Issues that have forced me to shelve the game and refrain from recommending it to anyone. |
I've played the Space Empires series since the mid nineties. My computer has a 2 ghz processor, over 700 megabytes of RAM, and an NVidia GeForce FX 5200. I finally bought SEV this month, and downloaded the 1.44 patch. There are some bugs and other issues in the game that have forced me to shelve it, and which prevent me from recommending the current version of the game to anyone.
-Ships in fleets are not pooling supplies. When one ship loses supplies, the whole fleet stops. What follows may be a separate bug, I'm not sure. Even attempting to resupply the low-supply ship in the fleet via the cargo transfer tool results in failure, as supplies disappear from the donating ships but do not reach the recieving ship: the supplies disappear into thin air.
-AI is putting too many life support units on ships, and from what I've read elsewhere on this site, the AI is not using master computers, ever.
-AI is still, even after SEIV, failing to allocate races to maximize production. Several races that breathe different atmospheres will inhabit an AI planet whose atmosphere is suited to only one of the races.
-If one is in an alliance, one cannot make treaties with an empire that is not in the alliance, despite the lack of such a prohibition in the alliance rules. Nor can the alliance as a whole make a treaty with an individual empire outside the alliance. I see no reason for these prohibitions, and the lack of explicit rules stipulating them and the lack of an explanation in the manual as to why they exist is very frustrating.
-AI's drones are nonfunctional. AI does not appear to be building them with weapons, and even when one sets the computer empire to be human playable and enters tactical combat, the drones do not accept orders in battle, though they have engines (they accept 'move to' orders for a moment--they move for half a second and then stop).
-One cannot deconstruct and analyze units--at least not drones, because I've tried.
-It takes FOREVER to launch fighters in the system window. The game literally freezes for minutes at each attempt. This alone makes the game unplayable.
-When pulling up a unit group report on fighter groups, the cursor speed drops to nothing, the cursor basically becomes nonfunctional; one is forced to hit the 'esc' key to get back into the game. This phenomenon is evident at groups of 50 fighters to a slightly lesser extent, but at groups of 100 and more fighters the result is unplayability.
-Sometimes AI empires do not vote on alliance proposals. I don't know if this a bug or a conscious decision to let the AI determine when refraining from voting will have the same effect as voting.
-Minor issue: alliance name does not appear in political messages; instead of a name, there is a question mark.
There are probably other issues, but these are the ones that bothered me the most, as they really don't belong in this game after so many patches.
Having experienced the out of box state of SEIV, I expected SEV to be unplayable until the third patch or so, and I bought the game just this month hoping to enjoy it. It's really frustrating to see such a potentially excellent game fail to live up to its potential. I really hope most of these issues are fixed in a future patch, because I'd love to play a fully functional version of the game, and I would be able to recommend such a game to everyone who I thought might like it.
Re: Issues that have forced me to shelve the game and refrain fr
Fighters are very effective in the right circumstances. It becomes very difficult to break through warp points that have a wall of 50 fighters without specialized ships.
In response to the OP, your complaints regarding alliances are very valid. So far I haven't actually been able to make an alliance. Any time I accept a changed alliance proposal, nothing happens. Alliances definitely need work.
With regards to the rest of the AI in general, have you tried mods, such as Unnamed's AI mod? So far it has been a vast improvement over the default AI, and it succeeds at its tasks without cheating. There are still many improvements that can be made, but what Unnamed has done so far is worthy of notice.
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Space for rent - please contact owner
Re: Issues that have forced me to shelve the game and refrain fr
Hi there about your ships not transfering supply when in a fleet?
I found that if you have a ship out of supply and send another ship to it? on arrival they form a fleet? I expected them to share supplies? But the did not.
I found that if either moved then they did not share.
They had to remain still for one turn?
The supplies then transpherd between the ships?
This may also apply in your case as they were in a fleet? Try it and See?
