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.

Agree with the OP - combat in this game is the least entertaining portion.



1) It's confusing. If you're fighting someone of the same species, there's no visual method of distinguishing who owns what.

2) It lacks interaction. It has three points of interaction and those are just picking cards. Why bother showing the battle if you only have minimal impact on it?

3) Given #2 it drags on!

4) The camera angles are annoying. I really just want to see a top-down visualisation of the battle without constant camera cuts.





Might sound harsh, but I'm loving the game so far and this is the only portion of it where I think it sucks bad.

I have to admit the only space battle system I ever liked was the one of Star Fleet Command 1/2/OP. So I am impartial and don't feel like glorifying either TB or RT based combat. For what it's worth it's depending on the scope and having 25 supply at max. worth of supply does not warrant a complex turn-based system.



I admit I am not a fan of GC2'esque showcase combat either, I am a control freak but I am also realist. I know given the timeframe until release a complete overhaul is impossible and even if it were not the creator's prerogative would kick in. Unless they are convinced by themselves that their own core design doesn't satisfy them a change is unlikely.



My filtered main gripes are:

• Arrival phase should be skipable
• Only one card per phase. More about it later.
• Too much RPS. Every weapon has a counter, weapons don't have a variety of behaviours but mainly a set of scaling weapon-typical characteristics and thus mainly different stat weightings. Thus you ultimately have this top-dog weapon whose counter effectiveness makes or breaks the weapon game.
• No fighters. This may sound cliche but it can soften up the RPS a little as every counter will work against them at certain reduced effectiveness levels while also not being the ultimate weapon either. They are basically like wildcards.
• Lack of maneuvers and formations, especially those based on ship type. The entire card system is mainly a battle of modifiers. It would be nice to have the possibility to interject a limited amount of actions between or during phases which would pause the phase in order to leave the option for a counter for the other side. These actions could substitute the need for formations and maneuvers and even introduce some currently lacking. Such as: Retreat!
• Lack of free camera control
  
  

what would perfectly fit the game and the present combat model is including a fleet management screen as done in Dominions 3 where you are able to position ship groups and assign them a role.

So you could determine colonizers to stay away from combat and assign some combat ships to protect them. The present model doesn't seem to make any difference between ship types and throws them all together as a bulk in combat, as a result non combat ships ,being the weakest, are targeted first and most always lost.

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".