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Neat, it was possible to increase the number of AI's and systems through it. Now I've got 4 Amon'Krie(ish) empires in my game and 3 others. I set the startdate to 25000, never know if it might avoid the 100-turn limit.

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Speaking of Rome Total War - if the SEV demo gets 95% what score would you give to RTW, Wilhil?

R:TW is probably the only game I've logged close to as many hours in as SEIV. I know they're not comparable but at this rate I'll be buying Medievel TW 2 before SEV.

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honestly, I have not played it!

I have been giving gaming a break recently as my other jobs have been taking up a lot of my time.

the honest truth again to high ratings, I can honestly 100% say that some rating systems just suck, talking about tv game shows, some bias mags... where they get people not interested in a genre and tell them to review it. At the end of the day, if you hate FPS games, you wouldnt play one if it had a 100% rating, and space games are niche, especially space strategy. It is always important to get someone who is interested in the genere/niche to rate a game and to others in the same genre, not to other games, and you have to take a lot of other factors in to consideration as well.

I personally used to review real time and turn based strategy games along with a niche of space games and sim flying games... havent done it for ages! but it was good fun! I hope to start doing it again along with my main business soon as I am hoping to launch some new big website projects early next year!

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And will this new website use your innovative ratings system running the gamut from 90%(rubbish) to 100%(brilliant)? Hehe.

I take your point about games being reviewed by people who don't like the genres involved though.

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seriously as I said, it does not get a 90% in its current state, due to the fact it needs to have the tables and filters.. general UI stuff sorted, there will be no problem giving it close to 95% once that is in place.

When I did the long post, I was not being entirly serious, it is not as though I am being paid here to test out the game and do a full report... I used to write reports, reviews, scoring... everything! I used to have one to one chats with devs or reps of the devs/publishers, but I am just giving a little review from playing a little! please dont take it to seriously!

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Chill! I'm teasing.

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sorry, i didnt mean to be so aggresive sounding! long day and all!

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Are these sites being tested outside of IE? heheh, j/k.

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I sadly constated that the AI isnt much improved since SE:IV, as I hoped. In the AI home system I saw a 22% mineral planet filled with 20+ mines and next to this there is a research colony (20+ facility too) with 122% mineral value.

However nice to see all the new diplomatic options, but diplomacy with the AI seems as pointless and dumb as was in SE:IV.

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lol, I honestly wondered if you were reading or would of remembered!

I have been learning more about other techs, but I still generally think if it looks alright, there is no need to stick to them strictly... I am using more and more, but probably not as many as you would want me to, but that is another issue I wont go in to!


however one project I am working on will require standard, but I cant go in to more details at the moment http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif shhh!

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So I guess I'm the only one getting so many Access Violations that I cant even get to turn 20, eh? Any suggestions? Do I have a bad install? I cant imagine that I'm having any issues with systems specs.

What are some potential causes of 'access violations'?

Thanks

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In my case it was from my dual core machine. If you have a dual core processor, open SE5, CTRL-ALT-DELETE, click the process tab, right-click Se5.exe, click Set Affinity and deselect one core. See if that helps.

You have to do it every time you launch SE5, though. :/

Beyond that I'm not sure what it could be.

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I had once a problem as i didn't choose one of the different minister files at the starting options menu...
the game crashed very often, and the safe files were corrupted... perhaps this might help

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Thanks guys, but I dont have a dual core system and I've been selecting a minister style too although that was a problem at the start for me too.

I get it in the simulator (which I've stopped using) but I also get it simply designing ships.

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Try turning on the design minister and letting that do all your ships, see if it still crashes. That might help us narrow it down a little. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

And email MM about with as good a description as you can. The demo is probably a little more unstable thanks to all the restrictions, but he needs to know about the issue.

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After playing for a few hours, I think I enjoy the game over-all. However, I agree that the UI needs refinement. Using the keyboard shortcuts helps a lot.

I would also like ship design to be more meaningful. It feels half-implemented to me. If there are going to be engine limits for each ship, then why not have engine slots? Why am I allowed to put guns in the center of the ship? Why have so many available slots even for frigates?

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The GAMING GODS ARE SMILING! Downloading now, WOOT!

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I really reccomend the Torrent. I'll be seeding the rest of the day.
Enjoy it people!

