Some remark from a stars! player

[Athena]

It has been some weeks now that I play SE IV, and I have a bLast. Before I played to the death Stars from Crisium.com, and managed I think to reach a veteran position, having done quite a number of MP Games. I would like to share some thoughs, as I'm a 'transfuge'. Don't get me wrong, SE IV is a great great game, and I now thinks that he is, at least partly, superior to stars! in many way. Don't blame me for my remarks, look at them as innocent critiscism

Some things surprised me in SE IV. I still dont quite understand why, after 4 iterations of the game, such features are like this. Perhaps the vets here can tell me the reasons why Aaron Hall did these things:

1- Only one item build on each planet each turn, with no carry over of production. Induce quite a MM hell if you want to optimize the prod queue. Silly example is I order to build one turn worth of fighters, and during the turn processing one of my transport take some pop and reduce the available production, making the construction take 2 turns, with the second turn using only 10% of the build capacity of the planet.

2- No scenario editor ???

3- No parametrable load order. In stars you could order to load population, but leaving at least xxx colonists on the planet. Quite a strong feature if you wanted to automate all transport without fearing to deplete any world (Set waypoint to, leave xxx at waypoint).

4- Some weapons seem to be utterly useless. One can see this even after one day of play. Why Malfador never tweaked the stats, taking feedback from players?

[Lord Balzingo]

quote:

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Originally posted by Athena:

3- No parametrable load order. In stars you could order to load population, but leaving at least xxx colonists on the planet. Quite a strong feature if you wanted to automate all transport without fearing to deplete any world (Set waypoint to, leave xxx at waypoint).

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Try using "Cargo Transfer" as opposed
to "Load Cargo"

[thorfrog]

Some good points. malfador time to step up to the plate.

[geoschmo]

It is natural to assume that people that have been here a long time have some special influence or understanding into the whys and wherefores of Aaron Hall's thought processes, but that is not really the case.

As far as your specific points:

1. This is a good point. I have never heard it put in exactly these terms before, although that's not to say it hasn't been. Perhaps this is simply a case of noone has asked for it. Or perhaps it's "on the list". There are many things that get requested, that even Aaron says he likes and plans to do someday, but don't get done for lack of time. Unfortunatly the nature of the industry, and this type of niche game limit the resources he has to work on this game.

2. This one has been requested, a lot. I don't know if it's just a matter of lack of time to do it effectivly. That's my guess though. He could throw toghether a half a$$ one, but it's not likely to please most of the people waiting on it, and that is not been the way he normally does things. Many of us have developed tecniques to work around this though and make fairly effective scenarios.

3. Again, a nice feature to have. There are ways to program the AI to do this, so you should be able to program your personal races AI and then turn the pop relocation over to the ministers, but I am not sure. It may be another case of not enough request for it, or nobody expressing it in the way you do that is so easily understandable.

4. Here I have to disagree with you a bit. I don't really believe any of the weapons are "useless". A lot of them become obsolete at different points in the game, but that doesn't mean they aren't useful in their time. Plus getting a consensus on a problem in these areas is much easier than getting a consensus on the solution. Many "solutions" in fact open up a whole new set of problems. Ask anyone who has tried to do a "weapon balance" mod how easy it is.

But this is an area where SEIV has no equal. If you feel there are problems in these weapon areas, there is very little you can't change yourself in a mod to make it the way you like it. Then you don't have to convince Aaron it's a problem, you can go ahead and fix it yourself. He's given you the tools.

Geoschmo

[disabled]

On the scenario editor, I recall Aaron saying that the expense of making it outways the benefit of making it. I suppose when MM grows, there will be mroe people and resources to absorb the cost.

[1FSTCAT]

One of the things that our "Stars!" player missed was:

The ability to give a merge fleet order. I can't tell you how many turns I've wasted just trying to get two fleets of ships to sync up.

This headache is even worse, if you have fleets with 2 different movement rates, because then you have to calculate how to move them, to get them all to arrive in a combat sector within the proper combat phase window, where they will all fight at the same time!

There's nothing more frustrating than sending 2 or 3 fleets to attack a planet and having them arrive one combat phase apart, and having them destroyed because you didn't have the #'s on your side..

--Ed