My viewpoint of SEV

[Demorve]

I have played SEV for about 2 weeks now and I now have a feel of what I like and don’t like about the game. Since I loved SEIV I will make my comparisons to that game.

1) I like the hex grid of SEV over the square grid of SEIV. I grew up playing the cardboard war games that used the hex grid for movement purposes and I feel it gives the game a more accurate movement count when moving at the diagonal.
2) The 3D map is fine and I’m getting use to it. I also liked the 2D map of SEIV. For a game like this I don’t care if the graphics are state of the art, only that they be functional. My main complaints with the UI are that the flags are too large and the ships are too small on the system map. I prefer the way the information on the system map was presented in SEIV better.
3) The complexity of the diplomacy part of the game is nice, but I think it’s too complex for the AI. Since I don’t have the time to play multiplayer games I need the AI to be a little better than it is. I have to look very carefully at what the AI is offering because if I don’t, I could end up crippling myself or the AI to a point in which neither of us has a chance of winning. It usually took me 5 – 6 counter proposals just to get a semi-reasonable treaty.
4) There are a lot of little things that I’m ambivalent about such as the need to place ordinance supply modules on the ships. This feature does make one think about how much ammo you need. For instance I’m creating a long range scout ship. I want it to have lots of supplies so it can do some long range exploring, but how much ordinance do I place on the ship? Do I place a lot so that the ship will have enough ammo for lots of potential battles or do I place a limited amount hoping that the ship will meet some friendly races that will let me resupply?
5) Now on to ship design. I like SEIV better than SEV. SEV ship design’s not bad it’s just that I prefer the way SEIV handled.
6) The feature that I don’t like about SEV is the tactical combat. SEV’s tactical combat has just been turned into a click fest and if you make one mistake clicking during combat you can lose it all. One of the things I loved about MOO, MOO2 and SEIV is the turn based tactical combat. One of the benefits of turn based combat is the fact that you can take your time while you figure out your next move and if you do make a mistake you may be able to recover from it.

Overall I like the game, but the real time tactical combat ruins the game for me and I doubt if this game will stay on my hard drive like SEIV has. If I use strategic combat instead of tactical then I think SEV becomes an inferior version of Galactic Civilizations 2. I think that if Aaron replaces the real time combat with a turn based one and improves the AI so it can deal with diplomacy better SEV becomes close to SEIV in quality and game play.

Disclaimer: This is my opinion and my opinion only and you have the right to yours. Any and all flames will be ignored by me and suggest all other reasonable people ignore them as well.