Map Editor

Dont forget that all adjacent systems are also as bad if not worse, massed asteroid belts or nebulae. no use when you dont have the tech to build stars or planets

worse is on a large map with 1 or 2 enemy empires i get the system next to one. that really gets me

Bumpity, bump, bump, bump! Yeah, no kidding! I loved the map editor that came with SEIV, and used it to set up storylines and other senerios. I always recreated the long lost Sol system that my Terrans are always in search of because it's there ancesteral homeland. (They were kicked out of the system eons ago by an advanced alien power, who also is supposed to have a custom star system.) Can't wait till the editor is released again.

Lol loved the map editor that came with SE4? It was a horrible program that crashed constantly lol.

and yet somehow it was still useful. and i suppose, mr. wombat, you feel the same about SEV

just a waitin for a patch

Yeah I ran into this as well, I started playing with all systems have been seen option so I can tell right away how well the surrounding systems are.

Yours in gaming,
~Elucidus

I started only a few games yet because I am still experimenting with techs, but while the first two games were similiar to the description above with only a few usable planets near, the third map gave me lots of usable planets within the home system and the next few systems.

I decided to make the games low tech costs and 100.000 starting tech bonus - that allows me to select a second colony tech from start, something what I haven't seen an AI doing. That usually gives me an early boost to the number of colonies...

But I agree that the AI empire distribution is somewhat odd - on a large cluster map with only 6 or 7 AI empires there's always an AI empire which starts in the same cluster as my homeworld, even if there are 10-15 different clusters to distribute the empires...

The planets are randomly placed, and sometimes you just get a crappy start.

What's a tesco start? I though Tesco was Great Britains equivalent of US's Wal-Mart?

There is a longtime SE player that goes by the name Tesco Samoa. He is notorious for getting crappy starting positions.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

Theres an option when your picking your map type to assign all potential spawn points (tho as far as i can tell you cant see the quality of these syatems from there) which should make it impossiable to start near opponents if that is your desire. Making sure u have a good starting system is another matter tho, just luck i guess.

I was ready to start swapping "shopping at Tesco while on vacation in Edinburgh" stories with someone.

Tilarium,
In SE4 I would just keep starting a game until I got a nice homeworld system. In SE5 there's a new save setup feature that will allow for quicker restarts until you get a nice homeworld system.
Omnius