I think the combat is complete trash and people need to stop trying to defending it, thinking it will get better.

Yes read the GDD or watch the Angry Joe video play through with the devs. Combat is pure aesthetics and meant to be watched, and that is EXACTLY what they are going for.

Now in what world would devs find this to be a good idea?

Especially since lots of 4x gamers like the idea of adding depth to their decisions when playing a game. Combat is a big part of 4x games. Im enjoy the pacifistic route in my 4x games, because its much more interesting. So I usually dont care to "exterminate" the players. Point being if they are going to make combat nothing more than a video than its nothing better than hitting auto complete button. Wow such depth!

Bunch of players in ES1 complained about the card combat and that was tweaked and fixed and overhauled in Endless Legends. No idea why they took 3 steps back with the combat in ES2. 

So as a gamer who wants depth and wants to make ES2 a better game. Everyone should voice their opinions about the combat.

Combat does need some work - however with so many features missing it too early to tell where they even intend on taking it.  Having all the amplitude titles so far I am not particularly worried.  I think they will definitely look over the forums and consider the feedback.

Give it more time.  I really like the game so far and wish it had more features implemented but that is a good complaint.

I will just add that to be honest I don't really understand how the pre battle planning affects the result. So I set to close range which is 100% compatible with my ships that use short range slugs .... hmmm so what ? What does this mean? Am I missing something? Are these weapons being restricted to only be used AT the short range? I just don't know what's going on.

I agree the auto camera needs work as I'm often just looking at a too-close flyby of some ships with no sense of what's happening instead of a good perspective of both fleets or the actual action/thing they are shooting at. Apart from that I like the general hands-off approach that Endless Space has always taken to this. You're an emperor watching your commanders in action, making decisions during the battle is not something you would do. Obviously other 4X games do this but this is the philosophy behind this approach that Amplitude has always espoused.

Thaeos wrote:

I will just add that to be honest I don't really understand how the pre battle planning affects the result. So I set to close range which is 100% compatible with my ships that use short range slugs .... hmmm so what ? What does this mean? Am I missing something? Are these weapons being restricted to only be used AT the short range? I just don't know what's going on.

Slugs only actually fire at medium/short range, with less accuracy at medium range. Missiles on the other hand, are optimal at long range and will fire as soon as the fight starts. If you have missiles, choosing a long range stance VS ships with slugs make them optimal because the ships with slugs will have to choose a shortrange stance to actually do damage.  Since you have a long-range stance, and they have a short, it will take longer till they can actually fire weapons because they have to close the gap. 

DA_Corporation wrote:

Thaeos wrote:

I will just add that to be honest I don't really understand how the pre battle planning affects the result. So I set to close range which is 100% compatible with my ships that use short range slugs .... hmmm so what ? What does this mean? Am I missing something? Are these weapons being restricted to only be used AT the short range? I just don't know what's going on.

Slugs only actually fire at medium/short range, with less accuracy at medium range. Missiles on the other hand, are optimal at long range and will fire as soon as the fight starts. If you have missiles, choosing a long range stance VS ships with slugs make them optimal because the ships with slugs will have to choose a shortrange stance to actually do damage.  Since you have a long-range stance, and they have a short, it will take longer till they can actually fire weapons because they have to close the gap. 

Which effectively means if you hold to a long range battle plan and they have a short, and you load out on torpedo boats, you are going to -wreck- anything that's armed with short range weapons, because by the time they've actually closed in, you'll have had plenty of time to keep them at arms length and fill them with torpedo-ey goodness. This was a persistent problem in ES1 but was compensated somewhat by the idea of overlapping flak boats that could provide point defence to each other.

Goetia wrote:

It's cool if you like combat minigames and there are plenty of other games that do include it, but ES2 might not be for you. 

We're not going down the "Elite dangerous" route of argument on this one, the fact that combat exists to be viewed in detail is not just there for you to stare at the pretty, or it damn well shouldn't be, if it is it's going to get mauled at reviews because people will compare the sequel to it's predecessor and correctly identify combat as a major regression. Having Autocomplete offer the same or similar results to in depth combat is a -good- thing, don't get me wrong, but there should be the option for the player to "improve" that result through active tactical management, that's the point of going down into the nuts and bolts of combat, to turn a close result into a win, or to try and turn around a narrow loss. Right now there's zero point even considering that because in effect the outcome is entirely predetermined. Very few 4x's survive on that premise at this stage unless they're -really- good in just about every other department and treat combat as part of the macro picture (i.e. Civ). Endless Space does not treat the ships as part of the macro, as evidenced by the strong lean on design and fleet comp, so it does need to make sure the combat is up to par.

