Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Did you shudder to think of the time wasted on SE4's graphics, which were hugely improved over SE3? Or SE3's improvement over SE2? I wasn't around this board until just after SE4 was released, but I'm sure a lot of people did complain about how Aaron shouldn't have been focusing on graphics in the buildup to SE4, too.

All the complaints about the graphics just confuses me. Either they're complaining because Aaron supposedly focused on "flashy 3D graphics over gameplay", or they're pointing out that the graphics are the opposite of flashy, and are in fact quite dated. Well, which is it? And can any of you look me straight in the face and tell me you would pay $40 if the game looked exactly like SE4 with a few new effects? Did you pay full price for SE4 Gold when you already had SE4? I sure as hell didn't. When you release a sequel, everything should be improved, including the graphics. If these graphics complainers would really listen to themselves, I think they'd realize the absurdity of their complaints.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Like you could in SEIV or SEIII, you mean? Let's be honest; the SE series has always been a bit of a UI disaster area. I can remember having the same thoughts back when I got the SEIV demo. You end up getting your teeth and getting used to it, though, because it's by far the best 4x series on the market.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

arthurtuxedo, you are correct. I was lurking here back then and lots of people complained about the effort put into the SEIV graphics over gameplay.

On that note, am I the only one who thinks that the facility, component and unit graphics are better in SEIV than SEV? The new ones are bigger but look cloudy and don't have much in the way of additional detail.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Whoever designed the SE4 UI needs to come back and work on SE5. As it stands now, the interface is much too cluttered and busy, i.e. too many visual elements and no distinct organizational layout.

The SE4 UI had a minimalist technical feel and out-of-your-way quality that presented the game perfectly. It also had a cohesive graphical motif that gave it a palpable professionalism.

As SE5 stands at the moment (with its Starcraft command interface and OS X menu dock), it looks like someone just installed a badly designed WindowBlinds theme from 1998.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I agree completely. SEIV was elegant in its design, SEV, unfortunately, is not.

I will still be buying it though.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Actually, I'd have to say I love MoO3's way of dealing with colony/empire related options. I find the only thing I'm really micromanaging is when I want to have some ships ready fast, at which point I put a few of my best colonies to produce my desired ships only. There's some minor issues with the computer being slow to build the latest ship factories and the way the computer *always* build troops, etc. If you've set up your development plans nicely, you'll find that the AI actually make surprisingly intelligent choices when it decides on which DEA's to develop and such, though.

And AI competence aside, I really like the way the whole thing is set up and connected in the game(research, economics, planet development). There's obviously huge room for improvement, and the game is only half-done, but they really managed to set it apart from the regular micromanagement 4x games, bringing a far more epic feel to it. With the right hacked-exe patches and mods it's actually great fun.

Bump on the SEIV interface vs SEV's. Doubtful something like a major interface change will be done in a patch, though.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Regarding the designer of the SEIV UI vs that for SEV I am pretty darn sure that they are one in the same.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I found the UI of SEIV took an hour or so to get used,I see no diffence in the SEV UI, apart from it looking 5 times nicer graphicly.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

SEIV look with SEV game improvements.

The perfect game game for me.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I suspect that those two complaints are coming from two separate groups. Can anyone find an example of the same person saying both things? (I don't care enough to look for one, myself.)

Arguments over the quality of game graphics (like arguments over any kind of art) are a waste of time and bandwidth, IMO. Tastes vary too much to form a consensus.Yes, I did. A lot of SE4 owners did not take advantage of the discount Shrapnel offered, because they wanted to support Aaron and Shrapnel. (Granted, some didn't take the discount because of what was wanted as "proof of purchase" [a piece of the original CD].) Strategy First hasn't yet earned that level of customer loyalty.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

2d Graphics in line to the lasts game graphics prolly a bit easier then designing 3d graphics.. I wasnt around either so no idea. But this kind of game i dont care about the graphcis.. Yes the 3d graphics are horrible that doesnt mean alot of time wasnt invested in them cause making lots of such graphics isnt easy. Not to mention i find it an uneeded drain on processing and such.

And yes i would gladly pay 40,50 for a game that improves the gameplay,ai,interface and does nothing with the graphics. As long as i can tell the difference bewteen different ships and planets i dont much care.




