Romeo wrote:
Fake sizes all the way.



Listen, I understand that the logistics and sheer amount of "stuff" that would be required to get something larger than most cities built in a gravitational environment both assembled, and launched, without destroying itself or the planet. But I don't care, it's silly fun. Fake sizing ALL THE WAY.

You could just build the ships in orbit to begin with.

Yet even a fake size should have some scaling.

I hate those games where battleships are around 6 times bigger than a class below yet only carry 50% more firepower.

Sinnaj63 wrote:
You could just build the ships in orbit to begin with.

True, but you still have logistical issues such as transporting those materials up there, harder working environment, inability to do conventional welds, dealing with fluctuating orbits and damage from space debris and meteorites. The reality is building something the size of a Dreadnaught in space would be a decades long affair, and also damn near impossible to pull off. But my point being, I simply don't care. I don't care that it would be near impossible. I don't care that it would be horribly wasteful to use missiles in space when energy weapons are "free". I don't care that ships have crews, instead of being remotely operated at that point. None of it matters. It's fun gameplay.

FieserMoep wrote:
Yet even a fake size should have some scaling.

I hate those games where battleships are around 6 times bigger than a class below yet only carry 50% more firepower.

Again, relating to the above, it's to make sure the game is still somewhat fun. If one class of ship renders all the others irrelevant, you've ruined fun gameplay in the interest of "realism". It's the same reason when you crash in a racing game, you don't have to go through physical rehabilitation, PTSD, earning the trust of sponsors again, rebuilding the car from scratch and being allowed to re-enter a track environment. Because, while real, it sucks from a gameplay element.

deathcoy wrote:


That Kraken thingy is a Suulka. Its Leviathan class, part organic and part mechanical. Players fondly call them space whales. They're basically an offshoot ancient, powerful and titanic race that woke up from hibernation and bent on galactic annihilation. If you play as the Zuul race who are actually bio-engineered by Suulka to serve them, you can summon these Krakens.

I really love the lore of SotS, so I "need" to intervene. It seems you love it, too, so I hope you will take this "lecturing" as positive...



Suul'ka are members of Liir (whale-like telepathic and telekinetic beings), not an independent species. Liir do not die of old age and continuously grow (both their body and their powers), so their natural end is being crushed by the water pressure when the body can no longer withstand it due to size. They look at this as normal and natural and as an inevitable circle of life. Some however do not want to go when the time comes. And some of those are very powerful. They enslave their whole worlds in an attempt to make themselves immortal by escaping the gravity of the world they live on. They use slaves (other, smaller Liir) to construct an exoskeleton, with which they teleport themselves into space. Those are Suul'ka.



I apologize to all who find this info completely redundant.

Metalynx wrote:
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.

Do players design their own battle plays or is there an existing list that they choose from? If the latter, do they have any leeway to customise them or create their own later?



How granular can the commands specified in these plays get? Does it only determine flotilla makeup/movement or can you add things like targeting priorities and conditional behaviours? Or are the behaviours you're referring to ('hit hard' and 'take out shields') determined entirely by the ship's design?



I do like the idea of determining macro-level strategy and then letting things play out automatically, but only if we can design those strategies beforehand in detail. The OP made it sound like the developers would create a small list of plays that we would have to select from, and that feels deeply insufficient to me. If I go up against an enemy fleet and get wiped, I want to be able to take the insight I get from that battle and design a new battle play around it, specifying things like targeting priorities (for ships and modules), movement patterns, and buffs.

Will the modules work similarly to the way they did in endless space 1? IE will you be able to change the ranges of different weapons, but only have 1 range setting for each weapon type?

emraldis wrote:
Will the modules work similarly to the way they did in endless space 1? IE will you be able to change the ranges of different weapons, but only have 1 range setting for each weapon type?

What we know so far is:

The are only so many "slots" to put things like weapons, shields and the like on to. Weapons and shields and modules all use the same "slot".



Weapons can now have multiple effects (For example, guns were proposed as assisting in missile defense). We don't know if that applies to all module types, or even all weapon types.





Regardless though, no, very different system from the first game. And a better one, I'd argue.

Oh cool, sounds like what I was hoping for. That's good to hear.

