Please no har counters! 3 weapon types and 3 protection types were the worst thing to happenen to ES1 and dragged it to the same mire as Galactic Civilizations 1-3. It just killed any motivation to play or bother with weapon research or fleets, aside from spamming jack-of-all-trade autodesigned ships.

Am I the only person very excited for the current system?



Listen, I understand some people want direct control of ships: That's awesome, but there's already a plethora of games to fulfill that exact need.



To me, the "plan the football play" sounds way more fun, kinda reminds me of a mix between 4X and Cold Synapse. Not knowing what the other side is going to do makes for interesting gameplay, and can lead to interesting multiplayer battles.



Everyone is acting like the game will be a total write-off because they chose to do their own thing instead of copying every other 4X game ever.

Romeo wrote:
Am I the only person very excited for the current system?



Listen, I understand some people want direct control of ships: That's awesome, but there's already a plethora of games to fulfill that exact need.



To me, the "plan the football play" sounds way more fun, kinda reminds me of a mix between 4X and Cold Synapse. Not knowing what the other side is going to do makes for interesting gameplay, and can lead to interesting multiplayer battles.



Everyone is acting like the game will be a total write-off because they chose to do their own thing instead of copying every other 4X game ever.

First of all, there is not some huge number of 4x games with decent realtime combat. There is the original Sword of the Stars released in 2006, the failed/flawed/publisher ruined Sword of the Stars 2 released in 2012 and Stardrive 2 in 2015. I'm not going to count Star Ruler because it is a full RTS. Where is this plethora you're talking about? Because everything else is turn-based or just auto-resolved.



If they want to do the football play routine for whatever reason, then basing it on Starhammer: The Vanguard Prophecy actually makes sense where each side can adjust ship position in a series of phased turns, not a single 'go and pray' movement. But that adds MORE micro not less.



I have to ask why there is a burning need to try to find clunky ways to tell a bunch of ships to go to point A and attack X. Or rather just move to attack X. You can have a facing setting if you want so your module/weapon placements comes into play. That's why people complained about the combat in ES. I didn't mind it, but why waste time reinventing a perfectly working wheel?

Romeo wrote:
Am I the only person very excited for the current system?

No, I'm excited for it in principle, but I do think there remains a lot of questions that need to be answered before I develop a final opinion.



But I like the idea of providing general strategic and tactical guidance, as opposed to control ship by ship movement.

Slashman wrote:
First of all, there is not some huge number of 4x games with decent realtime combat. There is the original Sword of the Stars released in 2006, the failed/flawed/publisher ruined Sword of the Stars 2 released in 2012 and Stardrive 2 in 2015. I'm not going to count Star Ruler because it is a full RTS. Where is this plethora you're talking about? Because everything else is turn-based or just auto-resolved.



If they want to do the football play routine for whatever reason, then basing it on Starhammer: The Vanguard Prophecy actually makes sense where each side can adjust ship position in a series of phased turns, not a single 'go and pray' movement. But that adds MORE micro not less.



I have to ask why there is a burning need to try to find clunky ways to tell a bunch of ships to go to point A and attack X. Or rather just move to attack X. You can have a facing setting if you want so your module/weapon placements comes into play. That's why people complained about the combat in ES. I didn't mind it, but why waste time reinventing a perfectly working wheel?

Sins of Solar Empire (And it's three expansions), Star Drive 1 and 2, Sid Meier's Starships, X3... In fact, with the exception of Galactic Civilization 3, almost EVERY space 4X game to come out in the last few years has had direct ship control. This is to say nothing of the space RTS games and non-space 4X games to also have come out in that time frame.



Again, I'm very hard pressed to say "Boy, sure wish Endless Space was less like Endless Space and more like everyone else". They're sticking to their concept, while trying to refine it and try new things with it. That is exactly what I want in a sequel: Something that is better than the previous entry, not something that is simply different than it. And I certainly don't want to see more homogenalization in the genre, that's what started to kill RTS for me. I also think that barring something obscene (We've decided to make the whole game in ASCII!) dismissing something as broken before it has even come out is patently ridiculous.

