OT: Moo3 had a lot of unutilized protential. It was a game that should have been a hell of a lot better than it turned out to be. To "me" the UI had fuzzy fonts, was combersome to use, and lacked intuitiviness. It was more frustrating than useful and that seriously hurt the game IMHO.
I really didn't play much of Moo3 after about a week. While many have grown to love the game and some have even improved it, I haven't played it in years. I really wish I could have gotten to play this game, but honestly I just could not get into it.
I look back on Moo3 with sincere regret. Here was a game that I wanted, that I waited for, and that I shelled out $60.00 buck for. I was really angry at the time both at the developers, and at the publishers. (But more so at the developers.)
I think many game developers learned a very valuable lesson from the whole moo3 incident. (Well not VUG, Tribes Vengence was a solid single player game but had astonishingly cheat riddled multiplayer coupled with insanely bad game play design, two things which were key elements to the games failure.)
Aaron, I am sure, took notice of what happened with MOO3 and has done everything he can do to develope a solid game. SE V, even with its current flaws, is a surprisingly damn good game right out of the box and patched to current version.
As a one man development team, he himself, and Otus, his games have consitantly been addictive time consuming life destroyers.
While I would have gladdly paid another $40.00 or more for a FIXED version of MOO3, or waited another year for it to be released as the game it should have been, I can understand the need to get money coming in after so many years of development.
BOT:
With some work the UI in SE V can be made very functional and intuative. I am sure that as time passes many things will happen with the UI. I look forward to the time that I can start a game of SE V and instinctively use the UI without becoming frustrated and angry. I want to look back at these days and feel good about how the game has improved over time.
I figure that after most of the bugs have been delt with, Aaron will begin to work on the UI. So having a good idea of the improvements that are needed wouldn't hurt their chances of becoming part of the game.
So the more we talk about it, the better the chance that we will come up with some good ideas.