[Demorve]

I have to disagree with Atrocities and President_Elect_Shang about SEV becoming one of the best 4x games since SEIV. UI aside, there are games with a lot worse UI's than SEV (like NWN2), this game has to many thing wrong for it to ever become as good as SEIV. Like diplomacy, there are to many choices for the AI. The AI will never be able to handle diplomacy unless Aaron makes it possible to remove about 90% of the options. Ship building needs to streamed lined as well. Just have two rows one labled inner hull and the other outer hull, each can hold a certain percent of the total hull capacity. For example the inner hull can hold 30% of the total hull weight, the outer 70%. This means that a ship hull with a 200kt capacity would be able hold 60kt in the inner hull and 140kt in the outer hull. Directional damage needs to be removed and changed to this: components in the outer hull destroyed before the inner hull components. Having firing arcs in this game would make it to combersome to use in combat, especially when there are more than 50 ships to each side. I know of no other RTS that use firing arcs in their combat model (I don't consider SFC1-3 to be RTS's, they are real time tactical combat games using a limited number of ships at one time). Just try and imagine having to remember the firing arc of over 50 ships and then moving an individual ship so as to take advantage of it's firing arc. If you thought the AI is weak now, just add firing arcs to the mix. You could add firing arcs if combat was turned base like it was in MOO2.

To me the way this game stands now it's probably an excellent multi-player game as long as there are no computer players, but since I don't have the time to play multi-player, SEV becomes a below average 4x strategy game. I don't think SEV will ever become as good as SEIV was and is, so I think Aaron should cut his losses here and move on to SEVI and take the things that worked well in SEIV and SEV and combine them into one very awesome game with a superior AI.