Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned; I scanned through the thread but didn't see it anywhere...

In the Demo version, happiness is apparently 'backwards'... the government and racial choices that should make your citizens happy actually make them angry, and vice versa.

Other than that, I've encountered a few of the bugs already mentioned; game locking on turn processing, alt-tab problems, etc.

That being said, I'm impressed so far. I was/am a big fan of SEIV and the mods that it spawned, and while the demo certainly has it's share of bugs and balance issues, I'm going to remain cautiously optimistic about it. Good, deep games seem to be a rarity nowadays, and I certainly could use one that'll keep me occupied for months (or even years).

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

I seem to be the only one in the world who is uncautiously optimistic. Sure, the game's got some serious flaws and rough edges, but so did SE4, and the improvments to the combat system and modability are nothing short of massive. Yet most of the buzz I'm hearing is negative.

It makes me wonder if this isn't another case of a great game destroyed by its own community, who turned on the game because it was too different from the previous ones and because they felt that they weren't being listened to. Then when new people try to pick up the game, they carry all the negative buzz with them and notice the problems more than they would have, and don't give it a fair chance. Reviewers are influenced by the negative buzz generated by the fans (turned anti-fans), and don't want to look like idiots, so they give it a bad score, and the whole franchise crashes and burns because of a bunch of whining idiots on forums complaining about virtually nothing. I'm not saying it will happen to SEV to that extent, but that is exactly what happened to Fallout Tactics.

Sorry for the rant, but I really am starting to see people developing and spreading irrational opinions of the game based on things like Aaron supposedly ignoring beta testers (which may or may not actually be true, but has no bearing on the quality of the game), and I would hate to see it happen to SEV.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Personally, I just don't see that. I've seen maybe two posts from people who said they absolutely didn't like SEV. Pretty much everyone else likes it to one degree or another. Sure, people are picking out little things they don't like, but almost everyone tends to compare the new to the old. In time most of the little things will be fixed/tweaked (or even left as is), and most people will accept the new things and keep playing. Personally I had some serious reservations about the game before it was released. I wasn't too happy about the 3d system view, or the real-time (sorry..continuous-time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif )tactical combat. After playing the demo (and seeing the *massive* potential of it), I am most definately looking forward to getting a copy, even though I still don't care for the CT combat model, I'll probably get used to it eventually, and might even end up liking it.

As far as people developing/spreading irrational opinions, well, people tend to do that. The best response is to correct any wrong info, or just ignore it. In a worst case scenario Arron could make a post to correct any wrong perceptions.

I just don't see a problem.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

I have (another) question..do asteroids block ships/weapons? If I stick a base behind an asteriod will it provide protection to the base? I haven't fought in an asteroid field yet, so I don't know yet..

Re: Video Wierdness
 

There appears to be a problem with fleets. I had about a dozen ships in a fleet all with 11 movement. Lots of supplies each and also included a supply transport. When they started moving in a fleet, they made it about 7 of their 11 movement before running out of supplies completely!!!

Re: Video Wierdness
 

The Shard Cannon does 15 damage...at lvl 100..that has to be a bug!

Re: Video Wierdness
 

Did another check and yep, something is buggered. Each of my ships consume 40 supplies per hex. When in a fleet of 10, they should consume 400 supplies per hex. Not so. I moved them and found that they consumed 4000 supplies per hex!

Re: Video Wierdness
 

And something else. If you select a group (not fleeted) and give the whole grop the move to order, regardless of the movement points of the other ships, the entire group can move the maximum movement of the ship with the most movement points in that group.

Re: Diplomacy
 

It happens me only with neutral empires. Non-neutrals seems react normally, including they are proposing teatries as well.

However I experienced they might stuck with exploration, which blocks them from expanding. In my game the Abiddons only have 2 colonies (at turn 56), some neutrals have better score, altough they cant leave their home system.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Sometimes, when I exit the SEV demo, after it shows the ending splash screen for a few seconds, the entire screen turns black and the computer freezes up. I can't exit or use ESC or CTRL-ALT-DEL or ALT-TAB or anything to get it unstuck. I end up having to power off the computer and power back on.

Re: Diplomacy
 

Occasionally, some of the graphics mess up and look like this. Then I quit and restart the game and it's OK.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...screenshot.JPG

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

I'm not sure where you got the idea that "cautiously optimistic" means anything other than what it is; optimism tempered with realism. And concerning "negative buzz"; almost all the comments so far (including my own) have been positive...

