Re: Things you wish they kept from SE3
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JDL:
The beam/pulse weapons are the HEART of any scifi genre.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Erm, I must beg to differ. Certainly they're the heart of MANY scifi settings, but by no means all. To wit: Joe Haldman's (sp?) classic The Forever War, Dan Simmon's Hyperion works, and the Honor Hartigan (sp?) series (at least, that's what I gather... I never managed to stomach more than 50 pages or so of it myself). I'm sure there are plenty of others, but these were what sprang to mind.

Frankly, it depends on your view of engagement ranges and ship speeds. If we take the engagement ranges to be the paltry things they appear to be, and the speeds to be as minute as the lack of concern about acceleration and turning implys them to be, your argument in favor of beams has some validity. However, if we assume longer ranges and/or closer to reletivistic speeds, beams become far less practical, as they can't correct their aim...

Re: Things you wish they kept from SE3
 

I too was a longtime player of SE3 and miss many of the features. However some of the comments mentioned below I don't entirely agree with IIRC.

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-Basic indutry and research facilities took .5 years to build EACH.
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Thats not entirely true IIRC. I remember fully populated large planets only taking 1 turn (to produce Ind / Res facilities). When you only have a few (pop) it took 5 turns.

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..well I'm another person who likes the starting tech levels. Though maybe there should be a cost so people won't do the obvious and go for the colonization techs and planet utilization techs immediately.
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I also liked the starting tech levels, but I like the Racial Techs idea even better. If MM implemented it (the tech levels), I agree people would tend to get the Atmos techs, but they could NOT get to the planet util techs. If they implemented it (tech levels) like SE3, it would not allow selection of hidden techs which planet util is one.

I personally would rather steal / beg / "borrow" atmospheric techs - its more fun that way and a hell of a lot less expensive (in research points).

I did like the "put the basic hull in orbit and repair the components" way of building ships. You could save a planet from attack by buying a coupla' bases, change the repair priorities to Sensors, then Weapons, then Shields and within 1 or 2 turns you had a base or two that was not completely built but could still deal a formidible blow to the attacking enemy.

One thing I liked a lot that has been mentioned in other threads but not here is the separation of building ships and facilities. Shipyards built ships - period. You could build ships and facilities at the same time. I would not mind it at all that we don't have multiple shipyards on bases if we could build facilities on a planet the same time we're building a ship. Why can't I build a mine on my planet at the same time my shipyard is building fighters (or ships or sats, etc.) Do they really use the same stuff?

Re: Things you wish they kept from SE3
 

SE III would allow the selection of hidden tech levels, but only if you had selection the prerequisites during the setup. Quantum reactor, for example, took up 28 tech levels just to open up the the option to select quantum reactor. If you started with 50 tech levels, you would only have 21 left by the time you got your eternal energy source.

I still wish they had left the option to select the number of starting tech levels and the ability to choose different ones in.

Re: Things you wish they kept from SE3
 

I'm missing some features too...

1) The SE3 Construction queue. Was so far, much better than the current SE4 queue system.

2) The Starting tech points.

3) The right click menu.

4) The zoomable galaxy (I believed that I was the only guy who missed it!).

5) The ships in construction in SE3 could fight, but SE4 ships under construction simply doesn't exist.


Anyway, I'm starting to believe that MM only will implement the points 2) and 4). But to lose the queue system is a real shame.

Re: Things you wish they kept from SE3
 

The main thing i miss is the windowed display, meaning with a matrox dualhead gfx card i could spread the display wherever i wanted (specially the galaxy zoom) in what ever order i wanted over 2 monitors. Now if mm could implement......

tic

Re: Things you wish they kept from SE3
 

tictoc: DUAL MONITORS??? And I thought I was cool for using a 21" monitor to play (well, at least at home - my work monitor is only 15"). I bow to superior technology.

Re: Things you wish they kept from SE3
 

I really, really, really miss not having a ship-halt button.

Re: Things you wish they kept from SE3
 

Samurai: YES!! That was one of the best features; if you had a ship that you wanted to just stay put, but didn't want to (or couldn't) put it on sentry, it was great!

I also liked being able to specify EXACTLY how many units I wanted built; if I wanted 33 fighters, I selected 33 fighters. Now I have to either build extra fighters (to come up to a number divisible by 5) or put a couple of single fighters in the queue. Which wastes build capacity...

How about shield facilities in the standard shield tech area? Now we have to find unique technology to build planetary shields! I don't miss the weapon facilities, though; I like the weapon platforms in SE4 better.

Re: Things you wish they kept from SE3
 

You CAN sentry ships in SE4. You can also clear their orders - that'll also make 'em stop.

[This message has been edited by rdouglass (edited 19 January 2001).]

Re: Things you wish they kept from SE3
 

It's been a while, but as I recall didn't SE3's fast combat resolve ship fire almost as fast as if all the guns fired in one volley. Unlike SE4's where when you tell the game to "auto resolve combat" it's this slow drawn out shot, pause, shot, pause, shot, pause. Next ship. Shot, pause,....

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