No sadly but come on this is the 5th game. I doubt im the only one who thought that double clicking to bring up construction que's would be handy..This would be the kind of improvment id expect in the 5 release of such a game. These are the kind of things that keep me from being able to get any of my friends to play.. Mix bad UI stuff with a rather complex game and they all think its way to hard.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Their loss.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Modelling and texturing a primitive 3D model is about as time consuming as making 8 different 2D pictures for a ship.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Not necessarily. Many people are already created 3d models for the 2d sets to start...

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

And can any of you look me straight in the face and tell me you would pay $40 if the game looked exactly like SE4 with a few new effects?

I'd probably be more positive about buying the game if that was the case, actually. Then I'd know that the money would have been used for gameplay/AI improvement, not spent on developing a fairly needless(to me) 3D engine, which, from what Aaron said in the latest interview, was the hardest and most time-consuming feature to implement in SEV.

For that matter, I'd probably pay 40$ just to get a ground-breaking AI update alone.

Besides, the Football Manager( former Championship Manager) series are good examples of games where players are more than happy to pay full price even if it's just for some very minor tweaking and an updated player database.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I'm not sure at all that it would have been less time consuming to make a new 2D graphics engine. In many cases, 3D is actually easier because you don't have to come up with a whole new graphic for each and every facing, animation, and different configuration.

I believe you, but the majority of gamers, even niche gamers, want to see some improvement after 6 years or they won't plunk down $40. And let's face it, the graphics vs. gameplay argument is a false dilemma anyway. Improved graphics can lead to improved gameplay. For instance, the new real time combat system wouldn't have been possible without the 3D graphics. You could have had a real time system with 2D, sure, but the ships wouldn't be able to pass over and under each other and planets, and I can't imagine how it would have worked with a lot of ships if they can't occupy the same square.

Let's also not forget that "gameplay" should be taken to mean the entire gaming experience, which includes the graphics. If they're an eyesore, it does drag down the gameplay.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I can understand complaints about how the UI is clunky or the demo is buggy or the AI isn't optimized, but I can't see how SE players can argue that game mechanics were not improved or gameplay was sacrificed. Seriously the unfair combat of SE:IV was eliminated, ground combat was at least expanded, improvements were made to construction point usage, unit individualization, research, customizable lists, etc - and that's not even talking about the modding capabilities of SE:V versus SE:IV.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

The guy above said.. Aaron said it was time consuming and hard. And tahts what i usually hear.. I've never seen a devloper go Thankfully this edition we've upgraded to 3d graphics and it saved alot of time over the old 2d engine.


And yes graphics are part of gameplay.. Just in games like this a very unimportant part to me. And plenty of games succeed with little or even no graphics. Refer to FM series or the Ootp series.. I dont play 4x games to admire the graphics..Ill buy dominion 3 they really didnt do anything to the graphics...

Im sure they could of figured out something in the 2d engine.. Maybe the real time space combat will be good enough to make up for the crapdom that is the graphics in the rest of the game. Wont know tell i get to partake in large battles againist the Ai.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Hear him! Thank you for articulating what I hadn't the wit to say for myself http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Well here is my two cents. The UI is clumsy and ruins the game play. This version will have a hard time fitting into slot 5 of the SE saga. It is missing that special something that the other versions had. With 2 and 3, I spent hours and hours playing in the beginning. With 4 it took a little longer to warm up to, but was still an evolution of the series. This one looks like/plays like a knock off. IMHO we have traded game strategy for eye candy. For those of us who loved SE3, this is quite a ways off the path. I wish MM all the best and I hope the game sells well, but as it is now, I don’t think this will be my cup of tea.

PS:

I was going to skip this part, but the days that I have the energy to post are too few of late.

I have to wonder as to the direction that the SE series is taking. It is becoming less of a strategy game and more of a FX game with each new version. I am left wondering who has the greatest amount of influence on the evolution of the game.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Do I see MOO3 making a come back? With the last patch, mods, moddabilty, & STABILITY. This game (in my opinion) should be considered a classic. Alas, such is not the case, but the game does have a "feel" like no other.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I agree...SEV does have many modding capabilities, and the code under the hood so to speak, is going to be very helpful in modding...

Yet...I could have easily lived with SEIV graphics, a non-real time combat engine, and these improvements...

