Innovative: to invent or begin to apply (methods, ideas, etc)



this RPS system is in no way innovative. nor is it elegant, though that one is a matter of opinion. to say it is innovative is to declare your lack of interest/knowledge in the 4x genre.

xposting from http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2681374&page=2



Romain: In ES we want the player to focus on the grand strategy, rather than require them to be mouse freaks. However, we want the battles to be beautiful and remind us of some of the greatest moments of our favorite sci-fi movies and TV shows. Battles are the pinnacle of our strategy and will show us if the decision we took over the past turns hold up against the choices made by our enemies. Did I do the right research? Are my spaceship designs adapted? Are my fleets optimal? Should I have focused my Admiral hero in other branches of his evolution tree?





I see what you've bolded, but I want to highlight what is right below "We want the player to focus on grand strategy" RPS+R.U.S.E is not grand strategy,there are no unique desings in endless space, it is /linear progrsesion/ which is a sad thing to see.

Meru wrote:
Innovative: to invent or begin to apply (methods, ideas, etc)



this RPS system is in no way innovative. nor is it elegant, though that one is a matter of opinion. to say it is innovative is to declare your lack of interest/knowledge in the 4x genre.

It is your limited way of seeing things. From my point of vue, such statement is not a proof of open minded intelligence.



To return to the subject, the current battle system is quite innovative, and I think that it is also a quite elegant one. It allows the dev team to focus on strategic aspects of the game, and not waste time on coding a tactical IA (which should not be very good in fact).

I think the current combat model has a lot of potential. Targeting would be a nice addition, as suggested by the OP.



The OP's two main suggestions seem to be asking for more cosmetic (camera adjustment) and more transparent (showing weapon/defense values more dynamically) improvements.



The tactics model is really cool imo, once they flesh it out.

Agreed, current model has potential, but is too bland to leave alone as it is, not sure how else I can stress that last phrase without a wall of text, but it seriously is a bit too uncontrollable/passive right now. The solution may still be a different model altogether, but what is more certain is that it will be a terrible move to leave the current system be.

Terror has it right.



In the playthrou i did, where i was around turn 250 at the end when my horatio enemy did an economic victory (i have no idea how he managed that ... ) just before i could finaly crush him completely with my fleet, half of the game i did space battle (approximatly).



And face it: Space battle right now is not really fun. The first 50 times perhaps, its nice to watch. but then one does recognice that he has very very little influence over the outcome and the "strategic" discisions go not further than dicide if i want to have kinetic - laser - rocket ships, which i can easily decide because i can allways see the designs of the AI ...



in its current state i can imagine multiplayer matches to be a dust focused "refit-fest" where the player who is in defense, and can, because he has his fleets on his planet, refit them as he sees the incoming fleets strategy before they reach him.

I think having a VATs like system (from Fallout) would make the combat a little more interesting while not changing the turn based nature. You could target ship engines, leaving enemy dead in the water. Target their weapons turrets to disable their offensive cababilities. Blow up life support and watch as crew eject out escape pods.

halflotus wrote:
I think the current combat model has a lot of potential. Targeting would be a nice addition, as suggested by the OP.



The OP's two main suggestions seem to be asking for more cosmetic (camera adjustment) and more transparent (showing weapon/defense values more dynamically) improvements.



The tactics model is really cool imo, once they flesh it out.

My main desire is to see more depth in the combat system

Please note that a MoOII-like combat system would work fine only for small fleets. Late in a MoOII campaign it became a boring stellar-converter slug match. So far the fleets in ES seem pretty small, but if the number of ships will be increased in the final release the actual system would be much more practical than a turn-based direct-control one. A Sins-like system has the potential to be amazing, but still, that game is basically a RTS built around space combat, so it seems to much to expect something similar from a proper 4X.

Would like that if orbiting allied fleets be able to warp in and act as reinforcements to your battles, makes things much richer, makes no sense if they'd just stood by there watching your fleet getting blasted apart. Makes having garrison fleet a lil more viable too

Meru wrote:
My main desire is to see more depth in the combat system

Agreed. Maybe some type of targeting, maybe some type of overall tactic like fleet formation which affects the entire battle.

Xenos wrote:
Please note that a MoOII-like combat system would work fine only for small fleets. Late in a MoOII campaign it became a boring stellar-converter slug match. So far the fleets in ES seem pretty small, but if the number of ships will be increased in the final release the actual system would be much more practical than a turn-based direct-control one. A Sins-like system has the potential to be amazing, but still, that game is basically a RTS built around space combat, so it seems to much to expect something similar from a proper 4X.

