Donkadoo wrote:
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.



snip

That's exactly the level of control I would like to have for the fleet engagements. I should add that I really like the new targeting and formations. They were well done.

loppnessmonsta wrote:
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.

This I completely agree with. I love the fact that you don't need to lead each spaceship by hand, telling it exactly what to do at any given moment. I want to be a general, not a bunch of captains all at once.



But the current card system seems like lottery tickets. One can profit much more by guessing the opponent's card than by playing your strong hand as your strong hand is completely negated if the opponent guesses it.



Also, there is not a single tactical way to guess the next card. With the sole exception of retreat, it has absolutely no connection with the battle so far. Perhaps this is not the best explanation, but I see all three rounds as the same kind of lottery tickets.

after watching the video you call ES combat clunky and a waste of time.......really?



Maybe your perception is kinda "imprinted" due to the fact that you adore MOO that much. I never played it and all that video does for me is to take a stick and keep it away from me.

Igncom1 wrote:
In b4 mod fires the related thread cannon.



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.



And as your an emperor and not a admiral you really shouldn't have direct control anyway.



Not that the current system is perfect by any means, I still give it the old dagger eyes every time I play, but I really, really REALLY love the battle cards and would love to see them be massively expanded in use and implementation in the game. Get cards for fleet mobilization, and feet control (Possibly split the current combat rounds into micro phases for the use of extra cards, and alloy me to play them during an auto battle.



Expand the battle system based on what is awesome and fun!



(P.S. If you ever wanted MOO like Real time combat, please for the love of almighty spaghetti monster check out SOTS1, and possibly 2, you won't regret it, promise)

i agree, the premise of the cards is actually quite awesome, i don't think they should go - infact the post i made before yours i think is a good middle ground

kaydiechii wrote:
can anyone shed some light on why this was designed and implemented this way? i feel like somewhere half way through the game development funding just got cut altogether and someone had this brilliant cost effective idea of "hey lets just make the battles a predefined cinematic where players click 3 buttons!"

Nope it's been like that since the early alpha's - always been that way by design. I'm sure the 'why' is buried here on the forums somewhere in the archives.

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

Yeah, the OP hit the phrasing that I was looking for for a while now.



WHY the cinematic expirience?



If you go at it logicaly there's 2 points going for pressing auto and 2 points going for pressing manual.



Auto:



1) Saves Time

2) If you're clueless about the cards, the auto might win you a fight you could've screwed up somehow



Manual:



1) You get to see a cinematic

2) You can use the repair card which the auto doesn't seem to use, and you can retreat



But once you get familiar with the cards, and you see all the animations, youre left with



Auto - Saves time (and there is no way in hell anyone has the time to go through all the combats manualy once ships start piling up)

Manual - You get to use the very important defeat cards, and the completely overpowered repair cards



And since most of the game is really not graphics intensive, the cinematic combat is inflating both the size of the game and the pressure on your machine, and since I have a rather old computer this is quite a bit of an annoyance. I WANT to use the cards, and HAVE to since at higher difficulties playing without retreat and repair is suicide, but there really, really, really is no reason for the combat not having a small interface with a timer, 3 buttons and a "skip" button on any phase so you can skip to the next one, and no graphical involvement at all.



That is, right now. IF it were possible to move the ships in line to the front/back and manually affect what get's hit and what doesn't during combat and thus give any meaning except the aesthetic to the combat, then maybe, maaaaaybe it would make some sense. But I'd pay out of my own pocket to have my manual combat be done in a small window with no graphics apart from a timer and a couple of buttons.

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

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

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

The combat in "Birth of the Federation" by Microprose (who made Master of Orion 1/2) was very similar to Endless Space. Except that it was better - as you gave your fleet orders between phases, and those would then visually carry out. It looked more impressive and it also allowed for more than 2 sides to engage in combat, so 3-way battles were perfectly possible. None of this card nonsense, but instead they used tactical maneuvers which could counter each other. (including ramming the opposition if this was your last resort)

I can't record dosbox, or i'd upload a video of original MOO fleet fights and plaster it all over these forums, id put it in my sig even, lol





and evil, that actually sounds half decent - i could live with that, but this current status quo is just painful lol



Video of what is DECENT for a 4x game in OP lol

lujo wrote:
But I'd pay out of my own pocket to have my manual combat be done in a small window with no graphics apart from a timer and a couple of buttons.

This. id pay to have moo2 ported into teh battle window for the ships. lolol







THIS.

I wholeheardely support the "unique" rant. I mean, I live in this century, and I've lived in the 20th century, and I know my "style over substance" when I see it, but I just can't see the point of having such an obvious "style over substance" feature be the only damned way you can interact with other players. It's insane. Who in the world would take a 4x game, and then be satisfied with the "visuals" of the combat so much that he wouldn't be annoyed by the non-interactivity (or sense, or lack of depth, and the misuse of time). I could go on for hours, this is just wrong.







EDITED IN BEING CONSTRUCTIVE:



Whad did get me thinking is that the whole thing could work it they just made it a proper cardgame when it comes to battles. If there were cards which could give you non-combat benefits like production bonuses, science bonuses and so on and so forth, if different ships models (or modules) allowed for different manouvres, if systems could be attacked while sieging fo benefits (or fleets attacked by static defenses) and if all this led to card use then battles would make sense.



They'd still need an option to disable the whole "animation" aspect and let as do them by just pressin buttons IMO, but then it would work. Cards ARE a good idea. Also, tieing their usage to dust might not be the best, but if there were modules which gave energy for manouvers, then it would not only be good but incentivise people to do something other than slap millions of weapons or shields and press auto all the time.



Or if you could manufacture one-shot expendible cards like big nukes and ones that would let you "stink up" a system by adding an anomaly to a random planet if you lose, or add an extra level to the opposing hero which increesed their upkeep but gave none or negative stats, I don't know... But there's so many places to go with the cards that it's amazing that what we currently have is... Not much.

maybe, tieing in production to cards actaully is a pretty cool idea, reminds me of a little of DW:E (dynasty warriors empires) and something like those card system (which it seems that is what amp was aiming for) would be nice, but i can't stress again how much of an issue this lack of fleet control is, it really wrong and just out of place, however on that note of DW a good idea for a future expansion is to revamp, not remove this combat style and allow you to posistion your fleets and send in battle commands to each ship, and by this i mean simplistic commands, retreat, advance, repair x, etc. things that can be easily done in the incredibly limited cinematic engine that you have locked us in, this can be done, and with not much effort mind you, i hope to see THAT in future expansions.

In b4 mod fires the related thread cannon.



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.



And as your an emperor and not a admiral you really shouldn't have direct control anyway.



Not that the current system is perfect by any means, I still give it the old dagger eyes every time I play, but I really, really REALLY love the battle cards and would love to see them be massively expanded in use and implementation in the game. Get cards for fleet mobilization, and feet control (Possibly split the current combat rounds into micro phases for the use of extra cards, and alloy me to play them during an auto battle.



Expand the battle system based on what is awesome and fun!



(P.S.

i haven't played sword of the star's but i heard its combat was somewhat similar to this.

If you ever wanted MOO like Real time combat, please for the love of almighty spaghetti monster check out SOTS1, and possibly 2, you won't regret it, promise)

I played both MOOs and Birth of the Federation and they both had different yet addictive combat styles. Personaly i am fan of turn based combat and imo a 4X game should have a turn based combat. I know i know we are emperors and not admirals but if take that then we can have auto combat for granded too. The style ES uses i believe has been chosen for multi player reasons. Its not bad, personaly i enjoy it with its flaws but needs some balancing to get more fun for the single player. Right know i doubt it can be changed but only improved. There is a lot of things (at least in my list) that could be added to make battles more fun but its a matter we can discuss some other time when an expansion is at bay.

