Space Empires V: General Thoughts, Observations, and Suggestions

Keep in mind that a Sphereworld or Ringworld now occupies the inner 6 rings...

-----

Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

One thing - planets. I like them but... when I zoom one of them I don't like visual quality of them. This is some like "bubble bitmaps" without good resolution of lands, continents, clouds etc. I loved this game, but this one thing... please, make this beautifull....

BTW: Sorry for my English...

--------------------------
You may fire when ready...

I like very very much Space Empires 5 but i wonder why the planets not move around the stars? Will be nice that planets changes their position every turn, rotating around the central star!

And SE3 Research Style is slowing my turns, because every turn i must change the percents and this is an annoyng thing. SE4 Research Style was much much better.

And in the combat phase i can't choose which wepons fire and which not. I don't like real-time combat mode!

They changed the 'which weapons to fire and which ones to not fire' in favour of setting individual targets. This works better for me because the targets assigned stick until I change them. (instead of having to re-do the targetting after each and every turn)

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

I like everything about the game so far save one detail. I cannot seem to find a filter for the news that just shows NEW events everyturn. I find it confusing trying to decipher the old from the new...

I found that news items with grey background were the ones that happend 'that' turn. The older items had a black background.
I agree that I don't like the new news layout. I wish that the news just showed up as a list of text which you can click on to bring up more detailed view. Similar to SEIV

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

Thanks, I had'nt noticed the colour scheme. Hopefully it helps. And yeah, I miss being able to click to get details, especially on new technologies, from the news as well.

I’ve been watching the development of this game series for years now, and find myself to be very disappointed with this offering. I find that MM has succumbed to the fait of many small game businesses, not to mention a few larger ones. They allowed themselves to be influenced by people who were not part of their target market. SE3 and SE4 were good games but were locked into the specialty market because of the difficulty of learning the game. And both suffered in the game press from the dreaded “boring graphics” reviews. Now here we have SE5, which was reported to be the version that would carry the came to the masses. But what did we get in actuality? This game still has boring graphics for the casual user. It is still far too difficult to play at first. And a lot of it seems to be ported in from another series. Shame on you MM! MM has fallen prey to three things. They undertook a project that they were too small to handle properly, and ended up with an out of date graphic presentation. They listened to game reviewers who never really tested the game. These guys were looking for flashy intro videos that are often used to bait the general public. SE never used them much, and still does not. And last but the worst by far, MM fell victim to the lunatic fringe. It looks as if this game was designed by computer geeks who do nothing but play SE. And while that is fine for the niche market, it spells death for a general release. I suspect that the Beta Team is the same group as tested SE4, and I bet that all of them are SE fanatics. I seriously doubt if any of them were supervised by people in possession of marketing skills. And I would be shocked to find out that any of them ever suggested that MM needed to go back and rethink what they were doing from the beginning. Most fanatical beta test teams tend to be good at geeking out code defects, but unable to keep the brown off the ends of their noses. And without serious criticism, game development suffers. I’ll also bet that not one test was run on a generic audience. Had a general review test been run, the authors would have perhaps received advanced warning of what was about to happen and done some serious recoding. And now it is in all probability to late. The general public will choke on the game and soon as the returns show up it will evaporate from the shelves, rejoining the ranks of niche games. We can only hope that MM sees the light and returns to the fold some time in the near future. We can only hope that the release is delayed until the GUI can be cleaned up so that a casual user will have the desire to play the game. I would hope that the publisher would take control and do some marketing tests before releasing this version to the general public. But sadly, I fear that the need for fast cash might doom the future of Space Empires.

are they in the demo? curious because if they are i wanna build them meeheee! big huge uber planets ripe for the exploiting!

From playing the demo, the game certainly looks complex but interesting.

I expect it's going to take quite a while to get up to speed on how things work, particularly since I've never even seen any of the previous SE's, but I expect I'll manage. And for some reason, the GUI doesn't particularly bother me. If I can do what I need to do in a reasonably efficient manner, that's what counts to me. I've been playing these sorts of games since the original Civ, so somehow my brain is able to cope with these constraints (I won't call them problems, any more than I'd call the requirements of a different programming language a problem).

Maybe that makes me part of the lunatic fringe. (g)

Ridgeway:

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. At no point did the beta testers _not_ bring up complaints, totally absent of your brown-nosing, about the interface of SE5. There was far more serious criticism than you can imagine. Some issues were addressed before the game went gold, some were not. I suspect that more of them will be addressed now that the game has gone public and the same criticisms will be made from a larger group of people. I assure you, almost every complaint that has been lodged on these and other forums has already been lodged during the beta period.

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

It would be nice to just look at a news overview so that you could get a feel for what happened in that turn and then click on anything that you want more information on.
Currently the news takes up to much room to really get a feel.
It should work like headlines like a paper and then you can read the item that you want to.

Although I have said that there should have been regular people in the Beta testing to point out the need for a user interface that helps the person along and does not get in the way of trying to play the game.

This is the "Official" SE site and as such I can not understand why someone from SFI or MM does not come here to communicate with its user base.

It costs nothing but a bit of time, and it would go a long way in allowing people understand why things were done the way they were. I am sure there are reasons for everything in the game, but the community is left to figure it out on their own.

