Newbie impressions and rant (long) |
This is my first post here. If this is not the right forum, my appologies.
I never dug deep into se4. Maybe I was put off by the low-fi graphics (I picked it up first in 2004 or 2005, can't remember right). But on advice by some trustworthy people I downloaded the se5 demo. I had problems with it. Now, it just so happened that someone I know had a copy of se5 so I installed it. I know this is illegal, and before anyone starts busting my chops (deservedly so) I have to say I am not proud of it, and at the moment of writing this I have already uninstalled it. I was also advised to download and install the balance mod, which I obediently did (it is not a justification, but this was another reason for installing the copy and not just go with the demo).
What follows is a resume of my experience with se5 patched to 1.33 and with the balance mod. Note that the computer where I played is from the dinossaur age - an ~500Mhz CPU with >= 500Mb of memory in win2k fully patched. Add an oldish NVidia card.
1. I played a quickstart game SP game for a few turns, just to get the hang of things. The turn processing was a bit slow, but with my computer I could not expect much. The eye candy was much better than se4. It's not top of the line by any measure, but it was "enough" for me, meaning I was not distracted by the uglyness and could immerse myself in the playing.
Still have not figured out how to play in windowed mode though. Can anyone tell me how?
2. Time to get more serious. I found out that I could play SP with simultaneous turns. Cool! I like WeGo games so much more than IGo-YouGo games. It was also a preparation for, maybe in the not so distant future, joining some MP games. No matter how good the AI is coded, playing against a human opponent is much more satisfying, and from what I could gather from the complexity of se5, having such an AI is next to impossible anyway.
3 (B). So I clicked the New Game button. Was going to choose the terran alliance (despite all human failures I still have a soft spot for the lil' buggers). *Was* is the right word. Where are the standard stock races?
4 (B). So I cannot choose a stock race, I'll make one up just like it. In the meanwhile I noticed these neat little racial techs with high-sounding names like Temporal Technology or Crystalline Technology. Hey, maybe I will give one of these to my race, beef up a little the technology points and spend them in these new technologies so I can see what they are about. So I do that, and behold, where are the racial techs to spend tech points on? Nowhere to be found.
5 (B). So I cannot give my human race that crystalline tech and make them cyborgs. Oh well, back to the original plan. I scavenge the data folders for the history, society and biology descriptions of the terrans and copy them to new files. Then, in the race construction screen I add them. Huh? the game crashed? What the... I try again. The game crashes with a list out of bounds error. Hmmm ok, so no history, society or biology for you!
6 (UI). Continuing the setup I notice that the master password field is filled with... master. WRONG. You never fill password fields with some default. It is totally brainless and leads to nasty surprises. Also, how do I input a different path for the savegame? I tried every combination I could think of, unix and win2k conventions, and se5 always barfed.
7. After the bumpy start, I am ready. So I click begin. HA HA HA (maniacal laughter, clenching my fists) I Am The Master of the Universe! (you know the feeling).
8 (UI). So I start expanding. I design my colony ship. Alpha Centauri had this and it was one of the best things in the game. I also set my empire researching sensors (this was on advice: research to sensors level 3 asap) and in the meantime just build a few sensorless colony ships and send them to the colonizable planets in the home system.
On the other hand, could we please, please, please join all components, facilities of the same type. What I mean by this is that if you are looking at the report of a ship/planet and looking into its components/facilities, instead of condensing the 7 research centers into a single slot with some indication that there are seven of those, no, we get 7 separate slots with research centers. Much more difficult to parse. Ugh.
9. At first, giving orders to ships is a bit counterintuitive. Remember, I am playing simultaneous turns! But I soon get the hang of it. Order the ship to load cargo population *then* colonize the planet. Then I notice the colonize button. OK, I confess, I am somewhat dense.
10 (B). At first, I tried to load population via the transfer cargo orders. I cannot even begin to describe it, but I got some really *weird* results. After that, it was a pain to cancel those orders. Fortunately I am one of those "hey, what will happen if I touch here" guys, so I eventually found out how to cancel orders.
11 (B). I also noticed some glitches. First, if I cancel the movement orders of some ship, the white mobvement lines on the system map are still there! Confusing.
