You forgot to mention in your tutorial that you'll most likely encounter the annoying bug of "just seeing kinetic weapon effects" in the battle screen when using customized racial ships.

When I reported this bug some time ago, the Stardock tech support indicated that it was something with my cpu, drivers, etc.  I was convinced that this bug was just happening to me, and since Stardock wouldn't be addressing it, I gave up and stopped playing the game.  I figured I'd come back in a few months when some other patches were implemented.  

Anyway, good to know that this wasn't just happening to me!

Im surprised more people are not talking about the kinetic issue.

I started to think it was just me since one would think this would be a huge deal breaker for the game and/or no one watching battles.

Which tbh i am convinced the main dev's/people in charge do not care much about the battle viewer and possibly do not use it in their games.

Since #1 the viewer is crappier in crusade (ships starting on top of eachother range of weapon is pointless) #2 the battle viewers view options and just experience is awful and takes a lot to get used to. #3 The weapon effects are terrible for a game of this scope and of this year. One would think after all this time they could at least release some updates or even dlc to make the weapons much more sci fi and cooler looking. and less issue #4 weapons beam specifically do not animate where you put them on the ship if certain ship parts are used to make the ship. You send up with your ship just shooting weapons from a ton of spots on the ship which if you car about that it is really stupid an annoying and just plain sad.

But seriously how can you drivers and cpu make the game animate kinetic on some ships but not others? Im open to trying that but ffs went full clean install soo many times no install of all ships and anything to try and fix it but its still a craps shoot if w/e ship you downloaded will do anything more than shoot red balls at you.

I'm not saying this not is a bug, but I'm confused how this is game breaking. Honestly if graphics were my forrie in games I probably not play galactic civilizations it has never been big on eye candy. I can mention a lot of non wow'sers, but it is getting. personally I like the game play better than graphics. One thing thing that was better in two; because of lack of three demensional graphics it was easier to tell how your ships are doing. Three demensions killed this. I think the trade offs are better in three it makes for a better mini movie. I'm more concerned about ship stats than movies. I'm bigger on expanding, exploring, and exploiting than conquering. As a war game I don't even rank it. Honestly if there is a kenetic issue I'm not paying attention.I really watch battles for the movie aspect. I'm more concerned with stats then if some one messed up a graphic here.    

If your typing Island dog that is impressive.

So what you're saying is you wouldn't mind watching a Star Wars movie without the light sabers being animated, or the space battles without the blasters shooting. Just watching ships blow up. But it's not 'movie breaking' because you have the dialog, intrigue and plot twists.

Stardock put the battle viewer in for a reason. To show off the cool space pew pew of your epic fight to control the galaxy.

But more importantly, it's got to be a real turn off for the mod guys that spend hours upon hours customizing ship designs only to see their space boats just firing 'kinetic' animations.

I'd like to see Stardock address it, but sadly, it seems to be ignored.

I forgot to add the not on the part of I'm not saying this is not a bug. I probably not mind watching watching star wars without the light saber fights if they never had them. If they are pretending to sword fight without swords that would just be stupid. If they used swords instead of light sabers like in flash gorden, and called them light sabers that would be fine. But in order for your illustration to make sense you must be talking about pretending to fight with something when they had none. If they talked about the light saber fights without showing them it would still work for a movie probably not as good though. No what I am saying I get some thing different from a movie than a game. I'm guessing it's not that way for you. It's okay we are just wired differently.

Modding is just to much work for me. I might would think differently if I was a modder. Probably not though It might be modding breaking, not game breaking for me.