Tactical combat

[projekcja]

1) The map-size for tactical combat is quite small. If I try running away from an enemy, I quickly bump into the 'edge of the map', and then to it's corner.

Being a space game, I find this artificial edge somewhat inappropriate. Is it a problem to make the map infinitely large, or maybe make it wrap-around (going through the top brings you to the bottom, left edge connects to the right edge).

2) In Master of Orion 2, it was possible to rotate your ship without moving it so that it would face a certain direction by right clicking on that direction. Here this simply tries to move the ship to that destination. Is it possible to order the ship just to rotate (i.e. so that a different face of the shields get hit)

3) Could we get the ability to plan the initial formation of our fleet? Or maybe at least have it automatically place short range, well armored ships in front and long ranged ships at the back? I'd also want to be able to have my ships come to combat facing a different direction (i.e. missile ships ready to shot and run, rather than have to spend the first turn rotating away from facing my enemy....)


4) Could it be workable to implement a momentum to the ships, so that their movement would be more like the movement of ships in Star Control 2 melee combat, with rotation being independent of movement.(The ship could rotate to have its back facing its direction of movement for example.) The ship at the beginning of a turn would have a velocity in addition to position, and so the cloud of possible places to go to would be centered at a continuation of movement with this velocity, with additional acceleration that would change the destination.

5) Might it be possible to have the initial distance between enemy combatants change due to scanner techs, so that at low tech we don't have to waste turns moving towards the enemy, while at higher tech we could destroy the enemy ship at a huge range before it gets anywhere nearby.

6) Regarding warping-out to escape combat: I wouldn't want it to either be too easy, making some combats just a boring affair of knowing in advance you cant get to the enemy, as it will escape, nor would I want it to be impossible for scouts to escape any armed encounter. Instead I would want there to be some suspense, as the question of escape would depend on technological innovations (i.e. faster escape warp drives techs/systems, more stable warp drives that cannot be interrupted by enemy fire etc.) and maybe on some random environmental combat effects. Could there be some kind of randomly generated patches of 'easier to bend space' that you have to get to in order to escape?

7) Are missiles supposed to move both during your turn and during enemy turn (essentially moving twice on each turn)? Missiles seem too fast: it seems like all ship movement has: full stop / acceleration to full speed / decceleration-to-stop, while the missiles are moving at full speed even in the initial acceleration phase. Making missiles really difficult to avoid by maneuvering. Also, missiles target your 'destination' rather than your 'current position'. Kind of like they're reading your mind. Finally, missiles disappear when their target escapes or dies. They could lock on to another target instead.

8) Is there a way to ask the game to direct me to the next ship that hasn't been issued orders yet? or some graphical indication as to which ships have and have not moved?

[Arioch]

Map size could potentially be made larger, though this would mean changes to the art assets (the background starfield would need to be tiled so that it could expand) and to the minimap. I'm not sure that the artificial boundary is a problem in most battles, as normally one will either retreat or close to fight (I'd be interest to hear other players' thoughts on this subject). Having ships teleport from one edge to the opposite edge would be, I think, even more artificial than the arbitrary edge boundary, and would be problematic due to the existence of planets and their defenses (I could lead to some questionable tactics such as backing up to attack the planet from behind, thus making the placement of defense stations a problem).

You can rotate a ship without moving by keeping the cursor very close to the center of the ship, though it is slightly touchy. You can also order the ship to explicitly rotate by expanding the +MOVE item at the bottom of the screen and selecting ROTATE.

I'm not sure that being able to plan formations would be worth the extra management, but I do agree that the formation logic needs to do a better job of putting combatants in the front and more vulnerable ships in the rear.

Momentum and realistic physics is tricky to model in a turn-based system, primarily in terms of the player understanding what's going on, whereas in a real-time system it's more intuitive.

Ships currently start tactical combat close enough that certain long-range weapons can fire on the very first turn; I'm not sure that it would be a good idea to start much closer.

I agree that it's not ideal that with the recent changes ships can usually escape 100% of the time, but I think it's better than the previous alternative of scouts almost always getting killed. We will try to think of options that make it a little more compelling, but in the meantime we plan to add a "Retreat" auto-resolve button on the strategic screen so that at least you don't have to go through the uninteresting task of guiding your ships through the retreat process in the tactical battle if that's all you're going to do.