as title says, i played the original Moo religiously, i logged almost as much time in that game as i did brood war, fantastic game. i never played moo3 because it was clunky, poorly made and just unfun. coming back and seeing ES is really nice, the faction creation is pretty detailed, could use some more point variations (especially neg mods) and customizable affinities - but alas it's very pretty and a fun game to play through. but i have to ask, what the hell is up with the combat in this game? Auto combat takes the fun out completely (although epically one sided battles i get that, and in the 100+ turn mark i get it too, thats fine) But manual, this 3 phase bullshit of cinematic arbitrarily placed gunfire shooting back and forth with almost 0 accuracy at the highest possible upgrades is just silly. not to mention the rock paper scissors additive of cards - that just is a more engrievous insult. maybe i was spoiled by the incredibly in-depth strategic positioning and turn based tactics of the original Moo fleet battles (which could take in excess of 25 minutes each lol, dear god that game was at time sink), or has the norm degraded this far? i haven't played sword of the star's but i heard its combat was somewhat similar to this. i'm not bashing ES saying its terrible. amplitude didn't have amazing funding to hold that level of aesthetics, but i'd honestly sac the aesthetics of that beautiful (but as linear as humanly possible lol) cinematic for some actual tactical play.



can anyone shed some light on why this was designed and implemented this way? i feel like somewhere half way through the game development funding just got cut altogether and someone had this brilliant cost effective idea of "hey lets just make the battles a predefined cinematic where players click 3 buttons!"



overall ES gets a 7/10 from me, the only markdown is this part, the severe gamebreaking technical issues are not design flaws, but rather errors that will be fixed in time, but i don't forsee a patch or expansion anytime in this game's lifetime to actually add depth to the combat, instead of this.... hideous thing that after seeing a fleet of every race fight once i dont feel like clicking "manual" ever again, if only to retreat.



despite all this negative tone im using, ES still remains by far one of the best space 4x style games ive played, and i really would like to see where development goes, its a very fun game to play through!





This is what im talking about if anyone is interested in MOO1/2

I personally like the combat in the game. I wish there were some things to streamline, like the ability to speed up/fast forward in combat if both players agree to it and the ability to retreat from the auto/manual menu.



I would also like to see the possibility for basic fleet setup. That way I can put some of the beefier ships in the front with a lot of defense to shoot down missiles and take the brunt of beam/kinetic damage, and some glass cannons in the back.



Either way, I personally like the combat in the game and like how it looks as well. I think if they can improve it down the road, it'll be perfect.

I like the current system and I don't care if its cinematic, its unique and cool it could be expanded yes but that vid looks boring as crap I don't want have to do that 50 times cause players are spamming fleets because they can.



I would also like the option as someone else posted is a non-graphical manual mode, where you just pick the cards and it just tells you what ships died etc on a bar.



Giving players options is GOOD game design and should be what 2012+ game design is about not restricting players to play X way (that is dumb 90s game design)



ES is not a replacement for MOO so stop trying to make it ES IS ES so less fanboi ism and more enjoying ES for it being ES and not for not being a replacement for MOO, this is why it wasn't designed like MOO.



the current system functions in an interesting way that is quick and easy to understand this is a good thing and looks good and that is all a battle system needs to be in a 4x game.



civ 5 has a less system than this (my unit deletes your unit) and I don't see peeps complain about that.

@the OP:



ES is not a game of tactical combat. It is a space based empire building game, like GalCiv2. Tactical combat would ruin ES in my opinion. The system could use tweaks, but the basic system is as it should be.

ThatMG wrote:
civ 5 has a less system than this (my unit deletes your unit) and I don't see peeps complain about that.

^ This!

I love the combat. It's strategic, economic, and quick. This allows multiple battles to occur without dragging the game on and allows for some really interesting multiplayer. Battles in MOO2 had to be mirco or you would lose almost every time. By controlling the battle you could really win with an inferior force but it took forever. That's all fine and dandy for single player but ES tries to macro a bit of that and speed things up all while proving a nice view to the battle. Again attrition comes into play here. In MOO2 or Galciv2 you either win or lose. In ES you can draw as you try and widdle down the opposing ships. I remember doing some brainstorming years ago about redoing the combat for MOO2. We had a very simular system in place but without the strategic or economic factors that effect your choices. Some of the strategy comes from technology also. This adds another layer to the strategic battle since your enemy could be using tactics you haven't developed yet. So while the ships are very important in their roles and sizes of the fleets there is also a strategic element which draws from economics at the same time. If you have the tactics and the money to back your fleets your going to be hard to stop.



I'm hoping to one day see the battle phase expanded to Orbital Bombardment and eventually Ground Combat. To this day it seems to be missing in all 4x games. Sins did it very well however there was no actual invasion with ground forces after orbital bombardment.