units and map. mentioned by dozens of others before me

Hopefully Aaron does n otmind working 24h a day...

[jowe01]

[quote]
AMF said:
Have you checked to make sure the weapons you're using can target planets? Certain weapons cannot, IIRC.

That was my bad, sorry. One of the rare occasions when I got diplomacy to work, I concluded an alliance which banned planetary bombardment. Only saw it later...

[wrongshui]

Hopefully Jowe the demo isnt a new build and most of the obvious bugs are already fixed.

[Phoenix-D]

wrongshui said:
Hopefully Jowe the demo isnt a new build and most of the obvious bugs are already fixed.



Apparently the demo is buggier than the latest better- more Access Violations and the like. Probably due to a rush-job in coding the demo restrictions.

[Blade W]

Yea, my greatest disappointment in SE:V the AI behaviour. Based on the demo experiences it isn't much improved since SE:IV, although a turn based game mostly for single player, where a good AI guarantees a high replayable factor.

[Captain Kwok]

We'll have to wait until we start building a library of AI scripts. There's a ton of items that can be tweak already that would help with performance, but it's going to take some time though.

[BBegemott]

Sorry for duplicates if any.

[annoyance]Log window is awful. SE4 was much better, though not perfect also. I think log window should have:
* more info in screen (~13 entries in SE4 is much little too);
* ability to go back to last log entry that I left with 'Goto' button from Main System window.
* summary info per empire/per system. E.g. little subwindow in the corner, telling how much my research/resources/ships has in/decreased during the last turn.

/threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif I select a drone, a planet, a sattelite in the same sector, i order them to warp. I go to the orders and I see these orders for the planet and sats, though they cant move. I even see movement lines, if I arrive at the item via 'GoTo' button.

/threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif The 'requirements' subwindow in research tech detalization is always empty. Even if I click on already researched technology.

/threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif 'Manual' button doesn't work in Help window. (In fact DEMO doesn't include any PDF files, though the message says it shouls).

/threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif AI doesn't progress if I ALT+Tab SEV program, when it is performing its dirty tasks.

/threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif Quadrant window shows warp point connector entries, even if those warp points have not been seen yet.

[feat request] I would like to have checkboxes on the right instead of radio buttons in 'Filter' windows. That would allow players to filter list by few types of info at once. (And would allow less clicking).

[feat request] Windows with only one 'CLose' button should be able to close with right mouse button click.

[feat request] ability to remove star glowing would be nice. (It makes unseeable what is behind it).

[???] Under empire omptions, select vehicle sizes. It shos that I lost a few colonisers, though I colonised planets with them. I don't this means I lost them...

[Suicide Junkie]

If you click the column header for the picture, you can shrink or hide it.
This will improve the data density significantly.

Having an indication that the sizes are optional would be very nice.

[RonGianti]

Just a general question about some of these bug requests:

Whats up with the Alt+tab? It seems like a number of issues revolve around the Alt+tab, but I cannot, for the life of me figure a reason why I would want to Alt+tab out of a runnning game?

It seems like a lot of people do it, so what in the world is behind the game, running in the background that you all are Alt+tabbing too? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

[Phoenix-D]

RonGianti said:
Just a general question about some of these bug requests:

Whats up with the Alt+tab? It seems like a number of issues revolve around the Alt+tab, but I cannot, for the life of me figure a reason why I would want to Alt+tab out of a runnning game?

It seems like a lot of people do it, so what in the world is behind the game, running in the background that you all are Alt+tabbing too? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif



IRC, web browsing, text files to make suggestions, whatever. In SE4, it was nice to alt-tab away while waiting for the turn to process, especially for a very large game that could take a couple of minutes to process.

The answer to "the game has a bug" is never "you shouldn't have been doing that anyway". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

For most of us, it would be this forum, the IRC channel, a music player, and similar things.