DA_Corporation wrote:

The system itself does not appear to be designed to have mid-battle input. As far as I can tell it's purely to watch a cool battle play out, and detail information on what works and what doesn't. (The overview camera will probably help this). It's just too early to decide and push such an aggressive action.

As I've mentioned on the Steam Forums, now is the optimal time to determine if this system is a good fit for ES2, because if it's not, it's easy for the Devs to backtrack and revise, or overhaul with an eye to ground level improvements, as opposed to doubling down on what they have in the hope that somehow it will magically fix itself. If there's going to be any real change, this is the point at which the devs have to consider it, because come late beta, it'll be way too late for anyone to really consider major overhauls (unless they pull a disharmony and start adding in combat features as part of the DLC, but then that might be too late by that point).

I disagree with the premise of this thread.  The combat system rests on a strong foundation, and it looks great.  It needs a bit of complexity and some creative TLC, nothing more.

Hobbesian wrote:

DA_Corporation wrote:

Thaeos wrote:

I will just add that to be honest I don't really understand how the pre battle planning affects the result. So I set to close range which is 100% compatible with my ships that use short range slugs .... hmmm so what ? What does this mean? Am I missing something? Are these weapons being restricted to only be used AT the short range? I just don't know what's going on.

Slugs only actually fire at medium/short range, with less accuracy at medium range. Missiles on the other hand, are optimal at long range and will fire as soon as the fight starts. If you have missiles, choosing a long range stance VS ships with slugs make them optimal because the ships with slugs will have to choose a shortrange stance to actually do damage.  Since you have a long-range stance, and they have a short, it will take longer till they can actually fire weapons because they have to close the gap. 

Which effectively means if you hold to a long range battle plan and they have a short, and you load out on torpedo boats, you are going to -wreck- anything that's armed with short range weapons, because by the time they've actually closed in, you'll have had plenty of time to keep them at arms length and fill them with torpedo-ey goodness. This was a persistent problem in ES1 but was compensated somewhat by the idea of overlapping flak boats that could provide point defence to each other.

Goetia wrote:

It's cool if you like combat minigames and there are plenty of other games that do include it, but ES2 might not be for you. 

We're not going down the "Elite dangerous" route of argument on this one, the fact that combat exists to be viewed in detail is not just there for you to stare at the pretty, or it damn well shouldn't be, if it is it's going to get mauled at reviews because people will compare the sequel to it's predecessor and correctly identify combat as a major regression. Having Autocomplete offer the same or similar results to in depth combat is a -good- thing, don't get me wrong, but there should be the option for the player to "improve" that result through active tactical management, that's the point of going down into the nuts and bolts of combat, to turn a close result into a win, or to try and turn around a narrow loss. Right now there's zero point even considering that because in effect the outcome is entirely predetermined. Very few 4x's survive on that premise at this stage unless they're -really- good in just about every other department and treat combat as part of the macro picture (i.e. Civ). Endless Space does not treat the ships as part of the macro, as evidenced by the strong lean on design and fleet comp, so it does need to make sure the combat is up to par.

DA_Corporation wrote:

The system itself does not appear to be designed to have mid-battle input. As far as I can tell it's purely to watch a cool battle play out, and detail information on what works and what doesn't. (The overview camera will probably help this). It's just too early to decide and push such an aggressive action.

As I've mentioned on the Steam Forums, now is the optimal time to determine if this system is a good fit for ES2, because if it's not, it's easy for the Devs to backtrack and revise, or overhaul with an eye to ground level improvements, as opposed to doubling down on what they have in the hope that somehow it will magically fix itself. If there's going to be any real change, this is the point at which the devs have to consider it, because come late beta, it'll be way too late for anyone to really consider major overhauls (unless they pull a disharmony and start adding in combat features as part of the DLC, but then that might be too late by that point).

Short range weapons double as flak, whihc counters missiles by destroying them, which means a full missile alpha strike strat doesn't work against a close range fleet because they'll shoot them down, take no damage, and then wipe out the fleet in close range.

Eji1700 wrote:

Short range weapons double as flak, whihc counters missiles by destroying them, which means a full missile alpha strike strat doesn't work against a close range fleet because they'll shoot them down, take no damage, and then wipe out the fleet in close range.

Up to a point, that point being where enough missiles get through the flak and begin to overwhelm the short range weapons. SR can't keep up if you've enough missiles going in, eventually enough get through that if you fully commit to that strategy, it does reliably work. Once you do begin to crack the defences, it's a snowball effect, because the flak defence contribution declines. Shields will take X punishment from first to last ship, HP declines at a fixed rate. Flak defence is the only thing that declines on a curve (and consequently, results in progressively higher incoming DPS over time). Either flak has to soak 100% of what's coming in, or it's going to fail in it's entirety (how quickly depends on at what point of the curve we start at) and missiles will do 100% of damage and then we're back to the torpedo boat problem.

