Has anybody tested to see if there is any advantage in manual combat resolution? The tactical input is very limited: select one of 3-5 cards in each phase. I think the player AI should be able to do this when you auto-resolve. There is not much skill; much more is luck based on what the computer AI picks. Although the manual resolution is very pretty, it takes a long time with all the delays inserted. If I am forced to go to manual resolution to win, it will be very disappointing.

I think the main advantage of what i've seen so far is that the AI tends to select the same options (Overclock Weapons in P1, Overclock or Enginnering in P2, and i can't remeber the only time i went to P3).

So its its AI v AI you might get:

Overclock v Overclock

Engineering v Overclock



But if you play manual, you can use the countercards (like Tactics in P2 or Sabotage in P1)

Very difficult to test, as the enemy A.I. doesn't always choose the same strategy! I would assume that it's purely a matter of preference.

If I'm over the 75% odds of winning I use the auto. And I never lost unwanting ships. Lower than that I manually take care of the combat (cards, like repairs, can really do a difference when the two fleets are of the same power)

But do you think that if you let the AI play your cards for you (auto-resolve), the combat would come out any worse?

Probably- you want something done right.... Better do it yourself!

drewitt wrote:
Probably- you want something done right.... Better do it yourself!

Right. I did the experiment myself. I saved the game immediately before a sizeable fleet battle. Well, sizeable for me, it was 5 of my cruisers (Hissho, 2300 strength) against a 7 ship destroyer/cruiser mix (UE, 1700 strength). Then I ran it five times. Each time I destroyed the enemy while taking some damage. But the interesting result is how much damage I took.



1. Automatic resolve. I took 1000 HP damage.

2. Automatic resolve again, exact same result. Just to see if there is much random spread.

3. Manual resolve, selecting no cards at all. Just sitting there. Surprisingly, I took *less* damage, 850 HP.

4. Manual resolve, selecting what I thought were my best cards. I took 1000 HP damage.

5. Manual resolve, selecting on purpose what I thought were my worst cards. I took 1000 HP damage.



So, at least in this one test, the best maneuver was to get a cup of coffee while letting tactical play itself out. Automatic, good manual selection and bad manual selection gave identical results. Not what I expected.



Any devs comment on what "should" happen? Anybody else want to try this with different configurations? I would love to find out how the player AI picks cards during automatic resolution. If we *need* to hold its hand and pick cards during tactical to get decent results, I will be disappointed. I prefer to skip tactical in all the 4x games I play. Of course YMMV.

@ davea: Unfortunately testing 5 different scenarios once is hardly scientific, and not conclusive in the slightest. Slightly interesting finds tho. I like 1 and 2 the most. Nice that's it's consistent.

Very interesting! At least you tried it out. I've heard there's a lot of tuning to be done to the alpha, so I'm not surprised that combat is unpredicatable (for lack of a better word). I heard an update is due next week so it may bear repeating then.

davea wrote:
But do you think that if you let the AI play your cards for you (auto-resolve), the combat would come out any worse?

It depends on the ratio. If you have two fleets that are close, then you can change things (40% damage boost with some cards can be huge)

In my experience auto combat always comes away worse than manual



I tested some saves and each battle in auto was always a lesser outcome than when i assumed direct control

x239marine wrote:
In my experience auto combat always comes away worse than manual

Thanks. That is too bad, actually. I don't like taking the time to resolve each battle (even close ones) in tactical. I hope the player AI for choosing cards can be improved. Do you know, when you see these big differences, is it because you have special purpose cards like hero cards? Maybe there are some cards the player AI cannot use effectively.

Personally I'd like to see a hybrid option, where you can pick your cards before hand and then auto-resolve. That way you can have input on the battle without always having to sit through the graphical representation of the battle.

x239marine wrote:
In my experience auto combat always comes away worse than manual



I tested some saves and each battle in auto was always a lesser outcome than when i assumed direct control

That's pretty much what I anticipated would be the case. Davea, you should just do the manual for the battles that are too close to call- auto the rest!

Not that the mechanics can be transferred, obviously, but to take inspiration from the Total War series: the auto-resolve there is suggested only in battles where you have the advantage since it's purely numbers versus numbers and no strategy involved. If it's close or you're facing bad odds then manual is your only chance. If I were coming to this game from Total War that would have been my mindset and from reading the thread it seems to be the general assumption of other players too. The test above was interesting... you'd think then that the mechanics need a bit of tweaking based on those results but we probably need a bit more testing to be sure.

TW is actually my favorite example. I *never* use tactical in TW, and my results are pretty good. I tried the same in the related King Arthur series, and I got stomped. In that game with a 1:1 matchup, the AI does such a poor job of choosing spells that you lose 50% of your army when you autoresolve, while playing tactical you can get out of the same combat with zero losses. So I stopped playing.



I like the hybrid option proposed by Jaimoe above: choose your cards and then auto-resolve. But I'd prefer the player AI to make the choices well enough. If card selection winds up being moddable, I can help improve it.