12 (B) If my calculations are not wrong, you load 10M people in a colony. So how come, in the turn the colonies are founded, they start with 11M (large domed planet) or even 66M (huge undomed planet)? Spontaneous generation? There were humans hiding beneath the surface all along?
13 (UI). And the UI... huh, how can I describe it? At several places it is completely moronic (exagerating a bit for the comic effect). For example, choosing one object out of many in the same sector. I have to *right-click* not *left-click*. This is inconsistent and confusing.
Another example: in several windows when selecting a row. In some (left-)clicking the row is enough (e.g. create custom layout), in others you have to click the ball on the left (e.g. queues window).
14 (UI). I start getting my first log reports. Confusing. Why are there items from the *previous* turn? Can't we filter them out? Things get even more confusing if some other race has sent a message. It appears as being sent in the *previous* turn - which it was - but what it matters it that I have *received* it this turn.
And couldn't some entries be joined in a single entry? e.g. if you are upgrading all your research centers in a planet, why the heck I get an entry for *each* research center upgraded?
For that matter, when upgrading a facility why do I have to choose the amount and not just click some button saying "upgrade every facility of this type in this planet"?
15 (UI). After a few turns I already have a few planets, so it's time to start managing my budding empire through those Queues, Colonies, etc. windows. Well, the Systems windows is basically useless. Instead of presenting a summary of each system it lists (row after row) every planet, etc, on it. I tried to customize the layout, but there simply was no *useful* field, e.g. a field with the System's name, a field with the number of colonies, planets, etc.
The Queues could *really, really* use a goto button like the Colonies or the Ships window have. I find myself inspecting some queues, and then if I want to make some changes that need that I *first* see what's in the surrounding sectors of the system. For example is there a spaceport already? This is of course a trivial example, but I hope you understand where I am getting. But there is no goto butoon. So I have to go to the system map, locate the right system with the right colony and survey. Ugly.
16 (B). Custom layouts are pretty cool. After a few tries I managed to configure almost all of the management windows to my taste. There does exist some buggy behaviour around it. For example, if the current layout is a custom one and I right click in a tab (to choose the layout and the filter), there is no check mark on the current custom layout entry.
Also, there are some fields I really miss. For example, in the fleets window I create two layouts, one for my fleets and one for *unfleeted* ships. But I cannot filter the unfleeted ships. And there is no field that tells the *system* where the fleet is. I have to hover my mouse over the row corresponding to the ship/fleet and look at the upper right corner system map to locate it. Ugh.
And if we could have custom filters... Ah *that* would be neat.
17 (B) Somewhere around the 6th turn I get a Load Error. The application hangs and I have to bail out to the task manager to kill it. Fortunately, I restart se5, load the game and everything seems OK. I (grudgingly) continue.
18. I encounter a few more bugs and UI inconsistences, but I give up on writing them down.
19 (UI). I have my first degree encounter with an alien race. Hello, how are you? Nice chaps, if a bit wonky on the head. Hey wait, where is that colony they had? Hmmm so the system map keeps track of breathable, colonizable planets but not of enemy colonies? Just a little flag saying that "last time we saw, this planet was colonized by the XXX empire"? No? OK...
20 (UI) My research goes forward at a good pace. Then I notice that the old components/facilities disappear from the help system. How am I supposed to compare new and old facilities/components? How am I supposed to know if researching that extra level in propulsion was not a complete waste if there is no easy way to make the comparison? IOW, shouldn't the help system provide a way to navigate the (available) tech tree?
21 (B). At turn 26 a whole system vanished. Poof! I look at the system map, where the system, planets, stars and ships used to be and nothing. Just an expanse of red/black hexes with nothing in it. Wait... not 1 system disappeard, but 4! I investigate the matter more carefully. The vanished colonies are still listed in the colonies window, but *not* in the queues window.
I give up. I am a newbie and I have not only managed to crash the game several times, but have found a several bugs and UI inconsistences. And I have not even started to make fleets, I have not waged war or used the simulators, etc. I have not whined about the AI or about any imbalances - these are areas where the moddability of se5 and the community can patch up things. Only bugs and bad UI.
