SEV DEMO IS OUT!

[wilhil]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

to finish off in these words.

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

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


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

[wilhil]

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

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

[Barnacle Bill]

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

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

[StarShadow]

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

[Jayalin]

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

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

[arthurtuxedo]

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

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

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

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

[StarShadow]

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

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

[StarShadow]

@arthurtuxedo

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

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

[arthurtuxedo]

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