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It's due to the way the current AI is setup to choose colonies type, which is based first on having a percentage of each colony type - rather than evaluating the planet first for what colony type it would be best as. I suspect a script doing the later will come along shortly after the game's release. For diplomacy, I think AI treaty proposals generate random terms which is pretty crappy. I'd imagine improving that set of scripts will be a priority among AI modders.

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Being an old timer who played these things as board games back in the 70's, I don't get too worked up over the UI stuff. At the risk of sounding like Grandpa talking about how he walked 10 miles through the snow to school every day, I had loads of fun playing Stellar Conquest and that meant keeping MOO1-style records on every colony in your empire with pencil/paper/calculator http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

What I do care about is features & "game mechanics" (i.e. the "rules", including customization opportunities). That's what makes a great game to me.

OK, I played the tutorial and am about 1/2 way through a "full" 100 turn game with my own custom-designed race (using the Terran shipset). Here's what I think so far...

I wish they'd have provided a manual of some sort (e.g. the "Great Invasions" devs posted a full beta manual on their website). Even for an experienced SEIII/SEIV player, there are a lot of questions. I hope now that the demo is out the beta testers are allowed to answer "how does it work" (or "how is it supposed to work") questions...

My biggest beef with SEIII/SEIV was in the diplomacy area - specifically the inability to defend your territory from your "allies". In SEIII, once you signed a treaty whereby combat didn't occur if you were in the same sector, the AI's colony ships would swarm into your systems and colonize anything they could. They also had a tendency to sign such a treat, spend a few turns penetrating deep into your empire, and then Pearl Harbor you. So, I always had to keep it to "non-aggression" or war and garison the border warp points. It kind of felt like Rome vs the Barbarians. I thought SEIV would fix that with the ability to clain systems and negociate ownership, but the AI turned out to be automatically programmed to claim any system adjacent to one contailing their colony - even if a few turns earlier they had dropped their claim as part of an agreement with you. So, Rome vs the Barbarians again.

I like the custom treaty system in SEV. A question I have is relative to the treaty element "can colonize each others systems" - does this mean unless I make such an agreement they can't, even if I have all sorts of alliances with them otherwise? Also, I don't see a mechanism to claim a system - what makes it "mine" from the standpoint of that treaty element? Also, I have one race in my game that just seems to ignore diplomatic proposals - no answer at all - bug or feature? How does the AI react to getting beat up? I mean if I thrash his fleet is he more likely to agree to my treaty proposals because he's intimidated, or less likely because he's angry?

Some aspects of the GUI are actually improvements, BTW. For example, I like the ability to create custom reports, the ability to save & recall build ques & that I can now upgrade ships while they are still in fleets.

On the subject of upgrades, now that higher levels of a given hull type are available (e.g. larger sizes of Frigate with each level of the applicable tech), I think this could have been used for a more effective limit on upgrading that the cost rule carried over from SEIV (which never stopped anybody, just made you go through several upgrade steps). My idea is just don't allow a ship to upgrade to a design that uses a larger "level" of hull that it has. You'd need to ability to upgrade designs without upgrading the hull level, but that wouldn't be a big deal. Eventually your oldest ships might have the latest tech, but would be significantly smaller & less capable than newer ones (more or less how it works in real life).

On the subject of ship design, that is a place where I do admit the GUI needs a little work. I'd like an SEIV-type collapsed view so I could see at a glance what was on a given design. Having the level of the system superimposed on its icon as in SEIV would also be nice. Having the boxes aranged on an outline of the ship is visually interesting, but unless the decks actually mean something in combat I'd prefer to get just three rows of slots/boxes - armor, outer hull & inner hull. The collapsed view should show those separeately, since it does apparently matter.

One thing that I find odd is that (so far, up to light cruiser) level 5 of a hull type uncovers the tech for the next hull type. The odd part is that a level 5 frigate hull and a level 1 destroyer hull have the same volume, but the destroyer has more crew & life support overhead, so the frigate ends up more capable! That doesn't seem right. The starting point for a given hull type should still be bigger than the prerequisite level of the next smaller hull type (easily modable, though).

I like the new system-wide function of Resupply Depots. I think that will make maintaining warp point pickets in your own systems without all the micromanagement (in my game so far my fleet is too small to afford to park ships, though). I find the separation of supplies & ordnance interesting. I can envision large scale offensive operations requiring a considerable fleet train of logistics ships - especially if you use a lot of ordnance-intensive weapons. Somebody up-topic mentioned how their fighters sucked their carrier dry of supplies & ordnance - sounds like something you need to allow for in carrier design (real life carriers devote a lot of internal space to that). Again, my fleet is still too small to have to worry about it, but can you directly transfer supplies & ordnance between ships? Do ships in the same fleet share?

