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?