stasik28 wrote:
Well there's three of us now haha. But I agree with you, the cards are a fun idea at first, but it's like watching a replay of an rts, but you change the outcome by applying a spell card from Magic to "Add +2 attack for all allies on the field". You can get what I'm saying :P. But luckily, I'm just an addict for Space Battles, so setting up some cards then turning on free cam is all I need to enjoy it.

I still look forward to starting the manual battle and watching the two fleets wallop each other into the void. Fun times .

fargazer wrote:
I would like to see a fast forward for each phase - pick your card, space or other key to see result, then a few seconds to possibly change your next card. It may not save too much time in player vs player (since you have to coordinate both participants), but it would really speed up combat with AIs without losing the option to use the cards.

Note exactly the best way to do it, but I see where your head is at...



I would rather have a menu pop up after clicking 'Auto' that allows you to select your cards, and then it would calculate the battle.

I'll keep my thoughts on the matter concise, which is how I'd like combat to be.



My main gripe with the combat is it's slow when you want to go manual.



I'd like a manual option without the 3d cinematic; pick your cards, get results, next fight. repeat for the 30+ battles that round and end turn to do it again. Rather than taking an hour per turn loading in and out of 3d combat and slowly watching ships floating around adrift through space with no real movement.



I don't want the 3D combat removed (first few games it was nice, it does add something to the game), but I want an option to skip it, speed it up, or to somehow not have to have a loading screen for each combat phase. There comes a point when most players will have seen the 3D combat enough that it's a negative aspect of their playing experience (see many posts in this thread). Don't force those players to endure the cinematic just because they wanted to retreat, repair, or ensure some other cards were played but otherwise have ZERO interest in seeing the fight in 3D.



Last reason, if giving players an option to retreat/repair without entering manual combat was already up for discussion, don't stop short and just give us full access to our cards without the 3d combat screen. By all means hide the option and have 3d combat default manual combat, it looks better, but please add that option for those of us that aren't interested in the cosmetics.

Xanoth wrote:


Last reason, if giving players an option to retreat/repair without entering manual combat was already up for discussion, don't stop short and just give us full access to our cards without the 3d combat screen. By all means hide the option and have 3d combat default manual combat, it looks better, but please add that option for those of us that aren't interested in the cosmetics.

a quick 10-20 second non view battle multiplayer option might be worth making.



cards useable, 3 phases, battles done in 10 seconds

I believe battle sequence should be different for MP and SP. Personally i dont play MP games due to lack of time so my main focus is on SP and personally i want my battles more epic. For me SP battles are too short. I like the Amplitude approach on battles, its something new and fun but needs a lot more work. (and dont forget we also need proper ground combat lol)

Have anyone tried starebase orion? its for iOS, I think they solved it pretty sweet actually. When you engage the enemy you choose a option for each ship (there is a option to make it applied to all the ships in the same class) the top one is distance.



1. Charge Close 2. Medium Range 3. Long Range 4. Evasion 5. Retreat



And then there is what to engage (don't remember the order of that one, or the exact types)



1. Weakest 2. Biggest 3. Smallest 4. Closest 5. Hold ground (something like that)



And then you have two boxes where you can choose if you want to pick a enemy ship to kill first and then apply these rules

And one box if you want to escort one of your own ships.



The rest is just an show where the ships fly around doing their thing, sticking to the rules you set.



I think something like that combined with the cards would be fun and smart.



I mean, I only play Starbase on multiplayer with my friends, and it is fast and smooth to operate and if you don't want to watch the ships fly around you don't need to. you get the report in the notification bar. We play 2 games a week, and its the same micromanagement as in ES or MOO and all those other games, if not more.



Maybe have these options I mentioned, pre combat and then when combat begins instead of just a show you could pick your cards during the fights? (like now) And if you don't have time for that you could just choose 3 cards as it is now for auto combat. It would be kind of like now but with some more settings for how your ships should behave, the faster ones will engage faster, or flee faster, and the bigger ones will be slower but maybe escort something important, like a colony ship?



On top of that, if you would like to go deeper, just add range to the weapons.. bullets for closer.. etc.. or why not making it hard to hit the small ones that are fast?

If you build from that the possibilities are endless, and I don't think it would be to hard to make either, just ad higher deflect to smaller ships.. etc.

All it would take to improve the battle system in Endless Space is more control over cards and card types, and less reliance on having the entire battle preplanned before even starting it. Here is a list of improvements that I have gleaned from this forum and seem perfectly obvious to me.



1) Each phase is its own turn. You choose cards per-phase so as to counteract other cards or react to situations.



2) More than one fleet can engage in a single battle. I have two fleets orbiting the system, why can't I have both engage if I want them to? it could be beneficial too in that more fleets would mean each fleet gets its own card, but it only applies to the fleet using it. Downside is strengths get cut in half, and heroes only apply to the fleets they are in. It would stop pirates from attacking my colony ship while a fully decked out battle fleet without any room is right beside it.



