PyroMancer2k wrote:
I like where you going with these. The potential problem though is in larger fleets allowing the player to focus fire on a single target could get chaotic. Combat progresses in real time and you pick your options very quickly or else you miss your turn. In a large battle with 10+ ships on each side trying to tell your ships which should fire at which could get hectic. That being said I think your ideas could be expanded upon as follows. Some of what I mention is likely to be similar or the same as I'm trying to flesh out the ideas more into a direct UI and mechanics break down.



1) Ship Formations - The user can put his ships into formation across 3 different rows (Front, Middle, Back). This is to keep the UI simple as well as combat which I'll explain below.



2) Targeting Options - Instead of focus fire on a single ship the player can choose which of the enemy rows he wants to concentrate fire on. And he can choose each of his rows targets individually. This way the user can choose to mop up some weaker ships with his front row tanks while his 2nd row nukers focus on the enemy third row. It adds for a large amount of variety here. And when it comes to shooting past the first row or two at the ships in back it would be harder depending on a number of things. How many ships there are in the rows in front of the one your targeting, ship size difference in those rows, and etc. Shoots aimed at middle/rear rows while ships in front still remain have a chance of hitting the ships in the front as it's not simply a higher miss chance for no damage. It's a the enemy ship shielded its fleet mate with its hull.



3) New Cards & Card Usage with formations - I know you mention you don't think many new cards need to be added. But with the addition of formation it adds the potential for some new cards. I'm mainly thinking of row swapping cards. Say your front line gets hit hard so you can order them to fall back to the second row and your 2nd line will move up to the front to take the brunt of the damage. Also with each row acting individually there could be the potential for individual rows to have individual cards. Though I think that could get a bit confusing, and an alternative is to maybe have current cards do extra effects on different rows. For example "Tighten formation" could reduce the chance 2nd & 3rd ships get hit but lower their damage output because lanes of fire are no longer open. Or "Clear the way" could make it so front line ships provide less protection for 2nd line ships because they moved out of the way to allow all guns to come to bear on the enemy.



4) Rework Defenses - It was mentioned in another thread about making FLAK different then the other defense by having all ships combine their flak values into a flak curtain shooting down all missiles that come towards the fleet. That way the defenses would act differently instead of all being the same just counter a different weapon type. I like this idea and it fits in well with formation idea. Because you can then extend the idea to shields as well. The shield bubble around the ships could block lines of fire for the ships behind them. Thus the ships in the front row would use their shields to contribute to the defense of the ships in the 2nd & 3rd as well as themselves. However the shields on the ships in the 2nd row would only contribute themselves and those in the 3rd row. This would mean support ships in the back could be great for FLAK as it applies to the whole fleet while ships in the front are best for shields. And of course Kinetic would remain unchanged.



5) Preset Tactics - Most of the time I want to use the same cards over and over on specific combat phases, like the one that boost missiles on the Long Phase. To speed up some of these choices in combat allow the player to have default targeting and card settings for the fleets.



This could add a lot of variety to combat. As formations and new defense system would allow for a lot of different combinations. I don't really have much to say in regards to new ship addons. But I think with these changes we could see more specialization in the ships as they are set to fill individual formation roles.

Great ideas. I had a similiar thought about having formation cards. Perhaps allowing different classes of ships to have different tactics? dunno might be taking it too far.



Excellent ideas in this thread thus far. Lets hope the devs agree

+1 / i like the idea to have formations, so e.g. i could cover weeker ships (for colonisation)

another idea:



Positions/Ambush/Advantage/Disadvantage



1. The Defender always is in the system and doesn't jump in

2. The Attacker always jumps in

3. A calculation (skill, hero, techs etc) decides, WHERE the attacker jumps out*.



-- 3.1 When the attacker has an slight advantage, he jumps out above the defender. (means, the defender loses some points in armor/shield/def)

-- 3.2 When the attacker has an average advantage, he jumps out behind the defender. (means, the defender loses lots of points in armor/shield/def)

-- 3.3 When the attacker has an massive advantage, he jumps out on two different positions (boxing-in) and ignores the arrival-period (means, the defender loses almost the half of def)



-- 3.4 When the defender has an slight advantage, the attacker jumps out under the defender

-- 3.5 When the defender has an average advantage, the attacker jumps out in front of the defender (pointing in the wrong direction)

-- 3.6 When the defender has an massive advantage, the defender awaits the attacker on two different positions (boxing-in) and ignores the arrival-period



-- 3.7 When none of the two sides has any advantage, we'll see the normal fight



Pro: Even with a weaker fleet the "better" hero and the better position in a "massive advantage"-fight could lead to a victory over a more powerful enemy - or vice versa.



