Better Combat and Visual Space Magic!

Here's a little blurb from an article about MoO2's combat system:

"At the start of a game you choose whether space combat should be "tactical" (controlled by the player) or "strategic" (controlled by the software); but choosing strategic combat prevents you from designing your own ships. In tactical combat the screen has an "Auto" button which makes the software take control of the player's ships and finish the battle."

I remember that lovely little Auto button. I loved it. I adored it. I could flip it off at any time in the middle of the battle and take direct control of my ships. I could tweak their orders and flip it back on to watch the carnage ensue.

Here's what I keep hoping to see instead of glorified cut-scenes.

Here's my vision of ES2.

A battle occurs. You choose to let it auto-resolve the conflict (just like we can now) or you choose to command the fleet. All at the click of a button.

You get in that fleet command mode. Hey, there are the flotillas and command cards etc. Just like there is now, but once you launch the fight there's something new. You can pause the action (just like now), but now you can click on your ships! You can alter their battle plans. You can set their headings! You can choose their target priority. You can set what guns engage what targets! Hey, look at that! You can tweak your fleets battle card settings, and thus change how the flotillas prosecute the engagement. Look! You can tell individual ships to retreat mid fight! And at any time you can hit that pause button again and watch the battle continue to play out.

And if you want to get really saucy, you can do all of the above while the battle is in action without ever touching that pause button.

But wait! There's more! If you don't want to participate in the rest of the battle, hit that "skip to the end" button and the computer will crunch the rest of the numbers and give you your results.

Take a look at the Total War series. Specifically, Shogun 2 and Total War: Warhammer. They implement similar real-time/direct command/auto-resolve gameplay layers and are (justifiably) lauded for it.

That said, I absolutely adore Endless Legend, and while I own Endless Space, it's hardly been touched because Endless Legend is just so damn good.

On that note, one thing I'll bend your ear about with this project is that I desperately hope various resources and materials your worlds and civilizations possess are given the same love and detail they were given in Endless Legend (where every tile seemed like its own beautiful, magical little slice of the world).

I would squeeeeel with glee if worlds with "X" resource had plasma clouds drifting through its atmosphere, or lightning storms (energy source "whatever") wracking its surface visible from space. Or crystals of (insert mineral here) orbiting it. Complete with flavor text. You get the picture.

If the resources and commodities just end up being stat-line "blahblahblah" on a planet's fact sheet, you'll have missed an opportunity to bring the magic (read: artistry and atmosphere) you brought in Endless Legend to this game.

I would say it would have to be only after a planet has been scouted (and when various anomalies are discovered on a planet), and not in the zoomed out galaxy view, but on the planet/system sheet when you zoom in and get the animated world view of the planets in a system (and of course the lovely guided tour one gets when first clicking a system).

The idea being to have these effects playing on/around each planet representing strategic resources and anomalies they contain (one you've scouted/surveyed/asked Deep Thought about them) in a graphical, animated, beautiful way.

Know all those gorgeous Hubble shots of stellar bodies, the amazing NASA footage of thunderstorms on Earth from orbit? Think like that. Those planetary rings? Give them more visual purpose. Make them more than a skirt for your shy planet! There’s resources (insert special thing about that planet here) in that there ring and we can see’em! Hey! Those rings aren’t like those other rings! They have resource (“Hi, I’m a different resource”) in them! “Look at that! That planet has big space crystals orbiting it! Looks important!”

You get the picture. Or rather, WE should get the picture(s).