I'm not expecting a bug-free game, or a perfectly balanced game, and I'm CERTAINLY not expecting a game that's exactly like SEIV (because if it WAS exactly like SEIV, I'd just play that instead; it's more stable and I already own it). All I'm really interested in is the game-breaking bugs being fixed... and I'm quite certain Aaron will be able to at least squash the worst of them before it goes gold.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Kamog are you running in safe memory mode? It fixed the graphical issue for another guy which looked just like yours.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

I have some similar problems, I found that they're usually confined to one of the dialog windows, and if I close that window (using the ESC key) and then reopen it, it's fine.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Thanks, I tried the 'safe' mode and it seems better; so far the graphics has not messed up. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

I landed troops on a aplanet, but when it went into ground combat the terrain was black and there were no buildings. My troops killed the lone militia trooper and the combat ended but the planet was still enemy. I then noticed it was quoting an entirely unknown planet name.

I was getting that same hting every turn so that game was pretty much kaput.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Safe mode is the best fix for this problem. I had the same issue. However, you can also fix it by opening a small program, such as calc, and when your graphics mess up in SEV simply alt-tab to the calc program and then back to SEV. It fixes it for a short period but not for long.

Safe mode is the best fix.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

At the end of a turn, it displays a warning "100% research points unspent" even though I have scrapped all my research facilities and have 0 research points.

Same thing happens for intelligence. It displays the points unspent warning even if you don't have any intelligence points to spend.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

I've noticed that as well. I think they should kill those warning if you have no points to spend. After all, a warning that 100% of 0 research/intel is unallocated, is rather pointless...

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

How to do you get Solar Generator facilities (from crystalline tech) to work? I built a Solar Generator on my home planet and it doesn't generate any resources at all. In fact, I have less resources per turn after building it because the facility uses maintenance.

Before building the solar generator:
production: minerals=49593, organics=5616, radioactives=5664
maintenance: 3680 / 400 / 0

After building the solar generator:
production: minerals=49593, organics=5616, radioactives=5664
maintenance: 4280 / 1000 / 600

This is my home system and there is a sun in the system. Is this a bug or is there some way to get it to work?

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

They wasn't working for me neither, nor all the special armors, I think a few abilities aint in the demo.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

They don't work in the demo.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

In the vehicle design screen, it has the message:
"This vehicle can only have a maximum of 12 movement" (for example)
which isn't entirely correct.

What it really means is that you can only have 12 engines. You can actually have more movement by using engines with bonus movement like quantum engines and also by adding solar sails.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

True, I've noticed that myself.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

I bought and played to death both SEIII and SEIV and saw multiple patches to fix and improve both, especially SEIV.

At first I did not like the SEV demo but is beginning to grow on me quite a bit, to the point that I am quite tired this morning and my wife will be sending nasty grams to Aaron. Obviously it needs work in a few areas, but experience tells us that we can expect most reasonable requests to be addressed. The key things I think SEV needs:

Fix the bugs.
Add ability to lock the view for each system so it looks the way you left it when you come back (default lock would be good). IMO this is the single biggest time waste in the UI.
Easier weapon targeting in tactical mode. Right now I can't figure out how to tell which weapons are already targeted and on whom.
Positive buzz to drive a large player community that will yield many great ideas and mods and provide necessary $ to keep the improvements coming.
Really good documentation.

As far as CT combat goes I don't really like it so far, mainly because I keep losing battles I would have easily won in SEIV. I guess if I won I would like it. In Xcom Apocalypse there was both CT and turn based combat options. CT was much faster to resolve but always yielded more casualties. Turn based was great for "must win" battles and times when minimal casualties were necessary. I thought this was a great feature in that game and would like to see it in SEV (eventually), probably a stretch though.

Just my tcw.

TM

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

In the ship design window, if you move the cursor over the ship portrait, the help message says that you can click on the portrait to get an enlarged version of it.

But when you click on it, nothing happens.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

The Solar Resource Generation ability is not working, so neither are Solar crystalline facilities. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Thanks for the info. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Here's a strange thing I noticed. Sometimes, some of the planets look weird. They still rotate and nothing else seems to be wrong except their strange appearance. If I change the view to a different system and then go back, the appearance of the planets return to normal.