MoO had shortcomings in late(LATE) game battles aka the last 5% of your turns, that is something that could be accounted for so that the battles don't taper off into superweapon pewpew. the system also doesn't /have/ to move to a turn based one, it would simply give options for depth. which is the main goal here. I do personally feel that a turn based combat system could be built to amazing effect, but I could also see building on the GC2 system & adding depth to be a strong contender. the bottom line is the current system is linear, with no options for unique play or grand play.

I don't have a lot of experience with strategy games and don't have a lot to compare this to, but what about a modified version of the card system. What about instead of both sides playing the cards at the same time, one side or the other would go first in each phase and the other side would have the opportunity to play a card in response to the first one. That could add some strategy into the card playing aspect of it.

Eiensakura wrote:
Would like that if orbiting allied fleets be able to warp in and act as reinforcements to your battles, makes things much richer, makes no sense if they'd just stood by there watching your fleet getting blasted apart. Makes having garrison fleet a lil more viable too

that would be quite nice, I remember in MoO having a fleet be one turn away, or a ship one turn away from being done wishing that a certain number of battle turns would = a turn and the ship/fleet would join the battle. and with the ships being built into hangars in this game(which makes no sense with no planetary based stations/shipyards?) it'd be nice if they could reinforce mid-combat or have the option to include them in the fight.

paradiddle wrote:
I think having a VATs like system (from Fallout) would make the combat a little more interesting while not changing the turn based nature. You could target ship engines, leaving enemy dead in the water. Target their weapons turrets to disable their offensive cababilities. Blow up life support and watch as crew eject out escape pods.

This is a great idea for a game of this nature. You could have the cards to add tactical elements to the overall fleet strength and use this vats-like system to have more control over the nature of the battle. I'd be willing to bet that it is a bit too late in the development cycle to add this, though.

VATS is actually a really solid analogy, a time-limited or action-lmited pause that allows you to refine the battle, even as simple as ship targeting, since subsystems don't really exist in this game in the same way they do in others to where "target weapons, engines, subsystems" would be viable actions. it'd be nice if there were, but that's more in the "overhaul" category & less in the "tweak current system" category.



people keep saying its too late to change the system, I definitely don't think so this game doesn't even have an official release date. just "summer 2012" it won't be catastrophic if that release date gets pushed back, and it doesn't even have to be, adding depth to the current system is /not/ a daunting task. even scrapping the system is not unfathomable given the timeframe of "summer 2012"

Again, rather than adding convoluted, potentially unfeasible alternatives - we need to at least make the devs notice a consensus of dissatisfaction, even unacceptability, of the current combat.

Terror wrote:
Again, rather than adding convoluted, potentially unfeasible alternatives - we need to at least make the devs notice a consensus of dissatisfaction, even unacceptability, of the current combat.

that is the long & short of it.

As a new purchaser of the game with about six hours under my belt so far, I have to say that I have zero interest in yet another Real Time Strategy (RTS) or Turn Based Strategy (TBS) clone being duck taped onto a space empire game. I was quite enjoying the pseudo-board game feel of playing a few cards and then letting the fleets do their work. There are plenty of RTS games on the market and if I want to play one I would play Starcraft II, an amazingly *balanced* RTS which is quite fun. The problem with adding a RTS to a larger game is that the majority of the resolution should be based on the fleet compositions. Sword of the Stars is a great example of how the RTS portion can really *take away* from the core gameplay. Is it gorgeous and even fun? Yep, until you are deep within a long game and having to resolve dozens of them every few turns. Now I'm spending more than half of my time in an RTS when I signed up to play an empire builder.



TBS combat is even worse in this regard. Space Empires IV and V get bogged down mightily once large fleets fight.



While I can understand the appeal of adding complex subsystems to another game, I think letting an empire builder be an empire builder makes a lot more effective use of an Indie houses limited resources than trying to create an entire other *game* that will rarely present balanced battles anyway. See, RTS or Turn based games are fun in my eyes when both sides are balanced. Yet in empire builders, most battles are wildly unbalanced, making the subsystem an annoyance rather than a joy.



Ironically, in games with massive combat systems bolted on I find most of the battles resolved by the auto-resolver anyway. I find the current three phase card system a wonderful compromise and would be sad to see the game development diverted into something unrelated.



Where I *did* find the system a bit clunky was the time pressure to selecting the tactics seems unnecessary and the cinematic run a bit long for an "automated" combat system. If I could see the composition of the enemy and select my cards up front and the combat passed about twice as fast I would find it less necessary to use the auto resolver. (In fact, I'm not sure why there isn't an auto-resolver that still allows for card play: it is all hidden die roles either way).

*purchases SoaSE:R*