This is one of those things that I can not understand why Developers or Publishers would miss an opportunity to talk with those that want the game to do well and succeed.

No one really knows what might be worked on, what might be changed, or what will not be looked at or changed. A simple listing of things being worked on would go miles to give the people a reason to defend MM and how they are supporting the game. All we have currently is people saying they will, with zero official word on what will really take place.

No one as far as I know even knows if the issues in the demo will or will not be in the game.

This is likely the biggest Bug in the whole of the SE Series; lack of communication to the end user.

I so want this game to do well, and want to see many editions in the future, and I think that will depend on how SEV is received and how well and long it is supported.

Because when they do the fans get..really, really annoying. Ever been to the WoW forums? Every other thread is just a screaming for dev attention thread. It happens with every single active dev team I've seen. Lots of complaining, lots of "do this now" lots of "why are you paying attention to him MY COMPLAINTS ARE MORE IMPORTANT", etc.

We do have the current patch list for things to go on as far as bug fixes and such.

The patch lists for versions 1.01 through 1.05 have been posted elsewhere; but here they are just for you guys.

Version 1.05:
1. Fixed - The resources amounts on the Select Package window would not change.
2. Fixed - On the Set Construction Queue window, the "In Existence" was always zero for facilities.
3. Changed - On the Set Construction Queue window, the "In Existence" field will now include
all versions of this object regardless of level.
4. Added - "Lock System View" button at the top of the Orders panel.
5. Note - To use Automatic Moveto for Construction Queues, you need to define a waypoint where you
want the ships to moveto. Then in the Set Construction Queue window, select Queue Settings
and scroll the list to the bottom where you can choose that waypoint as a Moveto location.
6. Fixed - Changed Planet Temperature formula so its not quite so cold.
7. Changed - You can no longer change your intelligence defense spending. It is automatically set to the
remainder after your attack spending is deducted from 100%.
8. Added - Scrollbar to the Weapon Report so that damage at range can be scrolled through a distance of 300.
9. Added - "Override InvConfiguration Slots" to the Mod_Definition.txt file. If this field is set TRUE, then
all Inventory Configurations will be read from the file "Override_InvConfiguration_Slots.txt" in the
mod directory (the flag [%EmpireName%] from VehicleSizes.txt will be set to "" and the name will be
trimmed).
10. Fixed - Revised Help Text from Chris Traber.
11. Fixed - Size for Small Supply Storage and Small Ordnance Storage reduced to 2.
12. Fixed - Select Colony Type window was not responding to the Return key and not selecting an item on double-click.
13. Fixed - Sometimes in Sector View, you could move planets.
14. Fixed - Sometimes ending the Sector View would show the Simulator window.
15. Fixed - Log window should jump to the top most message at the beginning of a turn.
16. Fixed - In a Combat Replay, the targeting icon should not show over enemy ships.
17. Fixed - In a Combat Replay, you should not be able to right-click to give orders.
18. Fixed - In combat, you shouldn't be able to see movement destinations and weapon targets for computer controlled ships.
19. Fixed - Construction Queues were absorbing their full resource rate regardless of the cost of the items being built.
20. Fixed - Units were not showing any supplies or ordnance in combat replays.
21. Fixed - Game was changing Speaker Configuration to Stereo.
22. Fixed - If a minister style wasn't selected when creating a new empire, no default strategies would be loaded.
23. Fixed - Victory Conditions and Racial Traits were using the wrong style of option box.
24. Fixed - Lists with option buttons or check buttons will allow you to select the text to toggle the option.
25. Fixed - Some Lists with options buttons or check buttons were highlighting the row you clicked on.

Version 1.04:
1. Fixed - In SystemTypes.txt, the "Ring" position would not register rings 10 or above.
2. Fixed - Closing the Political Message Report would cause a crash.
3. Fixed - Sometimes damage to a planet would cause a crash.
4. Fixed - A planet's condition of "Plague" should show in red.
5. Fixed - A planetary plague was not showing in the Planet Report "Planetary Damage".
6. Fixed - Weapon Damage Type in the Components.txt file is now a formula.
7. Fixed - The Plague Bomb was only doing Plague Level 1 damage.
8. Fixed - Fleets were using more movement than they should.
9. Fixed - Fleets were getting one movement even if they had zero movement.
10. Fixed - Fleet were using more supply than they should.
11. Added - Popup Help Text Delay to game options. The default is 0.5 seconds.
12. Fixed - In the Create Design window, available mounts would not be reloaded when the Vehicle
size was changed.
13. Fixed - You could exceed the maximum tech level in research if enough points were spent.
14. Fixed - In Player Setup - Technology, you would retain tech levels even if you removed the prerequisites.
15. Fixed - In Player Setup - Technology, you could click disabled buttons to change tech.
16. Fixed - Occasional Access Violation when shutting down the game.
17. Fixed - Combat Replays were not always playing. To get rid of bad combat replays, all combat replays from
games earlier than 1.04 will be deleted (on game load).
18. Fixed - The Set Construction Queue window was not showing the Usage Rate based on Emergency Build.
19. Fixed - Return now works for OK on the Login window.
20. Fixed - Vehicle Designs and Vehicle Sizes were not showing maintenance reductions.
21. Fixed - In Player Setup, picture lists were showing large gray bands.
22. Fixed - Lists were enabling their buttons incorrectly.
23. Fixed - In Create Design, if you pressed Create, then Escape, the wrong window would dissappear.

