OT: SE4 players thoughts on OTHER games

[Aloofi]

I got SE4Gold a month ago, and today its the first day i have come out of the cave.

*looks at the sky expecting to see alien transports droping armored troops*

[ February 07, 2003, 20:07: Message edited by: Aloofim ]

[Lemmy]

I'll comment on the ones i find worth commenting on, and also read about.

Originally posted by Puke:

GALCIV: looks like fun, focus is on politics, but seems to have a very linear political progression. I like the description of the MOO3 political system better. boasts about its AI, but is it strong because it cheats? if so, how does it cheat?

It most certainly does not cheat, at least not in the way traditional AI's do to be good.
The difference is in the design, a traditional AI, like in SE4 or Civ, does it's thinking between player turns, and because not every players wants to wait 30 minutes for a turn, the amount of thinking an AI can do is limited by the games minimum system requirements.
However, in GalCiv, this is handled differently, it's multithreaded. The AI doesn't do it's thinking at the end of the players turn, but during it, while the player is making it's moves, the AI thinks in the background.
This gives the AI a lot more to think about things, allowing for a far better design, not necessarily more complex. How much time it actually takes, still depends on what the AI has to do, but it will not take more time then it needs, so taking more time to finish a turn will not make the game harder.

Linear political progression?
What exactly do you mean by that?

MOO3: whats not to say? whats not to read on any review site. probably just have to wait for it to come out.

Meh...i think it's been hyped a lot, then dehyped by the cutbacks, i'll have to read some player reviews before getting excited about it again.

X2:The Threat: Elite and then some! whoo-hoo. hurry up and find a publisher!

Yes! I've been waiting for tha game so long
I like the developers, they seem to listen to the players complaints. A while ago i've bought X-BTF (the original, found it in the bargain bin) and liked, but i had some gripes with it, that you can't for example buy stations, or own multiple ships, well guess what, the X-Tension had all those things fixed i had gripes about...too bad i can't find it anywhere nowadays.

Freelancer: if you liked privateer, its more of the same, from all the pre-reviews I have read.

Say what you will about Microsoft, they usually deliver decent, and solid games (at least the ones i played), i have no reason to doubt Freelancer will be another one of those.

Imperium Galactica 3: looks to be a super-sweet capital ship combat simulator. other than this, i dont know too much.

The thought of a sequel and improved Version of IG2 is tempting, but Last i read about IG3, is that it will be mission based, which is a big turn-off for me.

X:beyond the frontier (with/without x-tension): sounded cool, never really looked at it. how much strategy and economics were there? or was owning space stations simply a way to make money, and the economics were not really developed?

Hmm, see my reply to X2
IMO X-Tension is a totally different game from X-BTF, given the major impact of the game changes.

[PsychoTechFreak]

Originally posted by Puke:


X:beyond the frontier (with/without x-tension): sounded cool, never really looked at it. how much strategy and economics were there? or was owning space stations simply a way to make money, and the economics were not really developed?

I have played both of them for a long time, but the concept was more or less boring at the end. Most of it is economics, buying stations or remote mining of asteroids, producing different stuff and move/sell it around the galaxy either by remote control of transport ships which can be programmed with buy/sell price thresholds. The most fun of it was capturing pirate ships and sell or use them. Elite-like missions from time to time, pirate bases to destroy or to make deals with. You can live as a pirate also, every ship can be captured, best in lonely quadrants. Graphics and handling are really great! I have heard about the next generation, should be multiplayer as far as I know, but you still can not land on planets. I am not sure yet if it is worth a try.

[Lemmy]

I have heard about the next generation, should be multiplayer as far as I know, but you still can not land on planets. I am not sure yet if it is worth a try.

Well, there is X-Online, which is a massive multiplayer game in a persistent universe, and X2, which is a sequel to the original X, and a singleplayer game.

[Tenryu]

Awaiting MOO3 impatiently.

GalCon, bought the beta. Looks pretty good.

Stars Super Nova, sigh, {gets out old copy of Stars!, lovingly dusts it off, and hopes for the best for them}

The rest of the lot not really to my liking.

[Puke]

regarding linear political progression in galciv:

i mean, from what i read, that you go from imperal to republic to democracy to federation. each one is better than the Last, and harder to maintain. there are no choices, you cant get different benefits from a democracy or a republic or a oligarchy. you cant choose a socialist or capitalist economy.

you dont decide anything or make any tradeoffs, you just progress from one to the next. or, in theory, move backwards if you were having a better time maintaining party power in a previous form of government.

[Atrocities]

GALCIV:
I not really interested.

MOO3:
I wish people who do not yet have the game, would stop reviewing it. (It's not even out!)

S!SNG:
What is it?

X2:The Threat:
What is it?

Freelancer:
More of the same.

Elite4:
Release date: "When Hell Freezes Over"

Imperium Galactica 3:
Looks interesting, nice looking graphics, ? on game play.

Star Peace (name has changed):
Not at all interested.

Your foregot:

Stars Super Nova Genisis:
Looks like it will be a great game, but they can't publish it. That means the likely hood of it ever being released are remote.

Space Empires V
Now your talkin

"and on the shorter list, games currently out that I am aware of:"

Starships Unlimited: seems to be very limited. the focus was supposed to be ship design and combat, but i found this to be less detailed than in SE4. If there was more to it than what was in the demo, no one ever let on.

Agreed

X:beyond the frontier (with/without x-tension):
Not my thing

Battlecruiser Millenium:
Lame

Homeworld and sequel:
Fun game for about the first five minutes. Anyone wanna by my disk?

Hegimonia:
Never heard of it.

Lets face it, there are many games out there that promis what SEIV already dilivers, but when it comes time to put their money where their mouth is, they push back there release date in order to "steal" the good ideas of SEIV and code them into their games. (Moo3??)

In the eight years that I have been playing games, 4x games have been really limited. I can only remember about five or six games that actually dilivered on addictive game play. Moo, Moo2, Rebellion, BOTF, *Stars and *SEIII (*I never did play them as I did not know about them. )