I'd have to agree with that; SE4 is about underlying detail. The building blocks are down to the level of separate components for bridge, lifesupport and crew quarters, and everything else except the kitchen sink
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By building on the fine details, everything above becomes similarily detailed.
In combat, then, if you get hit, your ship might lose some of its engines and, naturally, have a reduced speed until the damage can be repaired...
Now, should your battlefleet slow down so the damaged ship can keep up, or press on with the assault? Will the crippled ship be able to escape to a friendly base before being overtaken by enemies? Should it try to hide out in the nearby storm until reinforcements arrive?
Yet still, the detail is not required. You can turn on the design minister, use strategic combat mode, and just leave the crippled ships to their doom while you build new ships to replace them.
If you are more of a big picture person, you can merrily move your stacks of fleets around like chess pieces, and let the details take care of themselves.
You will likely be drawn deeper and deeper into the details, though, as you think "Hmmm I wish I had X..." and then go and make it...
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Is summary, it is very much about detail. You'll get into how things work... It's not just a ship; its a personally crafted work of art.
This can be seen in the turn times: from 5 minutes to check the big picture and get all the nessesary orders done in order to win ... all the way up to an hour or two for fiddling with build queues, local defenses, and giving all your ships unique names for the micromanagement inclined.
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Did I ever tell you about the story of the Avenger?
The fanciest and most unfathomably expensive dreadnought ever built, she was built to last - piles of shields and armor and bristling with point defense cannons. She also took the full output of a small mining world just to cover day to day maintenance. The same funds could have supported a twenty or thirty smaller craft, but the Avenger was the flagship of the empire, and she had priority.
Aliens had finally breached the empire's defense minefields after decades of relative invulnerability, and one of their dreadnaughts had just exited the warppoint into the empire's Home System.
The Avenger was the only ship assigned to that particular warppoint sector at the time, since her sisterships and Battlecruiser sized escorts were undergoing repairs from a previous incident.
Without a second thought, she was sent to finish off the mine-damaged DN before it could cause any trouble.
Unfortunately, there was a problem... directly beside that one enemy dreadnought were ten others, all still cloaked and lying in wait. If not for the light-to moderate damage delivered by the last of the mines, the battle would have been lost immediately.
The Avenger, now locked in battle, made some impressive manouevers. She attempted to stay at extreme range where her powerful ECM and stealth abilities would be most effective. She struck out at the fastest ships in hopes of slowing them down to reduce the volume of return fire...
After almost being trapped, the Avenger broke through; shields depleted, and some armor damage degrading her stealth, but only a few enemy ships still keeping pace.
Just as the tide of battle looked to be turning, the unthinkable happened: The Avenger ran completely dry on supplies...
Shields collapsed completely, weapons fell silent, and the engines powered down, leaving her to drift slowly while the enemy fleet poured onwards.
The avenger absorbed an incredible beating, with beam after beam cutting through her heavy armor plating.
At the last moment, reinforcements from a neighbouring sector were able to arrive. The pair of Battlecruisers swept past the Avenger, taking the pressure off. Combining some tag-team dogfighting with fully charged weapons, they swept through the field to finish off the rest of the crippled ships to save the day.
The avenger had to spend over 10 turns in the spaceyard undergoing repairs, but she returned to serve the empire for next decade before finally being retired.
She currently resides in orbit of the homeworld, and historical tours are held weekly.
Stardock Forums
Altho the stock AI is relatively weak, a number of mods have addressed this. The TDM modpack does an especially good job of improving AI performance and providing a challenging solo game, and it does this without changing any of the mechanics of the game, but, instead, simply tweaking the AI files to make them more efficient.