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Sorry Kwok, but that argument is a bit weird, dont you think ? To be exact, i would prefer the old system over the new. I for one cant call the current system an improvment. That is the worst ground combat, ever. I was hoping for something similar to MoO 2, and now we get a C&C -clone which additionally appears to be the ancestor of C&C 1 :p

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I wouldn't call it greed. It is a matter of (1) the investment in training time and expense to produce a cardiovascular surgeon is a whole lot higher than that to produce a lawnmower-pusher and (2) the percentage of the population that is mentally capable of getting through the training to successfully perform open heart surgery is a lot lower than the percentage of the population mentally capable of mowing a lawn. Why would anybody go through all those years of medical school, residency, etc... and pay all those big tuition bills if at the end he got paid the just same as a non-skilled laborer?

The value of anything (including an hour of your labor) is exactly what somebody else will pay you for it, and not a penny more or less, and if the market price isn't high enough to justify the investment then suppliers exit the market (which in fact is happening in the US medical industry as malpractice insurance rates continue to rise and insurance reembursement continues to fall).

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Why couldn't they occupy the same square? They can in board games like Starfire & Starfleet Battles? It's called "stacking". It happens on the system map now (and in SEIV and in SEIII). The above games had "range 0" entries on the CRT and SFB had rules for determining weapon direction at range 0 (since it had directional weapons & shields). A set of rules that can be written for a board game could certainly be programmed for a computer game.

In fact, with location quantized to a grid (hex is better, but still true for squares), the SFB proportional movement / pre-ordered movement system effectively is real-time. I can envision an almost direct real-time port of the SFB system, with the player able to pause at any impulse to change movement orders (subject to turn mode) or fire weapons that bear & are charged, and the computer just stepping through the impulses. You would not have to take the complexities of SFB internal energy management, sticking with the more simplified SF/SE assumption that (aside from ordnance & weapon cycle times) everything in the ship can be run simultaneously at full bore. You could track shields & armor by the hex side they face and determine weapon firing arcs by the side they face and how much extra $/hull space you spend on a mount with a bigger arc. A 2D system that eliminates the issues of SEIV combat is very doable...

Not to say that I dislike the SEV system, just that it wasn't the only way to skin the cat...

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I'm not saying that it isn't ugly - but it is certainly an improvement in gameplay terms. Factors like speed, range, reload times, armor, and shields are all involved. Heck if you're using strategic combat then it's not much different that SE:IV ground combat but with advantages of the items I mentioned.

Thermodyne, I see your points about UI etc. I don't see how strategy was traded for eye candy though. By my experience, there's more strategy involved with SE:V...

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I didn't really like the SE4 UI, but I only played the game 5 years after it was released. On the other hand, I like the SE5 UI which seems more intuitive to me, just another viewpoint.

As far as strategy, I agree with kwok in that it there seems to be more but there is a 3d layer on top of it.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I agree with Kana, I'm not very fond of REAL-TIME combat. In multi-ship combats the advantage always goes to the computer as it will give and process orders much faster then I can. If I wanted real time then I would purchase a ‘first person’ action game. I want to be able to sit and drink my coffee while doing combat or be able to pause the action (which never seems to be an option with real time) when something comes up in the middle of combat. The only way to determine if your ship designs are good is to run them in battle where you can see what is taking place and the results of the battle as they happen.

I will wait to hear the reviews on this board before I decide to purchase SEV. I’m not interested in a game that will be corrected after it’s released. I would rather purchase a functioning game out of the box and patch it later to improve it, but if the game is not similar to SEIV and what’s new is what doesn’t work, then MM missed the point of releasing the game.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

SEV combat is pausable.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

You can slow the real time combat down to a crawl if you want too,you don't have to pause,there are multiple speeds.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Xrati did you try the demo?
I seems that you got a completely wrong idea about the real time combat in SE V: you can stop whenever you want and take all the time you want.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

SE5 combat is pauseable, you can set it to AUTO pause after running for a certain number of seconds, and you can slow it down to 1/8 speed on top of that.

Plenty of time to do whatever's needed.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Personally, I don't even give commands in combat. I just sit back and watch the battle unfold, and only intercede when my ships do something really braindead.

You're correct that it could have been done with 2D, but it would have been much more difficult to keep track of and had a more complex set of rules that would be harder for players to learn. SE combat has always been simple, and necessarily so given the huge number of ships on each side that might have been fighting it out. I shudder to think of trying to figure out what was happening in a real-time 500 ship furball when any ship that enters the same square as another becomes a 'stack', or to try and give orders to those ships.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I wouldn't want to do that in 3D or 2D, real-time or turn-based. Playability with that many ships in a battle mandates giving orders by multi-ship formation to reduce the number "units" the player has to keep track of individually. In a computerized game, that is completely feasible with the type of 2D proportional movement system I described.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

So many bugs, UI lost me totally; I wasn't even sure if this was SE or a cheap knock-off by a no-name company. I will wait to see if later patches clean it up. Presently there is no way I would spend my money on a game that comes across as a cheap attempt at mass market appeal which has fallen way short.