Version 1.03:
1. Fixed - Accepting an alliance would cause the game to lockup.
2. Fixed - Empire Icon spacing for an Alliance report on the Empires window was off.
3. Fixed - Alliances were not showing moods on the Empires window.
4. Fixed - Alliance Report was displaying blank.
5. Fixed - In the Alliance Chambers window, the text for proposals was offset.
6. Fixed - Alliances were not getting or generating First Contact messages.
7. Fixed - Communicate window had text offset for Alliances.
8. Fixed - When viewing a message, the interior of the report would not move with the window.
9. Fixed - Revised Help Text from Chris Traber.
10. Fixed - "Upgrade Facilities" was replacing facilities in the construction queue with facility upgrades.
11. Fixed - In the Create Design window, if you were holding a component and used Shift to delete a
component, the design stats would not get updated.
12. Fixed - Some of the big list windows were still changing highlights under a popup window.
13. Fixed - Some of the reorder items in the Empire Options window were not performing Move to Top and
Move to Bottom correctly.
14. Fixed - Units viewed in Sector View would not "give back" their supplies and ordnance to their Unit Group.
15. Added - Component highlight information on the Ship Report for Components and Cargo.
16. Fixed - Help Text on the Units Group Report was backwards for Orders and Units.
17. Added - Component highlight information on the Unit Group Report for Units.
18. Added - Component highlight information on the Planet Report for Cargo.

Version 1.02:
1. Fixed - Items in a construction queue would not be constructed if the empire could not
provide the full resource usage of the queue.
2. Fixed - The Empire Options window would allow lists under windows to be clicked.
3. Fixed - The Log would show multiple tech level gains in the same area with the current
tech level.
4. Fixed - Alt-Tab would cause order buttons to blank out.
5. Fixed - Moving through an enemy minefield would cause an error.
6. Fixed - Cultural Achievements and Intelligence Achievements were not working correctly.
7. Fixed - On the Intelligence window, Estimated Intel Expenditures were not correct.

Version 1.01:
1. Fixed - The recalculation of Warp Transit Order would sometimes cause an Access Violation.
2. Fixed - Clicking on "Racial Traits" in the Empire Setup window would cause an Invalid Index error.
3. Fixed - In the Empire Setup window, random selection would allow you to get a Gas Giant
with a None Atmosphere. There is also an added warning message as a fail safe.
4. Changed - Selecting a "Gas Giant" atmosphere type will no longer restrict the Planet Types.
5. Fixed - In combat, once you entered into an order mode such as "Fire Specific On Target"
but had no valid targets, then there was no way out of the mode. Also, when in an order
mode, the select region box should not display.
6. Fixed - After turning Autotargeting off, using "Fire Specific On Target" would set the vehicle
to have autotargeting for all untargeted weapons.
7. Fixed - In Simultaneous Games, duplicate designs were showing up.
8. Fixed - AI Setup was not researching correctly.
9. Changed - Increased the tech points for the 3 starting tech levels.
10. Fixed - Message boxes were not responding to the Return key as clicking the OK button.
11. Fixed - The mousewheel would not work if the mouse was over the thumb or arrow buttons.
12. Fixed - In windowed mode, the mouse coordinates for the mousewheel were off by the size of the
window border.
13. Added - End of Turn confirmation information.
14. Added - On the System window, you can hold Ctrl and right-click to perform a Move order (or
an Attack order if the sector you click on has a visible enemy present).
15. Fixed - Blue line under large green planet.
16. Fixed - Space & Ground Combat hotkeys were misassigned.
17. Fixed - Sound clips on full screen windows were not being played (until the window was closed).
18. Fixed - The Load/Save window was not supporting double clicks.

-----

Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

You have to understand that I remember the days of Submarine Titans where the Developer would come out on line and play Multiplayer with people.
I played several games of ST with him and was absolutely saddened when Ellipsis Studios went under.

GalCiv is another example of a Developer that talks to the people and by in large people are not yelling at Frogboy, but thanking him for the way he supports his game and let's the community in on what is happening.

Let's hope SEV gets a lot (I mean a lot) more support from SFI than O.R.B. ever saw.

@Captain Kwok -- Thank you for the listing. But from this list it appears that SEV is already at v1.05. Will this be the release version and future patches from that point or is 1.05 the patch they are currently working on for release day?

Version 1.0 (~demo) was the "Gold Version" that will be on the CD. So 1.01 and beyond will be part of the first patch - likely at release.

-----

Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

So the patch v1.01-v1.05 which fixes so many important things does not apply to the CD release nor to the Demo that we have access to now.
That does not sound like a good idea to me not with all these bugs.

Man, it seems like the Demo was like an open Beta of sorts to show where all the bugs were. If they were already known why in the world were they not fixed.

Can you describe "the fold" in more detail?

Long-time player and a first time poster.

First, I hope a demo with the happiness bug fixed is released, sooner rather than later.