The longer a defending fleet patrols in its own system, the higher is the chance of getting an advantage. E.g. in system A is a fight, in system B is fleet 2 on patrol. Fleet 1 in system A got killed and the attacker flies in the very next round to system B. Because of having a fight right the round before but no hero, the attacker gets a slight disadvantage in that upcoming fight. The defending fleet patroled system B 5 rounds, so it "knows" all the nice spots to "hide". When the attacker jumps in, the defender instantly attacks, so the intruder becomes the defender, but is surprised and weaked after fight&flight and has some serious disadvantages for that fight.)

I really like a lot of the ideas in this thread and I just wanted to expand on a couple of them.



1. Ship-add on modules: I really like the idea of being able to build some specialized ships that make use of a very large/heavy module giving a fleet wide effect (maybe limited to a certain ship cap based on hull size, etc...) like designing a command cruiser with a battle link up module that would give bonuses to accuracy or an ECM mod that would allow a ship to increase the effectiveness of countermeasures or make it harder to detect the fleet on the star map, it would really make the fleets feel more like a cohesive battle group rather than a disparate collection of ships designed primarily to maximize numbers and firepower.



2. I like the idea of the ship formations which would play right into the first point of being able to specialize to a degree.



3. Maybe the implementation of a pre-battle risk reward system, i.e. choosing cards for attack strategies, maybe utilizing the current rock paper scissors approach, where the defender can attempt an ambush or the attacker can attempt to box in the opponent and where failure to have the strategy execute properly imposes negative modifiers on the rest of the battle. Perhaps hero level and/or system improvements could play a part in determining what stratagems would be available and increase/decrease the likelihood of success.



4. The ability to research and then implement an overall military doctrine for your empire that would give some bonuses and negatives. I realize that the faction traits play a role in this but it would allow for a more nuanced military buildup and would play into the whole risk reward thing where initializing a missile boat doctrine would make missile tech better/cheaper in some way but would could reduce the viability of other weapons and maybe even some defense or support tech.



I'm really loving what I've played so far these are just some thoughts on how to maybe make an already amazing game even better!

Hi this is my first post as I'm new to the forums, and only began testing today.



One of the first things I noticed was a lack of support modules which are common in other games of its ilk. Im sure this game has had comparisons drawn with SoTS as it is quite similar at first glance, so forgive me if i am repeating what others have already said. To me combat support should be about increasing the effectiveness of the fleet, or systems that have specialised combat effects. For example, a laser designator could increase missile accuracy by 15% for the whole fleet, boarding pods could deliver troops to enemy ships and attempt to take them over, or just try to inflict internal damage to them. How about ECM which makes the ship harder to hit. There are lots of possibilities that could be incorporated into the support section.



I've seen from some of the tactics cards that some of these kind of bonuses have already been incorporated in a way, but they only take effect from the combat phase the are played in, where as the support modules would infer a permanent bonus to the ship/fleet

This thread is starting to get quite a few ideas in it. I just wanted to throw my weight behind PyroMancer2k. His post is well thought out, and I think implemented with relative ease.

uk_uk wrote:
another idea:



Positions/Ambush/Advantage/Disadvantage



1. The Defender always is in the system and doesn't jump in

2. The Attacker always jumps in

3. A calculation (skill, hero, techs etc) decides, WHERE the attacker jumps out*.

Pro: Even with a weaker fleet the "better" hero and the better position in a "massive advantage"-fight could lead to a victory over a more powerful enemy - or vice versa.

i second this .

