StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Arujei wrote:Well, it looks really awesome, I have to say that. But I can't get to the download because Fileplanet wants me to pay them money! I may just wait until it's out before I get it.

InnocentBystander wrote:The game, so far as I can tell, is pretty much a newer, swankier Spaceward Ho!, which is cool, but I does lack depth.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:I think the criticisms are way overblown. People built it up in their minds as the new king of all 4X games, and then they're disappointed when it's rough around the edges. It may be a little obtuse, but I didn't have any trouble with the interface after a few minutes (except figuring out how to change camera focus, that took longer). It's a good game, and I think people are overreacting.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:I think the criticisms are way overblown. People built it up in their minds as the new king of all 4X games, and then they're disappointed when it's rough around the edges. It may be a little obtuse, but I didn't have any trouble with the interface after a few minutes (except figuring out how to change camera focus, that took longer). It's a good game, and I think people are overreacting.

Graeme Dice wrote: The reason the complaints are repetitive, is that the problems are glaringly obvious, and because the devs defend their choices with appeals to authority.

For example, the news ticker is completely useless unless you are trying to force people to spend minutes just staring at their message log instead of playing the game. Why can't I make a message log simply pop up at the start of every turn with each message listed separately? I don't care that the devs want me to spend minutes on each turn. If I am expected to play a hundred turn game, then I want the first turn to take less than 30 seconds. The second turn should be over in even less time, maybe 5-10 seconds. Otherwise the exponential growth of turn length with increased empire size will make the game unbearably long.

Why does the build queue charge you for items you add to it right away, then charge you interest on the accumulated debt, instead of only charging you for them once they start building? Am I expected to visit every single build queue every single turn just so that I spend more time playing each turn? It's fine, though annoying, if I only have 1 colony, but if I have 20 then I'll be spending more than 20 times longer per turn. That's going to make the average strategic turn take almost 10 minutes just to spend 30 seconds at each planet setting up the next turn's build queue. How is this an advantage to setting up a 15 turn build queue, then changing it if I want to? On the same note, why can't I add 15 of a single kind of ship to the queue at once? Don't tell me that I can't support dozens of ships, because I clearly can from just a single colony.

Why isn't there an option to make planet names always appear regardless of the zoom level? Why do the devs throw out ten years of 3D graphical interface design and force us to get repetitive strain injuries from mousewheel scrolling? Why does the interface outright lie to the player and tell them that they will be plotting a sublight course, when they are actually plotting a normal course that will only be sublight if you don't get fuel to the ships on time. Why isn't there an option to force ships to never travel sublight unless I specifically okay it?

Why does the research screen use a 3D interface when a 2D interface is easier to read? Why does that same 3D research interface use the opposite scrolling convention to every other 3D screen in the game? Why doesn't the research interface provide us with hard numbers on what effect the technologies will have? Sure, researching pulsed fission will make your ships faster. How much faster is the question.

Why is there no useful feedback in the combat interface? You are given absolutely no indication that your ship has a destroyed engine for example. Nor are you given any indication that your shots are hitting the enemy. Why does targeting individual components require me to click on the component on a rapidly moving object in a supposedly strategic combat model? Why isn't there a drop down menu that lets me tell the crew of the ship where they should be firing. I want to be sitting in the captain's chair, not at the individual gunnery consoles. Why are the devs so wedded to their combat graphics that they want to force us to get even more RSI's zooming around the screen? Why is the combat screen 3D when you can't give 3D orders? Why do they use Newtonian mechanics but not allow you to control ship facing independent of velocity? How do you plan to deal with people who cripple all the ships that are currently in the battle, then wait out the combat timer without destroying a single one, so that no reinforcements ever show up?

Why are there virtually no global options that you can set to reduce the micromanagement? Why can't I have ships from an arbitrary set of colonies route all of their production to a single central location. Why can't I set the auto-refuel status on all new tankers to on or off as I see fit? It's claimed that you won't have hundreds of ships flying around, but unless a dreadnaught can take on more than 20 destroyers singlehandedly then the cost differential will give the win to the person who swarms all of your colonies at once. If you can only support 4 dreadnaughts at once, then I can still hit 16 of your undefended colonies.

The devs claim that they are trying to get away from "spreadsheet games" which is what they use to describe other space based 4X games. The problem with this claim is that it's nothing but a smokescreen. Hiding the information that's necessary to plan a strategy from the player doesn't make the information go away. The game is still just a collection of numbers and rules governing the interaction between those numbers.

Graeme Dice wrote:

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:I think the criticisms are way overblown. People built it up in their minds as the new king of all 4X games, and then they're disappointed when it's rough around the edges. It may be a little obtuse, but I didn't have any trouble with the interface after a few minutes (except figuring out how to change camera focus, that took longer). It's a good game, and I think people are overreacting.

I definetly don't think that people are overracting, considering that the devs ip-banned me for posting this: