The problem for the developers standpoint is how to not make it boring for the other players in multilayer.



I suggest that turns take place in order of: Orders->Movement->Combat

Try it PvP MP. I know I keep banging on about this but I have a drum so I’m damn well going to bash it! Seriously, try starting a fight with a human player fleet that’s in your system. Quite often you can’t. Why? Because that human player has probably already moved that fleet away during the turn and it hasn’t updated on your client yet. Bashing away on the attack was I, wondering why the hell it wasn’t working…



I’ve moved over to Sins:Rebellion now; Sins doesn’t quite scratch the same itch that ES would but I can’t play competitively what is in practice a broken game. If ES ever sorts out the simultaneous turns thing I’d gladly return to it because I otherwise very much adore the laid back, mellow game play. In the meantime I’m off to steer the TEC to victory - or at least a glorious end.

This is becoming, for me, the one issue that makes me reluctant to play the game... Today, again, at one point I got attacked by the Cravers (of course - massive fleet spam), and after a turn or two I completely lost control over the flow of events. Enemy fleets were moving as they pleased, leaving me with no chance to react (before I clicked, they were already somewhere else), even with fleets on Intercept orders. When I finally did get a chance to do something, I played one battle and lost another one on Auto because both timers started on the same moment.

This is nowhere near fun - it's confusing, frustrating and annoying.



Also, while we're at fleet movement: it would be nice (assuming that movement is somehow solved) if player fleets did not automatically entered invaded systems. This often leads to unwanted battles involving single ships or small fleets before merging, and only leads to unnecessary losses and adds to the confusion. Instead, it would be nice if a fleet that is about to enter an invaded system stopped one system before and notified the player that the path is blocked.

How about when it happens when your organizing something? Very annoying.

I actually ran into a situation the other day where during my turn the enemy moved in on two different spots. Two combat messages popped up at once, so I clicked manual and fought the first one only to learn that during this fight the timer had run down on the second battle and it had been fought automatically.



Still not sure I totally get or like the movement happening during my turn.

I think the way to address this would be a round-robin system gated on resolving potential fleet interactions. That is, if you could move fleets freely as now if there is no way for an interaction that could require action from the fleet or interfere with it would occur along its path, but possible interactions would hold up continuing movement until the involved parties resolved all sides of the possible interactions.



Resolving would be reached/bypassed akin to the "finish movement" control that was added, stopping at resolve opportunities instead of finishing all movements so the player could press again to resolve with no action, though I also think that functionality could use enhancements beyond those that would go with just that type of change.



As far as implementation, I have several thoughts on fleet based data structures based on orders or system based data structures populated by fleet/order iteration, and using them to evaluate this, but only guesses on existing implementation and vague concepts at the moment.

Nosferatiel wrote:
The guard function already does exactly what Joush proposed. If you have a fleet in a system with the guard function on, enemy fleets can only leave the system if they flee in combat.

No, it does not. I have encountered problems on multiple occasions that, unfortunately, are nigh impossible to capture with a screenshot. It seems to happen thus:



I place a fleet on "Guard" on a perimeter system, thinking that any enemy fleets trying to get to one of my interior worlds will have to stop here and the enemy may not pass until I have had a chance to engage and destroy them before they can get to my interior planets.



This, unfortunately, fails if the enemy AI has set their fleet on a long path. An enemy fleet on a long path going from one star system away from my guarded border system to a destination past my guarded system will cheatingly bypass my guarding fleet without stopping at all if it does not reach my star system from that previous star system in a single turn. I believe this is because, as with human-controlled fleets, when you first set a destination for one of your fleets that will take multiple turns, it will immediately expend all remaining movement points for the first turn, but after pressing "End Turn," it will only advance your fleet along its route when you either press "End Turn" again or the newer button to move your fleets along their current routes; this button does not affect AI fleets on long distance routes. Their fleets will, therefore, only move in long-distance moves when you press "End Turn." This can and does put AI fleets to your guarded system during end of turn processing, when you cannot control your fleets and cannot order an intercept. After the end of turn processing, it is a new turn, and the AI seems to know 'Oh no, I don't want to engage here' in your guarded system and move their fleets past it at the very beginning of the turn, before you can do anything, giving you zero opportunity to actually intercept their fleet in this situation.



I've encountered this on multiple occasions.

Yep, Sword of the Stars had it right: Simultaneous empire and fleet move order issuing but nothing actually moved until everyone hit End Turn, then the combat dialogue popped up before the events list. No silly Mexican stand-offs, no rushing to move your fleet before your Human opponent can click Attack, no comical races for the 'Intercept' button, no not being able to act before the AI does because the interface is unresponsive while it moves, no AI bulk-moves that any Human player can't hope to match, no deliberately initiating a battle when you know your Human opponent is busy elsewhere in the game...



All of that must sound like I hate playing the game but I really don't. I like ES a great deal but if anything is going to force me to shelve this game it's going to be this horribly exploitable simultaneous turns thing. I just don't understand why it was designed this way. If it were built the SotS way turn times would be no longer than they are now anyway, so it can't be an attention span consideration. To boot, I expect the game would run a lot better in true turn-based mode (or at least the SotS method) because all of these timed packets flying around must generate no end of synchronisation headaches.



I too didn't go anywhere near CIV after playing the demo and discovering the way the turn sequencing worked. Awful. Bad mojo.

