One more reason why the space combat needs attention is that not only does the player (currently) have no input in the battle but the different classes of the same weapon types are pretty much the same, visually.

For example an all missile weapons have the same speed and reach their target the same way.  So after 1 or 2 watches the novalty wears off because they are visually so underwhelming.

While I agree that combat is now boring and overly simplistic, reading the new design document about combat makes it clear that we are just looking at a placeholder.  If they do everything they say they will, it will become a lot more interesting.  The only thing they didn't address is the lack of variety in ship equipment.  It looks like right now there are three types of offense, three of defense, one of each for each era, plus the strategic resource varieties.  I'd like to see much more variety there.  The gold standard for ship design as far as I'm concerned was the Master of Orion series.

Sotnik wrote:

SethG wrote:

While I agree that combat is now boring and overly simplistic, reading the new design document about combat makes it clear that we are just looking at a placeholder.  If they do everything they say they will, it will become a lot more interesting.  The only thing they didn't address is the lack of variety in ship equipment.  It looks like right now there are three types of offense, three of defense, one of each for each era, plus the strategic resource varieties.  I'd like to see much more variety there.  The gold standard for ship design as far as I'm concerned was the Master of Orion series.

Did you try support modules? I did not do much experiments, but they look promising.

I fiddled with the ship designer a bit.  The support modules were mostly fleet bonus type things you'd put on one special ship.  Extra shields, fleet repair, etc.  It helps, but there could be so much more,

Yeah I see support modules as a huge unused space right now.  They vary by hull in some cases and we've only got on set (just the initial tech, nothing in era 2 or 3) so i'm hoping there's a lot of gameplay to come there.  I've no doubt they'll be adding more, but i'm hoping we get some more interesting effects (there's already some good ones, but I don't just want to see higher numbers on those same systems).

SethG wrote:

While I agree that combat is now boring and overly simplistic, reading the new design document about combat makes it clear that we are just looking at a placeholder.  If they do everything they say they will, it will become a lot more interesting.  The only thing they didn't address is the lack of variety in ship equipment.  It looks like right now there are three types of offense, three of defense, one of each for each era, plus the strategic resource varieties.  I'd like to see much more variety there.  The gold standard for ship design as far as I'm concerned was the Master of Orion series.

We're reading the same document? Or has something been added to the document that is currently being debated in the Design Forum? The one that's attracted quite a bit of criticism because it clearly isn't going to be enough to make Ship Micro interesting. I've been pointing people to the other thread because frankly that's where all the constructive effort is being placed, and at this point Amplitude need to take a real step back and re-evaluate what on earth they're doing with Ship Micro. Simply having a "deck of battle plays" and rock paper scissors simplified via modules is going to make Ship Micro a complete nonsense.

So far the rough feeling is that the maneuvering grid needs to be split into phases, with per flotilla orders, and with manual flotilla distribution. NOT automatic flotilla distribution and NOT automatic orders for pretty much -everything-. If they're going to automate the whole lot then they might as well jettison Ship Micro right away and focus on Empire Macro and save themselves the dev time and effort.

Hobbesian wrote:

SethG wrote:

While I agree that combat is now boring and overly simplistic, reading the new design document about combat makes it clear that we are just looking at a placeholder.  If they do everything they say they will, it will become a lot more interesting.  The only thing they didn't address is the lack of variety in ship equipment.  It looks like right now there are three types of offense, three of defense, one of each for each era, plus the strategic resource varieties.  I'd like to see much more variety there.  The gold standard for ship design as far as I'm concerned was the Master of Orion series.

We're reading the same document? Or has something been added to the document that is currently being debated in the Design Forum? The one that's attracted quite a bit of criticism because it clearly isn't going to be enough to make Ship Micro interesting. I've been pointing people to the other thread because frankly that's where all the constructive effort is being placed, and at this point Amplitude need to take a real step back and re-evaluate what on earth they're doing with Ship Micro. Simply having a "deck of battle plays" and rock paper scissors simplified via modules is going to make Ship Micro a complete nonsense.

So far the rough feeling is that the maneuvering grid needs to be split into phases, with per flotilla orders, and with manual flotilla distribution. NOT automatic flotilla distribution and NOT automatic orders for pretty much -everything-. If they're going to automate the whole lot then they might as well jettison Ship Micro right away and focus on Empire Macro and save themselves the dev time and effort.

I'm sure we are.  The end product looks like it will be a lot deeper than ES.  Not deep enough for you?  I sympathize, but I expect it to be a real improvement.  Maybe I misunderstood the screenshots, but it looked like there were per-flotilla orders.  Did you want pausible combat to issue new orders?