3) Attack/Defence cards. Seriously, no more rock paper scissors. Each turn gives you one card for attack (including sabotage), and one for defence(including repair). The bonuses for each would just be slightly downgraded. Secondly, you can play two of either attack or defence for a small penalty to the ability you're not using. Double nano repair your ships? Well your attack strength just got slashed by 1/3.



4) Retreat option from the auto menu. Just click it and no need to choose cards. The card would still exist in manual battles but would get harder to use the closer the fleets are together.



5) Speed up the cinematics. Seriously. We just need 1)view of enemy ships using their cards 2)view of your ships using your cards 3) view of damage to enemy fleet 4)view of damage to your fleet. End phase.



I'd like to keep the current battle system as it does away with long and arduous turn based battles, real time battles where you lose track of who's doing what in your fleet, and battles where x strength is stronger than y's strength so x wins. But come on, alphas over guys time to put some meat on this skeleton.

Wow, a fellow British Columbian!



I'm with Javarino on all of the above points. I've been playing 4x for a long, long time and have been eating, drinking and breathing Endless Space for weeks now. I won't go as far as say the system is broken but the battles have become pretty boring and kind of tedious - all of those suggestions he's outlined would improve gameplay dramatically, IMHO.

Supahbeel wrote:
Wow, a fellow British Columbian!

Woot! It's surprising the response I get just from filling out the "Where are you from" section lol.

I would like to say that there are ways that the combat could be better that are within the system already.



I REALLY hate how cards are currently acquired. You just have this list of cards you start with and then get a few others with hero xp or research and I think none from subsystems? I would be much happier if only a few "basic" abilities were left as "Everyone starts with these" cards, and more were either put on the tech tree or required specific support units to be on one of your ships(want nano repair? Better put the nano repair mod on a ship). It would also help if the tech tree wasn't so spartan and....kinda meh balanced. Lasers seem to basically always be the weapon of choice, and very little changes that. Even more so with how alpha strike fleets can be so powerful,.



Really though I would like to see more "unique" weaponry. I know that since we can't target and control combat it sorta limits the design, but 7 tiers of machine guns really isn't exiciting, even to design. Even if i was auto resolving Moo combat, i enjoyed trying to make plasma webs, stasis fields, tractor beams, disruptors, those spinny thingys, and a bunch of other unique weapon based designs work. At the very least some offensive weaponry that can debuff or disable enemy ships might be a fun place to start.

Eji1700 wrote:
I would like to say that there are ways that the combat could be better that are within the system already.



I REALLY hate how cards are currently acquired. You just have this list of cards you start with and then get a few others with hero xp or research and I think none from subsystems? I would be much happier if only a few "basic" abilities were left as "Everyone starts with these" cards, and more were either put on the tech tree or required specific support units to be on one of your ships(want nano repair? Better put the nano repair mod on a ship). It would also help if the tech tree wasn't so spartan and....kinda meh balanced. Lasers seem to basically always be the weapon of choice, and very little changes that. Even more so with how alpha strike fleets can be so powerful,.



Really though I would like to see more "unique" weaponry. I know that since we can't target and control combat it sorta limits the design, but 7 tiers of machine guns really isn't exiciting, even to design. Even if i was auto resolving Moo combat, i enjoyed trying to make plasma webs, stasis fields, tractor beams, disruptors, those spinny thingys, and a bunch of other unique weapon based designs work. At the very least some offensive weaponry that can debuff or disable enemy ships might be a fun place to start.

I like the idea of more weapon types, but you have to admit that the combat system as it stands couldn't really hold up to that. I'd rather see your idea of mods having more of an influence on battle cards, but keeping the same weapon types. Say adding a mod that gives you a battle card so your lasers destroy a certain amount of anti-missile flak, for a damage decrease, but allowing your long range ships a higher hit chance. Stuff that makes better use of the current system by adding cards instead of just percentage increases. Maybe weapon overclock could do more damage but only be available on fleets with the proper mod installed, allowing you to specialize close range fleets.



At the same time, you'd need stack modifiers to prevent one ship from superpowering the entire fleet, and then we're just going in circles around the issue of changing the system. Still its a good idea Eji, I'd like to see it implemented. Anything to make combat more interesting .

Supahbeel wrote:
Wow, a fellow British Columbian!



I'm with Javarino on all of the above points. I've been playing 4x for a long, long time and have been eating, drinking and breathing Endless Space for weeks now. I won't go as far as say the system is broken but the battles have become pretty boring and kind of tedious - all of those suggestions he's outlined would improve gameplay dramatically, IMHO.

Well there's three of us now haha. But I agree with you, the cards are a fun idea at first, but it's like watching a replay of an rts, but you change the outcome by applying a spell card from Magic to "Add +2 attack for all allies on the field". You can get what I'm saying :P. But luckily, I'm just an addict for Space Battles, so setting up some cards then turning on free cam is all I need to enjoy it.

