SEV DEMO IS OUT! - Page 23

Phoenix-D · #**221** September 18th, 2006, 03:17 PM

"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.

Barnacle Bill · #**222** September 18th, 2006, 04:23 PM

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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...

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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...

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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...

Phoenix-D · #**223** September 18th, 2006, 04:54 PM

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.

AAshbery76 · #**224** September 18th, 2006, 06:22 PM

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.

Mephisto · #**225** September 18th, 2006, 06:27 PM

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.

Noble713 · #**226** September 18th, 2006, 06:48 PM

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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.

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Do ships in the same fleet share?[

It doesn't seem like it.

Barnacle Bill · #**227** September 18th, 2006, 08:53 PM

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wilhil said:
Had my game up to 100 turns, (tried looking in save game for hex value of turns then put it back to 1, and changing all the 100's to 300's in the exe, but no luck, although the game ran fine with no problems, no idea what them 100's where! I would have more of a look later, but I have to much work to do and I have waisted a day playing!)

This is really getting in the way-back machine, but if I recall correctly we had a similar situation with SEIV (limited turns demo out weeks/months before the game) and there was a work-around. IIRC, what you had to do was hex-edit the savegame file to change the date. IIRC, it messed up the log but otherwise ran fine. However, it's been 6-7 years, so maybe I'm confused with some other game. I'll probably p-lay around with it once I get to 100 turns, bewcause I really hate to leave a game in progress unfinished...

StarShadow · #**228** September 18th, 2006, 09:03 PM

Hey...correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like it's possible to trade unique/racial techs in SEV, that's pretty cool..

Jayalin · #**229** September 20th, 2006, 10:18 PM

Question: I tried the "ALLTECH" cheat someone mentioned in some thread somewhere, as I wanted to see what sort of technologies are avaliable later in the game. I have to say, I hope that a lot of techs aren't included in the demo, because the results seemed pretty sparse, even in comparison to SEIV. Is this the case?

Also, a lot of the weapon damage formulas seemed to be weird, because it looked like at max level pretty much everything is inferior to anti-proton beam, including all the high-energy weapons and so forth. I thought this was pretty weird?

arthurtuxedo · #**230** September 20th, 2006, 10:59 PM

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Jayalin said:
Question: I tried the "ALLTECH" cheat someone mentioned in some thread somewhere, as I wanted to see what sort of technologies are avaliable later in the game. I have to say, I hope that a lot of techs aren't included in the demo, because the results seemed pretty sparse, even in comparison to SEIV. Is this the case?

Also, a lot of the weapon damage formulas seemed to be weird, because it looked like at max level pretty much everything is inferior to anti-proton beam, including all the high-energy weapons and so forth. I thought this was pretty weird?

If you look more closely, you'll find that even the APB is inferior to the Meson Blaster, which has the same damage and range, but is smaller and uses less supply. Also, the Meson Blaster version of point defence is a slam dunk compared to the other two forms of PD. Because of the way the formulas are written (Meson Blaster starts at lower damage but gets the same amount per level), I'm going to make an early call and say that the Meson Blaster will be the best weapon in the game, the Phased Polaron Beam of SEV.

Anyway, only some of the techs are actually included in the demo, and I suspect that some of the techs we did get are disabled (people are reporting that emissive does nothing, for instance, which I hope means that it's disabled for the demo rather than bugged).