So what does everyone think of the space battles and whats your suggestion for improvements???

I made an earlier post describing my displeasure with this part of the game. I enjoy the game immensely, but watching ships bounce off one another in the combat viewer really seems ridiculus. Space is a big place and ships are going to give one another a wide birth, cause, crashing into one another = hull breach = death. i know to some it might seem minor, but it just irritates the heck outta me

I'd also like to be able to zoom out and in as far as I like to get the perfect view . The perfect view would also include being able to really see and appreciate the size difference between capitol ships and fighters. As it is, you really dont get a good feel for the scale differences.

This isnt a knock on the game, cause i love it. I would just like to see the space battles tweaked to make this game perfect.

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Just use the free camera for zoom.

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i would like to see the weapons actually fire, instead of just one attack with the damage equalling how many weapons of that type you've used.

weapons actually firing out of their mounts, not the sides... i.em the one closest to the enemy.

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Might want to check your drivers and video card --- mine fire out of the hardpoints and I can see it every time...

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Once I get a good idea of how my ships stack up against their opponents I stop watching the battles entirely and skip to the report.

Then again I don't play this game as a "war" game, I avoid war as much as possible.

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I very much appreciated the somewhat simplistic (and buggy), yet fun, interface in "Birth of the Federation".

Basically, you had the same sort of "watch the action" as you do in GC2. However, the scaling was better (star bases were truly mamoth compared to ships), and you had turns in that interface in which you could assign your ships one of a number of "tactics" - something like being the coach of a football team - there was a straight forward bull-rush, there was a circle manuever, there was a hang-back and lob long-range weapons, oblique pass, etc. Not many choices, maybe 6, but you got to choose them each "round" and then watch as the action unfolded.

However, the very best set of 3D controls for viewing anything comes from "Homeworld"! In fact, I keep trying to use those mouse commands in GC2 (and every other space combat game) as they were by far the most flexible and intuitive yet devised. If I could control my camera with Homeworld-style mouse interface (instead of the clunky one available in "free-camera" mode in GC2), then I wouldn't care a whit about the rest of it, cause I could in an instant rotate and zooom the perspective to one that gave me a good view of the action!

Overall, its way better than just seeing the little "zap, shield burst, zap back, boom" on the main screen. But boy, what if I could just zoom in on a combat happening on the main screen (or auto-zoom) and it simply blew up the action to something reasonable to watch the combat unfold!.... (auto zoom out at the end...)

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The battles you see in Gal Civ are nothing more then fancy dice rolls. What you see is nothing more then the results of those dice rolls. How this ship or that ship moves will have no outcome on the battle results. I also see all the shots fine so i'd have to guess those that dont have dumded down thier comps to make overall game play allowable on an older more marginal system.

Myself, I've played many many hours and am to the point where I just hit results as soon as I can to make the game faster.

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The only thing I "dislike" is the way the ships sort of float around like they are in a bathtub. Otherwise, I think it is well done. I would like to see the little fighters go on swooping tracks; the cruisers could still do their bathtub schtick for all I care.
My suggestions would include:
- further diversification of weapons, such as adding "to-hit" chances: beams would do less damage but be most accurate, yet hard to defend against; missiles would "track" targets and thus nullify smaller ships inherent defense rating (negative to-hit modifiers), do most damage, but be easy to defend against and most bulky; mass drivers would do lots of damage, be cheap, but not very accurate, although somewhat mediocre to defend against. Starbases would also have modules for increasing the accuracy of some types of weapons. As implied above, huge ships would be easiest to hit, tiny ships hardest.

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Hi all,

Even on high specs comp, ships fire only one beam even though they've been given up to 3 plasma guns.

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The only issues I've had so far are:

1: Intergalactic bumpercars.

This is especially jarring when both sides have large fleets of huge ships. I guess you could pretend that they are broadsiding each other and sending over space marines

. Speaking of which, give us a space marines weapon! Anyone here ever play starcon 2? GO GO GO! LAUNCH LAUNCH LAUNCH FIGHTERS!

*ahem*

2: Although the ships DO fire from their hardpoints, the ships do not orient themselves so that the weapons are facing their target, and likewise, the weapons do not turn on their hardpoints to face their target. This means that you can have a long-barreled mass driver weapon firing in such a way that the round exits the barrel of the weapon and travels diagonally to the target.

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3: This one is a question as well as a comment- Does a ship with two missile launchers fire twice as often in the battle screen? Sometimes it seems like they do, but only up to a certain point. For example, when I get huge hulled ships and put on 10 missile launchers, I don't see it firing ten times as many missiles...

Am I just hallucinating, or what? If not, I would like them to change this to better reflect the amount of weapons mounted on the ship(s). Purely a cosmetic change, but a really COOOOL one

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All of the above and..

I know its just dice rolls but I want some control. When my fleet clashes I want to pick the target. I may know going in that I'm goign to lose but I can take one ship with me and I want to pick the ship that comes down with me.

I also would love to see all the different types of weapons firing. I've had ships with mass drivers, beam weapons and missles, but all I see is the beam weapon firing. I'd like to see each one volly at the enemy to give a sense of how powerful my ship was. Also, I'd like to see the fighter assist from starbases and maybe even the starbase that is lending assistance showing up in the battle in the background and doing its thing.

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I have to admit that there are a few things I don't like about the combat set up... Like it always seems to leave the enemy's largest ships until last (this could be an order of fleet listing issue ) and usually the big ships are the only things in his fleets with enough firepower to get through my defenses if I could target big ships first that would increase my fleets survivability...(just a fleet management button making this an option perhaps)

Also I agree about the toys in the bathtub comment (not that I play with toy ships in the bathtub--anymore) but I kind of expect my capital ships to stand back and annihilate his ships without ramming them... and since combat is just a dice game some nice cut scene action wouldn't have to be anything but cosmetic -- a little distance, maybe the free camera angle being mouse moveable so I can see all the action...stuff like that. But I have to admit that I also just hit the done button a lot -- like when I have 5 battleship class ships against his armada of "heavy" fighters so if none of this happens I won't be too offended I'll just stop watching my ships beat up the poor AI....

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the concept of "range" would also be nice, but it would reqire a complete overhaul of the combat system.

i'd like to have the choice between some weapon that have lower damage but longer range, and some that have shorter range but more damage... say lasers vs fusion beam weapons.

or some weapons that don't lose damage with range, like mass drivers and missiles, compared to beams which would fall off with range.

or some weapons that do damage instantly, and some that take a while to arrive, like missiles take time to hit that depends on range, but beams and drivers arrive in the same round.

this is a huge combat paradigm shift from "roll the dice" boardgame mechanics, so i don't expect to see it in any future expansion of GC2... but maybe GC3?

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Hi all,

Even on high specs comp, ships fire only one beam even though they've been given up to 3 plasma guns.

Lucky me that I have low-specs comp then, since I see ships firing multiple beams if they have multiple weapons.

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