My concern: If Sophons and Cravers set ut the medium sized spaceship with the same modules, will they become exactly the same ship? Variety in galactical government is one thing (and a cool thing), but combat units is a more visual and pleasing way of portraying the difference between factions. Maybe have it so that each weapon technology is unique to each faction? Different base stats and visuals. I really enjoyed Endless Legend because each faction was so varied and different from each other, all the way down to their units. I would like this to be re-looked at to make the units more different for ES2.



On a side note, I would actually have prefered the ships weren't customizable, but that each factions had a rooster of 7-9 ships that had certain setups. Food for thought.

Luring wrote:
My concern: If Sophons and Cravers set ut the medium sized spaceship with the same modules, will they become exactly the same ship? Variety in galactical government is one thing (and a cool thing), but combat units is a more visual and pleasing way of portraying the difference between factions. Maybe have it so that each weapon technology is unique to each faction? Different base stats and visuals. I really enjoyed Endless Legend because each faction was so varied and different from each other, all the way down to their units. I would like this to be re-looked at to make the units more different for ES2.



On a side note, I would actually have prefered the ships weren't customizable, but that each factions had a rooster of 7-9 ships that had certain setups. Food for thought.

Some things I would consider is that likely similar to weight from the previous games will determine how many slots you have. I would also wonder if each species has a different layout for where their slots are.



And no customization? GET OUTTA HERE. =P

I'm hoping for each faction to have a couple of unique modules, be they weapon or support modules. It would be cool, for instance, to have a Sophon module that increases the chances of positive exploration events. Or for the cravers to have a module that repairs ships after combat based on how much scrap was created from destroyed ships (your own and your enemies)...etc

Well, there were a few unique modules in the last game, so hopefully they're still around for this one!

It should be possible for us to deploy a few strategies or maneuvers against the enemy.



Picard Maneuver - involves using a short-range FTL jump to make the ship/fleet appear as being in two places at the same time and immediately opening fire. This catches the enemy off-guard and has a high probability of having the enemy targeting the previous position.



Crazy Ivan - involves turning the ship/fleet 180 degrees as fast as possible and going headfirst against a pursuer. Can reverse the roles of pursuer/fleeing and break the formation of the pursuer.



Maybe it would be possible even to make a 'Crazy Picard' maneuver, where the fleeing fleet spreads out the enemy by baiting the faster ships into pursuing them, turning 180 degrees and doing a short jump to the heavier, slower ships at the back and attacking them without the support of the lighter ships.

Lost a very large post responding to this. Short version:



1. " such I assume a MOD will exist for those who really thinks it's too simple. The reason we're going this way is firstly for visual feedback - when you see a ship, you know its function based on its shape. And secondarily for the purposes of having 'reasonable' balance between factions on a battle level - pushing the larger balance efforts to empire level."



That first sentence feels insulting. I know that's not intended, but it comes off as "ok do it yourself because we don't want to or maybe don't see value in it". I don't think it's just myself that is concerned that game will devolve into basically playbook style play like ES1 and in some ways EL. Both got better with age, but its a consistent problem your games have had, and I don't love the idea of just throwing it on the mod community, which lacks the resources and often the ability to organize and spread easily. It feels worse that you just assume a mod will fix it. I feel like if you're expecting a mod to do it, then it should possibly be a feature. i don't want needless complexity, but actual depth. If I go into every single battle knowing the outcome and autoresolve them all, that's just not a good system.



Further given the system you've described I don't see how ship size tells me much about function, since it appears to be just that "large = more space". I know you haven't mentioned ship customization, so hopefully that will make more sense, but I don't see why you can't have "light craver ships cost half as much fleet cap" so they can swarm while sophons get "+10% shields to all ships stacking with medium ship 2" in a fleet. This gives incentive to think about design uniquely between races. Regardless of the depth of combat in ES1, the actual fleets and strategy could almost always be copied between races as there was no actual difference besides aesthetics and maybe one or two techs or traits. It wasn't nearly enough.



2. Battle system: Mostly happy with it. I think it should have two phases though so it's not all front loaded into one 3 part choice (formation, fleets, reinforcements). While that system SOUNDS like it has potential depth, after some thought it seems like its going to be very very obvious just from looking at what my opponents fleet is made up of what formations they will and won't consider. Battle field hazards alter that, but again it's all frontloaded. This sounds like a test, not depth. "consider X and Y and then solve for Z." If you know the equation you can do the optimal thing every time, and if you don't then you'll do suboptimal things until you learn. The moment you learn it stops being fun (barrier/nano/nano...repeat) unless you force yourself to play worse.