Romeo wrote:
Sins of Solar Empire (And it's three expansions), Star Drive 1 and 2, Sid Meier's Starships, X3... In fact, with the exception of Galactic Civilization 3, almost EVERY space 4X game to come out in the last few years has had direct ship control. This is to say nothing of the space RTS games and non-space 4X games to also have come out in that time frame.



Again, I'm very hard pressed to say "Boy, sure wish Endless Space was less like Endless Space and more like everyone else". They're sticking to their concept, while trying to refine it and try new things with it. That is exactly what I want in a sequel: Something that is better than the previous entry, not something that is simply different than it. And I certainly don't want to see more homogenalization in the genre, that's what started to kill RTS for me. I also think that barring something obscene (We've decided to make the whole game in ASCII!) dismissing something as broken before it has even come out is patently ridiculous.

Sins of a Solar Empire is more than 7 years old. Sid Meier's Starships is NOT a 4x game. X3 is NOT a 4x game. Space RTS games are exactly that...not 4x games. I'm talking about full 4x games with turn-based strategic play and real time, controllable combat phases. There are not many and furthermore there are not many GOOD ones.



As has been pointed out before, this is exactly the time to question what and how they are implementing things because it will quickly reach a point where they cannot easily make changes to the system. And a system that seems fine on paper can quickly become a hindrance later on if you don't properly examine it and make sure that it is what the players want.



I certainly don't want a system that claims to try to avoid micro and then find that it simply front-loads decisions that should be made during battle and not before it.

Romeo wrote:
Am I the only person very excited for the current system?



Listen, I understand some people want direct control of ships: That's awesome, but there's already a plethora of games to fulfill that exact need.



To me, the "plan the football play" sounds way more fun, kinda reminds me of a mix between 4X and Cold Synapse. Not knowing what the other side is going to do makes for interesting gameplay, and can lead to interesting multiplayer battles.



Everyone is acting like the game will be a total write-off because they chose to do their own thing instead of copying every other 4X game ever.

No I dig it myself. For me to believe an emperor would be able to directly control all ships in his empire seems foolish and would destroy immersion. That he would be able to suggest commands however is believable enough that I will at least not let it destroy my immersion. Practically I think the systems i really fun while saving time.

Eysteinh wrote:
No I dig it myself. For me to believe an emperor would be able to directly control all ships in his empire seems foolish and would destroy immersion. That he would be able to suggest commands however is believable enough that I will at least not let it destroy my immersion. Practically I think the systems i really fun while saving time.

But it is obviously not silly to expect that a galactic emperor would intricately design each and every ship in his empire. And it is totally not silly to expect that he would build individual buildings on his planets or tell his fleets what combat maneuvers to use on a per encounter basis. Sure...let's go down this road. I, too like to take an occasional trip into the absurd.

Just a quick question I'd like to have confirmation on, while it looks like it in the teaser art, will we be getting true beam weapons like this:





Instead/in addition to this:

I still like this method of combat, and will be happy if it stays. I also really like the addition of terrain modifiers.



I can see the concern about picking odd actions though and having it fail horribly. Has the dev team considered the Endless Legend approach, where there was a placement phase where you could see the disposition of enemy armies, and *then* picking a set of actions to follow? That could make for some really fun gameplay.



Also, I'll hold off on saying too much until we see the full design, but I really hope ship design isn't too messy. We clearly need more build options, but if options are added at the expense of watering down everything and making all the modules same-y, then it will be a step backwards.

Slashman wrote:
But it is obviously not silly to expect that a galactic emperor would intricately design each and every ship in his empire. And it is totally not silly to expect that he would build individual buildings on his planets or tell his fleets what combat maneuvers to use on a per encounter basis. Sure...let's go down this road. I, too like to take an occasional trip into the absurd.

We where discussing battles not design nor building choices.



In any case not going to go into a discussion on this subject as clearly you have your opinion and I have mine. And btw I really like it you have a strong opinion as well. The more fans who care the more love for the game



I certainly hope ES continues the road it has from ES1. It is after all one of the defining features of the endless space series compared with other games. With that said obviously improvements to the system would be great.

I think there should be a 'HEAT' metagame in the battle.