I was thinking hmm i if have radar mark 2 .... i know where they will jump in i will have the first strike ability in the arrival phase + another card of my choosing -- omg he had cloak mark 5 he got into- (long/middle/melee) range and has the surprise attack card activated and he can chose another card .

and +1 to formations. i have 3 attacking ships and 2 invasion dedicated ships i want my invasion class in the middle or back rank to be better defended

I want to add my support to this excellent thread, which is starting to generate a lot of useful ideas.



I would like to see, maybe, three cards that you can play on the first phase which set up fleet, tactics and equipment choices. Then you could play a card that changes ONE of these things for the next phase and evolve your tactics that way. Of course there's no sense that these changes are reactive to the battle at present, perhaps each phase change would 'lock in' your choice for the coming phase but allow you to make changes for future phases to take into account how the battle is evolving?



Perhaps being able to change cards for undeclared phases, or being able to change two or three cards instead of one per phase would be a hero power?

1. bump the post 2. there should be the possibility to discard cars. Sometimes it is realy confusing to find the card i am locking for in the endgame phase



3. the formations could be a little like naval formations for example the the hammer formation ( i dont know the proper english name and wikipedia hasnt got a english version of the page) all ships in one line chargin towards the enemy, first is shielding rest firering, first one gets destroyed rest crashes and so on..... there are many more =)



4. what would you guys think about carrier or the possibility to ram the enemy ?

I think it would be cool if you could set battle plans for each fleet before going into battle. Not like, immediately as the battle starts but just when you're looking over your fleet or something you can give it plans for how it should enter a battle when it ends up in one.



Pretty much it would be a new type of card, a formation card, which you could design your own out of combat by designating certain classes of ships to go to certain positions on a grid. For example there would be a front, mid, and back rows, as well as flank columns along the side of the rows, and then some boxes off to the side for sending ships to flank the opponent or to hang back while the others advance and then another for a rear guard. So you can tell your heavy ships to stay up front and protect your support ships, with skirmishers on your flanks to protect against flankers, then keep artillery ships behind and more skirmishers as a rear guard to protect them, and then have stealth ships or carriers try to flank the enemy fleet. And carrier type ships wouldn't actually physically flank, they would just stay in the back row and send their craft wherever you told the ship to go.



So when you design a ship, you can put it in whatever class you want, which you can name. And then when you make a formation card, you can use those classes to designate where you want ships of those classes to go. You can pre-assign formation cards to each fleet to match their make-up and also have a brief window to pick or change the card for a different one at battle start.



As an added layer, you could even give ships tactical parameters for each position within the formation. For example you could tell a stealth ship that when it is in the flanking position, it should try to avoid detection to get into optimal firing range, or tell an artillery ship that when it is hanging back, it should ignore flankers and focus on the main enemy fleet, or tell a heavy ship that when it's in the front row, it should focus primarily on shielding it's fleet from fire, etc.



Then when the battle actually commenced, you could use tactical cards to adjust on the fly. Take out phases and instead add turn cycles which go on until one side is over. Each cycle you get to play two or three cards which could adjust the way certain grids in your fleet behave (like telling front row ships to tighten formation or clear firing paths) or adjust the formation on the fly (like telling your flanking ships to pull back or having your main fleet hang back or rush forward). And a retreat card too.

Perhaps add command cards that would change the focus of your entire fleet in the battle, from either damage or protection or electronic warfare, which could only be played if you have ships with the proper command modules in them.



Just saiyan, I think that would be quite cool.

I agree with the first suggestion completely but frankly the 2ed and 3ed are already in game, the Corvette is a support role ship, they have for the United Empire at lest modals that heal ships per turn by X amount or X% and same forth each turn when in friendly space, the Corvette reduces the "Space" required for such modals and such.



With the addition of the formations you could have 1 or two purely logistic corvettes in the back while your dreadnaught or Battleships take the damage.





As for the volleys of the missiles, i usually see my 1 dreadnaught fire 1-4 missiles at each ship rather then just at one, tho he does have 6 missiles installed.



Also another suggestion might be to add Maneuver cards, that would possibly quickly close to close range and skip mid range, the advantage of this would be, the opposite side's mid range card would be voided no matter the card and ballistics would do more damage in close range compared to what lasers can do base damage at all range and missiles fired at this range would be harder to shoot down sense they are so close.



Then there could be a maneuver card that could keep you at long range, making missiles easier to shoot down and lasers would be most effective at this range.

