Idly, I was just reading the 'please change the way combat works' thread and it occurred to me that the way it does work reminds me a lot of the battles in "Stars!" for the Enlightened Awesome and Cool people here who've played that.



One thing that does occur to me though, is that I pretty much always used to watch my battles in Stars!



The reason for that was simple: You have total ship customization and it's really important to know not just that your fleet was destroyed, but why it was destroyed.



Useful little messages like:

Spriggan VI deflected 99 torpedos. No damage received.



Ouch. Ok, sounds like I need to make some non torpedo ship designs asap.



Feels to me thats missing from the battle system here; when I lose, I have nfi why I did except in the (common) case of: they had more ships than me.



I'd love to see a battle log style thing during battles that'd let me tune my ship designs~



Any thoughts on that?



Nb. Yes, I've totally split from the other conversation because I think its degenerated into a "but why _wouldnt_ you want real time homeworld style control of ships? That's the whole point of space battles!" <-- If you have a comment like this, please post it in the other thread; I'm not talking about changing the way the battle system works, just providing more info on why what happens happens.

Absolutely. I hate dying without knowing the reason, and your right - it's really important to know not just that your fleet was destroyed, but why it was destroyed.

You get after action reports which tell you roughly what happened.

You can also check the designs of the enemy ships and of yours.... Gives enough information actually.

Like Enemy has his combat power in missiles and you have 0 Flak... easy to understand what happened no ?

Jethro wrote:
Absolutely. I hate dying without knowing the reason, and your right - it's really important to know not just that your fleet was destroyed, but why it was destroyed.

Wahey Stars!! One of the best games ever.



I loved the battle playback system in Stars!, especially the really detailed feedback you have. And how the tactics you choose (close to short range ASAP, stay at longest weapon range etc) really matter. And how you can have multiple ships stacks in the same battle, following their individual tactics.



If a dev reads this, those factors would improve the current battle system a lot. Currently it's really great, but a bit shallow on the tactical side, when compared to other 4x games.

shadowmint wrote:
Idly, I was just reading the 'please change the way combat works' thread and it occurred to me that the way it does work reminds me a lot of the battles in "Stars!" for the Enlightened Awesome and Cool people here who've played that.



One thing that does occur to me though, is that I pretty much always used to watch my battles in Stars!



The reason for that was simple: You have total ship customization and it's really important to know not just that your fleet was destroyed, but why it was destroyed.



Useful little messages like:

Spriggan VI deflected 99 torpedos. No damage received.



Ouch. Ok, sounds like I need to make some non torpedo ship designs asap.



Feels to me thats missing from the battle system here; when I lose, I have nfi why I did except in the (common) case of: they had more ships than me.



I'd love to see a battle log style thing during battles that'd let me tune my ship designs~



Any thoughts on that?



Nb. Yes, I've totally split from the other conversation because I think its degenerated into a "but why _wouldnt_ you want real time homeworld style control of ships? That's the whole point of space battles!" <-- If you have a comment like this, please post it in the other thread; I'm not talking about changing the way the battle system works, just providing more info on why what happens happens.

Yes ! Me want to know !

I am sorry but if you loose in this battle system against an enemy fleet you did probably not look at the enemy ships stats (always visible if they are in radar range right now) ... because then you would see if they have weapons you have shields against, and vica verca ... and if you have done that, you allready know with a 95% chance if your ships loose or win, no matter what you do ....



and. that is the major damn flaw in this oversimplistic sorry system of space combat.



But: lets hope that this will change in the feature



PS: if you see an enemy fleet aproaching, and see their stats, and see that they have, e.g. only kinetic weapons, which you have right now no defenses or to few on yours, just go to the design screen, design with a few stupid clicks the perfect anti - kinetic weapons ship. go to your fleet, pay XXX amounts of dust, which you hopefully have! (because dust wins space combat!) refit your ships and see the enemy fleet fly into their doom ... and because the AI is (hopefully right now) not very clever, you can be again 95% sure that the AI will use the same model of ship against you for the next 30 turns ... so, congratulations, you just beat the AI