Obscure, unintuitive and unforgiving

[bbq]

First let me say I have enjoyed many aspects of this game since I started playing a month ago. But I'm not posting about that, I want to share a major gripe I have in a constructive manner which I hope the developers will listen.

So what's the problem? Well, I really dislike part of the mechanics of the game, its lack of documentation and the unforgiving nature of the interface itself. Let me give an example.

In my most recent game I wanted to explore what it would be like to create new planets from scratch. So I researched all the Stellar Manipulation technologies. Now, I'm sure most of you know that there is very little information in the manual as well as the help file itself. It took me a LONG time to figure out that I need to build 41 starbases, load them with the materials and components before I make it.

So I bit the bullet and started building and building. It took me a long time to put it all together. Imagine my surprise when I tried to activate the component to create the Sphere World I was informed that there was "No Sun in sector". So I said fine, I'll make another ship and create a sun in that spot. But as you probably guessed, there was already a sun on the map elsewhere and it said I couldn't do it. Now, WHY THE HECK NOT? I have seen systems with more than one sun in it. So why can't I do that?

Furthermore, the component to create a Sphere World states that "it will create a sphere world AROUND a sun". Where does it say anywhere on the components or manual or help file that you need to create all the material ON the sun itself???

The notion that you can move a ship onto the sun and not burn up is bad enough. But why would anyone think that you need to build a pile of stuff ON the sun? Where does it clearly explain that?

So I have wasted hours of my time because such unforgiving and unintuitive mechanics leave me with thousands of kt of materials wasted in dead space. Obviously destroying the existing sun will wipe out all my work, but for some inexplicable reason I cannot create another star where I want.


I know many of you might laugh at this, but these 'undocumented features' as well as how unforgiving and exact things must be within the game design really turns me off. I have enjoyed many other aspects of this game, but I things like this makes me wonder if I should buy SE5 if it comes out. I mean, if something is obviously designed to take a LOT of time and resources to put together, shouldn't it be explained a little better than the way it has been?