SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Ok, so we have a snazzy new interface... some 3D (low poly) models, a new ground combat feature and a new system look. Just about everything else is the same as SEIV?

Why would I spend $50 on this game when I just spent $20 on SEIV which so far sounds so similar.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

hm while i have my doubts about SEV as well, they are from a different point of view.
Considering your thoughts: What is different from HoMM4 to HoMM5, what is different vom Civ3 to Civ4 ? What is different from Homeworld 1 to Homeworld 2?

Apart from that, i love SEIV. If SEV would be exactly like SEV, but with more features and technology, i would defintly buy it. I dont even new graphics :p

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

A lot of the mechanics are different such as how combat is resolved, research/intel, hex movement, customizable lists on so on. On the modding end, there are more than double the number of data files in SE:V, not to mention scriptable AI, ability scopes, create your own units/damage types/etc.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I was looking forward to the new alliance system, which I was hoping would be similar to MoO3's Galactic Council, but the lack of attention it gets might indicate it's not as big a feature as that.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Hum, that is a really good question that a lot of people are going to end up asking themselves as they stand their looking at the snazy new box on the computer game shelf aptly titled Space Empires V. Well you get a new box to add to your collection, a new dis, or coaster depending on whether or not you liked the game, and your walet is lightened up by a few micro ounces once that $50.00 bill is gone. You get the pleasure of installing a new game onto your computer and learning how to play it without a manual or other source documentation. Since everything in PC gaming is going paperless these days. Ever try to trouble shoot a PC while trying to read a PDF file on that PC about trouble shooting it? I want to thank the master mind behind that brillant but extremely stupid idea.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Atrocities. Two words. WINDOWED MODE.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Hard to say about your $20. The last time I spent any game money was when I plucked down $45 for SE4 Gold -- many, many moons ago. So I just figure I'm due to pay rent on the shreds of genius Malfador deigns send my way. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Well SE IV Deluxe is already making its rounds on the BT sites so I would suspect that SE V will be joining it soon enough. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif Its not until one of your games is on the network that you begin to see the importance of copy right protection and anti piracy technology. Not that any one here has anything to do with pirated software. If I cannot buy it, I do without until I can get it cheap or I can aford it.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I dont get this negativity? Why would you pay the money to get SEIV rather then stick to SEIII? It's the same thing only with "a few more features and some graphic improvements" right? SEV is too SEIV what SEIV was too SEIII a an improvment over the previous version, what more do you want? Hell the way people keep complaining about the graphics basically they are saying they want SEIV with a new name and some more features. Without the 3d graphics some of the features *cough*real-time pausable combat *cough* wouldent even be possible so we would be stuck with the same exploitable turnbased combat of SEIV so where would be the improvement in that case?

SEV to me at least looks to improve all aspects of gameplay over SEIV, for some features even going back to what YOU PLAYERS WANTED like the reasearch and intel from SEIII, and giving better visuals too. I for one cant wait!

If you dont want the game, dont buy it, your loss.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Uh, you can certainly do real-time combat in 2d. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

It'd probably be a better deal for the OP if he had bought SE:IV 6 years ago like a lot of us did..

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Maybe you can, but I dont see that working quite as well with 2d pictures as with a 3d engine running it where ships and fighters manuver in realtime. I cant see how you can do with with .gifs. Besides whats wrong with some 3d graphics, I think it will help create a better atmosphere where the universe seems more alive.

But thats just me. Sorry for going off like that but even as a part time poster here (though I lurk here alot) im getting sick of the rediculous negativity to this game.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

SE IV is not SE V and SE V is a completely differant kind of game from SE IV.. SE V will have 3d combat and RT ground combat whereas SE IV does not. SE IV, in my humble yet illinformed opinion, will remain a solid stand alone alternative game from its younger brother for many years too come.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Oh I completely agree that SEIV will remain a great game and still played for a long time coming just like SEIII has. Despite the fact that new installments into the series are being made the old ones never die out, thats one of the great things about SE as a whole.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

..does the phrase "Warcraft 2" or perhaps "Command and Conquer" ring a bell? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif Both 2d. 2d has its advantages and disadvantages, but to say it can't do that is just silly. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Do those use the kind of simple .gifs that SEIV uses? If your gonna make an engine that runs like those games then you might as well just go the next step and make it 3D, the way I understand it is the ones compalining about SEV's 3dism want a game thats just basically SEIV but with a few more features. THAT was the point I was trying to make. And I also said I cant see it working as well, which it wouldent, 2D has its limitations.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I think the movement to 3D will be an overall good move, even if only to prevent things like one-sided warp point battles from occurring.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

<font color="blue"> BINGO !!! </font>


I happen to like the way SE-IV visually works now !!!

