Doggone double post.. Sorry..

Having been a gamer for many years, I don't have much of an issue with using the Impulse download manager - it's less intrusive than Steam.  Stardock have gone much further towards treating their customers as honest citizens than most companies.  EA, for example, is getting worse and worse, and all they are achieving is to alienate their sales base - pirates seem to take pride in cracking their attempts at stopping piracy before their software hits the shelves. Those of us who pay for software are the ones who face the tighter and tighter restrictions, not the pirates or those who use pirated software.  I understand their reasons, and I would be pretty hacked off if someone stole my work, but I don't go around threatening my customers.

My only gripe, as others have also mentioned, is the inability to save the update to a directory of my choice, so that I can retrieve it later.  I live in an area of this country with very poor access to the internet - dial-up speeds are the best we get, and the signal drops frequently.  Occasionally I can get a strong enough mobile phone signal to use 3G (like right now) but it is very expensive. I really don't want to have to spend a lot of money and a lot of time to re-download a patch.  We could save patch 1.05 to our HDD / CD, so why not the recent ones?  I log in as a registered user to downlaod, so why can't I save it?  If you are afraid of losing control because someone will host patches elsewhere, then by all means electronically tag the one I download with my username - I won't pass it on, so have no need for concern - but please treat me as an honest adult.

Sigh, kryo, you guys are gonna have to put this in some very obvious FAQ somewhere. If you have upgraded Sins to the latest patch version and want to make sure that you do not re-download the patches again in the future, use the Impulse archive function and save the archive file for future use (restore from archive).

I will admit that I too asked this question on this forum when I first started using Impulse because I didn't see it anywhere, so the question is a valid one for many legitimate users.

Which is true. But I meant an FAQ specifically for those who do not have good Internet access and/or wish to reduce their download bandwidth.

"Q: How can I keep my patches and updates to my SOASE so I do not have to download them all over again if I needed to re-install SOASE on my PC for some reason in the future?"

A: First, run Impulse to update your installation of SOASE to the latest patches. Secondly, click on the blue orb and choose archive.. then copy the archive.. then.. When you need to re-install your SOASE (eg. after a HDD crash), you need to install Impulse, click on the blue orb, choose restore from archive and select the file you saved from step 2..."

After reading all six and a half pages of topics, I've learned a lot, and I'm going to summarize what I gathered from all this reading:

1. Stardock employees are awesome! You find me another company with such great games that has real employees reading and responding to your comments and complaints. Props to Stardock for being so accessable.

2. SoaSE has a version of DRM, but a very mild one. What's protected? A patch. While this has caused some legitimate issues because of Impulse (no internet, slow internet, etc.), Stardock is obviously aware of these problems and is trying to address them.

3. Impulse really hasn't done anything to deserve the attacks it's getting. Some of you have had some legitimate issues, some of which have actually been addressed in this forum (see #1). Others are simply paranoid. I don't see how you can be. Try downloading a game with Steam, and then uninstall Steam. Can you still play your game? Didn't think so. Do that with Impulse. See? Impulse>>>>>>>>>>>>Steam. Is it a perfect system? Of course not, but it does address a lot of the issues that other companies have, and SD is working to improve their product.

4. Pirates WILL pirate a game. No matter what kind of DRM you have, your product will be pirated. 1.1 hasn't been pirated yet, that's better than any other game company out there. Look at EA. They are a much larger company than SD, have more resources, and a bigger employee base, but there latest hit (Spore) was on the torrent sites two days before the game went retail. How long has the latest SD patch been out? Is it readily available yet? Nope. Props to SD.

5. Pirating is illegal. The law says it is, therefore it is. Just because you aren't stealing a physical object, does not mean you are not stealing. How would you like it if someone called you to do some work for them (pick a profession) and then didn't pay you for it. "That's different!" BS! The people at (fill in the blank) put the time and effort into (insert product name here) to create it. Most companies don't do it for free. Some of you make the argument that "I wasn't going to buy it anyway if I didn't like it." Try the Demo. It's legal. If you don't like demos, then companies need to make the demos more appealing. Just because you download something that you weren't going to buy, doesn't make it legal. I know I'm wasting my typing here because...

6. Thieves will always justify what they do. We've heard every excuse under the sun. Doesn't matter. Ever try talking your way out of speeding ticket? You still broke the law, and deserved to be punished. Everybody speeds, but that doesn't make it legal or morally right. I wonder how you thieves would like it if I were to come and steal all your computers. No more legal than stealing software, just hits closer to home. Anyway...

Thanks for reading! Stardock, keep up the good work!

Disclaimer: This post has not been evaluated or approved by Stardock and does not necissarily reflect the opinions and views of the company. (Though they have been very up front about there opinions and views)

After all these discousions - the last updates were crazy huge again. Now from 1.15.048 to 1.16.051 = 220 MB. WHERE THE HELL IS THE BENEFIT now of this impulse stuff?????? Increment updates huh? Everytime i´ll start it - a new update of impulse is boring me as well.

