Growing concern - but optimistic

[Captain Kwok]

At lower resolutions, it becomes harded to see the ships in the system view - and in particular some of small ships like Frigates and Destroyers are very hard to see - especially when you throw in the default-sized flags/icons.

[Xrati]

I like the 'fog of war' setting, BUT I do agree with Demorve that ships should see the whole system. If it were in a Nebulae/Cosmic Cloud then I could see limited detection. (Good idea for a mod)

[Captain Kwok]

BTW, "level of sight" is a game setup option in the full version just in case you didn't know.

[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

[Santiago]

For example in 1024x768 resolution,

In SEIV its a top down view of the entire system and you can see where your ships are at any time just by glancing at the screen.

In SEV the star system is much bigger . In a top down view (comparing to SEIV) and you zoom out to see the entire system- actually just 3/4 just to make it not too small, the ships are virtually non- existant. Flags were too big and the mini-flags help, but its still just frustration. Where are my ships? I waste time trying to find where they are currently at.

The bottom portion of the UI is too big in relation to the main game screen and hides part of the main screen where I like to have it at a particular playable size. It should be made individually to minimize.

Since I am restricted to playing in safe mode and not primary display adapter, it ends up being windowed and cuts off a small portion of the game even moving the window for maximum visibility and the scrolling of the game screen (this needs to be user selectable to on/off) results in scrolling of only 2 directions

There are other issues brought up by others. If it was only a few items, then maybe it could be looked over. Seems more like mid beta than near release.

Don't get me wrong, I'll probably cave in and buy it eventually, and I like a lot of things in it, but I think it really needs lots of work. Just my opinion. Now I came in at SEIV after it was already well patched and MM has a great reputation with the players and I'm hoping for the best.


@ Fyron Thanks for the email addy, this post or the other one.

[AMF]

SJ,

that's a very valid point, and I take it to heart. Certainly, if Aaron does support SEV as well as I hope he will, then I will do a complete turnaround, and become as addicted to SEV as I was to SE4. But I have heard enough about how everything that has been brought up was brought up by the beta testers, but was ignored, and other things, etc...to make me cautious.

So...I'm likly going to be holding off for now. In any case my time frame for me to become addicted to and supportive of this game is measured in months and years, not weeks. In fact, I anticipate starting to really play it in about ten months, since I'l be quite busy until then. Ironically enough, that will be plenty of time for all buggy issues to be worked out, me to decide if I can tolerate the UI (or it changes), and a whole slew of mods to come out. I will certainly buy the game, but whether or not I play it for the next six years will be determined by how well it survives the test of time. And that depends, as you rightly point out, how well Aaron listens to the players and implements fixes and patches...

Suicide Junkie said:
Final release?

It sounds like you probably won't be happy with the initial release unless something surprisingly big happens.
But Aaron is well known for continuing upgrades in the long term. Mods won't be out for a few months anyways.

[VanderVecken]

Well, I've played with the demo 3 times, and things do get easier, and some parts are nice to have, and ...

... but here is the thing. As it stands, SE:V is not a 'Just one more turn and I'll go to bed; no dear, I really mean it this time. Oh, I said that 45 minutes ago? Well this time I really, REALLY mean it !' kind of game yet.

Yes, I think it's probably a better game than it's predecessor, but because of a few previously mentioned UI and visual things, I really just cant enjoy this as much as I should be able to. I'll need to wait for some changes before I can wrap my time into this game. I expect that these changes will be made with Aaron's track record; but if not, "We'll always have Paris(SEIV)".

Until then, besides getting involved in that strange thing called 'Real Life', Shrapnel just started shipping Dominions-3.

[Matryx]

If it's a case of the ships appearing too small on the screen as Kwok mentioned - isn't that one of the file-changeable things? You could ask Fyron to quickly knock you up a script to go and alter them all, he's done it a few times with other files needing similar changes?

I play on a 19.1" monitor @ 1280x1024 - in windowed mode (1024x768) so I don't have to alt-tab all the time with my dual screens to get to the other monitor, and I can see my ships just fine in their hexes...

That said - I use the isometric view, with the view dragged all the way to the bottom, and just rotate the view a smidgen if I'm trying to click something on completely the opposite side of the system.

[Captain Kwok]

It's changeable in the data files, but it is a specific value for each ship - so it should just have a multiplier - which shouldbe applied through an in-game setting...