So what's great and what's not?

Ill keep mine short and sweet

The Good: Enormous potential to be the best of all time in this genre

The Bad: Some serious balance issues and major game breaking bugs that will take time to fix.

I'll start with the bad,

I can't believe a company would release a product this buggy and call it gold. I considered returning it may times,even though I got it through steam. The AI sucks, the diplomacy is fubar and I am spending my gametime with a pen and paper writing down more bugs then when I beta'd shattered galexy. My game crashes, My system resources are streached to their limits. And all to often I forget what I am doing because all the systems look the same! When I hit he next ship button (space) I need to strain my eyes to look for the hex with a double line inside it. COMON! make the ship blink or something or at least center the view on teh ship!, I too fed up with the last game crash which was caused by my screen saver, MY F ing screen saver! COMON! your telling me no one in the beta had a screensaver? {sigh}

Well thats the bad,

And the good part is
I just keep comming back for more...

_=Beansly=-

I played the demo, saw the bugs. Expected to be even more buggy than it turned out to be. SE4 in the end was patched into perfection, and I expect this to be the same. The only way the game can fail is if it doesn't get obsessively patched and modded. The community makes the game, and the dedication of MM to the community. I have faith, will be playing hardcore until the end of November when an even more over bearing addiction gets a "pick me up" aka expansion >_>

What I like best in SE V are the increased modding possibilities and the combat engine.
My biggest disappointment so far are the intel (in my opinion it is worse than in SE IV) and the AI. The AI may be improved by modding but the intel probably not.
I am not so much concerned about the bugs as I have faith in MM that they will be fixed.
I am sceptical however, if it will ever be possible to play as big games with SE V as I can with SE IV, where I have really huge empires with combats involving hundreds of ships and thousands of units. Even on a very fast modern computer this may be practically impossible for SE V as I expect very long turn processing times.

One thing I really like is the way we are allowed to customize the various status screens. I don't know of any other game that gives that option. I've made several, one for building ship, one for building units, one for facilities, and on and on.

The game doesn't NEED a backstory, thats not the point. And, if you want backstories, most races do have their history tabs filled out (I think, not something I pay attention to).

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

I agree with other posters who say they are not concerned with the bugs. I've been playing this game series since 3 came out, and I'm sure that the bugs in this one will be handled eventually. So, with that out of the way, on to actual gameplay opinions...

I wasn't sure if I would actually like the realtime combat system, but it has grown on me. About the only thing that gets annoying is how long it takes to chase down a fleeing opponent when there is only a marginal difference in speed, but that's an acceptable issue. I'm actually amazed at how smoothly the system works, and it gives me more reasons to look deeper into the ship strategy options. Combined with the fleet system (once they manage to get the fleet ordnance bug corrected), I'm really impressed at the options available.

The new slotting system for ship construction similarly has its positive and negative aspects. I've often found it tedious having to slot in every component I want, but the wealth of options for components and weapons has always been a draw for me in this series. I'm a little disappointed that some of the weapons don't seem to scale properly, though. The large, slow-firing weapons should have a faster rate of increase in their damage to prevent them being completely outclassed by the smaller, faster-firing weapons, but this is easily handled by a few simple mods to the component files, so it's not a huge concern. On the positive side, the recent implementation of offense/defence bonuses being displayed in the construction screens is a huge advantage for me.

One of the systems that is most easily abused, however, is the ability to have migration between allied races, allowing you to make much better use of non-native environments. Personally, I like this option, but I don't see the AI making as much use of it as it should be, and I don't know if there's a way to program it to do so.

Those are my first impressions, after just one week with the game. I'm sure I'll have more to say as I dive deeper into it, and start trying out the 'balance mod' to see how things change there.

As with all sequals and launch versions, I have mixed feelings about SE:V.

The good:
The ship design system is great. You get to make the designs that fit exactly the way you want to play your race.
Combat is fun. In SE:IV, it was more or less number-crunching and micro-management to the extreme for me, although I was able to destroy fleets of twenty ships with just one . Now, with real time combat and nice effects, combat feels like combat and is very fun to play.
The pictures of all the components are great, too. Makes everything feel a lot more real.

The bad:
Research needs too much micromanagement. I liked SE:IV's research, and never understood why people liked SE:III's interface. Being able to drop the next tech you want in line was a lot simpler and easier, but I can survive.
All the windows that you use to do everything in the game are slow on my computer. I drop down to around 35 fps, from 75 fps without the windows, when I'm using any of the interfaces. This makes them a lot harder to use since the cursor keeps jumping around, but I'm slowing compensating.

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With all these people, you would expect one of them to carry an iguana around...

The cursor shouldn't be jumping around at 35 FPS -- thats the level where (most) human eyes percieve fluid movement!

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

I can easily see unsteady movement at 35 fps. It's very annoying watching the cursor go a few pixels, then one pixel, then not move, then jump 10, etc.
Things only look steady to me around 45+ fps.

-----
With all these people, you would expect one of them to carry an iguana around...

Sucks to be you -- I only start to notice non-fluidity at around 15 FPS... takes 10 or lower to make me able to really see it.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Not on a computer monitor.

They have removed so many of SEIV's good features, it's really frustrating.

- Retrofitting ships one at a time is a chore. Why can't we mass retrofit any more, like in SEIV?

- Some *non-neutral* AI empires never respond to messages, even though they appear to be having normal relations with other AI empires.

- Speaking of which, what's the reason behind making neutral empires silent, in the first place?

- The option to scrap planetary facilities should not be inside the cargo orders. That makes no sense at all, it only confuses people.

- Popup portrait windows (race portraits, planets, ships, components etc.) should close with a right click, like in SEIV.

- In SEIV, we could see which empire owns which system in the quadrant window. Now we can't even see our own borders.

- The treaty grid in SEIV was neat, why did they drop it?

- SEIV had a really good turn summary system. The new one is bulky, ugly and tedious. Is there a reason why we should only see 3 1/2 news items at a time, only because the event portraits and the fonts are so huge? (Note that clicking on the portrait header does make them smaller, at the cost of warping them hideously.)

- Speaking of huge fonts: please make the system object name fonts adjustable! Activating planet names in the system view options makes the system view a garbled mess of letters.

- The ominous FPS slowdown when viewing the ship details window.

- Center view always centers on the centre of the system, instead of the selected object. It should be able to center on any object or hex I choose.

Oh, great game, by the way.

Try selecting multiple ships at once before retrofitting, I think that works.

That appears to be a bug -- someone posted a workaround a while back that gives nuetrals diplomacry.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

I'll echo the lack of centering and the frustration of having to play 'find the ship' ship by bloody ship.

And the comments about the News. It is HORRIBLE compared ot SEIV! I don't need no stinken pictures! Just give me HYPERTEXT that I can click on for more details!

The ship design screen is okaaay, but clunky, way clunky compared to SEIV. When I upgrade a ship, it should automatically wrip off all the ion engines and slap on jacketed photons, if I have researched it. Let the few and far between people who actually WANT to use obsolete engines on their ships because they carry more supplies have to micro-manage their creation!

Now, for what I like.

I like the hexes. Long time hex fan. It's weird, a box grid gives you 8 directions of movement instead of 6, but for some weird reason the hex seems to work better and be more realistic.

I like the sensor ranges. Love having to design a scout now and actually explore. Disappointed there isn't more cool things to discover, though, like alien ship hulks and space monsters and the like.

I like the real-time combat. Except when it turns into a running chase, as there are no borders now. I don't like the lack of options in combat. Need to be able to issue detailed commands to individual ships, like 'chase that guy' or 'atack planet, target defenses ONLY', ect..

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All that is done before the naked stars is remembered

I already tried that, it doesn't work.

I followed the instructions to the letter, but it doesn't work. Does that only work when you start a new game?

Man...a frame every half second before you can notice?!! You must not do very well in FPS games with reaction times like that

The Bad:

1. Upgrading = PAINFUL OMG PAINFUL! Why did they drop the Mass Upgrade from SEIV is way beyond me. My turns take an upward of 30 miniutes simply because having to upgrade 1 ship at a time... yes. I like to use frigates, even late in the game.

2. Crashing. I've learned how to avoid most crashes (like when you try and recall fighters during combat), but the one that kills me is when you crash at the end of a turn, for no reason. I've walked away far too many times because of this.

3. AI is pretty weak. I deliberately aid my enemies with technology "gifts" so they put up a fight. It sucks, but at least I stay entertained.

4. Resources unbalanced. Everything is mineral dependant, all other resources are relatively useless.

The Good:

Um... This IS Space Empires... typing all the good would make my fingers bleed.

1. I can say that I love the space combat the most. Unfortunately I havent had any really awesome battles because of lame AI, but I know that will improve.

2. Tech trees are awesome. I dont play with PLAYER SEES ALL TECH, so every time I play, I get a new surprise. This also makes dealing with other races very interesting (or would, if the AI actually did research).

3. Great starting options, even though I ruin it by always being a human like civ.

Its just a great game.

I have only been playing for a few hours and have not yet encountered any bugs or major gameplay issues. However there are a few aspects of the interface which I would like to make suggestions about.

Like the first poster I think the way the Ship Decks are displayed is rather awkward. I'd like to a view where all three Decks are visible at the same time, such as

Alternately, another way to switch between Decks would be nice. The main reason I say this is that when you are placing one particular component over several decks you have to clear the component from the pointer, change decks, then pick up the component again. What I propose is, when carrying a component, moving the pointer to the top or the bottom of the Viewing Window will scroll up or down Decks:

In this image, mousing over the top 'button' would take you to the Upper Decks, the bottom 'button' to the Lower Decks. Additionally, it could be circular, while viewing the Upper Decks the top button would take you to the Lower Decks.

One other think I'd like to suggest is the ability to clear the component on the pointer by right clicking in the Design Window. Having to move back over to the Components List is just painful, particularly when you have to move back to the Decks selection buttons afterwards.

On another note, it would be nice if the arrows on the research percent spending would increase by keeping the buttons held down, rather than having to click on them successively.