Abandon SE4?Opinions:Space Empires 5 screen shots?

[Ed Kolis]

Would you be at liberty to name a few of the new ones, just as a teaser?

[StarShadow]

Ack! If that's what combat is going to be like, then the chance of me liking SE:V just dropped to 15-20%, real-time anything does not belong in a TBS game, regardless of what it can kinda, sorta emulate. I'm definately with Roanon when it comes to graphics, too many games lately are graphics heavy/gameplay lite. Most of the games I play are old games, such as Alpha Centauri (I can barely stand Civ4). I'll give the demo a try, but I'll likely be going right back to SE4.

[Captain Kwok]

*sigh x 2*

We've been over this ground so many times. The tactical combat in SE:V is Inherently more fair than the old tactical system in SE:IV. No more first shot advantage and other sorts of silliness that drove people crazy.

And for the record, the gameplay actually has significantly more depth than SE:IV and hasn't been "simplified" for the masses, so no need to worry.

[Suicide Junkie]

I think the RTS style button/map/unit-info layout may be melting people's brains, CK.

***COMBAT IS NOT A CRAPPY RTS STYLE CLICKFEST***
Besides, it not like you get to manually control your forces in multiplayer games anyways.

[Roanon]

Ohh - careful. Judging the depth of a game is the most difficult thing at all. More options just don't make a better or more complex game. If an optimal strategy can be found, trivializing all choices, forcing one option making all others game looser choices (why does SE4 race design come to my mind?), there is actually more triviality not less.

No more heavy first shoot advantage, that is good news. How is it done? All shots simultaneously? Random ship-by-ship? Or is it planable, like smaller ships move and shoot first, or are there technologies that enable faster shooting? This truly would be great and add a whole new feature of tactics.

Another annoying thing in SE4 is the build queue mechanic, does SE5 finally spill over construction points from one build into the next ?? Would be great too ! Much unnecessary micromanagement comes from that, and there is really no technical or logical reason for this silly program behaviour.

[Suicide Junkie]

Consider the effect in starfury.

While your bullets are on their way towards the enemy, the enemy can be firing energy bolts back, and the shots cross in the middle. Two ships with equal weapons range will both fire, and both hit. Two direct fire ships in combat can potentially both die, leaving no survivors.

Naturally, projectile speed is a somewhat important feature of a weapon, since if your shots go faster, they hit earlier, and the enemy weapons get damaged earlier.

A nifty weapon might even be a gun that does Huge damage, but the bullets it fires travel slower than most ships. So it only works when the enemy is charging towards you.