My bigest problem with es battel was that i did not feel that my action inpacted the battel. It was butifull but the card system was no enoguhe to make battel fun. Its important that my skill will inpact the outcome of the battel.

I had never even thought about this battle system as being one that allows consistent results between manual and automatic battles, but I certainly approve of that design goal.

In games with tactical battles I often feel compelled to play out every battle myself to minimize losses, even more so when auto-resolve is so unreliable that it sometimes manages to lose valuable and expensive units to insignificant opposition. (Or, as it has happened to me in Stardrive 2: Outnumbering the enemy three to one and being immune to the type of damage they deal, yet losing 80% of my forces to autoresolve.)

Really like the 'Battle Play' choice shown on the graphics to allow players strategical options for battle. The more tech one empire has, the more battle plans.



One major problem with ES1 was to have battles only between 2 empires. So one is bound to fight one battle after the other, even if the enemys are allied. Sometime it was a 'Endless' battle after the other, just to solve a simple situation. Gets me boring after a while...the longer you fight against the same empires.



All my ideas about an alternative system are based on a mix/chain of diplomacy, battle-plan research and coincident war goals. One has to establish trust and a high level of diplomacy to form tactical alliance on battlefield with his ally. If one or more of the allies lack the needed battle-plans...they simply will not be offered the choice for combined forces, or only those partners with the needed levels do get the request. Last but not least, if allies compete about the revenue of battles outcome (fighting for earning a planet btw.) and have not war-goal treaty about, there will be no common war goals and combined forces are not availible too.



So I'd prefer a pre-battle request for allied players to



A - share command

One commander will get battle authority and does command all allied ships.



B - land lease

Commanders could request additional support from allies at same battle arena.



C - hasty retreat

If you see your allies facing overwhelming enemy or you do not prefer your 'ally' to win too much that early, get the choice to leave battlefield immediatly. ...probably for the price to leave alliance and the cost of some civilian or minor ships.





I have read the answers about UI design problems with combined forces, but I could see clear options to implement such a system within the current outlined dev-patterns about Endless Space 2.

Metalynx wrote:


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 an idea I can suggest to counter that problem is way guns of Icarus online handled in battle repairs was via their Armor/Hull system. Each airship had separate bars for armor and hull respectively. Armor can be repaired, but any damage to the hull cannot. So the more your armor is pierced, the less effective your repairing becomes as your ship is essentially losing a chunk of it's maximum heath if it takes too much damage. This also opens up the possibility of different armor/hull combos. You could have a light armor super robust hull ship that can take a nasty beating but can't be repaired too well in combat and has to be repaired in a hangar to restore it's durability. Or weak hulled, heavily armored ship that is relatively fragile to say a balanced design, but can more easily bounce back from extreme damage provided it isn't destroyed outright.



Another wish I have for ES 2 is a better defined use for planetary hangars and CP usage. Because in ES, sure stats help early on, but after a certain point waging war is less about the battles and tactics, and who can throw out the most ships. I.E Fleet spam.

WhiteWeasel wrote:
I'd like to see a CP cap (that can be upgraded with research of course) on fleets where you can only have a certain amount of ships deployed at once, to stop endless spamming and make individual battles more important. As when you reach the cp cap (say 100) you physically can't build any more ships. So if you were to lose a couple fleets, you have queue up more ships-which will take a few turns.



I also want to see more strategic uses for hangars:

Put a CP cap on your hangar-so you can only put a limited number ships in it. Say it starts with a 4 CP capacity by default and by endgame it can be around 35 (about 1 1/2 fleets worth of ships). However this CP cap for the hangar does not count towards the main one. So if you're at the cap, you can still build ships; provided you have room in that planets respective hangar. Also have a repair module type improvement(s) you can build on your star system, so the hangar provides more use than parking space for your reserve ships. I know you can repair your ships with , but that is expensive and this will provide an alternative way of repair your fleets. Cheap, but slow.

It is quite difficult to find a good high level resolution system actually. A few board games have a satisfying card based system :

Starcraft : The Board game has an interesting one :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tR7AG4D6TM

Its successor, Forbidden Stars has a similar one, which combines cards and dice (you draw cards for the battle, and play one for each phase). It is pretty similar to Endless Space actually. It is not straight RPS :

your dice and cards give you 3 kind of symbols : offense, defense, and morale.

If your offense beats the opponent defense, you inflict damage (or destroy units). At the end of the 3 phase, the side with the lowest morale is routed, if neither side was destroyed.

I think it is a pretty neat one.

Some other system that works well for abstracting battles while letting the player take some decision is the one in use in Cryptic Comet's Armageddon Empire, but it would be too long there (you choose target for each unit, and then roll dice).