I'd go so far to say that for as much was tried with ES1, the ultimate balance and execution of the combat system was so bad it might as well not exist. You already have the 4x problem where battle is often just flat out decided on the ship design and empire screen (i'm 2 tech levels ahead with a 3:1 advantage and 6 hero levels on him specialized in combat vs his labor hero...auto resolve), but then poor balance in ship design, tech, and cards meant that even battles that should feel deep, weren't (basically the early game skirmishes or the "do what you can and get out" moments). I really don't want to see that for ES2, and I get that you guys are aware of that (but am likewise concerned that EL had similar mistakes).



So again, I suggest two phases. This allows "combo's" where doing one formation the first turn into a different formation the next is a totally new "overall" formation than just "1, 1". In a system with just 3 options you massively open up the number of possibilities by adding just one more phase while also allowing some reactive play (and potential feints/traps/baits). Going from "1, 2, or 3" to "1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 2/1, 2/2, 2/3, 3/1, 3/2, 3/3" is much better for potential depth, not micro heavy, and still overall elegant.



3. Super ships. I know you don't want to really do it in general, but at the very least there's usually the "death star" game ender ship. I'd see this as something you could only have a few of, and couldn't even consider rushing. If you want to be clever you could actually have one race get a "deathstar"(pilgrim super battle colony ship maybe) while cravers get hive ships that just puke out fighters and sophons get some sleek medium sized E warfare corvette, and so on. Maybe not in the design goals, but again it adds so much more flavor to playing different races.



Overall- I should say given the very negative tone of this post that I'm mostly happy with what i'm hearing, but i'm also passionate that the combat not fall flat. I am happy to hear that steps are being taken to rethink ES1 and learn from EL. I am though worried about some of the approaches being taken and certainly concerned that some of the VIP feedback seems to mimic my own worries and hope it will be responded to appropriately (even if everything i've said will turn out to be not valid).

Eji1700 wrote:


Further given the system you've described I don't see how ship size tells me much about function, since it appears to be just that "large = more space". I know you haven't mentioned ship customization, so hopefully that will make more sense, but I don't see why you can't have "light craver ships cost half as much fleet cap" so they can swarm while sophons get "+10% shields to all ships stacking with medium ship 2" in a fleet. This gives incentive to think about design uniquely between races. Regardless of the depth of combat in ES1, the actual fleets and strategy could almost always be copied between races as there was no actual difference besides aesthetics and maybe one or two techs or traits. It wasn't nearly enough.

Eji1700 wrote:


3. Super ships. I know you don't want to really do it in general, but at the very least there's usually the "death star" game ender ship. I'd see this as something you could only have a few of, and couldn't even consider rushing. If you want to be clever you could actually have one race get a "deathstar"(pilgrim super battle colony ship maybe) while cravers get hive ships that just puke out fighters and sophons get some sleek medium sized E warfare corvette, and so on. Maybe not in the design goals, but again it adds so much more flavor to playing different races.

Eji1700 wrote:


Overall- I should say given the very negative tone of this post that I'm mostly happy with what i'm hearing, but i'm also passionate that the combat not fall flat. I am happy to hear that steps are being taken to rethink ES1 and learn from EL. I am though worried about some of the approaches being taken and certainly concerned that some of the VIP feedback seems to mimic my own worries and hope it will be responded to appropriately (even if everything i've said will turn out to be not valid).

Very much agree on these points.

A lot of interesting questions and remarks on the Battle system! Unfortunately I cannot respond to everyone



I will start by pointing out that there is (expectedly so) a clear divide between people who wants more involved battles and those who wants to focus on empire level strategies and desire battles to be an afterthought. The legacy of Endless Space is the focus on empire level strategy and we are attempting to reduce the relative time invested in battles, where Endless Legend was the game where we looked for a 'strategic compromise'.

Our combat systems has always has its rough edges and flaws, but we are overall happy with how they break the norm and how they provide interesting discussions on the subject.

