Howdy all,

Haven't posted for a while but I've been playing and have some things I wrote down.

Technical

1) I noticed that some of my save attempts the "Accept" button disappered and had to rely on my enter key. nothing big there just an FYI.

2.a) Not sure if this is technical/Game Play/ or both, but I noticed that after a lot of ships and structures are out and about on the map, zooming in to watch a battle up close lags the rear out of the game. I have to fight in the 2nd stage of the zoom levels where u can see the icons of the ships and structures but only hte rendered planet is visable.

2. I ahve also noticed that when you zoom in really close, that these planes( as in a 2-D plane) are generated that disort stuff and look weird. Doesnt happen all the time but I have noticed that they generate with increased frequency in bigger games and in hte laterstages of a game when higher unit and structure counts are present.

3) Upon loading up a game I have noticed that it takes atleast five minutes but mostly about ten minutes for the game to get going. It loads up and you can play but there is 5-10 minutes of skipping (both sound and graphics skips) and temporary screen freezes. This happens with small saved games and big saved games, no diffrence if I have 1 star system with 5 planets or 3 with 10 each.

Game Play

1) Please bring back the option to create your own custom game with specific numbers for planets and stars and the like.

2) While it isn't neccassary, it would be nice to have a Cap ship easy tab. This could be place on the right or left side of that ship pic in the bottom center of the screen. Often I have not heard/seen the message or the animation of my capitol ship rising in level. I am force to have to keep cycleing through all my ships just to get to my capitol ships. Since there are only 16 ships allowed, atleast for the TEC, the tab could open a list of the cap ships with the ship type/group number ( if it is in a group; I order my fleet by mission, so a cap ship in fleet 1 might skill up differently then on in fleet 2 or 3), level and finally the number of skill points availible to use if any.

3) Again, while not neccassary, a Fleet warp option would be nice. To me, it just doesn't seem tactically sound for my ships to warp in piece meal especially since all my heavily armored capitol ships are slower to warp then my smaller ships.

4) Just now thought of this but is it a good one, on the right hand side of hte screen where the buttons for individually ships are located should be a tab at the top of the box to allow for switching from individual ships to a fleet options panel. There you could indicate warp type(standard/fleet or group warp), formations, etc.

Game Play irritants, seeking clarifaction

- Slow pace of the game and the Domination of credits over resources.
I don't understand why it is that I have played for 6 hours on a Random Medium Game and have only conquered one star system. Not because I am a terrible general but because it just took that long to be able to do everything to get that one system. Not to mention that nearly all the metal and crystal are gone in my system so I am forced to buy huge quantitieson the market.
This brings up another point with that, if it is indeed the case that credits drive so much of the game, then won't be harder for the other races to compete or is it that we are just seeing the TEC (credit driven faction) part of the 3 race/resource triangle?

- I magine that you dont use Garda frigates (or whatever the PD frigate fothe TEC is called) because you wish to maximize you ship to ship/ship to structure dmg. Then imagine that the two Battleships in your fleet dont fire their PD guns at fighters because aparenlty in order for them to use PD guns they need to have the Flak Burst ability selected.
Irritating right!? Well, now imagine after learning that little lesson, you make other cap ships (because they automatically have PD gun on them) and you produce more Battleships w/ the flak burst going. Have you imagined it? Well now, lets siege the enemy sytems Caps in front. The enemy has about 8 bomber squadrons coming for you cap ships. No problem there, because your cap ships all have PD.... Now imagine that all you PD guns that fire are firing at frigates because the ship ai is stupid.
Please fix that I really dont want to HAVE to put garda frigates into fleet because of ship ai. I dont mind it if they are needed because my opponent using nothing but carriers and LCVs but I dont like it if it is because of ship ai not shooting the right thing.

I am sure I will think of more things later on, those are it for now. Happy Hunting

Take Care and God Bless,

Lharrs