I would also like something more.  I loved MoO2 ship crafting and combat, but a lot of people hate having to manage at that level.   At this point, I'm going to put the game on hold for a month or two, come back and see what changed.  The VERY last thing I want is to be bored of playing by release.

SethG wrote:

Hobbesian wrote:

SethG wrote:

While I agree that combat is now boring and overly simplistic, reading the new design document about combat makes it clear that we are just looking at a placeholder.  If they do everything they say they will, it will become a lot more interesting.  The only thing they didn't address is the lack of variety in ship equipment.  It looks like right now there are three types of offense, three of defense, one of each for each era, plus the strategic resource varieties.  I'd like to see much more variety there.  The gold standard for ship design as far as I'm concerned was the Master of Orion series.

We're reading the same document? Or has something been added to the document that is currently being debated in the Design Forum? The one that's attracted quite a bit of criticism because it clearly isn't going to be enough to make Ship Micro interesting. I've been pointing people to the other thread because frankly that's where all the constructive effort is being placed, and at this point Amplitude need to take a real step back and re-evaluate what on earth they're doing with Ship Micro. Simply having a "deck of battle plays" and rock paper scissors simplified via modules is going to make Ship Micro a complete nonsense.

So far the rough feeling is that the maneuvering grid needs to be split into phases, with per flotilla orders, and with manual flotilla distribution. NOT automatic flotilla distribution and NOT automatic orders for pretty much -everything-. If they're going to automate the whole lot then they might as well jettison Ship Micro right away and focus on Empire Macro and save themselves the dev time and effort.

I'm sure we are.  The end product looks like it will be a lot deeper than ES.  Not deep enough for you?  I sympathize, but I expect it to be a real improvement.  Maybe I misunderstood the screenshots, but it looked like there were per-flotilla orders.  Did you want pausible combat to issue new orders?

I would also like something more.  I loved MoO2 ship crafting and combat, but a lot of people hate having to manage at that level.   At this point, I'm going to put the game on hold for a month or two, come back and see what changed.  The VERY last thing I want is to be bored of playing by release.

It doesn't help that MOOII wasn't actually that deep in the end.

It's fun at first because yeah you can do boarding strategies or web strats or fighters/lasers/missiles/whatever, so there's a lot of variety.

But the system has several huge issues, namely that it's not balanced at all (in serious pvp it's literally a joke, and if you somehow get to late game you must ban certain techs or the whole combat system falls apart), and the First attacker advantage means that once fleets get over a certain size not only does combat take FOREVER, but the person who goes first always wins.

hibbidy_jibbidy wrote:

Is this a very vocal minrity thing? I love how the combat works, just waiting for battle reports to be fleshed out, and whatever other stuff they are throwing in. More control of flotilla battle plans ect. this is alpha, no?

seriously, if you want to play every other 4x game ever made, they are over there lol

I think a lot of people that are saying "it's fine" aren't quite reading the criticisms close enough to see what we're saying.  Most people that are critiquing the combat system are NOT advocating for a switch to full-control tactical battles.  What we ARE advocating for - as one option - is exactly what you mention above (i.e. "more control of flotilla battles plans") among other ideas to improve the pre-battle planning system.

The problem is that the revised roadmap from the developers does NOT appear to be adding much into the system other than a greater variety of battle plans.  The combat system, as clarified by the devs, is still currently based around one plan for the entire fleet, with still no ability to manually assign ships to flotillas.  Saying "its alpha" isn't really a valid excuse when the current direction and their stated plans do not indicate that anything will be substantially different anytime "after alpha."  That's why we're so vocal and worried.

I honestly hope Amplitude has something special up its sleeve. 

mezmorki wrote:

hibbidy_jibbidy wrote:

Is this a very vocal minrity thing? I love how the combat works, just waiting for battle reports to be fleshed out, and whatever other stuff they are throwing in. More control of flotilla battle plans ect. this is alpha, no?

seriously, if you want to play every other 4x game ever made, they are over there lol

I think a lot of people that are saying "it's fine" aren't quite reading the criticisms close enough to see what we're saying.  Most people that are critiquing the combat system are NOT advocating for a switch to full-control tactical battles.  What we ARE advocating for - as one option - is exactly what you mention above (i.e. "more control of flotilla battles plans") among other ideas to improve the pre-battle planning system.

The problem is that the revised roadmap from the developers does NOT appear to be adding much into the system other than a greater variety of battle plans.  The combat system, as clarified by the devs, is still currently based around one plan for the entire fleet, with still no ability to manually assign ships to flotillas.  Saying "its alpha" isn't really a valid excuse when the current direction and their stated plans do not indicate that anything will be substantially different anytime "after alpha."  That's why we're so vocal and worried.

I honestly hope Amplitude has something special up its sleeve. 