Overall, I'm disappointed with SEV.

It's been improved vis a vis the way basic sensors now work.

However, SEV seems to have tossed out the brilliant elegance that SEIV had.

One message did well in summing it up, such as the huge flags crowding out needed info and so on....

Faithful,

It takes a significant amount of time to fix bugs and even sometimes fixing one bug might accidently make another. Thrown in whatever else had to be done for release and other stuff and you have to pick and choose what you can do at the time. Anyway now that the release version is set, we're seeing more dedication to corrected the bugs and addressing some of the known game issues. Things went down this way more or less for SE:IV when it first appeared, so if anything MM is consistent.

-----

Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

It certainly sounds like it applies to the CD release... O.o

There are 10 types of people in the world:

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

/shudder

Yeah, alas that does happen. And man is it a headache and a nightmare...

I just wish some of the fixes would be released for the patch! (And that an open beta had been called, but, oh well...)

There are 10 types of people in the world:

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

Mostly it's a case of priorities and time constraints.... You know, there used to be a bug where planets could join fleets and move around... I daresay things like that were higher on the list of things to fix than the current bugs

Regardless of the bugs in the demo, with the patchlog you can already see it should be very apparent that Aaron is working hard on the bugs. It's down to the age old problem again - would you rather play the game sooner and have patches regularly to fix things, or wait longer for release and have more bugs fixed in release?
If the former is the case, I can't see the point of your posts because you'd understand that a faster release will equate to less bugs being fixed, and if the latter is the case - then just wait for the patches which fix the bugs you dislike while the rest of us who don't want to wait play the game
______________________________________________________
I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26

Back in the days of Submarine Titans, the internet was full of people that behaved far better than the general groups you see today. It's very hard to find any situation where the Devs of a game can talk to the Playerbase without seeing flamewars and whines as some users *seemingly* get listened to and others don't.
Take a look at WoW, SWG, EVE Online (all MMOs admitedly), or other games like Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter.
It's nearly always the same story with different characters.

Coupled with the fact that Aaron has always been reclusive, I can totally understand why he stays in the shadows. Already, for example, I've seen rants and such from many 'new' users about how they're disappointed with the way SE5 has gone from SE4 - I always saw the SpaceEmpires series as Aaron's baby, and trusted his judgement in the direction he wanted to take them, for surely if I wanted enough changes to warrant huge posts about them, then I would be wanting a different game entirely

RE: the patch - I expect 1.05 (or 1.06 depending on how far it gets) will be available for download to co-incide with general release.
______________________________________________________
I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26

I would ALWAYS want to wait for the best and most bug free release of any software. Part of any person's life is waiting and good things are always worth waiting for!

Two things about this, and a few comments

1. I personally refuse to pay to play the same game every month. If I did and it was not working well I too would voice my displeasure as I am paying every month for a product that is not working. Of course that may not be the case of what you are trying to say, but I really have no reference point here as I never play Pay to Play games.

2. I have no problem with Aaron being someone that rather stay in the shadows, but he should send someone into the light to let the user base know what is happening.

As I stated above I would be one that would rather wait another 3 months for the most bug free game that can be made instead of having a patch future of what will be fixed after release.

I have really tried to be measured in my posts and I hope for the large part I have. I have no intention of bashing anyone. I do think I have raised some legitimate questions and concerns that I hope are taken into account in the future.

E.g. My cry for Icons to switch form screen to screen and the ability to change views without having to close a window first are I believe very good ideas.
It is simply unknown if they have been read, considered or will ever be implemented that leads to discontent and eventually thinking that it really does not matter what one says online as it will not be heard.

I will maintain these are the “Official” SEV forums and site so this is the place to let the Developers see what is on one’s mind.

Finally, less time spent after the fact on bugs gives confidence in the game and creators, and also gives the Developers more time to work on a X-Pack for the game! WooHoo!

Just wanted to point out, Eve-Online suffers from that problem the least, the people who do that have usualy quit by the first week because the game is not easy, and until you get socialy involved it can be borring.

I think you can be safe in the knowledge that Aaron reads all emails sent to him, and Kwok does a pretty fine job of sending every new topic he hasn't yet passed on over to him.

As for idea feedback, which seems to be another topic, well beyond actually seeing it implimented you won't really get a chance to see if it will be implimented - or even if it's on the to-do list at all... But then again, that doesn't really change anything.

It's been made fairly clear a few times by several people that Aaron doesn't read the boards, but board-members do email him information, and from what I can gather he does read every email he receives (even if he only replies to new information sometimes), so along with posting here, you could email him directly to get the feedback you desire
______________________________________________________
I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26

*cough* ongoing Amarr versus everyone flamewar, and the ever-present topics of WCS's and War-Decs *cough*

Point taken though - EVE has such a cliff-learning curve that those who dislike things usually move on fairly quickly.
______________________________________________________
I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26

Then we differ in outlooks

I work in software development as well, and (like Aaron seems to) we work with an iterative development model... I know just how easy it can get bogged down in tweaking and fixing things forevermore that sometimes you just have to release something and carry on the work after the event.
______________________________________________________
I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26