Missiles do move both during your turn and the enemy turn. It's not intended to be possible to dodge missiles, but it is possible to intercept them with weapons or fighters.

We do need a system to direct the player to the next unmoved ship, and that is planned.

[projekcja]

The idea of a wrap around is not that you see an unexpected teleportation, but that as you continuously scroll down, you'll keep seeing 'copies' of the entire map. You'd see another planet, another copy of the entire fleet etc. The point is for there never to be any 'special point' in which you bump into a wall or notice a teleportion rather that locally, on any point the map seems the same.

I bump into the problem if I want my missile boats not to be hit by enemy short-range weapons, and thus rather than move in to engage, I want them to fire their payload and move away... towards the invisible wall at my back. I also this this as the tactic of missile-ships vs one another. Whoever gets hit first loses, so fire and run.

The fact that you could attack the planet from more than one direction only seems to be sensible to me. A defensive station either has a long enough range to attack from the other side of the planet or cannot protect the planet from attackers that aren't trying to go through it....

About formations, the main problem with the lack of it in actual games for me was when 'transports' were included. These huge unarmed ships blocked my combat ships from advancing and made the default placement seem really clunky. Maybe just allow some ships not be included in the combat, or have transports not show up in combat. Also, I'd rather not be forced to fight unarmed space stations. I'd rather if they'd be automatically captured or destroyed.

About range, I was thinking of starting further than current distances, not closer. Even Missile can now sometimes hit on the very first turn. On the other hand, I don't want low tech combat in an extended range to consist of a couple of boring 'closing the gap' turns.

About missiles, I feel like what you need to do at the moment is pretty strange:
1) find the ship being targeted.
2) move it a little bit so the missiles advance half way
3) switch to other ships, move towards the half-way position of the missiles. Attack the missiles from as short a range as possible. If needed tweak the missile position a little bit more by switching back to the targeted ship and moving a little.
4) switch back to the targeted ship, move it forward till it bumps with the remaining missiles and automatically uses defensive weapons from minimal range.
I don't like it, but I don't see the alternative either. Maybe simply have missiles move on the turn of the ship shooting it? I also don't like the idea that short-ranged, missiles cant be intercepted, or relying on unexpected short-range automatic use of interception techniques.

Interceptor-missile interaction is also quite strange. I'd like to be able to send the interceptors on a general 'shoot down missile' mission, instead I can only send them onto a specific pack of missiles, and if they don't intercept the missiles in the short distance they move on my turn, the movement of the missile on the 'missile-target-turn' is going to make the initial movement of the interceptor completely off...

[Arioch]

About formations, the main problem with the lack of it in actual games for me was when 'transports' were included. These huge unarmed ships blocked my combat ships from advancing and made the default placement seem really clunky. Maybe just allow some ships not be included in the combat, or have transports not show up in combat. Also, I'd rather not be forced to fight unarmed space stations. I'd rather if they'd be automatically captured or destroyed.

I understand the issue; the formation logic should be more consistent with putting "civilian" vessels and carriers in the rear. However, if you want to exclude certain ships from battle, you can do this manually (if you're the attacker): just deselect the ships that you don't want in the battle from the fleet pane before you click "Attack."

[enpi]

larger tactical maps?
Why not, especially when alot of ships are involved.

teleporting ships exiting one edge and coming in from another?
no way, thats silly.

making it possible to preaarange the fleet?
seems ok to me, as long as there is still an "auto-arrange" button included

rotating ships?
maybe in addition support from the keyboard? (like pressing q means left rotate and pressing e means right rotate, for those of us which are challenged with mouse use.

Distance between the fleets in the first turn?
Maybe its just me, but I would wishfor a little bit more distance between the fleets, so that I can manoevre more. Atm everything seems a little bit too close.

[Gyrfalcon]

I do think having the ability to arrange my ships in formation before combat is a desirable feature, particularly because I can think of no automated system that will allow for specialized designs like making a shield-heavy boat to stick in front with a gun-heavy version of the same hull that I'd like to keep toward the back. I can also see how making the map bigger will allow for more interesting tactics, such as shoot 'n' scoot with missile boats. The current map favors beam ships pretty heavily.

