Official SE5 release date announced - September 12

[Ed Kolis]

Yay! I kinda suspected that you could flee combat in that manner but it's good to hear confirmation of that!
Presumably that distance is moddable, and perhaps it might even be a formula, so for instance if you start with Chemical Rockets going 20 km/s or something and eventually get Hyper-Quasar Drives going 100 km/s then the distance required to retreat could increase throughout the game as the average player's tech level advances? Or is it time-based - based on the speed of the fastest ship in the pursuing fleet? (e.g. "if the enemy ship can't reach your current position within 30 seconds the combat ends")

edit: clarified from "can't reach you" to "can't reach your current position"

[RonGianti]

I just assumed that some shipsets would be better than others, and that you would have to pay for better ship sets the same way you pay for any other advantage at the beginning of the game. Oh well.

So now we have to pay for maintenance on fighters? Oh great. Are they completely useless then? Are they just a little niche item or just something to bypass completely?

[Ed Kolis]

They are now individually targetable, rather than stacked in groups, and the lack of area-effect weapons means that ships with only big guns will be wasting a LOT of firepower trying to blast those little buggers out of the sky

99 drushocka fighters in space, 99 drushocka fighters
Shoot your DUC, blow one up, 98 drushocka fighters in space!
WHAM! 98 structural damage!
98 drushocka fighters in space, 98 drushocka fighter...

[Captain Kwok]

One complaint overhead early on was that fighters were too strong...

[Q]

Is the problem of accidental ramming (like in Starfury) eliminated in SE V?
Did you or any other betatester ever have a combat with something like 500 ships and 2000 fighters?
Sorry for all these questions, but we are just too curious and impatient.

[Captain Kwok]

Ships pass over/under each instead of colliding. I've already offered some speculation on performance with large numbers of ships earlier in this thread.

[reen]

Will there be mines in the 3d battle or is it like Space Empires IV?

[RonGianti]

Captain Kwok said:
I've already offered some speculation on performance with large numbers of ships earlier in this thread.

I went back through the whole thread and can't seem to find it. How many ships in a battle were people were seeing before it was unplayable?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Ed Kolis said:
They are now individually targetable, rather than stacked in groups, and the lack of area-effect weapons means that ships with only big guns will be wasting a LOT of firepower trying to blast those little buggers out of the sky

99 drushocka fighters in space, 99 drushocka fighters
Shoot your DUC, blow one up, 98 drushocka fighters in space!
WHAM! 98 structural damage!
98 drushocka fighters in space, 98 drushocka fighter...

I suggest that be the new, official unoffical SEV theme song.