Yes, and Klingons follow iterative software development processes, too... after all, as the saying goes, "Klingon software is not released... it ESCAPES!"
(I swear, I heard that somewhere, I did not make it up! )
By the way, when you guys say that the patch should be ready upon final release, does that mean that those of us who preordered from Gamestop or EB will be stuck with the buggy 1.00 version for a couple weeks until the game "officially" ships?

~~~
Mr. Flibble says...
Game over, boys!

I Know that it is not something that you would want in the game but it must have been funny to see planets joining fleets and traveling with them.
Tho it would be one way to put all the good planets that you find in one solar system just send out a fleet to enlist a planet and bring it home.
Boy does that create some weird mental images.

Return to being one of the best Strategy games on the market. Forget the dated special 3D effects and 2D tricks. Save the console game ingredients for a new title. Stop trying to be the game everyone wants but never actually fills the role. Go back to being the best game in the 4X arena.

Do you mean things like improving the fairness of combat by eliminating the cheesiness of SE:IV "IGOUGO" combat or perhaps expanding ground combat so that factors like speed, range, reload rates actually make a difference? Perhaps give the user the ability to have taskforces within fleets with their own strategies? Or maybe you meant making units individual items rather than stacks?

Yes, say the the current demo is buggy or that there are UI issues to address or the graphics are not cutting edge - that's fair, but don't suggest that gameplay was sacrificed compared to previous versions of Space Empires because they were not.

-----

Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

So you say

Perhaps you might answer a few simple questions for us then.

How were the beta testers selected? And from what mob were they selected?

How was the test team organized and how did they collaborate and share information?

How were the tests organized? By game area with a schedule and dead line? Distributed to sub groups of testers?

How did the test team react to being ignored when brining up serious issues?

If as you say “every complaint” had previously been presented by the beta team, how do you explain the status of the demo? Exactly who should we be addressing about this game and its eternal ability to cark it without warning?

Now perhaps you might tell us about the general backgrounds of the team? Something of yourself too? You come off as being a bit of a figjam by your posts.

Even *greater* for all us rabid players/testers would be the rapid release of these patches for the demo. I can understand that they'd want to fix more and more bugs with a given patch, but it's annoying for us to all be reporting bugs in 1.0 code, which may already be solved and fixed in any of the patches 01-05. Wouldn't it make more sense to have us all banging on 1.05 and reporting real bugs that are still in the code (and also thereby giving us all more confidence in the final/purchased product)?

Keep up the good work! I'm hoping the bugs get ironed out soon, so the GUI can be tightened up!

I think we were perturbed by your accuastions of us being "lunatics" and "brown nosers" incapable of being anything more than yes men since we were too giddy being testers and eager to mark the game with spreadsheet geekiness.

The issues that remained outstanding and just starting to be addressed in a more rigirous manner, happened because there should have been more people working on the non-coding aspects to free up MM to focus on the issues collected during testing. It didn't happen for whatever reason before the game was scheduled for release so... check back later and see what happens with the after-release development.

Anyhow I'm sure you could have addressed your concerns without resorting to such discourteous language and condescending remarks.

-----

Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

Case in point.

The News viewer in SEIV was PERFECT. If it AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT. They tried to, and broke it.

MAKE THE NEWS EXACTLY LIKE IT WAS IN SEIV!!!!

---
All that is done before the naked stars is remembered

It was called 'Planet's Edge' and it was the best space game ever made if you like the Star Trek concept. Like 'Balder's Gate' in space, with designed characters with abilities, and quests and exploring on every planet. On top of that, you got to design your own ships, fly them, and have ship combat between the planets.

To top this, each time you entered a solar system, all the planets were in orbit and moving, and you had to match velocity with the planet or intercept it with your ship in order to get into parking orbit. The only problem was that the orbit speed display was controlled by the processor speed of your computer. I think the game was written for a 386, and on my Pentium it was like watching marbles going around on a high speed turntable

What in incredible, beautiful game, that should have been remade every 5 years.

---
All that is done before the naked stars is remembered

Click twice on the Events tab and it looks pretty much the same, the only difference being political messsages not showing up and the non-grouped units (which isn't a problem with the log per-se)

I assume you missed the entire beta application and selection process by Malfador Machinations on their website then? (start of April last year actually if my memory serves me correctly - funny you missed that if you've been following the development for years)
As for everything else - it's all subject to the Non-Disclosure-Agreement so you may as well stop asking about it.

Of course - if you have complaints about the beta-testing then you should be adressing them to Aaron himself as he is the guy that runs the show.

Why on earth you need to know about the backgrounds of the team I have no idea, but *you* come across as being rude just for the sake of it. If you don't like the state of the game as it stants, wait until it's patched until you do.

I'm sure Aaron will be thrilled to hear about your opinion on his marketing and development strategies, but then in my mind he's always seemed to be trying to make the fans of the series happy - goodness knows what you think he should be doing. In my opinion, I would rather he *did* undertake this project even though he's a one man team - You on the other hand have already said he shouldn't have bothered. I don't know where you got your "facts" from about listening to game reviewers, but since that's beyond my scope of influence I'll assume it's out of thin air along with the majority of the rest of your post.