Something like the one in use for Solium Infernum (from the same developer) could work though.

Actually, Game of Thrones : the board game system is simple and efficient too : you count attacker and defender values, adding support from nearby supporting armies, then each player chooses a card from his hand, and the highest total win. The catch is that you don't get the card back until you have played all your cards so there is a mind battle element to it.

Of all these systems, I'd say Forbidden Stars is the closest from ES.

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.

I can get why you found it disappointing. For me, it was really cool. I already made important decisions in ship design and tech choices and fleet composition. I liked that my role was more of an admiral than the helmsman of every ship. I liked that large battles were smooth and relatively quick, especially when I'd have to take on many many many enemy ships in chain battles. I am glad to see the cards come back.



I hope, though, that there's something to do besides just watch battles. I liked that I'd watch a battle to help me choose the next card. If I choose all cards before battle and no cards during the battle, I'm not sure I'll be engaged or comitted to watching the outcome. There's not enough "play" there and even great visuals may not be enough.

There is the trade off between having more player involvement in the tactical battles, too much of it and you end up spending all your time in tactical battles and the strategic game bogs down. The card/cinematic system in E1 gave a bit of player involvement and you spent 95% of your time on the strategic game. Where do you prefer to spend most of your time in game? Ship design? Exploration? Planetary management? Diplomacy? Developers have to balance all that and more to build a fun game.

Can human vs human players see the battle cinematic?

Yes, as far as I know. It was also the case in Endless Space 1.

Frogsquadron wrote:


[LIST=1]

Pick a "Battle Play".

Distribute Fleet into Flotillas.

Choose Reinforcement Pattern.

[/LIST]



Battle

• Wishes to be able to save "battle setups".
  
  

Having recently played some Endless Space again, saving Battle Play is not just a wish, but a must (as in a very high priority) in my opinion. Many battles have me just picking the same cards over and over again or if the battle was a sure win, not even picking cards at all - in other words the cards were more tedious than fun.



In particular, I'm reminded of the the old (16-bit Windows) game Stars!. In that game you could create battle plans on the empire level and for each fleet select the most appropiate one (disengage on your bomber fleet, minimize damage (stay at max weapon range) on glass cannons, maximize damage (close in to min range) on your frontline fleet, etc).

Of course you can still allow change the battle play for each battle, maybe move a damaged ship into another flotilla, but typically you will use the fleet saved battle play means you can start resolving the battle with one click.

Especially with having to divide up you fleets into flotillas, it would be nice to only have to do that when you change the fleet battle play instead of for each battle - though I assume you probably have some auto-distribute into flotilla based on ship class planned.



Saving the battle play per fleet also allows for multiplayer to always auto-resolve combat, while allowing the player (some) control of which battle play to use by setting them for their fleet the turn before. This is what Stars! did as it always auto-resolved battle if fleets met at a location and you only could replay it to see what happened instead of having a direct effect.





Also the link above also has information on the weapons system, which are I think more interesting that the Endless Space ones:

Beam: short-medium range, but 10% damage fall off per distance unit

Missile: long range, miss: 1/8th (explosion) damage to shields, hit: half damage to shields, half to hull.

Capital Ship Missile: long range: double damage to hull if shields are down.

Sappers: like beam, but high damage to shields only.



You could add the ES long/medium/short modifiers for more specialization (short range beam: extra damage, but higher fall off), etc., though you could also make that different weapon types.



Another interesting thing is that shield overlaps, so a big ship with strong shields protects smalls ships without at the same position protect against beam weapons. Or the fact that each missile can kill only ship, so many small ships are more effective against them (less relevant for ES2 I think with fewer ships). Or, I think Space Empires had this, slow moving torpedoes which can be shot down, a bit like one shot bombers.



Another thing I hope Endless Space 2 improves is separate research for attack and offence, since in ES if you need to research shield because the enemy has beams, you also get the beams weapons, but since the enemy has beams researched it already has the counter to that...



Anyways, looking forward to Endless Space 2!

I think what would be soo ♥♥♥♥ing awesome and cinematic and real and cool would be to see the heroes in their ship and before the battle start they're like :"YOU WILL FEED THE HIVE!!" or "WE SHALL NOT FAIL THE EMPIRE!!" and more depending on the hero and of course the faction.

Admiral addressing the troops before combat like at Rome:Total War, would be nice but prefer to see a balanced, and most importantly, interesting combat than sauce before combat.

"I can get why you found it disappointing. For me, it was really cool. I already made important decisions in ship design and tech choices and fleet composition. I liked that my role was more of an admiral than the helmsman of every ship. I liked that large battles were smooth and relatively quick, especially when I'd have to take on many many many enemy ships in chain battles. I am glad to see the cards come back.