In the picture below, three of the planets look weird.
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...%20planets.JPG

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Hmm. It looks like the flag texture image is being applied to the texture of the planet. Have never seen that before! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

While playing around with my "kewl rangez demod" (all weapon ranges about 1000 with alltech) I noticed that, for some reason, projectile weapons simply annihilated anything with beam weapons. It was obvious why missiles would do that (after all, with no way to mod it, direct fire weapons have a "to hit"-modifier of something like -1000) but why, say, meson blasters?

After some testing, I discovered that projectiles are fired directly at the target, with no adjustment whatsoever for hit penalties (or bonuses, for that matter). In other words, they always hit... Unless the target is moving even a bit laterally (in relation to the shooter) in which case they miss all the time, unless the range is so short the target has no time to move away from the bullets path... This also means that manual dodging is possible.

Weird.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

I also noticed that one can clone fighters with combat replay... I fought a battle, lost some fighters, watched replay (watching my destroyers/light carrier annihilate a squadron of alien scum, cool!)... And noticed that there was a new "fighter squadron" occupying the same sector with my ships.

At first I thought my carrier had simply not recovered its fighters after the (Glorious!) battle and simply loaded them, not paying attention to the number of fighters already onboard. Then I watched the battle again, just for kicks. And lo, another squadron-clone appears!

Turns out you can't actually order these squadrons around (they just disappear if given movement orders) but since you can retrieve them...

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

-----Um...my home planet's temperature for the Terrans is -292 degrees Celcius! Also, absolute zero is -273.15, according to Wikipedia.

I wonder about the gravity and radiation too.

Seems these Terrans are quite TOLERANT to cold (especially BEYOND absolute zero).

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

So i've found 2 fun bugs which could be exploits.

Happiness is backwards, if you choose naturally happy planets get unhappy and if you pick naturally depressed planets get happier.

Also if you use the C key to colonize a system your ship flys off to colonize and runs out of movement points, if you press backspace to cancel its orders and then press C again and pick the planet again it will move one space, even though its out of movement points. You can keep doing this again and again through warp points and all sorts.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Weapon mounts don't get upgraded when you upgrade a ship design.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

If you run a a simulation and end it and then click an enemy location in a system you can move enemy around on the sector view, then when you click to end placement you go back to the simulation window and then get an Access Violation error and the game bugs out. Easily reproducable.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports & Annoyances/Requests
 

I don't know if this is a bug or just a balance issue. Played the SEV demo for about 30 turns. Have missile5 and PDC5. In the simulator, a Frigate5 with 3 missiles easily defeats a LightCruiser2 with 11 PDC and 2 large-mount DUC5s, in either Tactical or Strategic mode. I figured the LC would chase the F into a corner and pummel it, but the missiles get through the PDC too often. [edit: Forgot to mention that LC has CombatSensor4.]

Note that the strategies are set to Med Range for the LC and Max Range for the F. (BTW, I also noticed that changing to Max Range _really_ helps missile ships, and editing the Max Range strategy to break formation and to target the closest ship is also critical for the success of missile ships in multi-ship strategic combats.)

Note also that I didn't know about directional damage until just now, so my PDC and armor are distributed around the perimeter of the LC in an aesthetic fashion. Don't know if that matters. Are there firing arcs as well?

Anyway, is this a bug, or a balance issue, or am I doing something wrong? As it stands, there seems to be no point in using any weapon but missiles for the first 50 turns, and there seems to be no point in bothering with PDC. (I haven't encountered any AI yet. [Wierd, but I did start in the corner.] I guess if they are using fighters I'm in big trouble.)

On the positive side, I love the look of the tactical combat, and how it can be varied from adrenalin-pumping real-time to almost cerebral turn-based. Also love how the ships can't change heading instantly -- they have momentum! Does engine placement affect this? (I'm guessing "no.")

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

I offered a treaty, the AI countered, I re-countered, and when the AI re-re-countered there was no reply option in the news, and the message didn't appear under the diplomatic menu.

When the AI escapes in combat, you can reposition your ships in the sector screen (surrounding the AI) and then attack again... maybe escaping ships should move to an adjacent hex (random or directional) so this wouldn't work (and possibly have them end up into an occupied hex and have to fight/flee again).