I am more interested in the 4x aspect of it than the REAL-TIME or 3D (<font color="yellow">ooooooh, aaaaaah, how flashy...</font>) combat, the new interfaces, the new this, the new, the new that-other-thingy.

Improvements on the operational aspects, such as research, AI's, treaties, and the like are admittedly great, but if what I really wanted was a realtime 3d game, there are certainly other, better titles out there dedicated to exactly that, and little else.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

A real time combat engine (distinct from a RTS engine) is, in fact, a vast improvement to the 4X aspects. eXterminate is the 4th X, afterall. The combat engine is the most critical aspect of this X. If it sucks, the whole suffers. The primitive combat mechanics in SEIV (not even a basic initiative system!) have always been a failing point... Just compare to something like MOO2 and you shall see. Of course, at least they are no frickin Civ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I joined, after lurking at SE sites for years, just to try to defend P2P as a not-entirely-evil way of trying some things before you buy it. I purchased this past weekend SE4 (after years of, ahem, trying it) as part of Steams SciFi pack.. Was thrilled to be able to buy it, 'cause I'd never, ever, seen SE4 on shelves. Actually seen 'Stars!' on shelves (anybody know 'Stars!'? All 4X fans are born somewhere..). I was going to make it a bright example, but after trying to phrase it in a way that really sounded noble for half an hour, couldn't do it.

You're right, piracy takes money off the dinner table of the guy who gives us this great series.. and other indy developers just like him. P2P helps spread the game to those that otherwise never would've heard of it, but the net harm is probably larger than the net benefit. The worst part is, there's no counter to it at all; Even Starforce, which was so powerful it did as much harm to customers as it did pirates, has fallen.

My only hope is that when SEV hits the BT sites a ton of the people that end up DLing it end up making their way to a store or Steam (All games should be offered on Steam -- hardcopys seem so 20th century http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif) and pay for it.. sort of like I did.. except with the whole several-year delay. Even though I paid for it, I still feel ashamed!

Regarding the original issue though.. I'm with dejavu. But I think its almost the same as with people who don't see why to upgrade to Vista upon release. "It's the same!" Sure its the same, the same as 95 was 3.1, 98 was 95, 2000 was 98, and XP was 2000.. if you want to look at it in a backward fashion, sure. But Vista is rebuilt from the ground up, more efficient network stack, coded with the age of virus's and malware in mind, new driver model for stability and performance, and even in beta builds has been benchmarked to be more responsive and less of a CPU hog. Likewise, SEV is all the same sort of things; rebuilt, bigger and better than ever before in all ways. I think if you really like the game then die-hard fans dont even need to explain it. If one is more of a fairweather or part-time fan, well then, $50 suddenly seems like a lot.

I for one will be eating up Steam's bandwidth on Sept 12th, though.

Last second idea: You know, SiN Episodes found a ton of pirates out by updating through Steam exclusively. If Malfador does the same thing then patches would be more of a pain to distribute. We legitimate customers wouldn't even know a patch occured because it'd happen automagically next time we ran Steam. Pirates on the other hand would flood the message boards revealing themselves all complaining about the bug that was just patched, as happened with SiN. Don't know if thats feasible, random idea though. They want new features and patches, then pay up!

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Eww Steam. No thanks!

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Steam hate.

From what I remember, Fyron, wasn't the MoO2 combat system such that the attacker always got to start? I remember eradicating entire Doom Star fleets with a single Doom Star of my own, simply because I always got to start and had massive amounts of plasma cannons. Guess it might have been fixed/balanced in a patch, as I only played it unpatched.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

The 1.31 patch added a decent initiative system. This is what I was refering to. The original release did indeed have a crappy combat model. If you ever play MOO2 again, make sure to get the patch.

