Like any modern game, this one has scaleability. That is, depending on your setup, you can turn off certain graphical elements so that you can play the game even if it doesn't look quite so pretty.

There's no doubt in my mind that if someone wants the eye candy badly enough, they'll find it in their heart to upgrade that much-neglected PC which they're running. If they just want to play the game with what they have, then they'll configure away. The options also present the opportunity to speed up gameplay.... yes, much as you might like to view every fleet battle blow-by-blow, if you have a big war on it might take half-an-hour just to get through one turn with full battle viewing engaged

OMG get RAM, people, it's cheap now!

And I thought I was running lean with just 1GB. The very thought of upgrading "to" 512MB on a 2.8GHz machine just boggles my mind.

Considering this game was advertised as being low-end friendly...

Dude, low-end does not equate to obsolete, or antique.

k, back to the topic...who needs eye candy anyway? Eye candy is for games that don't have any substance or anything else but the eye candy, so they have at elast something that makes them worth buying...or borrowing...or at least pirating to see just how bad they really are! (kidding ) Seriously, how many people here would be playing this sequel to a space-based strategy game if it had nothing of substance, just bling, flash and a cool ship designer? (not that that's bad, but eventually you get tired of making ships and want to see them in action, and even on my machine which is far from leading edge but definitely capable of running anything current at close to "max eye candy" I prefer to tone it down a bit.

Some of ous with Good machines WANT the eye candy it helps the immersion and fun in the game. Ok people spend 1500 bucks and get a computer thats less then 10 years old for your own sake! its is friendly to low end machines the graphics are therey low grade in terms of the rescources and graphics card needed. If you have a dinosaur of a machine just turn the settings that are slowing your computer down of! (note my comp would cost around 2000 - 2500 dollars and it plays excellently no lag at all!

When someone advertises something as low-end friendly, it does kinda imply that the game will work fine with low end machines. While obviously that isn't going to include all of the best effects, you'd at least expect something a little better than magical disapearing spaceships. Explosions have been around since practically the beginning of games.

I'm not saying that they shouldn't have better explosions for people whose machines can handle it, I'm just saying that they should have a more basic explosion as an option for lesser machines. And what do you know, it appears that Stardock agrees with me, as they have included such an option in the latest update.

I get the few seconds lag when ships explode, and my system isnt THAT outdated. The demo worked fine for me, but now I've got the full game with 1.2 it lags like hell in battle or even in the empire map when my fleet attacks a planet garisson.

Question.... Do they make CD roms that will work with my Commodore 64?

Stardock bothered with the 3D graphics because some people play in multiple dimensions, not just the "chess" view. Everyone has their preferences... even me.

My Imagination, My Rules.

My guess is that it isn't the explosions themselves, but the 'shattering' effect of the spaceships. All the pieces of jewellry break off and start flying in opposite directions. Could that be causing slowdown?

My laptop has an X1600 as well and it runs the game pretty darn good. So yea, you don't need a really fast system for this game. A mid-range current generation video card is plenty.

Some of you guys must be trying to run this game on a Commodore64 or something....for a new release this game is about as basic as you can get as far as eye candy. I get what you're saying though...I'm still miffed that I can't get Dead Rising to run on my Atari 2600.