Socializing while you play is the best.
It really takes the edge off of the longer turn times late in a game, and spreading propaganda about your latest turns in a PBW game to the enemy while you play it is always fun.


And, of course, when processing some of the big CarrierBattles turns, they can take two or three hours. Letting se4 chew on it in the background is infinitely superior to the game tying up your entire computer during "prime time".

[Captain Kwok]

Sometimes I want to alt-tab because I'm making screenshots or sometimes during turn processing I want to browse the forums (although that's not working) or sometimes I want to double-check an item in the data file when testing a mod etc.

[Artaud]

Santiago said:
Quick start game locked up at about turn 48. "processing players turns" Had to close the game down.



This happens also in games where you create an empire.

[wrongshui]

My ships won't unmothball, they have the order they just do nothing, does it take some amount of turns?

[Ludd]

Is there a way to be notified when a ship or fleet has reached its destination?

[Phoenix-D]

BillyBoy said:
Is there a way to be notified when a ship or fleet has reached its destination?



Only by the Orders section of the ship list- once a ship reaches its destination, that will be blank.

Or by the next ship/fleet button, which skips ships with orders.

[StarShadow]

The ground cannon (troop weapon) needs major tweaking. At top level it does 707 dmg, although top lvl small shields are only 108 and top small armor is 50.

As someone else has pointed out emmisive armor doesn't work.

The anti-matter and quantum torpedos need tweaking. You get both at the same time, they level at the same time, their stats are the same except the quantum has more range and damage.

[Ludd]

Phoenix-D said:

BillyBoy said:
Is there a way to be notified when a ship or fleet has reached its destination?



Only by the Orders section of the ship list- once a ship reaches its destination, that will be blank.

Or by the next ship/fleet button, which skips ships with orders.



Then I have a request for a " We have arrived at our destination Sir. Do you have any further orders?" message.

Difficult to do?

[Phoenix-D]

You'd have to ask MM, not me..no idea how difficult it would be. Email the request to se5@malfador.com. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[scJazz]

Did a search and tried to find out if this was already reported. Didn't find anything sorry if it is a dupe.

After initial opening of a new game.
When to system list and the icons for the planets, asteroids, etc are rendered in totally mangled video mostly black but basically horizontal lines of random color.

I'm using...
1.5ghz centrino
512mb ram
rez 1280 x 800 (native for 15.4" lcd)
shared video ram

added dxdiag attachment

[Captain Kwok]

Have you tried switching to "SAFE" mode in setup?

[Santiago]

Artaud said:

Santiago said:
Quick start game locked up at about turn 48. "processing players turns" Had to close the game down.



This happens also in games where you create an empire.



Update: I had originally saved this game at turn 42. I played up to turn 47 and saved it. Game locked up again at turn 48. Ended game and reloaded and have not been able to repeat the problem yet. In hindsight maybe I shouldn't have overwritten the turn 42 save.

[StarShadow]

Switching the video to SAFE, seems to fix everyone's video problems.

[StarShadow]

Do mines even work in the demo? I mined a warp point and aside from the mines disappearing when an enemy came through, they didn't take any damage. I know for a fact they didn't have minesweeper components on the ship either.

[cshank2]

For some reason, in the simulator. Fighters (Ground and space) make straight away fro the edge of the map. Same goes for ships in the space simulator. Straight for the edge of the map.

[Noble713]

cshank2 said:
For some reason, in the simulator. Fighters (Ground and space) make straight away fro the edge of the map. Same goes for ships in the space simulator. Straight for the edge of the map.



I don't know about ships, but fighters will do that if they launch with no supplies/ordnance. Make sure your carrier designs have large supply/ord stockpiles. I had carriers with only enough supplies for half of their fighter complements, so half of my fighters would race towards the enemy and the other half would head off in the opposite direction. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif


On a related note, I'd like to be able to turn off "Auto Launch Units" in Strategies for Tactical Combat, but still keep it on for Strategic Combat. There are times when I don't want my carriers to launch fighters but then again I don't want them to be sitting ducks during any auto-run battles.