Only one battle so far. One of my exploration Frigates mounting a 1st generation missile launcher (or maybe 2) popped into a warp point defended by a gaggle of Depleted Uranium Cannon-armed Frigates belonging to the race mentioned above (the one that won't talk - in fact this was "first contact"). I was quickly wiped out, but went back to my previous save & tried again a few times to get the hang of the combat system. As it turned out, the gaggle were all either the same speed or 1 slower than me, so if I took off immediately running away they could not close to within weapons range (the range rings are cool). I could let the lead guy catch up to my missile envelop, then run again while pounding him - three broadsides => mission kill (speed <4) - wait until the next guy passed the first & repeat. Unlike SEIV, there is no corner to catch you. After I got the last one, I probably had insufficent odnance to actually finish any of them off. So, I tried circling around back to the warp point to escape, but the combat ended before I got very far along on that plan. It seems like a design strategy of the highest speed & longest range weapons will mean that the worst that can happen to you is a stalemate (if the other guy has lots of point defense). I'm not sure that's a good thing, but that was SEIV, too. Now you have to worry abount running out of ordnance, though. Of course, stalemate isn't good if you are on the strategic defensive...

Re: SEV DEMO IS OUT!
 

"Can conlonize each other systems" means you can ONLY colonize in the other's systems if that's turned on. You can have a full military treaty and still not allow that.

Who gets what is determined by who plants a colony there first, as far as I can tell.

The position of components does matter. Once your shields and armor fail, damage is directional- if the hit comes from behind, components at the back will die first.

Speed is life if you have short range weapons, yes. That's fairly basic tactics. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif What a human player could do, and the AI sadly won't, is split his force to try and hem you in from multiple directions. At least in SE5 you can't do the "missile dance" anymore.

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Great - exactly what I was hoping for...

Not so great - don't want any alien colonies in systems that link my empire, either. If I could claim them a la SEIV, but their recognition of the claim would stick unlike SEIV...

Interesting... Kind of the opposite of Star Fleet Battles, where shields are directional but the interior stuff is not. Is armor directional?

Actually, what I did was the SEV equivalent of the missile dance. Given the relative speeds and starting positions (all of the gaggle in a roughly 120 degree arc from me and initially out or range), I think even a human player would have had trouble hemming me in by splitting his force. Then again, this tended to be an issue in Starfire (the board game which originally inspired SE) as well. Maybe I'm missing something, though. It bears some watching...

On another note, I really like the visibility range thing in the system display. This promises to slow down the initial land rush, since you now have to survey the system. It also offeres some possibility of Midway-like carrier battles...

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Armor isn't directional either. Go figure.

What you did wasn't qyite the missile dance. The missile dance was worse- even if your opponent had the same range of missile, you could duck in, fire, and duck out. He'd never get to shoot back.

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I think the demo rocks and you can see the vast improvement over SEIV on all levels.After an hours play the UI is no problem either.


My only problem is the stupid A.I diplomacy.It lacks any logic.Spawning offers of no research,no intel for a trade deal every turn is insane.The A.I should never offer no research treatys at all,especially when there are other Empires in the galaxy.I really hope the A.I gets more attention by gold.

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BTW a quick tip abot custom layouts: If you save your empire during a game, it will save your custom layouts with it. You can then create a new race for a new game based on this file with your custom layouts right with it.

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Yes, on the cargo transfer screen.

It doesn't seem like it.

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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...

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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..

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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?

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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).

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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.

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@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.

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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.

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Warning. Do not look for logic or balance in the data files! Your brain will overload and your body will shut down. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/stupid.gif

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Actually, the Kinetic does exactly twice the damage of Meson, the starting points aren't even a factor. So in the end, you end up with equal damage (vs space), at a cheaper overall cost. Advantage: Kinetic.

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You could argue though that you need to spend 1000 racial points to get the Telekinetic Projector, which in turn might reduce its advantage...

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And I could argue right back that you could always get an extra 1000 points by taking inept farming/inept refining. The 5% hit on farming and refining is really rather miniscule since organics are still barely used (unless you take the organic trait), and rads are still used less than minerals. Plus you get access to more than one weapon, and some nice facilities (system-wide training, for example), also.

