Seeking Space Empires 5 players

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Basically trying to find if there is anyone on these forums that have Space Empires 5 so I could set up some multiplayer game.

So far, I only know DrumsofWar does but I would prefer to try to find someone else. I could try on the game's forums but I tend to dislike to play a game with a total stranger that I don't know if he/she will bail out in record time.

Recently, the version v1.79 was released to fix that no cooldown weapon bug that sometimes happened which could broke battles horribly in addition of the file compressing of turns (a major help to minimize waiting for turn transfers) so it feel like a good time to start playing SE5 again.

Note however that I tend to have my own personal mod that speed up games (5x resources gain, 3x engine speed for instance) that I prefer to play with rather than stock game.

[SaintKerrigan]

5, you say? Sorry, all I have is SE 4 Else I'd be willing to join in.

[Lavarinth]

Personally do you find it entertaining? Was wondering if I should pick this up.

[Hercanic]

Not knowing anything about the game, I went looking for more info.

Space Empires V Trailer

I like the alien species art. Looks like one of those sort of games that can eat away entire days with endless fiddling and customization. The action doesn't look particularly engaging, though.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

5, you say? Sorry, all I have is SE 4.: Else I'd be willing to join in.

Space Empires 4 might be fine if you are willing to play the Adamant Mod. Although from what I remember, latest version of SE4 is a pain to connect for TCP/IP play due to some old code.

Personally do you find it entertaining? Was wondering if I should pick this up.

It's probably one of the best large scale turn-based galactic conquest games out there. If you played the Civilization series (1-4) or Galactic Civilizations and liked them, you will probably fit in Space Empires 5. Another similar game might be Master of Orions.

Note however that you should not rely on reviews for that game since they are mostly based on SE5 v1.00 and the Space Empires series tend to always be released full of bugs and issues but they do get fixed over a long time. There is a demo at v1.25 although the game was probably still rather bugged at this point.

So anyway, here's the features of this game :

-> Mod-Friendly
Very moddable, basically lots of logically categorized text files you base on stock data and you create your own mod folder without any 3rd party tools. In addition, SE5 got built-in support to launch directly your mods.

Here's an example of such text file : http://hosted.samods.org/replays/other/SE5/VehicleSizes.rar

->Addictive

One of those games that have the addictive feeling to it. One more turn ... one more turn!

-> Customized Ships
Put all the components you want, the way you want in your ships. More weapons but less shields? A specialized stealth ship? Anti-Fighter ship? Construction Ship? Mining Ship? Any mix of those if you got enough ship space? You got it.

-> Real-time battles (Singleplayer only)

If you play singleplayer, you can control your ships in real-time in full 3D allowing detailed battle strategies. Unfortunately in multiplayer, you are limited in categorizing as squads and a ship strategy to each ship and/or squad.

-> TCP/IP, Hotseat or Manual transfers for Multiplayer

You got a friend at your home? Feel free to play hotseat with him.
Prefer one or few turn(s) per day? Go with manual transfers. Preferable method with most SE5 sites.
Prefer more extensive hours with friends over the Internet? TCP/IP is the way to go.

Best of all, hotseat can switch to manual transfer and vice-versa as wanted. TCP/IP can semi-go hotseat or manual transfer as long you don't do anything to permanently lose the TCP/IP game flag.

-> Fairly flexible map startups

You got a good choice of flexibility for generating your game's map and if it's not enough, you can mod your extra specific needs related to it or use a third party tool to create your own galaxy map.

In all honesty, there are also some drawbacks :

-> Lots of data transfer for multiplayer

While the recent addition of file compression helped a lot, it could take a while to send the compressed turn data each time to players as a host especially if said turn had lots of combat (and probably tons of fighters in them since each unit pumps the size).

Without compression, medium-sized 1v1 games could start with 300k data transfers and end up with 100 megs data transfer for ONE player. The true pain is for epic maps with 16 players that it could end up being 1 gig of data to transfer to EACH player, such case required torrent support so that it doesn't take ages to send the data to all players.

