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SE\'s Best Quality, And How to Improve It

Hi!

So - I've played all the other recent releases, like Galactic Civilizations II, and I've even been playing MOO2 again recently. But I keep coming back to SE:V, despite frustrationg with the interfaces and bugs and AI, because, unlike the other games, development in SE:V is much less linear, restrictive and formulaic.

For example, in Galactic Civilizations II, you're stuck in a never-ending rock-papers-scissors game, with the three varieties of weapons and the defences against them. You don't really get to experiment with more intricate tactical approaches.

In MOO2, while there's a neat variety of weapons, the fact is that shield-bypassing is so important that there are really only a handful of viable approaches to armament. And, of course, by endgame, everyone's using essentially the same equipment; all the final choices narrow in again.

So what I like best about SE:V is that you can play the game with so many different approaches; you can focus on masses of fighters, or kamikaze drones, or cloaked world-destroyers, or any number of variants - and they're all essentially viable, none necessarily overpowers another utterly, you just have to play them right.

The only problem is that the various AI's don't seem to branch out into those different approaches; all the AI's build pretty much the same way, in terms of military defence and offense.

I think that the game would immediately become much more interesting if it were possible to assign different strategies to different opponent races. For example, one race might favor high-speed, long-range, hit-and-run ships. Or another might focus on shields and armor, hoping to outlast their enemies' ordnance/supplies. Or, using massive fighter fleets, launched from slow but well-armed carriers.

Then, you the player would have to adapt to these different enemies. They wouldn't all be the same basic entity but with different tech levels and portrait icons.

I don't know if that kind of thing can be modded into SE:V, but maybe it's just worth bringing up for the sake of SE:VI.

Thanks for reading!