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Yes, you can easily game the system and get 1,000 starting points with basically no drawbacks, but you're ignoring opportunity cost. Those thousand points could have been used for a lot of other stuff, like organic, crystalline, etc.

Also, twice the weapons for the same total damage is advantageous vs. fighters, and increases the chance of hitting with at least one of those weapons.

I agree that Telekinetic Projectors share the "way better than the other weapons" spot, but I still say Mesons slightly edge them out, all things considered.

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Game the system? The negative options (ie drawbacks that give extra creation points) are there for a reason. And frankly I don't think that arguement makes any sense. Spending 100 points on the Psychic trait isn't advantagous because you could have spent them on a different trait? I don't get it. Taking a racial trait is *easier* to justify (and finance) in SEV, than it was in SEIV. In SEIV, I'd have the choice of taking a racial trait (for 1500 points), or bumping up my construction to 150%, after having to juggle points in other skills. Compared to SEIV, race creation in SEV is extremely simplified.

As for fighters, that's a complete non-point, point defenses are for fighters, not main guns.

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The drawbacks that you speak of are not really drawbacks at all, compared to what you can buy with them. -5% organic and intel for +25% construction, as an example. But eventually you run out of things to decrease, and you have to make some choices. If you choose Psychic, you're missing out on at least one 1,000 point choice, such as the aforementioned +25% build rate. So if you have two weapons that are very close in performance, but in order to have access to one of them, you have to give up +25% build rate or a similar advantage, the other one is the better weapon overall.

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I'm sorry, but you are really just grasping for reasons, this arguement makes less sense than your last one. How about we just agree to disagree?

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Opportunity cost is a very real and present aspect.

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I just don't see it. If you could explain it to me, I would have a better idea, of what, precisely, you mean.

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The fact that you can simply take the hits on refining and organic harvesting to get back the 1000 means nothing. I think you're focusing on the small picture. While the psychic tech is kinda free, you still must consider that you are expending 1000 racial points to get the psychic tech no matter what. If you and I are playing in a game, let's assume you'll use the 1000 for psychic tech and get it right back by taking hits on refining and organics. It's definitely a plus for you as long as you don't look at the big picture. I can just as easily take hits on refining and organics, and use the 1000 elsewhere, which may or may not benefit me more than psychic tech. You're still trading 1000 points for psychic tech. I can't emphasize that enough. It's great that you're getting those points back by reducing refining and organics, but everyone has that option so it's not an advantage. And if you hadn't chosen psychic tech you'd have 1000 more racial points.

No matter which way you look at it, you are trading 1000 racial points for psychic tech at the most basic and undebatable level.

Since you said oppurtunity cost didn't make sense, as an aside I'll mention that this is what Fyron's referring to as oppurtunity cost (he payed attention in economics) - if you had not chosen psychic tech you'd still have 1000 racial points to distribute, so the oppurtunity cost of psychic tech is 1000 racial points. That's the definition of oppurtunity cost. If you get those points back some other way it's superfluous.

If you still don't understand oppurtunity cost check it out on wikipedia.

If you think the psychic tech is free, you're kinda right. This fact does not, however, create an advantage over other players and also does not *necessarily* make the psychic direct fire weapon better than the meson blaster. Those points could potentially be spent elsewhere that might outweigh the benefits of psychic tech. I think that's everyone's point here (at least those that argue with you) - there's still options to explore so the case isn't closed yet.

Cheers!

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There is a nasty weapon called "Shield Imploder." The damage type is Shield Implosion:
"The target vehicle takes a percentage of its shields as internal damage and all shields are removed."

That would be a devestating weapon to use. It's in the Components.txt file but you can't access it in the demo because it requires a technology that's not available in the demo.

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And to think, the adjustable racial characteristics were removed due to complaints about imbalance... I think I'm gonna be sick. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

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I've never complained about it, I've always loved being able to adjust characteristics. Although since that got removed, I must be in the minority.

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Just jumping in real quick, I noticed some talk about the best weapon in the game. Yet I didn't see any mention of the Canon Cannon?! Ye'gods, man, nothing can beat that!

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Although since that got removed, I must be in the minority.

Actually, you are in a vast majority... Everyone that misses the racial characteristics should email Aaron about it (se5 at malfador dot com). The more that raise an issue, the more likely something will be done. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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If the majority of people liked it then why the phong did it get removed?? Sounds like the 'vocal minority' got to screw the rest of us again. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif