Railgun wrote:
Yes, because SotS 1&2 don't have a tactical battle system. OH WAIT THEY DO!

Oh, sure, it's real time, not turn based. Well, if you're dead set on a TBS, you're out of luck.





Some do, apparently.

And a TBS system will also take forever to implement. And it is not going to happen. Not just because people don't want it - but because this isn't even in the game's broad strokes.

-.- No. I am not talking about turn based or real time. I talk about tactical. I talk about "what do i have to do when the opponent has ship type x most of the time uses weapon y. Now his accuracy is that and his speed is that. He has big hulls but no good shielding. He tries to tank and live long enough for the rockets to hit your engines and his race has a bonus in repair rate and onboard marines. What ship do i build for this foe. Do i build small fast ships that try to outrun his missles and hit him with armor breaking weapons? Do i build larger slower ships with lots of point defense to try and kill the rockets before they reach me and build them with a lot of long range lasers and try to fry him before he even reaches me? Is my computer potent enough for that? Is my marine technology good enough to try and capture his ships so i can salvage his rocket technology?

etc. etc. etc.

That ha absolutely nothing to do with turn based or real time. It would even work in this short fight three stages battle system we have right now as i mentioned before.

I want more TACTIC. To build ships with lots of hp and Laser to kill everything in the first stage without thinking what the enemy is like is boring. Diversity is asked. Tactical decisions are asked. Just more then rock paper scissors.



Simply put.

I want rock paper scissors lizard spock.

I want more TACTIC. To build ships with lots of hp and Laser to kill everything in the first stage without thinking what the enemy is like is boring. Diversity is asked. Tactical decisions are asked. Just more then rock paper scissors.

While I like the current system in that the movie-based thing is a fresh approach, I greatly dislike the amount of tactical depth- or the lack of it. Even more, the rock-paper-scissor system is way broken. Defense moduls just dont make the cut against most weapons. I really dislike designing very good ships techwise and losing them to mediocre missile tech, just because the enemy stacked only offensive moduls. It just feels wrong to see every ship on BOTH sides blow up even if my fleet was way ahead strengthwise. Ships in general tend to explode very fast. Even fleets should be able to duke it out without both sides losing everything. I am missing hard fights there both fleets have a chance to survive in fair numbers if they have good tech, so that multiple skirmishes may occur.



For now the current system seems far to deadly and more like "whose empire can divert more ressources to replacing the ships that die on mass". Yes I know. "you need the right tank" But even in that case pure offense modules will still ruin your day and might cost less in the long run.

I am kind of sick of the RT battles in a turn based game. Don't get me wrong, I like RTS in general, liked Sins and liked SotS. It is just seems like everything and everyone wants to have RT in it. It is like how ever RPGs lately are trying to be more 'action packed'. I love hybrids but when everyone seems to want to do it... it looses some of the appeal.



Turn based battles are classic as classic can be, but there is two problems 1) Auto-battle results are very different, and always very different then a manual battle (RTS battles suffer this too to be fair), and 2) Fight can be long, really long. Sometimes taking more time than several turns of the strategy/galaxy map game. Heaven forbid you have 5 or more battles in a turn, every turn. Auto-Resolve becomes more and more tempting (and more and more painful if the result is far worst than if you manual it).



In a way I like the current system, it doesn't try to be a RTS but has the action flow in 'real' time. It is technically turned based with a timer and only one action selection per phase. Overall the fights get resolved quickly so you can manage many per turn and get back to the game proper promptly, your imput does matter and the right selecton of cards can turn the tide yet however if you do auto... the results are not always absurdly different... usually. They do look pretty, I so love seeing Gravity Well or EMP being used.

raw wrote:


Also, there are no tactical 4x games on the market. It's impossible to go "elsewhere".

No disrespect here. But is there not a game call Elemental that is a 4X game with tactical combat made quite recently? There even making a upgrade on it now. But i have not played it yet I must admit (Though I have been trying to buy a copy)



(I hope I did bring up something that did not need to be said.)

Though i would prefer turn based combat, i'm completly fine with the implementation of battles as they ar now.

The battle cards give a nice set of tactical choices to tinker beside the choices you make during ship construction and fleet composition.



More control (via controlling every action in battles) would only equate more fun, if it's done in an efficient and rewarding way.

So i don't need turn based fights only for the sake of being there and having more to click.

Yokto wrote:
No disrespect here. But is there not a game call Elemental that is a 4X game with tactical combat made quite recently? There even making a upgrade on it now. But i have not played it yet I must admit (Though I have been trying to buy a copy)



(I hope I did bring up something that did not need to be said.)

Good you brought that up.

Although Elemental: Fallen Enchantress (the expansion) shapes up quite well at the moment, the base game is a poster boy for showing that turn based controllable battles just for the sake of it may not always be the best approach.

Ohma wrote:
Welcome to my world about 89% of the time. May I interest you in a copy of DOSBox and some Good Old Games?

been there done that. the biggest gripe is the pixel mush you get on 1080p monitors.

Yokto wrote:
No disrespect here. But is there not a game call Elemental that is a 4X game with tactical combat made quite recently? There even making a upgrade on it now. But i have not played it yet I must admit (Though I have been trying to buy a copy)



(I hope I did bring up something that did not need to be said.)

You're probably referring to Stardock's Elemental. That game is bad. Also, it's more akin to Master of Magic than MoO.

el_phantasma wrote:
Though i would prefer turn based combat, i'm completly fine with the implementation of battles as they ar now.

The battle cards give a nice set of tactical choices to tinker beside the choices you make during ship construction and fleet composition.



More control (via controlling every action in battles) would only equate more fun, if it's done in an efficient and rewarding way.

So i don't need turn based fights only for the sake of being there and having more to click.

Wise words my friend.

I'ts fine the way it is right now. It could be better still.



Anyway, having a choice never hurts. While I enjoy battles as they are right now, I would like to have the possibility to slug it out turnbased from time to time.

(Maybe not completely unlike Total war, where you have the possibility to fight battles in RT or autoresolve).

raw wrote:
It is quite simple really. You pulled the statistics card when the sample size was at N = 7. That is the number one error in statistics and that means you automatically fall into the category flatliner, regardless of how much (wrong) math you pull up later.You also continue to derail the thread.



I don't know what you want to hear still.



There have been no "previously stated games" outside of SotS II (wich is a mess) and MoO (released 1993). Please, get a grip on reality.

Oh mah gaaaaad, you're still talkiinnnnng... and flatliner isn't even a wooorrrddddd...



Sqrt[8*.25*(1-.25)]=1.22474=σ

7/1.14564=5.7155



There's still almost a 6σ chance that the results are valid. This is also disregarding the fact that the only vote against it was you. There are currently neutrino detection experiments (worth several million dollars) that have an expected detection rate of 1-2 per year!



Anyway, allow me to introduce Exhibit 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep



I'm not even talking about other games anymore. The only point is that as much as you talk about it, you aren't going to get what you want in this game anytime soon, and probably never. There's no 'derailing' of something that wasn't ever set on the train tracks.



UNLESS... (Drum Roll) you make the mod yourself.



Either way, you should stop complaining, and you should definitely stop arguing statistics.





Oops, I almost forgot...



lol Graph!

thegreedyturtle wrote:


UNLESS... (Drum Roll) you make the mod yourself.

That could actually be quite interesting - I'd like to see what alternatives the community comes up with, if it turns out you can mod battles to that extent. We'd see what works and what doesn't, in the context of this game. I suspect that it would be tricky to make it moddable, though.

I think everyone agrees that at the very least the cameras need reworking. It would be nice to have an added sense of interactivity, however. Not really sure how that would be accomplished. Perhaps a manual targeting mode and/or more direct control of power directed to shields/weaponry. Although, this would make the cards less useful. Maybe you could change the cards to power ups.



Ooh, maybe each ship or fleet could have a stock of items that can be used throughout the battle. They can be picked up at a port (star system) for cheap, but say each ship can only carry a limited amount. These items are then consumed upon use and the ship must dock at a friendly port in order to acquire more. For example, one item can be something like an instant repair for one section of the hull. The player must find the outer hull breach via a free roaming or ship centered camera and can apply the item to the hull. It can be like a ghost image that you drag around and have to apply it so that you get as much hull repaired as possible. Another can be a deployable weapons platform and/or attack drone which can be manually controlled while the ships carry on with their pre-determined battle phases. Items wouldn't need to be restricted to one use per battle phase, but you would need to watch your resources so you don't find yourself lacking in the middle of enemy space or an exploration expedition.

Besides the camera rework, I think some additional layer of strategy would be interesting. Maybe something like fleet formations or maneuvers? The whole straight lines shooting at each other tactic should still be outdated in 1000 years. Going full RTS would rob some of the game's character, though.

Just to add something neither statistical nor turn based, I dug out a very old proposal while sweeping through the proposals forum that is quite elegant and also improves tactics a lot:

/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11583-allow-no-double-use-of-any-combat-card-in-one-battle

It simply states: Don't allow any combat card to be used twice in one battle.

Now the second problem, that no one gets past the first phase, has to be solved independently, but this proposal has a few tactical advantages, already.

Nosferatiel wrote:


It simply states: Don't allow any combat card to be used twice in one battle.

That's already the case. You can't select the same card for two or more phases.

raw wrote:
That's already the case. You can't select the same card for two or more phases.

Must be some time since I last played, then.

i definitely would rather like a combat phase as in star war empire at war.



where you can strategically position you troops, call reinforcement, use special ability



make it more skill friendly either than a big rock, paper, scissor game.



make us feel like we are our fleet commander taking strategical decision in combat



being able to focus a target, it is often a better to get biggest ship down or smaller according to your fleet.



even a small frigate class fleet could sneak trough bigger ship classes and disable some critical module like engines, defence, weapons with required skills.

Nosferatiel wrote:
Must be some time since I last played, then.

Same here. [variesfromenemytoenemy]/Nano-repair systems/Nano-repair systems, worked yesterday at least.

raw wrote:


This game dearly needs tactical combat. I could write a 1000 word essay now on why that is, pull references and examples from MOO2 and other games... but I think it's so obvious that I will spare myself the work here. Please, give us TBC!

I'm unconvinced, write the essay. I enjoy the card combat system and would like to see it expanded upon and not removed.

Oliolli wrote:
Same here. [variesfromenemytoenemy]/Nano-repair systems/Nano-repair systems, worked yesterday at least.

Rubbish, cards can be countered and if you let someone just counter your predictable card choices you will be destroyed quickly. You have to build fleets in a way that force card choices or leave the enemy with no choice but to choose a worthless card just to counter you.