I was using 1.35 last time I had a ship without supply. I`m not sure if 1.44 has changed anything though?
Hope this helps Spuda
Re: Issues that have forced me to shelve the game and refrain fr
What's with all the question marks on non-question statements? Makes it hard to read...
Ships in a sector will not share supplies. Ships in a fleet will share supplies, at the start of each turn. They do not share them immediately when placed in the fleet; you have to wait a turn. They don't have to sit still though.
Re: Issues that have forced me to shelve the game and refrain fr
Deconstruction works on facilities/ships/bases, but not units. It has ever been thus, as far as I know. You jettison obsolete/unwanted units.
Regarding the AI, this is my biggest beef with the stock game also, and is high on the list of many other people. The game is marketed as playable single player, and it is essentially nothing more than Space Empire Tycoon unless/until it is modified. That's pretty unacceptable to me. Mods should enhance/alter a game, they shouldn't be expected to make the game function in the first place. I'm making do with Unnamed's mod until MM gets around to this glaring hole in the product.
I also think that SEV's stock graphics are appalling, and trying to market the game as 3D with such lousy graphics is the second dumbest thing MM did. Fortunately, Fyron stepped up and made the game worth looking at, but again this is something that should have been baked in. Modders shouldn't have to make the stock graphics better, they should be able to concentrate on making graphics for new stuff.
With that said, I am enjoying my Unnamed/FQM hybrid version. It's nice that we have a good enough base that modders can do such impressive things with it, and the developer is continuing with the updates/upgrades. Much better than the usual developing house tendency to create a title, sell it for a couple months and then forget it (and the players) ever existed...until the next cheap sequel is ready for market...
Re: Issues that have forced me to shelve the game and refrain fr
Can anyone direct me to Fyron's graphics mod, please?
Re: Issues that have forced me to shelve the game and refrain fr
Re: Issues that have forced me to shelve the game and refrain fr
Fair comments. But patches are still coming out. So it isn't over yet.
Btw, haven't posted here for a while. I'm back now. Gotta idea, i'm posting in the mods section in just a moment
Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc
Re: Issues that have forced me to shelve the game and refrain fr
The main page for spaceempires.net:
http://home.spaceempires.net/
For the quadrant mod:
http://fqm5.spaceempires.net/
Re: Issues that have forced me to shelve the game and refrain fr
- Do not bother with alliances.
- You are not supposed to be able to control drones in battle. The problem is that 1.44 intoduced an annoying bug/feature that makes unarmed drones with "Don't Get Hurt" orders staying in place not doing anything. Thus you can't make "scout" drones anymore, the first combat ship they meet will easily catch and destroy them. I don't remember if any strategy changes could change this behaviour, since IIRC without weapons, drones automatically use this strategy.
"Don't Get Hurt" was not updated to reflect the combat strategy changes introduced in 1.44, you now have to change it if you want your ships to automatically flee.
Re: Issues that have forced me to shelve the game and refrain fr
Have you submitted bug reports on your issues? With saved games if possible? Aaron has been very good about fixing crashes and bad logic. He's already fixed three bugs that I have reported. If you really like this game and want to play it without problems you should be doing this.
Re: Issues that have forced me to shelve the game and refrain fr
-It takes FOREVER to launch fighters in the system window. The game literally freezes for minutes at each attempt. This alone makes the game unplayable.
yea, i tried launching 400 fighters from my homeworld once....
my system pretty much locked up for 18 minutes trying to launch these fighters.
that is quite the annoyance, and I now pretty much ignore fighters against the AI.
even trying to launch 50 fighters, will lock my system up for a good 15 seconds.
Re: Issues that have forced me to shelve the game and refrain fr
Did you try using the "remotely launch" command?
Re: Issues that have forced me to shelve the game and refrain fr
alliance? They have those? Fighters? Why bother?
Now the thing with fleets and supply pooling. I've seen the part about it not sharing, but I've always been able to transfer supplies readily.