[Zereth]

Phoenix-D said:
Yes, retrofitting is borked. But only if you need more than one ship- otherwise SE5 takes exactly ONE extra click. Yes, the cancel button is in a wacky spot. The keyboard shortcuts are tolerable though, which makes both those issues livable.


What do you mean "if"? Why would you be refitting one ship at a time? In SE4, unless I was trying to cut down the time it took to build ring/sphereworld components or stellar manipulation vehicles, I was usually refitting five ships, minimum, sometimes as many as 20 in a turn. (I also tended to have lots of repair bays in my fleets and build dedicated repair starbases, so this didn't make my fleet a sitting duck for a dozen turns.)

[MasterChiToes]

I would really like to be able to right-click an empty planet, and have one of the options be 'send colony ship'... only being able to auto-send a colony ship from the planet menu leaves me clicking back and forth between screens too much.

I would also like to be able to change levels on the blueprint without emptying the cursor of the current component... would make designing ships much easier.

In lists, components and facilities need to be stacked... and their research levels needs to be easily identifiable without right clicking on each of them.

Of course, none of this is really new... just like the code for ship movement is badly in need of optimization (since the longer the trip, the slower ships move between hexes). Also, the automatic function give away hidden map info... like if you try to auto-colonize an occupied planet, it won't go... or as was mentioned before, the pathfinding bee-lines for hidden wormholes.

[Arralen]

Artaud said:
Is there any way to increase the size of the ship icons relative to the planet icons? Without scrolling. I want to see the entire system and also see my individual ships.



The game does this for me already - even unasked for http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/uploads/447400-BigShip.png

[AMF]

Dude. That is a serious ship. I am totally NOT playing you in PBW.

[Arralen]

And that is only "FF Explorer MkI". Wait 'til you see "DN Squa**** Mk XIII" - or rather it's 241th porthole on the left, staring right in your eyes with screenfilling gaze http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[wrongshui]

StarShadow said:
As someone else has pointed out emmisive armor doesn't work.



None of the special armors work, neither do those crystalline solar plants, urban pacification centers and the planet condition improvers, I think a set of abilities have been left out of the demo, not actually a bug.

[RonGianti]

Phoenix-D said:
The answer to "the game has a bug" is never "you shouldn't have been doing that anyway". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



I was very careful not to say that, I was mearly curious as to "why" someone would want to do Alt+Tab. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[Aiken]

BBegemott said:
[feat request] ability to remove star glowing would be nice. (It makes unseeable what is behind it).



In BitmapEffects_System.txt set
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>Frame 1 Texture End X := 0.00
Frame 1 Texture End Y := 0.00</pre><hr />
But it will look really ugly.

[PDF]

I'd also like to have bigger ships on the sector view, maybe it's moddable (it was in Starfury where ships were too big to the contrary..).

The "ship design layout" is disappointing : the idea is good (it was neatly done in SF), but here we have a bunch of slots, way too numerous, very few specialized
This would be useful for preventing abuses - eg transports full of weapons, to enforce engine limitations, etc.., and weapons are still not directional (it seems).
It really looks half- (or rather quarter-)done http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Captain Kwok]

If you made the slots too specific, then it would become increasingly difficult to balance the sets - and then you'd have the problem of user created shipsets with favorable layouts for weapons or extra engines etc.

In the SE:V Balance Mod, slots are put to a little better use with some components like weapons and engines being restricted to outer slots and stuff like that. With the layers of damage, they should be the first to go before internals and so on.

[jowe01]

Has somebody else noted that the AI empires do not seem to react to the human's diplomatic proposals? Not that they refuse, they simply do not react at all.

[StarShadow]

In my games they react, I've had several treaties with AI players.

[Raapys]

I had them accept a counter-proposal. Can't remember if I ever sent a regular message. The AI in the game felt completely uninteractive at any rate, it felt like we were all just sitting in our own corner of the galaxy doing our own stuff.

[Captain Kwok]

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

[MarkSheppard]

P.S. I also have issues with the ship design boxes. I actually like the idea, and directional combat is something that I certainly can take. But when I buy a Bridge Module for 10 Tons and a Rock Colony Module for 100 Tons and the each take up 1 square I loose interest in that part of designing ships.



Oh that's an EXCELLENT suggestion; it would really help with preventing the smaller ships from becoming "uber" late in the game.

[arthurtuxedo]

On treaties, I like the new options, but the AI doesn't seem to have any understanding of them at all. Perhaps there should be a number of set "packages" of options, and those are the only ones the AI will recognize. They'll never suggest, for instance, a ban on research, and if you offer it, they will simply edit it out in the counter-proposal. That way, it's a lot more balanced for single player, and we still get all the advanced options for multiplayer.

[StarShadow]

In that case..what is the point of all the new diplomacy options, if the AI just ignores any that aren't part of a pre-defined package? I don't play multi-player, and even if I did, why should all the new functionality of diplomacy be reserved for multi-player?

[Raapys]

I don't do multiplayer either, and the change I was mostly looking forward to was the AI( and the modding possibilities). Can't really say it's been impressive thus far. If it really isn't much better in the full version, how much of an improvement can be expected from modding it?

[Ragnarok-X]

Probably none, since there is no actually artificial intelligence. It just reacts according to the settings given to it.

[StarShadow]

That's about all AI is at the moment. The best AI's could probably come up with creative solutions to situations (within set paramaters), for games it's pretty much limited to 'if x happens, do z'

[PDF]

Captain Kwok said:
If you made the slots too specific, then it would become increasingly difficult to balance the sets - and then you'd have the problem of user created shipsets with favorable layouts for weapons or extra engines etc.

In the SE:V Balance Mod, slots are put to a little better use with some components like weapons and engines being restricted to outer slots and stuff like that. With the layers of damage, they should be the first to go before internals and so on.



Hmm, problem is that as it is it's rather pointless and not interesting, the "dump'em all" of SE4 was at least simple and visually clear ...
Now I can design a Frigate with engines all over the place, weapon facing rear, everything spilled over 3 decks, it's rather stoopid...

[Captain Kwok]

There is a ton of room for AI improvements like making better Colony Type decisions, better fleet composition, better ship design, improved analysis of treaties, better decision making for attack locations, and so on. All of this and more is accessible through the AI scripts.

For slots, I agree it would be better if there were a couple more slot types for weapons or engines. We'll see I guess if that ever turns up in the future.

[Artaud]

PDF said:
I'd also like to have bigger ships on the sector view, maybe it's moddable (it was in Starfury where ships were too big to the contrary..).



It's almost certainly moddable, but you should not have to rely on a mod for something like this! Seeing the ships is a basic part of the gameplay.

If I have to download a mod just to play the game without straining my eyes, then maybe I should pay the modder instead of the game company.

If you scroll in to see the ships you can only see a small part of the system. You have to scroll out in order to decide where to move your ships. This makes no sense.

Well, as I said before, it's Aaron's choice as to what direction he wants his game to move. He has his reasons and that's his right and that's that. Everybody can make his own decision about whether that direction is right for them.

[wrongshui]

I had an issue where I couldn't switch back to the system view from the tactical view.

I had to resize the system map, click next colony and then look in a build queue, then i could switch back.

[StarShadow]

I would suggest that all player ships/units should have an outline around them, to make them easy to see.

[Santiago]

An outline is not enough- the ships need to be bigger. Basically the same reasons Artaud stated 3 posts up.

[StarShadow]

Oh I don't know, I think a bright/glowing outline would suit me fine. Although maybe a way to adjust the scale of individual elements (ie ships/bases/etc), would be a good idea.