As for serious criticisms - well, if you really had been paying any attention over the scene you would be well aware about the gripes and problems which have been raised by the testers over the last year and a half. How on earth you got the idea they are/were made up of yes-men playing with spreadsheets is beyond comprehension.

To be perfectly honest, people like you disgust me - always wanting to chime in with your trumped up narcisist views. MM/Aaron is doing just fine without you and your non-constructive criticism.
______________________________________________________
I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26

And how about quantifying that? - he did ask for detail
You may as well have said a load of buzzwords.....

Conceptualise, objectivise and realise a framework diversity through empowerment of sustainable synergy.

The only relevant part of this post is the return to 2D graphics, and in terms of gameplay that's a very minor point.
______________________________________________________
I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26

I would love to see a z-axis in an SE game. We already have forward, backwards, left, and right, why not up and down? It would add more realism, be the first of its kind in a 4X space game (to my knowledge anyway) and be awesome. Since there is already 3Dness, what has to be done is add layers. Then they could add up/down buttons to the GUI and find a way for ships to indicate which layer they were on. If there could be a way to add it, it would be awesome.

Didn’t your mum ever tell you how impolite it was to butt into a conversation? I wasn’t asking you. So how about you just stop being a whacker and buzz off mate. Then Fyron can answer the questions.

Before your bodgy bud spit the dummy, I believe there were some questions before you.

My, you're bitter.

Had you said that sort of thing in the first place and not been so ridiclously insulting this might have gone better. First thing you do is complain about SE geeks; the second is demand a "return to the fold" which you later define. Said defintion sounds like it matches SE geeks pretty closely..and more importantly most of your complaints would apply to the orignal release of SEIV as well.

and I don't really care. All I got to say is, I have always loved Space Empires and I will always give every incarnation of the game a fair chance from the start, and a chance to get better over time. Even if the stock game no longer entertains me someone will always come out with a mod that I will enjoy. And this time I even intend on making a mod of my own. Space Empires is great, always has been always will be. If you have something to say, say it thats fine, but please don;t be rude. I don't want to see it and neither does anyone else.
______________________________________________________________
Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe.

Please forgive me, I was under the impression that public forums were supposed to be public, and private messages were for, well - you know - private things.
As for manners, get some yourself you arrogant troll.
______________________________________________________
I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26

Alas, in today's "waaa waa waa" society this is going to be more and more prevalent :/

People are being raised to think they are right in all cases, and that it is their god given right to be told everything they want to know whenever they demand it. The best we can do is duck-and-cover in these situations.
______________________________________________________
I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26

Everyone has every right to say whats on their mind. All I ask is for them to not be rude about it. Is that really so hard?
______________________________________________________________
Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe.

Hm. If this is the type of people who'll be joining the community now, maybe it is a good thing most of them will never come to shrap or senet.

visit spaceempires.net or shrapnelcommunity.com for better forums

Everything I know indicates to me that the beta-testers strongly communicated their concerns to Aaron/MM. Those concerns are the same ones that are now being echoed in the general public (if these and other fora are any indication).

I believe that Aaron will endeavor to address some, if not all, of the most critical comments and concerns. He has already addressed them in part, and history implies he will continue to do so.

It has been made very clear elsewhere that he reads SEV-related emails that he gets and accords them more importance than the forums. So email concerns to him directly if you want them addressed. He's not going to lurk in all the forums trying to figure out what people want. His email address is on the Malfador website.

There is no call for rudeness on a public forum (at least not when it comes to a game). I've always felt that the TBS community is better than that. Rudeness should be reserved for other game forums (console, WoW, etc...) that overflow with it. For TBSers, shouldn't vigor be put into constructive criticism?

I have heard this from several people now. I just do not understand why Aaron would not put stock in forum posts that are clearly written and clearly define problems. I do not know him, nor understand his reasoning for not directly communicating with his users base.

I would not expect him to "lurk" but the acceptance and success of this game is (I would think) a large part of his livelihood.
All of us have jobs with part of those jobs that are not as fun as other areas.
So it is a bit inconvenient, or not enjoyable to come and talk to the people that buy your game, but it would be good for business.

I rather not have to jump through hoops with the hope that my concerns might be heard by sending him emails that are easy to view right here.
If all the Beta testers spoke up and they were not listened to, then why should I think a non-tester, but a simple customer would be heard?

I am not sure if I will ever understand this point of view or agree with those that defend such a position.

In fact I read on another SEV forum post where the base game lacks but that is OK because maybe Aaron wanted it that way to have others create Mods. Give me a break; if people are in the dark as to why the game is like it is and they are the long time committed people, why would people like me (a casual player) think any of this makes sense.

I could say a lot more, but I will ask a question of you all. If I send Aaron a mail to come and read his “official” forums do you think he will really listen?

I totally agree with the hope of a quality community and one that fosters people wanting to be here.

I can sort of understand why he may not read the forums, I mean - just look at how many threads have popped up already - by the time he's read some of them (and written a reply) he'll spend more time dealing with forum posts than working on the game. It could very well just be this sort of concern rather than anything else... or he might be the type who writes for fun rather than profit