[sven]

About missiles, I feel like what you need to do at the moment is pretty strange:
1) find the ship being targeted.
2) move it a little bit so the missiles advance half way
3) switch to other ships, move towards the half-way position of the missiles. Attack the missiles from as short a range as possible. If needed tweak the missile position a little bit more by switching back to the targeted ship and moving a little.
4) switch back to the targeted ship, move it forward till it bumps with the remaining missiles and automatically uses defensive weapons from minimal range.

This is one of the main reasons that the game includes a multi-ship move order. If you hold down shift you can add several different ships to your current selection set, and move all of them at once. A number of ships moving together in fairly tight formation will all fire defensive systems in support of each other as the enemy missiles come into range, so, in theory, you should generally be able to move ship groups together, and trust that the escorts will shot down any incoming missiles \ fighters as needed.

Arranging appropriate defensive formations is still a bit of a chore -- but, it with multi-ship moves, it should often be less tedious than similar situations in MOO2.

Interceptor-missile interaction is also quite strange. I'd like to be able to send the interceptors on a general 'shoot down missile' mission, instead I can only send them onto a specific pack of missiles, and if they don't intercept the missiles in the short distance they move on my turn, the movement of the missile on the 'missile-target-turn' is going to make the initial movement of the interceptor completely off...

If you have a save where the interceptors appear to go off-course, please upload it. They should be moving to intercept the targeted enemy missiles on a least-time course -- and that means that situations where fighters from your own escort carriers fail to chase down enemy missiles before they reach your own line should be very rare. Also, if interceptors do have enough firepower to shoot down multiple missile groups, they will do so, before returning to their carrier to rearm. In effect, if you target any missiles, the interceptors in that mission are on a general "missile defense" mission. (The same is true for fighters targeting ships -- assuming they have excess munitions after destroying a target, they'll chase down another enemy ship, before returning to the carrier.)

[projekcja]

This is one of the main reasons that the game includes a multi-ship move order. If you hold down shift you can add several different ships to your current selection set, and move all of them at once. A number of ships moving together in fairly tight formation will all fire defensive systems in support of each other as the enemy missiles come into range, so, in theory, you should generally be able to move ship groups together, and trust that the escorts will shot down any incoming missiles \ fighters as needed.

That's a very nice feature I wasn't aware of. Good job, it sounds a great way to make otherwise tedious ship-by-ship ordering faster.

If you have a save where the interceptors appear to go off-course, please upload it.

I tried to recreate the scenario I remembered, and couldn't. I think I just misinterpreted what I saw earlier.

[faijeya]

Multiple ship selection is a nice feature, it should be mentioned somewhere in game.


I personally think the dimensions of the battlefield are just right.
The battlefield should have the size for all combat mechanics to work and no more.
Horizon did the thing with the seamless battlefield (and you could fly from a sector to sector in the battle), but as it turns out MOO2-like mechanics do not cope with it well.

This may change with AI changes, but as currently it singles out a (closest?) ship to attack and hulls and shields are fragile, there isn't much need to maneuver.
If your missile boats are spent, you can always retreat them.


Preselecting the order of ships is a very tricky subject.
It's quite hard to do it not frustrating.

You can't please everyone with autoformations, placing ships manually will bore you even more (who played StarDrive 2, raise a hand if you placed your ships for at least 10 battles; placing them to the left border to retreat does not count), damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Better to leave it automatic just without shuffling ships as finding out where your missile boats are now is kind of tedious.


Newtonian physics do not belong to space games as we know them.
They imply wildly different combat mechanics accomodated to huge relative speeds and almost always devlove into a lancing tournament or into missile spam.
The battles will be much longer there too.

[spitfire_ch]

Preselecting the order of ships is a very tricky subject.
It's quite hard to do it not frustrating.

You can't please everyone with autoformations, placing ships manually will bore you even more (who played StarDrive 2, raise a hand if you placed your ships for at least 10 battles; placing them to the left border to retreat does not count), damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread.

For me, manual formations are rather important, as I don't like to move ships around within the formation once the battle starts. But not like it was done in StarDrive 2, but StarDrive 1 or even better in Sword of the Stars 1: Make it possible to adjust the formation when clicking on a fleet and SAVE the formation. So you don't have to do it before every battle, but only once. When you loose ships or add new ships to the fleet, you can simply edit the saved formation.

To save micromanaging, you could even use an automatically generated formation as a starting point, so you would only have to drag around single ships to match your strategy.