[bearclaw]

Something I already miss from SEIV is being able to see just how many resources each construction queue is using that turn. It's a micro-management function but I like it. With construction spilling over to the next build item, I can understand why it's not there, but it' still a function that I'd like to have.

What if you are building a bunch of facilities that don't use rads or orgs? I'd like to be able to see which queues are consuming what.

[StarShadow]

The weapons and armor/shields have (of course) changed somewhat in SEV, but that brings up balance issues. this being a demo, my observations may already be out of date for the final release.

I've noticed the incinerator beam(medium range weapon) has a max range of 12, but the wave-motion gun (long range weapon) only has a range of 8 (or 9, I forget at the moment), doesn't seem right to me..

Organic Armor..was this completely nerfed on purpose? It take 6 times the space of normal armor, and provides less protection (440 vs 520 (or so)), and the regeneration on it looks pretty lame (depending on how, exactly, it works) regen is somewhere around 152Kt per minute...combat only lasts for 1 minute (30 rounds of 2 seconds each, if I read the setting.txt right). Anyway, regardless of the regen, this armor is seriously under-powered for it's size.

The Alliegence Subverter at max level(and unmounted) has a 15% chance (or less) to affect an enemy ship, this seems quite under-powered to me, especially as it's really only useful for a limited time (until the AIs start using computers).

The Cloaking Device, looks pretty much obsolete now, stealth armor cloaks to the same level(and consumes no supplies) and is more economical and practical to research.

I'm not sure what to make of the shields, in SEIV phased ended up the strongest, in SEV normal shields are stronger. Makes it rather difficult to defend your ships from PPB's. Also a question here..does mixing shield types still result in un-phased shields, or does the phased-shielding only kick in when a PPB is used? (or they are the last remaining shields on a ship).

A bit of a gripe that I suppose could fixed easily in a mod: Shouldn't Organic and Crystal hulls have some special abilities, aside from having their min/org/rad costs slightly altered?

Can't think of anything else at the moment. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Captain Kwok]

Organic, Crystalline, and Emissive armor are not working atm.

What you're looking for is the SE:V Balance Mod. You'll just have to wait another 4 weeks to try it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[arthurtuxedo]

StarShadow said:
In that case..what is the point of all the new diplomacy options, if the AI just ignores any that aren't part of a pre-defined package? I don't play multi-player, and even if I did, why should all the new functionality of diplomacy be reserved for multi-player?


What's the point of the new diplomacy options if the AI has no idea what it's asking for, and suggests treaties that are all over the map, and treaties which may greatly harm them? The ideal solution is, of course, "fix the AI", but we all know the chances of that. My solution would at least stop the AI from completely screwing itself over or proposing treaties that make no sense and rejecting ones that make perfect sense.

I say leave the complex mode for the multiplayer arena where it will do more good than harm.

[StarShadow]

I would say, take the middle road. Make diplomatic 'packages' for the AI to use, but don't restrict the player to using only those packages. Of course making the AI more savvy in diplomacy would be good too.

[arthurtuxedo]

You almost have to restrict the incoming treaties the AI will accept if you don't improve the AI. Otherwise, it would be trivially easy to get them to agree to treaties that are extremely harmful for them. I agree that your system would be a great improvment to the current alphabet soup, but it does leave open serious potential for exploitation.

[StarShadow]

Not really, just add conditions to AI acceptance. For example, make the AI not accept a treaty that disallows them to do research, UNLESS, the treaty also says the player will share their research with the AI. With the possibility of the AI accepting a no research treaty if the player is much, much stronger than them(intimidation factor).

[Santiago]

When a ship is under survey orders and gets within 1 hex of a star it stops surveying until the ship is manually moved furthe away and a new survey order is issued.

[Spoo]

Is it possible to add ships to fleets in the Simulator? When I tried, the ships just vanished from the fleet window, rather than be added.