Growing concern - but optimistic

[Phoenix-D]

Just to have more slots on the ships. That's it.

And the SEIV interface was..er..not crisp. Especially if played at 800x600.

[Major_SNAFU]

Phoenix-D said:
Just to have more slots on the ships. That's it.

And the SEIV interface was..er..not crisp. Especially if played at 800x600.

Crisp isn't perhaps the correct term. I liked the look, it was spartan and futuristic.

For instance, in the ship design UI it felt to me like I had to move my mouse a great deal more, and over longer distances to put componenets on my ships.

So for 'crisp' perhaps I was really looking for 'efficient'.

I don't mind the more cartoonish look over all, but I wouldn't mind the mouse cursor being about 1/4th the size it is.

Anyway, I can now see what some people have been on about concerning hard to see through the icons. I can live with that because you can tilt the map to see 'under' things. Cumbersome, yes, but not a deal-breaker.

Returning to ship building, does anyone know if you can, say, hold down a key and retain the component currently selected so as to quickly put multiples of the same componenet on a ship. If this is possible, a good part of my concern with this specific UI goes away.

Thanks,

[FaultyAirlock]

Major_SNAFU said:
Returning to ship building, does anyone know if you can, say, hold down a key and retain the component currently selected so as to quickly put multiples of the same componenet on a ship. If this is possible, a good part of my concern with this specific UI goes away.
Thanks,

Holding down shift should let you place multiple components;
ie. select comp. -> hold shift -> place as many times as needed
edit: whoops, looks like Santiago got it before me

[Santiago]

Well then thousands will fit in a hex and the opposing player will never see them.

[Fyron]

I don't have any trouble seeing ships. Maybe you just need to play at a higher screen resolution? They are nice and big at 1600x1200, and I can see the whole map still.

[Captain Kwok]

Yeah, that's one of the benefits of the bigger resolution is that you can zoom in more and see the ships much better. Add SJ's flag pack and your set if the small ships are an issue for you.

[Phoenix-D]

Zooming in is still a pain, tho. If people actually are doing that I can see why they'd dislike the demo.

And Santiago: I was being silly. Elsewhere you'll find me griping about the size of units in combat, where it -does- make a direct gameplay problem.

[RonGianti]

Ok, so I've seen around 10 distinct "complaints" about the demo.

Around 5 of them turned out to be just changable options, (flag size, etc) that the poster(s) chose to complain about in overly forceful words ("I'll never buy this piece of crap, blah, blah until this is fixed!) rather than just poking around or asking a simple question.

2 or 3 of them boil down to "I'm used to SEIV and now I can't find stuff". Again, some posters choose to get out the big guns and start blasting away with "buggy piece of crap! I'll never buy this game, EVER!", instead of just asking a question.

Yea, fine, people are entitled to their opinion.

Heres mine: if you have to blast away with "I hate this buggy piece of crap and I'll never buy it EVER!" instead of just asking a question then you are being too negative.

There are so many new options and stuff to do and stuff that makes Space Empires LESS annoying that I cant believe the negative-fest here.

You know what I find annoying? When in SE4, one of my "allies" colonizes all the planets in MY systems! ARRRRGGGHHHHH. I'll never buy SE4 until they fix that buggy piece of crap. Oh yea, it IS fixed, in SEV.

You know what else I find annoying? Fighters are just one stack in SE4! Its not fair that a battleship can plow through my stack of fighters because the game conciders them one big stack! I'll never buy SE4 because its a buggy piece of crap! Good thing its fixed in SEV...

There are a couple minor, niggling little things in SEV that will probably be "updated" anyway, and don't HOLD A CANDLE to all the stuff thats been fixed, updated and just plain improved in SEV.

[tmcc]

Touche

[Barnacle Bill]

RonGianti said:
You know what I find annoying? When in SE4, one of my "allies" colonizes all the planets in MY systems! ARRRRGGGHHHHH. I'll never buy SE4 until they fix that buggy piece of crap. Oh yea, it IS fixed, in SEV.

That was my #1 beef with SEIV. It is certainly better in SEV, but since I can't claim a system other than by colonizing in it, it isn't 100% fixed.

Example - let's say I have a colony in System A, which links to System B containing no planets I can colonize, which links to System C containing a colonizable planet. Let's say the only route from A (or anyplace else in my empire) to C is through B. Clearly I'd be wanting to call B "mine". However, if AI enters B through another warp point and colonizes in it, now it's "his" and my colony in C is cut off. So, I'd still like to be able to claim B before that happens, thus precluding it.

Still, for the system ownership situation that applies 99% of the time, SEV is much better than SEIV.

RonGianti said:
There are a couple minor, niggling little things in SEV that will probably be "updated" anyway, and don't HOLD A CANDLE to all the stuff thats been fixed, updated and just plain improved in SEV.

I absolutely agree with this.

On the matter of seeing planets that so many people bring up - I actually like that because it slows down the land rush.

On the related subject of "seeing from memory", it looks from settings.txt like we have the option to set things by class, but I'd like the ability to set it by mobility. In other words to see things that can't move themselves like colonies, bases, satelites, troops, etc... from memory but not things that can move like ships & fighter groups.