Demo 1.25

I managed to get a game started with Safe graphic and shut the music off. Still, some of the windows (Construction Queues, Ship Design) are still almost unplayable and moving the mouse is painfully slow.

1.08 performed much, much better for me; it was just buggy and feature-incomplete. Same system, same drivers, no upgrades on anything. I ran about 40 turns and quit.

Mendel
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority

I'm still having the performance problems, and now am beginning to see some other bug issues. This isn't good for a demo.

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Bugs/Flaws/Defects:
- Built several Satellite Tender ships and moved them to a planet building lots of satellites. The tender ships had 5 Satellite Bay 1 on a level 5 frigate. I built 5 small satellites per tender ship. The satellites were level 3. Each Tender and could only load 4 satellites. This seems to imply that there's some inequity between satellite size and satellite bay capacity.

- One of these Tender ships was put into Sentry mode on top of the planet waiting for the production to finish. When I selected it again, it did not list any orders, and would not let me assign orders to the ship. It was physically there, but completely inaccessible. I could only select the ship -- all other commands were greyed out, and the keyboard shortcuts would not work.

- A single frigate with a single level 1 weapon (any) can destroy any planet in a single strategic combat turn, regardless of population size. The AI likes to barracade the warp points, but neglects to defend the planets.

- As the single frigate destroys a planet (in strategic mode), the planet health meter moves down, and occasionally 'heals'. The planet's effect will completely show as fully healthy for a few seconds before the colony is destroyed and combat ends.

- A single ship can engage in multiple fights in the same turn, (concievably up to 1 per movement point) without apparent loss of supplies of ordnance.

- A ship with a movement of 14 cannoth catch a ship with movement of 12 in either tactical or strategic mode if the slower ship wishes to avoid combat. The faster ship can have either particle or missle weapons and never get in range.

- Small satellites can retreat from combat, and move around in combat, even though they cannot have engines.

- Ships in a fleet still appear on the 'next ship' list (space bar), and not carry the fleet's orders, especially if the ship is slower (due to design or damage).

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Other observations:
- All diplomatic espionage and sabotage activities are available prior to researching the corresponding techs. (Espionage: Empire Wide, Sabotage: Planets & Colonies). The techs do not appear to grant any bonuees or structures/components -- it appears that the tech should enable these activities, but they are automatically activated, even before building any Intelligence centers.

- The AI icon selections are not exclusive. The AI will use an icon identical to the players in some games, but not all. 2 AIs will occasionally use the same icon.

- Ships ordered to 'Repair at Nearest' will move to the planet and repair as expected. If the repairs take longer than 1 turn, the partially repaired ship appears in the 'next ship' sequence, and will not accept a new 'Repair at Nearest' command. It is necessary to move the ship off the planet into space in order to complete the repairs. The 'Repair at Nearest' sequence should completely repair the ship before the ship is returned to the 'Next Ship' queue.

- Strategic combat appears to use the same tactical engine to resolve the combat, just a different interface (with no control). This is probably what is taking some AI turns so long (I'm guessing that the red bar indicates combat). Strategic combat should use some faster resolution method than tactical combat. I suspect that if the tactical timer is never stopped, and both strategic and tactical combat operate at the same speed, the combat session would be nearly identical (given quick and concise targeting instructions).

- Tactical combat targeting is abysmal. The offset interface makes it difficult to select anything smaller than a planet, although this could be related to the mouse performance I am having.

- Tactical combat orders mysteriously end. A ship ordered to move to a spot will stop its movement if the time is stopped. A ship ordered to fire on a planet will fire for awhile, then stop. If re-ordered to fire, it will resume fire for awhile. When the combat ends (with the colony dead), the ship will still have plenty of ordnance.

- The Resupply depots do not appear to function as advertised. They claim to provide 500 supply to every ship in the system at the end of a turn, but an unsupplied ship (moving 1) that is heading for another system/planet will not recieve supply until it docked at that planet, even though there are 1 or occasionally more depots in the system. Ships on 'Sentry' mode on a warp point recieve supplies correctly, but not unsupplied ships returning for home. When checked, the planet with the Resupply depot contains 4000-6000+ supplies on the planet.

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I like some of the concepts of this game, but it still just isn't there. The diplomacy and intelligence options are so interesting, but most simply don't work as expected, and the AI always wants to add a crippling restriction on every trade it offers.

If I had to put a grade on the demos, I'd give 1.08 a 65 of 100, and 1.25 a 55 of 100. The performance problems seem to be new and I am seeing more definite bugs in the newer version. If there are things being fixed, they seem to be causing more side-effects than necessary.

Mendel
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority