Will I ever be able to finish a game??

Your doomed. doomed, doomed I tell you.. to wander the halls of dispair and to die alone in the rain.

(Shameless Ernest Hemingway plug)

I hope you're not pushing for them to slow down the patching, because SEV is a great game struggling to escape its buggy bonds, and the sooner the better.

Well, the solution is easy enough: select a smaller quadrant map to play a new game. Fewer systems, fewer planets - faster game!

OR

Do releases only once every TWO months instead of every month. As a modder, this is a favourable path because then it means I don't have to retrofit all my changes as often. I have to track what changes I make to the base script files and apply them to whatever update comes out. Of course, I could always just ignore the latest release and wait for the release after to apply my mod changes.

So, either ways works for me!

"Do not be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DVader

Slow down their Kato... I need my monthly patch fix

I just patch and keep playing my same saved game. The new changes are applied in previous saved games. Why hasn't some else already mentioned this?
Of course, starting a new game after a new patch will have those changes in that early game history.

The real solution is longer play-times.

I actually finished a game - large quadrant, not all systems connected by warp point - though I wound up staying up all night to do so. It was actually rather interesting, because there were three different, unconnected warp networks. I started in the biggest one but had to break into the other two.

I have been playing SE IV since Aug 2000 and have yet to finish a game. Good luck with SE V.

You could play faster and more aggressivly. Expand your fleet based on the number of planets/systems you own. e.g. if you have an economy that supports 1 small fleet, attack with 1 small fleet...if you have an economy that can support 12 large fleets, attack with 12 large fleets. If you don't maximize you potential then you're wasting resources.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

What's with the resurrection of obsolete threads lately? I doubt that the OP is going to check after more than a year tbh.

theres a lot of necromancers around here

Don't remember the last time I finished a game.

I finished a game once. It was pretty anti-climatic. Like. oops.. your done.
i like patches... means i get to start over. i like the struggle at the beginning. once your empire is up and running... its not very interesting... at least in my mind. except against other humans of course.

Patches do seem to come alot faster than the end of any of my games. Those saved game breakers crush any progress I make.

ITS THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD IN HERE!

ph34r /\/\y b00m5t1ck

this sayd .. my games belong to the living dead too, I can't think of a single one game I ever really finished ( meaning in wiping out all competition .. but I never set any other game ending options, so the game doesn't finish on me suddenly .. like research win .. yeah .. I can build my sphere world .. now lets .. what ? .. I won .. crap )

There are way to much interesting mods around which get well supported, if its not that a patch comes around .. or I read a good gameplay Idea somewhere .. or I the pause in the game was just so long, that I don't want to relearn my empire and rather start over again ..

I never finished a game of SE. SEIV included

But most of the time ( since I play AI only ) I declare the game won if I get bored or got more then 10 times the score of the second player.

Remember : Pillage! then burn.
- Cpt. Kaff Tagon

I'll see if I can find my copy of SE 1 or 2. I don't remember finishing there either.

My game endings are usually like this:

1. Game crashes before its over.
2. Update breaks save game.
3. Kid deletes/overwrites save file.
4. Game crashes before I lose. ( )
5. Hardware failure of some sort.
6. Forgot which game I was currently in.
7. Wife is yelling at the kids.
8. Wife is yelling at me.
9. Boss just walked in.
10. Didn't like startup and started over.

Most commonly its just plain laziness. I know I'll win and didn't want to play it out. There are lots more but you get the idea.

I have yet to finish a game in anything other than the smallest galaxy settings. I've tried larger ones but I always give up because I get tired of the AI players taking 3-7 minutes to do their turns. And in more than one game I had to quit because one AI player's turn would never end. Even after waiting like 10 minutes when all the others probably took 1-2 min per AI. I end up literally staring at loading bars far longer than I actually spend playing the game.

I do think this game is more complex than say Galactic Civilizations II, but in that game I can have a galaxy that is freaking huge and the turns usually only take 1-4 seconds until really late game with many AI players and even then the turns fly by. Why is it soooo slow in this game?

Some people can be okay with the loading times I guess, but I just can't. In a 2 or 3 hour sitting I will spend a significant portion of that time simply waiting for the AI to do their turns. It makes overall progress quite slow and I always end up losing interest when I can go and have as much fun playing GalCiv II, Alpha Centauri, or even Master of Orion II. I really enjoy this games complexity and customizations.. But the turn speeds just get brutal. I am considering retiring this game until years in the future when I have a monstrous PC by comparison and hope it'll run at an acceptable rate a few generations of PC's after the game was developed. :/

NO

I have finished games [1], but I have more free time and patience than most people.

I suggest trying some human multitasking. Find something else you can do while waiting for the turns to process: read a book, do crossword puzzles, even play another game if you own more than one computer or a game console.

capnq

[1] In SEIV, anyway. I haven't owned SEV long enough for me to finish a game.

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"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

I've played Space Empires since SE3, and have only finished one game, which was in SE3. I'd say your doomed until the game doesn't have any more bugs to fix or patches to come out.

I've tried running it in a window and doing other things while the turns proecess, but it doesn't help for long.

im not sure if has been sed but u could w8 to finish the game before looking on the site for an update

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"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

Still, when you are doing something else the time will speed up At least it seems that way. Never finished a game yet due to new releases and now the unnamed bug that prevents me to pass 100 turns

I never finish a game either, usually because either:

A: The AI empires get so big that one or more of them cannot finish processing a turn. They peg my CPU and the game is kaput.

B: At some point I've conquered most of the galaxy, I am light years ahead in tech, and have huge fleets and impregnable planets. Cleaning up the remaining mess and rooting out all the remaining rebel scum from every backwater asteroid field is so tiresome, and I simply declare victory and start a new game.

All that is done before the naked stars is remembered