We intend for Endless Space 2 to follow the legacy of Endless Space, but hopefully provide more meaningful layers of decision before the battle starts. This is a topic, there will never be full agreement ^^

Brazilian_Joe wrote:


A game i would like to highlight as having an interesting model, more closely relatable:

GRATUITOUS SPACE BATTLES.

It is all about pre-combat setup.



Speaking of which, one thing I would love to see in ES2 is the ability of having ships swap equipment without the all-or nothing 'retrofit'.



The player should be able to have more than one e.g. weapon and systems loadout and pick one prior to battle, to be able to skew the odds to his favor.



There is a lot, lot, lot of possible micromanagement pre-battle on GSB, but the battle is completely hands-off.

So Gratuitous Space Battles is of course a source we used when looking for possibilities. The biggest 'difference' is that ES2 is an empire building game and GSB is -entirely- a space battle simulator.

Obviously ES2 will not have the same sort of depth as GSB, however, it will use some 'levers' that do not exist in GSB. For example the idea that the 'Sun type' will affect certain weapons, means that choosing where to engage in battle is a tactical decision before the battle begins.

GSB takes a long long time to setup (at least if you want to do it properly) and one of the main rationales for ES2 battles, is that you deal with pre-planning in smaller steps of pre-planning to lower the number of 'waiting for other players' moments.

But we have used it as an inspiration and there will be things that appear similar. However, we cannot set things like 'try to stay within this distance' and other 'behavior' parameters with our current system. The plays themselves do 'encompass' this though. A long range play will follow a path that attempts to keep the primary flotillas at long range.

Brazilian_Joe wrote:
It should be possible for us to deploy a few strategies or maneuvers against the enemy.



Picard Maneuver - involves using a short-range FTL jump to make the ship/fleet appear as being in two places at the same time and immediately opening fire. This catches the enemy off-guard and has a high probability of having the enemy targeting the previous position.



Crazy Ivan - involves turning the ship/fleet 180 degrees as fast as possible and going headfirst against a pursuer. Can reverse the roles of pursuer/fleeing and break the formation of the pursuer.



Maybe it would be possible even to make a 'Crazy Picard' maneuver, where the fleeing fleet spreads out the enemy by baiting the faster ships into pursuing them, turning 180 degrees and doing a short jump to the heavier, slower ships at the back and attacking them without the support of the lighter ships.

These are cool ideas. However, the system as it is right now does not allow for 'movement based' actions. We can provide a ton of effect areas, group or flotilla wide bonuses, but we cannot affect the movement of ships. The movement of ships is not tied to any sort of physics system, it is tied to a pre-set route. Overall, we hope that the system will have enough depth without adding actions in the middle of the battle, as that is the ultimate goal.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
I'm hoping for each faction to have a couple of unique modules, be they weapon or support modules. It would be cool, for instance, to have a Sophon module that increases the chances of positive exploration events. Or for the cravers to have a module that repairs ships after combat based on how much scrap was created from destroyed ships (your own and your enemies)...etc

Romeo wrote:
Some things I would consider is that likely similar to weight from the previous games will determine how many slots you have. I would also wonder if each species has a different layout for where their slots are.

And no customization? GET OUTTA HERE. =P

We do plan to have some unique modules from quests and faction specific technologies and such. Even some of the 'mechanics' for ES1 could potentially be moved - an old, old example we had was a 'tractor beam module' that would function similar to how Sheredyn's affinity worked in ES1. Of course I cannot speak to any specifics currently as those would spoil the factions! ^^

And of course each ship will have a unique layout of slots, both in terms of distribution of slot restrictions (i.e. number of 'weapon only slots', number of 'no restriction slots' etc.) but also in terms of how they're placed. Say some ships would have a lot of forward facing firepower and some will have a lot of side-facing firepower..

atejas wrote:
Do players design their own battle plays or is there an existing list that they choose from? If the latter, do they have any leeway to customise them or create their own later?



How granular can the commands specified in these plays get? Does it only determine flotilla makeup/movement or can you add things like targeting priorities and conditional behaviours? Or are the behaviours you're referring to ('hit hard' and 'take out shields') determined entirely by the ship's design?



