Does the Tactical Combat will be in expansion or update someday?

FlyingAngel69

Join Date 04/2006

Does the Tactical Combat will be in expansion or update someday?

I really-really want it! Please... say YES!

The only thing that makes me stop from buying GalCiv2 is that it has no tactical combat. Want to know why? Because if I have Tactical Combat my war becomes the personal war, instead of abstract startegy war.

For me it's really cool to destroy the opponents personally in Tactical Combat, instead of watching it falls down by my forces from the Galaxy view.

Also I'd like to choose for myself of using or not the Tactical Combat. I don't want somebody deside it for my, I want to choose it personally. I think, if it would ugly I will always could turn it off, but I want to have this way.

But, I hope the StarDock will be good this way as it always are, so I would like Tactical Combat. Of cause, if it will be created.

So could somebody tell me, does the Tactical Combat ever planned, as I hope so?

ideas

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Thank for answer, Frogboy.

We understand well GalCiv is not a tactical game. I prefer tactical games (i played a lot of these games since 1988), but i understand perfectly the "dice" combat thing. I find that in a lot of japanese games on genesis/megadrive, msx, pc98 and so on. It's cool too.

But, for now, the combat thing lack of deepness (it's the word ?). We can do NOTHING. The battles are just kill ennemies ship on planet, and send troop transport after another (a 2000 troops can be builded in 7 turns without hurt the population).

The choice in design is very little : Try to find the defense used by the ennemy, build a ship with two engines, one range unit, and full of the better weapon the ennemy seem don't have the defense for. And maybe one defense against the main weapon (on big ships, i use one defense of each : Seem to hurt the design choice of the ennemy).

The three weapon types hare the sames, as the defenses. It's juste a rock/scissor/paper.
No big or little weapons. No fast or slow weapons. No ECM or ECCM. No special things (i think i see a warp slower as planetary improvments), no regeneratives armor. Armor can't defend against missiles (err... why ?). equipment can't be destroyed. No crew. No weapons against biological or compuratized weapons (what the use for crew of Yors, then ?), etc.

It's not the dice thing for the combats that bother me. That's just the lack of choices.

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THEY SHOULD MAKE COMBAT TACTICAL!

IF THEY DID THEY WOULD BEAT UNBEATABLE MASTER OF ORION 2.

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MOO2 combat sucked. Turn based combat is unrealistic and guess what? Ain't gonna happen anyway.

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

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To Darth Kryo: No what?

To Vampiloup: I think exactly the same. You are right, combat system is in need of renovation, cause it's really lack deepness.

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In reality, MOO2 and Galciv2 are two unique game themeselve with similarity, but it doesn't mean they have to the same. Playing both game, I believe, with tatical combat implant in Galciv2 will mean, losing that judgemental AI in the Combat decision, the combat decision maker, are actually unique AI compare both ship and calculate the result using numeral sets of data for the fleets. But the Tatical combat basically mean, throw them away, and when you play with a harder difficulties, with a stronger AI as your opposition and you decide to Auto the combat, (with harder level already implemented in the set rule), it will really need alot stronger ships to equip with the stupid AI of yours ship to actually winning a more stronger and smart AI ships. And then if your actually lossing every battle with equal balanced fleets with identical firepower, and you keep losing those auto game, are you thinking about the computer cheated? Just even now I still believe if computer winning majority of battle with ship comparison with same rule at harder level, I still believe it is fair, since playing with harder level in reality has to take those things into consideration. For the Galciv2, those fair judge method combat with turns evoluation are making my life easier, imagine you have to go through all battle, then seriously I am out.

The MOO2 are actually been beaten several times, and please, both game are unique and both game are best of the kind, in really MOO serious are no better than Galciv.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

I loved MOO2. To repeat the oft-told story, I literally was playing MOO2 in the delivery room for the birth of my first son.

However, its tactical combat was not a strength IMO. It's a strength to people who (to put this delicately) are not keen strategists maybe. But it didn't take very much effort to outfight the AI in tactical combat which debalanced the entire game.

I totally agree that tactical combat would make the game have a wider appeal. No doubt about that. But that isn't something I'm that interested in (wider appeal). I only want to do tactical combat if I can have really good AI behind it.

Space Empires V is supposed to have tactical combat so those people should, by all means, pick that up instead. But I'm a computer AI guy, I want my opponents to be making use of every feature in the game. When one considered how relatively poorly (compared to a top human player) the AI handles star bases, one can imagien the difficulty in making use of ships in tactical combat.

So it's not likely something that would show up in a GalCiv II update but it is something I hope to look at in the future because it would be a neat challenge to write computer AI for tactical combat. But it would take months to perfect.

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Turn based combat is unrealistic

Not necessarily. It just depends on how it is done. Nothing particularly unrealistic about Starfleet Battles, for example.

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Many strategic games have tactical combat. MOO2 for example. MOO2 WAS primarily strategic but it certainly had a tactical element if you turned it on (you didn't have to). The Age of Wonders series had it and it added a LOT. As did MOM. In fact most TBS games I've played in the last few years have had some sort of tactical element. In all cases adding tactical combat added a lot of depth to the game. They managed to get it so that the AI was as intelligent at the tactical level as the strategic level.

In any event, after having designed the ships it would be cool to do more with them. On the strategic map I find myself having to scroll so far back that they switch to icons. Basically, all the fancy 3-D is lost on me and I'm back to looking at icons which would have fit in with a game from 10 years ago. Even if I set it so they didn't switch to icons the ships would be too tiny to really see. Working with the ship models in game for something would be cool anyway.

Tactical combat doesn't have to be super realistic. MOO2 sure wasn't and it would be easy to get the AI fairly optimized for that level of detail. Of course deep tactical combat is better then shallow tactical combat, but anything is better then nothing.

That said, I don't think you can just tack tactical combat onto an existing strategic game. All of a sudden things matter which didn't matter before. Like the direction weapons are pointing. It also allows a slew of new ship stats which could add a lot to the game if done right but which a pure strategic game (such as it is now) simply don't ahve. Like maneuverability. Or armor or shields which are better in one direction then another. Or any of several ship systems which add some sort of tactical advantage (look at all the extra systems MOO2 had for example).

Also, the way damage is done would be completely different and everything would have to be rebalanced. You don't just rework a game and toss it out, you have to spend a lot of time tweaking and balancing and anything which changes the way it resolves conflict is going to have to be tuned. A lot.

In the existing combat system they combine the stats of everything in the fleet (thus letting small ships have a chance against big ones) but in a tactical combat system that wouldn't work. Even if they just keep it simple and straightforward they'd probably end up wanting to tweak quite a bit to make the tactical combat satisfying and balanced. By the time they were done it would have been as if they'd redone the combat and ship stats from the ground up. Most likely they'd end up having to touch the tech trees, system size and mass, and who knows what else.

It's probably best if the game is designed from the ground up for tactical combat. That way, all the ship stats can be designed with that in mind, they can include additional features which would make sense in the tactical combat system (but not in a pure strategic system) and balance it all properly.

Because of that, tactical combat might work better in a GalCiv3 product in which it's designed in from the beginning then it would as an add-on to GalCiv2. It would certainly add to the scope of the development of a GalCiv3, but hopefully they're making so much money from GalCiv2 that that wouldn't be a problem.

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It's ok. I would start to wait GalCiv3.

I hope it will be better, then GalCiv2. Not like MOO3 (dhg-rgu-wiah-agh) after MOO2.

I agree, that Tactical Combat should be developed from ground up to be really cool, but I still want it.

Maybe it's true, that anything like somesing real will be better then nothing, isn't it?

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