Theempirewins

Hello everybody,

I'm now around 40% of the mod-play-test phase and here some of my remarks to you all and to Chris of course.

First of all, this is by FAR the most magnificent mod that i have ever played in the EAW/FOC existence,
That is also the reason i already sent my 'marketing' ;-) remarks to our PC GAMEPLAY magazine here in Belgium to add
this mod to their list in this magazine.

If they publish it in the February number, i will make sure it will be posted here !

So, i may say Chris congratulations ! in 17 months you have created a unique, and one of the best mods ever !

Reading also here in the forum and on other forums like http://empireatwar.filefront.com/ i have indeed also some remarks, all for
Chris to have a look at..remember, im only (due to time constrains..) at 40% of the testing.

What i have noticed so far :

The vast number of chips, and specially the SSD's is the best thing i ever saw, however, there is some unbalance between the Empire and
the Rebels, take the Executor (best chips i have ever seen!) and the Sovereign and you can almost beat everything you encounter, of
course they come at very serious price, but still, in my view the MC120 could be more powerful at least.

Also i found, playing on medium difficulty, that some systems have AI problems..
I entered with a really medium fleet the systems Yag'Dhul/Thyferra/Bestineiv and Druckenwell and i saw everytime a complete army,
10 times larger in space forces....FLEE from my very modest space fleet....i have played this instance times over, and everytime the
larger fleets of the Rebels FLEE, very strange!

I found also that the planets are way to close to each other, i often misplaced my space forces to the wrong planet.
The vast number of updates is mind staggering, fantastic how the player can keep updating, for me personally, even more updates
specially to the ground forces (let's hope in version 2.0...) could add even more depth to the game.

Considering what i have read and learned form this forum, indeed there IS a LAG problem...if you're PC is not up to it.
One of my pc's is a duo 6700, 3.2 Ghz/2Gb 800 mhz ram, raid0 and a gtx 8800 ultra oc (overclocked) card,(NX8800Ultra-T2D768E-HD-OC)
i have NO problem whatsoever to play the game....until in the largest GC you come to around half of the conquered planets, THEN i have the impression that the game-engine cannot cope anymore...

A little trick i found to help-out this nasty 'lagging' is when selecting a space fleet from a owned system to a 'red' (enemy) system it goes much faster
when you a) select your fleet and select your destination b) now select a 'red' (enemy) planet, you will notice that so long as your 'selected' system stays
on the 'red' planet that your space fleet travels much faster, strange but true, now even on my Ultra gtx 8800 i sometimes have 'lagging' on some systems
And yes, i do play also Crysis and other games at very fast frame rates, without ANY lagging.

I suspect that the EAW engine is SO busy scanning/deciding what to do with SO many systems that it cannot cope anymore the movements of the
human player.

The space fights and the missing hardpoints on the ships i found the best thing that Chris did in this mod, it's such a comfort to see at last a 'real'
space battle instead of pointing your space forces to that 'shield generator' or 'laser battery' hardpoint, however for the space stations i found this to be
a missing thing, also it seems the player cannot update the space stations, also no hardpoints, no repair facility, unless you park a repair ship next to it...hmm maybe in the next patch/release, also the TECH level stays always at level 1...?

Anyway, leaving you guys to play along the best mod ever, when i'm around 75% of this mod test-play i will inform you further.

I have never had any exception errors, so keeping up the hard battle to the rebels !

More detail and info also will be given then, i'm at the moment again in time-trouble..

Yeah time....it beats you everytime ;-)

Best to you all and Chris, again, thanks for such a nice addition to the EAW universe !