Some remark from a stars! player

[LGM]

Different game parameters will make weapons more or less useful. Many people consider weapons based on (Damage /Mineral Cost / KT) and what they can skip (shields and/or armor). However, if you have a small ship limit (200-300), then cost matters little once you get an established empire and you are more concerned how much damage you can pack into each kiloton (maximize Damage / KT).

I have heard many complain about the inability to build one ship and carry over left over capacity to the next ship. I have intentially left one piece of armor or one weapon off a ship, just to get its cost to be one turn less. Of course, these boundaries ship when you add population bonuses or improve you shipyards. I too would like to see that changed.

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Stars has its problems as well. In stars, you target enemy fleets, not individual ships. This causes all kinds of Fleet Spliting scenarios when trying to target something. Stars tracks damage in percent increments instead of damage points, so that the minimum damage you can do to a ship is .2% on a hit. In stars ships are maintenance free, so people just build ships until they run out of resources. In stars, the research tree is exhuasted in about 100-120 turns. In SEIV, you should have plenty to still research for another 100-200 turns. In Stars you avoid combat because there are few rewards. You want to save your resources to build the most Nubian later in the game. In stars, you cannot win with superior resources and inferior technology. In SEIV you can. You have many more ship strategies: Shooting, Capturing, Ramming. In stars you can shoot or run away. Running away in SEIV is difficult (many of complained about this), in Stars running away is easy in the early game and nearly impossible in the later game (Missles and Range 3 beams are yard to outrun since they get at least 3 shots at you with missles or 2 with beams).