Of course, you can still abuse it with phased cloak and the temporal device that gives you 2 turns for one... But that's not necessarily an issue with the combat mechanics themselves, more with not thinking about the consequences of these two high end components.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I kind of have to disagree here. For example, the whole idea Steam is based upon assumes the entire user base has constant access to high-speed internet. This is one reason I don't like Steam. I'm stuck with dial-up internet, and really don't have a choice about it until I move to a larger population center. Second reason I don't like Steam is the very fact that you don't have a hardcopy. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I like something physical that shows I own the product, something that isn't just on my computer and in someone's database showing that, yes, I'm allowed to own that product. It opens up a host of potential problems, from people hacking into Steam's database to allow whoever they want to download whatever they want, or even simple database errors which could cause Steam to reject whatever I'm trying to legitimately download.

Sorry for the rant about Steam, it's not really the topic this thread it about! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Or with Valve deciding to ban you, thus locking out access to *all* your Steam based games, with no appeal possible.

Given how often I've been marked as cheating when I'm NOT, that's not a small concern. (one popular anti-cheat method thinks I'm speedhacking any time I get packet loss, for example)

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I have to agree with you whole-heatedly on the steam issue. I for one will be looking in my local EB for SEV (I hope they will carry it) as I hate steam with a passion, the hate was emphisied when I tried to fire up old copy of Day of Defeat one day and steam in its infinate wisdom tells me its already registered to a steam account... OF COURSE IT IS MY FEAKING STEAM ACCOUNT YOU PIECE OF ****. And this was with having a hard copy, which is another thing that I HATE about steam is even if you get HL2 off the store shelf they make you go through steam to access the freaking game! Anyways im just glad it was a game i didnt care to much for, what if it was a game I forked out 60 hard earned dollars for and I liked?

Say no to steam!

(sorry for the rant)

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I for one really like steam - I dont have to bother carrying a hard copy around with me, and unlike the lame D2D service which I hope is already dead, with steam you can install on as many comps and redownload as often as you need. Patches are all taken care of, downloads are fast (most games its quicker for me to download than go to town and find the game) and prices are good. Its got an easy interface, doesnt mess me about, and the 'friends' feature is really handy.

As for torrents...cant you just spoof the tracker and upload garbage? How much validation on data can a client perform? Assuming they use a CD image, broken bytes here and there could cripple it. If that were possible, imagine how hard it would be to get SE:V off a torrent if every leagal owner was uploading junk data.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Steam does not block access to all your games. If you are caught cheating, your license for THAT GAME ONLY is banned from all VAC secured games. And it's very hard to set off the VAC anti-cheat system. At least from what I read, anyway.

Steam is nifty(for broadband users at least), in that you get automatic patches, and that the anti-cheat system that they use scares cheaters into not cheating. It's not as effective as they say, but the permanent ban serves to scare users into playing the game how it's meant to be played. Not to mention the authentication system hampers pirates that steal games, without invasive software such as Starforce. Just log into your account once, identify yourself as who you are, and then you can go play offline mode without the internet as long as you want.

Some of this stuff may be inaccurate, so feel free to point out inaccuracys. But in my experience, Steam runs flawlessly and gives you a lot of convienent features.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I don't see how Steam is any different than invasive software such as Starforce. It's just the implementation that is slightly different.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I think Steam works alright as an *addition* to the hard-copy packages, but it should never become a replacement.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Draxis said:
How much validation on data can a client perform?

Quite a lot, actually. The entire protocol is designed with perfect file transfers in mind, so each piece of the whole is validated with hash checks and such, as is the final copy.

You can't make a CD that will change how a CD image is created unless you use illegal (or at the least, highly immoral) rootkit garbage like Starforce that damages your CD drivers in such a way that it can prevent CD images from being made.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

