Greetings,

I have watched and been intrigued by the beta gameplay videos posted by Multianna, but the last bit of theater gave me cause to worry. I hope a developer might respond with his/her thoughts on the issue.

In most of the videos gameplay occurs in a single star system with multiple planetary bodies. The game possesses the capacity to play in multi-star systems (multiple solar systems). In the last video from beta 4, I believe I beheld an increase in game speed. With the potential magnitude of empire management and fleet management of Sins Of A Solar Empire I am very worried that this accelerated pacing will be too much for many players to grapple with, myself included.

Also, an accelerated pace of play does not do a service to the concept of mighty capital starships lumbering slowly through the cosmos. I know that in any rts the capacity of a foe to employ clever tactics against you is balanced by your ability to employ clever counter-tactics - accelerated rates of gameflow thwart that. To use an overutilized term, the game could become more of a reactionary twitch-fest than a *strategy* game.

I am worried that peoples` impatience might compromise what is a proper pace of play for a game like SoaSE. I think this sort of contest must occur at a slow pace, lest the thing seem more like an exercise in the dispatchment of swarming bugs to points on a dirt hill or race cars to points in a track, rather than the calculated deployment and retrieval of fleets to distant star systems. Gamespeed must adequately support the game mythology/premise in order for the experience to be convincing and immersive.

I believe that a slow pace of play should therefore be the default game speed out of the box. I believe if this is not the case, many potential players are going to dismiss the game as yet one more reaction-based horder, albeit with sophisticated trappings that make one *think* it is more at a glance.

If I might be so bold as to address the developers directly: I think you need to make a clear decision about the game in this regard. I do not believe there is a 'balance to be had' here either. If you speed up the flow of the game you may move to satisfy those who want to play a contest within X period of time. If you keep game speed in line with the subject matter, keeping things believably cumbersome & realistic, you can appeal to people looking for something different from the StarCraft experience. I would hope you bear in mind a part of the genesis of your entire project - the evolution of 4x conquering games. A lot of people who were fans of those terrifically time-consuming contests are paying attention to what you are crafting here. If the conquering part of SoaSE is distilled into a hyper-active adrenal event, you`re going to lose a lot of them. And me.

Thanks for your time. I look forward to seeing more of SoaSE and to trying it out at some point in the near future.

P.S.: I would also like to hear some isolated game music, if that might be possible.