Re: This game is no SEIV
 

SEV still sucks.

Re: This game is no SEIV
 

I played SE V hundreds of times. I have thousands of hours of play time on the game. Albeit none of my games lasted longer than 150 turns before crashing or locking up. Do I play it now, not really. I am still having problems when launching the game. (It tends to crash despite two fresh re-install attempts.)

Would I recommend the game now, in a word; yes. Yes I would. I think it is a wonderful game that any true 4x game lover would enjoy. However I would also recommend that also buy SE IV. While the games are similar in name and game play aspects, most people find that after an hour of playing SE V, they want to throw their mouse out and slam the monitor into the wall. That is why I recommend SE IV, if you find that you dislike the frustrating aspects of SE V, then perhaps you should give SE IV a whirl. Less frustrating.

Re: This game is no SEIV
 

*Shrug*

Gets a little better with each patch. And even if it's still far from top-notch, it's the only game of this type we've got. As I see it, GalCiv, SotS, etc. are so vastly different and simplified that they can't really compare, and Master of Orion 4 doesn't appear to be coming out anytime soon.

Re: This game is no SEIV
 

Actually it isn't the only one. It has a strong competitor in SE4. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: This game is no SEIV
 

Same here. Every time a new patch comes out, I play a few games, but they don't last more than around 100 turns or so. I like to play 255-system galaxy with 20 players, and SEV still has problems with that. Until the most recent patch, the processing turns got too slow at around turn 80 and I got tired of waiting 20 minutes between turns, so I'd start a new game. The turn processing is faster now with the current patch, so now the slow part is the ship movement at the start of the turn if you've got hundreds of ships. I could live with that, but every game I started with the most recent patch has crashed or locked up before turn 150.

I'm waiting for the next patch and I'm not going to start any new games of SEV until the patch comes out.

Re: This game is no SEIV
 

Master of Orion 4!!!
MOO3 is the only game I ever tossed in the garbage, and they paid me $5 for buying it.

Shame though, I heard some mods made it playable.

Re: This game is no SEIV
 

They paid you to buy it? O_O How'd you manage that?!

Re: This game is no SEIV
 

MOO3 at one point had a mail in rebate that was larger than the actual cost to purchase it.

As for SE5, I'd recommend it at this point. Try the demo first, though. Ignore the bugs, just focus on the UI. There have been a few small improvements to it, but by and large its the same. If you can live with that, its worth a buy.

The AI is about as stupid as SE4's, though.

Re: This game is no SEIV
 

For people that don't finish their games: Maybe you should try to play smaller games? For my part, I prefer multiplayer, but I'm sometimes craving about direct control of ships in combat... and not only in simulator!

About firing arcs: have you tried Sword of the Stars? It has _3D_ firing arcs, and the AI doesn't seem to have any major problems with that. You can control up to ~30 ships in combat and it's not that impossible with the help of weapon banks and control groups.