From what I know of networking (which is not that much, did not do well in the subject at university) most networking protocols are designed to prevent *accidental* imperfections, but there are a lot of possible variations of a single block (say 256Kb) that would all pass the same validation hash. Assuming every single block of a torrent had an associated MD5, to sabotage the theft, you only need to send a differnt block but the block would hash out the same MD5. When the entire file was finished, it would almost certainly fail any check on it, but that is still a few hundred megs that has to be redownloaded, and would only take 1 dodgy block to break again.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I don't think that will really work out too well in practice though... BT uses SHA1 hashing, not MD5. While an attack vector has been found for SHA1, it is not yet computationally feasible to create faked pieces of data that would let you disrupt a BT transfer. You can bet that as soon as viable methods for creating collisions in the SHA1 algorithm are found, the BT protocol will just switch to a newer algorithm that is not yet possible to break.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I don't think Draxis knows too much about hashing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Collisions (ie, two differing blocks of data that produce the same hash) are so supremely rare that a big deal was made of it in the crypto community when someone managed to find a way to make MD5 collide. The method was impractical, of course, and IIRC, only a few bytes could be changed. This was with a small dataset. Creating collisions out of larger chunks would be infinitely more difficult.

Now, out of OT mode...


If SE5 would only be sold on Steam, I would not buy it. In fact, I'm going to wait for the first reports from the community-- if SE5 has any crap in it, I won't buy it. If it's not portable as SE4 is, I will think twice but it's not a game breaker.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Your right Sivran, I'm out of touch, I used to play around with that stuff a lot though :p I never looked at the SHA1 but after a little reading it has me interested. Hate having to go to a job all day, I cant play with numbers!

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

SE4 (and earlier) was probably pirated massively long before the deluxe(!) version. I seem to recall a Q&amp;A with Aaron where he said as much.

Copy protection definitely stops games getting into the hands of casual pirates. I'm a bit more sceptical whether it actually encourages sales. I think people willing to pay will pay and those who can't, or won't, won't pay no matter what. I don't buy the idea of a pirate furiously exhausting his options for ripping off a game and then as a final resort reluctantly trudging to the game store with a bunch of grubby bank notes in his hands and a tear in his eye.

The Boycott Starforce (never had a problem with Starforce) proved that harsh copy-protection discouraged people from buying games. Stardock had a top-selling game (at Walmart!) with no copy protection.

I would say it's a cert that come what may SE5 will have copy protection, either through Steam or through a CD-in-drive disk checker. I couldn't tell you where my SE4 disk is (bought for about a $80.00 off a specialist import shop in the UK! Best value for money ever.) so I'll miss just starting up a game whenever I want but I suppose that's progress.

Getting back to the original reason behind the thread though - I'm still not convinced that these real time land battles and wotnot are going to do the released game any favours. As a straight 2D turn based war game SE4 fit into a comfortable, if no longer mainstream, sterotype. A reviewer seeing a lacklustre attempt at a RTS is going to tear it a new one in the review.

Look at the RTS battles in Space Rangers - pretty much universally put down by reviewers (though forgiven because of the strength of that game as a whole) and from what I've seen the SR RTS battles look a lot better than the SE5 ones. If they played like Warhammer 40K Dawn Of War then fair enough...

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Pirates buy games too. I personally know of some examples of people who pirated a game, then bought it because they liked it. I'm not saying I support such a thing, but it does happen.

You mentioned Starforce, and not having had a problem with it. I know this thread isn't about Starforce, but I have had problems with it. I had a CDRW drive die on me for no particular reason, shortly after installing a Starforce protected game. Now, that could be coincidence, but coincidence only goes so far.

But anyways, this thread isn't about Starforce so I'll shut up now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I've pirated games. I deleted the ones I didn't like, and bought the ones I did. The remainder I either never bothered installing or just simply forgot about. The "didn't like" and "forgotten" categories are by far the largest. This and the appearance of StarForce have a significant impact on my game buying.

Whenever I'm at Fry's looking at games, I really DO think to myself, "Can I find this game online? Is this game infected with Starforce?" It's the Starforce question that tips the scales toward putting down the box, going home, and either forgetting about the game (in this way Starforce hurts even those who don't use it!) or looking up the list or an illegitimate source. On the other hand, if I've downloaded a game--demo, or warezed--and I see it at Fry's, I might just pick it up as an impulse buy. Hell, I bought GalCiv II for no other reason than its lack of copy protection. I might install it one day, I've heard it's fun.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I too will be holding off on my purchase of SE5 until I've heard some feedback on this forum regarding the copy-protection methods used. If it makes the game unplayable, or it means I can't install it on more than one PC, or can't install it on a replacement PC, or it's going to break my PC by installing a rootkit or something, then I won't be buying it until it's fixed.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

To quote myself "I think people willing to pay will pay and those who can't, or won't, won't pay no matter what." which just agrees with you that copy protection or lack therof hasn't got a bearing on whether a game will sell. If you're going to buy it you'll buy it. If you're not then there are plenty of excuses to make to yourself why not.

