Love and Hate

[PvK]

Originally posted by alarikf:
What did SE3 have that SE4 does not? I played SE2 to death, but missed SE3 entirely since I was out of the country...but I am curious as to what I missed...

...

Some things I really like about SE3 that aren't in SE4:

* Much more detailed control of ship construction queues, being able to retrofit ships while they are under construction, and shift ships and units from one que to another, or foward and backward in the queues, ability to use a ship before it is finished building, ability to have multiple shipyards on a ship which build independently, etc.

* The ability to start the game with different tech levels pre-researched, and a very large resource Cache which could effectively let you start out with a developed empire which was different from your opponents' empires.

* Superb cross-referenced hypertext context-sensitive help system. You could pretty much get help on any display and link to a deep explanation of every part of the game.

* The ability to retreat from tactical combat - no "locked in the box of doom" SE4 tactical map.

* More control over the research queues - research all the techs at once, put 1% on the X tech, etc.

* Ability to control put planets on emergency production, at the cost of happiness (not just emergency construction, as in SEIV).

* Ability to move and re-size all of the windows.

* A better system for emissive armor effects.

* Better weapons balance.

* Better control of tactical strategies, in some cases, such as the ability to specify the amount of firepower to allocate to each target, so you don't have ALL your missile ships firing at the same enemy ship.

* Ability to stack ships in tactical combat.

* Construction had an element of time required, and not just resources used divided by resource use rate.

PvK