This sort of reminds me of Metallica with their drive towards mass market appeal. They have a few good songs in the present but the past was clearly superior.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Xrati said:
I’m not interested in a game that will be corrected after it’s released. I would rather purchase a functioning game out of the box and patch it later to improve it...

But you purchased SE4? It required several post-release patches to be "corrected" and functioning well. It's demo was extremely buggy too. Aaron has never veered from the industry standard of "release now, patch later." He just puts out more in patches than many developers do.

...which never seems to be an option with real time...

Actually, pausability is a feature in a lot of real time strategy games. It isn't used much in Warcraft clones, but the better RTS games do use it.

BarnacleBill:
Sure, you could have some complex turn-based initiative system. But consider that continuous time is, in fact, the ultimate extension of phased initiative systems; each "phase" lasts milliseconds. The amount of action taken during each phase is miniscule, since we can't follow milliseconds of execution, but it is still there. During each step, every ship gets a chance to act; it is somewhat abstracted away, of course, which is a good thing. The more complex turn-based initiative systems tend to be a chore to play, not too much fun. Something simple like Moo2 (with 1.31 patch) could have worked, but why stop with such a limited system?

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Agreed. As the resolution of the grid gets greater and the time increment represented by an impulse gets shorter, you arrive at "real-time".

I don't know about that. Too many people have been playing too much SFB for too many years (~30 now) for that charge to stick. The big problem with it is that the level of detail is too great to represent large fleet actions as required for most 4Xers. However, just taking its impulse movement concept doesn't require the taking the rest of it. The root of it is an "impulse" is just a mini-turn, and instead of differentiating by speed how many hexes/squares you move per "turn" it differentiates by speed how many "turns" you have to wait between moves. That eliminates the "missile dance". The other aspect of it was that you pre-plot your moves for the turn (in this case turn referring to a fixed number of impulses, not an individual impulse). Adapted to reducing micromanagement in a computerized version, this could just mean ordering a speed and end point for the formation, which in essense is how the move orders in SEV's tactical combat system work now. That could be combined a la "Steel Panthers" with the possibility to give weapon firing orders by range for individual weapons. Toss in a little more computerized intelligence and you could just order a formation to close to a certain range on a designated enemy formation and engage it with a certain weapon. It can be done in "real-time" or proportional turn-based, 2D or 3D - doesn't matter.

Certainly I would not consider the MOO2 system ideal. However, MOO evolved from a grand-strategic 4X board game in which combat was just a die rolling excercise (no tactical movement). SE evolved from a tactical space combat board game that acquired a 4X grand-strategic outer game only after establishing itself as a successful tactical gaming franchise (the first strategic rules for it were the second expansion product). So, one would expect more in the way of a tactical game from a new SE than from a new MOO (at least I would).

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

SFB is not a computer game though. It requires a fair bit of dedication to play. All that pre-plotting stuff sounds fairly tedious, to me. In a "board game" setting, it can't be avoided if you want a decent system. With a computer game, we don't need to have overly complex initiative systems when there are easier (for the players) ways. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I'm sorry Q, didn't try the demo. I was under the impression that it was your normal REAL TIME combat. I will eventually try the demo when I get time at work as I have dial-up and really don't want to download all night. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif I apologize for the misunderstanding. The only real time game I’ve played that I enjoyed was Breach 3, where you could pause the game, issue orders and then continue the combat, and even then some of the units would still do what they wanted (part of the game mechanics). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif Maybe with that being said and more revelations everyday the game will turn out to be good, in a NEW sort of way! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Fyron, I actually purchased SEIV after the release of some of the first patches. I am happy to wait for the same in SEV. I'm not in a hurry! I'm still playing SEIV and I am getting ready to play test AT's STMod1942. I finally finished DL'ing all the new files.

You cannot compare SFB to SE series. SFB is a complex board game that attracts 'rules lawyers' as the rules tend to be vague in areas or interpreted incorrectly. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

I have no doubt that SEV will be brought to a very playable state. The only question is how long will it take and will the true SEIV player finally accept the NEW game for what it is, "change."

