Demo - First Impression and some issues

[Gordon]

Milo, first I'd like to say that you have done a great job with this game, I have played the demo before the MP release and love the improvements that have been made.

Me and my friends have been playing the MP side of the game for the last few days and its been a blast. I did read on the boards about lag issues but we did not see evidence of this during any of our sessions. Unfortunately the newest Demo release did not come with a PDF file explaining the game in more detail but I had the older 3.9.0 version so I was able to use it and it helped. I had no problems setting up a server, but again the PDF file was a big help and answered all my questions.

We did come up with a few issues and was hoping that either you or the more experienced players could help us out.

The first issue was that we could not play the Hawk Match, as soon as we tried to start it the server would crash along with every players game. Is this a known issue or do I have a bad Demo download? I was running a dedicated server and can provide the error message if it helps.

The second issue was in the War Games scenario, every once in a while the game would announce the destruction of either the red or blue teams carrier when in fact it was not destroyed. Most of the time when this happened one of the carriers used its Quantum drive to jump out of a region. Other times it happened as soon as we started the scenario which was not as bad as it happening during a very heated match since you could just start over. Again any help from you or those with more experience would be greatly appreciated.

The next item has to do with the player that is hosting the game getting destroyed, but I believe you already know about this one. Instead of all the players going back to the mission debriefing our games crashed to desktop with a Windows generated error message.

The last item probably has more to do with my machine than the game but I would like to see if anyone else has had this problem that may be able to help me resolve it. It seems during the heat of battle my game would freeze, but it did not happen consistently nor did the other players get the same results, sometimes it would happen as soon as a battle started and other times we played for well over an hour before it would happen. In the destroyer Duel when I was on my server alone it will happen as soon as I engage the enemy, in each case I must give my computer the 3 finger salute to gain control again or do a hard boot.

I'm running a P4 3.06ghz machine with 1GB Ram and a ATI 9600Pro Vid card, all drivers are up to date but I could provide them if necessary along with any of the error files.

I would also like to let everyone know that we played using TeamSpeak and it worked flawlessly with the game. It adds instant feedback to all players and allows players on the same side to talk and give tactical information without the other team hearing the conversation. I would strongly suggest this for all of those interested in the MP portion of the game sine the ingame chat can sometime be missed.

Overall I give this game 3 thumbs up and will be making the full version purchase, I just want to get some answers to the issues I posted before making the plunge.

Again Milo, I have to say you have done a great job with this game, keep up the good work!

[Gordon]

I received an answer to the first issue that I've listed, from one of my friends who has the full version and he tells me that Hawk Match does work in it, so I guess that answers that.