16 NEW Screenshots!

[MarkG]

http://apolyton.net/dir/index.php?cat=219&t=sub_pages

[Xentax]

Nifty

[ashbery]

WOW the orions new and old look fantastic

[danminster]

They look pretty good.

[ruitodobom]

What exactly is that cat doing in the senate?

Also... when do we get to see the mouse pointer??

They look awsome!!!!!!!!!

[H Tower]

from looking at the Imsaeis Diplomacy 2 screen shot it looks like you could set the attitude of beg and declare war.

and why is beg in the ttitude list twice? would it be begging on your hands and knees?

[Carver]

Holy pixels Batman, that sh_t is dope yo. Are those screens that look like movies movies, or another part of the interface?

[LDiCesare]

There is nice art, but also a few things that disturb me:
One is silly, but putting cancel on the left and ok on the right for a button is so contrary to what is done everywhere else with computers that there are times when players will curse the game because they pressed cancel instead of OK.
Now there is lots of text, and lots of acronyms. That doesn't help getting into the game.
The planet screens look like they will promote micromanagement (MM) a lot. We see only two of them, production queue and DEA. Both are full of lots of clutter from my point of view. Why do I need so much space wasted to show there are two DEA's being produced? Why so much text too? Particularly meaningless text like "DEA". If I learn what "DEA" means, I can just as easily learn what an icon means.
Anyway, wht bothers me is there are many queues, DEA's, economy, etc., which are all fine concepts, but seeing them all in the UI, I wonder about MM. With the IFPs gone, that lot of detail which remains present in the UI seems to beg for MM...
Did I say these screens made me fear a micromanagement nightmare?
I wonder whether any feedback on the UI from the beta testers could have improved anything considering it happened so late in the process.

[Straybow]

Dominant Economic Activity defines what kind of goodies you get from a planetary region, so they are producing something rather than being produced.

You could theoretically play the game ignoring planetary mgmt entirely. It is alleged that the ai does a pretty good job of managing the 2 DEAs allowed per region. You can look around to your heart's content, and µmg if you choose, but there will be some bonus that accrues over time if you don't mess with regional mgmt.

The idea is that talent is attracted, recruited, conscripted, or even forced to the DEA from within that region and other regions. Outside interference either makes working at the DEA less attractive or gets people concentrated on kissing butt instead of doing work. As for gameplay, that seems like a reasonable µmgmt disincentive.

Constantine indicates that he is personally involved in playtesting and is partly responsible for pushing the reworking necessary for a fun game ( = successful game). For me, putting a face on the bureaucracy bumped my confidence up a couple notches.

I do see one screen with cancel/accept in a counterintuitive arrangement, but I'm not letting that spook me.

[Atragon]

Originally posted by H Tower
from looking at the Imsaeis Diplomacy 2 screen shot it looks like you could set the attitude of beg and declare war.

and why is beg in the ttitude list twice? would it be begging on your hands and knees?

"Please oh great sir, may we go to war with you so that you may crush us utterly?"

[Master Marcus]

these shots are more polished next to most of the past ones, more impressive, indicating they've entered the final stages of the game.