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26 May 06

Now that the story's over I wanted to wrap up with a few thoughts. First, I welcome feedback. Please don't hesitate to tell me what you thought of the story and what you'd like to see in the future. If you'd like it more personal, say from the point of view of a single character or if you'd like more pure war story without embellishments, let me know.

I have to say I had fun with the game. The AI did a lot of interesting things and kept me on my toes. I'm sure the developers will have the bugs worked out by release. If the enemies had effectively combined the neat tricks I saw, I would have been in serious trouble. I'm also sure once the higher difficulties are implemented, the game will challenge better gamers than me.

Personally, I felt the four minute combat was about right. Most reasonable battles could be fought in that time. Epic battles took longer, but they should. I think the 150 stars for four players was a bit big for my tastes. The game built nicely, but toward the end, even with great engines, there was just too much room. Perhaps that just a function of my limited available gaming time.

I really enjoyed the random tech tree. Even at times when it seemed to make sense to scale back research to increase my armies, something new would pop up that I just had to have. It wasn't until the end when I was catching up on items I had skipped over that research funding was scaled back. There was a point in the middle where it seemed like I was kicking out new ship revisions for most of the fleet every few turns that seemed like too much, but overall very fun. I would say the most noticeable technology missing from that game's tree was shield technology. Obviously it wasn't crippling.

Finally, I know I promised some new screenshots and movies. What wasn't that screenshot enough for you? Ok, I have more, but need to get them cleaned up and posted. I should have time over the long weekend. We'll see about the movies. I can't believe the headaches I've had trying to work on them. Mostly it's caused by my own ineptitude, but software problems and incompatibilities have worked in there too. If I can get them to work and if I have the patience to finish (remember I'm already tested to the limit by a toddler), I'll post them.

Next week, it will be back to normal around here. That means me rambling on gaming in general, begging for story submissions and regular news posts. I'm also working on getting some more interviews lined up. Let me know if there are any games you're interested in. If you were just here for the SotS story, thanks for visiting. Check back sometime.

Jason