Igncom1 wrote:
The problem for the developers standpoint is how to not make it boring for the other players in multilayer.

I think in an era where gamers in a number of genres complain about the industry sacrificing gameplay for graphics - strategy gamers are suffering from sacrificing gameplay for patience.

Most studios, including Firaxis and Amplitude, seems to believe that this market of gamers will not sit and wait for our opponent to take their turn like we used to throughout gaming history (I'm talking not only video games but something as simple as Chess or Risk). This may unfortunately be entirely true, and it will continue to kill gameplay for the rest of us accustom to taking turns in a turn based game (go figure).



I don't think it's going away in this game or any others.

Nosferatiel wrote:
The guard function already does exactly what Joush proposed. If you have a fleet in a system with the guard function on, enemy fleets can only leave the system if they flee in combat.

But what happens if my fleet is incoming, trying to intercept and destroy an enemy fleet which is invading one of my systems? New turn starts, and if I'm fast enough to click to resolve my movement and then click to attack you, i'll destroy your fleet. If, instead, you're quick enough to move away before i can attack, I get no combat. This turns a game which is supposed to be about decisions to instead being about reaction time. Now I play my share of RTS games, I don't mind reaction or timed based mechanics, but this is a thoroughly uninteresting and disconnected time mechanic.



If you want to do simultaneous turns, *really* do simultaneous turns correctly. Everyone imputs orders for their fleets, then when everyone hits "end" the orders all resolve *at the same time.* Nobody gets to move first because they clicked faster.



I feel like all movement should happen over the turn execution. Having the movement happen during the player decision phase breaks way too much.

The guard function already does exactly what Joush proposed. If you have a fleet in a system with the guard function on, enemy fleets can only leave the system if they flee in combat.

as a single player fan, i truly and utterly hate your simultaneous "turn-based" system.



until now, seems like the people who play in MP enjoy it, those who play in SP hate it. if that is the case and i "counted" correctly, then i do tell you that that is very bad for business!



best of luck!

I also wanted to chime in on all of the Civ 5 analogy talk here.



This is absolutely the number one reason I left Civ 5 and am hoping to find a good game here. It is pretty widely accepted that Civ 5 is in fact terrible multiplayer.

The one post on the first page that mentioned they loved this feature from Civ... you are seriously the ONLY person.



I can't believe so many turn "based games" like Civ and apparently ES can't master the concept of "turn based" they are named after. Can we all make up a term like "simultaneously turn based" or some otherwise illogical name to turn into an acronym to help be realistic about these things.



While I have completely written off Civ as single player, I am still holding out hope of finding a good multiplayer experience here.

Joush wrote:
Seems like you could solve these problems just by giving fleets a "control area" where an opponent can't pass them without giving them a chance to fight.

This, PLEASE. I want to get the real-time out of my TBS! This is one of the features about Civ V multiplayer that kills it for me. Why should a combat be decided by who can click faster in a TBS?

It's not ideal in MP either IME because it is exploitable, and in the later game some turns devolve into a Mexican stand-off where no-one wants to twitch first; such 'tactical' gamey actions do not sit well within what is ostensibly a 'strategic' turn-based layer. There is also the 'race for the intercept button' thing which gets rather comical at times. The AI bulk-moving everything hardly helps matters and the interface being unresponsive during these moves only shines a light on why simul-moves probably wasn't the best decision.

Agreed!



This is the biggest gripe I have with the game. It's so frustrating that I can't recommend the game to anyone who likes serious strategy games, even though the game is otherwise (mostly) excellent.



[edit] To clarify, I mean simultaneous movement in SP. Might work fine in MP, haven't tried it.

The simultaneous movement is SP is utter garbage - the AI moves all fleets at once (which I am incapable of, having only one mouse) and during its moves the UI becomes completely unresponsive and the games is barely playable, making it very difficult for me to react in a coherent manner. In fact, I've caught myself losing control of the situation and simply waiting it out until the AI finishes, so I can start doing anything about it...

Not to mention that instead of engaging my brain cells and doing some planning I am instead faced with a clicking race in a non-responsive interface - not fun at all.

I proposed something akin to a hotfix for the combat related simultaneous movement problems, here: /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/12511-fix-simultaneous-battle-engagement-with-queue-mechanics

I would also like to say, give us the option in SP of disabling the utter nonsense that is the AI being able to move during our turns. Or at least make the movement like Frozen Synapse, where everyone decides what to do, then when they all end their turns it happens, and combat occurs accordingly. Currently I have had 6 fleets accidentally killed because I wasn't "fast" enough to move them in time to get away. I know I just said the game was great, and it is, but if this isn't fixed my pre-order will be gone, and I'll spend my money elsewhere, it's ruining the game for me.

Igncom1 wrote:


This is a Turn Based Strategy game, and should not have the elements of a Real Time Strategy Game.

Absolutely true!



Don't wanna go into too much detail, as this is simply the most important point.

Although the game is turn-based, it constantly hammers me with all those little things I hate soo much about RTS!

Due to the simultaneous moves design, it "feels" more RTS than TB - and that's no good.



Please Devs - good and "pure" turn-based games are a dying species!

This game could be one step in reviving them - keep it strictly TB and make us happy!

For MP - there are solutions to be found!