Tried to think of a good topic for the thread, I don't want to make it sound like I'm beating a dead horse or anything, that's not the point.

I've noticed that the "speed" difference between single player and multiplayer is very noticeable, when in theory it should be the same. The problem is, I think, that when you play multiplayer (or at least when I do) even when there's no noticeable lag (like orders taking longer to register, or mouse clicks) everything is 'twitchy'. It's pretty easy to see, your units will move slightly, pause, start moving again. This is constant, with the pauses coming at least 1/sec, if not slightly faster. I've played several MP games now with different hosts, and I saw this in each of them which leads me to conclude that this either always happens or way too often to be a streak of bad latency issues. Anyway, the twitchiness affects everything, not just movement. Credits accumulate slower, but probably the easiest way to notice it is with the colony frig. Start a single player game, build a Kol or something that kills fast, send it over to the next system, once it's done send the colony ship over to colonize, and note how long it takes for it to charge up to 100 antimatter. Now start a multiplayer, do the same thing, and in my case at least it takes much longer to charge to 100 antimatter than it does in single player. I haven't timed it yet, I'll see if I can do it tonight when I get home and can play.

So, my guess is that the slowness of MP games is due very largely in part to this constant twitching. Single player just goes much faster. Eet mentioned this too when we played our game, so I think we both have the same idea.

Now for the stock market. I notice that when you're low on credits, buying crystals or metal seems to be based on a fraction of your total money? I've seen metal/crystal sold for under 50 credits when I was very low on money, then drastically increase while you sell (note: without leaving the diplomacy screen). Now, here's the issue. Because of the behavior I just described, I gather the stock market is supposed to fluctuate dynamically while the diplomacy screen is open, but it doesn't. For example, I can open the diplomacy window, see crystal at 500 to buy, then spend 10k buying it all at 500 and when I close the window and re-open it, *then* the price on it goes up, but every purchase was at the original 500. Is this intended behavior? It seems like a bug to me, that the price should increase as you're buying it as it does in every other game I can think of.. the way it is now is too easy to abuse. You can gather up a bunch of credits, wait until the prices are at the base 500, buy up everything and not worry when it shoots up to 900 after that.