Hobbesian wrote:

Eji1700 wrote:

Short range weapons double as flak, whihc counters missiles by destroying them, which means a full missile alpha strike strat doesn't work against a close range fleet because they'll shoot them down, take no damage, and then wipe out the fleet in close range.

Up to a point, that point being where enough missiles get through the flak and begin to overwhelm the short range weapons. SR can't keep up if you've enough missiles going in, eventually enough get through that if you fully commit to that strategy, it does reliably work. Once you do begin to crack the defences, it's a snowball effect, because the flak defence contribution declines. Shields will take X punishment from first to last ship, HP declines at a fixed rate. Flak defence is the only thing that declines on a curve (and consequently, results in progressively higher incoming DPS over time). Either flak has to soak 100% of what's coming in, or it's going to fail in it's entirety (how quickly depends on at what point of the curve we start at) and missiles will do 100% of damage and then we're back to the torpedo boat problem.

That sounds like the exsact same kind of stratigy and depth that you said wasn't in the game.

I don't feel comfortable critiquing this combat system until we can figure out more details about how it actually works.

Not only is the Advanced Combat Log currently disabled, but I've recently uncovered a bug in the game where it'll give you the wrong values for ships' Range Effectiveness, which utterly screws up any current attempts at combat strategy. We need those fixed/implemented first.

Nyanko wrote:

If the combat was looking like in the EA trailer, it would definitely be great and entertaining. I don't know if the trailer shows what the final product will be, hopefully it does, because if not, space battles are rather boring for now in my opinion. Camera is not set properly to make it epic enough and as I stated in another post, the weaponry is just too thin and dull. 

By the way, has anyone seen those lovely vodyani red laser cannons from the trailer during their playthrough? I have yet to see any myself. 

They're in Era 3, and I think the reason battles look dull right now is because from era 3 on (which if this is anything like EL that's about halfway through a game)  You're probably going to see 3 fleets on each side of the battle, maybe more.  The Era 3 ship and hulls (era 2 hulls get an upgrade) put out insane amounts of firepower and it already looks pretty impressive.  The only issue being my largest target is 6 craver era 1 ships.

I'm very happy with the preplanned combat system. If I can just auto-resolve all the fights for the same result and never have to micromanage a fight I'll be ecstatic. While I'd certainly want more depth in the preplanning stage and to have meaningful options, having to watch fight after one sided fight so that you don't lose units to AI stupidity sucks. Personally controlling the combat gets incredibly tedious in large games, because 4x games are universally terrible at representing tactical combat. 

Nyanko wrote:

How do you attack or defend with more than one fleet? Cause each time I get attacked in a system by pirates, even though I have a few fleets in it, only the one directly targeted gets to fight the battle. 

It's fleet size and makeup, not how many fleets are actually in the system.  One fleet vs one fleet is always the battle, but as your CP and ships get larger you'll start to see them broken into 2 and 3 goups rather than just 1.  

This is basically the old argument of whether or not there should be a Battle mini-game, and just like the Steam thread, everyone is split between the ones that want a pure 4x and those that don't.

Those that want a mini-game defend that adds depth while those that don't argue it's too cumbersome, slows down the game too much and that one doesn't buy a 4x to play an Tactics Game. 

And you see this over and over and over again being argued to the point that isn't funny anymore.

Honestly I am of the opinion that a 4x game should either have no minigame or the minigame should be fast and short. 

Endless Legend tried to have a minigame and boy oh boy did it slow down the game unnecessarily. Heck even the Endless Space card game felt pretty meaningless when looked back upon.

So I am glad that battles in Endless Space 2 are fast and autonomous with no more need to micromanage each and every little skirmish that get in the way of the actual 4x gameplay.

It is just for viewing pleasure, why so much complain about it? The almighty Civilization series doesn't even have any single depth in combat. You just click on this unit, and click on that unit, and they pummel each other to dead. I am more happy with what ES1 and ES2 did. At lease it make big fleet fight look impressive but you can choose not to watch it. Galactic Civilization 3 also trying to add more depth and complexity into their combat system but it failed horribly. Those ship role mechanic is much worst than ES1 card system and ES2 unfinished battleplan system. I adored that EL try something difference but i have mixed feeling of like and hate it. At lease Amplitude did try something difference than the other 4X and it did working for a bit. My only gear grinding would be the new combat system that they included in ES1 with Disharmony, it seem to add unnecessary complexity without yield any good result, just make player much more confuse. Beside, we don't see the true form of Battleplan system yet, so i will hold my judge but so far, i like it.