I'm amazed at the way forums have been taken over by anti-Starforce sentiment in the last year or so. There are plenty of good reasons why I may not buy Space Empires 5 but copy protection definitely isn't one of them. I'll likely pre-order a physical copy and then crack on release day and buy the download too. I ended up buying 3 copies of Silent Storm because I liked it so much I just wanted to spread the word.

As for Steam, which I never really touched on, if you want to play a MP game you need to validate through Steam but if you're playing a MP game you're probably either already on the Internet or on a LAN and if you're on a LAN in the 21st century I can't believe there are too many times you won't have some Internet access.

Again I want to stress I'd prefer it wasn't the case but OTOH I'm not that worried about it. Your life must be pretty sweet if you consider this a hardship. Running a house and holding down a job (to spend on food and games) give me more than enough grief for me to worry about copy-protection.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

You have to validate SP games as well frightlever. And I'm not keen on spending money on a game only to have it turn into a coaster a few years down the road. Starforce is unlikely to work when you upgrade your OS, for example.

And that's not even counting its tendancy to kill CD drives, the scummy tactics of the people that make it, etc.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

frightlever, I think the problem people have with Starforce, is this: People don't like software that prevents them from doing legal things with their legally purchased software, don't like software that assumes that everyone is automatically a criminal, and software that kills hardware.

Of course it's not as important as a job, etc, but if copy protection ends up costing you money (ie: dead CD drive), then it does matter, since it's the crappy CP that's costing you money.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I'm amazed at the way forums have been taken over by anti-Starforce sentiment in the last year or so.

Its not just these forums, it is the entire Internet and gaming community in general. Starforce is horrible, horrible malware that does nothing but harm. It is only natural for the hate to show here too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Everyone who's worried about whether SEV will be worth the money seems to be assuming that there won't be a demo available to check the game out before they buy it. I do not understand this mindset. People who are confident in the game can preorder it; people who aren't can wait for more info. Why waste time worrying over this before anything concrete is available to base the decision on?

Disclaimer: I don't expect to buy SEV immediately because I don't expect it will run on my current aging hardware; in fact, I want to see SEV's system requirements before I start shopping for a new machine.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

From Malfador:
Pentium 500 MHz or better class machine
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
128MB RAM
1024x768 or better screen resolution
16bit color or better color depth
500 megs hard drive space
A video card with 3D acceleration
DirectX 8.1 or higher
A sound card capable of supporting MP3 and DirectSound playback. Sound card must be DirectX 8.1 (or better) compatible.

Assuming these specs are accurate, you really won't need much to play this game - perhaps you could even slap a video card in your old machine! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Are these the minimum, or recommended requirements? If we have a much more robust machine, will that allow us to run battles with higher poly models? Or is the poly count in relation to the game engine, not machine specs?

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

I'm wondering if the Simultaneus Movement game type works the same way as it does in SEIV, i.e. all battles have to be auto-calculated?

Playing single-player I've found that I by far prefer the Simultaneus type of play, but it's a rather big sacrifice to have to cede control of all battles. A MoO3 type system would have been awesome in single-player.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

What R U getting for you money, well your getting a new addiction, one that will cost you your job, wife/girl friend, home, career, and health. You will for your money, trade your soul away each and every time you start a game. Days will seem like hours, and whole years will pass you buy with you ever even noticing them. One day you will realize that you have been sitting at your computer none stop for a week, grown a foot long beard, lost 50 pounds, and need to clip your finger nails as they are now each two inches long.
So what are you getting for your money, well as I said, a new addiction.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

A one-time cost of $50 is pretty inexpensive for such a good addiction that lasts for years. Can't think of any other addiction that costs less than that.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Thanks for the info, Ed. I must have already seen that listing, because some of the items on my list are worded exactly the way they are there.

Can't just add a video card; I need to more than double my current CPU speed.

Re: SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?
 

Double your CPU speed? Wow. You have a knack for keeping old computers running, apparently. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

(seriously I have one sitting here I got for free that would play SE5..work was giving them away as too old).