I've seen a few negative responses to the current battle system, but I actually like the direction and the clean design fits the rest of the game. However, over time battles tend to get old primarily due to the repetitive natural of the current system. In my experience, when I go to war with a race, my fleets and their fleets tend to have set makeups, which means every battle seems to involve similar card plays, which leads to little variety. These ideas might have already been kicked around, but I didn't see any mention other than battle-revamp in the summary thread. I propose two potential ideas which shouldn't slow battles, but should add more decisions per battle.



Differing Battlefields: Unique areas of space that add modifiers to battle and would potentially favor different fleet makeups depending on circumstance (this information would be available in a icon/tooltip on both the pre-battle decision screen and the actual battle screen, while adding new visuals on the battle screen, many that could be done as backgrounds and post-effects. (this would add potential variation to battles per system)

-> Nebula, Ion Storm, Dust Cloud, etc - These could alter phases of battle ( Nebula disrupts long range targetting, Ion Storm disrupts missles, Dust Cloud could jam kinetics weapons )



Racial Gamechanges: These would be powers that are initially not available (ramp up with experience/tech tree gated) and would add variations on combat. Think Racial abilities from the board game Cosmic Encounters. Some of these could be defense only abilities or offense only abilities and would have a dust cost pre-battle (with increase cost of more/bigger ships involved). Picking an ability would need to happen in the initial setup combat phase. (this would add potential variation between early and late stages of play - however may be too redundant with current battle cards, and could potentially just be racial battle cards)

-> ie Human Minefield: on Defense, lay mines which cause damage to enemy at med-range stage, Cravers Ambush Jump: On Offense, can jump in close to enemy and both sides skip Long Range phase, Hissho Juggernaut: During combat, no battle cards can be countered, Amoeba Spacial Control: Defense Bonus, only useable in certain battlefields (Nebula, IonStorm, Dust Cloud), etc



Thoughts?

Good ideas! I specially like the mine field. If this has to be racial i do not know. But I can imagine a lot of these expensive cards.



1- Ambush which might be also only be possible if there are asteroids or nebulas in the system and gain an initial volley of your chosen weapons or the enemy has a handicap...

2- Persuade where you get a week additional long range phase and your fleet is faster

3- Swarm tactics or evasion actions for fleets containing only small ships (or even hit and run cards) -> this could make small ships more valuable in late game and could also result in special tech...

4- Suicidal missions (orders to ram slower enemy)...



and so on!

Great Idea! I think racial abilities should be added into the game. Maybe one in the beginning and two or three in the later game (through research maybe?)

Racial battle actions would be pretty awesome.