well that's reassuring.

No, ships will be customizable, it seems:

SpaceTroll wrote:


Ships and design

The game allows you to produce a vast array of ship types and sizes. Some ships are designed to colonize, others are designed to fight, or only to scout.

You produce ships on a solar System basis, selecting a ship design in the system factory. New designs are unlocked by your progress in new technologies, and can be completely customized. Custom designs are created from the assembly of ship Modules of different types, selected by the player in a special interface. Of course, available Modules will depend on your technology progress.

The combination of the ship Modules will determine not only its basic attributes such as damage, speed, and hit points, but also its passive capacities or possible actions.

More details will be available in the Ships Design thread.

I'm not sure we're on the winning side of this argument, though. Somewhere in the promo stuff I read that you could chose between dozens of unique ships per race. this leads me to believe that you might not be doing much ship design. maybe just unlocking new ships.

Raptor wrote:
Well I saw a dev say he worked on Heroes VI, then I read about the retreat option and that made me recall the AI behavior in Heroes VI beta. It was running from battle like there is no tomorrow, leading to a game of running around the map, chasing, retreating from battle, chasing again... Needless to say it was not fun. So when I said abusing I meant that I don't want the retreat option to be implemented in such a way that would break the gameplay, allowing you or the AI to constantly retreat without any serious consequences, leading not to strategy gameplay but to an endless game of catch the mouse.

It may be frustrating to chase a small fleet around, as they strike into undefended positions; but it is an effective tactic when engaging a superior opponent. Besides that chase in BSG wasn't boring at all Frakking toasters wouldn't let go ... but then again I would have done the same. Nevertheless I agree that the retreating fleet should have some random chance to receive additional "free" damage from the chasing fleet.

It seems to me than the combat is a real time computer generated 3D battle, which is divided into battles phases; when the player can perform special abilities/actions(up to three per phase), which are linked to the heroes available to each side. This way you have the simplicity and cinematics of GC2 battles and at least some player interaction. Since your "heroes" can level up and gain new abilities, I imagine there will be a somewhat DOTA progression linked to the game; since having the stronger ships will not automatically result in victory here. Even when taking into account some random factors, as they should.

What put me of personally are when ships are just hit point blips with different weapons, armour and shields. Personally I like fewer ships that are more important and you really care about them and each individual ship can be damaged in many different ways.



I really don't care if it is turn bases or not, but I do like space combat eye candy as well and I wouldn't mind a combat model that is a hybrid between turn based and real-time based where the battle is played out in real-time and is paused for commands in between phases of real-time (kind of like Combat Mission series of games). I would personally like something like that.

From the released information it seems very hard to understand what they are trying to do with tactical (manual) combat.

this is my biggest question(concern?) as well. In my head I'm starting to think it will somewhat Sins of a Solar Empire-ish broken into phases and that some battles can last more than one game turn.

So, basically you will control some strategic parts of it and then it will more or less play out as a cinematic movie or something in 3D, otherwise I really don't get why it is displayed in 3D to begin with.



But I guess I will have to wait and see then.

Well, the "manual battle" is the part you want to know. The automatic battle just calculates how the battle should have gone, depending on the fleets statistics, nothing else.



And the post states, that the fleets are displayed in 3D, but the combat is broken into phases. Which means it will be turn-based.



The up to three actions and the explanations what those actions could actually mean, indicate indirect battle control. So you can assume it will be going towards a turn based indirect battle system.



The details have not been broached to the masses, yet. I hope we'll all get some answers to the details, soon enough.

To me it could as well men some pre set objectives you decide on. The art lead me to believe space combat is still portrayed in 3D somehow. So I just wanted to know how much input the player get to make during a space battle and I really don't get the above text and exactly what it means.

I can only try to quote SpaceTroll there:

SpaceTroll wrote:


Space battle

When fleets from opposing Empires meet at a system, the acting player has the opportunity to start a space battle by selecting one of the fleets at the system where they have met. The defending player is then prompted to select a defending fleet.

Both players can chose between an automatic (instant resolution) or manual battle. The automatic battle computes the outcome from the ships statistics of the opposing fleets.

The manual battle is a special game mode. The opposing fleets are presented in a 3D view near the system center planet of the system. The battle is broken into battle phases where each player plays one or more actions (up to three) to attack the enemy, defend his fleet, or apply modifiers to the battle.

