I wonder if a small skirmish mode might help online gaming for SoaSE, say, if you could start with small, medium or large fleets, determined by the devs as to what kinds of craft make up those sizes of fleets. In that way gamers could jump right into a battle without the necessary build up time that is normally required for the start of the game.
My thinking is that hard core gamers could opt for standard mode and spend however many hours they want, 2-3 or more, and the casual gamers could select skirmish mode and play for an hour or 2. Just a thought. It may be what the patch is all about anyway, since i am new to the game, 2 months now, and am not familiar with the details of the 1.1 patch.
Anyway, SoaSE is awesome! I mean i liked HW and Nexus and MOO and some of the others as well, but SoaSE has worlds better graphics and the game play battles are more cinematic. There are just a few things i can think of really to make it better than it is now. And the devs are probably way ahead of me.
Anyway, i am a casual gamer as well, and find online games daunting for the time reason, that and im not very good, i would hate to join a team and have them lose because of me
So for now i play single player mode, but the interaction of real people is always more fun, and unpredictable.
-Teal