So, please, do not tell me the game is ready. It is not. I do not know if it was a wise decision to release the game in this state, what matters to me is that the game *is* in a sorry state. Do not tell me there is only one guy doing all the programming - that is besides the point. I leave this (very long) rant in the hopes that maybe some of the issues get ironed out. I do not know if any/all of these are known, if not, can anyone make sure the Powers To Be know this?
This game has *great* potential. From what I have scratched - and it was not much - it has a lot of depthness and strategic variety and I can see people having loads of fun - in MP at least. Honestly. I do not want to be negative or drive people off, and for all the fanboys out there reading this and that may feel inclined to flame me, direct your flame-thrower elsewhere, please. But I have to confess I am in a bit of a quandary - to buy or not to buy that is the question.
Thanks for reading.
Re: Newbie impressions and rant (long)
Wow, I'm glad to see someone who has taken the time to voice their opinions rather than whine and make accusations and such. I'll try to respond as well as I can to all of your points.
1) Regarding windowed mode, on the startup menu choose settings. The resolution setting should have a windowed mode available.
3) The stock races are missing, and this has disappointed just about everyone. By starting a quickstart game with your preferred race and saving the empire file, you can then use it in a normal game.
4) Racial techs still don't show up in the tech list. We've been requesting that be fixed for a while, but there are many things on the list.
5) Some of the data files are picky about what you do to them, so a wide variety of errors appear if you don't edit things exactly as you need to.
6) The master password for the game is set so that you can take control of the AI for testing purposes. You can easily change the password, anyway. You should be able to set some (existing) directory, like C:\SE5Games\ if you really need that feature.
This is currently undergoing. Several lists were originally filled with every single facility/unit/etc that was present. Some of these lists have been condensed as you have requested, and many of us have requested. It may be a few more updates, but they should all be done eventually.
9) Note - at least in simultaneous turns - the colonize order adds a load population order so you don't have to set that order manually. It will load up all but the last 1M pop or as much as it can and then move to colonize.
11) Bugs are fun, aren't they? Haven't noticed that oddity myself, though...
12) Uh... that's happening? I stopped paying attention to population counts a while ago for the most part, so I didn't notice. That's strange behavior left over from a feature we got removed by general demand, probably.
13) Yes, elements of the UI are inconsistent, but I haven't noticed the problem regarding selecting ships.
14) I think somewhere in the Empire Options there is something to control how long old news items are displayed. Messages act quite strange, but I think it's how they're handled by the engine that makes it counterintuitive. The rest of this section relates to 13.
15) Unifying the different menu structures and interlinking their functionality would indeed be a great change, and I hope to see some level of that occur at some point.
16) There isn't an (un)fleeted filter? That's strange... this sort of goes with what I said above.
19) There have been at least two massive discussion requesting this feature. I have no idea if we will ever see it.
20) This was a popular request when the game was released initially. The reason this can't be done reliably is because the components can be related to many techs and have values that change within a single level, and so there is no adequate way to depict the previous states without storing huge amounts of data. But perhaps MM will make a way to at least see what the next level will be at some point.
21) The System maps seems to have been neglected in its design, so don't expect much. Hopefully if the menus are unified the system window will be more stable and useful one day.
The game was not ready, and it continues to have significant problems that kill its playability. The interface being so difficult to stumble around is the main reason that I don't play very often. Check back in a few months, and I bet the state of things will have been much improved.
Re: Newbie impressions and rant (long)
Yes, I agree. For SEV, time will really be the best medicine =). A pity you didn´t like SE IV, with TDM mod it´s a blast to play and would easily run on your computer. I had much more fun with it than with SEV so far...
As for the game not being ready, that´s the problem of all niche games... they´ll always be made by small companies and will never reach the level of polishment of a game made by, say, Blizzard or EA
=( To make things worse, since it´s a niche game few people will be playing it... and even less people would be willing to help mod it and it´ll take an awful amount of time to make things right. If it weren´t for the efforts of Kwok, Fallen Haven, bmaxa and Fyron, the game would have died out already.
Re: Newbie impressions and rant (long)
I usually keep quiet on threads like this. While I don't begrudge folks the right to demand polish in products they spend hard earned cash on, the game is now on ebay for $20, which is half what a lot of us paid. I have to leave for work soon, so don't have time for details, but what I'll say is this:
Loosen up. Yes, the game has plenty of imperfections and issues. However if your attitude is, "I'll only play the game when it's close to perfect," you just might be missing out on a source of great fun, because for all its flaws, SEV does a lot of things right, IMHO.
