No need to radically change the combat system, just tweak it here and there to make it less repetitive

Some camera control and more random ship movement and fighters on the field(can be only cosmetic stuff) would be very nice



The game is too much rock-paper-scissors with the kinect-beam-missile as defense modules really determines the outcome



So resuming:



Tone down the defense module role in battles, they make or break your fleet and it is almost the only thing you need to worry in combat

Repetitive combat, this could be fixed with added randomness to the battle, fighters would really help in breaking the static feel

Lack of pre-battle metagame, like choosing formations and determining target priority

Lack of free camera control

The start and ending phases should be skippable

I like the combat system being automatic and animated. I didn't like the realtime system of total war, or the turn based of tactics. I do agree that the combat system should allow you to focus fire or select targets for your ships. There should be more control than what is given, but it doesn't need to be much.

To be honest, I wish there was some option to quick-pick the cards, rather than watching the 3d. It's very pretty, but very repetitive. This could change with more options, I suppose, but right now I find myself auto-resolving.

Bamzamma wrote:
I like the combat system being automatic and animated. I didn't like the realtime system of total war, or the turn based of tactics. I do agree that the combat system should allow you to focus fire or select targets for your ships. There should be more control than what is given, but it doesn't need to be much.

you have autoresolve if you don't want to see combat, let those who do actually get something instead of a animated rock paper scissor. Why does the real time battles of total war have ANYTHING to do with the possibility of real time combat in Endless Space? Total war had great combat and a great system where a tiny army can very possibly outfight/manover a larger one. Just beacause that isn't you cup of tea doesn't mean this game should not have SOME sort of real time combat.

Stargem wrote:
I am fine with the card system. I want to do some mild thinking for the battles, have some element of luck that makes me pay attention to my decisions, and pretty explosions to go with it. Real-time micromanagement is not my cup of tea, and we have Sword of the Stars for that sort of thing, as it excels at that. Having this game take the opposite direction is a good thing, as that means we get two different camps that have their own specialties, instead of having them try to supplant each other.

Why does the Sword of the Stars 2 have any bearing here? Some of us don't have that game... From what I read on the steam forums that game is terrible. Saying you shouldn't have combat because SotS2 has it is like saying there shouldn't be planet mangment because some other game has them...

I think that the quick pace of the battles in this game is good, whether you play multiplayer or not. It is much more in depth than GC2 but maintains that feel. I do feel that more could be added, formations in addition to action cards would be cool. However, I want battles to be quick and clean to keep the game moving.

I said "Sword of the Stars", not the sequel. You should be able to pick up the ultimate/perfect compilation from Amazon. As for SOTS2...well, I am hoping that Kerberos can overcome the Paradox Curse and eventually make the sequel very awesome.

Soul0Reaper wrote:
you have autoresolve if you don't want to see combat, let those who do actually get something instead of a animated rock paper scissor.

Sadly the auto resolution of combat is horrible. There are many times where I would just like to auto resolve but the Attack Mdfr vs. their Attack Mdfr ends up with dead ships in my graveyard, when mostly it can be avoided. Losing costly ships to bad AI is a drag on the game. Having to fight nearly all battles manually is nearly a necessity if you want to keep pace with the AI and not fall behind in ship count, especially early on. It's also a drag on the game and the psyche because 9 times out of 10 you should be able to auto resolve and not worry about losing 25% of your ships to crap AI math/tactics.

I like the style of combat, but there are a lot of things that i would adjust.

1) Health bars would rock.

2) The paper-scissors-rock approach needs mixing up. The energy and kinetic need to be a more different to each other It would be nice if armor and shields slightly helped with the other weapon types defense. Also, am i the only one who finds the battle is always over before melee?

3) Someone mentioned an idea where you pick which ships go in front and which go in the rear, and the front ships took most of the hits. Thats actually a great idea, as not everyone has to bother with it, but it encourages different fleet builds.

4) The graphics could do with an overhaul. Did anyone play Nexus -the Jupiter Incident? the gameplay was average, but it was worth it for the lightshow. What needs fixing is explosions, more debris released, and bullet pathing where shots that miss slightly miss instead of being off by 10 degrees, it just makes it look a little odd i think.

Merku wrote:
As such, controlling the actual ships seems counter to the dev.team's objectives.

