[Renegade 13]

Nats said:
The UI IMO would look far better done in a metallic stylish hi-tech look rather than the rather uninspiring cartoony look it has.

Well, I may work on just such a mod, to be ready when SE5 comes out if there's enough interest and if I don't feel too lazy

I tend to prefer realistic graphics that pull me into the game. Im not a fan of cute or overly colourful cartoony graphics myself. Many of the ship graphics although admittedly quite fantastic still look very cartoony and 'unreal'. They need a bit of 'weight' and some rust/dirt. Has nobody here seen Star Wars?? Clean new spaceships went out with 2001 A Space Odyssey!

Well...rust/dirt would make no sense at all. After all, rust requires water and oxygen in order to oxidize the iron. Space has neither. Dirt is the same...there's no dirt in space. There's really no reason ships wouldn't be clean and shiny, except for battle damage, micrometeroids (though shields should stop them), accidents aboard ships that damage the hull, etc. Rusty space ships would be very unrealisitic!

Perhaps some background nebula would help the sparseness of the space graphics as well.

Again, if it's realism you're going for, you wouldn't see nebulae from space unless you were really REALLY close to them, in interstellar terms. Oh, and there are some background nebulae in the system view.

Sorry to be so blunt but lets get real here. I'm not paying my good money for a game however good the gameplay is that looks bad.

Im one of the first people to express the importance of gameplay and gaming choice over snazzy graphics and repetitive linear missions etc. But that doesnt mean graphics are unimportant.

Nats

Many people would like a game that is more original than most of the derivative games out there today, even if it meant dated graphics. Though I do agree with you, graphics are important. But I don't think gameplay should suffer due to them.

Oh, and not all of us who think graphics aren't as important as gameplay have crappy systems...my system can handle anything I throw at it, even the latest massively graphics intensive FPS games.