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  #1  
Old September 18th, 2006, 02:53 PM

Barnacle Bill Barnacle Bill is offline
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Default Re: SEV DEMO IS OUT!

Being an old timer who played these things as board games back in the 70's, I don't get too worked up over the UI stuff. At the risk of sounding like Grandpa talking about how he walked 10 miles through the snow to school every day, I had loads of fun playing Stellar Conquest and that meant keeping MOO1-style records on every colony in your empire with pencil/paper/calculator

What I do care about is features & "game mechanics" (i.e. the "rules", including customization opportunities). That's what makes a great game to me.

OK, I played the tutorial and am about 1/2 way through a "full" 100 turn game with my own custom-designed race (using the Terran shipset). Here's what I think so far...

I wish they'd have provided a manual of some sort (e.g. the "Great Invasions" devs posted a full beta manual on their website). Even for an experienced SEIII/SEIV player, there are a lot of questions. I hope now that the demo is out the beta testers are allowed to answer "how does it work" (or "how is it supposed to work") questions...

My biggest beef with SEIII/SEIV was in the diplomacy area - specifically the inability to defend your territory from your "allies". In SEIII, once you signed a treaty whereby combat didn't occur if you were in the same sector, the AI's colony ships would swarm into your systems and colonize anything they could. They also had a tendency to sign such a treat, spend a few turns penetrating deep into your empire, and then Pearl Harbor you. So, I always had to keep it to "non-aggression" or war and garison the border warp points. It kind of felt like Rome vs the Barbarians. I thought SEIV would fix that with the ability to clain systems and negociate ownership, but the AI turned out to be automatically programmed to claim any system adjacent to one contailing their colony - even if a few turns earlier they had dropped their claim as part of an agreement with you. So, Rome vs the Barbarians again.

I like the custom treaty system in SEV. A question I have is relative to the treaty element "can colonize each others systems" - does this mean unless I make such an agreement they can't, even if I have all sorts of alliances with them otherwise? Also, I don't see a mechanism to claim a system - what makes it "mine" from the standpoint of that treaty element? Also, I have one race in my game that just seems to ignore diplomatic proposals - no answer at all - bug or feature? How does the AI react to getting beat up? I mean if I thrash his fleet is he more likely to agree to my treaty proposals because he's intimidated, or less likely because he's angry?

Some aspects of the GUI are actually improvements, BTW. For example, I like the ability to create custom reports, the ability to save & recall build ques & that I can now upgrade ships while they are still in fleets.

On the subject of upgrades, now that higher levels of a given hull type are available (e.g. larger sizes of Frigate with each level of the applicable tech), I think this could have been used for a more effective limit on upgrading that the cost rule carried over from SEIV (which never stopped anybody, just made you go through several upgrade steps). My idea is just don't allow a ship to upgrade to a design that uses a larger "level" of hull that it has. You'd need to ability to upgrade designs without upgrading the hull level, but that wouldn't be a big deal. Eventually your oldest ships might have the latest tech, but would be significantly smaller & less capable than newer ones (more or less how it works in real life).

On the subject of ship design, that is a place where I do admit the GUI needs a little work. I'd like an SEIV-type collapsed view so I could see at a glance what was on a given design. Having the level of the system superimposed on its icon as in SEIV would also be nice. Having the boxes aranged on an outline of the ship is visually interesting, but unless the decks actually mean something in combat I'd prefer to get just three rows of slots/boxes - armor, outer hull & inner hull. The collapsed view should show those separeately, since it does apparently matter.

One thing that I find odd is that (so far, up to light cruiser) level 5 of a hull type uncovers the tech for the next hull type. The odd part is that a level 5 frigate hull and a level 1 destroyer hull have the same volume, but the destroyer has more crew & life support overhead, so the frigate ends up more capable! That doesn't seem right. The starting point for a given hull type should still be bigger than the prerequisite level of the next smaller hull type (easily modable, though).

I like the new system-wide function of Resupply Depots. I think that will make maintaining warp point pickets in your own systems without all the micromanagement (in my game so far my fleet is too small to afford to park ships, though). I find the separation of supplies & ordnance interesting. I can envision large scale offensive operations requiring a considerable fleet train of logistics ships - especially if you use a lot of ordnance-intensive weapons. Somebody up-topic mentioned how their fighters sucked their carrier dry of supplies & ordnance - sounds like something you need to allow for in carrier design (real life carriers devote a lot of internal space to that). Again, my fleet is still too small to have to worry about it, but can you directly transfer supplies & ordnance between ships? Do ships in the same fleet share?

