Re: SE5 bad reviews and problems.
 

Swiss Cheese?

Oh wait different thread...

Re: SE5 bad reviews and problems.
 

I tried Swiss cheese once, but my fingers got stuck in the holes. Still have nightmares about that one. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

Re: SE5 bad reviews and problems.
 

We all need the understand that no matter what we will always have those days where we say things that we normally wouldn't say. A drunk mans comments are a sober mans secrets may be the common belief, but trust me, they seldom are his reality.

Lets stop beating each other up over our varying levels of dissapointment and anger at the current state of SE V. We can all agree, I hope, that as time goes on the game will improve. Lets leave the past in the past and look toward the future. Otherwise, if the flames and rudeness continue, we may start to see thread being locked. That I do hope never occures, but it will if things continue to be aloud to spiral out of control.

Lets keep a focus on the positives shall we? The game is out, the first 4x game in years, and despite buggish set backs that we all know will be worked out, we at least have our game and its no Phantom Menance.

Re: SE5 bad reviews and problems.
 

Be glad it was only your fingers!

Re: SE5 bad reviews and problems.
 

You can't prove that ever happened!!! Did you hear it from that doctor at the ER? He's lying that was just my pinky!

Re: SE5 bad reviews and problems.
 

Starshadow:
That's exactly my point. Stop blaming US for what new people say. Give them a chance to have their rough edges polished off.
If the heat level is decreasing with time, things will probably end up all right.

Re: SE5 bad reviews and problems.
 

OK, so, I spent a lot of time when SE5 first came out being dissappointed with, and griping about, the UI.

I see now that there are a bunch of patches out - and I'm willing to fire up the game again to give it a fair shake.

But before I get up the energy to do that I need to ask: has the UI been improved at all? My primary gripes with it revolved around not being able to see things on the main screen, and the tediousness of the ship design. Have these been addressed at all? I have read through much of the patch history but they're pretty sparse in their descriptions of what the UI changes have been.

Most of the other patch fixes sound great, but there are still some things that I didn't see there - but I am hopeful that MM is fixing them as well...the UI remains my main concern...

Thanks, for any info, in advance.

Re: SE5 bad reviews and problems.
 

Well, the majority of the tediousness of the design is inherent in the slot layout system... mouse movements between every click is a given.
Using the shift key to place/remove multiple items in a row is critical to your sanity on the design screen. It has been an option all along, but you may not have known about it.
GGmod will also help a lot, once it comes out. Knowing that there is some benefit to the work will alleviate some of the drudgery. (GGmod has directional armor, and internal damage isn't instantly fatal so it matters where you put the armor plates and internals)


The main screen... what things in particular?
For the 3D view, I suggest using high rez, to minimize the UI's footprint and get the most screen area for the actual view. Also, using the angled view and tilting it will essentially compress the vertical extent of the map and allow you to make it fill your screen, more or less.
Definitely get one of the flag-shrinking downloads (thanks to TNZ for that one) from this forum.

See: http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...mainscreen.jpg

Re: SE5 bad reviews and problems.
 

And don't forget that the most flexible UI is your brain!

I was first too quite unhappy with the UI, but the more I play SE V the less problems I have.

As I said already IMO the real limitation is the hardware/computer resources SE V needs in a larger/advanced game. My system (Athlon 3400+, 512MB RAM, Nividia GeForce FX 5500) may not be the newest, but is far above the published system requirements. And in a game at stardate 2412.0 with about 70 systems and 18 empires a game turn processing lasts several minutes. Even changing the system display or some larger lists may take a few seconds. Compared to SE IV this is a huge difference on my computer.

Re: SE5 bad reviews and problems.
 

On hi rez - many people's pc's don't run the game well. But if you have a small screen or a laptop like I do, there is no way to reduce the UI footprint. It should be made minimizable; ie the button area, info area and map separately. Angling it works to an some extent but its just not suited for my taste.

On another note, the columns for various info such as ships, planets, colonies should be made movable just as in any windows app, so we could fit more when using custom layouts. Since the column width is fixed, there is wasted space I could use to put another selected column into.