Some great ideas in this thread, Amplitude should really look into them to make combat more strategic and gratifying. We're not asking for a 3D RTS here, just enough control where we can get ships to try doing what we tell them to do. When it comes to playing online multiplayer I would rather have more strategic options than just cards in a pretty equally matched battle, I would rather not leave fate solely up to the cards I chose. Ship design and cards should only be 2 of the several things that go into battle strategy, not the only things (admirals/pilots aren't counted here since they won't be in every fleet once you have more than one solid fleet).



Some battles are so crucial (this could be especially the case for choke point system conflicts) that they could influence the tide of an entire war based on who wins and/or holds that particular system, I'd rather not leave the results solely to the choice of cards like a coin flip in Overtime of a pro football game.

Love the thread. We need to enhance the 'card' system and improve what we have rather than making radical departures. This would address several issues I presently have with combat.

Without meaning to pee in anyone's cereal, I thought I'd raise some questions which would need answering -



Concerning formation of ships :



Whilst this is not a problem early game, you'll be juggling 12-20 ships mid to late game (potentially more, depending on how many C3/C5 researches you snag), one would have to assume thus there is some kind of maximum "Width" limit for a given row (say the max is capped at 30 ships, ensure that no row is wider than ten ships?).



Second : Whilst it's always cool to minmax fleets and set up tanky walls up front and glass cannons behind, for the sake of some form of balance there would need to be some kind of drawback to ships sat at the second or third line to make up for their lack of vulnerability to enemy fire - reduced accuracy or reduced RoF?



Third : Targetting options sound great until you realise the AI is going to be using the same kind of approach. A better solution would be to decree Beam weapons as "Always focus fire", Missile weapons as "Always spread over the fleet" and guns as a hybrid of the two. This adds flavour to the weapons, and at the same time builds in inherent risks and benefits to favouring a specific doctrine. Missile boat players might find their missiles spread thin over a line of tanky ships and don't get the desired effect, or a beam player might run into a single tankship that's been specifically designed to "soak beams". That way you create tactics by design of the weapons?



Concerning the concept of support ships :



I love it, there's already support module bonuses fitted to specific classes, it wouldn't need much more effort (aside from art assets I imagine) to come up with an extra ship class or two (logistics class anyone?). It'd be great to combine this with formation to have a couple of support ships in the rear row doing something akin to shield linking or remote armour repair. Most of the code already exists (you'd just need more modules and more ship classes) so I imagine it could be included with little cost.



Concerning jump positions and advantage :



This system would lead to too many random factors clogging up what should be a tactical fight. When you lose you need to see -why- you lost, losing to an ambush may not be very educational and you may end up being shunted on the back foot through no fault of your own. I disagree with this idea.



---



If this happens, preset card options on a per fleet basis, as well as saved formations would be a total must.

Third : Targetting options sound great until you realise the AI is going to be using the same kind of approach. A better solution would be to decree Beam weapons as "Always focus fire", Missile weapons as "Always spread over the fleet" and guns as a hybrid of the two. This adds flavour to the weapons, and at the same time builds in inherent risks and benefits to favouring a specific doctrine. Missile boat players might find their missiles spread thin over a line of tanky ships and don't get the desired effect, or a beam player might run into a single tankship that's been specifically designed to "soak beams". That way you create tactics by design of the weapons?

I agree with this I really like these particular ideas.



I think the most important thing is that we find a few simple ideas that shouldn't be too hard to implement into the game and then try to get the whole forum/game community behind them instead of everyone just suggesting whatever crosses their mind. Right now there are a jumble of suggestions out there and if I was a Dev I'd probably just glance over them and awknowledge that something needs to be done with the battle system, but as to what that "something" is, there really isn't a clear consensus.



I think we should concentrate our efforts on expanding the module system first. It would be very easy for the Devs to put more modules in the game and would require (I think) the least amount of work on their part. It seems a lot of people like the idea of more "support" modules that can give fleet-wide "buffs". These modules would need to weight much more than other modules to compensate for their abilities. Examples of such modules may include increased accuracy, 5% ship HP healing each battle round, or say 15% greater beam resistance for the entire fleet traveling with the ship equipped with the support module. A lot of people have expressed their approval of more varied support modules so I believe this is a good place to start.