I do like the idea of determining macro-level strategy and then letting things play out automatically, but only if we can design those strategies beforehand in detail. The OP made it sound like the developers would create a small list of plays that we would have to select from, and that feels deeply insufficient to me. If I go up against an enemy fleet and get wiped, I want to be able to take the insight I get from that battle and design a new battle play around it, specifying things like targeting priorities (for ships and modules), movement patterns, and buffs.

The goal is indeed to create a -small- list of plays to pick from. These do provide 'flotilla movement' but do not determine 'flotilla makeup'. Flotilla makeup is defined by the player themselves.

We have planned to look into the need for targeting priorities and such, but currently we hope to only use reinforcements and the 'Play' as a lever. I understand the worry here, but the goal is to do 'more with less' to start with and address the feedback. The system is very flexible to allow for new things.

The goal is that winning/losing should be a basis of three layers: 'Ship Design', 'Arena' and finally 'The Play'. So if you lose you can attempt to tweak any of those 3 things, not specifically tweak the 'play part' to go from a major loss to a major win. Though using all three parts, you should have a lot of oppotunity to change the outcome.

Eji1700 wrote:
That first sentence feels insulting. I know that's not intended, but it comes off as "ok do it yourself because we don't want to or maybe don't see value in it". I don't think it's just myself that is concerned that game will devolve into basically playbook style play like ES1 and in some ways EL. Both got better with age, but its a consistent problem your games have had, and I don't love the idea of just throwing it on the mod community, which lacks the resources and often the ability to organize and spread easily. It feels worse that you just assume a mod will fix it. I feel like if you're expecting a mod to do it, then it should possibly be a feature. i don't want needless complexity, but actual depth. If I go into every single battle knowing the outcome and autoresolve them all, that's just not a good system.

Eji1700 wrote:
I'd go so far to say that for as much was tried with ES1, the ultimate balance and execution of the combat system was so bad it might as well not exist. You already have the 4x problem where battle is often just flat out decided on the ship design and empire screen (i'm 2 tech levels ahead with a 3:1 advantage and 6 hero levels on him specialized in combat vs his labor hero...auto resolve), but then poor balance in ship design, tech, and cards meant that even battles that should feel deep, weren't (basically the early game skirmishes or the "do what you can and get out" moments). I really don't want to see that for ES2, and I get that you guys are aware of that (but am likewise concerned that EL had similar mistakes).

I am of course sorry of that came off as insulting, as you pointed out, that was not the intention at all.

The thing is your assumption simply does not correspond with the information and feedback we received. Most people do not auto resolve everything. Quite on the contrary the Endless Space 1 combat system, while it has its flaws, is actually very appreciated within the audience. This is, as far as we can tell, because it puts emphasis on the parts that a large part of our audience is looking for in our games - empire management. Even in this thread you see a lot of people say 'I'm happy there is not a full RTS battle system'.

In 4X, we want to emphasize empire mangement and a player being far enough ahead in technology, that player will have significantly better items and tools win the battle. This plays into the overall goal of 4X. I'm not saying this was perfectly balanced in our previous games and we will certainly look into this and address it, but being ahead in technology is inherently meant to be an advantage, such as having more production is.



As for the modding part, it specifically addressed that we have a visual design goal -> form = function. That as a design goal is limiting the available gameplay that could exist with having hulls with multiple roles. This does not mean the design goal is wrong or bad, but it does have consequences. The intention of the statement about modding was that we intentionally build the system to allow for that design choice to not be a limitation if players wants to explore the game without that.

Eji1700 wrote:
Further given the system you've described I don't see how ship size tells me much about function, since it appears to be just that "large = more space". I know you haven't mentioned ship customization, so hopefully that will make more sense, but I don't see why you can't have "light craver ships cost half as much fleet cap" so they can swarm while sophons get "+10% shields to all ships stacking with medium ship 2" in a fleet. This gives incentive to think about design uniquely between races. Regardless of the depth of combat in ES1, the actual fleets and strategy could almost always be copied between races as there was no actual difference besides aesthetics and maybe one or two techs or traits. It wasn't nearly enough.

Like in ES1, all ships will have unique parameters. This could be 'cheaper and less CP, but also less slots', it could be additional shields and so on. I will not go as far as to say that you can no longer 'copy a strategy', because the same overall lineup of modules will be available, aside from unique ones. But the interaction of ship design with the arena and plays should provide a slightly more coherent system that ES1 have.