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Totally agree, running away doesn't work. Maybe another work around would be to not allow hexes with engaged units in access to the sector view. In such a way that you can still surround them when you attack cloaked, but not after the first round.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Still doesn't remove all the potential abuse... add sensors to a colony ship and use it as a scout, every time it runs out of movement go into sector view and place it on the edge of the map... should be completely safe from the AI unless engaging it moves it to another sector.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Any new engangement could always be centered around the defender, with the attackers at a set distance? The map is semi dynamic size wise so it could be possible.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

I think fleeing ships that pass the "borders" of the combat area should move into the adjacent sector in the sytem. Any new combat in that sector would start in the middle again.

Sector placement should not be allowed for sectors that currently have an enemy presence.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Aw but I like using cloaking devices to do that, actually gives them a use in combat.

Re: Diplomacy
 

It is not only about them not offering treaties. Whe i send them a treaty proposal, I never revcéive any reaction. The do not even refuse, there just is no reaction at all.

Re: Diplomacy
 

I always get a reaction. Unless you have the Comms tab on the log showing, it's easy to miss though.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

A couple of days ago I've been searching the web for a place to pre-order the SEV. Not anymore, until I see a playable demo first.

I'm a big fan of SEIV. My system: Intel Dual Core 2 Duo E6600, 3Gb RAM, Nvidia 7950GX2/1Gb graphics with the latest drivers. This system runs Everquest 2 at the highest settings (but the shadows) without a problem. In the SEV demo the mouse pointer is so slow that it's work just to navigate the menus. The pointer is very slow and lags constantly.

I've tried some suggestions in this thread. Removing AA and AF gave nothing. Setting the affinity of my dual-core to a single CPU seemed to help a bit, but still not enough, I still feel like I'm fighting with the cursor. Maybe it has something to do with the instant tooltips? Some even stick to the screen until I move the mouse cursor over them again. All screens are bad, but the worst are the game setup screens (when creating the race and stuff before a new game), the research and the ship design screens.

Then there is screen corruption on the 3D combat screen. I've tried to start one with the combat simulator, using a ship I so painfully created http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. After a few seconds of combat the 3-D screen starts to stop being updated, in large lines from the bottom to the top, the cursor leaves a trail on it, yet the menus at the bottom are being refreshed. I have to pause the simulation then resume it for the refresh to kick back in.

So, with the empire management screens (the meat of the game) unusable, and some weird corruption on the 3-D combat display, I'll give it a miss until I can see some changes without paying upfront.

Another thing - a suggestion about the planetary screen rotation. How hard would it be to implement a rotation system that does not involve moving the mouse to the sceen edge? We're not in the early 90s anymore, and many games, namely the RTS ones, have shown that it is quite possible to rotate a 3-D view by simply holding the right mouse button for instance then moving the mouse. Or maybe holding shift or control then moving the mouse? Moving the cursor to the screen edge to rotate is as clunky as... having 'hotkeys' that require to hands to be used (like the Shift-<key> ones), while the third hand is on the mouse to select objects http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

Re: Diplomacy
 

I have seen both behaviors. Sometimes a race refuses the treaty and other times there is no response at all. Seems to be empire dependent in my experience. So far if an empire responds once it tends to always respond and likewise if it starts off not responding then it never does, at least in the game I'm playing. Maybe there is a hidden racial trait for rudeness http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

TM

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Sentry is a sweet command (if there are no enemies already in sight)... however without a guard or skip turn command, I still end up wasting a ton of time clicking next to be sure I am done moving all my ships.

[edit]One more thing... what is with having coordinates as an option for the ship screen, but not system? I know you can see the system highlight in the minimap when you mouseover the ship in the list, but still... sorting ships by system would be invaluable.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

@neo

Did you try changing to Safe video memory mode? That has cleared most people's video problems.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Safe memory mode fixed my 20-30 second mouse lag in window mode.

Re: SE5 Demo Bug Reports
 

Finished my first two demo games. Besides diplomacy not working (for me?, see above), the AI still is my main complaint. I ran a fighter-based strategy in the second game and the AIs failed to put any point-defense on their ships. Furthermore, there were no serious attacks from the AI (I always could feel very safe.

BTW, I sometimes had the impression that the defensive bonus of fighters do not really. With the 80 bonus and the AIs not using point defense weapons, they should shoot down very few of my fighters. However, about every second shot hit its mark.