Nosferatiel wrote:




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.

This is something, what I want to see in the game defintely. In some games it is so strange when a ship fires behind itself and only has weapons to fight against ships in front of it. It doesn't make sense and it looks very bad.

Nosferatiel wrote:
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.

What I personally want to see are diplomatic consequences to this sort of thing, if a planet populations starts dieing of famine; then this should be abhorred by the galactic community. Some mechanism must be put in place to put pressure on the attacker to be careful on how he/she conducts war. This necessarily doesn't need to be from the start, but eventually the game should get to a point where this kind of things are not free; so to speak.

I agree. There should bee some kind of diplomatic penalty system. Like in our world where rules of engagement and war crimes courts exist in order to define authorized actions and to punish crimes comited during invasions, defense wars, etc. I would like to see diplomatic sanctions, some things like fuel blockade, economical help blockade, punishing others that break these blockades, even military intervention in behafe of defending planets.

So you cant just go around from planet to planet killing everything that breeds. You could, but you would be facing sanctions so its up to you which path to choose. Ruthless invader lord or metodical officer.

reynanuy wrote:
What I personally want to see are diplomatic consequences to this sort of thing, if a planet populations starts dieing of famine; then this should be abhorred by the galactic community. Some mechanism must be put in place to put pressure on the attacker to be careful on how he/she conducts war. This necessarily doesn't need to be from the start, but eventually the game should get to a point where this kind of things are not free; so to speak.

I think this depends on the species, which are in the universe. If you are in war with a species you can be happy if the enemy has problems with a famine.

But I like the idea with such effects.

I'm all for being able to retreat from combat, so long as there are appropriate penalties/consequences to balance it out.





In at least one game I've played, your empire suffers from a morale/loyalty hit when you lose a battle (including when you withdraw). In other games, the army/fleet commander suffers a hit to their stats (which affect the units under their command) when they lose and/or retreat from battle. And in just about all games I've played where retreating has negative consequences, the retreating units are generally vulnerable to attacks of opportunity from their foe(s).



These are only a couple ideas, of course. Doubtless there are more that you could do. Either way, though, I think retreat should be a viable option so long as the retreating side suffers some sort of negative effect(s) to counter things.

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 interesting thing from this statement to me is

or apply modifiers to the battle

Perhaps this may have an option to flank an opponent if you suspect he will retreat. Or something like it. If a player is able to hit there opponent like this, through a carefully considered tactical move, I am all for it. But I am reluctant to offer support to a general across the board penalty given to a retreating opponent just because they decide to retreat, because it will make the strong even stronger and I don't think this would bode well for a good close battle's that could proceed in the next few turns.

I have to say, the simultaneous turns and "card" based maneuver mechanic that the game is supposed to have seems like a fresh approach while giving the player ample time to appreciate the eye candy as their space coffins of death-dealing fight each other. In general, I'm not a fan of twitch mechanics, and doubly so for games in which tactics and strategy are supposed to be central aspects of gameplay.