Vacuum is a perfect insulator. All waste energy - heat - would have to be stored on 'heat vaults', or released somehow. Part of it could maybe be taken advantage of, being reconverted on useable energy, but excess heat would give penalties.

This should play a significant part in the battle.



Heat signature: the more heat a ship has, the easier for it to be targeted. All enemies weapon benefit from high heat and take penalties for low heat. This is NOT just 'HEAT heat', but a term simplifying the description, encompassing the whole spectrum of excess energy emissions of the ship.

Heat buildup: how much heat all ship systems generate during operation (battle). This is added to the heat signature on every combat turn.

Critical heat: When a ship's heat becomes Critical, it starts to 'burn' - take damage from it - since it's just too much for the cooling systems to handle.

Cloaking devices: Tech tree of ship modules to conceal the ship. They are not 100% invisibility/untargetability, but they reduce the ship's heat signature.

Heat vaults: Tech tree of cooling technology which can store waste heat for later disposal/recycling. They are useful to conceal the effective heat buildup - until the vault is saturated.

Heat recyclers: Branching tech tree where excess heat can be recycled into useable energy to reroute to maneuvering, shields, or weapons, reducing the buildup and buffing the system respectively.



Operating mode: low signature, cruise, overdrive



low signature: a ship operating for low signature it attempting to generate as little heat as possible. All its system operate at a reduced efficiency.

cruise: ship is operating at standard levels. All energy generated should be absorbable by the cooling systems.

overdrive: an all-or-nothing tactic, where the ship generates more heat than it can dissipate or contain.



Kinetic weapons: should have travel time, lowest accuracy, and produce the smallest amount of heat compared to other weapons.

Beam weapons: would be hitscan, best accuracy and have infinite range, but produce a lot of heat. Better suited for damage-over-time.

Missile weapons: middle-of-the-road heat generation, have travel time, can miss, can be shot down by PDS. deal a lot of HP damage and increase enemy's heat.

Plasma weapons: Don't do a lot of damage, but can increase the ship's heat significantly, usually employed to put the target in 'Critical Heat' condition.

Magnetic/Ion: scramble all ship's systems, impairing targeting, maneuvering and heat management. May disable cloaking devices for next combat phase. Highly effective against shields but do almost nothing against armor/hull.



Point Defense Systems (PDS): branching tech tree:

Magnetic: effective to impair accuracy of missiles - may even turn missiles against enemy - and disrupt kinetic trajectories. Magnetic clouds are left behind and may linger on several battle phases.

Reflective: effective to do a flat reduction to effectiveness of plasma and beam weapons. Reflective clouds are left behind and may linger on several battle phases.

Ballistic: effective to shoot down missiles and strike craft.

Slashman wrote:
Sins of a Solar Empire is more than 7 years old. Sid Meier's Starships is NOT a 4x game. X3 is NOT a 4x game. Space RTS games are exactly that...not 4x games. I'm talking about full 4x games with turn-based strategic play and real time, controllable combat phases. There are not many and furthermore there are not many GOOD ones.



As has been pointed out before, this is exactly the time to question what and how they are implementing things because it will quickly reach a point where they cannot easily make changes to the system. And a system that seems fine on paper can quickly become a hindrance later on if you don't properly examine it and make sure that it is what the players want.



I certainly don't want a system that claims to try to avoid micro and then find that it simply front-loads decisions that should be made during battle and not before it.

That may be true, but it's among the more recent space 4X games, so it goes on the list.



X3 might not be full 4X, but it's knocking on the door of it.



Sid Meier's Starships might be extremely anemic in the 4X department, but it is still a 4X. Saying it isn't is akin to saying Age of Wonders isn't, because they're both combat-dependant.



And if you aren't asking for a full turn-based combat layer, what exactly are you asking for? Because if you take that away, we end up with exactly what they've proposed to do.



There is a time to question when something is obvious and patently wrong (If they suddenly decided to take combat out of the game altogether), but you're arguing about the balance and logistics of a system we haven't even had a chance to see in its entirety yet. For emphasis, this would be like saying "OH MY GOD, THE CRAVERS ARE OP" at this stage in time, without having any actual hands-on information to base it off of.



