Any One Still Playing This Game?

[Artaud]

Suicide Junkie said:
IMO, SE4's graphics are superior.
They are only as big as they need to be, don't block your view, and everything is always perfectly legible.

Snappy and responsive too, since the screen only has to be drawn once instead of continuously.

SE5's pictures are bigger and prettier, and the 3D models are nice, but they don't help gameplay at all, and often make it hard to see and read things.

I agree 10000%. I can easily see myself playing SE4 for another 10 years. It's just so immersive, so DEEP and yet so easy on my computer system.

I only played the SE5 demo, but the game as a whole turned me off. The things I remember most about it were 1) that the ships were way too small and that 2) when you entered a system, you could not see what was in the system. That just made no sense at all to me.

SE5 had an entirely different feel, IMHO, and was just not very appealing. I expected the game to have more of what I loved about SE4: more resources, more techs and more (and better) political interaction. Let me create my own government. Let me appoint and fire system governors, sector governors, cabinet ministers with abilities and flaws. Let me make realistic treaties with other civilizations.

Instead, it gave us...3D graphics. Yawn. Well, I'm 50 years old and I am just not impressed by eye candy. I want more game depth. I saw SE5 for sale for $10 a couple weeks ago and still could not bring myself to buy it.

But hey, lots of people like SE5 and more power to them. I hope a lot of copies were sold. Different strokes, as they say.

[Fyron]

The second complaint is easily modded out in the Data\Settings.txt file. Set these lines to TRUE (skip the ship and unit ones, naturally), and sight will be just like it is in SE4:

Can See Star At Any Distance := TRUE
Can See Planet At Any Distance := FALSE
...
Can See Asteroids At Any Distance := FALSE
Can See Storm At Any Distance := FALSE
Can See Warp Point At Any Distance := FALSE

The next 5 reference objects that do not actually exist in the game code, so can be ignored.

=0=

Note that SE5 is about more than just a graphical upgrade; there is a lot of candy for modders too. The game still needs work to be more fun to play, though.

[Xrati]

The game still needs work to be more fun to play, though.

Fyron, I guess that's the point. When you already have a game that's fun to play. Why would you leave it for another that needs work? People expected a lot from SE5 and many were disappointed!
I expected it to surpass SE4 and really kick some arse. Maybe my expectations were too high? But with the level of play that was achieved with SE4, there was no reason not to expect that.

[Fyron]

Given that the core mechanics are identical or refined (outside of combat, which is arguably vastly better than the shoddy initiative-less system of SE4), the exact same level of play exists in SE5. All that is SE4 is in there. Its mostly just the interface that could have been designed better...

[Urendi Maleldil]

True, but you have a hard time getting to the core mechanics because you're bogged down by the user interface. SE4 is much more accessible.

[Suicide Junkie]

Initiative mattering is only a problem when weapons outstrip defenses by too much.

And we don't have a fair and accurate real-time alternative yet.

[Artaud]

Urendi Maleldil said:
True, but you have a hard time getting to the core mechanics because you're bogged down by the user interface ...

That, to me, is a game-killer. I just don't want to spend time wading through a difficult interface just because there might be a good game underneath.

[capnq]

Suicide Junkie said: Initiative mattering is only a problem when weapons outstrip defenses by too much.

I beg to differ. I lost two major fleet engagements in my last SEIV PBW game because of the turn sequencing. Both battles were textbook examples of what's wrong with the way SEIV resolves combat.

[Suicide Junkie]

Which mod was that?

Stock-like Attackefense ratios fit my view of "too much"

[Fyron]

It doesn't matter what your Attackefense ratios are; initiative-less combat is a terrible, terrible thing in any case. You can partially ameliorate the other absurdities with very high defense compared to attack, but it doesn't change the inherent flaws in the type of combat engine SE4 uses. Having all of the objects owned by one side arbitrarily move and act before all of the objects owned by the other side, every turn, is just bad game design.