Meedoc wrote:
Hey fellows,



To answer to some of your questions:

• I don’t think that diversifying each weapon into 3 families (Melee, Medium Range or Long Range) will confuse the newcomer that much, because there is no complication of the defence system: deflectors are efficient against kinetics, independently of their specialisation. It only opens to more choices regarding the attack. Those new data will be amplified thanks to the formation & targeting, as well as with hero’s skills / battle cards. Finally one of the main ideas behind that is to be able to differentiate the several races with each weapon’s type: for instance, Cravers will tend to have Melee kinetics, whereas the United Empires will prefer Long range kinetics.
• We’re going to use the formula including DefMod (renamed hull weakness), and if the results are not too convincing. We can adapt it and try other things!
• There will be a huge redesign of the Warfare technology tree, and we plan to differentiate the military play style of each faction as much as we can.
• Targeting & Formation are here to complete the battle card system, not to replace it. =)
• We also plan to rework on the healing during battles, and everything that is linked to battle in general
  
  

Cheers,

Good, should be useful

How did this only pop up on my radar now. Anyways, I like what I see, and agree with a lot of what has been said so far.

Zaratoth wrote:
I haven't even finished my first save of Endless Space and I already wait for the expansion.

Learn! Fast!



This expansion has the capacity to disorient even the most experienced players.



I must say though, that It will be nice to have a combat system where there is actually something to learn lol

I haven't even finished my first save of Endless Space and I already wait for the expansion.

From my latest games the only thing that bothers me is that the AI and generaly any one can attack a planet with a single war ship be it corvette or dreadnought. Perhaps it would be better if the invasion was activated only when you load a ship with an invasion module similar to the fighter/bomber hangar bay and refit it to reload troops like the way you refit lost fighters. But on the other hand i dont know what devs have in mind for ground combat so for now its just wait and see (praying for ground combat :green

Nomas I feel that might be a little micro incentive.



However in here: /#/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/13127-exp-overview



We will have the choice of a siege, bombardment and land invasion.

For the expansion i mostly hope for a proper diplomacy screen ala Civ series type and a proper siege/ground combat mod. Now if ground combat adds some micromanagement like choosing troop types i dont really care i kinda like it to have more control

The expansion sounds cool but Land combat is just a matter of building a troop ship module on a ship? I am not sure the added micromanaging with little added mechanic is any better than the pure abstraction that the game had before.If you had a system with some actual mechanics like different unit types,battle plans and planet type environment having an impact on the battle the added micro would be worth the gameplay benefit.

Incredible ideas. Only one question - when will we see it ?

Is there any information about when this will be released? This makes a whole new game and i can't wait for it. I know they won't release an exact date but maybe at least if it will be in the first or secand half of this year.

I'd imagine not. They do need to sell some expansions to stay in business.

Will this combat mechanic be patched back into the original game?

So, will each faction get a faction-exclusive weapon/defense/support part under these changes, or not?

Hey fellows,



To answer to some of your questions:

• I don’t think that diversifying each weapon into 3 families (Melee, Medium Range or Long Range) will confuse the newcomer that much, because there is no complication of the defence system: deflectors are efficient against kinetics, independently of their specialisation. It only opens to more choices regarding the attack. Those new data will be amplified thanks to the formation & targeting, as well as with hero’s skills / battle cards. Finally one of the main ideas behind that is to be able to differentiate the several races with each weapon’s type: for instance, Cravers will tend to have Melee kinetics, whereas the United Empires will prefer Long range kinetics.
• We’re going to use the formula including DefMod (renamed hull weakness), and if the results are not too convincing. We can adapt it and try other things!
• There will be a huge redesign of the Warfare technology tree, and we plan to differentiate the military play style of each faction as much as we can.
• Targeting & Formation are here to complete the battle card system, not to replace it. =)
• We also plan to rework on the healing during battles, and everything that is linked to battle in general
  
  

Cheers,

This expansion sounds great ! Keep up the good work !



Now for my thoughts/suggestions :

- Formations available should be dependent on the fleet`s ship type composition. For example : without smaller(maybe destroyer class and below) and more maneuverable ships one cannot use the "Flak Escort" formation.

- Special weapons might suffer reduced(or improved) effectiveness - or even none at all - if the fleet employs a particular formation. This might contribute to balancing them out(the enemy acquires more certainty). For example : a wide evasive formation reduces the effectiveness of the Fleet Shield but would help a "Fleet Flak" weapon.

- Give existing weapons and defense types a second use to encourage more varied designs than all in spam. For example : flak might help shoot down bombers, shields hinder enemy fighters(maybe reduced damaged on ships and own small crafts ?) and deflection provides some protection against incoming bomber ordance.

- Bombers should heavily punish a ship design that lacks a particular defense type - again to encourage a little bit of variety and actual design. So for instance, if hitting a ship lacking one type of defense there is a critical hit chance of 33%, for two lacking 66% and if completely undefended bombers have 100% critical chance.



All in all, I would like to see tactics like the one type glass canon spam be a risky move - still sometimes good but requires intelligence gathering and planning. Using new formations, targeting and small crafts one could make many different approaches viable.



Thank you to everybody contributing on these forums. I got a lot of inspiration from them.

Kareal wrote:
This I would like to see, I mean ship HP has already been doubled once. If current ship HP was doubled again and the in-combat repairs were drastically reduced or removed I think that would go a long way towards making combat more dramatic. I mean if the Nano-repair battlecard and advanced repair module(currently 10%) was reduced to 1% and the fleet wide repair modules were always flat HP.

Then in that we agree! I'll bring the beer



Personally I would like the nano-repair to be temporary repair, as it it lasts the battle, but ut leaves ships that should have died at 1 HP.

Pietrak wrote:
That is exactly my point - if you won't get annihilated once the defenses run out, the battle will end in a draw. Getting one-shot in the Long Range Phase is cheap, but to simply stop firing after 3 phases is also cheap.

Well the battle has to end some time!

Thanks for the code suggestion, I will try it out...

Hm. About that code. Is it possible to increase the number of phases by adding additional segments to that code? Or is everything hard-coded to have only 3 phases?

I believe so, although there may be connections else where in the code that help determine other things, like accuracies per phase.

Should have read the other post first haha.

Nosferatiel wrote:
Although it would make sense, historically, it might not make sense, from a production point of view. Although I may be wrong, I'd expect a lot of testing and balancing work needs to be done, even after most program parts are finished, to assure good quality.

True, testing is going to be big considering it will be a commercial endeavor. However, maybe they will let us buy the "1st draft/pre-release" for a 1 yr. anniversery.

Good thing they work on it Hope it will come out soon And I love carrier fleets so that will be some part for me with fighters and bombers