Again, I will reiterate: This idea may crash and burn. It may be a total let-down of a component. It may turn out to be my least favourite part of the game (As it was in the first Endless Space). But I'd much rather they try their own thing, then simply aping the others and losing their identity in the process. Even if that part of the game ends up terrible, it will be one part of a larger game, and a poorly implemented unique component rather than a well-done copied one.

Romeo wrote:
There is a time to question when something is obvious and patently wrong (If they suddenly decided to take combat out of the game altogether), but you're arguing about the balance and logistics of a system we haven't even had a chance to see in its entirety yet. For emphasis, this would be like saying "OH MY GOD, THE CRAVERS ARE OP" at this stage in time, without having any actual hands-on information to base it off of.

What I don't want is a messy system that ends up being fun to use...once or twice then becomes tedious. So for sure I'm not big on the idea of trying so hard to create a cinematic experience because you can only watch a movie so many times before you get bored. I don't want gimmicky mechanics that, in a roundabout way, achieve the same thing as click here to tell your ships to go here or click on this to tell your ships to attack this.



I like the idea of organizing your ships into battle groups. That should make commanding them much easier. So why even bother with a hands-off approach at this point? And maybe you're right in that we don't have enough information, but they are the ones who limited it. It is obvious they will be questioned based on what they've provided.

Again, I will reiterate: This idea may crash and burn. It may be a total let-down of a component. It may turn out to be my least favourite part of the game (As it was in the first Endless Space). But I'd much rather they try their own thing, then simply aping the others and losing their identity in the process. Even if that part of the game ends up terrible, it will be one part of a larger game, and a poorly implemented unique component rather than a well-done copied one.

You know there are times when developers go headlong down the wrong path (I'm not saying that this is what's happening here), and sometimes players see it. I really have had enough X-Rebirth experiences in my life that I'd like to at least speak up when something worries me. And this seems to be the type of thing that Amplitude encourages so why try to stifle that? If the only reason you can give is that you don't want it to change based on a certain type of feedback then that is a weak reason because everyone has the right to give feedback and question what is there.

Answering some questions. Sorry we've been a little slow to respond, but we've had a couple of very busy weeks!



Overall Battle System Concerns

Slashman wrote:
I think what worries me about this battle system is that I get the impression that it will be going through a lot of trouble to implement things that could just as easily be solved by letting players command ships in battle by selecting what they attack and where they go.



There is always this argument that tactical control over ships is somehow going to devolve into micromanagement hell etc. but having played Stardrive 2 and seen how very simple and effective the battles are done there I am left wondering if this won't just be another unsatisfying battle system that is remembered more as quirky than 'innovative'.



Choosing where my ships go BEFORE I even know where the enemy is going to be or how they group their ships is odd to me.



I still like the concept of battle cards, but they could just as easily be integrated into an RTS system as anything else.

There are a few core reasons why we are going this direction. We are trying to focus gameplay on the empire-level strategy, not the individual battles. What we're trying to avoid in a system like Stardrive's battle is that I as a player is forced to play that battle, because if i Auto the battle it will lose significantly more than if I play myself. Endless Legend has that issue as well and it continually becomes an issue for players that do not enjoy the battle system, but do enjoy the 'empire level' play. Even more so, it's a large issue for our multiplayer community we want to foster more, not scare away.



So, if you want direct control over battles - we have Endless Legend and you have mentioned a plethora of other games that do this to varying degrees and to varying success. Endless Space will not be that game.



To the point of not knowing where enemies are: Can I just say I find it even more weird that most games feature 100% clear top-down view of everything that happens and allow a single commander to instantly control all units in real time. Now that is really odd! But either way, games don't strive for realism. It is convinient to take the stance of 'You only define the overarching strategy', because that allows us to always get the same result from auto or manual battle.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
A few questions:

1.Will we be able to study enemy ships prior, in terms of not only what modules they have, but where these modules are placed? This knowledge would allow us to reasonably predict how their ships would move.