The devs have said that they'll look into adding manual flotilla composition back in. They seem generally amenable to the idea of defining custom range intentions for all of them too.

hibbidy_jibbidy wrote:

Lookin at the devs notes on battles, it is exactly what I have been looking forward too, I believe some people actually enjoy getting people worked up for notoriety(or a job, whatever).
seen it bfore many, many times...its tiresome. 

That's the only part of your post I'm even bothering to pick up on, the rest is just going for the report button because it's not constructive whatsoever.

I'm critiquing the system because it's -bland- and -boring-. I see major problems with it that will cause it to not work out for a lot of people, from a game design point of view it does not make sense to have minimised Combat Micro unless you're explicitly focussing on Empire Macro (such as the Civ series, and I discount Beyond Earth from that), this game does rely on Combat Micro to a large enough extent that it cannot afford to have abbreviated versions of Combat as a "feature", even Amplitude are beginning to figure this much out, so instead of throwing garbage out, perhaps offer a better argument?

I agree with Hobbesian that the space combat feels off right now. There are no real choices to be made. At least in ES with the phases and the card system you could try to predict how the enemy fleet would fight and reduce enemy combat efficiency by choosing the right tactic.

Another thing I hope will be changed is the mechanics and presentation of ground invasions. It reminds me in the worst ways of the tacked-on fleet battle minigame in Assassins Creed: Black Flag. It's also weird that a civilization with access to interplanetary travel would need years to research tanks and airforces.

hibbidy_jibbidy wrote:

Lookin at the devs notes on battles, it is exactly what I have been looking forward too, I believe some people actually enjoy getting people worked up for notoriety(or a job, whatever).
seen it bfore many, many times...its tiresome.

I often work in remote areas, in camps. Once this loudmouth dude stated complaing about the cooking staff(he was a fat useless idiot, who was mad he didnt get fried chicken everyday), he got everyone all worked up over the quality of food(which was excellent), made little complaint papers for all the people he got worked up to sign (he was a talker, and was very good at faking passionate diatraides) 
some good people who did a good job felt like ♥♥♥♥, I wonder how much boogers and ♥♥♥ I ate after that?
so we got some deep fried mess more often, nobody wanted to work there after all the tension, the loudmouth moved on to the next job doing the same thing. guess some people never happy until nobody els is either(Think he was trying to get a forman job, as moving around a lot wasn't his thing, and could use his new found popularity to get a forman job lol)

I think some people become loud voices for their own ends.

This kind of post is not at all helpful for the discussion. Did you want to prove that you can use a chain of fallacies to attack other users while staying off-topic the entire time? 

I still don't understand how ships can have varying short, medium and long range "compatibility" and how these percentages are calculated. I can understand if a ship solely fitted with long range weapons would have 0% compatibility at short range. But right now, I have no clue as to whether certain ships are better at certain ranges, or whether it depends on the battle "terrain", or how faction military traits affect such compatibility.

idlih10 wrote:

I still don't understand how ships can have varying short, medium and long range "compatibility" and how these percentages are calculated. I can understand if a ship solely fitted with long range weapons would have 0% compatibility at short range. But right now, I have no clue as to whether certain ships are better at certain ranges, or whether it depends on the battle "terrain", or how faction military traits affect such compatibility.

it's 100% to do with the weapons on the ship.  If your ships have 70% long range weapons and 30% close range beams then they'll be 70% at long and 30% at short.  The hull itself doesn't matter (other than hull type restricts weapons, so a few hulls are medium and close range only for max compatibility).

MidnightSun wrote:

I have no idea what the current system is doing. I read the new ideas in the other thread and I have no idea what the devs are intending either. It's all completely incomprehensible. I suspect it's thousands of words of game design and months of programming all for me to just click whichever option seems to work and stick with that option forever after. Plays, pairings, flotillas... um, ok?

What's wrong with choosing say, offensive or defensive, short or long range, and a special tactic to spice things up and give a bit of ES1 flavour? Simpler is better I think.

Plus the auto-resolve takes bloody ages. In ES1 it was quick as I could click. Sigh.

The proposals from various people would actually make ES2's combat a lot more engaging, if implemented -in full-, but it does mean you'll be doing the work "before the battle" and then seeing the results in combat, as opposed to influencing them during combat, so there's a difference in how things work.

Eji1700 wrote:

it's 100% to do with the weapons on the ship.  If your ships have 70% long range weapons and 30% close range beams then they'll be 70% at long and 30% at short.  The hull itself doesn't matter (other than hull type restricts weapons, so a few hulls are medium and close range only for max compatibility).

I haven't really had the time to analyze how these numbers are derived as they don't always seem to add up. I also wish there was a tech to increase the number of available module slots besides having to research a larger hull.