Beta version: 0.20[b].002 (most recent as of 9pm EDT June 14 2005) Multimedia pack NOT installed
System: Athlon64 3400+, Asus K8V SE Deluxe MB, 1GB RAM, GF FX 5950, SB Live 5.1
I attempted to attack another ship, which sounds like I got further than most everyone else... The game locked my entire system up. Had to push the reset button...
Things that work so far (no crashes):
building ships, designing ships, colonizing, building structures, researching, moving ships (with exception noted below), invading planets (conquered 2 terran worlds), race selection screen (selected one of the new races), customizing racial traits (customized my new race with different traits), exploration
Things that are quirky:
Research screen not logical - difficult to tell which techs are researched compared to not due to very subtle image differences, and tech tree is way whacked. I understand that this is not fully implemented, but techs should be listed in order of availability. Several of the tech trees are very randomly scattered, others are great.
Designing ships can be tedious - Engines are listed as size 5+10%? End result is something about size 7 or more. Very unclear especially since all other items are size 1 or 2, with no other additions. Removal of unwanted items from a ship is annoying. Needs to be a hotkey assigned to remove items. Recommend DEL. When you remove an "extra" from a ship, the extra's hard points are still visible till you click on a different item to place. When you remove any other object, the hard point disappears till you click on a different item. Needs to be a visual representation for sensors range, troop capacity and colonist capacity on any given ship. Very easy to forget sensors, since there is nothing to even refer to. Also, can we paint our ships another color? Even if we still have to have a stripe of our empire color, painted ships would be nice.
Initial ship did not work - Game started with a ship named "[race] flag ship" in my possession. This ship would not move, and it's image was ghosted near the spot I could select it, instead of properly on top of the selection point. Destroyed the ship, since it was not useful. Image remained for the rest of the game (till the fatal crash above). Have not yet loaded my autosave to see if it is still there even after that.
Starport build queue does not accept "nothing" as a valid entry while using the "keep building same type of ship" option. If I click on "nothing", I continue to build the current ship. This even applies to conquered worlds with starports. I conquered a terran world, and a few turns later built a colony ship because I hadn't even realized there was a starport there. Perhaps it might also be wise to include a small graphic on the main map for any of your worlds that have starports. Also, might be wise to include information about build queues on the main map. That way you can see at a glance what your empire is doing.
While writing this I have installed the multimedia pack... we'll see if that changes anything, heh...