The battle ends when one of the fleets is destroyed or retreats, or if there is no conclusive winner at the end of the combat phases. If both fleets survive a space battle, the fight can resume at the next galactic turn.

More details will be available in the Space Battle thread.

Seems to be turn based instructions for the fleet. Otherwise "up to three actions" makes no sense.

I must say that I did not really understand what was said about Space Combat in the Design Overview thread. Is it suppose to be 3D real-time combat or some hybrid between real-time and turn based like cinematic playback?!?



Could someone explain a little more about Space Combat in the game?



I did look through the forum and I couldn't really find many answers to that question.

The difference should be that fleets need maintenance, food, fuel and some time off for the personal in order not to get the space crazies.



If a fleet only flees, instead of fighting, it should be a losing tactic, because you can take their planets. If you can take their planets, the enemy empire can't sustain the fleet anymore.



If the ships rebel and become pirates, get sold/scrapped or even slowly decay and the crew dies... one and the same to me, but something should happen if the fleet cannot be sustained.

This should simply solve your fleeing fleet problem.

The fleeing fleets should get double damage during retreat or heroes loose xps. Maintenance, food , fuel dont know. I think that if planing an invasion one would took in account those kind of things to have them stacked up and ready to use in worst case scenario, but I would like to see ships that didnt make the way back, and got strained due to damage somewhere between systems, planets mine for the taking.

zoky wrote:
Maintenance, food , fuel dont know. I think that if planing an invasion one would took in account those kind of things to have them stacked up and ready to use in worst case scenario[...]

Stacking supplies is fine, but consider the limitations of space. We don't need a "supply unit"-module, perhaps, but engines, reactor, crew quarters, weaponry, armory, munition depot perhaps, corridors, pipes, cable shafts and the bridge are no places to stack either fuel or food.

If you go to Star Trek and research, say, the replicator, the food issue is resolved, but still the fuel issue remains.

Personally I don't understand why a fleet should get penalized for fleeing of the feature is implemented in a good way. Just the fact that you must retreat will be a drawback in and of itself. Getting less experience is also counter intuitive in my opinion, I thought it was scientifically proven we learn more from our mistakes than successes.



If a fleet is forced to retreat it usually means it is beaten. If it was defending the attacker can now assault the planet/system. If they were the attacker they will have to go back home and lick their wound and perhaps be vulnerable to a counter attack.

I think the issue would be more along the lines of say:



You want to attack planet A, a mining world without much capacity for farms, and lay siege to it by blocking the orbit. Trade to the planet gets canceled, resistance drops. You want to wait for a few turns to soften the populace by famine.



Then the AI attacks your blockade fleet and instantly flees. If this counted as a blockade break, the AI would (correctly) attack and retreat permanently, stalling your invasion indefinitely.

Of course, this would be a case of bad game design, but that is just what we're discussing how to prevent.

Yes I would agree to that, and that would be (as you say) a bad gaming design. Also something easy to fix if it is the case, at least I presume such a thing would be easy to fix.

actually I could see a situation where a tiny fast ship 'frigate' was attacked by a dreadnaught '72 gun man o war'...



so the frigate just sails away since it can travel at twice the speed and has a only 16 guns. escaping this attack should actually GIVE experience not be considered a negative. This always annoyed me with Total War naval attacks. bigger does not always equal better.



any combat situation a unit survives should give experience. This forces diverse unit types and fleets of mixed types - agile fighers, loaded out bombers, defensive focused units and of course the big berthas. no?

maceman wrote:
any combat situation a unit survives should give experience. This forces diverse unit types and fleets of mixed types - agile fighers, loaded out bombers, defensive focused units and of course the big berthas. no?

If you can escape without penalty, so escaping is relatively easy, I wouldn't agree.

But I agree with you on mixed fleets. I'd just enforce that idea otherwise.



Think of the classical fighters vs deathstar-setting, where the biggest ship simply annihilated any other big ship and you could only get through the defenses by carrying around a lot of small ships. Capital ships should never be as fast as small ships from the start (I like inertia!) and harder to maneuver.



Another thing would be to specify the position of the gun when you design the ship. If the gun is on the upper side of the capital ship, it shouldn't be able to shoot below. If you have to install a real nasty and big gun, then it should only be able to shoot forward, like in MOO2 (and MOO3).



This would automatically enrich the game with "sneak up from behind" or "go alongisde"-tactics which require maneuverable ships and thus a mixed fleet composition.