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

With the computer doing the record-keeping, a lot of the complexity goes out the window. The "Move to" order in SEV tactical is conceptually identical to how pre-plotting would be done.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Another issue that goes away in a computer implimentation, since the "rules" are the program code and can't be lawyered.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Well there is a computerized version of SFB, its called Star Fleet Command. It is bascially an RTS tactical engine, on top of a hex-based strategic engine. Sound familiar? It was programmed with a majority of the SFB rules, except that instead of turns, they used time. Again sound familiar? While I enjoyed it, especially if you slowed down the timer (again familiar), it still in the end wasnt the SFB you play on a table top.

As for RTS 'tactical' games I like, the Combat Mission series, is by far the best. You basically have paused real time turns. You give orders to your troops, and then you press end turn, computer or other player puts in their orders, then they end turn. At that point the turn runs for 1 min. During that minute all you can do is watch what happens in shear terror, hoping all goes your way. Rinse, wash, repeat. Again this sounds vaguely familar. The problem that now lies with SEV for me, is that with the scope of the number of ships, and units available in 'tactical' combat, plus with bascially a poor interface, makes an unenjoyable 'tactical' experience. I for the most part will be playin simo games anyway, because of PBW, or PBC, and in single player, because it tends to be more fair to the computer and vice versa...

So basically the graphical combat engine is just an over glorified 3d movie of combat results.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I don't see how it is over-glorified. Aside from the fact it does serve a functional purpose, it just uses 3d models of ships rather than 2d renders or 2d sprites - which by the way are just as time consuming to make as 3d models or to set up effects with...

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Se5 tactical is paused real time turns if you want it to be...

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Well I started with SE3, and loved it. Got SE4, hated it initially, but grew to love it. I dont hate SE5 all that much, and the UI complaints are really minor, it didn't take me long to figure out many of the little tricks on my own, without any beta tester help.

Certainly most of my complaints with SE5, have to do with gameplay issues more than anything else, and I'm sure they will be either corrected, or modified in the future. Or I will just come to except them. Like I did for SEIV.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I agree with Kana. I too started with SE3, got SE4 and hated the changes initially. I am growing to like SE5.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Well after quite a few hours of playing, I still have some doubts. I have yet to complete a game with out a memory error crash, so my observations are all from less than 50 turns in.

I find that the more eye candy I turn off, the less cluttered the UI feels. Big displays with 1400 settings helps too.
I also find that this game seems to want to be driven from the key board, way to many extra clicks in the mouse controls. It would be nice if the mouse’ing was cleaned up.
The way the game reports events is a disaster, nuff said. I really hope they fix this. I really do. Before they release the game. Seriously this needs to be fixed.
And while I have yet to get far enough along to have a large empire and fleet, I suspect that it will be somewhat more difficult to manage it.

Early on, most of the changes I have experienced are eye candy and FPS stuff. I can’t really say that I have found many improvements to the strategy part of the game. The UI seems to go out of its way to be less than useful. And there seem to be windows that are redundant, asking questions that could be answered in the next window. I also find that many of the windows are too much candy and too little information. I have yet to encounter an AI anywhere near as smart as a TDM-AI. And some are back to SE4 demodumbness. IIRC the SE4demo AI’s would also send ships through the warp points one at a time even after they knew the WP was defended by a fleet.

I have done some runs on several different systems, and so far all work equally well up to a point. (Same Memory exception on all three) I’ll give it a run on Vista next, and the perhaps XP64.

All in all the game is playable and being new, it holds my interest. Let’s hope for a demo patch in the near future.

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

Perspective is always amusing. Just read a GalCiv's player account of the SE series- SEIV unmodded, I think.

Remember how we always complain about the AI being too easy? He was complaining that on easy mode it "ruined MP games by going on a rampage and taking out a couple players".

Re: SE:V, I\'ll be honest
 

I give up! Damn Access Violations are just too numerous to bother trying to continue. Every time I get a little infrastructure going and start to move on an AI, I get an AV error.

Maybe I’ll drag out an old system and see if it does better with less resources to abuse.


On another front, the Game runs on Vista. I had some issues with the 7800 video driver, it over fills the monitor and prevents mouse access to the window edges. I had to use the default driver and safe mode on the memory. I haven’t played it enough yet to see what kind of errors pop up.