2. When deciding how each flotilla moves, do we do so only for the first combat phase, or for all phases (or do we set the parameters we want)? What happens if the flotilla's movement is executed in the first phase, and there are still 2 phases left? Does it then not move or does it move based on what it deems is best?



3. Are there any benefits to sniping the hero's ship in battle, like a debuff to enemy fleets or the like? Are we able to customize the hero's ship in terms of modules? Do their ships get bigger as they level up?



4. If we have carriers with fighters and bombers, do we decide the movement and target of these fighters or is it decided automatically? Can we for instance order all bombers to target a specific ship before the battle starts?

1: In the style of EL you can target the enemy fleet and look at their ships before a battle. We do need to work on clarity of feedback in these tooltips to allow players to quickly get an idea of what the fleet 'strategy' is.

2: Currently you only take one choice for all phases.

3: There is currently no plans to give special interest to take out heroes first. Though I can implement this in XML in 2 minutes, so depending on feedback and playtests we may add something like this.

4: Currently there are no 'targeting interaction'. To clarify, Currently targeting is based on the Weapon Module Definition. For example, Kinetic will always target short range first, then medium, then long. It will then target on a basis of ship size and finally on a basis of roles. So each weapon will have a clear targeting parameters that are predictable.

However, we have talked about expanding this to give more options to the players. Our starting point is as few options as possible in the setup, which we will expand on as necesary according to playtest feedback.

Sinnaj63 wrote:
The new battle system looks great. Though I feel like there should be, with you doing all the decisions beforehand, fewer hard counters, especially with tactical cards, because those could be OP in some situations in ES1 when you got unlucky or lucky.

The cards are only meant to be 1 lever in the battle. If a player strategically chooses a proper fighting location and ship layout, the card in itself should never change that result. So yes, we are very aware of this and will limit the effect of cards and card counters to not turn into instant wins or loses.

Blastoderm wrote:
Please no har counters! 3 weapon types and 3 protection types were the worst thing to happenen to ES1 and dragged it to the same mire as Galactic Civilizations 1-3. It just killed any motivation to play or bother with weapon research or fleets, aside from spamming jack-of-all-trade autodesigned ships.

The battle will still contain 'countering mechanics' - but we will not have the clear counter system of ES. We are working with a softer layer of counter mechanics.

lo_fabre wrote:
Second, I'm a bit confused with the mechanics of the battle. If I understand correctly, this works like this:

1st: You choose a "battle play", which is something close to ES1 battle cards but lasts all the battle.

2nd: You divide your main fleet into flotillas and choose moves in a system close to EL, may be, choosing one move per battle phase?

3rd: You choose what reinforcements and when enter the battle.

4th: See a cinematic with the 3 battle phases, where you are not doing anythig.

5th: Get a report.

Is that?

This about right. The plays define movement of all flotillas and a buff that will last over the entire battle. The countering mechanic will disable the opponent cards buff.

The flotillas do not choose moves similar to EL though - they will follow the splines of the play.

And yes, the battle cinematic is currently non-interactive.

lo_fabre wrote:
-Will we be albe to see the opponent initial distribution, or at least fleet composition, to plan our moves?

- Will there be the "auto" option like in ES, where you just choose a card per phase and get the report with the result? Asking because I like playing battles, but normally skip that ones that I'll clearly loose/win, like killing 2 minor faction units with my V era 8 units army in EL (note that I'm not saying I dislike Amplitude system, just I'm skipping obvious battles).

- How hard will be the difference between ship hulls? Ask because in Disharmony the bigger hulls seems clearly favoured (not complaining, played like this and had fun, just a suggestion) and IMO a similar CP with similar tech levels should have similar power: 4 ships with 1CP = 2 ships with 2CP = 1 ship with 4CP.

- About damaged modules:

- How can you repair them? Dust, some card like "Nano-repair systems"?

- Will the damaged modules work the next battle? (Understand that destroyed ones obviously won't)

- Can a ship have all modules destroyed and survive because hull has some HP? (Suppose that then you'll have a useless ship)

- Have you considered some system defences, like space stations/cannons in Imperium Galactica II or militia in EL, that allow systems defence themselves without an orbiting fleet?

1: Yes you can see the opponents fleet composition and from that, the goal is that this should give an indication of which play they 'intend' to take.

