Abandon SE4?Opinions:Space Empires 5 screen shots?

[Captain Kwok]

*sigh x 2*

We've been over this ground so many times. The tactical combat in SE:V is Inherently more fair than the old tactical system in SE:IV. No more first shot advantage and other sorts of silliness that drove people crazy.

And for the record, the gameplay actually has significantly more depth than SE:IV and hasn't been "simplified" for the masses, so no need to worry.

[Suicide Junkie]

I think the RTS style button/map/unit-info layout may be melting people's brains, CK.

***COMBAT IS NOT A CRAPPY RTS STYLE CLICKFEST***
Besides, it not like you get to manually control your forces in multiplayer games anyways.

[Fyron]

SE5 combat is much better than SE4. It is fallacious to call it "real time combat" because of all the Starcraft/Command and Conquer baggage that label brings along. It is absolutely nothing like those games. I'd certainly not be testing the game still if the combat was anything like those games.

SE4 combat sucks, terribly. There is not even an inkling of a basic initiative system as in games like MOO2 (1.31 patch). Both sides just line up and shoot, one at a time, everything on one side, in some gross Napoleonic system of warfare. Sure you can play with maximum ranges and such, but those just drag forth the other glaring issues of a basic turn based system. There is actually very little strategy involved in the SE4 combat model (other than exploiting AI weaknesses in single player).

Especially in the stock game, SE4 combat tends to be winner take all (past the pointless early game battles of 3 ships against 3 ships), because the more powerful side can deal out tremendous damage before the enemy has a chance to fire back, each round. This is totally imbalancing and nonsensical. Some mods try to get around the horrid limitiations of the combat engine by overpowering defenses so that ships survive multiple rounds of fire, but this can only go so far. With a good initiative system, you can get situations where ships on each side move and fire at each other back and forth, avoiding the one side moves entirely crap that so weakens SE4. SE5 does exactly this, but smooths out the initiative system infinitely. It is not a matter of just trying to make the combat glitzy, it is a concerted effort to make it better, to make it balanced and sensical. Playing with it in tactical mode is certainly not a click-fest/button-mash like Starcraft/C&C type games.

The auto-pause feature is the real clincher... It turns the combat into a simultaneous execution system with perfect initiative. There is no silliness with ships moving in, firing, and moving out before the enemy can react as in a primitive model like SE4; it all happens in a better, more fluid environment. No more missile dancing! There have been games that seek to put into place complex initiative systems to approximate realistic action, where ships do part of their actions for a turn in phases. While this does generally make the combat engine more balanced and sensical, it does create horribly complex, anti-fun rulesets that get in the way of playing the game. A continuous time model achieves the same goal, though to an even greater degree, without the madness.

It is still a deep TBS game, just with a better engine for combat execution. The ships are just as complex as SE4; their interactions in combat are governed by similar horribly (beautifully?) complex rules. There is no RTS style oversimplification of unit stats into attack, defense and hitpoints, no horribly frantic pacing (though you could probably create it if you ramp up weapon damage...). I can't really go into detail due to the NDA, however.

"If I want to play a game where the number of mouseclicks per second"

Number of mouse clicks is not even a relevant complaint when you can pause the combat and issue whatever orders you like... Click-festing can only be an issue if you refuse to use the pause hotkey and the auto-pause feature.

And it is absolutely nothing like MOO3, in any regard. Why do you think Aaron Hall would be so inept as to follow in MOO3's footsteps?

Remember, "real time" does NOT mean click fest. It does NOT mean "like a RTS game." RTSes are only click fests because the game engine is made to be click festing. SE5 is not made to be click festing.

(I wonder how many more times I will need to make this argument... at least the 6th time in the last few years. )

=0=

Roanon said:
I do hope the testers do their job properly... I would recommend a second beta phase with more testers, especially players being totally new to SE if possible.

I'm fairly offended by this whole paragraph, as I imagine most of the other beta testers are as well. I don't know what rabid fanbois you think are running around merely gawking at new features, but I assure you there are none in the beta tester group.

[Roanon]

Ohh - careful. Judging the depth of a game is the most difficult thing at all. More options just don't make a better or more complex game. If an optimal strategy can be found, trivializing all choices, forcing one option making all others game looser choices (why does SE4 race design come to my mind?), there is actually more triviality not less.

No more heavy first shoot advantage, that is good news. How is it done? All shots simultaneously? Random ship-by-ship? Or is it planable, like smaller ships move and shoot first, or are there technologies that enable faster shooting? This truly would be great and add a whole new feature of tactics.

Another annoying thing in SE4 is the build queue mechanic, does SE5 finally spill over construction points from one build into the next ?? Would be great too ! Much unnecessary micromanagement comes from that, and there is really no technical or logical reason for this silly program behaviour.

[Roanon]

Imperator Fyron said:I'm fairly offended by this whole paragraph, as I imagine most of the other beta testers are as well. I don't know what rabid fanbois you think are running around merely gawking at new features, but I assure you there are none in the beta tester group.

I'm really sorry, I didn't want to offend you or anyone of the other testers, I apologize if you feel offended. I am sure you are doing the best that you can, I think I couldn't do better, knowing SE4 and the basic game structure too.

But I know from program testing, any one too deeply involved, having too much knowledge from a prior version, tends to test in a specific, often developer-influenced direction. Without wanting it, even without noticing it. Someone totally new to the game would have a totally different approach, trying things that might be ridiculous and senseless most of the time, but uncover hidden loopholes sometimes too.

[Suicide Junkie]

Consider the effect in starfury.

While your bullets are on their way towards the enemy, the enemy can be firing energy bolts back, and the shots cross in the middle. Two ships with equal weapons range will both fire, and both hit. Two direct fire ships in combat can potentially both die, leaving no survivors.

Naturally, projectile speed is a somewhat important feature of a weapon, since if your shots go faster, they hit earlier, and the enemy weapons get damaged earlier.

A nifty weapon might even be a gun that does Huge damage, but the bullets it fires travel slower than most ships. So it only works when the enemy is charging towards you.

[Dejavuproned]

From what I understand combat will be simultaneous, all sides involved will carry out their orders at the same time.

I know alot of people here seem to feel that graphics = less gameplay/detail. But thats not the case here, the graphics was not only a good upgrade but a needed one, Aaron would not beable to sell a game that looked and felt like SE4 with a few new features. Just like SE4 was a big visual improvment over SE3, SE5 will follow the same steps, just the order of things. But the game itself will be superior to SE4 with the combat being far superior, I always really disliked the first shot adv in SE4. Im sorry but you just cant sell games with SE3 or even SE4 graphics these days unless its a free open sourced game over the net (which isent even selling technically). One of the biggest knocks in reviews for SE4 was the fact that nothing about it was animated, all gifs and whatnot, lessening the immersiveness of the galaxy in the game, I agree somewhat with that, and it looks like SE5 will give you much more of a feeling of immersiveness and roleplaying potential then SE4 could. And lets be realistic, SE5 isent gonna do much to stress most people graphics cards, as even its graphics are quite dated.

my only knock on SE5 is it isnt coming out fast enough, grr!

[Raapys]

I'd buy it if it looked like SEIV. In fact, I'd be more optimistic about it then, because I'd know that the *one* programmer that is working on the game would spend all his time on gameplay, instead of making a new graphics and combat engine. In fact, when new games today brag about good graphics I'm immediately put off. Also, a graphics engine change in a sequel is just about always accompanied by a worsening of the gameplay because of limits in the new engine, time constraints, longer and more expensivedevelopment time on textures/models, etc. In short, gameplay elements are very often sacrificed for some bells and make-up.

In the case of SEV, though, I'm inclined to trust the beta testers on the point that it's 'deeper' than SEIV and not simplified. Mostly because it's the same guy who has provided us with all these games, and I doubt he suddenly just lost his touch and taste about what makes a great game of this type.

[Fyron]

"I'm really sorry, I didn't want to offend you or anyone of the other testers, I apologize if you feel offended. I am sure you are doing the best that you can, I think I couldn't do better, knowing SE4 and the basic game structure too."

No worries; I probably overreacted anyways.

"Another annoying thing in SE4 is the build queue mechanic, does SE5 finally spill over construction points from one build into the next ??"

I'll just refer to Kwok's post:
Production is like SE:IV but you can construct multiple items per turn for any item.

[Roanon]

"I'll just refer to Kwok's post:
Production is like SE:IV but you can construct multiple items per turn for any item. "

Maybe I have misunderstood this - sounded to me like you can construct X ships of one specific sort, like you can do with units in SE4. But it still is unclear to me: do you still have to construct ships in a way to be as close as possible to a multiple of your construction/turn? In other words, if ship A finishes, do construction points spill over to ship B or is any leftover wasted, like now in SE4?