I thought the whole point of having a publicly released alpha was to establish that dev teams aren't infallible in everything they're going for? :P

After 17 hours playing the game, I just can't disagree that the fights are redundant.



I would love to make optimal fleets with defenders, offenders and support. Also with mixed weapons and shields (at least 2 of each). But actually I'm just building fleets of similar spaceship because that's working better...



Setting a fleet formation whenever you want during a turn, but not at the battle start, open a lot of perspectives to balance this without making the battles longer. In addition with the 3 range phases which should be more developped (I mean the effect of each range on each weapon/formation position).



With mixed fleets + range effects, you can start having great dilema with cards choices. And if you increase the depth of the cards strategys, then I hope that the fight will be realy good.



Then just add a skip action when clicking on the hourglass to skip to the next phase for those who don't wanna spend all their time watching wonderful cinematics but don't want neither to let the AI decides the cards for them.

I like the combat in it's current form.

I'd like a few more options: perhaps formations, additional cards with, maybe, a offense and defense or tactics column.

Having some control over the cinematics would be nice.

Having the ability to replay a battle would be nice too.

Saapho wrote:
I like the combat in it's current form.

I'd like a few more options: perhaps formations, additional cards with, maybe, a offense and defense or tactics column.

Having some control over the cinematics would be nice.

Having the ability to replay a battle would be nice too.

I agree, i actually enjoy the combat system the way it is now that i understand it better but having more control would be nice.

Current combat system is kind of meh. It basically renders the cinematic aspect irrelevant because all you can do is choose some cards that modify combat outcomes a little bit. It gets boring pretty fast and I found myself building megafleets just so I could "auto" the outcome of battles. You might as well just switch to a civ style combat system where you just move ships over other systems and let combat resolve on the board if strategic controls aren't implemented.



You could (well, relatively) easily incorporate all three modes and let the player decide what to do. auto-resolve, the current card captor system or whatever it's supposed to be, and strategic control.

I really don't mind the current combat system. Combat that is too in-depth in a turn-based 4x can really make things tedious. It would also take away from the "grand strategy" of the game...you shouldn't lose a battle because someone out-micromanaged you despite your larger-scale strategic planning. That being said, I do think the addition of another "card slot"...ArrowLance's Military Doctrine idea...would add the level of interaction that I would feel comfortable with.



Also, we have to remember that the game is in Alpha. Generally, huge game design changes aren't implemented this late in development. I might be wrong, but I don't think we should expect a radical redoing of anything. However, the additional card slot idea is definitely feasible within the current framework and design philosophy of the game, and I want to throw my support behind it.

The combat system is the weakest part of the game thus far.

The cards as they are right now are a really cool thing to have, but the cards alone are not enough to carry what is ideally an engaging military experience; the combat being based almost entirely upon cards right now feels like it's missing several key gameplay components.



Simply because this is a 4x game doesn't mean that it is acceptable for any aspect of the game to not be deep or profound, so naturally I don't believe that the cards being the sole form of player input in battle is acceptable as they are particularly deep or profound. Not saying that I want to play an RTS when the battle is underway though; RTS style combat has no place in this game.



I would like to see something like Gratuitous Space Battles in this game, where you have control over the initial parameters of the fleet battle, but do not have much control over your vessels during the fight. Perhaps cards can still play a major role here, where you can assign cards to each vessel or group of vessels for the different engagement ranges.

kibertoad wrote:
No. Please no. Current combat system is what makes this game unique. Everybody and their dog has nowadays implemented a detailed ship combat system, and you have a plenty of choice if that is the kind of a game you want to play. However, 4Xs that are truly global and do not require you to micromanage very single ship in every single battle or face lousy autoresolve with lots of casualties are mostly non-existent.



Camera management definitely could be improved, but rather than that - current system is nearly perfect.

How about a check box, auto managed for you, and detailed for those who prefer that? Personally I would like a Homeworld2 style of ship combat. Kind of make the game like a Total War game in space, but that's wishful thinking and never going to happen (tactics in 3 dimensions would be cool) so a SOTS type of thing would be okay.



As it sits now, the game is pretty addictive. But I agree, the combat needs "more".