Boys this is a F$%&/)(=?  DRM TOOL - nothing more. All those fine lib promises are just smoke on the water. Damn it.

All this complaining, I guess Impulse really does keep the pirates at bay

I do not use Impulse because I do not trust Microsoft and its IE7, but I think Impulse is a brilliant program and great new way to piss off pirates.  Hell, I say make patches unavailable and have a program like Impulse that actually edits the core files once a week, even if it is small 8b segments that take 2 seconds on the slowest connection (and do it in the background during game startup).  Sure people could still steal it, but they would have to go get some torrent every week or they could not play online (oh yeah, make the only one that works online the latest one).

HA, I love it! If ya can't beat 'em, piss them off without remorse!

Entrenchment 1.02 was that size.

The vanilla sins update (1.16) that you needed to go with it (which had most of the memory tweaks in it etc...) was about 200 odd MB compressed.

i think its disingenuous to say impulse offers any benefit to the consumer that any other downloader does not offer.

i cant even seem to connect to the service to get the latest updates to Sins. im stuck with 56k and ICS, so having a network install is important to me in the event that i have to reinstall my OS.

yea, i bought into the grass roots movement that said lets all buy Sins to support the developers who decided to make the game DRM free, who then turned around while sitting on this huge pile of money we gave them and stabbed us in the back by making the patches impulse only.

stardock has been wrong before, when they were saying multiplayer does not sell games in reference to GalCiv.

i also feel its weak sauce to say anyone who does not like impulse must be a pirate and find its offensive.

if you cannot attack someones argument, you attack their character and thus their credibility. its a bunch of garbage talk.

ah yea, i stand corrected.

i think you can do that in steam as well, no?

its nice that they offer impulse for people who want it, but not so nice for those of us who do not. i dont want 100 folders under Program Files, i want options. and some of those options are to download updates for broken features or whatever how i want and not in a controlled enviroment, and also the ability to sell games that suck or i dont like.

I like a number of others feel the need to jump in here to defend Stardock and Impulse from unjustified and uninformed attacks.

I think the general gist of the problem is Impulse getting dragged into the EA Downloader/Steam Validation argument even though it works nothing like those apps.  The problem I think is that it 'appears' to work like those apps. I dont know if there is an effective way to battle this 'appearance' problem other than trying to educate people. The EA Downloader/Steam Validation are made to protect the company at the expense of the consumer even if some of them like Steam attempt to give some value added benefits for the consumer.  Many of the problems and complaints about these apps/systems have found thier way into here.  Impulse on the otherhand was made for the benefit of the consumer AND has benefits for the the company.  Somehow WIN-WIN is a problem I guess?

Impulse is just a simple, optional, download manager, and automatic updater you get to use for FREE if you just register your purchased game. Registering your game is as easy as typing in your CD key.  Many of the games offered on Impulse even have demos you can download right through Impulse to (imagine this) try before you buy. Theres even a demo for Sins didnt the OP try it before they bought it? Impulse is user friendly, low impact, and greatly simplifies things like downloading the latest patch for game X without hunting around websites and forums trying to find out what the latest patch is and then find some source for the latest patch. You also know you are getting a clean and 'official' patch not some malware infested file you downloaded from www.malwarepatches.com.

As far as access to patches goes not every gaming website in the world has every up-to-date patch for every game ever made. Do people go around heaping hate on these websites for not having the latest patch for thier particular game? I can just see the post now, "Hey [insert file site] your repressing my god given right to the latest patch and/or every patch ever created (should I happen to want some screwed up interim patch that was later patched) for [insert game name].  I demand a full refund of my free registration." Oh wait many/most of the sites that host patches dont even allow you to post comments.  They must be repressing your right to free speech too. You'll have to go post some comments on another website about that.  Most websites that do have patch downloads require some kind of registration anyway (which likely requires validation of your email address) and many of them even have 'download' managers of unknown origins or purposes.

Stardock has been around for many years now and has always displayed an utmost of integrity, professionalism, and an unrivalled dedication to customer satisfaction and support for thier games.  Trying to lump them in with the likes of EA/Sega/Steam is simply uninformed hogwash.  Go over to those forums and see if you have the president/ceo/board of directors of EA or Sega posting responses SPECIFICALLY addressed to you - in an attempt to resolve your SPECIFIC problem. You'll be lucky if you see an autoreply email from a techsupport replybot that says 'Thank you for reporting your problem.'  Or try going over to those forums and complain about thier 'actual' DRM/Malware/Spyware applications that you are in fact forced to use to even start up thier games.  See how long it takes for your thread to be locked/erased and your account banned. Here Stardock is letting you rant on and all the while trying to talk to you person to person to solve whatever problem you may be having.

Stardock respects their customers more than any other developer/publisher out there.  Thats why I have supported Stardock over the years and I see my support as a win-win.