Fortunately, with the new in-game compression, I say the pain was reduced by 40-80% depending on the specific case.

->  Potential oddies or crash later on

While it is greatly debugged compared to its beginnings, there can be always that bug or two remaining that could crash your turn compilation at some point. Fortunately, the game have autosaves that you can rollback to and try other things that won't trigger that bug so you can move on with your game.

-> Lots of hours spent

Complete games can end up being 100+ hours of your time. It's addictive enough to make you willing to do so but it's not always in everyone's interests to put so much time on a single game. Some might prefer playing that long but in much shorter bursts (one or few turns a day over 2-3 months).

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Double-Post but for a good reason.

Note : My ships/units tend have the "RH" tag while DoW tend to have more sophisticated or historical names.

QUICK-EDIT : All the videos can be seen in full screen 1024x764 details.

Here's some of my videos of SE5 so far :

http://hosted.samods.org/replays/RHvideos/SE5_x5_RH_Homeworld_Destruction.avi
The game where DoW used intelligence on me and managed to steal one of my spaceyards at my homeworld and use it against me ... and actually win since I severely neglected my homeworld defense. Probably one of my humiliating games of all my history (which I don't mind to share).

http://hosted.samods.org/replays/RHvideos/SE5_ConversionAttempt.avi
One of DoW's attempts to mass convert everything I had, I had too much defense for it to actually happen.

http://hosted.samods.org/replays/RHvideos/SE5_HardcoreLanders.avi
DoW attempting to land conquer on one of his earlier planets conquered by me. He actually managed to slip through all those planetary guns.

I am going to make a quick game video to show the more concrete out of battle gameplay.

EDIT :

http://hosted.samods.org/replays/RHvideos/SE5_Early_Gameplay.avi

Here it is, an idea on how early gameplay starts and having a clue how it looks like. Unfortunately, I didn't set my sound recording settings right so I killed the audio and to boot I had my alarm clock program that popped out and crashed the game. However, I still managed to record long enough to have an idea on how it is and I felt it was enough anyway.

[SaintKerrigan]

Space Empires 4 might be fine if you are willing to play the Adamant Mod. Although from what I remember, latest version of SE4 is a pain to connect for TCP/IP play due to some old code.

Never heard of the mod, but I'll look it up. Also, are you referring to a hotseat style of game or take turn when you can? I don't have frequent enough I-net access for a hotseat game.

->Addictive

One of those games that have the addictive feeling to it. One more turn ... one more turn!

I remember that happening to me one time. Just kept doing "one more turn", and next thing I know it's four in the morning and I'm tired as hell...

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Space Empires 4 might be fine if you are willing to play the Adamant Mod. Although from what I remember, latest version of SE4 is a pain to connect for TCP/IP play due to some old code.

Never heard of the mod, but I'll look it up. Also, are you referring to a hotseat style of game or take turn when you can? I don't have frequent enough I-net access for a hotseat game.

For the way I prefer to play, I am referring to simultaneous turns with TCP/IP connection for easier continuous turns in a same setting (instead of a turn or few turns played per day especially in the beginning).

However, since you can only play for limited bursts of time, I can settle for a more e-mail/file transfer type of game allowing to do turns when you can. Maybe DoW might be willing to join in as well.

Btw, Hotseat (at least from what I know of it) implies two physical persons or more in the same house playing on the same computer which we obviously can't and won't do even if we could. However, I understood you implied continuous gameplay.

[Lavarinth]

Considering I played Civilization 3 for over 48 hours straight without eating.. This would probably do the same.

"Acquiring."

[UntamedLoli]

I might go and buy it, used to play 4 alot.

[DrumsofWar]

My name is DrumsofWar and I fully support this message.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Well, I am kind of surprised to get a few people interested since I thought it was more or less a lost cause off the start.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Double posting maybe but anyway ...

Seems Steam got Space Empires 5 at 15$.

EDIT : Should gave the link : http://store.steampowered.com/app/1690/