I'm reposting this from another thread with similar subject. Did not saw that thread in the first place, nor read all 13 pages so my ideas might have been suggested before ^^



While i dont like current combat system, i'm more fan of SOTS style, changing it before release is for sure a HUGE work for the devs, as it is working fine actually.

But here a little something to spice it :

Christophe_Degoy wrote:
By the way, there is this little shady game nearly no one knows about but that might give some ideas about evolving combat system using more cards :

Smugglers 4 Doomsday

(http://www.nielsbauergames.com/smugglers4.html)



What is interesting about this game is the card system in combat which is a bit similar to what Endless Space is proposing.



While in Endless Space all cards are played from the start, in Smugglers 4, you play a card each turn during a fight, where initiative rules who is drawing card first each turn, and the fighting last until you or ennemy is dead turns after turns.



I'm not asking to make more turns in ES, but some kind of "initiative" would be welcomed, puting more strategy in the fighting.



In actual system all cards are played at same time, with no initiative advantage.



Initiative checks at each round :

What would be interesting is puting some more Initiative in it :



- preparation round : each player draw one card, cards are played same time (like a deployment phase, this will then tell who's initiative would be the best and dictate wich player throw his cards first on next round)



- long range round : the player with the worst initiative from preparation round play his card first, giving the player with the best initiative an advantage to choose his card accordingly. Then the round is played.



- middle range : depending on the result of the long range round, an initiative check is done again, and players draw their cards accordingly one after the other. Round is played after that.



- close combat range : same as middle range.



Cards initiave rolls should be done so even if you have initiative at Long Range turn (hence playing second for that turn knowing what the ennemy will do and having possibility to counter him more effectively) this does not give you an automatic initiative advantage for the initiative check on Medium Range. The initiative check should take into account result of previous round, losses and so on to tell who has the best initiative for the Medium round to draw cards.

Think of this initiative idea as a sort of moral ledger.



Some cards should negate/reduce initiative from other cards like it is working similar with the current system when a card negates another.

Some others cards should boost your initiative or ennemy initiative if the card you play/he play tell it.



To summerize, initiative system is not a separate card, it is a value added to existing cards, but used separatly to make the checks each round.



Reverse fight range cards :



The fighting should go normally from long range to short range, but there should also be "one time use cards" that make this go back one click, like going from a short range position to a medium range position, or a medium range to long range. If no more special cards played like this one, the combat goes on normally from long/middle range till it ends to short range. If there is, say, 2 cards like that, playable only once, this would probably just double the time spent on fighting.

Or there could be just one card like this one, playable only once. And one skill a Hero that would do the same but once per fight.

this card could be played in addition to another card (or not, since it's already a nice advantage to take distance from ennemy if you want to flee, or finish off ennemy for more turns)

This system would be interesting, if weapons effectiveness also vary with range (is it the case?). IE you have ships designed for long range (accuracy/damage but low armor), this card is interesting.



Evasion card :

Also adding some special "evasion" cards would also be interesting to make your ships retreat whenever you want during a fight, but at the next round following, so you still have to sustain damage to simulate preparation for a hyperjump retreat.



With just this, the initiative system and the possibility to reverse range of fight for 1 round or twice, is enough to add a lot more of interest in the current fighting model.

This system will evolve from a "sit and watch system" the case actually, to a more immersive system.

No need to add more time to each round, just split actual rounds so that each player have time to draw cards one after the other and still have time to think of their choice. this will make fighting more dynamic !



Finally adding more cards variation during the fight would also add more spice to it, since we will no longer play them at same time.

About initiative, some hulls could have more initiative than others (scout > dreadnought), some module giving more initiative. The average score of the entire fleet will be added to the value given by the cards that you draw, and used for each checks. (we wont give more initiative for 6 ships vs 3 just because we add all 6 values that's why using average is good)

Damage sustained could affect initiative after each round. And the next roll will take that into consideration.

and so on...



Many ways to explore "initiative", not changing the game mechanics a lot and keeping a somewhat similar combat system that we have already, with more dynamism.

I like the core concept and mechanic of the battle system, but the camera is aggravating. I would like either fewer cuts or fewer angles. The way it runs now there is no establishing cinematic feel. The combat looks like a collage of miscellaneous space scenes.

they can keep the card system in place but please add a real time combat that is my opinion of what makes a X4 an X4

Needs a revamp. The current system is basically an interactive movie.