Additionally, instead of having "battle formations" which would require a great deal of work on the Dev's part to design and include such a system in the game, we could also use modules to help us get the same "effect" as a battle formation would have. Basically what most people seem to want out of battle formations is the ability to present certain ships as targets and have other ships less targeted. We could do this with modules instead... with the current system, the AI seems to randomly select one enemy ship as the target for each of your ships. To clarify what this means, say you have 2 ships in your fleet, ship A and ship B, the AI gives ship A one target and ship A focuses all their fire on that ship, the AI also gives ship B a target and ship B focuses all it's fire on that ship.

There could be a module which causes a ship to be focus fired say 30% more frequently or even 60 or 70% more frequently. This would give you the same effect as a battle formation, you would have certain "tank" ships that would draw enemy fire and other "nuking" or "damage dealing" ships that could be more specialized towards offense. Of course the tanking ships shouldn't be able to draw enemy fire 100% of the time, there should still be a chance for the damage dealing ships to get hit, but having a module that increases the likelihood of ships being targeted by the AI would, in effect, do the same thing as a battle formation and it would be A LOT easier for the Devs to incorporate.



So what do you guys think? As a community could we come together and get behind a few simple and clearly defined ideas on the battle system that we could then present to the Devs? Throwing all of our ideas out into random threads is great and all as far as brainstorming goes, but if we actually want to make a difference and get the Dev's attention we need to come together as a community and ask for something that wouldn't too difficult to put in the game and that would go along with the current "vision" of endless space.

Ideally, the Dev's would put up a vote saying "This and this would work" (option A), "So would this and this" (option B) or we could do this. (Option C). Now Vote.



Then, after the vote, some ideas can be buried (the options should be packaged so that they are mutually exclusive) and the community can concentrate on fleshing out the voted for option.

Jethro wrote:
Ideally, the Dev's would put up a vote saying "This and this would work" (option A), "So would this and this" (option B) or we could do this. (Option C). Now Vote.



Then, after the vote, some ideas can be buried (the options should be packaged so that they are mutually exclusive) and the community can concentrate on fleshing out the voted for option.

That would be nice if the Devs took the initiative on this, but they may not. However, if we as a community can come together with a short list of examples of SIMPLE changes we want to see I think it would get us the best result and the Devs may actually make those changes or very similar ones. All I'm saying is it doesn't hurt to ask, but if we're going to ask we need to do it right and we need to do it as a community if we want to be taken seriously.

From another forum --> /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11021-discussion-we-need-weekly-updates-on-this-whole-section

VieuxChat wrote:
Skamaks, SpaceTroll, Steph'Nie are frequently on the forums. But I too hope some dev news that would say what they've taken into account, what they discarded.

This matter seems to have made significant progress.



With this in mind, perhaps Amplitude would elaborate on the most effective way for us do this.



Random ideas everywhere can be useful. The breadth of creative responses we have come up with is fantastic - and prematurely committing to one posters suggestion could shut down useful dissent. But when an idea has 'suvived' for a bit, feedback like that which Spacetroll has committed to here --> /#/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/14002-suggestions-and-wishes-that-we-are-tracking is fantastic. I hope to see it updated, and for some extra feedback posted formally like "We are going to try this, posts on this are very welcome" or similar.



When I PM'd Spacetroll on this issue and asked about the viability of certain changes, I was told that Amplitude "...is now heading towards final and is finishing implementing content planned for during the alpha (like the MP, missing heroes etc...), and at the same time polishing the game, which may include minor modification to existing mechanics to fit community feedback, game balance and AI, AI , and some more AI" and that after it has developed further to the next stage, and they see it as a live game, they will start releasing patches and addons to "fit more ambitious additions, player options and modifications."



Spacetroll was very explicit in his assurances that they definitely follow what we guys are saying and that they will do their best to satisfy the community if it is both within their budget and vision.



I don't think we need to be concerned that any of our posts will be 'missed'. They seem absolutely committed to really getting our input.

Good thread I think a Battle formation is indispensable for a more tactical battle.



1 for construction battleship



2 try to take advantage in unfavorable position.

+1 for more control during manual battles