Only one battle so far. One of my exploration Frigates mounting a 1st generation missile launcher (or maybe 2) popped into a warp point defended by a gaggle of Depleted Uranium Cannon-armed Frigates belonging to the race mentioned above (the one that won't talk - in fact this was "first contact"). I was quickly wiped out, but went back to my previous save & tried again a few times to get the hang of the combat system. As it turned out, the gaggle were all either the same speed or 1 slower than me, so if I took off immediately running away they could not close to within weapons range (the range rings are cool). I could let the lead guy catch up to my missile envelop, then run again while pounding him - three broadsides => mission kill (speed <4) - wait until the next guy passed the first & repeat. Unlike SEIV, there is no corner to catch you. After I got the last one, I probably had insufficent odnance to actually finish any of them off. So, I tried circling around back to the warp point to escape, but the combat ended before I got very far along on that plan. It seems like a design strategy of the highest speed & longest range weapons will mean that the worst that can happen to you is a stalemate (if the other guy has lots of point defense). I'm not sure that's a good thing, but that was SEIV, too. Now you have to worry abount running out of ordnance, though. Of course, stalemate isn't good if you are on the strategic defensive...
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Old September 18th, 2006, 03:17 PM

Phoenix-D Phoenix-D is offline
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Default Re: SEV DEMO IS OUT!

"Can conlonize each other systems" means you can ONLY colonize in the other's systems if that's turned on. You can have a full military treaty and still not allow that.

Who gets what is determined by who plants a colony there first, as far as I can tell.

The position of components does matter. Once your shields and armor fail, damage is directional- if the hit comes from behind, components at the back will die first.

Speed is life if you have short range weapons, yes. That's fairly basic tactics. What a human player could do, and the AI sadly won't, is split his force to try and hem you in from multiple directions. At least in SE5 you can't do the "missile dance" anymore.
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Old September 18th, 2006, 04:23 PM

Barnacle Bill Barnacle Bill is offline
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Default Re: SEV DEMO IS OUT!

Quote:
Phoenix-D said:
"Can conlonize each other systems" means you can ONLY colonize in the other's systems if that's turned on. You can have a full military treaty and still not allow that.

Great - exactly what I was hoping for...

Quote:
Phoenix-D said:
Who gets what is determined by who plants a colony there first, as far as I can tell.

Not so great - don't want any alien colonies in systems that link my empire, either. If I could claim them a la SEIV, but their recognition of the claim would stick unlike SEIV...

Quote:
Phoenix-D said:
The position of components does matter. Once your shields and armor fail, damage is directional- if the hit comes from behind, components at the back will die first.

Interesting... Kind of the opposite of Star Fleet Battles, where shields are directional but the interior stuff is not. Is armor directional?

Quote:
Phoenix-D said:
Speed is life if you have short range weapons, yes. That's fairly basic tactics. What a human player could do, and the AI sadly won't, is split his force to try and hem you in from multiple directions. At least in SE5 you can't do the "missile dance" anymore.
Actually, what I did was the SEV equivalent of the missile dance. Given the relative speeds and starting positions (all of the gaggle in a roughly 120 degree arc from me and initially out or range), I think even a human player would have had trouble hemming me in by splitting his force. Then again, this tended to be an issue in Starfire (the board game which originally inspired SE) as well. Maybe I'm missing something, though. It bears some watching...

On another note, I really like the visibility range thing in the system display. This promises to slow down the initial land rush, since you now have to survey the system. It also offeres some possibility of Midway-like carrier battles...
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Old September 18th, 2006, 04:54 PM

Phoenix-D Phoenix-D is offline
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Default Re: SEV DEMO IS OUT!

Armor isn't directional either. Go figure.

What you did wasn't qyite the missile dance. The missile dance was worse- even if your opponent had the same range of missile, you could duck in, fire, and duck out. He'd never get to shoot back.
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Old September 18th, 2006, 06:22 PM
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AAshbery76 AAshbery76 is offline
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Default Re: SEV DEMO IS OUT!

I think the demo rocks and you can see the vast improvement over SEIV on all levels.After an hours play the UI is no problem either.


My only problem is the stupid A.I diplomacy.It lacks any logic.Spawning offers of no research,no intel for a trade deal every turn is insane.The A.I should never offer no research treatys at all,especially when there are other Empires in the galaxy.I really hope the A.I gets more attention by gold.
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Old September 18th, 2006, 06:27 PM
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Default Re: SEV DEMO IS OUT!

BTW a quick tip abot custom layouts: If you save your empire during a game, it will save your custom layouts with it. You can then create a new race for a new game based on this file with your custom layouts right with it.
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Old September 18th, 2006, 06:48 PM
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Default Re: SEV DEMO IS OUT!

Quote:
Again, my fleet is still too small to have to worry about it, but can you directly transfer supplies & ordnance between ships?
Yes, on the cargo transfer screen.

Quote:

Do ships in the same fleet share?[
It doesn't seem like it.
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