All total speculation on my part mind you, for a real answer you'd have to... wait for it... email him!

Before anyone suggests "well, why doesn't he get someone else to read - condense topics into digests for him and then reply on his behalf then" - that seems to already be what Kwok and the other testers are doing, plus the remainder of us in the community still help as much as we can when we know the answers. Already we see many reposts of the same issues with different wordings because old topics slip down off the first page - if Aaron were to come here and personally adress all the concerns not only would he spend most of his time answering posts (to prevent a "HEY! he got his questions answered - why not me?" situation arising), but repeating himself on old issues.
______________________________________________________
I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26

Yeah, I am not sure I agree with it either. Although I can't fault someone for not wanting to wade through hundreds of forum posts of which only a small percentage contain well thought out and constructive criticism useful for the game designer. All I can say is...I guess that's just the way he is, and I can see both sides of it.

I'm pretty sure that he reads emails he gets. He has responded to mine, in the past, I know that...So I do, strongly, suggest to email him with your concerns and suggestions. There is also a bug reporting and feature request system (go to 'projects' on this site) that you can also use, but I think emailing MM directly is best.

Faithful,

It's a time issue. I for one having trouble keeping up with the forums here and elsewhere and I'm spending too many hours already and I don't even have a game to fix up!

I suggest sending e-mails because it's easier for Aaron to either have a savegame example or to log the report than going through the forums. Although it's still good to post bugs in the forum because other users can provide feedback or confirmation.

Secondly, it's been a little misleading about comments made by testers etc. Yes, many of the reported issues were known and reported before and many were not addressed before the demo/release version - but it was again more of a time issue than being "ignored".

Now that many of the "administrative" type details have been taken care of, we're seeing more effort focused on bug/UI fixing. Could we have just waited a couple of months before release - sure - but I think perhaps having the release out serves as a greater incentive for lighting the fire under Aaron's butt.

-----

Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

There's a saying. "You can please some of the people all of the time and you can please all of the people some of the time. But you can't please all the the people all of the time"

To say that MM is a specialised market game and not mass market game because of it's learning curve is quite unfair, because civilisation follows a similar suit and is considered a mass market game.

The target audience are those that enjoy strategy games with a sci-fi environment. Space Empires 'is' a strategy game with a sci-fi environment and i'm probably not going out on a limb by saying that it's one of the best ones out there (the fans of the series would be cheering this opinion).

By adding a real-time combat solution to the series opens this niche game up considerably to a much larger audience. To say that this game 'may' (as in a possibility) carry it to the masses is a very fair statement.

The developement on the demo stopped around June/July time and it is now October. A lot can happen in that time.

To add my two pennies worth, I've come across "perfect" demos only to have the full release of the game to be a pile of crap. A perfect demo can cause a lot more trouble if the game is rubbish, especially when you decide to buy the game because of it.

And to finish up - If you were decent and open minded you would sit down, shut up and wait for some reviewers to give opinions of the full game before you go out and buy it.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

they've added it to a limited degree in other space games, for instance ascendency had a 3d warp point map you had to rotate to fully see the relationship between the different star systems. BotF had 3d flight, though limited combat control. Didn't Imperium galactica 2 have a pseudo 3d combat, hold down the mouse and you could set height. I also know that it was in homeworld, granted its not a real 4x, but it lets you see what you would get from such a system, which as near as i can tell, is nothing.
Really, what about such a system are you looking forward to, would make it awesome? Please describe
cause as i see it, the difficulty in programming a computer to think in 2 dimensions is bad enough, but getting it to think in 3,and do so within the constraints of current processing power when dealing with massive numbers of ships and an entire galaxy of planets. And then designing an interface that is not so clunky and cripplingly bad that you can actually use it effectively, and for what? i mean its a novelty? whats it get you other than an "ooh" and "ahh" at first glance, followed by a head ache from trying to figure out whats going on. looking at a mass of ships ontop of ships, trying to figure out who is actually bellow who, beside who. color coding aint gonna help in a battle of 100 or more ships where they are going to be right on top of eachother, masking eachother. which means multiple views, or spinning the camera around like mad. trying to tell a ship which height level to go to, which direction. Gah!, gives me a head ache just imagining it.

I apologize if that reads as snippy, it was not my intention, but i am geniunly curious as to what exactly you hope to get out of a z axis, how you imagine it working.

And this is why we need those fancy 3d-holo-table display thingies you see in the sci-fi shows.
______________________________________________________
I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26

I'm not meaning to be snippy either, I'm just writing as this comes off of the top of my already caffeine wired brain . Have you ever read any Military Sci-fi novels such as the Honor Harrington series? If so then you see what use this could have IF the game had facings for shields, armor and weapons (which I don't believe it does).

Basically, as an example, say you are closing with an enemy fleet on the horizontal plane, you pick a few ships within their fleet as you close and focus your long range weaponary on them (i.e. your missiles). Now this would most likely not completely destroy them and would instead result in the weakening of shields and armor on the facings which your weapons impacted, and perhaps destroyed a few components. As you get within your close weapon range you transition your fleet from a formation on the horizontal plane to the vertical plane as you pass by/through their formation. What this does is allows you to turn your close range weapons to strike along 3 facings (top, bottom and side) rather than hitting them from just the side preventing them from protecting themselves by turning undamaged facings into the line of fire.