Biaslemon wrote:
I quite like the combat system, its unlike any game I've played before and it does mean that as long as you play smart you can defeat a force much larger than your own, it is a bit limited granted but im still not sick of it yet :P

lol - camo + repair + repair

heh yea, I've been playing it kind of badly since the patch. Because I'm one to just go down one tech tree and maximize the effectiveness of one weapon type, usually its kinetics (Warhammer, what have you done to me!) but since the AI go a mix of all 3, and have defenses of all 3, while my fleet only counters one of them, I usually melt haha. Been playing a bit less, might start a bit more since a few more friends bought it

kaydiechii wrote:
it certainly gets points for unique, but as my picture can better describe:



It doesn't fit the 4x scene. at ALL, its completely counter intuitive.



fleet formations, micromanaging your support/lead ships and controlling mobility over firepower and durability were all design elements and thoughts that LEAD to the creation of the original point/module system that moo pioneered, ES in short directly COPIED what moo did with their tonage/module system, but took out the very reason they were CREATED in the first place, that in it of itself is completely just absurd, i don't know how else to say it...





i don't usually get this emotional about video games, but i've been wanting a game that could come even remotely close to the original MOO for years, running that damn game out of dosbox with a network emu is just tiresome - and i guess my feelign could only be described as if i was given what appears to be my wish after all these long years, only to have one of the most intrisnical stragetic elements of the game snatched away and replaced by what can only be described as complete observer, i mean even the freecam option is another slap in the face of "Ooh look you can watch in all angles but can't control a damn thing", i mean, whats the point in having ships with bonus tonage effeciency to defense/support/offense modules if you can't even posistion them, several times i have watched helplessly as my armored ships sit behind my lesser armored ships and they get melted, i mean i could rant about this for HOURS.





moo. a 2mb game had the combat perfect. it was slow, it was hard to learn, but it had an auto feature for less experienced players, and even that auto feature was fast and you actually watched what the cpu did to micro (allowing a new player to pick up on strategies) I just don't see how something like this was missed or intentionally not added. I get the desire to be unique and accessible to players of lower intellect or means, but for the love of god there are other ways! Don't copy moo, that's fine i agree, but can the dev's honestly sit here and say the battle system is fine the way it is? maybe im the one odd duck here who can't seem to enjoy what others are, it feels bad. this game is so wonderful



on the converse - i've never seen such good tooltips and effecient ui's, especially for this game's age. its almost as acessable as moo was (the original moo, you could right click virtually ANYTHING for in depth information and statistics), the amount of anomolies/tech branches and depth of planetary management is amazing too, though again i feel the system production instead of invidiual planets is a bit odd but nothing wrong with it. there are so many amazing facets to this game, asthetics too... but why combat, whyy

There is a game in dev "M.O.R.E." that is supposed to have combat like MOO 2's ,you might want to check it out it looks good

stasik28 wrote:
Well there's three of us now haha. But I agree with you, the cards are a fun idea at first, but it's like watching a replay of an rts, but you change the outcome by applying a spell card from Magic to "Add +2 attack for all allies on the field". You can get what I'm saying :P. But luckily, I'm just an addict for Space Battles, so setting up some cards then turning on free cam is all I need to enjoy it.

Make that 4 of us

Honestly, I think the rock-paper-scissor combat system is terrible. Weapons will pretty much always be better than defenses because defenses are good against one weapon, whereas weapons are good against two defenses. Generalizing in defenses is always a losing proposition against those swarms of glass cannons. Furthermore, why stick yet another rock-paper-scissor-lizard-Spock on cards? Why not always provide their intended effect, but subtract from some kind of reserve or cost Dust?



Also, the opacity of ranges on weapons and fighter/bomber mechanics and stats is very frustrating.

Igncom1 wrote:


Ok so I know we all love MOO (Not me personally, I cringe every time someone mentions it) but that game did have a lot of late game problems with management of battles, and considering the current battle system was a dev decision to implement I feel like we should focus on improving it rather then trying to copy some 30 year old game.

Igncom1 and I have been arguing a bit lately about the awesomeness of MOO and MOO2, but i will side with him on this one.



Bottom line is, ES is not meant to be as tactical a game as MOO2 was. ES is designed to focus on the strategic and building elements, the "execution" is more automatic. Its neither good nor bad, it simply caters to a different kind of player.



I like the tactical battles in MOO2 once in a while. I loved the big epic battle where i painstakingly worked my way to victory. But most of the time, i just wanted the battles over. I'm a builder more than a fighter, so i prefer the quicker execution of ES.

I like the card battle system. It makes for a nice middle ground between real-time action and turn-based random-number-generation. That's not to say it's perfect; it's not. It needs continued balancing and tweaking and expansion, but the overall concept is good. In 4x games, I find that if the battle system is too involved, you end up spending so much time on it that you don't actually manage your empire, which is kind of a problem if you plan on having interesting and compelling trade/diplomacy/research and empire-building systems. And it sucks late-game, when you're fighting dozens of battles at once. If you have to micromanage each one or risk losing, you'll spend hours on a single turn.



Also, for those of you who just really want space battles like the video posted on the front page, check out Gratuitous Space Battles. It's close.

I am a long time fan of the MOO series, but I am just as much of a fan of the ES game, and in my book, it wouldn't take much to take ES to MOO category. THe combat is what makes ES unique. In MOO, I got very tired when it was massive fleets against massive fleets. It took forever to resolve.