You mentioned multiplayer. Well, I can tell you that if you just take a small amount of time to learn to deal with things, SEV plays fine in MP games (I've spent very little time in SP and most of my effort on PBW games). Almost all of the issues in your list have workarounds, actually have semi-decent reasons for being like they are, can be dealt with through application of just a little patience or tolerance, or are matters of personal preference that a player can simply adapt to. I can think of only one or two issues that I consider "important" that impact MP games that appeared with the current patch (my guess is that you haven't noticed them), and even those can be adapted for while waiting for the next patch.
SEV needs a lot of tweaking, I agree, and if pressed I could come up with a list of my own nitpicks that I think need attention. But really, yours is no more than that: a list of nitpicks in the grand scheme of a game of this depth. There's so much going on in SEV that I doubt it is humanly possible to have a 100% bug-free game with an interface that makes everyone happy. The game as-shipped actually was basically unplayable, but in the past 6 months that has changed.
I don't know you, so I can't say whether you'd like SEV with a slight change in outlook. But what I can tell you is that I've taken an outlook of just dealing with the things that are truly minor, and what I've found underneath it all is a very fun MP game. It won't replace MOO2 in my life, because SEV MP games move at an incredibly slow pace (varies from less than 1 turn per day to more than 10), but again, once I let go of my preconceptions there, I started having lots of fun with it.
Re: Newbie impressions and rant (long)
Join a multiplayer game and you will see SEV shine more brightly. Yes, there will be bugs and flaws, but they are overshadowed by the player interactions. For example: The Play by web (PBW) game I'm in right now is about to get VERY interesting. I formed an early alliance and have amassed a huge invasion fleet just outside my allies sight range. It will be a glorious backstab as I roll through his empire. (evil laugh) (Gusset....wink wink) 
Don't give up yet and approach it more lightly. Oh! and quick clicking on things you don't need to click on! lol
Re: Newbie impressions and rant (long)
I came into playing SEV after only having played SEIV a few times over 2 years ago. It took a little while to get used to the control scheme that was chosen, but now I fly through my turns rather easily and quickly. The only truly annoying parts are things like the alliance voting/chatting bug and the bombardment bug of 1.33
Re: Newbie impressions and rant (long)
Yeah. PBW makes it soo much more interesting; and exciting 
(See my post in over here. http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/3012 ). Pardon the blatant commercial break
Also; we are playing without revealing each stats. (you know.. score compare..). This makes it even more of a mystery.
~Myrath
Re: Newbie impressions and rant (long)
HI I agree with the original post, as do my friends who I play SEIV by e-mail with.
Yes the game looks good but is that everything?
I do not believe that wanting a game to be accessible and playable is nit picking, in fact I think that it is reasonable.
I have posted a few comments on SEV and given them to Arron, however their are still enough problems with the game esspecerly in simultaneous move games to make it hard work to play. My main bug other than most of the ones listed above is that the load cargo dos not work or only loads 1 unit at a time. How people use fighters and satellites or troops beats me.
Having the whole system map turn blank has happened to me and I do not think it is minor, if you have not saved the game you are stuck, and if you were doing a multi player game by e-mail it gets annoying.
I play lots of games used to be mainly figure games now more computer games and have had a few which stink but only 1 or 2 which were not playable even after patches. I put this game in there with them.
I enjoy SEIV and play a lot by mail with my friends but none of us [thats 6] think SEV is worth playing at the moment and some have given up altogether.
Thats 6 customers who feel they have wasted money, and not all of us are made of it or have the time to rewrite a game. I have played with modding SEIV and still enjoy the game but it is years ahead of SEV except in the graphics which in this type of game played in simultaneous e-mail games id not that important.
C Brann
England
Re: Newbie impressions and rant (long)
yeah there seems to be some bug which has creeped in over the last patch somehow which causes .plr load problems and dissapearing planets/fleets. saving and reloading the game before each processes 'fixes' it though.
mosth the other issues you've mentioned the betas have been bashing aaron over the head with, eventualy they should get fixed.
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an se5a is a ww1 fighter, it is also a car.