But admitedly with space combat the way it is, the lack of "newtonian"/inertial flight and facings for weapons/shields/armor it is relativly useless in the game as it presently exists.

And no it isn't hard to program games to take into account 3 dimensions and many already have (Homeworld, H2, Orb) the problem is the devs usually fail to give enough fleet organizational control to the players (through the use of allowing players to set up their own custom formations to hotkeys and the like), fail to demonstrate within the tutorials the advantages of such maneuvers and possible counters, and make battles/maneuvering so quick and hectic even with large ships that the use is largely lost. They seem instead to dumb the game down in the hopes of getting more casual gamers because they think the casual gamers can't wrap their heads around 3D instead of properly educating them. And that is NOT a slam on Aaron as he never did more than 2D combat (unlike say the makers of Sword of the Stars who HAVE done 3D combat in the past in the Homeworld series, but yanked it out of the new game instead of informing players how to use it right). I only hope that some day some 4X company will take the initiative and do 3D space combat and do it right, but I don't think that will occur until either Aaron makes that leap himself, or Creative Assembly makes a Total War Sci-Fi game as they already take all 3 dimensions, inertia, etc. into account in their current ground based 4x games.

With the tech available today i'm suprised VR hasn't made a comback. Now that you can get LCD screens that can fit on goggles that weigh only a few grams (as opposed to the 1/2 kilo jobs of the 90s) with resolutions as high as 800*600. That + solid state gyroscops (I think that what nintendo wii controller uses) would give superb response.
Add a glove to that and voila, full on virtual controls. (Ah crap...there goes my opportunity to patent the idea )

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

Haven't read those books no. But i know what you're talking about as its been used in countless books, movies, etc.

shield facing and these kinds of tactics are best reserved for games like "Star Trek: Starfleet command". Single ship or squad level combat. orchestrating a potential armada for this kind of thing is micromanagement at its most psycotic, especially when you take into account the sheer volume of battles a player is likely to have to fight in a single game of SEV. they did shield facing, and firing arcs, to a 2d degree on Moo2, and the minute you got more than say a dozen ships to a side, combat got tedious for me. more over i doubt you will ever, in a 3d enviorment, with all the tactical considerations, get an AI to be able to perform anywhere near an effective level, especially since the AI can barely function in a 2d level.

I should clarify, when i speak of the difficulties of 3d programming, half of what i am talking about is the math and logic for the specific game, the other half is getting that math and logic to work within processor constraints. Homeworld didn't have custom ships to the best of my knowledge, with variable amour, shields, weapons, range, damage types, and other combinations to take into account when performing its tactics. and yes it was dumbed down, but i doubt as much for the sake of gamers as for the sake of the program and programmers. more over it was representing a very limited number of ships, no installations, no planets or colonies, satelites, drones, troops, and the fighters were counted as ships.
It is very difficult to program in 3 dimensions without makeing sacrificies that a game like this couldn't tolerate, especially the way you want it. you can play just about any 3d game from space combat to first person shooters, to RTS's and find annoying little instances or short comings that come up far to often that were essential for the game to run at a reasonable speed or give the AI a fighting chance.

this isn't going to sound right, but if thats why you want it, shield facing and these kinds of individual ship tactics, then i can understand why you think you do, but i doubt you would really want it, or take advantage of it, if you actually got it. And short of giving a generalize order to a ship, that it could ever be achieved in a descent user interface. It can sound good on paper, or in a movie, and can be effective in really life, but trying to manage it from a few dozen to a hundred ships in a few hundred battles in a 3d world?
and in the end you are talking about a lot of work for one small aspect of a very large game. 4x, eXterminate is only one of those x's, and space combat is only part of that x.

And now i'm going to apologize, cause im sure that came out wrong, i'm exhausted from lack of sleep, and i've no doubt it sounds snippy now, along with being horribly mispelled, and lacking the grammer of a fourth grader.

I tend to think in more theoretical terms. If you are advanced enough to actually create a solid energy barrier around an object, in this instance a ship. Then you would be clearly smart enough to find a way to quickly shunt large amounts of power around the ship to the shield emitter that requires it the most. The only instance where this wouldn't be possible would be if the shield emittor was damaged.
So the next logical construction would be to make many small emittors like a fish-scale affect around the ship.

Now what i'm saying is that the emittor is only a small 'projector' of the shield, and it's actually the generator that creates enough energy to make the shield. So in SEV term the generator is the componant that would get destroyed by shield generator targetting weapons. The emittors are essentially the 'hull' and destroying 1,2 or even a dozen of these emittor 'scales' wouldn't actually have any effect on the ships ability to shield itself.

So in essense the reason why they don't have shield facing in SEV is because all the races are so damn smart that they've overcome 'Star Treks' limitation of bulky crappy single facing shield emittors. (Notice that the white star in Babylon 5 has also overcome this limitation )

Star trek fans + theoretical scientific arguments + babylon 5 + couldren, let it simmer for 1/2 hour and serve with a garnish of sarky comments. The perfect dish!

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

I hate newtonian flight models in my space games, sure its realistic but its not fun. The old WW2 dogfight/battleship combat is much more interesting.