2: There will be auto. One of the main goals was that the auto would always produce the same result as manual battle.

3: The bigger ships will have a lot more module slots for weapons, but the general idea is that they are more fragile. Also the role system means we can give unique modules to smaller ships, such as support ships to keep them interesting throughout the game.

4: We currently don't have repairing in the game. Though it's a simple process to add (even for modders). We want to avoid a lot of fights that result in 'draws' and fights where players can use the battle to 'heal' due to these types of plays. This is why it is currently not implemented, but it is easy to do if we find a way to do it properly in a fun way.

5: Our current repair implementation heals all sections/modules to the % of the ship health/core health. But we are still testing how we want reparing to function. Again repair is fully implemented in XML for modding.

6: A ship can be rendered inert by having all modules destroyed, while still being alive yes. This is unlikely to happen unless a player specifically focus on disabling modules.

7: We have and for now, its a 'maybe'. (Overall we like the idea).

Keymaster89 wrote:
1) when i enter "Battle Plays" someone have to choose the movement that my fleets will take. This will be done, if i didn't misunderstood, by a selection of movement option setup, where my flottillas will follow invisible rails through the scenario, encountering enviromental hazards, using only the module that have arc of fire on the enemies and hopefully getting the right card at the right moment. Ok, cool, i'm fine with that. But who actually is the one that make the choose? The attacker? The defender? Both in secret or both with the info of the other player/CPU about their choices? And if it's the last one, who will have the last choice? or there is a trade until both parts ar satisfied with the setup?

2) There will be an ingame way to save and review overly epic and awesome cinematic battles? It will be cool!

3) There will be planetary defenses that will help you defend a system as part as hazard/arena system? i'm thinking at a barrage of ion cannon shots from the surface to disable module temporarly or disrupt ships's shields, or colossal railguns that can shoot 1 time in a battle a medium - large ship for massive damage, and stuff like that.

4) Don't know if i can ask here or this will go into "GDD - ship design", but you said that there will be a 3x increment in size for each ship size. Beside "bigger is better" what i want to ask is what will be the the difference in size between sizes and if will be respected in terms of CP... I mean, for example how many small size ships should i use to face a medium size one to be a balanced fight?

5) There will be any cover in some arenas? Like the "ships graveyard" hazard or an "asteroid field node" arena where objects can obstruct line of fire? or where projectiles destroy asteroid and stuff, missing the target but clearing the line of fire? in cinematic will be soo cool!

6) Can we give flottillas some beheaviours? like i want this flottillas to attack enemies with low health first or i want this flottillas to attack ships this size first.

thanks!

1: Both players choose it in secret. The idea is that you should be able to infer what your enemy will try to do on the basis of where you decided the battle takes place and the sort of ships each empire has in their fleets.

2: We want to do something like this. But we currently are focusing on gameplay - though we are keeping it in mind.

3: As in my previous response: We are looking into doing this and we agree it is cool.

4: Aiming for same number of CP and technology level ^^ Some of the smaller ships (defense/support rules) will have special support modules that could be more important than pure CP though.

5: Yes there will be 'obstruction'. Currently no gameplay interaction (such as attacking asteroids to remove them) is planned. Visually we will polish it as much as we can.

6: Currently no, but it is one of the improvements we expect to make with initial playtests.



Various Ideas

Brazilian_Joe wrote:
I think it would be more interesting to have larger fleet sizes. The smallest fleet cap(game beginning) should be equal or larger than ES1 largest fleet.

If the player is to have so many strategic choices, th player should also be able to group the ships by role and order them to attack/retreat not only as a whole battleball, but also in groups.

Picking from your example, I could sent my light ships with a volley of EMP missiles to deplete the shields at the beginning of the combat, then retreat them to the back of the fleet for the other ships to move in for the kill.

In gameplay terms:

The player should be able to create groups of one or more (or all) of the ship'ss fleets.

The fleets should have a front/middle/back composition where each ship group can be ordered to occupy.

On each combat phase the player should be able to change the front/middle/back positioning.

