Some observations

[Phoenix-D]

Even in the demo, the turn rate can be modded if you think it is too fast. Go into Starfury/Campaigns/Campaign 0/ and open the file Main_PurchaseShipsPlayer.txt. Each ship has a bunch of values here.

I changed the cruier's turn rate from 0.03 to 0.003. At first it didn't seem to do anything- then I bought another cruiser. Bingo- the ship that had pulled a 180 degree turn in 4 seconds, now took 40. You'll have to make any changes to all the ships, including the ones in the other files (eg Main_PurchaseShipsEnemy.txt)

I think after release I might try throwing together a Newtonian mod. Right now I'm still exploring the limits of the demo. I have a suspicion that you can change entries all you want, you just can't add any new ones.

EDIT: As far as graphics go, those can be too of course. I think most of it looks fine, except the star graphics and close ups of the nebulas.

[ September 24, 2003, 00:01: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[Captain Kwok]

Originally posted by Renegade 13:
Perhaps we're being a little harsh here. It isn't as if there's a huge company out there, with money to burn, and tons of programmers to satisfy our every whim. It's one company with a (comparativly) small workforce.

Make that one person with a bit of contracted graphics.

I think Aaron did a pretty good job and I know he'll keep working on improving the game.

[jimbob55]

a match target's speed button would be nice.

As would an auto save when moving through warp points.

Just lost 2 hours of gameplay because i forgot to save the friking game and crashed into an invisible planet.

[Wydraz]

It would be nice (and somewhat more realistic) if planets had atmospheric halos so you could pick them out a bit better. (!)

[Phoenix-D]

Uh, jimbob..the game does auto-save when you go through warp points. Check the Last game in the list. Note that it only saves one auto-save though.

[Ed Kolis]

Originally posted by Wydraz:
It would be nice (and somewhat more realistic) if planets had atmospheric halos so you could pick them out a bit better. (!)

You can put "engine glows" on ship models, so it seems feasible that you could put a bunch of them in a spherical grid about a planet to create a halo effect. Not sure how realistic it would look, though. You can also put blinking lights on models (look at the floating cargo crates)... it might be kind of cheesy to have a planet surrounded with a grid of blinking lights, but consider it a computer navigational aid

[Captain Kwok]

You can increase the in-game lighting to avoid crashing into dark planets etc.

Check the hotkeys in the options menu to find what keys do that as I can't remember off-hand.

[Ed Kolis]

I had another idea about the halo; there's a field in StellarObjects_XFiles.txt called "Star Glow Color"; presumably setting this to some RGB value other than 0,0,0 would make the planet glow faintly. I tried this, though, and it doesn't seem to be working; I posted in the beta forum about it so we'll see if anyone figures it out...

[General Woundwort]

Originally posted by jpowell:
I was more than a little underwhelmed by the demo. Dated (crude?) graphics in a strategy game are acceptable because much of the game occurs in your mind and imagination.

OTOH, the simpler the graphics, the easier it is to mod. And the hallmark of the whole Space Empires line is not high-end graphics, but playability and modability. That's what most of us here are looking for. And MM/Aaron usually delivers.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

i can say for certain that you can't give yourself 2000000 by messing with the starting character file. but gamehack took care of that.

oh, and on a side note, the difficulty scales based on your ship and i'm pretty sure, characteristics like armor regen.