We do not wish to have people 're-learn' the entire combat system whenever they play a new faction.

Eji1700 wrote:
2. Battle system: Mostly happy with it. I think it should have two phases though so it's not all front loaded into one 3 part choice (formation, fleets, reinforcements). While that system SOUNDS like it has potential depth, after some thought it seems like its going to be very very obvious just from looking at what my opponents fleet is made up of what formations they will and won't consider. Battle field hazards alter that, but again it's all frontloaded. This sounds like a test, not depth. "consider X and Y and then solve for Z." If you know the equation you can do the optimal thing every time, and if you don't then you'll do suboptimal things until you learn. The moment you learn it stops being fun (barrier/nano/nano...repeat) unless you force yourself to play worse.

Its a test where you do not have all the 'correct' tools available at all times. Sure you can 'solve it', but it would possibly require you to retrofit your entire fleet or pick a different place to fight -> which you will then have the lure your opponents to. Then when you fight a new person you have to solve it all over. The 'solvability' should not be an issue in a 4X setting.

Eji1700 wrote:
So again, I suggest two phases. This allows "combo's" where doing one formation the first turn into a different formation the next is a totally new "overall" formation than just "1, 1". In a system with just 3 options you massively open up the number of possibilities by adding just one more phase while also allowing some reactive play (and potential feints/traps/baits). Going from "1, 2, or 3" to "1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 2/1, 2/2, 2/3, 3/1, 3/2, 3/3" is much better for potential depth, not micro heavy, and still overall elegant.

We have built the system to support more phases in case this becomes needed. However, we hope to avoid using it. We believe that interesting battles can occur from planning before the battle starts and that is what we intend to use for the first versions. If we are proven wrong and our testers bring this up, then we will certainly use this sort of setup ^^

Eji1700 wrote:
3. Super ships. I know you don't want to really do it in general, but at the very least there's usually the "death star" game ender ship. I'd see this as something you could only have a few of, and couldn't even consider rushing. If you want to be clever you could actually have one race get a "deathstar"(pilgrim super battle colony ship maybe) while cravers get hive ships that just puke out fighters and sophons get some sleek medium sized E warfare corvette, and so on. Maybe not in the design goals, but again it adds so much more flavor to playing different races.

Maybe for an expansion? We all agree that this would be cool. Production would strangle me if I said anything else ^^

Eji1700 wrote:
Overall- I should say given the very negative tone of this post that I'm mostly happy with what i'm hearing, but i'm also passionate that the combat not fall flat. I am happy to hear that steps are being taken to rethink ES1 and learn from EL. I am though worried about some of the approaches being taken and certainly concerned that some of the VIP feedback seems to mimic my own worries and hope it will be responded to appropriately (even if everything i've said will turn o

Hey hey, confirmation of what I was hoping for with slots, and even something I wasn't expecting? Gooooood Monday.

So, the slots idea means that only part of ship place can be used for XY? If yes, I predict lots of happy players.

One question: will the placement of modules will have an impact for battle? For example, if I place lasers only at one side, the ship will have to manuver to use them?

That's a great deal of info. Colour me excited!



I like how the combat system in ES2 will be, much like EL, simple but yet still with quite some depth for those who are keen on exploring it. I very much love the idea of environment affecting the battlefield, as I like the importance of module placement on ships. Movement will become very important.



Will there be a morale system in the game? It played quite a significant role in EL and it would be nice to have it again with more or less a similar impact.

Thanks for the detailed response. I'm really glad to hear that the system at least has the option of more complexity built into the system. I understand the desire to not to need it, but it's good to know that you're not totally locked into your current system if it doesn't hold up (the big concern being were everything looks fine until launch, and then a rabid player base tears the system apart and some non obvious flaw shows up).



As for the rest it's just nice to hear confirmation and the deeper explanations. Obviously all we have to go on is a writeup and our previous experience, and I can respect that it means I'm likely to be off. If the internal playtesting is going well than I'm glad to hear it. The only thing i'd clarify is the "solving" combat problem. I'm sure that there's "absolute" answers to a fight and they won't always be available, but my larger concern is that it'll be quite easy to estimate what the "best" option is for myself and my opponent even in non optimal situations. That said judging by what you've said the answer is still no, so good to hear.