The goal of plays is exactly to design them so they feel real. So a play could be designed to have a 'screen' flotilla that is meant to take and deal initial hits. Then the goal is that a player should either be able to use that as a 'close range hard hitting' flotilla, so going for a lot of damage up close or it could be more of a 'take out shields' flotilla. In terms of movement it will work the same, but ship design will change the idea with that screening fleet.

In general, these sort of 'I expect this sort of behavior' is something we will need a lot of moving forward, as with 'preset plays', we really need to hit the nail with allowing players to do what they expect.

Evil713 wrote:
I know it said that multi-empire fleet combat is out, but I was wondering if in the intrest of reinforcements I could pull an allied empire in for one phase of battle? like a quick slashing attack or to take the option to interfear with anothers battle by sweeping in and out.

The idea with reinforcement choices is that they, depending on play and 'phase' will have different strengths and weaknesses. We currently have allies helping implemented, but we still have some uncertainty in terms of performance when mixing too many ship types.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
I have another question.

In addition to potentially avoiding the enemy arc of fire, does flanking and attacking from the rear provide bonus damage?

Currently they do not. However, ships can have 'weak points', which means that potentially you would want to have the front/rear/sides facing the enemies depending on your ships and theirs. We are working on how to make the actual 'positions' relevant without being frustrating.

rockmassif wrote:
The fact that we were choosing cards before battle was a pretty cool idea I think. It kinda felt like a small card game. Like Gwent in Witcher 3. I always liked

Great post, thanks for helping me do my job. lol

4: We currently don't have repairing in the game. Though it's a simple process to add (even for modders). We want to avoid a lot of fights that result in 'draws' and fights where players can use the battle to 'heal' due to these types of plays. This is why it is currently not implemented, but it is easy to do if we find a way to do it properly in a fun way.

I suspect everyone is using nano-repair when fighting vs 1CP fleet to repair their ships. Glad you'll fix it.



Thanks for your answers. I think Amplitude is working in the correct way with battles, but it's very difficult to put it into gameplay. I'm afraid that what happened in EL (players asking to control their units every turn on beta version) can happen to ES2, although that I'll trust you'll find the mechanics to make it fun and avoid AI doing silly moves (or at least moves that looks silly to the player).

To be honest, I really didn't enjoy the battle system in ES1. I especially hated -- HATED -- the battle card system, so I'm more than a little disappointed to see them return in ES2. But maybe it's because I enjoyed the "micro-managing" in EL and how I felt my choices would more directly affect the outcome of battle than leaving it up to RNG (i.e., hoping that the enemy doesn't choose a counter type card to my own).



So, yeah. I'm loving everything that's been revealed about ES2 so far -- except the battle system. Having said that, I'm very open to see how it all turns out.

I personally really like the card system, and it seems to be getting even better in ES2 considering how the tactics behind the cards will be more noticeable (in ES1, some of them were pretty abstracted).



Firstly, because it allows me to relax and watch the beauty of the battles without having to worry about issuing orders. Secondly, I like to think that I'm playing as the head of government, not as the captain of each individual ship who commands all of its movements, but I like playing the admiral role and choosing the main tactics for the battle. In short, I don't want to take care of those things when the scope of the game is larger. That's where Europa Universalis and Victoria thrive, in my opinion; the difference being that you don't see the battles on those games.

Yueran wrote:
To be honest, I really didn't enjoy the battle system in ES1. I especially hated -- HATED -- the battle card system, so I'm more than a little disappointed to see them return in ES2. But maybe it's because I enjoyed the "micro-managing" in EL and how I felt my choices would more directly affect the outcome of battle than leaving it up to RNG (i.e., hoping that the enemy doesn't choose a counter type card to my own).



So, yeah. I'm loving everything that's been revealed about ES2 so far -- except the battle system. Having said that, I'm very open to see how it all turns out.

I enjoy micro-managment too and thats why i want more control in battles. When ES was published i liked the card system because it looked new, trying to do things differently. Unfortunately it become quickly boring. The lack of control in battles it may prevent micro-hell but one way or another battles will turn the same and will end up pressing the auto resolve button again. Lets see how the combat evolves and pray the future patches and expansions arent about fixing combat again.