I hope, though, that there's something to do besides just watch battles. I liked that I'd watch a battle to help me choose the next card. If I choose all cards before battle and no cards during the battle, I'm not sure I'll be engaged or comitted to watching the outcome. There's not enough "play" there and even great visuals may not be enough."

"Originally Posted by Mad Mario"



I dont know about that, the battles felt repititve and boring because of it, taking out the tactical strategic element that the player has really makes the battle seem the same, I think there should be a bit of personal control involved

I really liked the visuals in ES1 for the fleet battles.

People saw the epic space battle consisting of fighter squadrons, dreadnoughts, and futuristic weaponry in all its glory which draws them in. Once bought and starting to play, it is quickly realized that the decisions are already made before going into the battle.



Many players have an expectation that their direct in-put into battles will heavily decide the outcome. This type of expectation is realized in a vast majority of space combat games, but is broken within ES.

Commanding battles from an admirals perspective is exactly what ES battles are all about. I really enjoy this type of battle as it is more a battle of wits instead of AMP (actions per minute) or figure reflexes.

Players and prospective players need to go into the game with that in mind.





Not a word about invasions in the Battle overview, so I'll take the bullet and ask.

Questions:

-1: How will Invasion of systems take place in ES2?

The community is passionate about their methods of destruction of the opposing factions, yet the invasion mechanics in ES1 (to myself) felt flimsy. They where augmented with the addition of bombs and "land battles," yet utilizing those options was not fulfilling. You received a window of population/system structures destroyed and if you won, yet it never felt like a grand battle over the fate of a system hung upon that window.



-2. Will fleet battles have impact over Invasion/conquering a system?

Such as: sacrificing valuable battle play(s) in a singular battle (thus "losing" the battle) in order to speed up the overall invasion of the system.



-3. Will player fleets within enemy territory take damage over time when blockading enemy systems? (from defenses)



-4. Will fleet actions (such as invading/blockading) give advantages/disadvantages when involved in combat? (augment the battle arena)



-5. Will fleets be limited to the number of battles they can participate in on any one turn?

Such as: not having enough fleet command points to be Primary Fleet, but can be used as the reinforcements.



-6. Will "land battles" utilize the same battle play/arena/reinforcement system as fleet battles?



-7. (if applicable) will certain race/faction population have advantages in "land Battles"? Such as Cravers literally eating....Sophons.

We appreciate the feedback and will continue to monitor and respond as we find time for it!

Tussak wrote:
Also the link above also has information on the weapons system, which are I think more interesting that the Endless Space ones:

Beam: short-medium range, but 10% damage fall off per distance unit

Missile: long range, miss: 1/8th (explosion) damage to shields, hit: half damage to shields, half to hull.

Capital Ship Missile: long range: double damage to hull if shields are down.

Sappers: like beam, but high damage to shields only.



You could add the ES long/medium/short modifiers for more specialization (short range beam: extra damage, but higher fall off), etc., though you could also make that different weapon types.

This is a very interesting example. We are trying to do similar'ish sort of balancing between weapons with specializations in terms of what they're good against and in what situation they're good. This will be a long term balancing act of course.



For the quote below, this is the exact sort of style of space battle we've gone for.

Tainted wrote:
Many players have an expectation that their direct in-put into battles will heavily decide the outcome. This type of expectation is realized in a vast majority of space combat games, but is broken within ES.

Commanding battles from an admirals perspective is exactly what ES battles are all about. I really enjoy this type of battle as it is more a battle of wits instead of AMP (actions per minute) or figure reflexes.

Players and prospective players need to go into the game with that in mind.

This part will be a little vague as we are not 100% on the system as a whole.

So 'Invasions'/'Land Battles'/'Ground Battles'. We will have an entire GDD on the subject, but it scheduled as one of the last ones. I will attempt to talk about the goals, without making any final statements about the system nor promising anything

Firstly, what is the intention of invasions? From our perspective, invasions are clearly second behind space battles in importance, due to their primary goal being 'how do an empire take a system from another empire'. We want to use invasions to make space battles more interesting by having the two systems synergize in terms of fleet movements and combined military strategy.

To this end, we are trying to create a system that feels similar -> a lot of planning ahead of time and a very automated invasion system. We are expanding on the model from ES1, so it should feel a lot more epic!

Also to your last question, we do want to have each specific population and faction have their own impact on battles that should push the player to create strategies during the game, as opposed to using the same every game.

Tainted wrote:
Many players have an expectation that their direct in-put into battles will heavily decide the outcome. This type of expectation is realized in a vast majority of space combat games, but is broken within ES.

Commanding battles from an admirals perspective is exactly what ES battles are all about. I really enjoy this type of battle as it is more a battle of wits instead of AMP (actions per minute) or figure reflexes.

Players and prospective players need to go into the game with that in mind.

The thing is, that's not a traditional 4x game. In my view the best 4x that did RTS battles extraordinarily well is Sword of the Stars. Almost ten years on, still my absolute favorite for taking a direct hand in blowing things up. But...it's fairly light on the empire management, something that ES/EL most certainly were not.



"RTS" (which should be RTT, not RTS)? Not in EL/ES(2).

I loved SOTS and SOTS2 heck I have played almost 2k hours on SOTS2, however I found issue with that game due to the amount of time spent in tactical battles or viewing auto-battles. When I have a large empire and end up with 3-5 battles a turn, that is 10-25 minutes of tactical battles between each strategic turn in a game I expect to go 300 turns that is a lot of time. I love large to insanely large maps, with empires to match, ES1 got boring quickly in that every game basically went to who can spam the most ships with the best tech. I probably played the same number of games in both SOTS2 and ES1, it just took 5x longer to finish 1 game of SOTS2 due to the tactical battles. SOTS 2 was an nice attempt to merge strategic play and tactical battles it could have gone somewhere well if it had been managed well, but it is history.



ES is concentrating on strategic play and having us plan out battles or quickly auto out of them. I like that direction and am hoping for the best. There are variations in the tech tree for each weapon system and type and their counters. I would like to see a split in the tech tree in defense/offense so that researching a weapon system will not automatically get you its counter.



We are making strategic decisions, by the tech on our ships and how we implement it. They determine the tactics used in battle. I found the ship design system in ES1 to be quite inadequate. There were no size limitations, power limitations and no limit on ammunition. You can remove the limit on ammunition if the ship has fabricators built in that automatically create the ammunition that it needs in battle and repair components when out of battle. But there should be extra power requirements to adding shields or a spinal laser/particle cannon/rail-gun etc.. Also a spinal weapon on a frigate should not have the same attack power as one on a Battleship.



There is also the question of ranges, in every battle in ES1 we have two fleets rushing into long, medium and melee ranges. If I had the speed advantage on my ships and I had mostly long range weapons I would keep the range for a long, long, long battle and not close in for a battle.



So there are 3 types of weapons, Kinetics, Lasers and Missiles. They can be used at 3 ranges, does the limitation of only having one type at one range still exist or can I have lasers for long, medium and melee ranges? Can a spinal rail gun be used for long range point defense via a special rail gun round that breaks up like a shotgun round? Can a spinal laser be set to wide beam to do the same? I will assume sprint interceptor/counter missiles can do the job.



Do all the ships have the same tactical speed in battle? Can I sacrifice space/weapons on my capital ships to equip them with bigger tactical engines in battle to give them more speed? Or go the other direction? If I have a frigate screen made up of point defense equipped ships are they more effective than having a capital ship dedicated to point defense? Can I use fighters as a point defense screen? Can we have pod layer ships to have a huge initial missile strike?

Metalynx wrote:




For the quote below, this is the exact sort of style of space battle we've gone for.

I'm sorry but to be frank here, there was no battle of wits involved in ES 1. I used pretty much the same cards in every battle once I acquired them.



ES 2 looks like a similar approach with simply choosing your path as an additional option. Where exactly does the battle of wits fought Admiral style come in? And how will the AI address this type of gameplay that makes them interesting to fight against?

So far I love what I read on ES2 battles!

Slashman wrote:
I'm sorry but to be frank here, there was no battle of wits involved in ES 1. I used pretty much the same cards in every battle once I acquired them.



ES 2 looks like a similar approach with simply choosing your path as an additional option. Where exactly does the battle of wits fought Admiral style come in? And how will the AI address this type of gameplay that makes them interesting to fight against?

To be fair, positioning can make a MAMMOTH amount of difference to a situation. Hell, most sports have only one or two options for each team during plays, the other detail work is all about movement (See: Cycle maneuvers in Hockey, or literally any passing play in American Football). Age of Wonders III has incredible combat mechanics - a significant amount of which is simple positioning.





On a different note, I've been playing a Mordheim: City of the Damned (WOOOO, WARHAMMER!) which has a built in solution to a "fair" way to prevent ties: Morale. If your side gets absolutely thrashed, the survivors will simply flee the battle. Doing a similar set-up for Endless Space 2 would also prevent those annoying "ties" where one side has taken no damage, and the other has one survivor whose ship is surviving through duct tape and hope. Make them turn tail and run (Saving the ship/ships), and give the victory to the side that didn't run. With the new laws and whatnot in the game, laws could be passed to try and resist this action a bit (Preventing unnecessary combat loss), or encourage it (Preventing unnecessary ship loss).